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State budgets have come out in the House and Senate, and the word “brutal” comes to mind. Goldy wants an income tax. Does that make him crazy? Are there good alternatives in the face of a state revenue collapse? Will someone show leadership on the issue? And how long will it take voters to warm-up to the idea?

Wait…wasn’t that Mike!™ McGavick’s shtick? Senators Murray and Cantwell vote to slash the estate tax. What the hell were they thinking? Same-sex marriage Marriage equality gets a huge boost with a ruling in Iowa, and votes in Vermont and Washington D.C. How long will it take here in Washington state? Finally, the panel peeks at the rave reviews from the Barack Obama World Tour.

Goldy was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, Peace Tree Farm’s N in Seattle, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, and Executive Director of the Northwest Progressive Institute Andrew Villeneuve

The show is 42:19, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_7_2009.mp3]

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

Over on their editorial board blog, the Seattle Times’ Bruce Ramsey calls me out for calling out Susan Hutchison for her connections to the Discovery Institute and their Christianist, anti-science campaign to foist so-called Intelligent Design theory on unsuspecting school children.

Oh, come on. I don’t buy the argument from design, and once compared it to the fabulist Erich von Daniken. But Discovery does lots of things, from stuff on Russia to passenger trains. Discovery was the initial backer of the bored tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct—an idea now endorsed by Ron Sims, Greg Nickels and Christine Gregoire. Funny how our progressive pundits missed the chance to make fun of that idea by talking about Intelligent Design.

Oh Bruce… why are you always picking on me?  When have I ever said an unkind word about your publication?

But if you’re gonna pick on me, the least you could do is pick your spots a little more carefully, for I’m pretty sure I’ve never missed a chance to make fun of Discovery by talking about Intelligent Design.  Indeed back in December of 2007, when the deep bored tunnel idea was first raised, I ridiculed Discovery in a post titled “Intelligent Transportation Design,” writing:

[T]he folks at the Discovery Institute are a bunch of fanaticist nutcases “visionaries”… you know, if by “visionary” you mean promoting Intelligent Design, seeking to overthrow the scientific method and “replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions,” …

And then again a year later, in a similarly named post, I once again honed in on the cavemen riding dinosaurs meme, musing:

Yeah, but then again, these are folks who don’t believe in evolution, so forgive me for taking their claimed scientific and technical expertise with a grain of salt.

There are a lotta things you can tar me with Bruce, but being inconsistent ain’t one of ’em.

And as for your main premise:

There are two obvious questions that matter about Susan Hutchison as King County Executive. One is whether her career as a TV news anchor and in arts fundraising qualifies her to be CEO of the largest county government in Washington, which is involved in police, courts, jails, land-use control, public health and elections. The other is how Hutchison would use the power the county executive actually has. Focus on these, and give us all a rest regarding the Discovery Institute.

Well, forgive the over-the-top forced metaphor, but I’d say that arguing that Hutchison’s association with Intelligent Design has no bearing on her fitness for office is kinda like considering Mussolini to head Sound Transit, and insisting the only thing that really matters is whether he has the proven ability to make the trains run on time.

Of course Discovery is a valid issue in this campaign, as are Hutchison’s self-identification as a conservative Republican.  These are issues and labels which help inform us about Hutchison’s values, and whether she shares those of the majority of King County voters.  Given her background, Hutchison should be forced to answer whether she accepts evolution as valid science, and whether she believes Intelligent Design or other “alternative theories” should be taught in the schools.  Surely, Bruce, you’re not arguing that voters would be better served by having less information about their candidates?

As I stated yesterday, the bulk of the invitations for Hutchison to sit on boards came from her role controlling Charles Simonyi’s vast checkbook, but her position at Discovery, and the conservative Christian organization Young Life were different.  These were board positions Hutchison sought out, presumably because their agendas were consistent with her own personal beliefs.  Good for her.  People should act on their principles.

And people’s principles should be issues in political campaigns.

I’ve been admittedly obsessed over the past couple weeks with making the argument for a high-earner’s income tax, but the other policy issue I’ve been advocating this session also appears to be gaining a little traction: a move toward a high tuition/high financial aid model that could raise additional funds for higher education, while increasing access and decreasing costs to students from lower and middle income families.

