HorsesAss.Org

Sometimes, we really don’t have our heads screwed on straight:

Jackie Brooks has smoked for a half-century and figures she consumes a pack a day inside her Auburn apartment.

The 74-year-old doesn’t want to quit and says she has a right to smoke in her own home.

Not anymore. The King County Housing Authority is banning smoking in all units at Plaza 17, the 70-unit apartment complex where Brooks has lived for 14 years.

Back when I was on the losing end of the I-901 fight, I at least had some acknowledgement that there were some legitimate points to be made for restricting smoking in public. Not so much because it’s cancerous, but because of its more immediate health effects. People who have asthma or some other respiratory problem shouldn’t have to be surrounded by cigarette smoke against their wishes when the health effects are clear and undeniable. Banning this activity in enclosed public places is just common sense. It obviously gets murkier when you’re talking about restaurants and bars as these are places that people can essentially choose not to go to, and I didn’t think it was the place for the state to tell business owners what environment they should provide. The one counter-argument that I found somewhat compelling was that certain classes of workers (servers, musicians) should be protected by the state, but did that require a ban which didn’t even allow for local municipalities to license certain places as exceptions? I still don’t think so.

But those are separate arguments from this one. Banning smoking in private residences just goes way too far.

The reality behind a lot of these bans is that they really are attempts to enforce a rigid public health morality. I’ve heard enough interesting propaganda on the effects of currently illegal drugs to be very skeptical of the current Surgeon General when he says that there’s no risk-free level of second-hand smoke (which is cited by the Times article as the KCHA’s reasoning for the ban). That’s silly. Obviously, there’s varying risk relative to exposure and below a certain level of exposure, you’re not at risk.

We see the same thing with the reports of marijuana smoke having more toxins and carcinogens than tobacco, but studies meant to demonstrate an actual link between marijuana smoking and lung cancer find no correlation. This is because, as Jacob Sullum writes, the dose makes the poison. Just being able to smell cigarette smoke through an open window is obviously not at a dangerous level. Is it annoying? Perhaps. But you’re not gonna get cancer from it and it’s not going to trigger any other health problems. The end of the article makes it fairly obvious what’s driving this:

Alice Bruce, 71, Brooks’ neighbor across the hall for a dozen years, has heart problems and is glad the authority is banning smoking in her building. She believes years of exposure to secondhand smoke from family members contributed to her cardiac arrest more than a decade ago, and she’s still concerned about secondhand smoke.

“I’ll be sorry to see her go,” Bruce said of her neighbor. “I think the world of Jackie. I still do. I just don’t agree with her smoking because of the experiences I had with my own family and smoking.”

I’m in no position to know whether Bruce is correct in her belief that second-hand smoke has led to her health problems, but even by her own words, that’s not the reason she supports the ban. She “just [doesn’t] agree with her smoking”. It has nothing to do with her own health. Someone smoking in the apartment across the hall is obviously not directly affecting her. This is a case where people are successfully goading a government agency to impose a particular public health morality. And even though forcing these old smokers out of their homes may be popular, it’s still the wrong thing to do.

Joel Connelly, who’s no fan of Rep. Jim McDermott, lays out the blueprint for McD’s exit from congress:

A possible arrangement: McDermott’s legal bills are paid off. Something gets named after him. And a new posting, possibly meaningful, allows the globetrotting congressman to pursue his interests in HIV/AIDS and South Asia.

Discretion is vital. McDermott’s “amen corner” will entertain no criticism of our quixotic man of principle in Congress. And Seattle needs re-education on potential benefits of having an effective liberal doing its business in Washington, D.C.

I’m pretty much done with Rep. McDermott, and wouldn’t mind seeing him go sooner rather than later. As long as he was on the block for the whole “tape” thing, I didn’t feel it was right to do a hatchet job on him. Now that he’s going to have to pay the 800k, things change somewhat.

But still! Dump McDermott? No. Why not demand Richard McIver’s resignation?

The night Seattle City Councilman Richard McIver was arrested for allegedly grabbing his wife by the neck in a drunken tirade, he yelled at her about not keeping the house clean and opened the door to officers in his bathrobe, wobbling, reeking of alcohol, slurring his words, and acting confused and slightly belligerent.

