HorsesAss.Org

A few links to share while I root for Chad Ochocinco and Vernon Davis to keep my fantasy season going.

– Pete Guither catches the New York Times sanitizing a story on Mexico’s violent drug war. This comes while the Washington Post and reporter Ashley Halsey III are still digging in their heels after being caught passing along completely imaginary statistics fed to them by the drug czar.

– Josh Feit points out that Larry Haler (R-8) has introduced a bill to overturn the state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law. One can only imagine what the voters of the 8th LD would think if the federal government passed a strict gun ownership ban, the voters of Washington passed an initiative that restored gun ownership rights, and then a Seattle legislator introduced a bill to overturn that voter initiative. Yet I’m sure people will still vote for Larry Haler next year because he believes in liberty, or something.

– Barbara Coombs-Lee has another follow-up on the attempt by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ to override individuals’ advance directives at their many hospitals and health care facilities around the country. Despite the protestations by certain local commenters, I’m still not aware of any Catholic facility in Washington state that will refuse the order and respect the living wills of individuals who come under their care.

– Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul (son of Ron Paul) is in a bit of trouble now that his main spokesman, Chris Hightower, had to resign after he was caught with some seriously racist stuff on his MySpace page. [via the General]

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Indian Harbor Beach, Florida.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Forgive a proud father for kvelling, but congratulations to the Mount Baker/Lakewood Supremes for their dominating performance in the SYSA city tournament this year, where they outscored opponents 19 to 1 over five games in the Girls U13 division.  Yesterday’s championship game was a tough physical match, but the Supremes saved their best play for the tournament, and only seemed to get better as it went on.

Also, a big thanks to the folks at SYSA, the neighborhood clubs, and Seattle Parks and Recreation for making all this possible. I’m sure this is a memory the girls will long cherish.

Seattle’s mayor-elect supports House Bill 2401:

“I actually took this position during the campaign and nobody noticed. It was an answer to the question in the Stranger’s election land,” McGinn said. “If every elected official who ever smoked marijuana voted to legalize it would probably be legalized in an instant. We recognize that, like alcohol, it’s something that should be regulated not treated as a criminal activity and I think that’s where the citizens of Seattle want us to go.”

For quite some time, Darryl has been urging me to do something about longtime troll Marvin Stamn, who appeared to be spamming the open threads with links to right-wing sites. Well, today was the final straw, as Stamn essentially admitted to such:

34. Politically Incorrect spews:
Marvin,
Give it a rest.

Can’t. I’m making a couple extra bucks propagandizing today.

Well, no more. The purpose of the open threads is to give the HA community — even the hateful trolls — the opportunity to talk about whatever they want, without driving the other comment threads off topic. The purpose is not to provide a handy (and profitable) tool for upping the Google ranking of right-wing sites.

So Stamn, who has apparently been making more money off my blog than I have, has joined the execrable JCH as only the second commenter to be permanently banned, and we’re prepared to ban anybody else who routinely violates the letter or spirit of our comment policy.

To which, I suppose, I should add the following explicit addendum: no spam.

And if that policy strikes some as unfairly subjective… well… it’s my blog, so fuck you.

I think Jane Hamsher has been pretty insightful when reading between the lines on the health care reform battle, but I’m not sure I get this part (via John Cole):

The sight of pundits yucking it up about the “Democratic circular firing squad” have become as tedious and threadbare as those counseling “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Both of these admonitions have at their heart the notion that “liberals” are being irrational, unreasonable and rigid in refusing to accept the Senate health care bill.

But in the very next breath, they will then promote statistics that say the tea parties are more popular than either the Democratic or the Republican party, and wonder if it’s an opportune time for a third party candidate. (From the “right,” of course, because who would take the “left” seriously.) At no time do the synapses firing in their brains make the connection that both the “lazy progressive bloggers” and the tea party activists are saying almost the exact same thing about the Senate bill.

There are two aspects to political problems – being able to identify a problem and knowing how to fix it. Most people are really good at the first part, but it’s the second part that matters far more.