A few weeks ago Rep. Reuven Carlyle (D-36) staked his own credibility to the concept in a guest column in the Seattle Times, and just last week, the even the Times editorial board wrote in favor of raising tuition and financial aid.  And today, coming on the heels of Gov. Gregoire’s proposal to let tuition rise 28% over two years, none other than University of Washington President Mark Emmert, writing in his own guest column in the Times, argues that if we are going to keep the “higher” in higher education, colleges and universities need more “flexibility on tuition.”

The leaders of our four-year colleges and universities understand that our schools must take cuts. But we also know that we can keep students coming to school and graduating on time if we are simply given more flexibility on tuition. We can help our students and our state without new state money. Moreover, we can fix much of this problem without denying access to students because of their income or family background.

The UW has the lowest tuition of any of its peers and is one of the best bargains in the country. With increased financial aid and the expanded federal tax credit, we can remain an excellent value for our families, maintain our world-class quality, and not slash the number of students we admit.

To give higher education the opportunity to resolve this crisis without requiring more state money is the only responsible thing to do. To do otherwise is to deny thousands of our citizens a chance to succeed in the knowledge economy.

Huh.  Guess the idea doesn’t sound so wing-nutty after all, when it’s coming from the mouth of Emmert.

So how does it work?  How can we possibly raise tuition while maintaining access and affordability to lower and middle income students?  Well, as I’ve explained before, it’s simple math:

Let’s say you’re a low to middle income student currently receiving financial aid in the form of $3,000 in grants, and the UW suddenly jacks up its $6,800/year in tuition and fees to $17,800.  Now let’s say the UW (ie, the state) increases your grant by another $11,000 to offset the hike.  How much extra money did this cost the state?  Zilch.  You were paying $3,800/year and you’re still paying $3,800.  It’s a zero sum game.

But if you’re a student from a wealthy family, who does not need financial aid, and thus does not qualify for it, you’re suddenly paying an extra $11,000 into the system… money that can be spent to increase the quality of education at the UW, or expand the number of seats, or even lower the costs for truly needy students.

The key of course is to increase financial aid commensurate to the needs of the students, both the dollar amount, and the upper range of incomes that qualify for aid.  The goal should be to accept students based solely on merit, and to charge them for their education according to their ability to pay.  That, in my opinion, is the best way to extend opportunity to all of our state’s young people.

Or, you know, we could continue with what we do now, where wealthy families who have easily afforded years of $23,420 annual tuition at Seattle’s exclusive Bush School, send their kids on to the UW at the same $6,800 bargain rate as everybody else, at the same time the university is being forced to slash classes and slots. Does that really make sense?

Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, two of only nine Democrats to vote in favor of raising the federal estate tax exemption from $7 million to $10 million, and lowering the top rate from 45% to 35%, apparently both told Publicola’s Chris Kissel that they did so to reduce the financial strain on “small businesses.”

“Small businesses are hurting and we need to make sure they’re protected,” said Murray spokeswoman Alex Glass.

Um… define “small,” but… whatever.

Kissel goes on to suggest the real motivation behind our senators’ vote:

The measure will have the greatest impact on wealthy folks like Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen, who unsuccessfully lobbied both Murray and Cantwell to vote for a repeal of the estate tax in 2006. That same year, voters here rejected a measure that would have repealed Washington State’s estate tax.

Gee, I dunno.  With McClatchy essentially writing off its 49.5% stake in the Times, I’m not so sure that lowering the estate tax’s top rate helps Blethen and his heirs all that much.  I mean, 35% of zero is still zero, isn’t it?

Talk about a clever estate planning strategy.

I guess some folks just aren’t willing to share pain:

Both the House and Senate budget proposals this week would take a chunk out of the State Auditor’s Office performance audits, which measure the bang-for-the-buck worth of government programs.

“To take more than half of the revenue that voters permanently designated for performance audits and use it to fund other programs undercuts the performance audit authority that citizens directly gave to their independent state auditor,” Brian Sonntag, that auditor, told senators this afternoon. “That change . . .and the precedent it sets is absolutely unacceptable.”

