by Carl Ballard — ,
– Saving the PI Globe.
– Employer Authorization for Contraception
– A view from the deck.
– Rush Limbaugh’s non-apology.
– What’s the matter with white people? is obviously a provocative title, but well worth the read.
– Freewayblogger is looking for slogans about climate change for the next tour.(h/t)
– Yes, this is mostly an excuse for the Democrats to get you on their email list, but you can commit to the Democratic caucuses here.
by Darryl — ,
The G.O.P. is supposed to release caucus results at 5:00 pm, but who knows what will really happen.
Here are some sources for results:
Feel free to share your caucusing story in the comment thread. I’ll provide some updates if and when anything interesting happens.
3:15:
Kate Martin @Gov_SVH
BREAKING: SKAGIT #Wacaucus results: Romney 41%, Santorum 21%, Paul 18%, Gingrich 17% (rest undecided/other) Total votes: 969
Mike Faulk @Mike_Faulk
OFFICIAL YAKIMA COUNTY RESULTS: Romney (394), Santorum (252), Paul (225) and Gingrich (136) #wacaucus
3:18:The APs Chris Grygiel tweets:
Chris Grygiel @ChrisGrygiel
@AP_Phuong – WA GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur says caucus turnout could hit 80k. #wacaucus #wagop
Man…there must be a lot of Democrats showing up today. Mitt Romney sent a bold example. Or it might has something to do with no primary election this year….
3:26: Kirby Wilbur now says results will start coming in at 3:30. But the narrative so far on twitter feeds and political “chat rooms” is that thousands of people were turned from caucusing. The Ron Paul supporters have turned it into a conspiracy theory about keeping Paul supporters from participating.
3:33: Neither the WSRP page nor the AP page have any results yet. But there is this tweet (from Seattle Times’ Brian Rosenthal):
Brian M. Rosenthal @brianmrosenthal
With vote counted from 15 small counties, Romney is leading #wacaucus with 31.5%. Paul at 26.9%, Santorum 24.4% and Gingrinch 12.9%
…with the follow-up:
Brian M. Rosenthal @brianmrosenthal
These initial results probably represent only 10% or less of the #wacaucus vote, WA GOP Chairman Kirby Wilbur says
3:44: Here is a link to a photo of the initial official results:
4:33: With 12% reporting:
Romney 30.9% Paul 27.1% Santorum 24.1% Gingrich 13.5%
Oh…man, a narrow loss by Ron Paul is going to cause an uproar among his supporters!
5:03: Now we have 29% reporting:
Romney 36% Paul 24% Santorum 24% Gingrich 12%
5:13: At 31% the results are unchanged. Looking at the map of reported and unreported counties it seems pretty clear to me that Mitt Romney is going to win the beauty pageant in most of the remaining counties. (It will be interesting to see if Paul takes Watcom county—a sign that WWU students have been motivated and mobilized for Paul the way WSU (Pullman) students have been in Whitman county.)
Anyway…I’m calling the G.O.P. caucuses for the Mittster.
5:54: The quarter of King County that has been counted is heavily for Mitt (52% of the vote).
So now with 42% in state-wide we have:
Romney 37% Paul 24% Santorum 24% Gingrich 11%
Just for fun, here are some Ron Paul tweets coming across the innertubes:
Gabe @ninjagaben
Looks like they stole another one #wacaucus #RonPaul2012 this is bs
Sorry, kidd-o, but a couple of crappily run caucus sites does not equal “stolen election.”
Joe Public @Just_A_Joe
RON PAUL WINS MAJORITY DELEGATES in #WAcaucus today!! WOOT WOOT. Runner up Mitt wins the straw/sign-in poll. #RonPaul vs #obama
No, Joe…Washington doesn’t work like that. We won’t know who actually wins delegates until the state convention.
6:07: Every election season Snohomish County looks more and more like King County: Romney 42.4%, Paul 24.9%, Santorum 22.4%, Gingrinch 10.2%.
6:12: Ron Paul is speaking now. Live stream here: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/cvplive/cvpstream1
6:19: That’s interesting. Santorum takes Whatcom! Santorum 33%, Paul 27.8%, Romney 22%, Gingrich 11.9%.
