HorsesAss.Org

In the wake of the supreme court ruling that a majority is needed for a tax increase like the state constitution says, Rodney Tom has decided to huff and puff about it and maybe change the rules.

Senate Majority Leader Rodney Tom, the Democrat who abandoned his caucus to lead a Republican majority, has issued a statement explaining his plot to make an end-run around today’s state supreme court decision. That ruling found a two-thirds voting requirement is unconstitutional. But Senator Tom says never mind: tweaking parliamentary rules could mandate a nearly-impossible-to-attain two-thirds majority for any tax increases.

I’m not sure how you change the rules in the middle of the session. I assume he can if he’s proposing it, and it’s just a bad idea instead of an empty threat. But if he’s as sure as he seems to be about the caucus he’s leading, I don’t see why the 2/3 rule would be necessary.

We’ve waited and waited for this announcement. I mean, here we are half way through the current legislative session, but the Washington state Supreme Court has finally ruled on the 2/3 majority laws, brought to you by our state’s top Initiative Whore, Tim “Biggest Lie of My Life” Eyman.

The ruling: by a 6-3 majority, the court upheld a lower court’s finding that 2/3s laws are unconstitutional.

I’ve not read the ruling yet, but I strongly suspect it will highlight the major argument put forth by Goldy and other bloggers here: ENGLISH. If you read the state Constitution and understand the English language, it’s kind of a no-brainer.

Once again, an Eyman initiative–in this case, several similar versions of the same basic initiative–is found to be unconstitutional.

– Rodney Tom Hates Teachers

– I haven’t written anything about the sequester, but it’s going to have an impact.

– All that has made the borders, and the sharp disparities between states, more important and complex than ever for gay couples, and for interstate tourism as well. The marriage license office in Clark County, Wash., across the Columbia River from Portland, Ore., had to increase its hours to serve border couples when Washington’s new law took effect.

– So if I understand Scalia’s jurisprudence correctly, the 14th Amendment (which says nothing about race) applies only to racial discrimination (that affects white people) (unless a Republican has a presidential election to win), while the 15th Amendment (which explicitly forbids racial discrimination in voting and empowers Congress to enforce the provision) should not be construed as allowing Congress to prevent racial discrimination in voting, because this would be a “racial entitlement.”

– Congrats to Tom Tomorrow.

The State Supreme Court is planning on ruling in the 2/3 majority case.

SEATTLE – The Washington Supreme Court plans to issue a ruling Thursday on a lawsuit challenging the two-thirds majority required for the Legislature to pass a tax increase.

[…]

The Supreme Court agreed to expedite its consideration of the two-thirds majority rule, which came about because of a series of citizen initiatives. Voters most recently approved the supermajority rule last November.

The Washington Constitution requires a simple majority of the Legislature to approve most laws, but the supermajority, or two-thirds vote, has been the law for tax increases thanks mostly to measures successfully pushed by initiative activist Tim Eyman.

I’m no lawyer, but it seems pretty unconstitutional on its face. You can’t bind future legislatures with the initiative process (except up to 3 years for laws that are constitutional). That takes an amendment to the state constitution. Cut and dried.

Still, our state supreme court has heard these sorts of cases in the past and figured out ways to punt. Hopefully they’ve run out of ways to kick the can down the road, and can actually rule on the case. I don’t know how much practical difference it makes with one house of the legislature in the GOP’s hands and Inslee opposing most tax increases in the campaign.

I’ll be at work when the ruling comes down, so I thought I’d put something up now.

Sometimes The Seattle Times has great, important, relevant stories that put a new light on something in the Northwest that otherwise wouldn’t be covered. And I’m going to miss some of those when I don’t read their website behind its paywall. But sometimes they just do hack pieces that they claim are important stories. More and more it’s looking like the Rob Holland piece falls on the hack side.

Except that’s not what happened and that’s not what the report found. Martin did not use Holland’s credit card to purchase anything, and the report Heffter cites actually found this particular allegation to be “unsubstantiated” (PDF, page 25). Martin has repeatedly asked Heffter and Kreamer to issue a correction, and they have repeatedly refused.

