This site is preventing me from writing anything more substantial today.

UPDATE: SAFER, a popular Colorado-based marijuana law reform group that has run a number of initiatives, is launching a boycott of Starbucks over their support for an anti-marijuana law enforcement group that promotes and glorifies violence.

So, how crazy is the state Republican caucus in their sloppy embrace of their crazy, tenther, teabagger, state sovereignty agenda? So crazy that state Sen. Val Stevens has introduced a Joint Memorial calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment… the amendment that mandates the direct popular election of U.S. Senators.

In its place, Stevens would have Senators once again appointed by their respective state legislators, only by a plurality vote, not a majority, thus giving Washington’s minority Republicans a better shot at electing a Senator than they do under our current, (small “d”) democratic system.

Really. I’m not kidding.

I guess that’s the Republican idea of “populism.”

The New York Times announced today that it intends to charge readers for frequent access to its website, starting in early 2011.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge.

What exactly the NY Times considers “frequent,” and how much they will charge, not even the paper’s executives seem to know, but the move to squeeze subscription fees from online readers doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Will it work? That is, will revenue from online subscribers substantially exceed the online advertising revenue lost due to the inevitable drop in page views? I dunno. The NY Times fills a kinda unique position in our media landscape as our nation’s undisputed paper of record. So, maybe.

But the big question for me is, successful or not, will this prove to be a viable business model that, say, the Seattle Times might follow in an effort to turn around its own declining financial prospects?

I don’t think so.

The Seattle Times simply does not play as vital and unique a role in our local community as their New York counterpart does nationally. While the NY Times consists almost entirely of original content from some of the best and most highly respected reporters and columnists in the nation, the Seattle Times relies heavily on the Associated Press and other newswires and syndication services to fill its pages. For example, two of the four articles on the front page of today’s dead-tree edition are newswire reprints, including an above-the-fold lead story culled from the pages of… the New York Times.

Why would I pay twice for the same story? Indeed, why would I pay at all for a newswire story I can read elsewhere for free?

Well, I might, because part of my schtick is critiquing the Seattle Times, but as an unrepentant news junkie, I’m the exception that proves the rule. Unless the news industry universally adopts the NY Times model, I just don’t see how dailies like the Seattle Times can demand a high enough flat-rate subscription fee to offset the inevitable loss of readership that would come from hiding their content behind a firewall.

Newspapers are kinda like information department stores, presenting a broad variety of content on a range of subjects and issues in one easy to consume package. But the hierarchy of the Internet is flat, and the barriers to entry relatively nonexistent in terms of capital and infrastructure investments, leaving publications like the Seattle Times vulnerable to specialized competitors.

In the old media technology, where folding a bunch of pages together into one convenient bundle was the most efficient means of distributing news and opinion, the Seattle Times merely needed to do everything well to fend off new competitors. But in the new media technology, being merely good is not good enough.

If The Stranger provides better coverage of the music and arts scene, and the neighborhood blogs provide better coverage of the neighborhoods, and Publicola provides more thorough coverage of Olympia, and HA provides more entertaining and relevant political commentary and analysis… what exactly is the economic incentive for consumers interested in those subjects to subscribe to the Seattle Times as a whole? Indeed, ironically, it is specialized news and opinion sites that have the more compelling argument for placing their content behind subscription firewalls, a model that has worked well for the Puget Sound Business Journal and other online trade publications.

I don’t mean to dis the valuable original reporting that the Seattle Times does produce, but I’m not sure there’s enough of it to make a flat-fee, all-you-can eat subscription a compelling product. I don’t subscribe to cable TV for the very same reason. Sure, there are networks I might purchase on an a la carte basis, were I given the option, but I’m not going to pay $60/month for 500 channels of stuff I’ll never watch. Especially not now, with so much equally compelling content available over the Internet.

No doubt Frank Blethen and his bean counters are encouraged by the NY Times pioneering effort, but they shouldn’t be. The Seattle Times simply is no NY Times, and I don’t see how the business model of one easily translates to the other.

I’m not sure what the solution is for the Seattle Times and other dailies. Hell, I’m not even sure there is one.

To repeat a comment I made a couple posts prior, the last thing voters want in their national leaders is weakness, and that’s exactly how Democrats are going to be perceived if they do not pass a health care reform bill after a year of endless talk and debate. President Obama promised change, and as ridiculous and unreasonable as the logic may be, considering that the Republicans have been the obstacle to change, if the Dems can’t produce it, voters will toss ’em out.