McIver likely will not stand trial for these alleged actions. Still, why tolerate this? I know I know, the two aren’t mutually exclusive. But for me, it’s not even close.

We plead guilty to a certain shall we say crankiness when surveying the mainstream headlines for scraps of local edification, but hey folks, we’re just tryin’ to help. Our intentions are good, please don’t let us be misunderstood. So when we earnestly inaugurate a feature called Local Headlines That Ran Elsewhere, we’re not saying the headline or story never ever ran in local media. We’re merely pointing out recognition by the Outside World of our humble region. “Seattle Man Bites Renton Dog” in The New York Times is probably of interest no matter how many times the story has run in the P-I. And when we decry the lack of a Big Picture in local reporting, we’re merely suggesting that an awareness of, and linkage to, larger forces at play help provide a context to make readers care. “Cat Climbs Tree in Ballard Before Earthquake” is not nearly the story that “Thousands of Cats Throughout Northwest Take to Trees Before Earthquake” is.

If you are distraught at having stumbled into Journalism 100.5, then yes, you can correctly surmise that this is an extremely slow headlines day. I’m writing this at 12:30 a.m., waiting for The Times Web site to flip, the P-I having provided me with “Sometimes Scanners Get Price Wrong” (Good Lord, now I’ll never get to sleep!) and “Neuheisel Eyes Successful Return” (and even if I do, my worst nightmare will be confirmed). Of course, the scanner story doesn’t mention what to do when you’re undercharged, which in my experience happens more often. Leave it to the press to out one of consumers’ few weapons against rampant inflation. Hopefully Costco management won’t see this one.

I would be remiss not to tip my hat to Times senior political writer David Postman for his generous acknowledgment in The Stranger of my conversation with my daughter a week ago, wherein I informed her that our beloved Crocodile, where Franz Ferdinand, Turin Brakes, Tapes ‘n Tapes and so many other uncommercialized rising bands had provided so much personal joy and temporary deafness, was closing its sticky grimy doors. But this was hardly my scoop, as I noted in Tuesday’s headlines post. My only reason for bringing up the thing was to give The Weekly credit, which is more than our friends at Slog have. Not to slight them in the slightest: I was just thinking how wonderful it is to have Erica C. Barnett back rattling the cages at City Hall (which were notably undisturbed by any local media during her absence), so much so that I almost forgave her for taking yet another interminable vacation, this time with a paucity of posts that she blamed on lack of Wi-Fi. This of course being the current reporter’s “headache and flu” excuse after a night of carousing, my all-time favorite being, after a reporter called in with a bad back, his editor’s observation that the female reporter he was with the previous night was no doubt going to call in with a bad front.

At Erica’s age I was getting two weeks of vacation and wasn’t paid enough to go to Italy Barcelona, or even Austin. But it seems only fair that someone who does the work of three reporters get commensurate time off. Welcome back Erica. Now tell me what Conlin will do as the next Council president…

Ah yes, The Times site has flipped, and the lead is lead: High lead levels in kids’ jewelry, a lamentable but unsurprising development to HA readers of Goldy’s scoop yesterday, sprinkled liberally with insights and calls to action, the way real journalism is supposed to work.

Addendum: Somehow in my blurry-eyed mumblings I missed the P-I coverage of the homeless rally last night. Nothing in The Times, which apparently is content to stick with Nicole Brodeur’s boneheaded revelations of a couple weeks ago (although a search did turn up a creditable report on Gates Foundation efforts for homeless families). The best discussion of course resides at Real Change and its editor publisher Tim Harris’ great blog. Give an RC vendor a fiver next time around, it’s Christmas folks.

Darcy Burner held a series of local events over the weekend where families could bring toys and other children’s products for free lead testing. Well, the results are in, and of the 479 items tested, 56 tested positive for lead, 47 above the 40 parts per million maximum recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics. Nine additional items tested positive for cadmium, another toxic element.

