HorsesAss.Org

The initiative campaign against the new jail, I-100, fell short of its signature goal. I-100 wouldn’t have directly prevented the jail from being built. It would have only forced the city to analyze alternatives, examine the racial disparity in the prison population, and then put the question up for a vote. In the failure, however, there appears to be one potential bright spot [emphasis mine]:

The deadline for turning in the signatures is Thursday and theoretically the campaign could ask for a 20-day extension, said campaign manager Natalie Novak.

However, Novak said the campaign raised an issue “no one really knew about before.” Additionally, the county has said it would allow cities to bring people to the jail for misdemeanors beyond 2012. The county had said the cities had to stop before 2012, setting off the debate over building a jail.

I’m not entirely sure what that means for the overall jail debate now. If anyone has more specifics, please feel free to share in the comments or email me directly. I still remain puzzled that with our economy in the condition it’s in that we’re considering such a costly infrastructure investment that hardly anyone wants and is not necessary. And despite what many I-100 opponents have insisted, we’re not diverting anywhere near as many people as we should be. This was made abundantly clear in a report from Nina Shapiro at Seattle Weekly back in January [again, emphasis mine]:

While liberal groups have fought for years for more lenient drug policies, our state’s financial woes are helping accomplish what their arguments alone could not. This is true at the county level as well. Faced with a $5 million budget cut to his office, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg in October started kicking felony cases involving less than three grams of narcotics down to District Court, where they are prosecuted as misdemeanors. He says the move affects two-thirds of his caseload.

Meanwhile, the King County jail is already nearly full, and the county has said it will no longer have room for misdemeanor prisoners from the cities as of 2012. So Seattle and several suburban cities have started planning to build a new multimillion-dollar jail of their own.

There just isn’t any ambiguity about this. When two-thirds of our county prosecutor’s caseload involves people with less than .003 kg of drugs or less, our local court systems are being clogged with low-level drug offenders. If you hear any local politician talking about how we already do a good job of diverting these folks out of the system, they’re lying. We don’t. In fact, we shouldn’t be arresting any of them in the first place, which is what Portugal decided to do in 2001, and it’s been an unquestioned success.

This problem is understood in the most morally bankrupt light when we see the affect that aggressively prosecuting low-level drug offenses has on the African-American community:

While African-Americans are represented in King County average daily jail population by six times their percentage of population, five Seattle public schools that primarily serve African-American communities were closed this year to save the school system a meager $3 million.

Somehow, the city of Seattle had $110 million for a new jail, but couldn’t seem to locate $3 million to save some schools. I think that says everything you need to know about how Seattle’s city leadership views its minority communities.

It was hot last night at Seattle’s Town Hall, both literally and figuratively. Outside, advocates of a single-payer healthcare system were chanting and leafleting. Inside, as Gov. Howard Dean spoke about healthcare reform, the crowd was only slightly less boisterous.

Though friendly and receptive as Gov. Dean took the podium, when it came time to take questions from the audience it quickly became apparent that the many of those inside shared the sentiments of those on the street, with some of the questioners filibustering their opportunity at the mic to take an uncompromising stance in favor of single-payer, and opposed to anything less. It was apparently a familiar scene for Gov. Dean, who had just arrived from a similar engagement in Portland, OR, where several single-payer advocates had to be removed from the audience after disrupting the proceedings.

Gov. Dean, a licensed physician and former presidential candidate and DNC Chair, is on tour promoting his new book “Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform,” but for many true believers, Gov. Dean’s prescription—take a public option and call me in a decade—isn’t real enough. What plays out is the sorta classic confrontation between idealism and pragmatism that so often undermines reforms coming from either end of the ideological spectrum, leaving those in the mushy middle so firmly in control. And it’s the kinda confrontation that the insurance industry and big pharma are counting on to stave off reform for another generation.