6:22: Kirby Wilbur is refusing to call the election. Apparently he remembers the Luke Esser debacle of 2008.
6:29: Last Thursday I saw a pack of Lyndon LaRouche supporters set up at a table in front of Denny Hall on the UW campus. It made me wonder if some of the Ron Paul supporters, disgruntled by Mitt getting the nomination, would go on to form a Ron Paul cult akin to the LaRouchian Movement.
6:36: Mitt Romney tweets:
Mitt Romney @MittRomney
I’m heartened to have won the Washington caucuses, and I thank the voters for their support today. #Mitt2012
“Support” is, perhaps, too strong a word. Mitt won because Santorum, Gingrich and Paul are fucking freaks! Mitt wins by being the least bad of the pack.
by Darryl — ,
Current and former State Republican Party chairs have two things to say about tomorrow’s G.O.P. caucus:
Here is current Chair Kirby Wilbur with Fox News:
For the first time in decades, Republican caucus-goers in Washington state may have a real say in who runs for president.
“We have always been the ugly sister who never gets invited to the dance,” Washington state Republican Party Chairman Kirby Wilbur said. “But this year we’re the princess, and we really like it.”
And former Chair Chris Vance on KUOW:
Vance explains the candidate who “wins” Washington will have won a non-binding straw poll of caucus-goers. […]
But Vance says the results of the straw poll have nothing to do with which candidate gets the most delegates. And even then, in Washington, delegates aren’t committed to a candidate until they go to the state convention.
“So there is no accurate way to know who has won any delegates from Washington state,” Vance says.
So…tomorrow’s caucus are either: (1) The first time in forever that Washington state actually counts, or (2) a largely meaningless beauty contest.
The truth is somewhere in between. Clearly, whoever wins the beauty contest, will get some inertia and a fundraising boost. A Romney win will help solidify the perception that Romney is inevitable. A Santorum win will throw the contest into chaos until next Tuesday, when everyone will forget us. And a Ron Paul win will make us the laughing stock of the nation for a bit.
Who will win? Several months ago, before there was any polling, I would have said that the G.O.P. sheeple would go for the establishment candidate. In 2008 it was John McCain, who won both the primary and the caucus.
The 2008 primary results were pretty “mainstream” looking with 49.5% going for McCain and 24.1% going to Mike Huckabee. Ron Paul squeaked out 7.7% of the vote.
The 2008 caucus results brought out the fringe side of the state G.O.P. (and some controversy): 25.9% for McCain, 23.5% for Huckabee, and 21.6% for Ron Paul. Now you understand why Paul is focusing on caucus states….
There have been three polls taken this year for the 2012 G.O.P. caucus contest.
A mid-January SurveyUSA poll found Mitt leading the pack with 26%. Second was Newt Gingrich at 22% with Santorum nipping at his heels with 19%. Ron Paul squeaked out 7%.
In mid-February, PPP released a poll that put Santorum on top with 37%, Gingrich second with 20% with Mitt nipping at his heels at 18%. Ron Paul squeaked out 9%.
What a turn-around!
But today PPP released a new poll showing Mitt back on top with 37% and Santorum nipping at his heels with 32%. Ron Paul has surged to 16%, and the smartest man in the world, Newt, tumbling to 13%.
In other words…nobody has any fucking idea what is going to happen tomorrow. The volatility in the polls could be real—pollsters happened to capture the fall of Newt as well as the rise and fall of Santorum and the fall and rise of Mitt over these three polls. Or it could be issues of identifying people who will be caucusing.
From my perspective, the uncertainty adds to the entertainment value.
The uncertainty also provides some incentive for trouble-making—you know, Democrats pretending to be Republicans and showing up to caucus. It’s legal, even if you leave the event with the taint stain of Santorum….
Here’s how you can participate on Saturday (I mean, you don’t want to miss out on the most important and influential Washington state beauty contest in your lifetime, now, do you?) Mitt Romney has a handy set of instructions to help you find your caucus location.
And don’t forget to stock up on popcorn for the post-caucus show. Entertainment is what you should expect from a “beauty contest.”
by Darryl — ,
Lots of retiring politicians in the news the past two days. I’ll chalk it up to the economic rebound, but feel free to offer your own theory….