Surprised? Well you shouldn’t be. Ten percent of items tested positive for excessive lead levels, pretty much exactly what Burner and Essco Safety Check expected heading into the tests. And chances are, about ten percent of the toys and household items your children handle every day would test positive as well. Lax standards, loosened regulation, nearly nonexistent testing and a mad rush toward globalization have put all our children at unnecessary risk.

In a press release announcing the disturbing results (and apparently ignored by our local media,) Burner lays the blame squarely where it belongs:

“This administration needs to get its priorities straight. Recent news reports have revealed that the Consumer Products Safety Commission currently has only one staffer in the entire country tasked with testing toys, while the current director and her predecessor have traveled on nearly 30 junkets paid for by toy companies and other consumer products manufacturers,” Burner said. “This is truly a scandal. Children are being put at risk while our leading regulators are hobnobbing in resort locales with industry lobbyists and so far nothing is being done about it.”

So, how dangerous are these toys? Many of the items tested contained lead far above safe levels:

A red plastic roof piece from a Lincoln Logs set tested at 1488 parts per million for lead (or 37 times the AAP standard). A small plastic Fisher Price Sesame Street Bert figure tested at 5346 ppm (or 133 times the standard). A Tinkerbell pink rolling backpack tested at 533 ppm for lead, while a Cinderella princess backpack tested at 474 ppm. A Winnie the Pooh placemat contained 985 ppm.

The highest lead level was found was in a Fisher Price Flip Track crane from a plastic train set that was owned by Burner’s own 5 year-old son, which tested at 10,600 ppm, or 265 times the AAP standard.

Cooler-style lunchboxes and soft coolers tended to have high levels of lead or cadmium, as did all of the children’s character placemats tested, including Dora, Spiderman and Winnie the Pooh. Chinese manufacturers tend to add lead and cadmium to vinyl (PVC) to increase durability, and while the CPSC argues such products are safe because the vinyl tends not to deteriorate during normal use, any parent who sees the wear and tear their own child puts on their lunchbox knows otherwise.

So what can you do about it? I suppose you could write to the CPSC and ask them to adopt tougher standards. Or you could help enact real change, and elect better Democrats like Darcy Burner to Congress.

P-I:

Police said the collision, at the intersection of Mercer Street and Terry Avenue North, was caused when the SUV ran a red light and was hit by the streetcar.

I’m feeling like that thing is worth every penny right about now.

John Edwards, it seems.

Of course, you have to take advice from your opponents with a grain of salt. That said, I’ve been telling folks that Mike Huckabee was always the toughest candidate on the GOP side, and I wasn’t lying.

Now, it seems that Mike Huckabee, the southern governor, finds himself at the top of the heap in Iowa with the southern senator, John Edwards:

Edwards leads with 30 percent in a poll of Democratic voters who said they intend to participate in the Jan. 3 presidential caucuses, followed by Clinton with 26 percent and Obama with 24 percent. When the sample was narrowed to the most likely caucus-goers, based on several questions, Obama leads Edwards by less than a percentage point with 27 percent, with Clinton in third place at 24 percent.

Edwards holds a significant advantage, however, among a group who could be key to the first contest of the presidential year: those who say their first choice is someone other than the top three. Under Iowa Democratic Party rules, candidates who poll less than 15 percent in the first vote at each caucus around the state are eliminated, and their supporters get a second chance to vote for another candidate.

Edwards is on the cover of the newest Newsweek, and inside I found some interesting tidbits about the 2004 race:

The Kerry-Edwards union was uneasy from the start. There were little things: Edwards wanted to lead audiences in his “Hope is on the way!” cheer. Kerry thought “Help is on the way” sounded more dignified. Neither man would budge, and they wound up using two different slogans. There were also larger differences. When Kerry came under the Swift Boat attacks over his war record, Edwards urged him to fight back early. Kerry believed it was beneath him to dignify his attackers with a response. (Emphasis mine)

Sometimes people like candidates for academic reasons. I like Edwards for his political instincts. He won’t be afraid to call them like he sees them (“Hope is on the way!”) and his first impulse will be, when attacked, to hit back.

Locally this morning, none of the top five headlines of the Seattle Times and P-I match each other, which is a clue as to how slow a news day it is. It’ll likely stay this way through the new year. The holiday fill is particularly in full force over at the Times, whose Danny Westneat informs us this morning that “Jolly isn’t mandatory.” For the other side of this breaking controversy, KOMO-TV last night gave us “Christmas will still be merry.” (We crabby secularists at HA tend to side with Westneat.)