He said the plan to move $15 million in performance audit money from his office to auditing programs in the Legislature and the governor’s office as “nothing short of an assault on what citizens expect the state to do.”

Oh boo-hoo.  Where or where will he find the money for yet another Sound Transit audit?

I didn’t hear Brian crying about the Legislature defunding voter approved initiatives to decrease class size and increase teacher pay, or about gutting I-937’s widely popular renewable energy targets.  But God forbid he temporarily lose half his performance audit budget, and it’s “absolutely unacceptable.”  I guess in Brian’s world, Eyman initiatives should be unassailable, whereas those other initiatives… well.. citizens didn’t really “expect the state to do” what those initiatives told the state to do.

If you don’t like your budget cuts Brian, either suck it up, or join me in fighting for some responsible revenue increases.

It was B-day in the Washington State legislature, and a “mostly-cuts” budget emerged from its mean, selfish, elderly-hating, antisocial hole. Goldy wonders if Rep. Frank Chopp really represents his constituents in the 43rd, and further wonders if Chopp is trying to extort a billion dollars from Sound Transit. Will the state Democrats’ failure to lead, rather than just grow their coalition, give us a Governor named Rob McKenna?

It was Election Day in NY-20, traditionally a Republican stronghold, yet the Democratic candidate came from behind to take a small lead as the polls closed. Time to call the lawyers! On that topic, a three-judge panel has ruled in the Minnesota Senate race lawsuit, and the ruling strongly favors Senator Elect Al Franken. How much longer will Norm Coleman be able to obstruct the seating of a junior Senator from Minnesota? Lastly the panel chats about sex…laws.

Goldy was joined by Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly, Group News Blog publisher Jesse Wendel, Effin’ Unsound’s & Horsesass’s Carl Ballard, and Drinking Liberally Seattle co-host Chris Mitchell.

The show is 37:01, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_31_2009.mp3]

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

State Senate Dems have been blogging the current session, and Majority Leader Lisa Brown has a new post up talking about, yes, taxes.

There’s been a lot of talk in Olympia recently about a sales tax increase, but we need a revenue proposal that makes things better and fairer for regular families in our state — not worse.

We need to keep in mind that, in Washington, individuals in the lowest 20 percent of the tax bracket pay 17 percent of their annual income in state taxes, and individuals in the top 20 percent of the tax bracket pay less than 3 percent.  For a sales tax to be fair, any increase would have to include a full working families tax credit to offset the unfair impact on those who are hardest hit by our tax structure.

I also worry that a sales tax increase would make us even more dependent on an extremely volatile revenue stream. Consider recent evidence: state revenue, more than half of which comes from the sales tax, has taken a nosedive in the current recession. The total downward adjustment of state revenues since the last legislative session is $4.9 billion – $2.3 billion in the past two months alone.

The New York Legislature is considering what I think is a fair and stable way of addressing their revenue challenges.

Should we do something similar in Washington?

Yes, yes, we should do something similar here in Washington, and the first step toward achieving this something similar is to actually mention it by name:  a high-earners income tax.

It is encouraging to see Sen. Brown publicly consider such a proposal, but also quite telling that she obviously felt the need to obliquely link to the NY State variant, rather than speaking its details openly, without hesitation.  The income tax—any income tax—has long been considered the third rail of WA politics, but we’re not talking about forcing anything down taxpayers’ throats here:  we’re talking about talking about holding a public debate over whether to put a high-earners income tax on the ballot where voters could approve or reject it for themselves.  Why should that be so hard?

Still, Sen. Brown appears to be taking the initiative where other Democratic leaders have failed to tread, and she deserves kudos for that.  What she needs now is unqualified public support from her caucus members who privately acknowledge that a high-earners income tax should be a responsible part of any proposal to close our current budget gap… politics permitting.  It is high time to speak truth from power.

I don’t normally reprint emails without the authors’ express permission, but since this exchange seems to be making the rounds, and since it constitutes official correspondence with an elected official, thus making it a public record, I feel comfortable making an exception.