“At the end of the day, all you have is your reputation,” Martin told me. And he desperately wants his reputation cleared. The Seattle Times has yet to respond to a request for comment.

[…]

But also, reading their emails to Martin, both Heffter and Kreamer just come off as incredibly confused. “There is a receipt and additional official documentation showing you as the purchaser of camera equipment for the Port, with Commissioner Holland’s Port credit card being used,” Kreamer writes to Martin in a February 25 email, totally ignoring the fact that this so-called “receipt” proves nothing of the kind. “The Port report you cite says the third-party use of the card (by you) was not found to be unauthorized, but we never wrote that it was,” Kreamer continues. “The items purchased were indeed for Port use, the audit found.”

When the Seattle Times goes out of their way to point out stories like this one are vital to the region, so we need to support them, well, you’d think they would at least work harder to get the story right.

In Saturday’s post on the recent DUI updates, I wrote:

And assurances from the police that they’ll only go after impaired folks requires a lot of skepticism given the history of DUI enforcement.

I wanted to elaborate on this a bit, but didn’t want to go off on any other tangents in that post. So I’ll go off on that tangent here. And a recent case from Kent is a good starting point:

Mike Simmons, 31, said Tuesday he was put in jail for 13 hours. Now with towing and lawyer fees, he said he’s out $5,000 and he’s not allowed to drive while he’s out on bail.

All for something he said he didn’t do.

“As soon as the officer came to the vehicle, he asked me to stick out my tongue,” said Simmons.

Simmons thought it was an unusual request but he soon found out he was pulled over for suspicion of driving under the influence.

Simmons said the officer told him there was a green film on his tongue. The unidentified police officer apparently felt that is a telltale sign that someone has been smoking marijuana.

Simmons admitted he had smoked pot three days earlier, but says when he was pulled over he was on a lunch break from work and was stone-cold sober.

We’ll find out more about this specific case as it unfolds, but if Simmons’ recounting of the arrest is accurate, it wouldn’t be the first time an officer has used something ridiculous or imaginary to imply impairment. In this case from Ocean Shores in November, an officer claimed an elderly medical marijuana patient was impaired because – among other things – she was unable to stand on one leg.

To clarify a point that should be obvious to most people, your tongue doesn’t turn green when you smoke pot. So if that’s the evidence that this officer used to demonstrate impairment, and Simmons doesn’t win a lawsuit against the city of Kent as a result of that, then the folks who say that impairment is required to end up in his situation aren’t correct. Because if there are no repercussions for when a police officer does something wrong, it doesn’t matter what the law actually says.

We’ve continually heard from members of law enforcement and others that impairment is required in order to end up in Simmons’ situation. But it’s not hard for an officer to just say, “your eyes are bloodshot!” and use that as a justification to demand a blood draw. These reassurances go beyond being wishful thinking that their fellow police officers won’t abuse their power. They’re close to being outright lies.

It’s Tuesday…so please join us for an evening of politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet every Tuesday at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Starting time is 8:00pm. Some people show up earlier for Dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter also meets tonight. On Wednesday, the Burien and Bellingham chapters meet. On Thursday the Woodinville chapter meets. And on Monday, the Aberdeen, Yakima, South Bellevue and Olympia chapters meet.

With 206 chapters of Living Liberally, including fourteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and two more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter that meets near you.

– No, I’m sure we can freeway our way out of any problems we have.

– Awesome endorsement, WCV.

– I’m sorry, Carl Ludwig Sherburne, but you’re wrong. You’re among the most disgusting and horrible things on the internet, and a woman posting her baby photos doesn’t even come close.

– If you take people’s guns away, they’ll just use a rock or something.

– Oh Iran, women can wear clothing without sleeves and it’s fine.

– Chris Hayes won’t go to CPAC.

– The BS approach will solve any problems.

