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With all of the focus on how terrible a newspaper the Seattle Times is, I temporarily forgot how terrible a newspaper the Tacoma News-Tribune is. To be fair, I’ve seen far more incoherent anti-drug editorials than the one in that link, but it ends up completely missing the larger point behind the corruption within the medical marijuana community. The recent violence against members of that community has intensified a few pre-existing rifts, but it also turns out to be a good example of why moderation within that group is as important as ever if we’re to overcome the outdated stereotypes about marijuana and close the curtain on a truly destructive social policy – and why creating a legal and regulated market remains the smartest solution to the problem.

That editorial is a good springboard for tackling various aspects of those topics, so I’ll take it piece by piece:

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Oregon Attorney General John Kroger, a Democrat, is the first state AG to announce he will file a brief supporting the new health care law. From KATU-TV in Portland:

In an interview with KATU News reporter Anna Song Kroger said, “I think if you look at the Supreme Court’s cases on the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution over the last 70 years, it clearly suggests that the government has the power to regulate insurance and indeed to require people to either buy insurance or to pay additional taxes to help pay for insurance.”

As you more than likely know, Washington AG Rob McKenna, a Republican, has joined up with about twelve other AG’s to support a Florida-based lawsuit against the law.

If you go to the KATU link above and click on the “video” tab, you can watch about a ten minute interview with Kroger. It’s not the greatest interview, because the reporter seems to have only a rudimentary grasp of the constitutional issues at stake, but since Kroger is a professor and constitutional scholar you kind of figure he can write a good brief. He kept making the point that it’s important the courts hear from states who hold the law is constitutional, perhaps an indication that there will be others doing the same as Kroger.

I really don’t think Rob McKenna and Bill McCollum (and the rest) have any idea what is going to hit them. The best constitutional minds in the country are lining up against them. All Rob McKenna can do now is double down with the Tea People and The Seattle Times, which right now is advertising a “live chat” with McKenna scheduled for 12:45 pm tomorrow. That would be tomorrow, April 1. Yeah, I know. It would be funny if it weren’t so damn transparent and pathetic.

Yet another disgruntled ex-reader cancels their subscription to the Seattle Times:

Editor
Seattle Times

By this email I am canceling my subscription to the Seattle Times. Your endorsement of Rob McKenna’s self-serving challenge to the constitutionality of the health insurance reform bill argues that the suit is a challenge to Big Insurance that progressives should approve. The idea that the Seattle Times supports the challenge out of a concern for the power of corporations in American life lacks any credible evidence in the editorial positions historically taken by the Times.

The Times has every right to support McKenna’s efforts to tack the gubernatorial shoals of Tea Parties and Clubs for Growth, but doing it with a lecture about what liberals should believe grates one last time too many on me. Lawsuits are supposed to be filed in a good faith belief in the positions advanced. Unless he is dumb and, therefore not qualified to be Governor, McKenna cannot believe that this lawsuit has merit. When McKenna files and the Times endorses a suit against corporate personhood to overturn Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, I’ll re-subscribe.

I’ve learned to live without the PI. Living without the Times will be like noticing it’s not raining.

Jan Bianchi
Attorney at Law

Nearly 19,000 citizens have joined the “Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit” Facebook group over the past week, yet the Times dismisses our opposition as a mere “politically orchestrated hiss.”

So if you’re sick and tired of being disrespected by Frank Blethen and his cronies, cancel your subscription and send a copy of your correspondence to me, and I’ll be happy to post it to HA, with or without attribution.

Just a provide even more of an exclamation point on Rob McKenna’s hypocrisy over the Commerce Clause, here’s a page that the Marijuana Policy Project put up shortly after the Gonzales v. Raich decision came down. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to arrest people who are following their state’s medical marijuana law. This decision (which was agreed upon by both the more liberal members of the court and Scalia) is why most legal experts believe that the challenge to the health care reform bill’s mandates will rejected.

