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Much attention was paid to the Nov. 5th shooting rampage at Fort Hood, and rightly so. It was a terrible tragedy in which 13 were killed and 30 others wounded by a deeply disturbed U.S. Army psychiatrist.

Yet news today that 12 more Army soldiers committed suicide in November, bringing the yearly total to a record high 147 suicides thus far in 2009, will likely pass with little national debate. And that’s just the suicides in the Army. As of last month 334 active members of the U.S. military services had committed suicide in 2009, also a record high.

By comparison, the U.S. military has so far suffered 304 fatalities in Afghanistan this year, and an additional 150 in Iraq.

Politicians in both parties like to talk about supporting the troops. I doubt the families of the service men and women who took their own lives believe we’ve supported them nearly enough.

I agree wholeheartedly with the headline, if not the text of a recent Seattle Times editorial: “Washington state’s finances require long-term solutions.”

Of course, the one long-term solution the Times doesn’t mention is tax restructuring… you know, reforming our tax system so that revenues actually keep pace with growth in the economy, while distributing the burden more efficiently and fairly. That’s to be expected from the Times ed board, which on revenue issues has pretty much become a mouthpiece of the state GOP.

But the editorial does make one argument that’s as applicable to the revenue side of the equation as it is to the spending, and which progressives should heed as we attempt to deal with this unprecedented budget crisis:

Opponents will say that such suggestions don’t produce that much money in this budget period, and they will be right. These are ideas for the long term — and now is a really good time to consider them.

This is, of course, exactly the argument I’ve been hearing from many of my fellow Democrats whenever I advocate for a high-earner’s income tax as part of the solution to the current fiscal crisis. It can’t produce revenue fast enough, I was told last year as legislators battled to put together a two-year budget in the face of record revenue shortfalls. It can’t produce revenue fast enough, I’m being told this year, as legislators prepare to fill an additional $2.6 billion gap. And no doubt the same argument will be used to brush aside the suggestion again in 2011 and 2012, as the state struggles to deal with what are becoming perennial revenue shortfalls.

An income tax is a distraction, I’m told, that only complicates the political machinations necessary to assure that some sort of tax increase be a part of the current budget negotiations.

Yeah, well, the problem with this line of reasoning is that while implementing an income tax can never be a short-term solution, it’s exactly the kind of long-term solution we need to make sure that more short-term solutions won’t be as necessary in the future. And with the budget crisis — and the unpopular cuts it necessitates — fresh in voters minds, now is the best opportunity we’ve had in decades to get some sort of income tax approved by voters.

Wait until we don’t have a short-term budget crisis, and there won’t be the popular will to swallow and accept an otherwise unpopular long-term reform.

The Times editors and their fellow Republicans are thinking long-term; they want to use this crisis to permanently shrink the size of state and local government and cripple its ability to provide the services people want. They may not be willing to come out and say it, but they are advocating for a paradigm shift, in which government plays a much smaller role in our local economy, and a much smaller role in funding health, welfare, education and public infrastructure.

We should be thinking long-term too.

Cherisse Luxa has passed away. I didn’t know Cherisse, but others did. Condolences to her family.

Andrew at NPI:

This morning, Washington’s netroots community lost one of its most wonderful and spirited activists when Cherisse Luxa, the founder of Burien Drinking Liberally, succumbed to stomach cancer. Cherisse was sixty two. She resided in the 34th LD, known for its strong and vibrant Democratic Party organization.

Cafecito at Daily Kos:

If you have ever attended Drinking Liberally, you almost certainly know of Cherisse’s incredible energy and her unstoppable drive to make our community a better place. From her decades as a King County Sheriff’s Deputy to her impressive track record as an activist an advocate, Cherisse made a huge difference, both for Burien and for the broader community.

Cherisse, like many of us, got religion with Howard Dean’s run.

Cherisse touched thousands of lives and was a role model for many of us. We will sorely miss her.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Kansas City, MO.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Beck – Not So Mellow Gold
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

– This looks like a potentially interesting discovery that could assist in combating climate change.

– Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio is a menace to society.

– U.S. Attorney Tanya Treadway isn’t much better.

– Speaking of unhinged U.S. Attorneys, I neglected to say farewell to a true authoritarian nightmare, Mary Beth Buchanan.

– Washington Post reporter Ashley Halsey III gets caught passing along bogus statistics, yet when this is pointed out to him, instead of issuing a correction, he throws a fit.

– Eric Martin has a post on the secretive war we’re fighting inside Pakistan. With all of the focus on Afghanistan recently, I think we’re overlooking what has the potential to be a greater failure in our overall strategy there.

With Sarah Palin arguing that a handful of 13-year-old emails are enough to discredit and refute the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (WA-01) hits back with perhaps the best quote of the day:

“Before Sarah Palin writes a book, she should try reading a few,” said Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who followed up with a series of peer-reviewed reports on rising sea levels, air temperatures and ocean acidity.

Ouch.

Just shows how desperate the climate change deniers are when Palin has become their most visible champion.

Here’s a free tip to those Seattle-haters in the rest of the state who just love to screw us big city folks:  pass a high-earners income tax.

Really. Pass it. I mean, honestly, let’s say we levy an income tax on household earnings in excess of $500,000 a year… who do think’s gonna pay most of it? You guessed it: folks right here in Seattle and the surrounding suburbs. This is the part of the state where most of the wealth is, and where most of the high paying jobs are, so the reluctance of voters elsewhere to tax us to pay for the things they need (you know, like levy-equalization) is, well, just plain stupid.

And you’re not stupid, are you?

I hate to make it “Dump on Joel Week,” and I’ve got no big quibbles with the rest of his column, but this is the sort of conventional wisdom that really ticks me off:

A tireless practitioner of town meetings, Baird had a grip on his southwest Washington district, which twice voted for President Bush. The political turf began to move beneath him last summer as tea baggers showed up at once-cordial sessions with voters.

Joel could easily have written that the political turf began to move beneath Baird in 2008 when he angered Democrats by providing political cover for President Bush’s policies in Iraq… but Joel didn’t. Why? Because protests and discontent from the left are generally dismissed by the legacy press, whereas the breadth and impact of right-wing hissy-fits like those from the tea baggers are generally exaggerated.

The implication is that a handful of angry tea baggers played a major role in driving a congressman out of office, while the growing disaffection for Baird from within the base of his own party had absolutely no impact on his decision.

It’s a double standard that distorts the public debate, and… well… just really sticks in my craw.

Barbara Coombs Lee has a follow-up diary at Daily Kos on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ directive that mandates that Catholic health care facilities employ feeding tubes and other life-prolonging measures even when an individual’s living will specifically prohibits it. When I last posted on this, I’d sent out an email to a number of Catholic hospitals and hospices across the state to see if any of them were planning to ignore the directive.

It’s been five days, and I haven’t heard any responses from any of the 10 contacts I was able to find. In the comments of the original post on this, Joel Connelly claimed to have spoken with an administrator who says her facility will ignore the directive. I got that person’s name from Connelly today and emailed her directly. I’m still waiting for a reply.

UPDATE: Joel Connelly is up to some more shenanigans in the comments. He writes:

After asking for my assistance today, you deliberately distort what I heard up at the Bellingham City Club forum.

Absolutely not. I’ve distorted nothing. Here’s what you said to me, with a link to the comment:

As one with a living will, I’ve been told several times by Catholic hospital administrators that my wish not to be kept alive by artificial means would be fully respected.

I emailed you today with the following request:

I emailed as many Catholic hospitals and hospices as I could find contact emails for and not a single one has emailed me back saying that they will ignore the end-of-life instructions given to them by the bishops. If you have contact info for the person or persons who told you so, please forward that on to me.

You wrote back with the name of the person I then emailed. Either you’re not following what you’re saying to me or you’re deliberately trying to lie. Which is it?

