HorsesAss.Org

As tough as I am on them, I have to admit that the Seattle Times editorial board is usually pretty good on issues involving free speech. Unless, of course, it’s spoken in Mandarin.

GOOGLE’S fight with China presents issues that are not as simple as many Americans believe.

Americans frame it as a fight against state censorship — of government telling a U.S. company to disable its search engine in China so that Google’s customers there can’t read certain political opinions. Americans don’t believe in doing that — and Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt, has said so publicly, threatening to leave China.

To China’s government, the issue is whether a foreign corporation will obey its laws. Framed that way, the answer is easy. It has to obey. That is the rule with foreign companies everywhere.

Well, the law is the law. Spoken like a Mahatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King Jr… you know, if they were drunk.

And on what does the Times base this bold statement of principle? Well apparently they looked the communist Chinese minister of industry and information in the eye and were able to get a sense of his soul. After all…

Listen to what they say.

“I hope Google will abide by Chinese laws and regulations,” says Li Yizhong, minister of industry and information technology. This is not the diction of a totalitarian state. It sounds like a man who wants to make a deal.

Now that’s the sorta confident assessment of a foreign government’s character and intentions that would make Neville Chamberlain proud. I mean, with totally non-totalitarian diction like that, where’s the harm in a little censorship?

I dunno, but is anybody else a little weirded out by an American newspaper defending government censorship, while urging the world’s largest Internet search engine to just quietly play along? Strange.

I’m getting word over email that the homeowner involved in this morning’s shooting in Kirkland is Steve Sarich. Sarich is a very prominent – but also very controversial – figure in the medical marijuana community. Last week, after a 38-year-old medical marijuana patient named Mike Howard was beaten to death during an alleged robbery attempt, Sarich sent the following email to both state legislators and the media:

[Read more…]

The King County Conservation District election is coming up this Tuesday. Kirk Prindle is a friend of HA and we hope that you can make it out to one of the seven voting locations and make your voice heard.

Yeah, I suppose we could just plop a pay-per-view Chihuly Museum and Gift Shop in the space where the Fun Forest used to be, and maybe extract a few extra bucks from tourists who stray too far from the cruise ship terminal. Or, we could build our kids a really kick-ass playground our region’s families would use again and again and again.

Again, nothing against Chihuly in particular, or museums in general, but Seattle needs more family-friendly attractions, not less, and a glass museum just doesn’t fit that bill.

Last week’s winner was Doc Daneeka. It was HersheyPark in Hershey, PA.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Brian hearts Denny.

Nice to see the future corporate lobbyists of America sticking together.

Let’s at least be clear about what’s being traded in America today. They think you’re stupid, that you can be distracted, and that they know best. They’ll take your money for their campaigns, pat you on the head, thank you for carrying heavy boxes for them, and then fuck you over in a heartbeat on the issues you care about the most.

Then they’ll insist that only “moderates” can do well. They’re not actually “moderate” on issues, because they’ll gladly abandon their faux outrage over the deficit when corporate coffers need a boost, they’re just “moderate” about not losing their power. If this sounds familiar, it’s because these kinds of people are properly called Republicans.

Baird will most likely screw us on health care again, and Heck won’t even take a fucking stand. There’s your “moderates” for you.

I’m getting phone calls from OFA urging me to “contact my Congressman to support health care reform” while at the same time another faction of the party is trying to kill it. I think we have a big problem here, people, and the problem is that certain people think it’s their political party, and the rest of us are just ATM’s and porters.

Now, most campaigns won’t turn down an endorsement, but given the antipathy towards Baird in the district, this move by the Heck campaign starts to look like a misstep, if not a blunder. But the insiders can’t help themselves, because they usually don’t need to worry about the petty concerns of those silly little voters, or even large blocs of rank and file activists; it’s all about proving to the other insiders that they’re a kewl kid. The voters can be dealt with in 30 second tee-vee ads later.

Enough is enough. We need someone principled in this seat, at long last, and Craig Pridemore has the support of hundreds of ordinary folks in the district. Those in the Puget Sound region who dismiss Pridemore’s chances based on ordinary metrics (ooooh! lookie! Denny has his own money!) clearly have no idea what makes Craig tick, nor his dogged determination in previous races where he defeated well-financed Republican incumbents. I don’t think some folks understand that over the years Craig has built up a tremendous and devoted group of admirers because he always fights for the regular people, even when the odds are against them.

