HorsesAss.Org

In their endorsement of Susan Hutchison, the Seattle Times told us that it was important for the county to, “act more like private-sector businesses.” Now, ignore that the county and businesses have fundamentally different jobs, so they should be run differently. Also, ignore the fact that the Times’ advice – hire someone with no experience, don’t look at new ways of finding revenue, and don’t even consider running a deficit – would be terrible advice for a business during a recession.

No, what I’m more concerned about is: who the fuck is the Seattle Times to tell anyone how to run a business? The Seattle Times that’s mired in debt? The Seattle Times that in recent years has lost most of its value. The Seattle Times who rumors are always circulating about their bankruptcy? They’re the ones who want to tell the county how to be more like a business?

I mean shit, if King County was run like The Seattle Times’ business, they’d buy worthless county property in Maine. Maybe hire Kurt Triplett’s kid to head up a major department even if he wasn’t really competent.

Now, you may think this is unfair. After all, there’s a line between the content and business sides of the paper. Normally, I’d think that was a reasonable point, if not necessarily a convincing one. But when the publisher is dictating content, it’s fair to ask how that content lines up with what that publisher does.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. The location was Burlington, NJ.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

If you are dissatisfied with the editorial content here on HA… if you find it offensive, insulting, narrow-minded, blindly partisan, dishonest or just plain poorly written… please, please cancel your subscription.

Every page you view earns me a little money. More importantly, I take pride in maintaining such a relatively large and engaged audience. So the best way for you to send me message is to simply stop reading my blog.

I mean it. Leave. Go away. Erase the bookmark. And don’t come back. That’ll teach me a lesson.

Otherwise, I’ll just take your continued readership and active participation in the comment threads as an indication that I’m doing something right.

– Radley Balko and Publius from Obsidian Wings have been following the scandal involving Texas Governor Rick Perry’s attempts to cover up the fact that an innocent man was likely executed on his watch.

– It never ceases to amaze me how often people who rant about taxes and socialism try to invoke Thomas Paine. I think they just assume that because the American revolution was partly about taxes that Paine must think like tea-baggers do today, rather than as someone who used to loudly advocate for re-distributing wealth through progressive taxation.

– Bruce Mirken asks why Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is doing so much to help out Mexican drug cartels? Law enforcement officials may be uncomfortable with those comparisons, but they’re undeniably true. Card carrying medical marijuana users in that county of over 10 million people are either going to obtain pot from local growers and local businessmen, or obtain it from gangs who are currently fighting the Mexican government. When you attack the local growers and local business, you automatically boost the profits of the gangs.

– I just very happily marked my ballot for Pete Holmes. The Stranger conducted a series of interviews with Holmes and his opponent, Tom Carr. The last one concerned marijuana arrests, which was somewhat funny because it consisted of Tom Carr spinning for several minutes about why his office is still pursuing marijuana cases, following by Pete Holmes making this very simple statement:

Whether standing alone or in conjunction with other charges, I will not charge another simple marijuana possession case. Period.

It’s that simple, Tom. And that’s why we want you out.

– Here’s a fascinating account from a mother who – after discussing it with her doctor – decided to treat her severely autistic son with medical marijuana. I’ve generally been averse to the idea of giving marijuana to children that age, but if it helps a child stop eating his own shirts, I think I’m ok with it.

American Violet is now available on DVD. I still haven’t seen it, but I’m hoping to check it out very soon.

That fresh pile of poop on your front lawn, near the walkway? It wasn’t a dog. It was me.

Last night I was visiting friends on the Island, and I had a little too much to drink. So I drove over to your house, scaled the security gate, dropped my pants, and took a dump.

It felt good. (You know, the way you must feel every time your paper shits all over the citizens of Seattle.)

Now I know in a region with a functional, well-funded government, this is the sort of disgusting, uncivil behavior the authorities might investigate and prosecute, but since you clearly hate government (or at least, hate paying for it, and see absolutely no need to leave it in the hands of a qualified executive) I’m guessing you wouldn’t bother to waste precious tax dollars by calling the police over something petty like this.

Oh, and when you have one of your servants clean it up, tell them to double-glove and wear a face mask. I was eating beans.

Check out Joe Copeland at the Post Globe.

