Search Results for: 10,000

10,000 immigrants, refugees and their allies are expected to descend on Pioneer Square this Saturday, in what is surely to be one of the largest pro-immigration reform rallies in the nation. So I wonder… will our local media bother to muster the same kind of coverage they routinely lavish on a couple hundred angry teabaggers?

If history is any indication, I’m guessing not.

Nearly one in six Washingtonians are Latino or Asian and 12.3% are foreign born. Immigrants comprise 14.2% of the state workforce, and pay 13.2% of state and local taxes. And of course our state’s vital agricultural industry is as dependent on immigrant workers, documented or not, as it is on the vast network of dams and ditches that irrigate its fields.

But although “New Americans” — naturalized citizens or the U.S.-born children of immigrants — account for 7.5% of Washington’s registered voters, and despite the huge impact immigration reform would have on our state’s residents and economy, the immigration reform debate receives surprisingly little attention from our local politicians and journalists beyond the usual hyperbolic sound bites.

Well, you can help the establishment types take notice and join the Stand Up in Seattle for Immigration Reform Rally, Saturday, April 10, in Seattle’s Occidental Park. Gates will open at 11 a.m., and the program of entertainment and featured speakers is scheduled to start at noon, so please stop by and show your support for rational, humane immigration reform.

I know it’s not quite as compelling a story as a few dozen angry old white folks with scary, misspelled signs, but together, perhaps we can make up in numbers what we lack in a marketable trope.

Minutes ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average broke the 10,000 mark for the first in over a year… yet more evidence, I suppose, of President Obama’s failed economic stimulus policies.

After reporting a quarterly loss of $56 million ($968 million in its commercial airplane division), Boeing announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs in 2009.

That number includes the 4,500 job cuts previously announced, mostly in the Puget Sound area.  And how many of the remaining 5,500 job cuts will target our region?  According to the P-I, “some“… with the cuts being spread across the company geographically.

Considering that almost half of Boeing’s 162,000 employees are in WA state, I suppose we should expect to absorb almost half of these newly announced cuts.

I few thousand here, a few thousand there… pretty soon this starts to add up to a bad recession.

Sometimes, the Seattle Times makes it too easy to criticize their endorsements. Really, Frank, what were you thinking??

• Jim Kastama for Secretary of State?
• Steve Hobbs in WA-01? They even suggest writing him in for the special election in the old WA-01.
• Dual endorsements for the US Senate (Maria and Whatshisface from Spokane), WA-02 (Larsen and some random Republican), and WA-06 (Derek Kilmer and the richie-rich 1%er from Weyerhauser)?

Even when they get one right, they often get something wrong. Consider state Supreme Court Position 8. In that particular race, with only two candidates on the ballot, the primary will decide who earns a full term on the Court. Like everyone who actually examines the candidates, the Times is endorsing the appointed incumbent, Justice Steven Gonzalez. His opponent is a little-known “strict construction” type, whose sole attribute is that he bears an Anglo-Saxon name. It’s well known, of course, that odd results may ensue in low-turnout, low-information elections. It’s also well known that in such races higher ballot position is a distinct advantage (the other guy’s name is above Justice Gonzalez’s on the ballot), and unfortunately it’s also known that in a state with Washington’s demographics a non-“ethnic” surname is a big edge in low-turnout, low-information races.

That’s why I find it rather disingenuous of the Seattle Times to have chosen the photo of Justice Gonzalez displayed here when they published their endorsement on July 5. Mr. Gonzalez certainly looks, well, ethnic in this image.

But that’s not at all the way he looks these days. For that matter, it’s not what he has looked like for quite a long time. For example, video of the news story broadcast on KING-5 when Justice Gonzalez was sworn in is shown below. That video was shot on January 9, 2012, fully six months ago:

As further evidence, I offer several additional recent photos. The first one shown below is from his page on the Supreme Court website. Presumably, it’s his current official portrait. Also displayed here is a shot from his campaign’s photo page. Now, I could have chosen one of the three pictures showing him with a beard, but I instead picked one of the 48 clean-shaven photos. Incidentally, all of the with-beard photos on the campaign site show his facial hair in a much softer, much gentler, less “bandito” light than the one attached to the Times endorsement. (Yes, that’s Edgar Martinez with him.)

