HorsesAss.Org

Yesterday, Mark Kleiman, a California-based professor who occasionally discusses drug policy, wrote about the shifting tides on marijuana:

Obviously, this isn’t something the Obama Administration is going to jump on, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a big move late in a second Obama term or sometime in the term of his successor (assuming the Democrats keep winning elections). If I had to quote odds, I’d say about even money on legalization within fifteen years. As with the repeal of alcohol prohibition and the creeping legalization of gambling, I’d expect it to be presented at least in part as a revenue-raising measure.

And today, a member of the California State Assembly, Tom Ammiano, introduced a bill to do just that. His bill would regulate sales of marijuana the same as alcohol, with a 21 year old age limit and fairly substantial ($50 per ounce) taxes on both growers and sellers.

While I’m not optimistic that this particular bill will pass, I think that legalization is bound to happen on the west coast well within fifteen years. As Kleiman predicted, though, it’s being presented in part as a revenue-raising measure:

It also has the backing of Betty Yee, who chairs the state Board of Equalization, which collects taxes in California. An analysis by the agency concluded the state would collect $1.3 billion a year in tax revenue and a $50-an-ounce levy on retail sales if marijuana were legal.

But the next part in that article is the subject of more heated debate:

The analysis also concluded that legalizing marijuana would drop its street value by 50 percent and increase consumption of the substance by 40 percent.

Kleiman tends to agree with the latter part of that assessment:

Substantively, I’m not a big fan of legalization on the alcohol model; a legal pot industry, like the legal booze and gambling industries, would depend for the bulk of its sales on excessive use, which would provide a strong incentive for the marketing effort to aim at creating and maintaining addiction. (Cannabis abuse is somewhat less common, and tends to be somewhat less long-lasting, than alcohol abuse, and the physiological and behavioral effects tend to be less dramatic, but about 11% of those who smoke a fifth lifetime joint go on to a period of heavy daily use measured in months.) So I’d expect outright legalization to lead to a substantial increase in the prevalence of cannabis-related drug abuse disorder: I’d regard an increase of only 50% as a pleasant surprise, and if I had to guess I’d guess at something like a doubling.

Bruce Mirken from the Marijuana Policy Project disagrees:

A spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, which advocates for reform in marijuana laws and is backing Ammiano’s proposal, said any expected increase in consumption is a “false notion.”

“They are making an intuitive assumption that a lot of people make that really does not have that much evidence behind it,” said Bruce Mirken, the group’s spokesman

Mirken is absolutely correct here. Anyone who confidently says that marijuana abuse (or even marijuana use) will go up substantially in an environment where sales are legal is far more certain than they should be.

The first problematic assumption that leads to that unwarranted certainty is a belief there are large numbers of people in California who would start using marijuana if only it were sold legally. I’ve certainly met people (generally older people) who’ve used marijuana in the past, but have found it difficult to obtain due to its illegality, and who would probably buy it if it were legal. So in that respect, I could see an increase in use. However, this is a subset of the population who has already proven to be extremely unlikely to develop problems with marijuana abuse.

Young people, on the other hand, don’t have problems finding marijuana. The idea that marijuana prohibition is actually working as a firewall to keep young people from obtaining it is utterly ridiculous. Establishing a legal market with an age restriction of 21 will actually make it harder for young people to obtain it than it is now (although it likely still won’t be that hard). Because abuse problems are most profound in people who begin using it early, there’s a logical basis to expect abuse problems to decline in a post-Prohibition environment. One could also look towards Holland, where sales of marijuana to adults have been allowed for over 30 years, yet the use of marijuana among teens there is far lower than it is here.

Again, there are a lot of factors at play here, but my own guess is that in whatever state legalizes marijuana first, use will go up by less than 10%, and the prevalence of abuse will stay about the same or go down. Marijuana abuse, as a societal problem, will still remain miniscule when compared to harder drugs like meth, or even alcohol.