What’s interesting about that page is that, of the 10 states that had medical marijuana laws at the time of the decision, all but two of the respective state Attorney Generals publicly affirmed that their state medical marijuana laws were still valid despite the ruling. One of the two who sat silent was Rob McKenna. In fact, I can’t find a single public statement from McKenna at that time standing up for the Washington voters who’d voted overwhelmingly to allow marijuana use among seriously ill individuals. This is why the Seattle Times editorial claiming that McKenna’s opposition is somehow rooted in his deep convictions about the Constitution is such a joke.

Instead, Josh Feit gets this one exactly right:

I’ll tell you exactly what Rob McKenna was thinking: Charlie Crist.

Sure McKenna may have jeopardized his shot at winning the governor’s race in 2012, but he has to make it through the primary to even have a chance. And even in a top-two primary (or especially in a top two primary), he needs the Republican base.

Feit thinks that McKenna’s gamble could work and get him to the Governor’s Mansion. I’m not so sure. But for the Seattle Times not to be able to see through his transparent bullshit – well, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from them.

I couldn’t make it down there myself, but I’m told a healthy media contingent showed up to watch the protesters drop off petitions at the Attorney General’s office, presumably on the off chance that there might be a little drama.

I’d say that was well played on my part, but, you know, one can only go to that particular well so many times.

When several thousand health care reform backers packed into Westlake Park last September the rally earned relatively little media coverage and absolutely zero ink in the Seattle Times. Yet when maybe a hundred or so Teabaggers gathered on a street corner to mark the anniversary of their so-called “movement,” the Times deemed that worthy of a reporter, a photographer and twenty column inches.

Why? Media bias, of course, though not necessarily of the kind you might think.

Yeah, sure, our media’s corporate owners are biased toward the right-wing agenda and away from ours, but outside of, say, Fox News and handful of other ridiculously partisan media outlets, that only explains a small part of the disproportionate coverage the Teabaggers have enjoyed. No, what the media is really institutionally biased toward is a good story. And the angry, crazy, froth-at-mouth Teabaggers are nothing if not a good story.

Peacefully dropping off a bunch of petitions on the other hand, not so much… not at least unless you’re Tim Eyman prancing about in a rented costume, and spouting off his usual anti-tax/anti-government sound bites. But up the ante a little — provoke the AG’s office into ordering a lockdown, for example — and voila… three TV cameras show up. You know, just in case.

Am I proud that it took turning up the angry rhetoric a couple notches to spark some attention? Not particularly, but neither am I ashamed. I’ve been at this too long not to know how this game is played.

In my emails today with AG communications director Janelle Guthrie, she wrote: “It doesn’t have to be as ugly and contentious as you seem to like to make it. Reasonable people can have reasonable discussions.”

Yeah, well, reasonable people can have reasonable discussions, but apparently, if you want the media to pay attention, it does unfortunately have to be a little ugly and contentious. After all, my long time readers know that at my core, I’m a policy wonk who often digresses into lengthy, technical policy discussions, only to be completely ignored by the legacy press. But break a bit of dirty muckraking — or vaguely threaten to vaguely threaten a public disturbance — and that catches the media’s attention.

I’m a smart critic, an entertaining writer and a damn fine analyst with long track record of getting stuff right, but honestly, I know what my main role is: publicly saying the things respectable folk wish they could publicly say, if they weren’t so cautious and polite. That’s why folks read me, because I’m willing to call a spade a fuckin’ spade. And there’s something naturally cathartic in that.

But like I said, one can only go to that particular well so many times before it runs dry, and if I’m the only person around here expressing any real emotion, the media will continue to largely ignore our side of the story while heaping outsized coverage on the handful of loud, angry wingnuts across the street.

And for those in the media who take issue with my assessment of what it takes to manipulate you, well, actions speak louder than words. (Or at least, actions would speak louder than words, if only there was anybody around to report on them.)