How difficult would it have been for the Seattle Times to locate a current photograph of the candidate they were endorsing for a vital spot on the state’s highest court? Is it presumptuous of me to ask whether anyone of the editorial board of the Times noticed that Justice Gonzalez was clean-shaven when they interviewed him in preparation for making their endorsement decision? Yet they still chose to accompany their endorsement of the Justice with a picture that could easily play into the worst preconceptions held by voters in the low-turnout, low-information primary election for Supreme Court Position 8.

After a knock-down drag-out fight over I-1000, I’m still pretty amazed by the margin of victory bestowed to the initiative I worked to pass:

58% to 42%

I-1000 won in every country west of the mountains, and won 11 out of 20 counties on the east side.

You know, for such a “controversial” issue, voters seemed be able to cut through the baloney pretty easily. Campaign-types like myself would like to take credit for this, but I think the credit belongs to my friend Nancy and others:

Nancy’s husband Randy died an awful death. His allergy to morphine, combined with a particularly nasty manifestation of brain cancer, resulted in one of the five percent of deaths that can’t be eased with palliative care. Nancy’s husband knew he was going to die a painful, undignified death, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do for him. Until now.

Folks have been talking past Nancy for most of the past year, arguing that I-1000 is a basic human right, or that I-1000 will result in full-scale euthanasia. It’s easy to bash Booth Gardner, or to slam the Catholic Church. Nobody wants to talk about Randy and the humiliation he went through.

Whatever. For 57.77% of the voting public, some issues are less complicated than the headlines would suggest.

A report by Progressive Future and the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center listed I-1000 as one of the best voter initiatives in the United States this year (you can see their full report in PDF form here). This is good news for several reasons, one of which being that progressive groups are seeing the value of promoting liberty as the road to achieving the goals that progressives want to achieve. If you go through the report, you’ll see that a number of the initiatives were chosen because of an emphasis on limiting government interference with our decisions. That’s how the progressive movement can succeed in this country.

In addition to this endorsement, former Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber cleared up another piece of propaganda being spread around by I-1000 opponents:

You may have seen the story of a woman on the Oregon Health Plan that makes the insinuation that services covered under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act are prioritized over chemotherapy because it costs less for patients to die than to live. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Unfortunately, a poorly worded letter to this individual contributed to that mistaken impression. Since then, the political campaign against I-1000 has made it difficult for the public to get the facts. I would like to set the record straight.

Like most insurers, the OHP covers nearly all chemotherapy prescribed for cancer patients, including the multiple rounds of chemotherapy this patient received. The request for second-line treatment was denied because of the drug’s limited benefit and very high cost.

When the Oregon Health Plan went into effect in 1994, it was backed by principles that remain relevant today, including a process for setting health care priorities that reflects a consensus of social values and considers the good of society as a whole.

As I’ve explained previously, the argument that we must limit our choices out of fear of what could happen within our broken health care system is pure folly. It’s no different than saying that we should outlaw abortion because it could allow for health care providers to cover abortions but not cover the cost of having the child. As Kitzhaber points out, the hysteria whipped by the I-1000 opposition is completely baseless. Patients in Oregon are not at risk of being told that they won’t receive proper health care because of their death with dignity law, and neither will patients in Washington.

Three former Washington State Governors have endorsed the Death with Dignity Initiative I-1000, Republican Dan Evans and Democrats Booth Gardner and Gary Locke. A fourth, Republican John Spellman, is opposing the measure. I’d been planning to write a final post about all of the myths and lies being spread by the I-1000 opposition, but Spellman’s recent editorial in the Seattle PI contains enough of them that it serves as the perfect springboard for this post anyway.