The biggest question for me is how the legal market will develop, and how we’ll deal with things like advertising and taxation. The tax being proposed in the California bill is pretty big. An ounce generally doesn’t cost more than $300 on the black market, so a $50 tax on that is not chump change, especially if legalization cuts the black market prices in half. Would that drive people back to the black market? Or would the growers (who have a history of begging to be taxed) be happy to yield a big chunk of their potential profit in exchange for legal status? I have no idea.

Kleiman, on the other hand, wants to take a different approach:

So I continue to favor a “grow your own” policy, under which it would be legal to grow, possess, and use cannabis and to give it away, but illegal to sell it. Of course there would be sales, and law enforcement agencies would properly mostly ignore those sales. But there wouldn’t be billboards.

There are a couple of very big problems with this proposal. Scott Morgan discusses some of the problems here. Another major reason why this approach won’t work is because it’s not trivial to grow high quality marijuana. It’s much more than just throwing some seeds in dirt and putting it under a light. It’s arguably far harder and more time consuming than homebrewing beer. And if you’re just growing for yourself, you’d end up spending a lot of money just to produce a single plant. People would naturally gravitate towards larger scale growers and distributors who know how to produce a higher quality product. It’s an unrealistic proposal, and it’s not at all clear why Kleiman thinks we can’t allow sales but just ban certain types of advertising.

At the end of Kleiman’s post, though, there’s something that he and I agree on:

I just hope the sellers are required to measure the cannabinoid profiles of their products and put those measurements on the label.

Ending prohibition doesn’t have to be synonymous with unfettered free markets. It should be about smart regulations for an activity that millions of Americans are going to partake in whether it’s legal or not. I hope that as we move closer to the post-Prohibition world, we begin to think about (and study) the real effects of setting up newly legal markets in various ways.

Some scientist says social networking causes lack

‘My fear is that these technologies are infantilising the brain into the state of small children who are attracted by buzzing noises and bright lights, who have a small attention span and who live for the moment.’

Oh I dont thin k thats realy very true—omg an ambulance just went bye…..

Di you see Hell’s Kitchen last week?Mises cuz basketball game.

Then they got up and were like “oh, no, that is so totally

Oscars!

Bloggers, on the other hand, are relentlessly focused. s Miss you! Happy b-day cutey 3.14!

The world needs more social networking. And cheese. Definitely more cheeses.

Aardvark.

That’s what the AP is reporting:

A senior administration official says that President Barack Obama’s likely third pick for Commerce secretary is former Washington Gov. Gary Locke.

Huh.  Locke isn’t exactly a lot of folks’ favorite governor, though apart from his conventional approach to trade issues it’s hard to argue that he’s a bad choice for Commerce.

Washington is one of our nation’s most export dependent states, consistently ranking fourth overall in total exports behind California, Texas and New York, and first in exports per capita.  And as our nation’s first Chinese-American governor Locke is uniquely positioned to bridge the cultural gap with one our most important trading partners.

I’d say this is a safe appointment for Obama, one that will generate little excitement and little controversy.  Locke is honest, workmanlike, and socially progressive (by national standards) if politically cautious, and while I’d prefer a Commerce Secretary who might at least challenge the current orthodoxy on trade, given his tenure in the governor’s mansion I wouldn’t expect much leadership from him on these issues one way or the other.

Unless he’s got some tax or nanny issue I’m unaware of, this should be an easy confirmation.

UPDATE:
A reliable source has confirmed that Locke received the call from President Obama at 1:30PM Pacific this afternoon.

In their latest monthly newsletter, the BIAW touts their recent “political successes,” including, apparently, the alleged 2004 election of Dino Rossi.

What a bunch of poor losers.

See, this is the type of Seattle Times editorial that really pisses me off, not so much because I disagree with the opinion expressed (and I sure as hell do), but because I find its rhetoric shallow, insulting and intentionally misleading… the type of piece we’re told we should expect from a lowly blogger, not the editorial board of a major daily newspaper.

