Give me a break on your theory of car tabs. The Stranger’s voters guide has never met a regressive tax that they didn’t love.

No worries that schools are ground zero for the culture wars or any mention of where this right wing demonstration happened or how this might impact, you know, education, but a link to “own the right” or whatever the rallying cry is today. My own kids can’t graduate SPS fast enough.

Yeah. The war on drugs was a failure. Are we to believe though that decriminalization has been a success?

@3: a success at making drugged up zombies a normal feature of everyday life on every urban street. junkies hanging out on your stoop petting your cat.

is Drug Decriminalization
a Failure or was it too
Much too soon?

from NPR’s
Fresh Aire:

Why
Oregon's
groundbreaking
drug decriminalization
experiment is coming to an end
--by Dave Davies

https://www.npr.org/2024/03/27/1240892448/why-oregons-groundbreaking-drug-decriminalization-experiment-is-coming-to-an-end

we Choose
not to Fund
mental health
amongst other
Vital Services (for
ANY Industrialized
country Except This
One) and wonder why
we cannot conquer Diseases
of Despair. we could also take
Care of the fucking Citizenry but
ong we gotta LOTTA fucking Billionaires.

Coincidence?

sure!

Oregon's movement was destined to fail. Maybe intentionally. If you're going to do all the decriminalization, you have to have the consequent support infrastructure in place. Oregon did not. Well done you fucking idiots, push us backwards. and give the right-wing nutters more talking points

@7 "Progressives talk about alternatives; however, they don't have alternatives that have been tested, measured, and shown to work"

How is anyone supposed to have the correct amount of time to test and measure and prove viability? Because the pearl-clutching is relentless and leads to these things being stopped long before any sort of success could possibly be shown, as seen here.

this country is devoid of long-term thinkers

Steady rain forecast after 10 p.m. But full marks for relying on the NWSFO forecast page, instead of a TV station's potted version, or someone's Tweet.

@7:

It's pretty difficult to "test and measure" alternatives to arrest and incarceration when the mechanisms for doing so aren't given sufficient time to amass enough data to actually, you know, measure. It's like with gun violence: For decades the NRA effectively blocked ANY studies or collection of information that would have provided empirical data, while simultaneously stating that no such data existed.

I'm wearing my first shorts of 2024 today, and I blame Ashley for it.

@5 It's still a secondary offense so if you get pulled over for speeding and your tabs are expired you will also get a citation for expired tabs and be required to renew them along with a fine to go with it.

@8 It was destined to fail because there is no stick to the carrot. The oft cited Portuguese example of decriminalization works because there are consequences if you don't follow through and people are still arrested for having and using drugs. The progressive model has been to leave people on the street and provide them with harm reduction efforts (e.g. drug supplies) until the addicted person readily accepts help. Then often times if they don't follow through with treatment there are no consequences. That in itself is a recipe for failure no matter how many treatment facilities and service you stand up. Until progressives are willing to accept that many of these people are incapable or unwilling to make rational decisions while under the throes of addiction nothing in going to change. In the meantime for the sake of the rest of society they should be removed from public if they demonstrate they are unable to manage their addiction without negatively impacting others. It's not a solution by any means but its the best we have at the moment.

There are two parts to the car tab tax. There is the tax on each car, and the tax on the valuation of the car. The latter is definitely not regressive. It is flat at worst. The more valuable your car, the higher the tax. The tax on each car can be considered regressive (own three junkers and you pay more than one BMW) but the two taxes may balance out.

In any event we are better off with a regressive tax than no tax at all. Think Social Security. It is clearly a regressive tax. But it has reduced poverty in the elderly dramatically. Or consider Scandinavia. The various countries have high taxes and the taxes aren't particularly progressive. But by raising that much money (and spending it wisely) Scandinavians live better than just about everyone else on earth (by various measures). This includes the large immigrant population.

Given the choice I would much rather have a progressive tax. But if you live in area where that is difficult to impossible (like Seattle) then a flat -- or even regressive tax -- is better than nothing.

Biden keeps saying he'll care when an American gets killed. Well, Americans have ALREADY been killed (and not just in this scorched earth Israeli genocide, remember Rachel Corrie?), but another one (WCK volunteer) was murdered by Israel. Will he care? He doesn't care about violating United States or International laws. He doesn't care about the slaughter and starvation of babies and children (or the slaughter and starvation of men and women). Seriously, Biden needs to GO. He and Trump can have adjoining prison cells for being traitors and international criminals.