State Attorney General Rob McKenna has ordered his offices on “modified lockdown” today in anticipation of protests against his bullshit lawsuit to block national health care reform. According to spokesperson Janelle Guthrie:

“We understand that a number of groups are going to be rallying tomorrow and bringing petitions over to our office. Some blogs have been encouraging acts of violence toward our office,” Guthrie said, declining to identify which ones caused alarm. “It’s for protection of all the employees here who have nothing to do with this lawsuit.”

Uh-huh. Well, I didn’t make an exhaustive search, but I haven’t seen any of the local blogs I usually read advocating violence, so I can only assume that Guthrie is referring to me. And here’s what I wrote on the subject:

Tomorrow at the AG’s office, let the polite petitioners do their thing, but if you’re pissed off at Rob McKenna for pandering to Teabaggers and threatening health care reform with his cheap political ploy, I encourage you to show up at his office and make a ruckus. Get loud, get angry, get threatening. I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage, but I’d love to see the genuine fear of it.

So here’s my question to our state’s top law enforcement officer: if saying that “I don’t particularly want to see any actual violence or property damage” can be understood as advocating violence and property damage, then you damn well better send a state trooper to my door and have me arrested, because I’m not backing down.

I mean, Jesus Christ… the teabaggers are faxing nooses and cutting gas lines and flashing their weapons and generally behaving like health care reform is the legislative equivalent of Red Dawn, and you’re locking down your offices because some blogger says he hopes protesters will be loud and angry? Could you be a bigger pussy?

That said, protesters will be gathering at the Tivoli Fountain on the Capitol campus at noon today, and marching to the locked-down AG’s offices at 1125 Washington Street SE to deliver over 18,000 petitions. And yes… I urge you to show up and get loud, angry and disruptive. But you know, not violent per se, because that sort of behavior is apparently only acceptable from the right.

UPDATE:
Guthrie confirms via email that yes, she was referring to my post, but claims she was misquoted.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Guthrie elaborates that it was this line that allegedly prompted the need for a lockdown — “… it’s not our fault if some people get out of hand” — a line that parodies the refusal of Republican congressional leaders to forcefully condemn the violent acts and threats from the right that has been spurred on by their party’s incendiary rhetoric during the health care debate.

But, you know, I am a liberal, so you can never be too careful.

On the same day that real estate salesman Dino Rossi teases the NRSC with word that he’s seriously considering a run for the U.S. Senate, the 18,000-strong Washington Association of Realtors announce their enthusiastic endorsement of Democratic incumbent Sen. Patty Murray:

“Realtors are proud to endorse Sen. Murray as she has been a tireless advocate for housing affordability and the American dream of home ownership,” said Bill Riley, Washington Realtor president. “She has also been keenly aware of the state of the housing market and its importance to our economic recovery.”

With the Realtors’ endorsement comes the financial support of the RPAC, the state’s largest political action committee, with as many as 10,000 annual contributors. RPAC endorses Democrats and Republicans who share the organization’s concerns for the housing industry, home buyers, and homeownership in Washington state. In 2008, Realtors invested more than $750,000 to support political races around the state; about 93 percent of Realtor-endorsed candidates were elected to office.

Oh man, that’s gotta sting, doesn’t it, when the folks who know you best endorse your opponent? Kinda like David Irons losing the endorsement of his own mother.

The Podcast emerges from its undisclosed location to make a fleeting appearance at Drinking Liberally. Goldy and his panel of political wonks and blogoratti take the opportunity to celebrate the passage of sweeping health care reform legislation…because it IS a big fucking deal! At the same time, they express collective bemusement in the Republican response to the new law: “It’s Armageddon!”

At the local level, the panel takes bewildered delight in the decision by Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna to join the Florida anti-health-care-reform lawsuit. Rob, who everyone knows is running for Governor in 2012, has done a wonderful job maintaining the façade of a moderate Republican. The panel dissects the decision and concludes that the lawsuit was a huge political blunder, and one that will re-brand McKenna as something of a “far rightie Tenther nutcase.” Explaining McKenna’s blunder proves more elusive for the panel. Was it anger? Was it self-delusion? Was it extortion? Was he reacting to a potential primary challenge by Dino Rossi?