The issue is taxes, which the Times once again opposes, but the premise is absolute bullshit, simplistically framing the budget debate as an either/or between budget cuts or tax increases:

FOR the two years beginning July 1, state government forecasts an $8 billion deficit — a sum equal to one-quarter of the money spent in the past two years. The chasm is not a gap the people can be expected to fill.

Of course not, and nobody—I mean absolutely nobody —is suggesting a revenue-only response to this unprecedented budget crisis during an economic downturn of historic proportions.  Yet in their lede, the Times intentionally conflates the notion of using tax increases to fill part of the gap with the paranoid fantasy of using such revenues to fill all of the gap… and that’s just plain dishonest.  Or perhaps, crazy.

If the state asks them — and by law, it would have to — they would say no.

Well, if the Times says voters would say “no,” then I suppose it’s just a waste of money even holding a vote.  After all, these are the top-notch prognosticators who urged the dismantling of Sound Transit after 2007’s Prop 1 went bust, accusing transit proponents of being delusional, and claiming “the ballot measure failed because the light-rail part was too expensive and created a tax that was too high.”

Can’t get much more in touch with voters than that, huh?

And why should they say otherwise? It is their government. They pay for it, most directly in sales taxes. And they have been buying fewer things for themselves. Some have lost their incomes, or expect to. Others have seen their assets shrink. They feel poorer. They feel less secure. And they are.

Damn right it’s our government, and it’s a government that provides services we need and want.  That’s why voters in the most populous regions of the state consistently vote to raise our own taxes, and why even I-912’s proposed gas tax repeal failed by a comfortable margin statewide despite the supposed popular backlash we were all warned about.

And let me just pause here for a moment to comment on the editorial’s headline: “Washington taxpayers can’t bail out state lawmakers.” I mean… what the fuck? That’s just plain disrespectful, and totally nonconstructive.

We wouldn’t be asked to bail out our lawmakers, we’d be asked to keep our government functioning at somewhere near the level we want it.  And if the Times was at all interested in promoting a civil debate rather than just provoking a knee-jerk, anti-government reaction, they wouldn’t so shamelessly vilify lawmakers for a budget crisis that they full well know is largely the result of a worldwide economic collapse unseen since the days of the Great Depression.

This Eymanesque anti-lawmaker crap is just mean-spirited and lazy.

They now hear pleas that certain state programs are needed more than ever. Some are. But there is that $8 billion hole. Even when reduced to roughly $5 billion with the timely arrival of federal fill dirt, the gap is still too wide to reasonably be filled with new and higher taxes.

Again… who the hell is suggesting even $5 billion in new taxes, let alone $8 billion?  Give us some examples.

Consider some of the tax proposals introduced in Olympia. Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, proposes a 0.215-percent tax on primary plastic and plastic containers. Rep. Deb Eddy, D-Kirkland, would extend the sales tax to hair transplants and cosmetic dentistry for people who already had a “normal appearance.” Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, would impose a gross-receipts tax on services delivered over the Internet. Sen. Rodney Tom, D-Medina, would add another dollar a pack to cigarettes. Rep. Maralyn Chase, D-Edmonds, would impose a 6-percent tax on small gasoline-powered equipment such as lawn mowers and leaf blowers.

All these taxes together would fill about 7 percent of a $5 billion gap.

Let’s see, 7 percent of $5 billion comes to about $350 million.  Hardly the stark either/or proposition postulated in the editorial’s lede.  But wait… there’s always that doomsday scenario…

One bill would fill all of it: Senate Bill 5104 by Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma. It is a personal-income tax with brackets of 2.2 percent, 3.5 percent and 6 percent, with the break points for a married couple at $50,000 and $120,000. This raises more than enough for the state — and takes it directly from private spending, private saving and private investment, all of which are necessary for economic recovery.