Rep. Norm Dicks (WA-6) just announced his retirement:
The 18-term representative, first elected in 1976, said he and his wife Suzie “have made the decision to change gears and enjoy life at a different pace.”
[…]Dicks is the ranking member on the powerful Appropriations Committee, and would become the panel’s chairman if Democrats won control of the House. […]
“Norm Dicks is a true Washington state institution,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) said in a statement. “But more than that, he is my mentor, my friend, my advisor, my teammate, and my brother. He is our state’s quarterback here in Congress, and I can’t imagine our delegation without him.
Yesterday we also learned of the retirements of state Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-36) and state Rep. Phyllis Gutierrez-Kenney (D-46).
by Lee — ,
NORML, one of the oldest and most respected marijuana law reform organizations in the United States, has officially endorsed I-502. As expected, this has created another backlash from those within the reform community who think the bad parts of the bill outweigh any good that comes from having a statewide vote in favor of ending prohibition. In particular, the DUI provisions are what drive much of the opposition, and even though NORML expressed their opposition to its inclusion in the bill, they still support its passage.
My personal position isn’t too much different from NORML’s. I’m pained by the inclusion of the DUI provision, but I-502 is still likely to get my vote. But what’s been troubling to me is how much of the debate over the DUI provision seems to have very little scientific backing and how much of the “science” surrounding this topic appears to be contradictory or just pure nonsense.
To begin to wade through this debate, I want to post a video that illustrates how difficult all of this is to understand:
The video was taken during last year’s Cannabis Freedom March in May. It was during the signature gathering drive and Sensible Washington volunteer Mimi Meiwes was driving her RV around the state rallying support for the effort. Meiwes had driven the vehicle (dubbed the “Canna-bus”) up to Seattle from Kelso, and if you click ahead to 1:30 in the video, you’ll see her driving from Capital Hill to SoDo while being interviewed by the cameraman. I was actually a passenger in the vehicle at the time.
Meiwes is a medical marijuana patient (as she discusses in the video). She uses it throughout the day every day. However, as you can clearly see from the video, despite consuming marijuana that frequently, she’s not impaired at all as she navigates a gigantic RV through Seattle while being interviewed on camera. She continued to drive the Canna-bus across the state several times that spring, and despite using medical marijuana throughout that entire time, her driving ability was never impaired at any point.
I recognize that this is difficult for a lot of people to understand. There’s a strong desire to merely equate alcohol to marijuana in terms of drawing parallels, but the comparison doesn’t hold up. Even an alcoholic who consumes large amounts of booze all the time still gets drunk (even if their tolerance goes up). But individuals who consume large amount of marijuana (usually for medicinal reasons) stop feeling the typical intense psychoactive response that recreational users enjoy.
Taking an objective look at this, there are two main questions and neither one seems to have an easy answer:
– How much active THC does a person like Meiwes have in her system at any one time?
– How much do non-impaired drivers like Meiwes have to fear from a per se DUI?
I was intending only to write about the latter question in this post, but after reading this post from Russ Belville at the NORML blog, I want to start with the former question*.
Before reading Belville’s post, I’d been under the impression that folks who consume large amounts of marijuana will be well over the 5ng/ml active-THC DUI threshold even for many hours after last use. This was based upon what happened when Denver columnist William Breathes had his THC levels checked and discovered that even after 15 hours of abstinence, he still tested at a whopping 13.5ng/ml. But Belville points to a different study that shows something quite the opposite:
For comparison’s sake, Participant N is a 21-year-old obese African-American woman who admits to smoking pot starting at age 9. She admits to smoking a half-ounce per day and had done so that day. She didn’t even have detectable ng/mL when she checked in. Participant L, a man who’d smoked an ounce that day tested at only 0.4ng.
Obviously, something isn’t right here. For those who aren’t up on the measurements, an ounce of marijuana is a lot. A whole lot. Even when I was a 2-3 times a week marijuana user, it would take me about a year to use that much. So this study is saying that someone who smoked several hundred dollars worth of marijuana in a single day only tested at 0.4ng/ml, and another person who smoked half as much had no active-THC in their system at all.