Speaking of Denny Heck endorsements, the NYT had an interesting article late last year on how the lobbying game is really played, and it mentions another WA-03 Congress-critter who has endorsed Heck, former House member Don Bonker of APCO Worldwide. Fun times, flying a conservative Repuke like James Sensenbrenner and his wife to Liechtenstein on a pleasure junket, staying at a ski resort and touring first-class vineyards and wine cellars. Sweet, and apparently all legal if the money is placed in the correct non-profit entities. I’m sure having his buddy Heck in office would enhance Bonker’s professional prestige quite a bit more.

Genesis 19:30-36
Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. Let’s get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father.”

That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I lay with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.

So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father.

Discuss.

The Google Maps Street Views below look like typical small-town scenery, with a lot of open space and far from the hustle and bustle of urban America. But they’re not quite as rural as you’d think. Each of the intersections above are only a short bike ride from downtown Detroit. In fact, much of the old neighborhoods around downtown Detroit have simply disappeared, with no development to replace the bulldozed homes. New Detroit Mayor Dave Bing (yes, that Dave Bing), has a plan for fixing it:

Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green.

This would be like Queen Anne or Capitol Hill becoming completely abandoned and turned into farmland again. Hard to fathom, but this is what happened to what was once one of the wealthiest cities in the United States in the early half of the 20th century.
[Read more…]

The Seattle Center’s Fun Forest was a virtually unique family amenity: an outdoor amusement park near the center of a modern American city. And our children deserve to have it replaced with something just as unique, and just as entertaining, instead of yet another pay-for-view museum.

So if you were designing a really kick-ass playground, what might it look like?

Wal-Mart fired a cancer patient in Michigan (who had been named Associate of the Year in 2008) after they discovered that he was authorized by his doctor to use marijuana. That occurred back in November. Wal-Mart is now even going so far as to try to challenge his eligibility for unemployment compensation.

You’d think this story of an orphaned 11-year-old might make a pretty compelling case for health care reform, but I suppose conservatives like Dori Monson would just say that the kid only has himself to blame for making the poor choice to be born to a mother who got sick, lost her job, lost the health insurance that came with it, and subsequently died as a result.

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When I talk about replacing the Seattle Center’s Fun Forest with a really kick-ass playground, I want to be clear that I’m not just talking about a teeter-totter and a couple of climbing toys… the type of installations you find at schoolyards and parks throughout the rest of the city. No, I’m talking about creating the kinda nowhere-else-on-earth one-of-a-kind destination that could be just as much a work of art as that pay-to-view Chihuly museum the grownups propose to be built in its place.

So come on, Seattle… let’s use our collective imagination and make our kids the envy of children worldwide.

According to the Seattle Times editorial board, Democrats are bad people:

THE priority of the majority Democrats in Olympia has not been economic recovery. If it were, the Legislature would not be leaning on the taxpayer for nine-tenths of a billion dollars.

Damn… they finally caught on. Yes the priority of us Dems, as always, has been the destruction of the economic and social fabric of these United States. “Heil Osama bin Stalin!”… or something like that.

Or perhaps, it’s possible, there might be a legitimate debate to be had over economic policy, with the majority of Dems genuinely believing that the anti-stimulative effects of further state government cuts would be greater than the anti-stimulative effects of minor tax increases? But, you know, it’s always easier just to question your opponents’ motives.

If the priority were economic recovery, Thursday’s page-one headline in The Seattle Times would not have been, “Despite cuts, state spending actually on track to go up.”

Oh God… if the Legislature’s spending, regulatory and revenue priorities were based solely on coaxing complimentary headlines out of the Seattle Times, Washington state would look like Somalia by now. I mean honestly, this is a paper that has steadfastly refused to cover the billions of dollars in spending cuts over the past two years, and the impact it has had on Washington families, yet we’re expected to accept their headlines as a generally accurate let alone evenhanded depiction of reality?

The priority of legislators has been protecting state employees. In the past two years, when private employment in Washington has plunged by 7.5 percent, the total of state workers outside of higher education has been shaved by 0.7 percent. The Legislature might have increased that rate in the coming year, but it didn’t.

A.) The past performance of the Times’ editorial board has given me absolutely no reason to accept that assertion as fact. B) Nice job cherry-picking data by excluding a big chunk of state general fund spending. I mean, it’s kinda like saying that “Nobody in Times management, outside of Frank Blethen, has ever shot a neighbor’s dog.”

Many voices, including this page, told legislators to declare a fiscal emergency and reopen state employee contracts. Raising the employee share of health-care premiums from 12 percent to 20 percent — a share that is still below the average in the private sector — would have saved about $50 million in this biennium. The Legislature didn’t do it.

Which is surprising, because if you’re gonna take fiscal advice from anybody, it’s a company that pissed away a half a billion dollars of equity over the past decade.