It is not often I publicly disagree with my former gubernatorial colleagues, Booth Gardner and Daniel Evans. While I respect them both, I must firmly disagree with their support of the assisted suicide initiative, I-1000.

Both frame the issue as one of strictly personal choice. But what’s at stake is actually much broader. Derek Humphrey, co-founder of the Hemlock Society, has asserted repeatedly that euthanasia and assisted suicide will inevitably prevail in our society because they make economic sense.

Think about that for a second. What on Earth is he saying? Obviously it’s cheaper to have people with serious illnesses die sooner rather than later. But when economics enters the picture, it’s no longer a matter of strictly personal choice. Do you really think that, once implemented, assisted suicide will remain merely a “personal choice,” isolated from not-so-subtle coercions of everyday life and magically protected from health care rationing?

Yes, I do, and we can look at Oregon for the proof. Oregon’s law has been on the books for 10 years now, and there’s absolutely no evidence that it’s moving any closer to being anything other than a personal choice. No one anywhere wants coercions, and no one anywhere is talking about coercions. As in Oregon, only the terminally ill individual makes the choice under I-1000, not doctors, not health care providers, not family members, not the government. The belief that I-1000 will lead to an end where people have less choices has no basis in reality.

[Read more…]

There’s been a lot of conjecture around these parts over whether doctors in Washington support I-1000. Carol Ostrom provides some hard data:

In July, the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA), which represents nearly 7,000 doctors in Washington, said it opposes the measure and that its “opposition was emphatically voted on” at last year’s meeting.

In fact, WSMA members never voted on the initiative.

And a survey WSMA commissioned last year actually found slightly more doctors approved of the provisions of I-1000 than opposed them.

In the survey, completed by Elway Research, 50 percent of doctors responding said they would support a measure like I-1000 while 42 percent would oppose it. Female physicians were more likely to support such a law.

In addition, I-1000 does not force dissenting doctors to certify patients under the law if they have moral objections to it. This is an initiative that respects choice for both doctors and patients. And this is why the similar law in Oregon has been so effective.

I don’t have any personal anecdotes to explain why I support I-1000, the Death With Dignity Initiative. Unlike Geov, I’ve never been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Unlike Goldy and Michael, I’ve never been beside a loved one whose once vibrant life was replaced by something barely recognizable in the time before their passing. And unlike Jesse, I’ve never had a job that put me so close to death and dying.

But I-1000 is personal for me. It can be personal for anyone. End of life situations can be complicated – they can be heart wrenching. And they are always unpredictable. Even as a healthy person in his 30s, I know that if I’m ever at a point where my death my imminent, the biggest tragedy for me might not be the death itself – death is inevitable and mostly out of one’s own hands – but finding out that the government is limiting the options I have because it doesn’t trust me with the ability to make my own choices.

We talk a lot about liberty when we discuss politics. Regardless of one’s particular orientation, we all tend to think that we’re coming from the standpoint of maximizing our own liberty. But while many talk about their liberty, not everyone follows the famous advice from Thomas Paine:

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself.

This truism extends to a number of our political debates today, as we often see politicians and partisans hold two completely opposing viewpoints on a subject depending on whether or not they or someone else is affected by it. When it comes to the opposition to I-1000, what many people see as government protecting their liberty is nothing more than a restriction on the liberty of others. What they desire is a system where government makes our choices for us because the decisions are difficult and potentially painful. This is the real slippery slope of I-1000.

I-1000 opponents will often come up with scary stories within a law like this. They imagine scenarios of being coerced into taking one’s own life or being overcome by the feelings of being a burden. These types of scenarios exist, but I-1000 does not create them, nor would it make them more common. I-1000 does not cause the insurance companies to do the wrong thing or a relative to lust after your inheritance. But I-1000 does prevent those people from dictating the choices you make at the end of your life. I-1000 ensures that the decision about how you die can be made by you, and no one else. Anyone who says otherwise is either lying about the law or does not understand it.