I love how everyone in the world believes all Palestinians are terrorists (even newborn babies) when the real enemy of the world, everywhere in the world, are old white men with power and their white supremacist terrorist cult followers like the domestic terrorists of 1/6/21.

Israel believes the only way it can be safe is to murder 2.2 million people.
Israel will never be safe and they are making everyone else unsafe.
And the United States will never be considered anything but a violent bully and if we get bombed by crazy ass motherfucking Putin because of Biden's Zionism? Well, we won't be able to blame Trump for that, no will we.

Fuck Biden.
Fuck Israel.

“No more innocent lives lost”: José Andrés mourns World Central Kitchen team killed in Gaza strike
"They are not faceless…they are not nameless," the Spanish-American chef wrote in a statement Monday.

“The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing,” his post continued. “It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.”

https://www.salon.com/2024/04/02/no-more-innocent-lives-lost-jos-andrs-mourns-world-central-kitchen-team-in-gaza-strike/?in_brief=true

@17: If I understand you correctly, you're saying Biden has said MULTIPLE TIMES that he will START caring about Gaza only when an American is killed there? Forgive me if I'm skeptical that's happened once, let alone multiple times.

@14 if you want to compare this to Portugal then you also need to compare it to portugals prison system. I can guarantee you that unlike ours, it’s not made up of thinly veiled slave colonies designed to do anything but actually rehabilitate

@20 I have no idea what that statement is supposed to mean. A quick search turned up this article which seemed to indicate Portugals prison are pretty awful

https://www.msuilr.org/new-blog/2022/11/3/prison-conditions-and-misconduct-in-portugal

nyt

Fears
Grow That
Syria Strikes Could
Spur Retaliatory Attacks on Israel and U.S.*

Current and former American officials
say the airstrikes on an Iranian
embassy compound in
Damascus were a
serious blow to
Tehran.

Current and former U.S. officials expressed fears on Tuesday that Israel’s airstrikes on an Iranian embassy compound in Syria could escalate hostilities in the region, and prompt retaliatory strikes against Israel and its American ally.

The officials said the attack on Monday, which killed three generals in Iran’s Quds Force and four other officers, had dealt a serious blow to the force, the external military and intelligence service of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Ralph Goff, a former senior C.I.A. official who served in the Middle East, called Israel’s strike “incredibly reckless.”

“It will only result in escalation by Iran and its proxies, which is very dangerous” to American troops in the region who could be targeted in retaliatory strikes by Tehran’s proxies, Mr. Goff said.
--by Eric Schmitt; April

more, recklessly:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/02/world/middleeast/syria-strikes-iran-israel-us.html

all This
Genocide
Just to keep
Bibi outta Jail

mind
Fawking
blown

we get a terrorist attack
Here how does that help
Biden electorally? oh
that's right they're
Awesome at Ex-
ploiting Disas-
ter when it
Strikes.

@15 Agree. Given a choice, I'd support going ahead with the flat 1% income tax that the Washington constitution explicitly allows. If the revenue from it is mainly used to benefit people in the lower income brackets, they'd still come out ahead. But of course that's an even heavier political lift than a progressive tax.

@17 I don't recall Biden saying that, and it seems like something I'd have noticed. Do you have the actual quote?

Regardless, it does appear that the attack on World Central Kitchen was intentional, at least on the part of the forces that carried it out. And it doesn't surprise me one bit. Recall that Israel didn't want to allow any external aid at all into Gaza, relenting only grudgingly when Biden made it clear he wouldn't defend a total siege. I'm sure the Israeli leadership is quietly furious with WCK (and other NGOs brave enough to go in there). This strike may well have been intended as a warning to all of them. And I have no more confidence in a Netanyahu "investigation" than I do in the Supreme Court's "investigation" into who leaked the Dobbs ruling.

@19 silly me, he was threatening Iran and other Middle Eastern countries. He doesn't give a shit who Israel kills.

@25: your hyperbole and exaggerations do you a disservice. Hamas handed Biden a pile of shit on 10/7 - for a conscientious Center-Leftist POTUS, there's no good way to thread this needle.

perhaps you're referencing statements on Iranian-backed Houthi attacks on global shipping in the Red Sea? that's the only recent event I can think of that would constitute threats to Iran and other ME countries.

Evidence shows Israel killed many of its own citizens on Oct. 7, then blamed Hamas
https://www.liberationnews.org/evidence-shows-israel-killed-many-of-its-own-citizens-on-oct-7-then-blamed-hamas/

Biden is the President of the United States. People in this country are suffering immensely. Our government is a shit show -every nook and cranny of it. No money and no weapons from us and there is no scorched earth war on Palestinians by Israel. No money and no weapons from us and there is NO ISRAEL.