As Gov. Dean repeated throughout the Q&A, he’d personally prefer a single-payer system, as it’s the only reform that can guarantee universal coverage while quickly providing the level of savings needed to get our healthcare costs under control. But as he also repeated, polling consistently shows that the general public just isn’t there yet, let alone the laggards in Congress, so while single-payer shouldn’t necessarily be taken off the table, it would be unrealistic to expect it to move any further… at this point in time.

And here’s where that confrontation between idealism and pragmatism really comes into play. Public option opponents on the left dismiss the proposal as mere half-measures, while public option opponents on the right attack it as a slippery slope to single-payer. And they’re both right. The question is, will the lack of enthusiasm for the public option from idealists on the left ultimately play into the hands of the pragmatists on the right in their efforts to scuttle any substantive reforms at all?

As I’ve argued before, the public option is a slippery slope to single-payer, if implemented and executed correctly. Now some might characterize this admission as cynical and dishonest, but good policy done right is inherently a slippery slope toward better policy. As it should be. And it’s a slope we slide down only with the approval of a majority of voters.

So after he finished signing books I asked Gov. Dean whether he believed the public option would be a slippery slope to single-payer. I wanted him to say yes, and I sensed that he wanted to say yes as well. But he’s too smart for that… and too pragmatic. Instead, he enunciated what I think is the most rhetorically effective response I’ve ever heard to the right’s slippery slope argument, a response that totally undermines their objection, even without denying it:

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This will be the change that the American people want at the pace that they want it. So the opponents have no right to make that argument. The Republican ability to make that argument assumes that they know better than the American people, that they’re so smart that the American people have no right to make up their own mind.

That’s what this bill is about. This bill is not about whether to have a single-payer or a public option or a private system; this bill is about whether the American people get to choose for themselves, or whether congressmen take it upon themselves to override the will of the American people and do something different. It’s a straight up vote between whether you’re in favor of the health insurance industry, or whether you’re in favor of your constituency. Everybody’s going to have to make that vote, and we’ll be watching.

The same could be said to the uncompromising advocates of a single-payer system.

I may not live to see the bottom, but I still believe that the public option will ultimately set us down that slippery slope to single-payer, and my sense is that many of its proponents believe the same, whether for pragmatic reasons, they’re willing to publicly say so or not. If given the choice, many Americans will flock to the public option, and if private insurers simply aren’t able to compete, I’m alright with that. It is ironic, after all, that those who insist there is no fundamental right to basic health care, also tend to be those who insist that there is a fundamental right to selling private health insurance.

Of course, there isn’t. And if the single-payer advocates can be as patient as they are passionate, I’m confident the American people will ultimately prove them right.

Digby discusses the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and our views of police power.

Republicans are horrified at the thought of the government being involved in your health care. Unless you’re a woman of child-bearing age, or use a non-traditional medicine or face a terminal illness, of course.

Staying true to their suburban sensibilities, the Seattle Times endorsed State Sen. Fred Jarrett for King County Executive today, just as I had predicted way back on June 25th:

Well, no, the Seattle Times hasn’t officially endorsed Fred Jarrett for King County Executive yet, but this morning’s editorial lauding him pretty much telegraphs that they will.

[…] The only question remaining is whether the Times endorses one or two candidates in the August primary, and if the latter, whether they’re crazy enough to endorse Susan Hutchison?

Well, they did do a dual endorsement, and no, they’re not crazy enough to endorse Susan Hutchison. State Rep. Ross Hunter gets the second, equally enthusiastic nod. No surprise there.

I suppose I could fisk the editorial; after all, there are plenty of passages with amusingly twisted logic such as:

King County has had just one executive from the Eastside, who served briefly as interim exec in the early 1980s. It isn’t so important where an executive hails from except it is a good idea to occasionally mix it up to offer different perspectives.

Get it? It isn’t so important where an executive hails from, except that we’d rather he’d hail from the Eastside. Fair enough. Stupid logic, but fair enough.

But you know what? It’s too nice a day to waste much time reading a Seattle Times editorial endorsement, let alone writing about one. What’s really important here is that it keeps my batting average predicting their endorsements near perfect.