The Seattle Times is a private entity, and they have a right to run their business however they want. But The Seattle Times also wants, and gets, special treatment because of their value to the community. Sure, they didn’t always live up to their ideals, but who does? Maybe it was excusable when it was just the nepotism of having an editor who maybe can’t write a decent sentence in English because he was the Publisher’s son. Maybe it was excusable when The Seattle Times went after Darcy Burner with lies. Maybe even when they ran their free ad for their preferred candidates and ballot positions, they deserved a pass because they were providing news that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

But when The Seattle Times makes a decision that they’ll deny access to their website to most potential readers it seems like they’ve abandoned the idea of keeping the public informed generally. When they reduce access to their web page, well they’re providing less of a public good, so it may be time to reconsider their B & O tax exemption.

Now don’t get me wrong: I don’t think newspapers should have that 40% exemption in the first place. But as more and more papers move to the paywall model, I’d like the legislature to strip the exemption from papers that hide their content behind a paywall. It’s probably too late to do that in this session (unless there’s a special session) but it’s one more place for our cash strapped state to look once newspapers stop providing a public good.

– That, unfortunately, is what a lapdog press corps looks like.

– In an effort to continue their slide to irrelevance, The Seattle Times will go to a pay wall light model in mid March. I’ll have a longer piece about it this evening, but people are talking about it already, so I thought I’d link to it in the open thread.

– I don’t know what’s worse, McCain trying to put a woman who lost her son in a shooting in her place, or the crowd cheering.

– One take on this map is that Washington rides the bus a lot. The other take is, I guess, that our buses are full of desperate people.

– Bees sense flower’s electric fields. (h/t)

– I realize that most people don’t care, but I really like this Kim Baxter song.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky in an impressive 6 minutes. It was Pasco.

This week’s is related to something in the news from February. Good luck!

(Note: this image is NOT at the default ‘North is up’ orientation)

Luke 19:29-34
As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”

Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”

They replied, “The Lord needs it.”

Exodus 20:15
Thou shalt not steal.

Discuss.

A few weeks back, the state legislature heard some testimony regarding the new DUI provisions enacted into law with the passage of I-502. These provisions were the most controversial aspect of the initiative among traditional drug law reformers, but throughout the entire campaign, there were very few actual numbers around to convey what the actual risk was.

For instance, how easy is it to be at the 5ng/ml limit? How long do people usually stay there? Is it an accurate measure of impairment? There have been a few studies on this, but far from any kind of consensus.

Also, how many people get marijuana DUI’s already? How many more are likely to get them now that prosecutions could be easier to obtain under I-502?

From the Seattle Times, here was what we learned about the latter set of questions from the testimony:

There has been no jump in “green DUIs,” said the Washington State Patrol’s toxicologist, Dr. Fiona Couper, at the hearing in Olympia Wednesday of the House Public Safety Committee. Seattle DUI attorney Patricia Fulton reported “absolutely no effect” in her defense practice.

This runs contrary to what other DUI attorneys have been saying.

A Seattle attorney whose practice consists solely of medical marijuana cases said more people are coming to him for help fighting charges of driving under the influence of marijuana, even before the new limit took effect.

“I’m seeing one to two a month and have been for a year,” attorney Aaron Pelley said. “Prior to that, I didn’t see really any.”

Pelley believes state patrol officers had been ramping up their enforcement of “green DUIs” in anticipation of the passage of I-502, the law making possession of up to an ounce of marijuana legal. And, now that it’s on the books, he suspects there’s been a “huge spike of number of people being tested.”

What’s the truth here? My guess is that Pelley, who’s been outspoken publicly about the DUI provisions, is generating more business for himself as a result, not that there are more people getting nailed.

So there isn’t much evidence the worst case scenarios are taking root, there’s still a concern with the basic effects of the new law:

Blood testing is not new and not done casually. It’s done at a medical center, and takes money and time. Couper said 1,000 to 1,100 drivers were tested last year statewide, with the median result slightly below 5 nanograms. About one-third also tested positive for alcohol.