Meanwhile, what’s actually going on in, um, news? Not much. A barge ran aground at Elliot Bay Marina, and nothing leaked. After much lobbying by the Fremont businesses that must deal with the splattered remains, Gov. Gregoire is including in her new budget $1.4 million for a suicide prevention fence on Aurora Bridge.

And, in a P-I column likely to irritate the faithful (but a sentiment a lot of local Democratic activists & pols privately agree with), Joel Connelly calls today for Jim McDermott to retire in 2008. Why? Because Baghdad Jim is broke (having just lost his long-running court case), ineffective, and carries no weight even with his own party leaders. Connelly even suggests some possible successors (all Democrats, natch):

Five names come immediately to mind: state Sen. Ed Murray, ex-City Councilwoman Martha Choe, attorney Jenny Durkan, state Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, or — if he quells a midlife crisis — Ron Sims.

Nationally, we learn this morning, courtesy the New York Times, that

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the C.I.A. about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

And, to absolutely nobody’s surprise, the FCC voted to allow newspaper cross-ownership of TV and radio stations in the nation’s top 20 markets (including Seattle).

Oh, and Senate Democrats caved on Iraq spending again. Yawn.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Stop on by for some hoppy beer and hopped up conversation.

I’m not sure what kind of crowds we’ll get the next two Tuesdays (or if the Ale House is even open Christmas night and New Year’s Day,) so if you suffer from the DL DT’s, you better come by tonight and drink your fill.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

I just gave this guy some cash:

Greenwald has more on what happened:

From the beginning, there was pure hostility from numerous Beltway crevices towards Dodd’s stance. The Beltway media largely ignored it except to mock it and question its authenticity with their standard lip-curling, jaded pettiness. The very day that Dodd announced his hold, Harry Reid made clear that he was hostile to it, and strongly insinuated that he would not honor it. That led to an outburst of anger directed towards Reid’s office which caused them — falsely as it turns out — to spend weeks issuing public and private assurances that Reid would treat Dodd’s hold the same way he treats other holds.

More significantly still, the leading presidential candidates — particularly Clinton and Obama — originally said nothing about any of these matters. That led to a separate joint effort from blogs and their readers, along with MoveOn, to demand that the Clinton and Obama campaigns issue a statement vowing to support Dodd’s stance. When the issued statements were ambiguous and seemingly noncommittal, a further controversy erupted, and in response, the Obama campaign (though never the Clinton campaign) clarified that they intended to express categorical and unconditional support for Dodd’s filibuster.

Without question, it was those efforts, spontaneously created and driven by blogs and their readers, which led directly to the principled stand Chris Dodd took yesterday in defense of the rule of law. This was not a process whereby some Beltway politician announced a campaign and then citizens fell into line behind it. The opposite occurred. The very idea for the “hold” originated among a few citizens, was almost immediately exploded into a virtual movement by tens of thousands of people, and was then made into a reality by a single political figure, Chris Dodd, responding to that passion by taking the lead on it.

It’s probably too late for Dodd to make a serious run at the nomination right now, but whoever wins it would be very smart to pick this guy as a running mate. The collaboration between our government and the telecoms in an effort to spy on us (which began before 9/11) in violation of federal law is the stuff of third-world dictatorships, not representative democracies. And the lengths that some Democrats have gone to avoid having to deal with this obvious problem demonstrates the power of special interests and the hold they have over both politicians and the media.

Sunday’s post lambasting the Discovery Institute (and our political and media elite’s insistence on taking them seriously no matter how wacky their proposals) has generated a number of emails from folks offering more detailed information on Discovery and its operations. It’s not pretty.