But the council endorsements underline the odd disconnect between a very progressive city population and how its only remaining daily paper’s editorial page, at least on – one guesses – issues in which the Blethen family ownership makes its views known. The council editorial started by almost holding the editorial board’s collective nose to support the re-election of Richard Conlin, who is quietly brilliant on environmental issues. “It’s not that we agree with Conlin often; we don’t,” the editorial proclaims. They go on to cite his reversal of position on an employee head tax, something the chamber is dying to end and Conlin now thinks was a bad idea.

More confusingly, The Times writes, “His challenger, David Ginsberg, shares many of the same values. The key difference is who is more enthusiastic about environmental sustainability — not much of a differentiation at all. Ginsberg is in more of a hurry, which comes off as naive.” Maybe that means The Times doesn’t like the green Conlin, but at least he is in less of a rush about sustainability? But does The Times really have a problem with Conlin’s environmental positions? This summer, the editorial board had the good sense to endorse – unsuccessfully – the grocery store bag tax this summer.

I was going to post this as an update to my previous post, but the point is too important to leave as an afterthought.

I’m hearing that the Seattle Times endorsement of Susan Hutchison came directly from publisher Frank Blethen himself. This is his right, of course, not because he is particularly wise or well-informed or civic minded, but because he owns the newspaper. He signs their paychecks, so he gets to tell the editorial board to endorse whoever he wants, no matter how unqualified she is, or how out of step with the values of a majority of King County voters.

But… if in fact this blatantly irresponsible endorsement came at Blethen’s directive, then the Times arguably has an ethical obligation to reveal it as such.

One of the monotonously familiar knocks against bloggers like me is that we are just partisan shills, but if and when we are, at least we’re honest about it. So when an editorial board like the Times’ pretends that its endorsements come through candidate interviews and informed discourse, when in fact they merely reflect the anti-labor, anti-tax, pro-Republican views of their boss… well then… the entire endorsement process becomes just as much a lie as those of Hutchison which their paper has chosen to cover up.

Old media journalists love to attack the blogosphere for its supposedly destructive and uncivil anonymity, but it should be duly noted that I proudly hang my name on every stance I take and every word I write, rather than cowardly hiding behind the anonymity of an unsigned editorial. And if Frank Blethen has any sense of civic obligation, he will do the same.

I actually thought the Seattle Times wouldn’t endorse Susan Hutchison because whatever the ideological affinity, even they couldn’t bring themselves to endorse a candidate who is so spectacularly unprepared and unqualified to serve in such an important office.

I was wrong.

I often speak of the Times ed board as a single entity, but I know this decision wasn’t unanimous, so if those ed board members who opposed Hutchison’s endorsement retain at least a shred of self-respect, they will make public who voted for whom, or whether the decision ultimately came mandated from union-busting publisher Frank Blethen himself.

But institutionally, they should be ashamed of themselves.

Apparently, Joe Mallahan wants to arm kids at playgrounds, or something like that, at least according to Renee on the prerecorded robocall I just got. I’m against that, so I guess I’ll have to vote for Mike McGinn.

Can you find I-1033 on this sample ballot? If not, apparently you’re not alone, at least according to the folks at the No on 1033 campaign, who have been fielding phone calls today from confused voters who can’t locate the measure on the ballot.

Hidden beneath five boxes of instructions on the first page, many voters are apparently just dismissing the entire left column as instructions. Folks at the No campaign are particularly concerned that this unfortunate choice of layout might appear on the King County ballot only, thus depressing the vote in the county likely to go strongest against Eyman’s stupidest initiative ever.

So pay close attention when you get your ballot and be sure to vote No on I-1033.

Down here in Clark County it seems there may be a wee problem, and that the problem has gone on for a very, very long time:

Allegations surrounding the firing of a black manager from Clark County’s jail portray a workplace where racism is tolerated or ignored, a state civil rights official said.

The graphic charges were detailed in an internal investigation by the county sheriff’s office and a series of legal claims against the county last month.

The result: a “toxic climate” that has led employees of the county sheriff’s office to “take sides” against one another, said Earl Ford, a local NAACP leader.

And if you click through and read the entire Columbian article, it appears that it’s not just white people who are accused of saying and doing racist and sexist things.