Imagine you have an old car that you need to fix up. It needs a new transmission, new brakes, a new alternator, new upholstery, and new tires. The mechanic tells you that you only have enough money to fix the transmission right now. You know the mechanic is dicking you around, driving up the price and making it seem far more difficult to fix the car than it really is, but you just don’t have the tools or the knowledge to do it yourself. It sucks. All you want is to drive it again. Your crazy neighbor, however, thinks that you can just tape some cardboard wings on each door and the magical unicorns in the sky will make the car drive. That same crazy neighbor may tell you that just fixing the transmission isn’t enough to fix the car, and he’ll be exactly right, but you’re still better off working with the mechanic to fix the car.

This is the dilemma that we’re facing right now. The tea party activists may be able to identify problems with our health care system – and some may even echo our own sentiments about the shared power between government and big business – but their prescriptions for fixing it far too often live in the realm of fantasy. They continue to advocate for less regulation of what insurers and drug companies can and can’t do when every other health care system in the world that’s more organized, efficient, and cost-effective has more robust regulation than ours has. This bill is far from perfect, but it’s not bad enough that we have to join ranks with the crazies and pray for the magical unicorns to save the day.

Get ready for the newest trend in police profiling, driving while erotic.

From Roll Call:

The Office of Congressional Ethics has closed its investigation into Reps. John Murtha (D-Pa.), Norm Dicks (D-Wash.) and Jim Moran (D-Va.) and their relationships to the lobbying firm PMA Group, and the OCE advised against a formal House ethics investigation, the lawmakers’ offices said Friday.

George Behan, Dicks’ chief of staff, said the OCE, which reviews potential rules violations and refers investigations to the House ethics committee, informed the Washington lawmaker on Dec. 2 that it had recommended the inquiry be dismissed.

“In his case, there was never anything there,” Behan said.

So, is Washington a high tax state, as folks like Tim Eyman so often imply? Well it all depends on who you are.

The Ten States with the
Highest Taxes on the Poor

Washington	17.3%
Florida	13.5%
Illinois	13.0%
Arizona	12.5%
Texas	12.2%
Hawaii	12.2%
Arkansas	12.1%
Ohio	12.0%
Connecticut	12.0%
Indiana	11.9%

The table above represents the effective rate of state and local taxes on the bottom twenty percent of households in each state. (In Washington, those earning under $20,000 a year.) As you can see, if your goal is to soak the poor, we kick ass.

Nationally, the average effective state and local tax rate on the bottom quintile of households is 10.9%; in neighboring Idaho and Oregon it is 8.6% and 8.7% respectively. Makes you feel proud, doesn’t it?

And how do we rank in terms of how we treat the wealthiest one percent of households? (In Washington, those earning over $537,000 a year.)

The Ten States with the
Lowest Taxes on the Wealthy

Wyoming	1.5%
Nevada	1.6%
South Dakota	1.9%
New Hampshire	2.0%
Florida	2.1%
Alaska	2.2%
Washington	2.6%
Texas	3.0%
Tennessee	3.1%
Pennsylvania	3.9%

So here in Washington, if you earn under $20,000 a year, you live in the highest taxed state in the nation. But if you earn over $500,000 a year, you live in one of the lowest. And that’s what makes Washington’s tax structure the most regressive in the nation by far.

The legislature will raise taxes this session; the only question is on whom?

I’ve written quite a bit about an income tax recently, prompting several readers to point out that such a measure would be unconstitutional, a standard rebuttal I routinely get from state lawmakers whenever I directly raise the issue with them.

The Washington Supreme Court has already ruled an income tax unconstitutional, and since neither house of the legislature is likely to coax the two-thirds majority necessary to put such a controversial amendment on the ballot, any debate about such a reform would be fruitless at best, and a distraction at worst. Or so the argument goes.

Well… not exactly.

Washington voters did overwhelmingly pass a graduated income tax via initiative in 1932, only to have it tossed out by the state Supreme Court the next year. It’s a complicated issue, but essentially the court defined income as property, thus requiring any such tax to adhere to the uniformity clause of the state constitution. Consistent with this ruling and other restrictions in Article 7 of the state constitution, the state can at most levy a flat one percent annual tax on income, with a household exemption of no greater than $15,000.