The panel wraps up with a discussion of the remaining reconciliation process and Republican prospects and reactions in the immediate post-health-care-reform world…seemingly, “no!,” “nuh-uh,” and “naaah.”

Goldy was joined by Drinking Liberally Seattle co-host Chris Mitchell, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, and me.

The show is 53:07, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_23_2010.mp3]

[Recorded live at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to Confab creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the Podcasting Liberally site.]

Via DailyKos.

“[Rob McKenna] may represent the people of Florida, but not on the dime of the taxpayers of Washington.”
— Washington Governor Chris Gregoire

Perhaps this helps explain why over 6,500 Washington citizens have already joined the Washington Tax Payers OPT OUT of Rob McKenna’s Lawsuit Facebook group?

UPDATE:
Oops.  A new USA Today/Gallup poll shows public opinion swinging strongly in favor of health care reform.

Americans by 9 percentage points have a favorable view of the health care overhaul that President Obama signed into law Tuesday, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, a notable turnaround from surveys before the vote that showed a plurality against it.

By 49%-40% those surveyed say it was “a good thing” rather than a bad one that Congress passed the bill. Half describe their reaction in positive terms, as “enthusiastic” or “pleased,” while about four in 10 describe it in negative ways, as “disappointed” or “angry.”

The largest single group, 48%, calls the bill “a good first step” that should be followed by more action on health care. An additional 4% also have a favorable view, saying the bill makes the most important changes needed in the nation’s health care system.

Perhaps this is why Republicans vehemently opposed passage… because the knew public opinion swing in the Democrats favor once it was passed? And notice how 48% call it “a good first step”… seems to be a pretty clear indication that a lot of the folks previous polls reported as opposing the bill, merely thought it didn’t go far enough.

Writing on the Washington State Insurance Commissioner’s official blog, Rich Roesler explains what yesterday’s passage of federal health care reform means for us here in Washington state:

The health care reform bill passed by the U.S. House Sunday will cut the number of uninsured in Washington state by more than 500,000, provide better coverage to those with insurance, and save $500 million in uncompensated care – health care that’s delivered in Washington state but not directly paid for.

Which makes it hard to explain why Republicans Dave Reichert, Doc Hasting and Cathy McMorris-Rodgers would vote against it. Unless, of course, their votes were purely ideological and/or political.

Ezra Klein makes this point magnificently:

When Medicare was being considered, the American Medical Association hired Ronald Reagan to record a record housewives could play for their friends. It was called Operation: Coffee Cup, and you can listen to it in the clip atop this post, or read the text here.

Reagan was a more graceful speaker than Blackburn, but his point was much the same. Kill the bill. “If you don’t do this and if I don’t do it,” he said, “one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children, what it once was like in America when men were free.”

Well, the bill passed. And moments ago, Rep. Paul Ryan was on the floor of the House, bellowing against Democrats who would dare propose “across-the-board cuts to Medicare.” This is breathless opportunism from Ryan — he has proposed far deeper across-the-board cuts to Medicare, and is making arguments against the Democrats’ bill that would be far more potent and accurate if aimed at his own — but leave that aside for a moment. The GOP’s embrace of the program that Ronald Reagan fought, and that Newt Gingrich sought to let “whither on the vine,” is based on the lived experience seniors have had with the bill: It has made them more, rather than less, free.

Blackburn’s introduction aside, people do not “celebrate” the freedom to not be able to afford lifesaving medical care. They don’t want the freedom to weigh whether to pay rent or take their feverish child to the emergency room. They don’t like the freedom to lose their job and then be told by insurers that they’re ineligible for coverage because they were born with a heart arrhythmia.

When faced with the passage of programs that would deliver people from these awful circumstances, the Republicans adopt a very narrow and cruel definition of the word “freedom.” But when faced with the existence of programs like Medicare, and the recognition that their constituents depend on those programs to live lives free of unnecessary fear and illness, they abandon their earlier beliefs, forget their dire warnings and, when convenient, defend these government protections aggressively. There’s nothing much to be done about that. It is, after all, a free country. But Americans should feel free to ignore these discredited hysterics.