Many people desire a higher authority who protects them from themselves. I have no problem with such beliefs. But where I do have a problem is when the people work to make their own personal higher authority the higher authority for everyone. Government should exist to create systems that protect people from the things that we can’t control as individuals – the environment, natural disasters, unexpected health problems, the shifting winds and complexities of the economy. But government should not exist to tell us what decisions we make at an individual level that relate to our own moral compass – unless of course those decisions directly impact the public at large. The opponents of I-1000 are crossing that line – attempting to make choices that should be left up to individuals and their loved ones, without government interference and without having to submit to anyone else’s religious doctrines.

This is why I-1000 is personal for me. I’ve seen a growing desire in this country to have government take on the role of moral nanny in many ways. The end result of such a movement is undoubtedly a loss of liberty and a loss of our desire to be free adults, fully responsible for our own choices. This is why I feel compelled to speak up and this is why I’m working so hard to make sure I-1000 is passed – even though I’m far from being in a situation where the law would ever apply to me. As Thomas Paine knew, and as we still understand today, protecting liberty is not just about protecting your own freedom, but making sure that you live in a society where everyone’s is protected.

Please vote Yes on I-1000.

I am a man with disabilities.

Moving HURTS.

My walking stick has been in my family two generations.

Like many people, I have disabilities you can not see. But the being a gimp thing is pretty damn obvious.

Back before I became a crip, I was a paramedic and a flight medic.

I worked as a paramedic for almost ten years. Houston, Little Rock, Tucson & South Tucson, Oakland, and up in the mountains doing rope work. The videos you see on television of medics going down hoists out of helicopters with red crosses on them, into floods, ravines, and mountains? That was me. I flew all over the western United States in both little prop planes and on high-flying Lear Jets. I worked in big-city inner-city neighborhoods — the ghetto — and I flew above it all as a flight medic. Except for the moments when I dropped in and pulled someone out.

All that is behind me now. Even walking hobbling to the bathroom hurts.

Some people, who claim disabled status, are lying about I-1000, the Death With Dignity initiative. They claim it is a trick to put down folks like me, people with long-term chronic injuries or medical issues. They are liars trying to scare people.

Don’t be fooled.

Death With Dignity has NOTHING to do with people with disabilities. That is a vicious, cruel, dishonorable lie.

I’m going to tell you the truth:

If you’re a cripple or a gimp or a wheelie, or just so hurt you don’t know how you can take it some days, I-1000 doesn’t apply to you AT ALL. Nada. Nicht. Non. Not one fracking bit. The ONLY people Death With Dignity applies to are people who are TERMINALLY ill.

If you have a disease which multiple physicians sign off as fatal, that you’re going to DIE and die soon, then and only then can YOU request a dose. That’s it. It is your call, no one else.

None of this has anything to do with people with disabilities. Not a thing. If you have pain, get a good pain doctor. It’s amazing how much pain can be managed with meds these days. I KNOW. I take pain and associated meds every three to four hours around the clock and have for years. Most of the time they work.

Here’s my point. Pain hurts. Disabilities suck. But Death With Dignity isn’t about people with disabilities. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.

Don’t listen to the liars.

Unless what you have is fatal NOW, unless you are dying NOW, Death With Dignity has jack shit to do with you. Because it only applies if you are dying NOW and multiple doctors say so.

In that final moment, I know I want my mother, my children, myself, to be able to be as PRESENT, as AWARE as possible. When death comes — and it is coming, one death to a life, that’s the way it works — I want my eyes to be open so I can watch the transition happen.

Death With Dignity allows this to happen.

The liars would have you believe otherwise. That it has something to do with being a gimp, a cripple, a wheelie, or otherwise a person with a disability. It does not.

Death With Dignity has to do with YOU and the people you love; with being in charge of your life… and your death… when it is time. YOU, and your doctors, and your family, will know when it is time.

Right now it is time, please, to Vote YES on Prop. 1000.

[Jesse Wendel is the Publisher of Group News Blog.]

Dad looked ready for space travel lying there in the ICU.