What this study suggests (if it’s accurate) is one of two things. Either the existence of active-THC in one’s system really does fall to near-zero levels quickly after use – or someone has to smoke pounds of marijuana every day to be at 5ng/ml for several hours. Either way, this is clearly not compatible with the data point from Breathes in Denver. Something clearly isn’t correct and I have no way on knowing what it is.
If the study that Belville points to is accurate, though, then the concerns over the DUI provision are totally unwarranted. In fact, people would still be totally free to get baked and drive since most people consume far, far less than the remarkably prolific pot consumers they managed to find for this study. If a person can process an ounce of active-THC within a short period of time, they can easily process a gram or two faster than the officer can take you to the hospital for a blood draw.
But I obviously have my doubts about the accuracy of that study, and I’d love to get some feedback from the comments on what other studies have found. While a lot of people are merely interested in advocacy and propaganda as we approach this historic vote, I want to make sure we have the facts straight. If the DUI provision really does make drivers like Meiwes sitting ducks for the police to saddle with DUI’s, it certainly gives me pause.
by Carl Ballard — ,
It’s not time to hit the panic button yet, but this is certainly a really bad sign.
PubliCola has learned that the Washington State Department of Transportation, which initially predicted it would be able to raise $400 million in toll revenues to pay to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a tunnel, now believes tolls will raise only $200 million, half the original projection.
The $200 million figure comes from WSDOT’s proposed tunnel budget (see page 9), which is currently being reviewed by the state legislature. The revised budget now assumes $702 million in funding from the federal government—$219 million more than the original assumption of $483 million.
As Erica C. Barnett says, so far federal money will pay for this. And if the economy picks up, some of the toll money is likely to recover. So it’s not a showdown between the city and state at this point. But it brings us closer to that point.
by Darryl — ,
Public Policy Polling has released a new poll on presidential politics taken in Washington state. The poll surveyed 1,264 voters (2.76% MOE) from 16th to the 19th of February.
Here are a few highlights. First the big four head-to-head match-ups. PPP writes:
Mitt Romney’s fortunes have really been sinking in PPP’s look ahead to the fall campaign, to the point where he routinely now performs worse against President Obama than the surging Rick Santorum does. Indeed, in Washington state, Romney not only trails Santorum with general election voters, but also Ron Paul.
To put these numbers into context, Washington went for Kerry over Bush, 52.8% to 45.6% in 2004, and Obama over McCain, 57.7% to 40.5% in 2008.
Obama has a net positive job approval: 51% approve, 45% disapprove.
The four Republican candidates have terrible favorables:
I think we can safely say that Washington isn’t turning red any time soon. I’ll be posting new poll analyses soon.
by Darryl — ,
This is the kind of activist judicial ruling that will cause Rick Santorum to foam at the…um, the caudal portion of his alimentary canal.
Moments ago, Judge Jeffery White of the District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause….
Clearly, the Republicans need to make a Big Fucking Deal about this and push a Constitutional amendment defining Marriage as between one Man and one Women.
Yeah…let’s hope so.
by Carl Ballard — ,
It’s been a while since I’ve done a good solid metacommentary piece, and I’ve been meaning to get back into it here. So even though this isn’t local, and plenty of liberal blogs made fun of this days ago, I’m going to give this crap a try.
What are women for?
Go fuck yourself. Jesus, I’m not even past the title and I’m just saying, “go fuck yourself.” This could be a long one.
In a simpler time Sigmund Freud struggled to understand what women want. Today the significant battle is over what women are for. None of our culture warriors are anywhere close to settling the matter. The prevailing answer is the non-answer, a Newt-worthy challenge to the premise that insists the real purpose of women is nothing in particular.
Maybe because it’s only a question a jackass would ask. Maybe, and I know this will sound silly, the billions of women are individual, autonomous humans and not “for” anyone or anything.
Also, did Freud live in a simpler time? Didn’t he live through the first World War? Oh, hey there’s a good chance you’ll have children who die before adolescence. Everyone is on cocaine. Simpler, simpler times!
Such an answer may or may not be a landmark in the progress of the human race, but it is anathema to most conservatives of any political party, and for that reason conservative folkways, prejudices, and ideals are once again on trial.