That said, all of the legal experts I’ve heard comment on the issue are of the opinion that the 1933 decision would likely be overturned if it were reargued today. Several other state supreme courts have since ruled that income is not property until it is converted to an asset, and in fact the case law guiding the court in 1933 has itself been overturned. As public finance attorney Hugh Spitzer explains:

[T]here is ample reason to believe that a modern income tax, established by the Legislature or by the voters, would now be upheld. The basic reason is that [Culliton v. Chase] was based on an earlier Washington case which the State Supreme Court clearly misread. More importantly, the earlier case was based on a line of United States Supreme Court cases that have subsequently been reversed. Our Court would likely take a “clean slate” approach to the income tax today.

So while yes, any income tax measure would surely be challenged under Culliton, Spitzer argues that there is a “reasonable likelihood” that this 1933 decision would be overturned.

That’s why I am strongly of the opinion that as both a strategic and pragmatic matter, the constitutional issue is little more than a red herring. In fact, it’s worse than that. It’s an excuse that Democratic leaders have been falling back on for decades to avoid the difficult and dangerous political challenge of embarking on real tax structure reform.

It is, I admit, possible that a high-earners or other form of income tax might ultimately require a constitutional amendment to enact into law, but that approach should only be taken as a last resort, and only after the people have already demonstrated popular support at the polls.

Any income tax measure — in fact, any substantive tax measure at all — will inevitably come before voters, either referred directly to the ballot by the legislature, or via citizen initiative or referendum. That is the indisputable reality of our current political climate. Thus the reasonable political course of action is to let voters have their say, and then the courts, ignoring the Culliton decision entirely.

If voters reject an income tax, then any prior effort to secure the two-thirds legislative majority necessary to put an amendment on the ballot would have been wasted. If voters approve an income tax, but the court rejects it, then the legislature has the popular mandate necessary to come back with a constitutional amendment. And if both voters and the courts approve an income tax measure, well, then it finally becomes law.

But since the people must ultimately have their say, what should be abundantly clear is that the 1933 decision can only become an obstacle to substantive tax reform if the legislature chooses to make it one.

So enough of this “an income tax is unconstitutional” bullshit. A) It’s probably not, and B) It doesn’t matter… at least not when it comes to strategizing how one might actually achieve an income tax, should that really be your objective.

Of course, if you oppose even the prospect of an informed public debate on an income tax, by all means, raise the constitutional issue. Just don’t expect me to treat your objection as anything other than what it really is.

Totally amazing. Stephen Colbert channels our very own Mr. Cynical:

A couple weeks ago Lee put up a post attempting to extrapolate data on how Washington State might feel about reforming our marijuana laws from a national survey. As it turns out, I was at a meet and greet with the 36th legislative district legislators, and during Q&A someone asked Mary Lou Dickerson about her proposed law to legalize Marijuana, and after she said her piece, she asked a representative of the ACLU of Washington to say a few words, and she mentioned that they had conducted a poll a while ago.

The poll was taken in 2006 among 1200 registered voters in WA with a sampling error of +/- 2.8%. The question was asked at the beginning and end of the poll.

Some people think we should make marijuana legal for adults while others say we should not. In your view, should we a) continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession, b) make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense, or c) make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults?

In the beginning the results were:

Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 29%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 30%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 37%
Don’t know……………….4%

And at the end:

Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 22%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 34%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 40%
Don’t know………………………….4%

More recently they asked just people in Puget Sound counties 2008. 500 registered voters +/- 4.5% and they only asked the question once.

Continue to send adults to jail for marijuana possession………………………………….. 26%
Make marijuana possession a finable non-criminal offense ……………………………… 33%
Make marijuana possession LEGAL for adults ………………………………………………. 32%
Don’t know……………………. 10%

So, a couple caveats: obviously the poll is for an organization that’s pushing specific policies. While I don’t think the Washington ACLU is in the business of deluding themselves, I wouldn’t have heard of it, and I don’t know if they’d have let me see it if there had been a lot of support for locking people up. Also, obviously, one statewide poll and one poll of a region in the state are hardly conclusive of how an initiative campaign or legislative session might play out.

…Argh. Insert not very funny posting while high joke here (although in reality worse, just sloppy writing, and poor editing and trying to rush it out). The polls got reversed in the original post, and this has been updated significantly for clarity and my being an idiot.