If those numbers stay constant in 2013, it would mean that about 500 people tested for marijuana will have a much harder time defending themselves in court against a DUI charge than before I-502 became law. It’s possible that many of these are egregious cases where the DUI is deserved. But it’s also possible that many of them involve innocent medical marijuana patients being harassed. At this point, without more specific numbers, it’s not clear how much of each case we’re dealing with. And assurances from the police that they’ll only go after impaired folks requires a lot of skepticism given the history of DUI enforcement. What’s promising is that this issue has been generating a lot of media attention and that we’ll hopefully be able to highlight any cases where people get trapped in a truly unfair prosecution.

——————————————————

Going back to the first set of questions above, how much is 5ng/ml, and what level of impairment does that really imply? Kiro7 recently aired an investigative report where they took 3 volunteers, had them smoke a popular and potent strain of marijuana, and let them drive around on a closed course. The video is here:

There are a couple of takeaways from this, but the main one is that even at 4, 5, and 7 times the new 5ng/ml legal limit, these volunteers drove fine. This was after consuming .3g. Of course, once they started smoking more than what people normally smoke in a sitting, their abilities tailed off.

Another key point is that even after these volunteers smoked themselves silly on nearly a gram of high quality marijuana and were driving like complete idiots, they all knew full well they were too stoned to drive (even the medical marijuana patient who was a heavy user). This is one of the main differences between alcohol and pot. People who drink too much alcohol become uninhibited along with their impairment, while marijuana users often become timid and cautious (although it was interesting to see that the medical marijuana user was a bit of an exception once they let her get behind the wheel). This is why alcohol-related reckless driving deaths are a frequent occurrence while it’s difficult to find too many instances of them with stoned drivers, even though impairment can occur from the over-consumption of each drug. People who are too stoned to drive often become reluctant to do it, and even if they do, they tend to drive really slow. People who are too drunk to drive often disregard the risks and drive very aggressively.

I’ve written in the past (sadly, the old Reload site is retired) about my own history with marijuana and driving, but didn’t discuss it much during the DUI debates of the I-502 campaign. My main reluctance has always been that it’s a difficult subject that generates mostly gut-level responses that don’t get us anywhere. This exercise provides enough data and visual evidence to at least begin discussing it rationally.

To recap, in my mid-20s for about 2 years, I smoked a small amount of pot at the beginning of nearly every drive I took (except for morning commutes, of course). There were two reasons for this. One, I was doing the hellish 520 commute from Seattle to my job at Microsoft and basically inched home at 2mph every day. And two, I’m a naturally fast driver and I found that pot would make me calmer and more relaxed as I drove. By that point, I’d already gotten somewhere around 7 or 8 speeding tickets in my life and was sick and tired of getting pulled over. Taking a hit off of a one-hitter made it far easier for me to obey the speed limits. In those two years, I was never pulled over for speeding – or for anything else – while stoned.

A one-hitter is a small smoking pipe, often made to look like a cigarette. Compared to what the volunteers in the Kiro7 experiment initially consumed, it probably only held about 1/3 of that, maybe .1g. I’d been wondering if the small amounts I was consuming in those days would even put me over the 5ng/ml limit. Looking at the data shown in the video, it probably was, but maybe not by a lot and probably for not very long.

From a safety standpoint, how safe this was is a matter of perspective and an interesting paradox. I always recognized two drawbacks to this. One, my navigational skills declined somewhat, so in the rare case where I was going somewhere new and was concerned I might get lost, I wouldn’t smoke. Two, my ability to react quickly and intelligently in the face of an emergency was also lessened. Thankfully, this never happened.

But to the outside observer, I was clearly a safer driver when I was stoned. Instead of being the guy weaving through traffic at 80 on I-5, I became the guy driving 55-60 in the right lane listening to some Percy Hill with a big fucking smile on my face. In my normal sober driving mode, I know I can drive safely at those high speeds, but to other drivers, I probably scare the shit out of some of them. And I draw the attention of the police, who like to give me very expensive speeding tickets.