There is one cut in Gov. Gregoire’s preliminary all-cuts budget proposal that the Seattle Times opposes:

The proposed cut the governor would buy back, and that we would, too, is in levy-equalization money for public schools. This is money that keeps a minimum level of schooling in property-poor districts. This page has long believed that the first and best social program is education.

Hmm. I agree that levy-equalization is good public policy. Unfortunately, I wonder if it’s bad politics?

The problem is, many of those “property-poor” districts who benefit most from levy-equalization are also those whose voters most reliably oppose giving state government the necessary taxing authority to pay for things like, you know, levy-equalization.

Understand, this is money that comes out of the pockets of taxpayers in property-rich (?) districts like Seattle and the Eastside suburbs. And for the most part, we don’t mind, because we’re good progressives who support progressive policies like levy-equalization. But when the rest of the state won’t allow us to tax ourselves to pay for the level of education our children want and need, well, that kinda throws a kink in the whole social contract thing.

So perhaps, if the state cuts off levy-equalization, maybe folks in these property-poor districts will think twice before voting against the tax hikes necessary to pay for it? Perhaps the loss of crucial levy-equalization money might create a broader statewide consensus supporting adequate K-12 education funding? Perhaps subsidies like levy-equalization undermine support for tax structure reform the same way Medicare undermines support for health care reform amongst the elderly?

Perhaps.

The Seattle Times editorial board likes Gov. Gregoire’s initial all-cuts budget so much, they wish many of the cuts would go even further.

THOUGH Gov. Chris Gregoire does not like her no-new-taxes state budget, and would buy back some of the cuts with taxes, the budget has a good deal of merit in it. Perhaps we like it more than she does. […] There are other cuts we would buy back, but many will have to be accepted. State government as constituted today is more than the people can afford.

Of course, I’m guessing, if subjected to a popular vote of the people, the Times’ editors couldn’t even win election to their own editorial board, let alone the Legislature, so it’s hard to imagine why anybody would take their relentlessly anti-tax opinions seriously.

(Oh, and a style tip to the Times editorial writers… unselfconscious use of the royal ‘we’ makes us sound like an asshole. And we wonder why young people don’t read newspapers anymore?)

I just received a news release announcing that state Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (17th LD,) is definitely running for Congress for the third district seat that will be vacated at the end of the term by U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash. Here’s a sample quote.

“From day one, I’ve been committed to being open and accessible to my constituents and being responsive to their needs. My focus has been investing prudently and in a fiscally responsible manner to improve education, modernize our transportation network, encourage economic development and job growth and ensuring public safety. I’ve always believed that government should live within its means, just like our families do and I will bring that same approach to Congress,” added Wallace.

Wallace would seem to be a strong candidate and potentially a good fit for the district. Her resume would stack up well against Republican state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) who announced her candidacy yesterday within hours of Baird’s announcement that he will not run again.

Wallace’s 17th LD is definitely the most swing district in Clark County. Encompassing the sprawling eastern areas, the other legislators are Rep. Tim Probst, D-Vancouver, and Sen. Don Benton, R-Vancouver. It’s an area high in strip malls, low information voters, and some amount of far right nutballs, although it’s nothing like the 18th LD in that regard. One can make a reasonable argument that the ability to win in the 17th is a decent credential for trying to win district-wide.

While there have been plenty of names other than Wallace floating around the rumor-sphere on the Democratic side, Wallace has moved the fastest, and apparently has hired a consulting firm, based on the where the news release came from.

UPDATE ON THE GOP SIDE—State Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) told The Columbian that she will make an official announcement next week. She might just be getting her ducks in a row, but this appears to be a step back from yesterday’s news that she was definitely running.

Herrera, R-Ridgefield, announced this morning that she will give the idea “serious consideration” and make an official announcement about her plans next week.

I suppose someone should tell Politico.