At first, I thought Natasha Chart’s post at Open Left was about the health care “reform” debacle. Perhaps she intended that, or perhaps it is a sad coincidence that her open letter to activists entitled “What Makes Someone a Dirty F*ing Hippie” features a photo of a UN delegate being punched in the face by riot police in Copenhagen.

It’s a short letter, but I’ll excerpt the end.

The governments of the world and the United Nations would like you to know that if you’re too sympathetic with the oppressed, care about democracy, and value people more than money, you can go ahead and do absolutely everything right like we told you that you had ought to do.

And we will still punch you in the face.

You’re welcome,
Your Overlords

My crystal ball is at Santa’s being tricked out with a new iPhone so I can say “hello” to AT&T tomorrow,* but I have this strange feeling that the tea party movement on the right is not going to be the only boisterous group in the coming months and years.

People want things to change for the better, and if the monied and powerful insist on resorting to parliamentary tomfoolery (and brute force when necessary) to stop meaningful change, then the social contract is being violated. Can anyone argue that all those millions of people who voted in historic numbers in 2008 just wanted to be fucked over some more?

The health care “result,” should it stand, is an illegitimate one, because the will of the people has been perverted and manipulated by the same con artists that profit from the current system. The town mauls in August were directed and whipped into a frenzy by corporate interests who think nothing of playing with people’s very existence if it helps the bottom line. The fact that some right wing fools were willing to do their bidding only proves that there are right wing fools, and the fact that a handful of U.S. Senators are craven liars only proves that being in the world’s most exclusive club says nothing about a person’s character.

I’d say it’s pretty much like repeatedly trying to drive a cork back down into a bottle of champagne that is placed over low heat. Whether we’re at a low simmer yet depends, I can’t say. Events sometimes have a way of overtaking even those who are sincerely trying to do good. I guess we’ll see what happens down the road. But don’t expect us to say that a shit sandwich is delicious, because it’s a shit sandwich, and everyone knows it.

*note to AT&T: I don’t actually use your service any more, so in reality I can’t say hello to you tomorrow

Brad Shannon has an article focusing on Denny Heck, the former legislator and founder of TVW. Heck is giving serious consideration to running for the seat to be vacated by Rep. Brian Baird, D- Wash. (WA-03), at the end of the term.

“I am doing a bunch to get myself ready so I can hit the ground running. Having said that, I have not pulled the trigger,’’ Heck said Wednesday. “This is a big, big, big decision and it bears serious deliberation. I’ve set a hard deadline of this weekend, and I will stick by that deadline” for deciding.

As Shannon notes, Heck has “fronted” $100,000 of his own money for a potential run.

The district certainly has the potential to be one of the top targets in the country, so large sums of money flowing into the district are a certainty. A candidate who can fund some of the expense himself is going to get attention. As to how much the race will cost, numbers like $3-$5 million per general election candidate seem likely. It’s great news for the companies that own Portland tee-vee and radio stations.

The announced big names on the Democratic side are state Rep. Deb Wallace, D-Vancouver (18th LD,) and state Sen. Craig Pridemore, D-Vancouver (49th LD.) Some other folks have made a little noise, including state Sen. Brian Hatfield, D-Raymond (19th LD,) and former state Sen. Mark Doumit, a Democrat from Cathlamet who now works for the Washington Forest Protection Association. While it pains me to say it, having once lived in Longview, the latter two would face an uphill climb in the district trying to get attention in Clark County with Pridemore and Wallace both from Clark. Olympia activist Cheryl Crist, who received just shy of 13% in the 2008 top-two primary, has also declared she is in the race for 2010.

If Heck gets in, there would be at least four Democrats running, three of them with a decent chance of moving through to the general. Heck justifiably seems to have a lot of people who admire him, and has more recently spent time in the private sector. Personally I think he’d also have an uphill climb against two sitting Legislators who currently reside in Clark County, but I’m biased. (As I’ve stated from the outset, I am supporting Pridemore.) Then again, money talks, as they say.

On the Republican side, so far you have state Rep. Jaime Herrera, R-Ridgefield (18th LD,) former Bush administration official and current private sector financial adviser David Castillo of the Olympia area, Washougal city council member Jon Russell and yelling Marine guy David Hedrick. While Herrera, a former staffer for U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. (WA-05,) was parachuted in to take the 18th LD state House seat vacated after the Richard Curtis sex scandal, she’s only in her first full term and is pretty young by political standards at 31.