After two years of this, I finally said “fuck it”, sold my car, and started taking public transportation for a little over 7 years. In 2010, after moving out to the suburbs, I once again have a car, but no longer smoke pot, so I have a radar detector in my Prius as I once again weave through rush hour traffic on I-5.

——————————————————

The rationale behind the inclusion of DUI language in I-502 was always clear, even if the result in Colorado showed that it probably wasn’t necessary to win at the ballot box. But the political implications of having drug law reformers concede too much on this point continue to worry me. Other states are considering and even implementing proposals far worse than what we ended up with here. And when there’s an unchallenged notion that stoned driving and drunk driving are the same, it’s difficult to avoid any of these outcomes.

The point of my story wasn’t to argue that stoned driving is good or bad, but to recognize that the issue is a lot more complicated than many people initially assume. From a regulatory standpoint, doing things that have worked or been accepted for drunk driving may not be the correct approach at all for stoned driving.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Jon takes down Graham and McCain for holding up hagel nomination over fake Benghazi outrage (via Crooks and Liars):

Young Turks: FAUX News’ crazy Al Jazeera theory.

Haggeling:

• Stephen on “Friends of Hamas”.
• Sam Seder: How “Friends of Hamas” joke became wingnut reality.
• Ann Telnaes: John McCain’s Iraq war fairy tale.

Maddow: Half of Michigan Blacks disenfranchised by GOP war on Democracy.

Young Turks: The GOP cat fight, staring Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove.

Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Sharpton: Is wacko Sen. Ted Cruz the new GOP savior?

Washington’s own Fukushima.

Thom: The establishment GOP versus the grassroots GOP.

Maddow: Indiana bill would force women to endure TWO transvaginal ultrasounds, before and after abortion:

Ed: Republicans are demonstrably out of touch with America.

Young Turks: How crazy is Sen. Ted Cruz?

Stephen on his sister.

Seattle Labor mobilizes for immigration reform.

Sam Seder: The Donald threatens blogger over Dump Trump petition.

Young Turks: Drunk tweets from Scott Brown?

White House: West Wing Week.

Greenman: Dark Snow Project.

Susie Sampson’s Tea Party Report: The week in intelligence.

Young Turks: Seven Craziest bills in the nation:

Maddow: No stigma for Sen. Ted Cruz for his McCarthy ways.

Pope Affairs:

• Red State Update: The Pope quits.
• Mark Fiore: Pick-a-Pope.

Sharpton: Obama’s approval up; GOP still hell-bent on destroying him.

Stephen: Horse meat (via Slog).

#StopTheSequester.

Thom: Single biggest driver if income inequality.

Lawrence O’Donnell: Who will be the next Republican savior-o-the-month?

Sam Seder: MO GOP lawmaker proposes making it a felony to propose gun control legislation.

Ann Telnaes: Congress takes a recess.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

I’m not thrilled with Publicola’s “Isn’t It Weird That…” segment as a segment. I’d prefer they do straight reporting rather than shoehorn some (often supposed) hypocrisy into a post that doesn’t need it. But the actual reporting in this piece is worthwhile.

No statewide tax measure can pass without Seattle’s support, yet the proposal state house transportation director Judy Clibborn announced yesterday included zero dollars for the new 520 bridge (whose west side remains unfunded) and zero dollars for the new Alaskan Way tunnel (whose estimated revenue from tolls has been slashed from $400 million to just $165 million)?

It’s disgraceful that we’re having this conversation while even the barest discussion of raising revenue for education or social services is verboten, but it is the conversation we’re having. And I want to support this, I do. A car tab would probably be the most progressive piece of taxation in the state, the backlog is real, and the need to invest in our infrastructure is real.

But the need is real in Seattle too. At a certain point, Seattle isn’t going to be a piggy bank for the rest of the state unless they throw us a bone every once in a while.