Biden was elected to lead this country, not Israel. Biden wants to lead Israel, he can go get elected there. Oh wait, they don't want anything to do with him if he isn't in a position of power to give them whatever the fuck they want with no strings attached.

Biden is a war criminal, violating United States law and International law by arming and funding Israel. Biden is also a war criminal for attacking Houthis, who have every right to control the passage of cargo through that area of the sea. The United States has no jurisdiction there.

Yemen,. already starving to death, is the one country that TOOK CONCRETE ACTION to stop the genocide. South Africa and the ICJ took action, figurative, meaningless action that didn't change anything (other than providing Israel with a list of everything they needed to do to commit genocide when they were told what not to do because that would be considered genocide).

Israel has chosen to go after Iran because they believe the United States will stand behind them and protect them. So we're supposed to enable genocide and bomb the fuck out of the entire Middle East because Zionists think they're some special chosen people? Please.

@25 Since when did you volunteer with the Trump campaign? I would have thought from your previous posts that Trump was an evil you recognized.

@28 Trump is evil. Biden is evil. There is no either/or and there is lesser of two. There is only evil. And being against Biden and his arming and funding of genocide is not working for Trump, no matter how many times Democrats say that it is. Fuck Biden. Fuck the Democrats. They have done this to themselves. To many of us they have finally been thoroughly unmasked. This country is just fucked no matter what, no matter who, always will be and there is literally nothing to do.

I will not vote for either evil and as a result I will be able to live with myself.

Everything that Xina has written about Israel and the United States of Israel is factual.
How many children, women, human beings, nurses, doctors, aid workers, journalists murdered by Israel does it take for people like raindrop to wake up to the genocide that is happening right now before our very eyes? All you have to do is look.

Many Americans have been murdered by Israeli forces. We can site the servicemen on the USS Liberty, Rachel Corrie, American journalists, nurses, doctors, aid workers etc.
Where the fuck you been democrats, republicans and all those that ignore this hell and fund this mass murder, this land grab, this genocide? You ok with starving people to death? Bombing them to death? Smothering them to death as they die under the rubble?

They are in your way such a nuisance really.

After WW2 there was a ruling that following orders is not an excuse for mass murder.
So what can you say when asked why you defended Israel and put them before everyone else in the world including the American people that you were supposedly dedicated to?

The zionists are just like the nazis. Plain and simple.

Fuck Israel and all the despicable excuses for human beings that defend that terrorist state and continue to fund it. Shame on you may you burn in hell if there is such a place.

26 Hamas did not hand Biden a pile of shit on October 7/23. Biden handed the world a pile of shit.

Palestine was handed a pile of shit in 1947 when israeli land grabbers and their backers
brutally and illegally attacked Palestinians and proceeded to steal their land by force.
From then on Palestinians were imprisoned, tortured, raped, killed and enslaved by zionist israel.

So stop with the October 7 bs and zionist lies. Its all being exposed for the world to see now.

@34 If Biden loses in November, I will remember folks like you and Xina, and laugh my ass off when Trump tells Netanyahu that he's free to do whatever he wants.

I don't give a fuck about what Palestinian activists want, I care about the women and children of Palestine. Right now, Joe Biden is their best hope to survive in the short term, and thrive in the long term. He is the very first US President to openly disagree with an Israeli prime minister. He's also the first to put any limits on US aid. I get that you and Xina are idealists who have checked-out of reality, and expect perfection from our leaders. The adults in the room are the one's encouraging Biden to let his new-found spine do the talking.

I'm curious, why haven't either of you denounced Bernie as a Zionist for not condemning Biden on this?

@23: Yes! More sympathy for Iranian generals! I knew you could do it!

So, to recap: the fundamental religious regime in Iran, violently misogynistic at home, has long funded Hamas. On 10/7, these funds brought terror, rape, and murder to Israeli women. Israel responded to Iran’s terrorism not by targeting civilians in Iran, but by targeting high-ranking Iranian military officers in a foreign land. You complain only about the last. Please do keep up the good work; even as high a number as the 84% of Americans who approve of our support for Israel could go higher, and you’re helping push it there. Thank you!

(Oh, and which is more “reckless”: allowing a brutally misogynistic regime to fund rape with impunity, or teaching a terror-funding regime they could lose top military assets as a result of such funding?)