Sen. Franklin proposes her personal income tax bill every year, God bless her, and it rarely even gets a public hearing, let alone a vote in committee.  The Times knows that, and to raise the income tax specter now, in this context, with this sweet old lady cast as the political super-villain poised to achieve what popular Gov. Dan Evans couldn’t accomplish at his peak, is a deliberate and dishonest scare tactic, pure and simple.

82-year-old Sen. Rosa Franklin

(Furthermore, the Times also knows that Sen. Franklin isn’t even proposing an income tax as a means of filling the budget gap, but rather as part of a broader restructuring package that would also dramatically reduce the state portion of the sales and property taxes.  Whether a restructured tax system that includes an income tax would raise more or less dollars, or remain revenue neutral, is an entirely separate debate from tax restructuring itself.)

There is the problem for Democrats who would send a tax package to voters. If their tax does the job, it will be an economy-killer. If it is a bearable tax, it won’t do the job.

I guess if they say it often enough, that this is an either/or option, they hope their readers will believe it true.  But it’s not.  If the legislature sends a tax package to voters it will be to fill part of the budget gap, not all of it.

The remaining option is cuts. They are painful, but they will have to fill most of that $5 billion gap.

The state must cut, cut, cut.

Actually, there are three options:  budget cuts, tax increases, and deficit spending, and considering the essential services at risk—not to mention that every $1 billion reduction in state spending is estimated to cost about 15,000 jobs—it would be irresponsible for lawmakers not to at least consider all the tools at their disposal.

So my suggestion to lawmakers is don’t allow yourselves to be cowed by the Seattle Times’ irresponsible demagoguery; the real reason they don’t want you to put a tax package on the ballot is that they are afraid it will pass.

So according to Glenn Greenwald the lovely Fox Noise channel is going to “war game” a possible civil war this week. Nice.

They discuss a coming “civil war” led by American “Bubba” militias — Beck says he “believes we’re on this road” — and they contemplate whether the U.S. military would follow the President’s orders to subdue civil unrest or would instead join with “the people” in defense of their Constitutional rights against the Government (they agree that the U.S. military would be with “the people”):

I really don’t have much comment other than to offer an image. It’s one painted onto the wall of the state capital in Topeka, Kansas. This is my cultural heritage, if the “Bubbas” want to start in with waving the bloody shirt after 144 years.

Fun times.

At least 618,000 Americans died in the Civil War, and some experts say the toll reached 700,000. The number that is most often quoted is 620,000. At any rate, these casualties exceed the nation’s loss in all its other wars, from the Revolution through Vietnam.
The Union armies had from 2,500,000 to 2,750,000 men. Their losses, by the best estimates:
Battle deaths: 110,070
Disease, etc.: 250,152
Total 360,222

The Confederate strength, known less accurately because of missing records, was from 750,000 to 1,250,000. Its estimated losses:
Battle deaths: 94,000
Disease, etc.: 164,000
Total 258,000

Oh, and BTW, the Union won. Funny how the “Bubbas” always seem to forget that part. The South was destroyed by military force, occupied, and then ultimately (after another 100 years) forced to submit to the rules of civilization.

They can bitch and moan about it all they want on AM radio, but they still lost. You don’t see me putting pictures of John Brown on my pickup truck and calling for neo-Reconstruction, now, do you? Although I will still argue that Florida should have lost some Congress-critters after the 2000 election debacle….

A few items of interest:

– Glenn Greenwald has a couple of tremendous posts this week, taking on the Obama Administration’s reluctance to give up numerous aspects of the Bush Administration’s attempts to expand the power of the executive, and on the flip side, looking at the right wing loonies who are now beginning to talk about Civil War against Obama, only weeks after finishing their 8-year stint crying about how it’s unpatriotic to question the President.

– CNBC recently aired a good hour-long special on the economic aspects of northern California’s marijuana industry. It can now be seen in its entirety on Hulu. A Zogby poll this week showed that 58% of west coast residents believe that marijuana should be regulated and taxed like alcohol and cigarettes.