Goldy broke the news earlier this week that 6 co-sponsors in the State House are introducing a bill that will legalize marijuana for adults over the age of 21. The bill will also utilize the existing mechanisms in place for regulating wine and hard liquor to establish a distribution system that makes our existing state run liquor stores the sole distributor. One thing that’s not clear yet is whether there will be any limit on people growing plants for themselves. Ben Livingston has an excellent line-by-line breakdown of the bill here.

Without getting as far into the details of the bill as Ben does, I want to lay out the general case for why the legislature should pass this bill. There are a number of ways in which ending marijuana prohibition will provide benefits for the state.

The Economy

Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron has estimated that legalizing marijuana nationwide would reduce overall government expenditures by approximately $12.9 billion in law enforcement and criminal justice expenses. It would also generate about another $6.7 billion if taxes comparably to alcohol and tobacco. As far as I know, there hasn’t been a study of similar scope done just within the state of Washington, but University of Washington professor Dick Startz took numbers from a previous study by Miron and estimated that the state would save about $105 million a year.

On top of that, marijuana is already among one of Washington’s top cash crops, and the state is consistently near the top when it comes to marijuana production. In 2006, it was estimated that the total marijuana crop was worth $600 million. Right now, all of that money is handed over to criminals, many based in Mexico. So beyond the already substantial savings that come with removing the multitudes of marijuana offenses from our overloaded criminal justice system, the economy of this state will also benefit by having those dollars staying here and benefiting legitimate farmers and businessmen who are licensed by the state.

Protecting Young People

One of the most common arguments made against the idea of establishing a legal and regulated market for marijuana is that “it sends the wrong message to kids”. This argument makes absolutely no sense for a number of reasons. First, one could easily say the same thing about hard liquor – the fact that we tolerate sales of liquor to adults tells kids that it’s ok every bit as much as tolerating sales of marijuana to adults will tell them that it’s ok. But we know the damage that was done when we tried to ban liquor in the 1920s, and no one really wants to go back to that.

Second, the experience in Holland tells quite a different story. Adults have been free to purchase marijuana in coffeeshops throughout the country since the 1970s. Did this “send the wrong message” to their kids? Apparently not, since Holland has much lower marijuana use rates among both teenagers and adults than we do (and even less marijuana use than many of their neighboring countries in Europe).

American teenagers repeatedly tell pollsters that it’s easier for them to obtain marijuana than it is for them to obtain alcohol. It’s this fact that’s starting to motivate more and more parents (like Rick Steves) to take a stronger stand against marijuana prohibition. The policy we have in place now is actually detrimental to our young people. Establishing a regulated system that forces you to prove your age in order to purchase it provides an extra barrier. It won’t completely prevent young people from getting it (just as it doesn’t prevent it entirely with alcohol), but it will make it harder.

And even beyond that, we’ve seen far too often where young people become involved in the distribution themselves. For a lot of them, it leads to an arrest, a conviction, and a lifetime of trying to overcome having a criminal record. Yet none of that benefits our society in any way. Everyone in the state of Washington who wants to buy marijuana will always be able to find someone to take that risk to sell it to them. Undercover marijuana drug busts in local high schools have done nothing but waste taxpayer dollars, limit the options of non-violent young people who are guilty of only bad choices, and foster a greater sense of mistrust of the police. If you regulate marijuana sales, the marijuana dealers aren’t in the schools any more; they’re in the liquor store, and they’re checking your kid’s ID.

Improving Drug Treatment

One of the nice features of this bill is that it specifically dictates that the tax revenue from the sale of marijuana goes towards drug treatment. It’s well-established by now that you save money in the long run for every dollar that you put towards drug treatment. Incarceration is the most costly and ineffective way to deal with drug problems, yet it often remains the default position of most politicians.

In addition, treating marijuana the same as alcohol will eliminate another problem with drug treatment centers; that people are sometimes sent there solely because they were arrested for marijuana and choose to go to treatment over jail, even if they have no real need for treatment. Marijuana is nowhere near as addictive as drugs like heroin and methamphetamines. Focusing on people with real problems and not wasting money and beds on the people who don’t need to be there will yield far more effective results in an area where effective results can have pretty significant downstream benefits in helping people become productive members of society again.