The House now has the votes to pass this thing.

Once again, the Change.org website held an open forum for voting on which issues Americans want the Obama Administration to address. The results were announced and – once again – ending marijuana prohibition was one of the top issues voted on. In Canada, Prime Minister Stephen Harper discovered the same thing when he agreed to respond to questions from the online community. He was expected to respond to these questions today.

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Yesterday I griped about the Seattle Times myopic focus on the revenue side of the state budget equation, while providing very little coverage of the steep spending cuts in virtually every state agency and program:

You wouldn’t know it from reading the Times, because that doesn’t fit in with their lazy waste/fraud/abuse meme. No, the Times never writes about the thousands of state employees who have lost their jobs — further depressing our local economy — because they’re too busy expressing outrage that the remaining state employees still enjoy the same kind of health care benefits newspaper employeesused to enjoy as recently as a decade ago.

And today, as if on cue, the Times initial coverage of the just released Senate budget proposal focuses exclusively on tax increases.

If all you read was the Times, you might not remember that the legislature and governor addressed last year’s record revenue shortfall with a dramatic, all cuts budget, and you might think that the Senate is looking to close this year’s additional $2.7 billion gap entirely on the back of taxpayers. No, you’d have no idea that the Senate budget proposal includes another $838 million in additional cuts.

I’m just sayin’…

Sensible Washington is having its kickoff meeting for Olympia area volunteers tonight. Also, Philip Dawdy responds to the ACLU of Washington’s decision not to endorse I-1068:

Sensible Washington is disappointed that the ACLU of Washington is refusing to support I-1068. We believe that in so doing the group is ignoring the wishes of many of its members and contradicts its years of support for marijuana drug reform. We find it especially ironic that the organization which initially promoted legalization and reform in Washington State should retreat from its last 10 years of work on that front.

We are especially disturbed by the characterization of I-1068 as irresponsible based upon lack of regulation when the ACLU of Washington is well aware that the initiative could not include a regulatory scheme. Federal preemption issues make a comprehensive tax and regulate scheme impossible and the single issue rule for initiatives in Washington State does not help either. Those restrictions limit the scope of any initiative to removing criminal penalties for adults. If I-1068 is passed this November it will fall to the State Legislature to provide a legal framework for adult marijuana use, possession and cultivation. The ACLU of Washington has been involved in developing such frameworks, making its current position on I-1068 even more curious.

We are confused that the ACLU of Washington doesn’t seem to get that it is wrong for the State of Washington to continue to waste about $105 million a year in taxpayer funds to arrest, prosecute and imprison over 12,000 otherwise responsible citizens a year for marijuana-related offenses. We are confused that the ACLU of Washington would be willing to accept a state medical marijuana law which offers little legal protection to sick and dying patients. And we are utterly baffled that the ACLU of Washington does not get that the repeated failure of the Legislature to reform this state’s marijuana laws indicates that an initiative to the people is the only responsible method to achieve the kind of reform that the citizens of Washington State clearly desire.

I think the main stumbling block for the ACLU here is that they’ve become so enamored with having good relationships with certain powerful folks in the state that they’ve been willing to completely compromise on making any progress in order to keep that seat at the table. During the push to modify the medical marijuana law in 2007-2008, they ended up compromising so much that patients ended up more likely to be arrested (see update 2) with the new law than they were before. The ACLU was prominent in those discussions. The I-1068 initiative is a recognition that trying to negotiate with the legislature is no longer a good strategy. This initiative is a way to force the legislature’s hand to deal with this problem head on and stop dicking around. And my own hunch (and it’s just a hunch) is that this made the ACLU uncomfortable. Otherwise, as Philip explains quite well in that post, their opposition to the initiative simply doesn’t make sense logically.