This afternoon Barbara from Sammamish mass emailed state legislators, citing a number of Biblical passages, and urging them to “Say NO to same sex marriage” or “be judged for all eternity.  And to his credit, Rep. Geoff Simpson (D-Covington) was quick to offer the following courteous and thorough reply:

From: Simpson, Rep. Geoff 
Sent: Monday, March 30, 2009 5:11 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: RE: Say NO to same sex marriage SB5688

Barbara –

What is it in the bible that leads you to believe stopping gay marriage should top your political priority list? Was there some extra-special **emphasis**, italics, bold or bold italics in your bible that called your attention to one aspect of god’s law to be the thing you should contact your elected representative about? Or did God himself point you to gay marriage as the issue that should be your tip-top, number one political concern?

Jesus opposed the death penalty, saying “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” – yet George W. Bush set an execution record when he was governor of Texas, and boasted of it. I don’t recall ever getting a message from you opposing the death penalty as Christ did.

Why is your “Christian” political activism concentrated against gay marriage instead of against the death penalty?

In the interest enforcing the laws of the bible with regard to marriage, let’s not forget that; 

• It’s ok for marriage to consist of a union between one man and one or more women. (Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3: 2-5)
• Marriage does not impede a man’s right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives.(11Sam 5:13; 1Kings 11:3; 11Chron 11:21)
• A marriage is considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. (Deut. 22: 13-21)
• Marriage between a believer and a non-believer is forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25: 1-9; Ezra 9:12, Neh 10:30)
• Since marriage is for life, nothing in the scriptures permits divorce.( Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)
• If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and by otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10) 

Finally, I need some advice from you regarding some of the specific laws contained in the bible and how to best follow them.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord (Lev. 1:9). The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. How should I deal with this?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as it suggests in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual uncleanliness (Lev. 15:19-24). The problem is, how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

Lev. 25:44 states that I may buy slaves from the nations that are around us. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans but not Canadians. Can you clarify?

I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination (Lev. 11:10), it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this?

Lev. 21:17-21 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle room here?

I know you have studied these things extensively, so I am confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Geoff

Huh.  I wonder if Barbara will respond, and if so, how?  (In case you’re interested, I’ve included the content of her email below the fold.)

Personally, I think Geoff replied with all the respect the initial email deserved, and I’m particularly impressed considering he doesn’t even represent a safe Democratic district.  Bravo.

[Read more…]

The podcast opens with Joel Connelly discussing his new job at the region’s newest media venture called Seattlepi.com.

Seattle has an upcoming mayoral race, and the big news is that Mayor Greg Nickels will actually have some opponents. Michael McGinn announced his candidacy earlier in the day, and then there’s The Stranger’s Dan Savage with his own announcement, and, maybe, Former City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck will do so. Nickels’ insta-spokesperson, Sandeep Kaushik, helps the panel sort through the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses.

In what may be the wonkiest half-hour in all of podcasting history, the panel kicks around the problems with and solutions to the $9 billion revenue shortfall in the State budget. Will Goldy save Washington State? Listen and find out.

Goldy was joined by Aisling Kerins of fuse, PubliCola contributor and political spokes-mercenary Sandeep Kaushik, The Other Side’s John Wyble, and Seattlepi.com’s Joel Connelly.

The show is 54:56, and is available here as an MP3:

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_mar_24_2009.mp3]

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

Oy.

It sounds like a proposed union organizing bill was in trouble even before a controversial e-mail killed its chances at the Legislature.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said Monday that she would have vetoed the so-called “Worker Privacy Act” anyway, because of its effect on Boeing.

So why did she, House Majority Leader Frank Chopp and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown refer the email to the state patrol if she was going to veto it? Good lord.

Gregoire had an entirely different take on things when she spoke to the state labor convention in the midst of her re-election campaign:

Gov. Chris Gregoire, speaking at the WSLC 2008 political endorsement convention in May at the Machinists 751 Hall, says: ““Like you, I believe that employees ought to be able to know they can go to work every single day, they’re not going to be intimidated, they’re not going to be coerced, they’re not going to be shoved around about whether their political rights are intruded, whether their religious rights are intruded, or their right to organize is curtailed. We’re going to make that happen in Washington State. We’re going to lead the nation in that regard.”