Are those even words? I feel like each of those words are words, but together, I don’t think any of them are, strictly speaking.
Rick Santorum may be easing up on the rhetorical throttle as his fortunes seem on the upswing, but everyone else feels their civilization is in peril, and the bile rises accordingly. On birth control, the Catholic Church is portrayed as the extremist fringe of its own faithful. On abortion, activists labor to extort Komen for the Cure.
Rick Santorum is still as much a jackass as ever, the Catholic hierarchy is out of step with its membership. And the Komen debacle was only about abortion insofar as they decided to make Planned Parenthood’s cancer screenings about abortion. If that’s the sign of civilization in peril, well good news, civilization isn’t in peril.
As MSNBC’s Chris Hayes observes, Republicans are being excoriated for voting against the Violence Against Women Act, for pushing transvaginal ultrasounds, and for holding an all-male hearing on birth control. Conservatives are even being reviled for “slut-shaming” sexy CPAC attendees. “Is there no one in the upper echelon of the GOP establishment,” Hayes wonders, “who can explain to them how all this looks when strung together?”
And, they’re all quite bad on their own. They wouldn’t get excoriated if they acted like women deserve respect and should be allowed to make their own choices. This isn’t a perception problem, it’s a human decency problem.
Alas, Carly Fiorina is not quite upper echelon. But before liberals ritually invoke the glass ceiling, they might want to conduct an agonizing reappraisal of their own. If the conservative movement’s nominal unity is actually belied by a stunning range of right-wing views on the status and purpose of women (and believe me, it is), the left’s alleged philosophical uniformity on the woman question is a complete fabrication — despite the fanatical discipline and norm-enforcement of much of the liberal cultural establishment.
Is the rest of this going to be an honest, thoughtful look at sexism in the Democratic party? If so, Meg Whitman might have been the better choice there. A writer who appreciates crafting a piece might then circle back to the time that she was called a whore. As a Hillary Clinton supporter in 2008, and someone who has tried to call out sexism in my own party, I would actually appreciate that effort. And while the Daily Caller isn’t really the best place to write that, it’s still a legit story. Or I’m wrong about all that and more nonsense:
The purpose of lifting the left’s Potemkin skirts is not to score tits for tats. Anyone serious about thinking through the role of women in today’s civilization is doing worthless work unless they take the controversies on the right hand in hand with the unsuccessfully suppressed tensions on the opposite side of the spectrum, where disagreements far more volatile in their profundity roil respectable liberalism.
OK, well that paragraph certainly feels like it’s only there to push up the word count. But is that a reference to Potemkin villages? The implication that nobody in the Democratic party actually is a woman? That they’re just fake women? Whaaaat?
Left opinion is no longer defined by the comfortably careworn liberal consensus that Sandra Day O’Connor conveyed in the abortive plurality decision of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. There, the metaphysical trouble kicked up by the elective killing of fetuses was relegated to the realm of life’s cosmic mysteries — a place liberals contemptuously deride as beneath human dignity when referenced in terms of the suffering of the crucified Christ. No judge, O’Connor and company concluded, could judge what it so much as meant to end fetal life.
I’m starting a band called “Abortive Plurality.” Also, is a Reagan appointee who was often the swing vote on the Supreme Court part of “the comfortably careworn liberal consensus” or is she a Potemkin skirt?
Lurking beneath this procedural non-judgmentalism was a stubbornly conspicuous judgmental end. Roe couldn’t be overturned, the plurality argued, because Americans might think the Supreme Court was bending to public pressure. The court’s solution was to bend to the public reality that millions of women had altered what it meant to be a woman — and what status that meaning conferred — by having or supporting abortions. On the bogus theory that all linear change is progress, the plurality embraced the immoderate view that a descent into barbarism is impossible.
I’m pretty sure the point of that argument wasn’t that we should all be barbarians.
Continued on Page 2 >>
Oh fuck, fine. I’ll press on.
Liberals, of course, generally and characteristically deny that abortion is barbaric. But the Casey decision substituted a progressive passivity for that very active moral claim. Today, the left is increasingly torn between old-school modern liberals who think like O’Connor and new-school postmodern liberals who find their cognitive elders in thrall to a haute-bourgeois conventionality that the deep premises of their own thought seem to strip of authority.