Castillo seems to bring a serious campaign style, and good communication skills, and I wouldn’t discount him.

Russell failed to get the endorsement of evangelical leader Joe Fuiten, who went with Castillo, even though Russell is a Faith and Freedom guy. Hedrick is, well, Hedrick.

So, at this point, if the Democratic field turns out to be:

Wallace
Pridemore
Heck
Crist

And the Republicans wind up being:

Castillo
Herrera
Russell
Hedrick

I think I would like our chances a lot.

I couldn’t help but be amused by the headline of this morning’s Seattle Times editorial: “Crushing the illusion of nonpartisan King County Council.”

IN an election overshadowed by gubernatorial and presidential contests, voters last year opted to change the Metropolitan King County Council from a partisan to a nonpartisan office. The vote was one thing, the reality quite another.

A perfect example includes the political high jinks associated with naming the council replacement for longtime Democrat Dow Constantine, the new county executive. His departure leaves eight members — four Democrats and four Republicans — or, four former Democrats and Republicans.

At risk of crushing the illusion, harsh partisanship reigns.

Well, duh-uh!

Just because a charter amendment officially declares an office nonpartisan doesn’t make it magically so. City councils throughout the county have long been putatively nonpartisan, yet even the most casual local political observers all know which council members hail from which party. Without the “R” or “D” next to their name on the ballot, the average voter might not always know who’s who, but as the Times points out, that sort of skin-deep nonpartisanship is merely an illusion.

Or in the Times’ case, perhaps it’s a delusion? I’ve long wondered if the Times’ ardent support for nonpartisan races was disingenuous or delusional, but now I’m guessing it’s a bit of both. The hope was, I suppose, that eliminating partisan labels might break the Democrat’s stranglehold on county government, but instead, it’s just ended up breaking county government itself. Without an officially partisan means of appointing an unofficially partisan official, and with no procedural method for breaking a tie, a fiasco like we’re seeing in the deadlock over Constantine’s replacement was both predictable and inevitable.

Now, thanks to the pleasant-sounding but boneheaded measure to make county offices nonpartisan, the council’s post-Dow row has sucked three legislative districts into political limbo with it. At least one, and perhaps two legislative seats will certainly change hands after the start of the 2010 session (Fred Jarrett’s replacement, and perhaps Joe McDermott’s or Zack Hudgins’), and that sort of disruption is simply inexcusable.

Or, of course, this all could have been avoided if, as the Times had previously advocated, the Democrats on the council had merely caved to the Republican block from the start. That’s likely the only way this dispute will be settled in the end, because Democrats do tend to care about governance, and are no match for Republicans when it comes to harsh partisan discipline. I suppose such a “compromise” could be spun as an act of nonpartisan collaboration… but more in the spirit of the way the Vichy French collaborated with the Germans, than the sort of high minded collaboration the supporters of the charter amendment fancifully imagined.

No doubt nonpartisanship is a noble ideal, and was roundly espoused as such by the founding fathers, but even they quickly fell into deeply partisan camps not long after the ink on the Constitution had dried. While our two party system is nowhere to be found in our nation’s charter, its spontaneous development represented one of the most ingenious aspects of the American experiment, for by institutionalizing and legitimizing political dissent it was here that the notion of a loyal opposition first reached full fruition.

Yes, institutional partisanship can be nasty and messy and chaotic, and as we’re currently seeing in the Senate health care debate, with strict party discipline, the minority can often exploit the system to obstruct both necessary reforms and the will of the people. But over the past 220 years, this system has also granted our nation extraordinary political stability, without which it never could have grown into the greatest political, economic and military power the world has ever known. It was through the institutionalized dissent of our two party system that we survived the Great Depression without succumbing to either communism or fascism, and went on to simultaneously defeat the Nazis and the Japanese in World War II, our democratic values largely intact.

Some might argue that if party politics was good enough for the so-called “greatest generation,” it should be good enough for us, but that really misses the point. Partisanship is part of human nature, and as such it will be part of any system of government we humans create, regardless of whether that self-realization is embodied in law.

The Times, the Municipal League and other cynics and do-gooders can rail all they want about the mere illusion of a nonpartisan council, but it can never be any more than that. Nor should it.