HorsesAss.Org

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8VMcRqtdSI&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

For years I’ve been suggesting that the way to win an income tax in Washington state was to borrow a page from Tim Eyman, and run against Olympia. You know, a message something along the lines of: “We don’t have an income tax, because they won’t give us an income tax…” emphasizing how the fat cats benefit from the current tax structure, while our legislators kowtow to their wealthy benefactors’ wishes.

So it’s good to see that message finally being tested, if timidly.

This poll from Marist makes eight consecutive polls in which Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has the lead over Dino Rossi (R), even if her 48% to 47% lead is smallish.

I do a more detailed analysis of the poll, and an analysis using all nine October polls, at Hominid Views.

Man, after all this number crunching and writing…I needs me a drink!

It’s Tuesday following the ballot drop…making it a great opportunity to enjoy and evening of politics under the influence. Please join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by earlier for dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 249 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

The city of Tacoma has decided to crack down on its medical marijuana dispensaries. There’s an ongoing debate about the legality of dispensaries in this state, and Chris Legeros explains it well right here:

The city’s claim, detailed in a letter sent out to the co-ops last week, is that the co-ops are acting illegally by dispensing marijuana to more than one person. The city claims that under state law, a designated provider of medical marijuana can only help one patient at any one time.

“…In these businesses, that’s not the case; it’s a business supplying it to many patients,” said Rob McNair-Huff a city spokesman.

But Jay Berneburg, a lawyer for The C.O.B.R.A. Medical Group, one of the co-ops targeted by the city, has disputed that claim and said the co-op is complying with both the letter and the intent of the law.

Every patient who comes in to C.O.B.R.A. signs a form designating C.O.B.R.A. as their provider, Berneburg said. After receiving their marijuana, the patients immediately sign the form again, removing C.O.B.R.A. as their provider.

“And that means the designated provider who can only be a designated provider to any one person at a time is now available to be somebody else’s designated provider,” Berneburg said.

Dispensaries around the state have been relying on this creative interpretation of the law in order to operate, but after a review, Tacoma warned eight such establishments in the city that they’re breaking the law and will be shut down. In response, there’s a rally planned this evening outside the Tacoma City Council meeting. I’m planning to head down there shortly and might update this post later with additional info and/or photos.

UPDATE: There are about 100 protestors here, along with some news media. I spoke briefly with James Lucas from Tacoma Cross, a dispensary that opened in April and is under threat of shutdown.

His employees are here wearing their corporate logoed shirts. Lucas tells me that he’s licensed with the city to operate his business and he pays all federal, state and local taxes required of any business.

UPDATE 2: There are now roughly 200-250 protestors here and it appears that their presence has made a difference. Douglas Hiatt and other patient representatives just came out of the Tacoma Municipal Building and it appears that the city will allow the dispensaries to continue to operate until the legislature has an opportunity to fix the law in the next session.

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Washington state voters are, seemingly, under a polling blitzkrieg. Today another poll is released in the race between Sen. Patty Murray (D) and real estate salesman turned foreclosure opportunity seminar motivational speaker Dino Rossi (R).

This poll comes from Public Policy Polling (PPP) and shows Murray leading Rossi 49% to 47%. The poll was taken from 14th to the 16th of October on a sample of 1,873 likely Washington voters. The margin of error is 2.3%.

PPP makes an interesting observation about the race (emphasis added):

There’s a pretty strong argument that the Washington Senate race is the most stable in the country: PPP finds Patty Murray leading Dino Rossi 49-47, basically identical to our July poll of the race that found her ahead 49-46.

The reason for the stability is that voters know these candidates, they know what they think of them, and nothing they’ve heard during this campaign has changed those opinions in one direction or the other. In July Murray’s approval rating was 46/45. Now it’s 47/48. In July Rossi’s favorability was 43/48. Now it’s 44/49.

Compare this with yesterday’s Rasmussen lede (emphasis added):

Democratic incumbent Patty Murray is barely ahead of Republican challenger Dino Rossi now as the lead seesaws again in Washington’s neck-and-neck U.S. Senate race.

The fact is, Murray has now led in the last seven of the eight polls taken in October with margins from +1 to +13 and with an (unweighted) average of just over +5%. Take a look at the entire polling history:

Note to pollsters and reporters…that meme about how close and back-and-forth this race is? Yeah…that last’s month meme based on a tiny blip in the data.

Note: The graph in the first version of this post included a poll by DSCC. I’ve reposted the graph without that poll.

Update: At Hominid Views I do some statistical analysis of the poll and further examine the differences between robopolls and live-interview polls in this race.

Vote No on I-1100… that’s what urge the readers at Slog while joyfully spanking my colleagues at the Stranger for daring to urge otherwise.

See, not all alcoholics are as harmless and lovable as the car-less barflies at theStranger, whose most abusive booze-fueled behavior is mostly targeted at the English language. Alcohol is the most widely abused drug available. It is the most devastating to families, and the most costly to businesses and government. And it is also by far the most deadly.

Anyway, it’s fun and it’s pointed. So read the whole thing.

Last month I wrote about Attorney General Rob McKenna’s cynical effort to reinterpret Washington’s voter-approved minimum wage statute, so as to avoid an increase this year. And as predicted, this week L&I announced that it would ignore McKenna’s opinion, by raising the minimum wage another 12 cents an hour.

Labor & Industries spokeswoman Kim Contris said the state ultimately made the decision to raise the rate “based on how we believe a court would interpret the law.”

“We really wanted to correctly implement the law,” she said. “We recognize there could be confusion and additional cost if we made a mistake and the court overturned the decision.”

That’s right, the state ignored its own attorney’s opinion because they were concerned about the legal cost of following it. Huh. Perhaps the state should fire its attorney?