Yeah, okay, I get it. Politicians have to be er, flexible. But come on. Regular people call that “lying.” Sure, the economy tanked big time last fall, so if Gregoire thinks a change in circumstances justifies killing the bill, she should just say so.

To make things even more fun, the governor had the following comment at a press conference this morning. From a partial transcription by Kathy Cummings, communications director for the Washington State Labor Council:

One thing is clear, this is not Chicago this is Washington state. I don’t impugn the integrity of the authors of it at all. I simply say that it was an unfortunate email, I don’t regret my actions, Washington state is transparent and clean.

Sigh.

We seem to have a generation of Democratic politicians who have so internalized right wing frames that sometimes they can’t help themselves. I mean, I guess we all do it at times, and maybe the governor was trying to quash the entirely predictable “unions are all criminal” crap the right inevitably resorts to.

Like all human-created institutions, unions had and likely still have their share of problems, but they not only have a legal and moral right to exist, they are also a key part of our coalition, and why any Democrat would bring up “Chicago” like that is beyond me. That is definitely doing the GOP’s work for them.

People didn’t vote for more Third Way neo-liberal triangulation anyhow, they voted to change the goddamn crooked system that favors big business, the wealthy and powerful, over ordinary citizens. The abuse of concentrated economic power is the very reason why we are in a Great Recession right now.

And by clumsily calling off a vote on the Worker Privacy Act, the leaders of the Democratic Party in this state exposed themselves to quite justifiable accusations that they are kow-towing to a large corporation in a way that would make some Republicans blush. It would have been better if they had just killed the bill without the state patrol drama; at least we would know for sure where they stand.

This sorry episode is potentially quite damaging to the Democratic Party in Washington state. Right after the election you heard a lot of concern trolling from traditional media types and Republicans about how “overreaching” cost the Democrats big time in 1994. But what I distinctly remember from that terrible year was a lot of outrage from staunch Democrats, especially labor folks, about NAFTA and other trade deals killing jobs here.

As we’ve seen, the destruction over the last 14 years has been massive. That’s not an argument for protectionism, it’s an argument for making sure trade deals have certain base-line standards on the environment and labor, a demand that was virtually ignored by far too many Democrats for far too many years.

As one long-time organizer I knew put it at the time, the rank and file was just going to sit on their hands. And that’s exactly what they did, as David Sirota pointed out in a column at HuffPo in 2007.

Another troubling aspect is that a vote on the labor bill this year was stopped because it was probably going to pass. I’ll say that again. It was killed because politicians knew they should vote for it, because it’s the right thing to do for workers.

Think about that sad fact for a moment. Your votes, your volunteer time and your small donations don’t mean jack if a corporate lobbyists makes the call, because the bill won’t even see the light of day. Hell of a way to run a democracy.

Charlie Bermant writes in the Port Orchard Independent about the Bruce Olson trial and the attention it’s finally drawing to what’s been happening in Kitsap County. Olson is an authorized medical marijuana patient who was raided by the WestNET drug task force in 2007. Prosecutors claim that Olson and his wife were selling marijuana as well as using it medicinally, but the prosecution’s only witness is a longtime drug addict who they flew up from Oklahoma for the trial who claims he bought marijuana from the Olsons. The Olsons, and others who know them, maintain that they were not growing plants to sell on the black market.

I’ve written about this case a couple of times already, but Bermant’s article illustrates why this case has elicited so much anger from the medical marijuana community:

Both Olson and his wife are medical marijuana patients, but have faced the same distribution charge. The law about acceptable quantities of medical marijuana has been more strictly defined since Pamela Olson’s trial.

Pamela Olson is now serving probation, having pleaded out to avoid jail time. As part of her sentence, she is not using the medical marijuana that she claims is necessary to ease her pain.

The case has become a flashpoint for medical marijuana advocates, or what Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge characterizes as “a well-organized lobby whose purpose is to see the laws changed.”

Hauge is a major focus of the anger in this case. A lot of us who are trying to call more media attention to the Olson trial certainly want more changes to our current drug laws. No argument there. But the problem with what Russ Hauge is doing is that he’s openly trying to undermine the current medical marijuana law in the state of Washington.

