Please join us for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. at 8:00 pm. Stop by earlier for a quiet dinner.
Can’t make it into Seattle? The Tri-Cities chapter of Drinking liberally meets every Tuesday night as well. The Bellingham Chapter also meets tonight. And tomorrow the Burien chapter meets.
With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, chances are good there is one near you.
Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-1) want to be your next Governor. In this interview, he talks jobs, jobs, jobs, and a bit of medical marijuana. The interview is followed by a round-table discussion with Chris Vance, Joel Connelly, Cathy Allen, and Joni Balter:
Watch October 21, 2011 on PBS. See more from KCTS 9 Connects.
UPDATE: I spoke to some folks at Fuse today and they’ve now updated their guide and removed the reference to the study in question. I have to commend them for responding to this the way organizations should.
Original post follows…..
Last night on Twitter, I saw that Fuse Washington was promoting their Progressive Voters Guide. Concerning the liquor initiative, I-1183, they wrote [emphasis mine]:
Big grocery chains and liquor distributors are back with another dangerous initiative to deregulate liquor sales in our communities. Based on an initiative that voters solidly rejected last year, I-1183 would authorize as many as five times as many retailers to sell hard liquor. As a result, our communities would see a 48 percent increase in liquor consumption and an even larger increase in problem drinking.
That’s quite a statistic, and one that I had trouble believing, so I asked them for the source. It turns out that it comes from an independent task force set up by the CDC called the “Community Guide”. And thankfully, I didn’t have to do a lot of work to demonstrate the many problems with this study, because Erik Smith at the Washington State Wire already took care of that:
The task force released a three-page report earlier this year that recommended against privatization. It wasn’t a study. It was a “finding” based on a review of 21 studies.
The finding was “based on strong evidence that privatization results in increased per-capita alcohol consumption,” the report said.
And it contained a striking statistic. In those studies, alcohol sales jumped by a whopping median figure of 48 percent after privatization.
The thing is, most of those studies had nothing to do with hard liquor. Fifteen dealt with the privatization of wine sales in the U.S. and Canada, a big push in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Two of them had to do with beer sales in Scandinavia. Only four dealt with hard liquor. And the results were all over the map, ranging from an 8 percent decrease to a 305 percent increase – never mind the type of alcohol.
The way that 48 percent figure was calculated was by lumping everything together, as if all forms of alcohol are the same, in all countries, in all time periods.
The better way to try to understand the likely consequences of moving from a state-run model for selling hard liquor to a private model is to look at other states that have done just that. As Smith writes:
There’s an easier way of looking at the question – by looking at actual government statistics. For instance, you can compare alcohol consumption in Washington with that of California, where sales are wide-open and there are eight times the number of liquor outlets per capita.
According to the National Institutes of Health, in 2007 the average Washington resident consumed 2.35 gallons of alcohol and the average Californian 2.34. No real difference at all.
There’s also the experience of Iowa and West Virginia, the two most recent states to privatize hard liquor, in 1988 and 1990. Liquor consumption remained flat after booze showed up in supermarkets. Lately it has been on the increase, just as it has been across the country. But privatization didn’t drive the states to drink.
I don’t even have that strong of an opinion on this measure. I’m voting for it, but there are definitely some good reasons not to. But it really annoys me to see an organization like Fuse – that arose in big part to counter bullshit propaganda from the right – deciding that it’s ok for them to throw out their own transparent bullshit as well.
Roads were fine. Lots of people took the West Seattle Water Taxi (thanks Dow) or figured out an alternative method of getting to work. It looks like people, gasp, managed just fine. Although, it looks like the Walk the Viaduct event was a lot of fun.
– Today in false dichotomies: Urban America versus America.
– Congrats to Shaun for 9 8 years’ writing at Upper Left.
– Progressive Voter’s Guide. Pro-Choice Voter’s Guide.
– Sound Transit’s service revisions.
– Fauntleroy is safer and not noticeably slower after a road diet.