Ending our Contribution to Mexico’s Violent War

How bad is the violence in Mexico right now? On October 30, a newspaper in Juarez celebrated the first day in 10 months without a murder with a giant headline announcing that fact on the front page. As we here in Washington were shocked by the murder of 4 police officers, that’s a fairly regular occurrence down there.

This war is being entirely fueled by the money that criminal organizations in Mexico make from marijuana. Even the drug czar’s office admits that over 60 percent of the billions being made by Mexican drug cartels comes from marijuana. Their reach extends well into Washington state, as the illicit marijuana industry brings large numbers of illegal immigrants to the area to tend to plants. Just as when it came to the criminals gangs who ran Chicago during alcohol prohibition, the only way to defeat these cartels is to eliminate the black market that fuels them.

Environmental Protection

The article linked just above gives another good reason to shift to a regulated market for marijuana – the environment. The Mexican drug gangs who supply a large amount of the marijuana in this state will often set up their operations in parks and other wildlife areas, doing a lot of damage to the ecosystem along the way. The cat and mouse game that our law enforcement officials play to try to avoid this is futile and unnecessary when we can be licensing real farmers to grow this crop safely.

Despite all of this, not many people expect this bill to pass. Last session, the legislature couldn’t even pass a decriminalization bill that would have merely made the penalties for low-level marijuana possession more in line with Ohio’s. But this is not for a lack of public support. Roughly half of Washington state residents would support a system of regulated sales for marijuana. So this is a challenge for those who oppose it, whether in the media or in elected office. Lay out your argument against it. Let us know why this bill shouldn’t pass. Marijuana prohibition has continued for decades now without any real coherent explanation for why it should continue. If it’s not time to end it, at least explain to the citizens of Washington why it’s not.

In a predictable move, state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-18th LD, announced she is running for Congress in WA-03 within hours of incumbent Brian Baird’s announcement that he will not run again.

Herrera took office in the 18th after former Rep. Richard Curtis stepped down in the wake of an unseemly sex scandal.

While it’s a smart move by the GOP, as Herrera comes across as articulate and smart, she’s also untested in a big-name campaign. But her entry does seem to dim the chances of other announced Republicans David Castillo, Jon Russell and David Hedrick. (Those three are, to use some quick shorthand, a former Bush official (Castillo) who seemed to be the establishment nominee until today, a “Faith and Freedom” guy (Russell (who didn’t seem to be getting anywhere, and a man famous only for screaming at Baird at a town maul in August (Hedrick.)))

On the Democratic side, the names being bandied about include state Senator Craig Pridemore of Vancouver, Rep. Deb Wallace of Vancouver, Rep. Brendan Williams of Olympia, and Cowlitz County Commissioner Axel Swanson.

And as for the usual discussion about what kind of district the Third is, well, it’s a swing district pure and simple. It’s kind of weird how people from outside the district perceive it sometimes as either “Olympia area,” which it’s not because Olympia now has only a small slice, or as some kind of uber-red stronghold, which it’s also not, because Clark County has changed dramatically over the last ten to fifteen years with new residents. Lewis County is very Republican, of course, but other than that a solid Democrat can do well in Cowlitz and Pacific.

The largest county by population is Clark, of course, so being from Clark County is perceived as an advantage.

The district went for Obama, but there is a large and boisterous conservative movement and a well-organized Republican Party machine that utilizes talk radio and newspapers to the fullest advantage. There is a giant, gaping media hole in Clark County, which is generally ignored on the political front by the dominant Portland media, which allows plenty of space for the GOP to operate.

The GOP types probably think they have an advantage going in, and maybe they do in a generic sense, but until the candidate field sorts itself out, I’d say anything could happen. As in any election, turnout and enthusiasm will be critical, and maybe a fresh face on the Democratic side can help motivate folks.