The original medical marijuana law that was passed by voters in 1998 contained only an affirmative defense for authorized patients. What that meant was that law enforcement officials were still able to arrest patients, who were then faced with the burden of proving their innocence in court. More progressive prosecutors like King County’s Dan Satterberg recognized that hauling patients into court like that was a waste of both time and taxpayer money as well as being immoral and didn’t do it. But not Russ Hauge.

Even worse, the usual tactic from Hauge’s office has been to arrest patients, then threaten them with long prison terms into taking plea deals. This is what happened to Pamela Olson. And because of Department of Correction rules that don’t recognize medical marijuana, she’s not allowed to take medicine that her doctor has authorized for her while she’s home on probation. A second patient from Kitsap County named Jason Norbut has also found himself in this same situation. According to Norbut, the judge even promised him when he was offered the plea deal that he’d still be able to use his medicine while on probation, but was later told after he was sentenced that it was not allowed by the DOC.

Access to medical marijuana is rarely, if ever, a matter of life and death to patients. For most, it’s a quality of life issue (pain management, stimulating hunger during chemotherapy, etc), but that still doesn’t give any law enforcement official the right to overrule the judgment of doctors. Despite what Russ Hauge may believe he’s doing, what he’s really doing is undermining an existing voter-approved law and violating the human rights of the citizens of Kitsap County.

As medical marijuana supporters have been congregating in Port Orchard to oversee this trial, they’re slowly finding more and more victims of Russ Hauge’s crusade, including a quadriplegic by the name of Glenn Musgrove, who was recently wheeled into court on a gurney. Musgrove has a hearing scheduled for next Friday, March 27th. If anyone is curious about why Kitsap County is spending taxpayer money to prosecute a quadriplegic, the case number is 08-1-00937-6.

There are some high profile diplomatic meetings coming up regarding Afghanistan, but in Vienna over the past two weeks, a conference took place that could have far more of an effect on success or failure there. The United Nations’ Commission on Narcotic Drugs has convened for the last two weeks. Reuters reported on the first week of the conference:

U.N. members are expected to sign a declaration this week extending for another 10 years a “war on drugs” policy critics say is flawed and only feeds organised crime, helps spread HIV and undermines governments.

The U.N. drug strategy declaration, due to be signed in Vienna on Wednesday or Thursday, marks the culmination of a year of divisive talks among member states to try to agree a unified counter-narcotics policy for the next decade.

At the last convention in 1998, the slogan “A drug free world — we can do it” launched a campaign to eradicate all narcotics, from cannabis to heroin, by using law enforcement to tackle producers, traffickers and end users globally.

Needless to say, this effort fell far short of its goals. Hundreds of millions of people across the globe still use and sell illegal narcotics. As the Reuters article points out, the real consequences of this international circus act have been disastrous:

Drug policy campaigners, social scientists and health experts argue that strategy has failed, with statistics showing that drug production, trafficking and use have all soared during the decade, while the cost of law enforcement, both financially and socially, has rocketed, with vast numbers imprisoned.

In the United States, where illegal drug use is highest, the government spends around $70 billion a year to combat drugs. But illegal drug use has risen steadily over the past decade and a fifth of the prison population is there for drug offences.

Of course, that’s only a small part of the disaster. It has turned Mexico and our inner cities into war zones. It has created an atmosphere of fear and hostility between law abiding citizens and the police. And on the world stage, it threatens to undermine NATO’s efforts in Afghanistan.

One of the promises of the Obama Administration was to restore a commitment to science-based policy over ideological posturing. When it comes to drug policy, they’re moving in the right direction, but still have a way to go before truly fulfilling that promise.