– Unless you’re living in a cardboard box, you have nothing to complain about.
In many cases, it’s these guys:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week highlighted what he called a “shocking” internal Pentagon report that concluded defense companies defrauded the military by $1.1 trillion.
“The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” Sanders said in a statement. “With the country running a nearly $15 trillion national debt, my goal is to provide as much transparency as possible about what is happening with taxpayer money.”
More than $250 million “went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period,” Sanders said, summarizing tables included with the DoD report. “Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.”
Last week’s contest was won by Poster Child, who found the location along Highway 18 in Maple Valley.
This week’s location is related to something in the news from October, good luck!
Genesis 2:2
By the seventh day God had finished his work, and so he rested.
Discuss.
At Slog, Dominic Holden fires back at the opposition from medical marijuana patients to New Approach Washington’s Initiative 502. He writes [emphasis his]:
But it’s dishonest to declare this this measure will subject people to more blood testing or result in a change of policing protocol. If voters pass I-502, officers would be held to the same standards as they are today: They would still require probable cause to stop a car, evidence of driver impairment, and any tests would have to be conducted by a medical professional (typically at a medical clinic or an ER). Those are the standards now, they wouldn’t change, and we hardly ever see those consequences for medical marijuana patients now because they aren’t impaired and cops don’t have probable cause to stop their vehicles. If cops didn’t have probable cause or evidence of impairment, but took action anyway, a defense attorney could move to have the whole thing tossed out—just like today.
It’s true that officers will continue to be held to the same set of rules as they are today, but it’s also true (and I’ve heard this echoed by several defense attorneys) that their motivation to push for a blood draw could certainly change. As of today, it’s very difficult to prove impairment in court. With no limit written into the law, any reputable defense attorney can have that charge thrown out. But with a 5ng/ml limit written into the law, that won’t be so easy. The concern is that this change will empower more police officers to push for blood draws in situations where they never did before. Will it be a significant difference? Maybe, maybe not. But the history of DUI enforcement for alcohol should make anyone wary of the possibilities.
Second, the point he’s trying to make in this paragraph isn’t true at all:
Some medical marijuana patients note that the cut-off is automatic—anyone who exceeds 5n/mg is automatically guilty of DUI. But I-502 actually does something very useful for marijuana users accused of DUI. It separates active metabolites, which indicate inebriation, from THC-COOH, the inactive metabolite that remains in the system for days or weeks. In other words, it tests to see whether people are currently stoned, not simply whether they’ve used marijuana in the past month.
No, it doesn’t test to see whether or not people are stoned. It tests to see whether or not people have more than 5ng/ml of active metabolites in their system. That certainly can indicate that a person is stoned, but sometimes it doesn’t. As I’ve pointed out before, people who use marijuana medicinally (and in particular, those who consume it within food) often have that much active THC in their system at all times. And because their body has that much, they no longer experience the “high” that brings about the impairment in the first place. This is a real concern for medical marijuana patients and I don’t find their concern here to be irrational in any way.
As for the overall initiative, I still find myself incredibly pained by this whole thing. And depending on how it all plays out in the legislature, it’s likely I’ll vote for it. But I’m still very unhappy that the ACLU and New Approach Washington decided to include the DUI provision. I don’t think it was necessary to pass something. It’s not based on sound science. And now it’s led to an organized effort to kill it from within the ranks of the drug law reform community. I worry that they may have misread the politics behind the failure of Prop 19 in California and will end up having people who normally should support legalization turn against it in large numbers – which doomed the Prop 19 campaign as much as any other factor. No one knows how this will play out, but I do find it ironic that the ACLU was willing to shit on the rights of an unpopular segment of the population in order to have a better chance of securing a popular vote.
Thom: Harold Camping tells us Friday is our last day.
Herman Cain jokes all the way to Worst Person in the World.
Obama Ends the Iraq War:
Pap: GOP ready to steal 2012 election.
Occupied:
Thom: The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.