So the solution is obvious. The House needs to pass the Senate bill as-is, and then attempt to fix it as best they can through reconciliation and subsequent legislation. There’s no other choice. Anything else would be political suicide.

Progressives need to bite the bullet and pass a bill without a public option, that largely caves to the demands of the health care industry, and conservatives need to give up their demand for tougher restrictions on abortion. To do otherwise is to assure electoral disaster in November, and sacrifice our last best chance to turn this country around.

Not much reason to be optimistic about tomorrow’s votes in the State House. For optimism, though, we can still look to the polling trends.

Scott Horton reveals that the reported suicides of three Guantanamo detainees in June 2006 weren’t suicides at all:

This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guantánamo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached.

All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred.

This is a giant story by any measure, but not a single major American newspaper has yet to print their own report on it. We often argue about media bias being liberal or conservative, but the bias in our traditional media is that they’re too chickenshit to take on powerful institutions.

UPDATE: It looks like it was covered on Countdown on MSNBC, but there’s still nothing on the MSNBC front page about this.

It’s Tuesday! And an interesting Tuesday at that. Please join us tonight for some election returns under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning about 8:00 pm. Or stop by earlier and join me for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 341 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

One of my favorite perks of being a progressive blogger is my annual invitation to serve as a VIP judge at one of my favorite events, NARAL/Pro-Choice Washington’s annual Chocolate for Choice.

This year’s celebration of the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision will be held this Thursday, January 21, from 7PM to 9PM at the First Base Club at Safeco Field (take the pedestrian bridge from 5th floor of the garage across Edgar Martinez Drive), and features generous samplings from 40 of Seattle’s finest bakers, pastry chefs and chocolatiers. Admission starts at $40 ($45 at the door).

It’s also one of my daughter’s favorite events; no doubt as I’m filling out my scorecard, Katie will be busy filling up my carry-out box with chocolaty treats. Hope to see you all there.

Of course, I’m not plotting to blow up an airplane, despite the intentionally provocative headline above, and anybody who would believe for moment that such a headline constitutes a threat that should make me the subject of a terrorism investigation, let alone criminal proceedings is a complete and utter idiot.

And yet, that’s exactly what happened to Paul Chambers for venting his frustrations over airport delays with the following harmless tweet:

“Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high.”

And the thoughtful, calm response of British authorities?

He was held under the Terrorism Act on suspicion of conspiring to create a bomb hoax and questioned for seven hours.

Mr Chambers was eventually released on bail until February 11 pending further enquiries.

His Twitter post was deleted and his laptop, iPhone and home computer confiscated.

He also been banned from Robin Hood airport for life and suspended from his job while an internal investigation is launched.

Yeah, because we all know that real terrorists always publicly tweet their intentions before striking.

Now I know that some of you trolls will respond that a bomb threat is a bomb threat, and should be punished accordingly, regardless of whether this poor schmoe actually had the means or intention of carrying it out, but, well… get a life. It’s not even like this guy made the comment while sitting on an airplane, or standing in line at security, or even passing time in an airport bar. Context matters, and both the context and content of the tweet make it clear that there was no threat, implied or otherwise. (Is it actually possible to blow up an airport? And had he said the same thing, or worse, in a comedy sketch, would that have been equally prosecutable?) And yet in the name of security theater, Chambers now finds himself banned for life from his local airport, out of a job, and potentially facing huge legal bills if not an actual prison term.

Feel safer?

Reportedly, when Chambers tried to explain to investigators what Twitter is, and the context behind his tweet of exasperation, the officer merely responded “It is the world we live in.” A shameless cop-out if I ever heard one.

As the wise folks at Gizmodo opined:

Indeed, it’s the world we live in, giving up on all our civil liberties for a sense of false security, and allowing morons to run the world.

Well, if that’s the world we live in, I might just have to blow it sky high.

UPDATE:
The post has been up for four hours now, and I haven’t been arrested yet. I guess there are benefits to being an American.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
24 hours later, and the feds still haven’t busted down my door and hauled me away. What’s up with that?

I know it is cliche to say that with every crisis comes opportunity, but cliches have a habit of ringing true, as with our worst ever budget crisis facing Olympia, now in its second year of a three to four year run. Unfortunately, while Republicans are prepared to take advantage of this opportunity, Democrats apparently are not.

The all-cuts approach of last year’s budget, and the mostly cuts, plus more federal bailout, plus maybe a hundred million or so in odd revenue increases the governor is pushing in this year’s supplemental, is nothing if not a recipe for permanently shrinking the size and scope of state government. We’re not talking about merely squeezing out waste or cutting the fat or reprioritizing, although we’ll get a little of that too; we’re talking about redefining the role of government in Washington state… ensuring that not only does state government come out of this recession smaller as a percentage of the total economy, but that it will continue to shrink in such regards for perhaps decades to come.