Within international drug policy, the sticky point is the term “harm reduction.” Ideas like needle exchanges, safe sites, decriminalization for users and addicts, and the legal markets for cannabis are the main examples of harm reduction. In areas where these harm reduction methods have been tried, the negative overall effects of drug abuse – from overdoses to petty crime to street violence – have been reduced. It’s virtually impossible to find public health experts who’ve studied this subject who will say that these tactics don’t work. While the Obama Administration has been willing to endorse needle exchanges, they’ve been balking at endorsing other proven strategies:

In a statement explaining the White House opposition to harm reduction, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, deputy chief of the U.S. mission to the U.N. in Vienna, emphasized the administration’s support for needle exchange programs and “other evidence-based approaches to reduce the negative health and social consequences of drug abuse, including access to medication-assisted treatment for narcotic addiction.”

“However,” Pyatt continued, “the United States continues to believe that the term ‘harm reduction’ is ambiguous. It is interpreted by some to include practices that the United States does not wish to endorse.”

Such practices, according to State Department spokeswoman Laura Tischler, include drug legalization, drug consumption rooms, heroin prescription initiatives and programs to provide drug paraphernalia that has no tangible health benefit to the user.

By claiming that heroin prescription initiatives, drug consumption rooms, and legalization have no benefits, Tischler is very blatantly putting ideology ahead of science. Vancouver’s IN-SITE program, which allows for drug addicts to have a safe medical setting to feed their addictions, has been such a success in helping people get clean (and to reduce the collateral damage that generally comes with addiction) that an official from the Harper Government last year publicly rebuked the government’s attempts to close it. Everyone from Vancouver city officials to the police to health experts have been fighting to keep the program running. In Switzerland, their heroin prescription program has been so successful that voters there overwhelmingly voted to continue it. In Zurich, the number of new heroin addicts has plummeted by nearly 90% since they launched their program in the mid-90s.

Glenn Greenwald traveled to Portugal last year for the Cato Institute to study the effects of drug decriminalization in that nation. The Portuguese didn’t just decriminalize marijuana either, they decriminalized all personal drug use, including cocaine and heroin. Here’s what he found:

Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.

Yet in Vienna this past week, the United States sided with Cuba, China, Russia, and Iran in preventing the declaration from containing anything about harm reduction. In the eyes of the world’s most authoritarian regimes, “harm reduction” is seen as an encouragement to do drugs, even though the reality has long been that harm reduction methods have not led to greater amounts of drug use. This decision was made under the direction of the outgoing interim Drug Czar, Ed Jurith, and not the recently appointed Gil Kerlikowske.

The proper analogy here, as this Students for Sensible Drug Policy post on the conference points out, is that harm reduction is to drug use as birth control is to sex. The pursuit of both sex and drugs is a part of human nature. The idea that institutions can establish effective barriers against these human impulses has repeatedly been shown to be folly. The role that institutions should play is to ensure that these impulses have the least negative impact on others. That’s the point of harm reduction, and by every measure, it works far better than trying to use law enforcement to stamp out the behavior altogether.

This failure in American policy isn’t just resulting in more crime and more wasted taxpayer dollars. It’s also undermining our efforts in Afghanistan. As we continue to strong-arm our European allies to take a more hard-line (and ineffective) approach to reducing drug use, the Taliban increasingly profit from the inflated prices. They profit both by protecting traffickers (and farmers) from the law and by participating in the trade directly. Afghanistan still produces around 90% of the world’s heroin, which accounts for somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the entire nation’s GDP. Much of this profit goes towards weapons used to kill coalition troops.

Much of the exported heroin from Afghanistan heads west through Iran or northwest through Russia on its way west. As a result, Russia and Iran now have two of the largest heroin addiction problems in the world. Those two notoriously authoritarian regimes both make attempts to downplay the problem while also demanding the most authoritarian response. In fact, Iran’s drug war solutions tend to look a lot like ours:

According to the figures released by Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters, Tehran spent over 600 million dollars in the two years leading to October 2008, to dig canals, build barriers and install barbed wire to seal off the country’s borders.

The result is that while the troops who fight alongside us in Afghanistan are Canadian, Dutch, French, and British, our approach to dealing with the illegal opium trade is more in line with what Russia and Iran advocate. As a result, the number of coalition troops who’ve lost their lives there has steadily risen over the past five years, and our relationship with NATO allies has been strained. When it comes to how to deal with the opium, we’re agreeing with nations we tend to consider enemies, while our strongest allies are seeing their brave young men and women being killed every day as a result.