And now that I know they’re doing dual endorsements in the primary, I’m ready to go out on a limb and make my next prediction: Joe Mallahan and (surprise!) Mayor Greg Nickels in the mayors race!

“Two assemblymen, three mayors, and several rabbis…”

It sounds like the set up to an old joke, but rather than walking into a bar, the perps mentioned above are behind bars today as part of a money laundering and political corruption investigation that swept up 44 suspects across New Jersey, Republicans and Democrats alike, and implicated many more.

Prosecutors said the investigation, reaching through layer upon layer of government, revealed a “pervasive” culture of corruption.

“New Jersey’s corruption problem is one of the worst, if not the worst, in the nation,” said Ed Kahrer, who heads the FBI’s white-collar and public-corruption investigation division. “Corruption is a cancer that is destroying the core values of this state.”

See, that’s why I laugh whenever I hear folks accusing Gov. Gregoire of being corrupt for (gasp) taking legal campaign contributions from tribes and unions, or comparing Mayor Nickels’ style to that of some East Coast political boss. Coming from Philadelphia, I know from corrupt political machines, and folks, this ain’t it.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy abusing our elected officials as much as the next guy, but as spineless, rudderless and ineffective as they can sometimes be, you gotta give them credit for at least being clean when it comes to the public till. Hell, we don’t even seem to get our fair share of sex scandals around here. Even when it comes to organized crime, the best Seattle can muster are two-bit hoodlums like the Colacurcios, whereas if this were Hoboken or Jersey City, rather than running strip clubs, Frank Jr. would be preparing to succeed his father as mayor.

I’m just sayin’….

A big chunk of Seattle’s spanking new light rail line grinded to a halt for much of yesterday, as problems with the downtown tunnel’s sophisticated control and signaling system (the only one in the world with stations serving both trains and buses) shut down service north of the Stadium station. And yet… no screaming headlines declaring light rail an epic fail.

Crosscut’s Skip Berger wrote on the opening of the line that light rail does not make Seattle a “grown-up” city, but perhaps our media’s calm and muted reaction to the new system’s first major hiccup does?

I thought the Obama Administration was going to put science before ideology:

The federal government is not going to pull back on its efforts to curtail marijuana farming operations, Gil Kerlikowske, director of the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Wednesday in Fresno.

…

“Marijuana is dangerous and has no medicinal benefit,” Kerlikowske said in downtown Fresno while discussing Operation SOS — Save Our Sierra — a multiagency effort to eradicate marijuana in eastern Fresno County.

What? Here’s what a National Academy of Sciences Institute of Medicine report said in 1999:

“Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation. … For certain patients, such as the terminally ill or those with debilitating symptoms, the long-term risks [associated with smoking] are not of great concern. … [Therefore,] clinical trials of marijuana for medical purposes should be conducted. … There are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief. … Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications.”

NORML has many more references here.

We’ve had enough of those pesky poppies in Afghanistan:

The U.S. military bombed about 300 tons of poppy seeds in a dusty field in southern Afghanistan Tuesday in a dramatic show of force designed to break up the Taliban’s connection to heroin.

The air strike occurred mid-day in Helmand province and was observed by CNN’s Ivan Watson, who is embedded with the U.S. Marines operating in that province.

The military dropped a series of 1,000-pound bombs from planes on the mounds of poppy seeds and then followed with strikes from helicopters.

That’s right, we dropped “a series” of half-ton bombs on a pile of seeds. Then, apparently because those stubborn seeds hadn’t learned their lesson yet, the helicopters were brought in to completely break their will. Kidding aside, here was the real explanation for this exercise in elaborate destruction:

Tony Wayne, with the U.S. State Department, said the strikes on poppy seeds, that can be used to make opium and heroin, is part of a strategy shift for the military to stop the Taliban and other insurgents from profiting from drugs.

Uhhhh, ok.