Tubes and wires hooked him up to costly machines precisely recording the metrics of his inevitable and upcoming demise. He didn’t have to do a thing, the robots were taking care of business: collapsing his lungs and filling them up; feeding and watering him; transporting the leftovers through expensive hoses to labs for weighing and measuring.

We had all the information but on his dying day (which stretched achingly to two and a half) we didn’t have Dad. The pain drugs and the impressive medical equipment jammed down his throat prevented him from speaking to us, his gathered family.

What we could do was wipe his brow, hold his hand, and make uncomfortable, one-sided conversations to be answered by the whoosh, whoosh of the breathing machine, the last sound we’d ever hear out of him.

He wasn’t in any pain, they said, but how could we know?

What was important was the letter of the law. And that every last minute of “life” they could get out of him was spent on this earth, and damn everything else. What we had was a familiar piece of meat in suspended animation. It was like a mortuary viewing except he was alive and we knew that only because the lines on the monitor were not flat.

I don’t want to go that way, he’d complained months earlier, get me a gun. No, we cried, the thought sickens us.

My mother wouldn’t allow the legal option depriving him of food and water; the silly woman wouldn’t watch her husband die of starvation and dehydration.

My Dad died a bloodless, soulless death over which he had few choices — dignity wasn’t one of them.

It was somebody else’s death, not his own.

Please vote Yes on I-1000.  It’s the compromise between the not-so-benign neglect of starving someone to death, and the violence of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. It puts dying back in the hands of the dying.

For me, it’s that simple.

[Michael Hood publishes the media blog BlatherWatch.]

Former Governor Booth Gardner’s Death with Dignity Initiative (I-1000) officially qualified for the November ballot this week. Carla Axtman from Blue Oregon reflects on the campaign to bring the original Death with Dignity law to Oregon ten years ago.

When Tim Eyman files an new initiative, his buddy in the AG’s office, Jim Pharris, pretty much lets Tim write the ballot title himself, and that’s how the initiative is generally described in the press, because you know, it’s printed on the ballot that way, and you wouldn’t want to confuse voters.  But when hundreds of volunteers work for months to get a grassroots initiative on the ballot, the ballot title suddenly isn’t good enough for the style-setters at the AP.

The AP has decided to refer to I-1000 as the “assisted suicide” measure, which not only is the term everybody knows polls the absolute worst, it is also completely inaccurate.  And confusing, because there is no “assisted suicide” measure on the ballot.  I-1000, which backers refer to as the “Death with Dignity” initiative, will appear on the ballot with the following title:

Ballot Title
Initiative Measure No. 1000 concerns allowing certain terminally ill competent adults to obtain lethal prescriptions.

This measure would permit terminally ill, competent, adult Washington residents, who are medically predicted to have six months or less to live, to request and self-administer lethal medication prescribed by a physician. Should this measure be enacted into law? Yes [ ] No [ ]

Opponents wanted the ballot title to contain the phrase “assisted suicide” but a judge determined the wording would be intentionally pejorative, which I can only assume is why the AP decided to use it.  And since the AP sets the standard for most other news organizations in the state, that’s how this measure is going to be described to voters.  It’s like handing the measure’s opponents a million bucks in free advertising, and the folks at the AP know it.

Impartial, fair and balanced objectivity… my ass.

The I-1000 Death With Dignity initiative is holding a press conference at 1PM today to announce that they’re turning in the signatures required to make it onto the November ballot:

Former governor Booth Gardner, a well-respected leader of the death with dignity movement, who has called this his last campaign, will speak about his support for aid-in-dying. Volunteer Nancy Niedzielski, whose husband died of brain cancer, will also share her experience and discuss the reasons that it is important to decriminalize death with dignity.

I’ve been a pro-choice advocate on this issue for a long time and I’m excited to volunteer to help get this initiative passed. If you would like to help out, visit their website and sign up.

The deadline for turning in signatures for the Death with Dignity Initiative 1000 is next week. Supporters turned in the first batch of signatures yesterday. There will be a press conference on Wednesday, July 2 at 1PM when the remaining signatures are turned in.