ONN: Week in review.
Ann Telnaes: Sen. Graham—Give me your oil….
Liberal Viewer: FAUX News bias on health law constitutionality?.
Lawrence O’Donnell: VP Joe Biden schools Republicans on math.
Sam Seder: Marco Rubio’s fictional biography.
The Teabaggers boycott Aladdin Episode 2.
Pap: How anti-science Republicans are destroying America.
The GOP Primary Asylum:
Glenn Beck conspires his way to Worst Person in the World.
The Tea Party Nation Engages in Blatant Sabotage Against America:
Pap and Ed: Republicans now claim to be concerned about income gap.
Alyona: Poverty spreading across the states..
White House: West Wing Week.
Gaddafi is Gone:
Sen. Cantwell (D-WA) on the threat of Salmon anemia:
Obama on The American Jobs act.
Thom: ALEC is targeting your sick leave.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
This is shocking news. I knew White and had tremendous respect for him as a person and as my former state Senator. This is a huge loss.
Just a note, this post contains some racist language, and violence.
I go to Westlake more days than I don’t, even if I haven’t always reported everything up to the moment. If news isn’t breaking or something important happening, I’ll just write the same as if I’d been in my apartment. So when the incident in #3 happened, I was 10, 15 feet away, but I didn’t report on it because “crazy person is crazy” didn’t strike me as a story. But since it’s on Publicola, someone thinks it’s news, so here’s a quick summary:
It was at the General Assembly. That day it was under the trees. About 7:30, I guess; the GA had been going on for a while. There’s a core group that sits down, and there are people who stand at the edges and sometimes come in and out. Someone walks up to the Assembly and starts yelling. “Niggers. Fuck you niggers.” And a few people go to confront him. It looked from my angle like he just ran into one of the people who walked up to him, but someone said he threw a punch. Then he ran over to 4th. He was then tackled by several cops as he was running North down the sidewalk.
I honestly don’t think this says anything about either Occupy Seattle or the opposition to it. As far as I can tell, it was just a crazy person, and Publicola’s report doesn’t make me think anything different.
This morning, public radio stations across the nation played a Marketplace piece about small businesses supporting the OWS family of protests.
And who did they feature in the story? Occupy Seattle and Big Mario’s New York Style Pizza:
Big Mario’s has made it cheap and easy to feed the protesters. As The Ave points out, even if you cannot join the crowds at Westlake Center or other occupied sites, you can still support the cause by sending food (or other essentials of life).
I could live the rest of my life on pizza alone, but that may not be true for all. The Ave article asks people to identify other places that support the protesters through discounts and deliver to Occupy Seattle. If you know of any, leave details in the comment thread, here or at The Ave.
It’s seems like an epidemic among Republicans these days. Earlier this week it was Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA-3). Today we have ourselves another cowardly Republican on full display.
This time it’s Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA-7) cowering at the thought of appearing before an un-screened crowd:
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) is abruptly pulling out of a scheduled Friday lecture on income equality at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School, according to the school.
[…] According to Cantor’s office, the Congressman pulled out after discovering that the speech would be open to the public and seeing reports that the university was allowing protestors to gather on the campus itself.
I cannot substantiate the rumor that instead of giving the speech, Cantor held a meeting with Herrera Beutler and Rep. Dave Reichert (R-WA-8) to draft the bylaws of the G.O.P. Coward’s Club.
– As a liberal guy, I’ll say, this is fucked up (Also, wow) .
– The Abacus sign and a sign from Occupy Olympia.
– Handbills and posters for the weekend events at Occupy Seattle.
– During the 2008 Democratic primary, I was always quick to point out that it wasn’t particularly nasty as primary fights go. Certainly nobody was grabbing anybody.
– It won’t get anywhere for now, but the GOP effort to ban discussion of abortion over the Internet is brazen even for Jim DeMint.
– When the machines take over, they won’t kill us outright. They’ll just program our GPS’s to make us drive around in circles.
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!