So there have been changes recently to our strategy for combatting the opium trade. We’re no longer eradicating opium fields – a move that has done nothing more than impoverish farmers and drive them to the Taliban. Instead, we’re targeting more high level traffickers and trying to root out corruption. We’re also attempting to get Afghan farmers to grow alternate crops.

These strategies will have various levels of short-term success. Those successes will be highly publicized in the media, even as very little will change in the overall picture. As we take out traffickers and corrupt officials, new traffickers will take their place and raise enough money from the heroin trade to be able to corrupt more government officials. And as we are successful at moving some farmers away from growing opium, new ones will take their place (often forced by traffickers and corrupt government officials). In a country where the opium trade is small and the state has some semblance of centralized power, a strategy like this might make a difference over time. In a country like Afghanistan, where the trade in poppies is over 1/3 of the national GDP, and where the central government of Hamid Karzai (whose own brother is involved in the trade) has little power over much of the nation, it likely won’t work for decades, if at all.

So I’m not sure what Wayne thinks this bombing exercise will accomplish. Did they take a bunch of captured drug traffickers to the bombing site and taunt them by saying “look what we’re doing to your precious seeds!”? And even if they did, so what? I’ve occasionally seen news reports that try to equate participating in the opium trade as being a similar dynamic to an actual addiction to heroin, as if people who make money from the trade aren’t people making rational decisions to violate the law to make shitloads of money, but people with a drug problem who can’t help themselves. But there’s no chemical or psychological attachment to those seeds. It’s a commodity that the traffickers have to replace. To them, once American forces confiscate those seeds, it doesn’t matter whether we blow them up or put them on our bagels. They’re gone and they’ll have to find new ones.

There just isn’t a logical explanation for why you would rain massive bombs from the sky like this onto plant matter. It’s just a sign of utter frustration. It reminds me of the scene in Office Space where the three fed-up mouse jockeys take a baseball bat to the printer that never worked right:

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The frustration is certainly warranted. Afghanistan will remain a no-win situation as long as international drug policies (which have been overwhelmingly dictated by the U.S. over the years) continue to keep the demand for heroin so high and as long as our fragile relations with nations like Iran and Pakistan force us into this failing strategy. But it would be hard to think of a single thing that’s more strategically backwards than this. The Afghan population already thinks we’re too eager to employ aerial bombings. I don’t think bombing a pile of seeds in air raid fashion is a good way to reverse that image. In fact, it makes us look crazy. And perhaps we are.

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As Jon points out in the previous post, Boeing’s “no-strike clause or else” threat to its unions comes across as a bit shrill and hollow considering Washington’s reputation for having one of the most favorable business climates in the nation. I mean, “or else” Boeing will move 787 production where?

Much has been made of Boeing’s recent purchase of Vought Aircraft Industries’ Dreamliner plant in South Carolina, speculating that Boeing might leverage its investment to build a second 787 assembly line there. But this speculation ignores the reality of the deal, which is that it was only made necessary by the utter failure of Voight, like many of Boeing’s other outsourcing partners, to meet the quality and delivery standards necessary to keep the 787 project on time.

Boeing’s purchase of Vought’s facility was, in effect, an admission that Boeing’s outsourcing strategy, the “systems integrator” approach, is not working. There may be a flaw in Boeing’s overarching corporate strategy of dumping costly assets and globalizing production.

That’s right, Boeing bought the plant, responsible for assembling large sections of the 787’s fuselage, because it couldn’t rely on Vought to fix the facility’s endemic problems. Do you really think that’s a signal that Boeing is eager to entrust even more responsibility to South Carolina workers and managers when it already has a large, highly trained workforce available here?

Indeed, not only does Boeing have an ample supply of trained workers available in the Puget Sound region, it also has an assembly facility available that could be converted to 787 production with minimal capital investment and in little time. Of course, I’m referring to Boeing’s existing, 767 final assembly line in Everett.