This is, of course the Republican agenda, an agenda that they have been unable to win with at the polls, but which they will inevitably achieve nonetheless as long as our highly regressive and inadequate tax structure remains at status quo. And faced with an opportunity to at least move the debate forward, if not immediately enact substantial reforms, the Democrats have opted to cede the debate to the opposition, pretty much accepting their terms unchallenged.

Republicans and their surrogates in the legacy press (you know who I’m talking about, Seattle Times editorial board) have insisted that a down economy is the exact worst time to raise taxes, an assertion that many economists would challenge, but which our state Democratic leadership will not. So… um… when is the right time to raise taxes? When the economy is good? Does anybody really believe that there will be political support in the Legislature to raise taxes once state revenue starts to recover?

Of course not. But the problem is, barring another unsustainable economic bubble, state revenue will never recover to pre-recession levels compared to growth in demand for public services, and will certainly never grow as fast as the overall economy. Without substantial tax restructuring — without a shift away from our over-reliance on regressively taxing the sale of goods, a tax base that has been steadily shrinking for the past half century as a percentage of the total economy — our government can never grow fast enough to keep up with the economic, infrastructure and human investment and services our state needs to prosper in the 21st century.

Without substantial tax restructuring, our state government, the investments it makes and the services it provides, will be gradually dismantled, piece by piece by piece.

This was our inevitable future before the Great Recession, and it will be our inevitable future after. Which is a shame, because with their large majorities in both houses of the Legislature, and their control of the governor’s mansion, the Democratic leadership had an opportunity to use this crisis to guide us down the road toward the reforms necessary to at least sustain our current quality of life, if not enact a truly progressive agenda.

Unfortunately, it looks like we’ve had the wrong Democrats in leadership.

Is it even necessary to point out the irony of Ted Van Dyk remarking on other people having outlived the politics of their youth?

Kennedy’s death, Dodd’s withdrawal, and Sen. Robert Byrd’s perilous health have drawn attention to the fact that the Senate that existed when they arrived has dramatically changed.

An astute observation which of course demands immediate, anecdotal references to Hubert Humphrey, Everett Dirksen, Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater, as if to illustrate his point by example.

Um… could Van Dyk be any less self-aware?

Those leaders all knew that no major policy change would be lasting if passed on a one-party basis. This stands in contrast to the path taken over the past year by Obama and Democratic congressional leaders with stimulus, cap-and-trade, and health-care legislation. All were drafted and passed on a Democrats-only basis.

So, Van Dyk’s point is, what? That the Senate that existed at the time Humphrey reached across the aisle to Dirkson has “dramatically changed,” but that Obama and the Democratic leadership should behave as if it hasn’t?

What a load of crap. The Dems did reach across the aisle to “moderate” Republican Senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, and even to more conservative Republicans like Sen. Chuck Grassley and others, but the Republican caucus, determined to see President Obama fail, refused to concede an inch. Yeah sure, I suppose we could have gotten Republican support for something called “health care reform,” that severely limited the ability of patients to sue for malpractice, while eliminating the ability of states to regulate insurance within their own borders, all the while continuing to allow insurance companies to deny you coverage for preexisting conditions, and cancel your coverage when you get sick. But what would have been the point of that? Short of total capitulation, the Republicans were intent on denying Obama a legislative victory.

That is the new Senate, that exists today, which is indeed very different from the Senate of Van Dyk’s youth, and as much as he may bemoan the decline of bipartisanship, that’s the reality that President Obama et al have to deal with. Times change, something even Ted Kennedy didn’t fully realize until it was too late, for despite his reputation as a liberal lion, he was also one of the Senate’s consummate practitioners of the sort of bipartisan collaboration that Van Dyk now mourns. Stuck in the mindset of the Senate of his youth, Kennedy ended up playing the role of Roosevelt at Yalta when it came to education reform, becoming little more than a Republican tool in garnering bipartisan support for No Child Left Behind, an act that promised to invest in and improve public education, but which ended up punishing those schools that needed the most help, while turning our classrooms into the public school equivalent of a Stanley Kaplan prep course.