I. Well. Huh? You know. Um, use an editor next time.
So postmodern Cynthia Nixon, who used to be straight but now isn’t, tells The New York Times Sunday Magazine exactly what establishment liberals don’t want to hear when it comes to the sexual politics of women — “you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” As Laurie Essig understated it in The Chronicle of Higher Education: “Such talk is heresy among some people in the gay advocacy and the reaction was both immediate and predictable.” Nixon was swiftly accused by the left’s cultural policemen of “aiding and abetting bigots and bashers.”
I’m not sure what makes Cynthia Nixon postmodern, but whatever. She and the gay rights advocates all want the same thing (gay rights), so hell of a rift. She can define her sexuality however she wants, like any adult.
The piece forgot to define what the other side wants for her. Maybe say why it’s heresy instead of just quoting someone who says that it is. Then we can see for ourselves if these disagreements are actual disagreements on the left, and maybe how to resolve them.
Lip service is often paid to the impression that the point of empowering women is to empower them to do whatever they want, but much of the left stops well short of the more radical implications of that easy answer. The left’s culture of celebration is hamstrung by the very assertions of should and shouldn’t that contemporary women have inevitably come to make — as the ongoing debate over the advisability of marriage reveals. Reihan Salam has hinted that typically left-wing implications of academic theories like “erotic capital,” including mainstreaming prostitution, point in directions quite at odds with the dominant but failing framework of liberal sexual politics.
I don’t know what erotic capital means, but how about this: women do what you like. If you want to get married, great! If you want to stay single, great! If you’re for monogamy, great! If you want to still see other people while you’re in a relationship, great! If you want children, great! If you don’t, great! You know, like women are autonomous humans who know what’s best for themselves.
To the growing discomfort of many, that framework hasn’t come anywhere close to answering even the most basic questions about what women are for — despite pretty much universal recognition across the political spectrum that a civilization of men, for men, and by men is no civilization at all, a monstrously barbaric, bloody, and brutal enterprise. A few inherently meaningful implications about what women are for flow naturally from this wise and enduring consensus, but no faction of conservatives or liberals has figured out how to fully grasp, translate, and reconcile them in the context of our political life.
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN TALKING ABOUT? Anyway, how about using ironically in a way that’s guaranteed to piss me off and then finish up with nonsense:
Ironically, one of the best places to look for a way out of the impasse is the strain of left feminism that insists an inherently unique female “voice” actually exists. That’s a claim about nature. Much good would come from a broader recognition that women have a privileged relationship with the natural world. That’s a relationship which must receive its social due — if masculinity in its inherent and imitative varieties (including imitation by quasi-feminized males of quasi-masculinized females!) is not to conquer the world.
by Goldy — ,
2 Samuel 13:10-15
And Tamar took the bread she had prepared and brought it to her brother Amnon in his bedroom. But when she took it to him to eat, he grabbed her and said, “Come to bed with me, my sister.”“No, my brother!” she said to him. “Don’t force me! Such a thing should not be done in Israel! Don’t do this wicked thing. What about me? Where could I get rid of my disgrace? And what about you? You would be like one of the wicked fools in Israel. Please speak to the king; he will not keep me from being married to you.” But he refused to listen to her, and since he was stronger than she, he raped her.
Then Amnon hated her with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her. Amnon said to her, “Get up and get out!”
Discuss.
by Carl Ballard — ,
– They should call it PolitiCowersToConservatives.
– Caring Across Generations in Seattle. (h/t)
– God Hates Checkered Whiptail Lizards
– And as long as I’m linking to copyright pieces: Authors Have a Moral Right to Profit From Their Works
by Carl Ballard — ,
I know I’ve been complimenting the legislature a lot recently. It feels quite strange. But fortunately, the state Democrats are back to being gigantic pissants who’ll fuck over their constituents for no reason.
The senate passed a compromise teacher evaluation bill this afternoon, 46-3. Republicans and moderate Democrats had been pushing a teacher evaluation bill for a couple of sessions now, but liberals had balked, echoing union concerns that it was unfair to teachers, who’ve already seen K-12 funding cut by $2.5 billion during the recession and who have already been working on district-by-district pilot projects to determine evaluation criteria.