The Taliban of today is not the Taliban of 2001, which used both religious sentiments against drugs and western aid to massively reduce the amount of opium produced there. The Taliban today is much more driven by nationalism and much more willing to profit from this trade. As a result, they’re once again threatening to overtake the regime in Kabul. They also have strong ties to anti-western radicals within Pakistan, which has the potential to turn the problem in Afghanistan into something worse altogether.

It’s been encouraging to see more and more media outlets correctly illustrate the dynamics of what’s currently happening in Mexico. There seems to be a growing understanding that the alarming amount of violence there is driven by American demand for illegal drugs and cannot be defeated with a military response. What we can’t afford to have right now is the same dynamic playing out in the lawless areas of Pakistan, where a populace largely sympathetic to radicalism has been put in a position to profit handsomely from the opium trafficking that we’re trying to push out of Afghanistan.

Up until now, the residents of the border area of Pakistan have been able to keep themselves isolated from Islamabad’s reach, but they don’t currently threaten the government itself. That could change if control of the opium trade ends up in their hands. And that’s exactly what our strategy in Afghanistan appears likely to do.

Just as the drug crackdown in the United States – the one that has filled our prisons to record numbers – has done nothing more than create a war south of the border, our ongoing belief that victory in Afghanistan comes from defeating the opium traffickers rather than building up stable Afghan institutions will only result in the same thing over there – a war south of that border as well.

Limiting the amount of money being made through the opium trade can only be done one way – by limiting the demand. A number of nations, including some of our closest allies, are figuring out how to do this effectively. Unfortunately, America’s anti-drug officials are still fighting them on purely ideological grounds. They’re ignoring evidence and avoiding debate. It’s time that we have an administration that allows for a fully open discussion on these issues that values empirical evidence over fear mongering. If not, Afghanistan will most certainly be to Obama what Iraq was to Bush.

Speaking of denial, I’ve always found this familiar journalistic defense to be particularly stupid…

“Criticism of CNBC is way out of line,” NBC head Jeff Zucker said at the BusinessWeek media summit at McGraw-Hill’s headquarters just now. … The press didn’t cause us to go to war in Iraq, he said; a general did. The press missing the financial crisis didn’t cause it. “Both are absurd,” he said.

What’s absurd is the notion that the press merely observes current events without influencing them, especially when it comes to politics, and especially especially when it comes to economics, both areas where public perception is at least as important as the “facts” on the ground.

With a head up his ass response like that, I’d argue that Zucker shouldn’t have any influence.  But unfortunately, he does.  And yes, his networks do hold some responsibility for helping President Bush cheerlead us into a war in Iraq and an economic bubble at home.  I mean, if his argument is that missing the financial crisis had absolutely no impact on the severity of the crisis itself, does that mean uncovering and predicting the crisis early on would have had no impact too?  And if so, what exactly is the point of journalism?

From the Albany (Ga.) Herald, in regards to the “Proud Peanut Expo” being held in Blakely, Ga., home of the Peanut Corporation of America. Here’s a nice quote from a local Chamber spokesperson.

“Our purpose is to show peanut butter is trustworthy,” Halford said. “There is a lot of misleading information. The Peanut Corporation of America (in Blakely) was a very small drop in the bucket that seems to be spoiling a whole bunch. We don’t want to focus on the bad; we want to focus on the good.”

Well, at least “spoiling” is the correct word to use. I haven’t touched one bite of peanut butter or peanuts since this case broke, even though I have a nearly full jar of name brand peanut butter I had already made sandwiches from. Clearly it’s not contaminated. However, sitting down to lunch and thinking about salmonella is rather off-putting, to say the least.

The outrageous case of PCA should be a lesson to all industries. Consumers will steer clear of products in a certain category in the wake of mass injury, even products from reputable companies. Ask tomato growers. Or the beef industry. You’d think people would finally figure out that it’s in everyone’s interest to sanely and properly regulate consumer items. Until corporate America gets this message, it’s not only consumers who lose, it’s also businesses whose sales plummet in the wake of these incidents. The cost of sensible regulation is surely less than than the hundreds of millions in lost sales every time this happens.

Props to Marler Blog.