Think about it. The 787 was always meant as a replacement for the 767, whose production has long been scheduled to be phased out one way or another. Remember, the main attraction to our region of Boeing getting the Air Force tanker contract was that it was based on the 767, and thus would keep production going at the Everett facility years beyond the model’s life as commercial passenger liner, and saving thousands of good-paying local jobs in the process. But in response to the Air Force’s obvious preference for a larger tanker, Boeing has resubmitted its bid with a tanker based on the larger 777. Win or lose, that’s a death sentence for the 767 assembly line.

But once (if) the 787 flies and Boeing swings into full production, that makes the 767’s Everett plant the obvious location for a second 787 assembly line.

Last year’s machinists strike my provide useful rhetoric for Boeing as the aerospace giant seeks concessions from legislators and labor, but even management understands that the bulk of the 787’s production woes have had little to do with local workers, and apart from the recent design flaw, have mostly stemmed from production problems from Boeing’s many out-of-state partners like Vought. In that context, what could possibly make more sense than starting a second assembly line at an existing Boeing facility with a highly-trained workforce that has proven track record of delivering quality product on time?

And if that’s not reason enough to keep 787 assembly here in the Puget Sound region, no amount of tax or labor concessions will be enough to convince Boeing management to change its mind.

Unsurprisingly, it isn’t at all terrible, in fact it’s rather good, if you look at rankings from a wide range of groups that aren’t hired by Boeing.

The first thing that has to happen to our discourse is that people stop equating unionization with “bad for business.” Yes, the bidness guys and gals (and certain newspaper owners) want everyone to think that, but that’s only because it’s easier for management to blame unions than to look in the mirror. A highly trained, skilled and well compensated work force is an asset to any region.

Sounds to me like the Labor Council is perfectly willing to entertain constructive suggestions, but I’m guessing “no strike clauses or else” may not be considered constructive. It’s called “bargaining,” not “the unions should give in because they’re unions.”

I truly do not understand why everyone on the right gets to act in their self interest and celebrate it, while anyone to the left-center who does so is vilified. I guess thirty or so years of neo-liberalism permanently reduced the capacity of traditional media and political leadership to do anything but get down on bended knee when the magic word “jobs” is incanted to protect policies that benefit only the business side of the equation.

For the umpteen millionth time, business should have a seat at the table, but problems inevitably arise as they always want to own the table, the chairs, the room and everyone in it, and then attack anyone who objects. It’s ridiculous, and hopefully labor’s new-found voice will start to plow some new ground in this state.

In gloating over the refusal of both the King and Pierce county councils to put tax hike measures on the ballot this fall, the Seattle Times editorial board congratulates council members for their political cowardice:

It is remarkable how the fear of losing an election concentrates the political mind.

I understand the Times’ knee-jerk, ideological opposition to tax hikes (unless, of course, we’re talking about driving tens of thousands of entrepreneurs out of business by forcing on them the expense of quarterly filing sales taxes in 45 states… that, they’re for), and they’re entitled to that, but their obvious pleasure over politicians bowing to fear, just comes off as unseemly.

Yes, we want our elected officials to listen to the people, but there’s a difference between representing the interests of voters and pandering to them. Editorialists can howl all they want about the budget crises facing nearly every single state and local government in the nation being crises of these governments’ own making (instead of, you know, being largely the result a nearly unprecedented economic downturn), but that doesn’t make the real life impact of the resulting budget cuts any less painful or the anti-stimulative effect of slashing government spending and jobs any less dangerous.

The bold and responsible move would be to temporarily raise taxes slightly to help soften the blow, so that we don’t have to, say, dramatically cut back our public health budget at a time we’re preparing for a potentially devastating swine flu pandemic. And with opinion leaders like the Times working hard to cultivate a climate of political fear, it’s no wonder such a proposal came from interim King County Executive Kurt Triplett, a non-politician free to act on what he believes is best for King County rather than what is best for himself at the polls, only to be quickly shot down by council members with opposite incentives.

Yeah, “fear of losing an election,” or of losing a majority, or of merely losing a reliable source of campaign money, that’s what tends to motivate politicians. But if that’s such a good thing, it’s hard to understand why the Times isn’t more satisfied with government we’ve got?

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