– I also recently watched a documentary on the case from Tulia, Texas, where a corrupt cop named Tom Coleman working for a drug task force managed to get over 10% of the town’s black population in jail before lawyers were able to prove that he was lying. I don’t think it’s being shown again on PBS, but hopefully it’ll be online soon.

– The story about the corrupt judges in Northeastern Pennsylvania who were getting kickbacks to funnel kids into private detention facilities is just amazing. This is stuff that would be shocking in the third-world, let alone America. And there are now allegations that one of the judges has been closely linked with mob figures for whom he used his position on the bench to extort money from journalists who’d been investigating them.

– Neal Peirce has a good editorial in the Denver Post today on Obama and the drug war.

And one Democrat, Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam. Here are some highlights and lowlights from Wednesday’s hearing on the marijuana decriminalization bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Well, at least one of them….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqkMfToY9Pk[/youtube]

A couple weeks ago I made fun of a Seattle Times editorial for suggesting that public agencies actually profit off of public records requests, for which some folks attacked me as some sort of anti-sunshine government stooge.  Well, in a guest column this week, attorney Ramsey Ramerman also took issue with Times, reiterating that open government is worth it, but it doesn’t come cheap:

Open government is not easy. Trust is hard to mint. It also isn’t free. Unlike in most states that allow agencies to charge for search time, agencies in Washington charge only for copy costs. Taxpayers foot the bill for the rest. Fairley’s bills try to look out for taxpayer dollars by making sure requesters are paying for the actual cost of copies they request. Why should taxpayers have to pay for copies when a requester asks for copies and then chooses not to pick them up?

Our public servants work hard to keep government open and to serve as prudent stewards of taxpayer dollars. It is too bad The Times insists on attacking them simply because they are trying to do both in hard economic times.

Something for nothing is always a popular position, but it isn’t very realistic or responsible.  The Times wants government agencies to be more responsive to public records requests, but doesn’t want to invest the money that would make this possible.  Pretty typical.

Sorry for the family’s pain, actually. Too many media flashbacks involving sharks. Anyhow.

An arrest may be near in the nearly decade-old slaying of federal intern Chandra Levy, whose disappearance in 2001 ended Gary Condit’s congressional career, several television stations reported.

The California Democrat was romantically linked to Levy, but was not considered a suspect in her death or disappearance. Television stations, KFSN and KCRA in California and WRC in Washington, D.C., reported that police were seeking an arrest warrant.

Speaking of the media, that second graph is kind of confusing. If you google around it appears authorities are looking at some guy, not Condit, who is in prison already.

If one were to point to an exact moment when people started passionately hating the legacy media, the Chandra Levy-summer of sharks frenzy would merit serious consideration. Again, sad for the Levy family, having your loved one’s death compounded by an absurd media circus. I’m sure all the right wing radio blowhards are very very sorry now.

Silver Falls Bank, Silverton, OR.

For those keeping score at home, that’s a total of three Pacific NW banks so far this year. The previous two were Pinnacle Bank of Beaverton, OR., and Bank of Clark County of Vancouver, WA.

Of course, the number of banks is not so important as the size. If you go back to last September, there was some big NW banky thing that had to be dealt with, even if they were technically listed as Nevada and Utah institutions.

I have to say, cat blogging is way cuter. I can haz natunilization pweeze? :-)

The Stranger’s Dominic Holden catches the Seattle Times rewriting a federal prosecutor’s press release on a marijuana conviction.  Oops.

Reporters rewrite press releases all the time—usually about restaurant openings or events without much widespread impact. But the war on drugs costs billions a year, kills innocent people in raids, and has resulted in increased drug use. News coverage of any other miserable war would get a some scrutiny after 30 years of empty-handed results. In the service of objectivity, reporters for daily newspapers make a moral virtue of getting “both sides of the story.” The war on pot deserves more than regurgitating government press releases and some scrutiny—at least a fraction the scrutiny our reporters give plastic bags.

And for this they want a tax break?