No doubt there are policy arguments to make in favor of keeping the minimum wage flat during a time of slow job growth and high unemployment — for example, the stupid, arrogant and profoundly anti-worker arguments made by the Columbian — but the problem for McKenna is that the legal arguments just weren’t there. The law is clear: L&I is instructed to adjust the minimum wage “by increasing the current year’s minimum wage rate by the rate of inflation,” and since inflation went up this year, however slightly, so will the minimum wage.

To ignore the plain meaning of the word “by” in the service of fabulating alternative formulas may be creative lawyering, but as L&I rightly determined, it wasn’t likely to hold up in court. Which in the end, not only calls into question McKenna’s abilities as an attorney, but as a politician as well.

I guess I was too busy paying attention to real stuff today to notice that Rasmussen dumped a new poll in Washington’s U.S. Senate race:  Sen. Patty Murray 49%, Dino Rossi 46%.

That’s the exact same margin by which Rasmussen had Rossi leading less than two weeks ago.

Whatever that means.

Update (Darryl): I take a closer look at the poll here.

2006 was a bad year for Camas Washington, with over 300 workers losing their jobs at the local Georgia-Pacific mill, shortly after the company was acquired by Koch Industries. But while the region is still suffering from the “Koch-izing” of Georgia-Pacific, at least one Camas resident owes the far-right-wing Koch brothers a huge debt of gratitude, if not something more specific: Republican congressional hopeful Jaime Herrera.

The latest campaign finance reports are in, and it turns out the Kochs are spending big to buy Herrera a job in the other Washington, contributing $5,000 directly to her campaign, and spending at least another $282,000 through their “Americans for Prosperity” front group, attacking her Democratic opponent, Denny Heck. It is the ultimate insult to WA-03 voters; first the New York-based Kochs make millions closing local mills and outsourcing jobs, and now they’re spending a portion of their profits to purchase themselves another congresswoman.

You know… the free market at work.

So are WA-03 voters going to let a couple of New York City billionaires buy their congressional seat? Do they really believe that Herrera won’t be beholden to the Koch’s anti-Social-Security/anti-regulatory/pro-outsourcing agenda? Only if the local media continues to fail to inform voters about what Herrera and her backers really stand for.

Annoying as they can be, I sometimes find my spam mail amusing, mostly due to their attempts to personalize them, based on my domain name. And, well, this one just made me chuckle.

So, only a week after the Seattle Times lauds Democratic challenger Suzan DelBene for her nuanced and knowledgeable stance on reviving the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act — a subject that came up at their joint editorial board interview — you’d think Republican incumbent Rep. Dave Reichert would at least be able to bullshit an answer on the issue.

Um… nope. In fact, at a candidate forum in Newcastle this weekend, Reichert said he doesn’t even know what Glass-Steagall is.

I don’t know what’s more insulting, the suggestion that Reichert is brain-damaged, or the insistance that he’s not.

More snark at Slog.

Last week’s contest had two winners. ‘Milk’ was the first to identify the house as the home of the Duggars, the Arkansas family with 19 kids who have their own show on TLC. And Brian wins for finding the view.

This week’s is just a random location, good luck!

Numbers 15:32-36
While the Israelites were in the desert, a man was found gathering wood on the Sabbath day. Those who found him gathering wood brought him to Moses and Aaron and the whole assembly, and they kept him in custody, because it was not clear what should be done to him. Then the LORD said to Moses, “The man must die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp.” So the assembly took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as the LORD commanded Moses.

Discuss.

Adam Nagourney in the New York Times was not paying much attention the first time California voters fought back against the drug war:

Washington has generally looked the other way as a growing medical marijuana industry has prospered here and in 14 other states and the District of Columbia, but Mr. Holder’s position — revealed in a letter this week to nine former chiefs of the Drug Enforcement Administration that was made public on Friday — made explicit that legalizing marijuana for recreational use would bring a whole new level of scrutiny from Washington.

To say that the Federal Government has “generally looked the other way” as medical marijuana has been introduced in over a dozen states is a fairly big misreading of the history. Previous to Obama, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations aggresively targeted medical marijuana providers in all states where it was legal. Under Obama, the DOJ publicly promised that they’d leave the states alone, but they haven’t lived up to that pledge. Even Congress has been unable to pass legislation that would’ve made it impossible to use federal resources to undermine state medical marijuana laws (side note: both Rick Larsen and Dave Reichert voted to continue to have the feds come into Washington to undermine our medical marijuana laws).

It’s worth pointing this out because Nagourney makes it sound as if this time it’ll be different. It won’t. As Dan Riffle points out in this post, the Federal Government would be powerless to overturn a successful vote in California to remove the state-level penalties on marijuana (even if whack-job Scientology-promoting sheriffs believe that they make the laws). Their only option is the enforce the law themselves, something that they have neither the manpower – or the political will – to accomplish.

Even so, it’s hard to know exactly how it will play out if Proposition 19 passes. Just because the Federal Government doesn’t appear to have much of a leg to stand on doesn’t mean that they’ll back down. It will certainly trigger some kind of a fight, but just as with medical marijuana, the will of the people and the forces of the market will eventually outlast it. But that’s still only part of what we’ll see if this domino falls.

What I think will be more interesting is to see what occurs outside of our borders. One of the particularly egregious aspects of our drug war is how effectively we’ve been able to force other countries to keep their marijuana laws in line with ours. In the recent ACLU forum, Rick Steves provided his perspective on this, noting that some countries enforce their marijuana laws solely to retain favored trade status with the U.S. If the U.S. isn’t able to maintain that level of control over one of its own states, it’s likely to change the perspective of those outside the U.S. looking in.