UPDATE: One additional aspect of this that’s worth noting is that the ACLU of Washington was the main driver behind the recent decriminalization bills in the legislature (which didn’t pass either the House or the Senate, despite merely trying to make our marijuana laws more similar to states like Ohio and Mississippi). Some of the folks who put together I-1068 had been very vocal in their criticisms of Alison Holcomb and the ACLU of Washington over not pushing for full legalization. Again, I have no idea exactly what drove Holcomb to come out against I-1068 (which has been endorsed by a broad range of folks already), but considering the ACLU of Washington’s track record in drug law reform, it’s probably a good thing they’re not involved.

UPDATE 2: After being challenged on the assertion noted above, I’m going to remove it from the post. This has been my perception from following a number of cases, but I don’t have any data to prove it, so I’m striking it from my original post. I do feel confident in saying that the revision of the law did nothing to prevent patients from being arrested, since the recent State vs. Fry court decision affirmed that the law does nothing to prevent patients from being arrested. My larger point that the attempts to work with the legislature were a complete failure still stands.

Last week, I wrote about the story of Kathy Parkins. Parkins was a 51-year-old medical marijuana patient from Washington who was arrested in late 2007 after being pulled over in Arizona with a small amount of marijuana. She was allowed to serve out her probation in Seattle, but ran into some corruption and incompetence within the Washington Department of Corruptions, including being illegally detained and kept in jail for a week in May 2008 without any charges. Following that, she spent over a year trying to get a hold of a document that showed that a corrections officer falsified information in an attempt to have her sent back to Arizona. The document was finally released in the most recent public disclosure request and contained several fabrications – things that clearly could not have been accidental.

I’d also mentioned that Carla Cole, Parkins’ roommate at the time of the arrest, had been trying to get an explanation from the DOC. In February 2009, DOC Head Eldon Vail sent Cole a reply claiming that the officers didn’t inaccurately fill out paperwork or fabricate anything. At the time, the DOC was still refusing to let Parkins actually see the report in question, an Interstate Compact form that allowed for her to serve out her probation here. So after the report was revealed in the public disclosure request – proving that, in fact, Officer Jeremy Praven made several things up – she sent off another letter to Vail asking for an explanation.

In a letter dated last Wednesday, February 10, the DOC once again tried to claim that there’s nothing to see here, although the letter did not come directly from Vail. It was from Regional Administrator Jim Harms:

I have been asked to respond to your letter dated January 24, 2010 addressed to Secretary Eldon Vail. You wrote about information contained in a public disclosure request response concerning the Washington State Department of Corrections and medical marijuana, and the circumstances of the arrest of your former tenant, Kathleen Merry in May 2008.

We take the concerns of you, and in fact, all citizens very seriously and carefully review all complaints. As Secretary Vail indicated in his February 20, 2009 letter to you, your allegations of misconduct were investigated. Both the Unit Supervisor and the Field Administrator followed up with identified staff.

I apologize for any confusion or frustration this incident caused you, but no indications of misconduct, intended inaccuracies or fabrications have been found in this case.

Once again, you can see the document in question in this PDF file of released documents, pages 20 to 22. As I documented last week, within that report, Praven makes a number of completely fictional claims:

– That Parkins has no family ties to Washington state and only came here because of the medical marijuana laws. In fact, Parkins has lived in Washington state nearly her entire life, only recently deciding to move to California. Her children and grandchild live here, along with 9 aunts and uncles.

– That Cole belongs to an organization called the ‘Marijuana’s Growers Association of Washington’. No such organization has ever existed.

– That Parkins was not authorized to use medical marijuana in Washington state. Parkins had received an updated authorization that morning. She claims that when she offered to show it to Officer Praven, he wasn’t interested in seeing it.

There simply isn’t any ambiguity about this. Anyone with rudimentary critical thinking skills can recognize that these lies showed up in Praven’s report as an attempt to have Parkins sent back to Arizona. Coupled with the fact that Praven illegally detained Parkins before filling out this document – and then left her in jail for a week without any information about why she was being held – there’s no justification at all for claiming that no misconduct occurred. And it’s a clear lie that no intended inaccuracies or fabrications ended up in Parkins’ paperwork.