They may have cleaned up their “official” budget by now, but I’ve been assured that in past years at least 40-percent of the Gates Foundation’s roughly $1 million/year grant to the Cascadia Project went directly to Discovery to cover “overhead”. This included a $60,000 line item to help pay the salary of Discovery Executive Director Steven Buri, who I’m told has absolutely no expertise nor interest in transportation planning. Of course, I expect Discovery would deny using Gates Foundation money to subsidize its Intelligent Design campaign, but if they want to refute my allegations I challenge them to release the original budget documents (not some bullshit, made up spreadsheet,) or better yet, sue me for libel, so that I might use the discovery period to shed some light on the shady accounting Bruce Chapman has used to sucker the world’s richest man.

My point is that through his foundation’s 10 year/$9.35 million grant to Cascadia, Bill Gates — who frequently bemoans the state of our nation’s science education — is directly funding the operations of an organization dedicated to undermining the scientific method, and teaching creationism in our public schools. I mean… what the fuck?

But worse than the money is the undeserved credibility Gates and others grant Discovery by perpetuating the fiction that there is actual thinking going on in its tank. A real think tank starts with a problem and then goes about creatively devising a solution; propaganda mills like Discovery start with a solution, and then go about marketing the problem. And what is Discovery’s solution to the many challenges facing our nation in the 21st century and beyond? Here are the institute’s goals as enunciated in its infamous Wedge Document:

Governing Goals

• To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
• To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

Five Year Goals

• To see intelligent design theory as an accepted alternative in the sciences and scientific research being done from the perspective of design theory.
• To see the beginning of the influence of design theory in spheres other than natural science.
• To see major new debates in education, life issues, legal and personal responsibility pushed to the front of the national agenda.

Twenty Year Goals

• To see intelligent design theory as the dominant perspective in science.
• To see design theory application in specific fields, including molecular biology, biochemistry, paleontology, physics and cosmology in the natural sciences, psychology, ethics, politics, theology and philosophy in the humanities; to see its influence in the fine arts.
• To see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life.

That is what Bill Gates’ fortune is helping to fund.

Of course, the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree, and so despite its charade of scholarly objectivity, Cascadia has its own ideologically predetermined solutions. That’s why, for example, anti-light rail zealot Ted Van Dyk was so eager to give Discovery’s Bruce Agnew a rhetorical blowjob in today’s Crosscut. Van Dyk, Agnew et al have their own transportation plan, and it resolves around “governance reform” that would create a four-county, regional transportation commission, largely designed to dilute the power of Seattle’s pro-rail voters, while forcing us to fund their priorities, rather than our own. To Van Dyk’s credit, at least he’s honest about his cabal’s ultimate goal:

It would stress immediate priorities such as addressing the urgent Alaskan Way Viaduct and Evergreen Point Bridge, which are aging and structurally vulnerable. It would not stop light rail construction in place, but it would limit construction to a line running from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport to either Convention Place, Husky Stadium, or Northgate. Future funding would be focused more greatly on express bus, bus rapid transit, and normal bus service; dedicated transit lanes; HOV lanes; tolling; and selective repair and expansion of long neglected local roads and lifeline highways. Citywide trolleys definitely would not be part of the scheme.

That too is what Bill Gates’ fortune is funding.

Of course, I suppose there are those civic leaders who agree with Discovery’s “Big Bore” pro-roads/anti-rail agenda, just as I suppose there are those who support its goal of imposing a world view “consonant with Christian and theistic convictions”; I just wish they’d be honest about it. But for the rest, it is time to wake up and recognize Discovery for what it is, and stop granting credibility and money it has not earned.

If you’re running as a pro-life presidential candidate for the nomination of a party that has made overthrowing Roe v. Wade a moral and political litmus test, I’m guessing it’s not a good news day when a photo turns up of you attending a Planned Parenthood fundraiser.

Blue Mass Group has the photo and the details of Romney’s hypocrisy and prevarication.

Why is one always left with the sense of half a loaf from local reporting? Stories will go on for pages, even for days, without ever connecting the dots or providing a true context. They may beg the Big Picture — the overriding trend or practice that might actually make us care; instead we get the Little Picture. Crackers and cheese instead of the prime rib.