…
However, Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Seattle), with an eye on counting moderate Democratic and Republican votes necessary to pass his budget, resuscitated the bill, triggering negotiations between the reform contingent and the opponents.
Yes, as part of an effort to make deeper cuts to education, Ed Murray has decided to fuck over teachers by imposing an arbitrary evaluation system. This will be more teach to the test instead of quality learning in an effort to punish the teacher’s union.
Rich Wood, spokesman for the teachers’ union, the Washington Education Association, complained that the union was left out of the negotiations and didn’t see the bill until a few hours before the vote. He said: “This new legislation must not derail, short-circuit or otherwise interfere with the evaluation pilot work that is already underway, and educators must be allowed the flexibility to meet the unique needs of students in their local schools.”
You know what, I can’t say it strongly enough: if you don’t give teachers a spot at the table when drafting legislation, you obviously don’t give a shit about education. You obviously want it to fail. That any Democrat would vote for that is a fucking disgrace.
There are ways to have testing that let teachers know what they need to work on, and how they can improve. This is clearly not that.
by Carl Ballard — ,
– Who could have predicted that Obama’s birth control compromise wouldn’t placate conservatives?
– A joint press release from Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit and Kitsap Transit on the awful transportation bill.
by Carl Ballard — ,
Obviously, the big news is that Gregoire signed the marriage equality bill into law. While we’ve known it was going to happen for some time, it’s still quite amazing. Very recently this seemed like an impossibility, and now it’s a reality. Of course there’s a real possibility that it will come before voters in November, but for now, it’s just wonderful.
Also, even though the bill info isn’t updated in the legislative web page [sorry, I linked to the senate version, here’s the correct link, and it works fine. I remain an idiot], I’m getting a press release from Washington NARAL that:
This evening the Washington House stood up for women’s health and passed the Reproductive Parity Act (HB 2330) by a vote of 52-46. This legislation, sponsored by Rep. Eileen Cody (D-34), requires all health insurance policies that cover maternity care to cover abortion care. NARAL Pro-Choice Washington thanks the representatives who voted to protect women’s access to basic reproductive health care coverage.
And it looks like it’s going to pass the state senate.
by Carl Ballard — ,
During the Tacoma teacher strike the Tacoma News Tribune had by far and away the best news coverage of any mainstream media source. But man alive were their editorials brain numbingly awful. Well, congrats to the Trib for keeping up that fine level of nonsense. In an editorial about how we need the kind of bullshit education reforms that haven’t worked in other states, they serve up this gem:
As usual, the Legislature’s powers-that-be crouch like defensive NFL linemen, ready to tackle anything that might challenge the failing trade-union model of public education.
I don’t have clue one what “trade-union model of public education” even means. Most of these reforms seem to be just ways to commodity children and sell them to charter school corporations regardless of performance. The rest seem to just be ways to break the union. If the I-saw-Waiting-For-Superman-and-now-I-hate-teachers crowd were serious about reform, they’d work with the teachers: they are among the most interested parties after parents and possibly students.
I mean the idea here seems to be that politicians (and editorial board writers) demagoguing the issue or bureaucrats administering tests are the ones who really care about education. Yet those politicians who’ve spent far too much time cutting education funding and the ed boards who cheered them on at every tax cut that made those cuts inevitable continue to attack, attack, attack the unions. They have far less credibility than teachers unions that have been fighting those cuts and the bullshit reforms at every step of the way.
And yet instead of working with the teachers’ unions to both fund K-12 education and make reforms that make sense, it’s attack, attack, attack. No, let’s trust teachers.
Also, “defensive NFL linemen” for serious is how you’re going to construct that phrase? Not “defensive linemen” and trust your readers to know what that means? Not “NFL defensive linemen” that at least has the advantage of not putting NFL in the middle of what the position is called for no reason?
Eager to share our brilliant political commentary and blunt media criticism, but too genteel to link to horsesass.org? Well, good news, ladies: we also answer to HASeattle.com, because, you know, whatever. You're welcome!