There is also the matter of step increases — an automatic pay increase for an employee not at the top of the salary schedule. In the worst crisis in years, with taxes being slapped on all sorts of things and the unemployment rate close to 9 percent, the Legislature continued to fund step increases.

While what the Times really wanted the state to do was use this crisis as an excuse to break contracts and crush the public employee unions.

The state might simply stop doing some things. A bill was introduced to end the state’s retail monopoly of liquor. The Legislature didn’t pass it.

And regardless of whose numbers you believe, passing it would have done absolutely nothing to address our current budget crisis. But again, if we can exploit the Great Recession as an excuse for privatizing something for the sake of privatization, why not have at it?

A year ago, when the economic omens were worse, the Legislature made it through without big tax increases. Back then, Initiative 960 required a two-thirds vote, and they didn’t have that. This year, I-960 was amendable by a simple majority, and they quickly amended it. After that, the tax proposals scurried out like crabs from under a wet rock.

If all you knew about politics came from the Times’ headlines and editorials, you might think that you have to handcuff those tax-and-spend Democrats to the radiator to keep them from raising taxes every full moon, when in fact when it comes to major taxes, the opposite has been true over at least the past quarter century.

Despite the fact that the sale of goods has represented an ever shrinking portion of the state economy since the 1950’s, there hasn’t been a hike in the state portion of the sales tax rate since 1983… the longest such lag, by far, since the sales tax was implemented back in 1935. The B&O tax on manufacturing was cut in 1995 and again in 1997, and now it too stands at 1983 levels. And while the gas tax has been raised 14.5 cents since 2003, that jump followed a nearly unprecedented 12-year period of stagnation, with the current 37.5 cent a gallon tax still falling below the historical average as a percentage of the price at the pump. Only the tobacco tax has seen substantial increases, but primarily for public health reasons, and with bipartisan support.

Meanwhile, the Democratic controlled Legislature has spent much of the past decade passing billions of dollars worth of tax exemptions. And let’s not forget car tabs, which the Legislature eliminated in 1998 by feebly reenacting Tim Eyman’s unconstitutional I-965, essentially cutting a chunk of annual revenue equivalent to a one cent per dollar reduction in the state sales tax rate.

Indeed, even with the plethora of property and sales tax increases approved by local voters, total state and local taxes as a percentage of personal income fell from a high of 10.4% in 1994 to 8.9% in 2008, ranking us 35th nationwide according to the conservative Tax Foundation. So the very notion that it was I-960 that handcuffed Democrats, rather than their own well-documented reluctance to anger taxpayers, is complete and utter bullshit.

Raising taxes is never an easy thing for politicians to do, not even Democrats. Never. And to imply otherwise is nothing short of slander.

Senate Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam, blamed her urban colleagues. “I think a majority of our caucus is from very safe districts.” she said. “As a result, they just feel like we don’t want to reform.”

Lynn Kessler is a Republican. There, I said it. At least on fiscal issues, the Democratic caucus is led, if not dominated, by politicians who would have been Republicans two decades ago. And yet even with the outsized influence that these economic DINOs have on the caucus’s agenda, Kessler has the nerve to publicly criticize her urban colleagues for occasionally voting the needs and interests of their constituents over that of the BIAW and Frank Blethen?

There’s a part of me that almost wishes the Democrats would lose a bunch of House seats come November, if only to foment a caucus revolt that might install some new and more effective leadership, that truly reflects the values of the Democratic Party.

Somebody, sometime, is going to make them reform state government. It will happen. But it didn’t happen this year.

Reform? What reform? The Times didn’t call for reform; they called for busting state employee unions and dropping temporary assistance to those unable to work due to physical or mental disability. Would that save money in the short term? Sure. Would it address the bureaucratic inefficiencies and misplaced priorities that surely exist? Nope. And it sure as hell wouldn’t do anything to address the long term structural revenue deficit that results from clinging to an early 20th century tax structure that simply doesn’t fit the reality of our post-industrial, 21st century economy.

But again, you know, if there’s an opportunity to impugn the character and motives of the majority Democrats, why not take it?

The bill to expand Washington’s medical marijuana law has passed the House after some late amendments were made to require tamper-proof authorizations (as a way to reduce fraud). After Senate re-approval, the bill will land on Governor Gregoire’s desk. The bill doesn’t address some of the major flaws in the medical marijuana law (such as full arrest protection), but it does make it easier for people in rural areas to get authorizations.

One thing that’s interesting about this legislation is that the Cannabis Defense Coalition (a group I work with – and that I can truly attest works on a small budget) actually hired a lobbyist to make the case for this bill. I think it caught a lot of us by surprise how much can really get accomplished when you have someone effective in the halls of Olympia fighting on your behalf.

UDPATE: More news on the legislation here.