On The Times side, today’s banner is about a humble Sammamish vendor who makes fire-resistant t-shirts for the military. Seeking to expand his business from the Army to the Marines, the guy ran into InSport, a big corporation whose megadollars lobbied an “earmark” for t-shirt contracts — can you believe this — without a bidding process. Welcome to our post-Halliburton, no-bid-contract world…although the story doesn’t actually go all Big Picture like that. What we have instead is the reliance on polite talk for corrupt practices: bribes and kickbacks become earmarks and sole-source contracts. I for one would be interested in this guy’s suggestion about what to do, and how he might vote in 2008. Make me care…heck, make him care about the story.

Of course, even relatively tame investigations like this won’t happen under media consolidation, which is set to go forward today despite near-universal opposition at public hearings, in congressional hearings and from anyone with half a brain. In the hmmm dept., the story got A1 treatment from The Times and nary a Top 10 mention from the P-I. For today’s Reader Quiz and the chance to win a trip on the purple streetcar, can you tell me which newspaper is locally owned?

The P-I does, however, wring its hands over the closing of the Crocodile, days after anyone who cares knew about it (or suspected its imminency), the taxonomy of the scoop (I think it was The Weekly this time) somehow escaping the pit-bullish reportorial skills of the newspaper staff: “Word of the closure spread like wildfire Monday through the city’s music blogs…” Oh come on. I told my daughter about this last Thursday. And no mention of the Big Picture here either: The Showbox gets sold, the Croc shuts down. Other than being small crowded venues for up and coming bands but sitting on prime real estate prized by greedy developers, they have nothing in common.

The Times also takes a stab at relevancy with an update on the let-nature-run-its-course theory of disaster management. Dot not connected: Floods are hardly a “natural” occurrence, as The Times itself showed Sunday with the Chehalis debacle. “Flood risk is only going to get worse, scientists say. That’s because of two converging trends: climate change and development…” How about the trends of “insatiable greed” and “self-destructive stupidity”? Too Big Picture…

Finally, we bring you a new feature, inspired by Goldy’s and my debate yesterday, the Local Headline That Ran Elsewhere. Today’s donor is The New York Times, whose lead Business Day coverage, The Price of Growing Fuel, features a Portland brewery owner looking really disgusted at the skyrocketing price of barley. Also pinched by a hop shortage, some breweries are even going out of business, leaving us HAs with lamentably fewer places to cry in our beer. With that, we provide a radio segue only a true aural rebel like Goldy would ever use, to our weekly reminder for Drinking Liberally…Darryl, take it away!!!

CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Tuesday and dropped in on the volatile northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk, a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Baghdad confirmed.

How long does it take before we stop calling them “surprise visits to Iraq”? At some point, if your Secretary of State has to sneak into the country just to check up on things, the “surprise” is more about the lack of security in Iraq and less about a fun winter visit to Mesopotamia.

[UPDATE]

A fun search to do.

Golly, gee! That’s a lot of surprises! One of these days I’d like to see our diplomats visit the sandy shithole place where all this success is happening without the flak helmets and evasive maneuvers.

Besides, when is the last time Condi has paid a “surprise” visit to someplace like Canada?

It’s Tuesday, so the FCC must be voting on media consolidation:

More on the topic.

Amnesty would stamp a congressional seal of approval on the Administration’s warrantless spying. If Congress immunizes the telecoms for past violations of the law, it will send the message that Congress approves what the Administration did. We would be aiding and abetting the President in his illegal actions, his contempt for the rule of law, and his attempt to hide his lawbreaking from the American people. Voting for amnesty would be a vote for silence, secrecy, and illegality. There would be no accountability, no justice, no lessons learned.

[…] Think about what we’ve been hearing from the White House in this debate. The President has said that American lives will be sacrificed if Congress does not change FISA. But he has also said that he will veto any FISA bill that does not grant retroactive immunity. No immunity, no new FISA bill. So if we take the President at his word, he is willing to let Americans die to protect the phone companies. The President’s insistence on immunity as a precondition for any FISA reform is yet another example of his disrespect for honest dialogue and for the rule of law.

It’s painfully clear what the President’s request for retroactive immunity is really about. It’s a self-serving attempt to avoid legal and political accountability and keep the American public in the dark about this whole shameful episode. Like the CIA’s destruction of videotapes showing potentially criminal conduct, it’s a desperate attempt to erase the past.

Via Crooks and Liars.