I won’t argue with Van Dyk as to whether America might be better served by the more collegial Senate atmosphere of the 1960’s, though it was no doubt easier to reach across the aisle when both sides were populated almost entirely by white, Christian men. My dispute with Van Dyk is over his repeated accusations that the current partisan rancor is entirely the fault of the Democrats — a bizarre assertion after a decade during which Republicans have taken to vilifying their opponents as morons, traitors or worse — and his apparent conclusion that the necessary prescription to our nation’s political woes is unilateral Democratic disarmament.

Not only would the Republican minority laugh at us as we ceded to them the national agenda, voters would laugh at us too. Indeed, I’d argue that the Democrats’ greatest political weakness is the popular perception that Democrats are in fact weak. That’s not a trait that voters tend to seek in their national leaders… hence the two terms of that idiot cowboy, Bush.

But that is exactly the posture that Van Dyk, calling upon his personal experience with a Senate that no longer exists, so vociferously advocates.

Here’s a question… if Republican Scott Brown defeats Democrat Martha Coakley tomorrow in the special election to replace recently deceased Democratic icon Sen. Ted Kennedy, will some name-brand Republican in Washington state grow balls big enough to challenge Sen. Patty Murray here in Washington?

By this time two years ago, Mike! McGavick had already held like his twentieth campaign kickoff event. So it’s kinda amazing that, ten months before a mid-term election, Murray still has no serious challenger.

Back in the 2009 City Attorney’s race, in a response to a question about pursuing low-level marijuana cases, Tom Carr replied:

You’re apparently reading from the Stranger. You’re talking about relatively small numbers. We do between a hundred and 200 cases a year. Whether we prosecute depends on the report that’s in front of us; whether or not it’s a case. Most of our marijuana cases are cases that come in when we’ve got another crime, so someone gets in a bar fight and they have marijuana in their pocket. That’s pretty much all we do.

So now that Pete Holmes has taken over Carr’s office and announced that he’s no longer prosecuting people for marijuana possession, what’s he finding out?

As PubliCola reported (via Twitter) from our Town Hall event with City Attorney Pete Holmes last night, Holmes’ new criminal division director Craig Sims is in the process of reviewing all outstanding marijuana prosecutions pursued by former City Attorney Tom Carr.

…

Interestingly, although Carr insisted repeatedly that he was only prosecuting cases with associated crimes (e.g., resisting arrest with pot in your pocket), Mulady says most of the cases Sims has reviewed so far are “stand-alone marijuana cases”—the sort of cases the city attorney and police were explicitly instructed not to pursue after the passage of Initiative 75, which made marijuana possession the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.

No kidding! So an overzealous law enforcement official with a penchant for nanny crusades was lying about what his office was doing? Who could’ve seen that coming?

In 2008 a group of “political reformers” ^* placed a successful measure on the November ballot to make King County government non-partisan. Fourteen months later that “reform” has failed its first three tests — filling two vacancies (Sims and Constantine) and a weird election for County Executive. Three pitches, three groundouts, inning over.

(* The non-partisan ballot measure was financed by the same special interests who backed Susan Hutchison’s Executive race.)

Choosing Leaders

Succession of office is an important test of our democracy. When a government official resigns or passes away, provisions are made for that position to be filled and for government to continue.

For partisan offices, state law assigns the political parties a role which has allowed vacancies to be filled in an orderly, timely, and predictable fashion. The Precinct Committee Officers (PCO’s) from the affected jurisdiction meet and choose three member of the party of the departed official, and forward that list to the County Council or County Commissioners, who pick one person.

That process took place thirteen years ago when the Democratic PCO’s met at the gym of Nathan Hale High School to designate a list of three Democrats to fill the last year of the term of then-County Executive Gary Locke, who was departing to be Governor. On that day, Ron Sims was chosen over the very able Greg Nickels to lead the County as the next Executive. On that day no one called for a “caretaker” or a “placeholder”. Sims served for ten months as the appointed Executive, then was elected to the post three times.

I was chosen the next month by the PCO’s to fill Sims’ seat on the County Council, just as Constantine was chosen to succeed Nickels in 2002 when he was elected Mayor. Sims, Pelz, and Constantine were chosen by the PCO’s, then rubber stamped by the County Council, and provided strong leadership for many years.

The PCO’s now play no role in filling King County vacancies. The County Council, freed from the shackles of the political parties, now makes the decision based on in-house politics and personalities. Rather than choosing strong leaders to replace Sims and Constantine, the County Council twice appointed Lois – Lois Common Denominator. Both Kurt Triplett and Jan Drago (fine public servants in their previous roles) effectively ran saying they would not provide leadership for the County in future years. The test of succession of office failed as a “caretaker” was inserted.

[Read more…]

Last week’s contest was won by Aneurin. It was San Jose, CA.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!