The other thing worth noting is that the local NAACP is being very deliberate and sensible about how it approaches this. While Clark County has its share of problems, like anywhere, it also has some pretty terrific community leaders who will try to address these thorny issues in a positive manner. Nobody wants to squash anyone’s right to free speech, but there are limits regarding what is professional conduct in the workplace. Racial and sexual taunts are clearly out of bounds, no matter who makes them.

In defending her failure to report the use of a four bedroom Laurelhurst house as her campaign headquarters, Susan Hutchison merely shrugged off allegations by claiming it was “the residence of my campaign manager.”  Of course, that’s neither here nor there, as she’s still required to account for the use of the house as either an expense or an in-kind contribution.

But as I previously pointed out, her dismissive explanation is also clearly a bald-faced lie, as there’s no way her young campaign manager could afford the $2300 to $4000 a month comparable homes in the neighborhood are renting for. Either he’s not paying rent at all, or… well… or this particular scam is part of a larger money laundering scheme Hutchison’s consultant, Dresner Wicker is using to funnel tens of thousands of dollars of illegal, excess contributions into the campaign.

Of course, there would be one way for Hutchison to help clear up the confusion. She could actually live up to her pledge of transparency and have her campaign manager make public both his pay stubs and his rent checks, so that we can see exactly how much he is earning compared to how much he is shelling out for his so-called “residence.”

Or, of course, Hutchison could just continue to lie the public and the press.

In the comments of my last post about the epic saga of the empty jail in Hardin, Montana, Jason Osgood asks:

Is anyone else disturbed that a new jail was someone’s idea of economic development and jobs creation?

Yeah, me too. And while there was a lot in that story to gawk at, that was certainly a big one. Why the hell did a small town in Montana with no immediate need to house prisoners build a huge jail? TPM’s Justin Elliott looked into it:

But an investigation by TPMmuckraker into how Hardin ended up with the 92,000 square foot facility in the first place suggests that, long before “low-level card shark” Michael Hilton ever came to town, Hardin officials had already been taken for a ride by a far more powerful set of players: a well-organized consortium of private companies headquartered around the country, which specializes in pitching speculative and risky prison projects to local governments desperate for jobs.

Elliott shines a welcome light on the way private prisons make their money. Private corrections firms aren’t talked about much as one of the industries that have tremendous power in this country, but they should be. As America has become the world’s most prolific jailer, this is an industry that has been driving it and profiting from it.

One of the biggest misconceptions I hear when it comes to drug laws is that we can’t change them because of public opinion. This tends to be widely accepted as fact wherever you go, but it really isn’t true. Ron Paul continues to get re-elected in a conservative part of Texas every two years even though he has advocated for legalizing marijuana since the 1980s. The reality is that most people don’t pay much attention at all the drug war, and those who do overwhelmingly want it to end. Things like needle exchanges create mini-uproars from a small fringe of drug warriors, but after they’re enacted, they work exactly as expected to reduce the spread of diseases and no politician ever loses their job over them. Aside from small attempts to minimize the damage of drug prohibition, though, we still remain completely unable to shift away from one core aspect of the drug war – the idea that putting large numbers of people in prison will fix the problem.

This isn’t just a national mental block on the part of voters. We’re nearing a national majority of people being in favor of having marijuana sold legally to adults. In survey after survey, people tend to understand that putting people in jail for drug crimes doesn’t work. Instead, it’s the private corrections industry (and other special interests) that have a very strong interest in continuing the status quo. Prison overcrowding is their life-blood. The more people we arrest, the more prisons have to be built, and the more the American taxpayers can be soaked to house them all. This desire dovetails perfectly with the interests of law enforcement unions and prosecutors as well.

But in one way or another, all this insanity comes out of our pockets. Putting people in prison isn’t an investment. It produces nothing of value. In fact, it compounds taxpayer expenses in a number of ways, from the costs of trying to re-integrate former prisoners back into society to the downstream effects of having large numbers of single parent (or no parent) households in low-income communities. Putting people in prison should be seen as a necessary evil in society, an unavoidable side-effect of human nature that’s required to provide justice for the victims of crime. It shouldn’t be seen as an opportunity for government to invest in job creation. I believe that governments at all levels can and should provide stimulus for communities with high unemployment. But building a new prison that relies solely on the premise that we don’t have enough people locked up in our society already is the most counterproductive way of doing it.