Archives for November 2007

I saw this at Washington Outsiders.

The Simple Majority majority is now over 11,000 votes, with about 43,000 ballots left to count, over half from King County. But you know, voters sent an anti-tax message last Tuesday, so what do I know?

…and he’s not excited about paying for a ferry in Kirkland either:

Cook is a South Park computer geek who, through her front window, has a commanding view of what ought to command the attention of King County: the South Park Bridge.

It’s a drawbridge over the Duwamish. It’s 77 years old and feels twice that. With a safety rating of 4 out of 100, it’s the most dangerous road around (the Alaskan Way Viaduct is a 9). Twenty thousand cars and trucks cross it daily.

King County owns this bridge. Engineers say they will shut it in a few years if nothing is done. Money to fix it was in the Roads and Transit plan that failed last week. Now the county has no plan for what to do.

“We aren’t going to be able to come up with the money for that by ourselves,” says Dow Constantine, the councilman who represents South Park.

So it rankles Cook that there the council was Tuesday, approving new taxes for ferries. For flood levees. For mental-health services. Worthy causes all, she said. But what could be more basic, more utilitarian than a neighborhood bridge?

“I don’t understand their priorities,” she said. “How can they just abandon a bridge?”

You know, it’s not like the county hasn’t seen this coming for years. It’s all a matter of setting funding priorities. King County should shelve the ferry to Ballard/Kirkland/Des Moines, cancel plans to remodel Seattle Center (which isn’t their’s to remodel in the first place) and focus on the South Park bridge.

First impressions count, and so the election night meme of a nascent tax revolt continues to hold sway over our political class, despite all evidence to the contrary. Or does it?

Yesterday the King County Council raised three new taxes: property taxes of 10 cents and 5.5 cents per $1000 of assessed value respectively for flood control and expanded foot ferries, and a tenth of a cent per dollar sales tax increase to fund mental health services. That’s about $90 a year in new taxes for the median county household… plus, a 25 cent hike in Metro bus fares. Meanwhile, after a contentious campaign season in which its public subsidy became a major issue, the Port of Seattle yesterday voted to increase its tax revenues by $10 million over 2007, levying 23 cents per $1000… about $92 annually on a $400,000 home.

Opponents of Prop 1 argued that we simply couldn’t afford Sound Transit’s proposed 50 mile light rail extension, and the half cent per dollar sales tax increase that would fund it at a cost of about $150 per year for a typical household. And yet just one week after voters soundly rejected the package at the polls, the council tacks another $90 a year onto our annual tax bill, without raising an eyebrow… or a public vote. Taxes equal to 60-percent of the cost of ST2 got raised just like that, with hardly any public debate. Doesn’t sound like the council fears an anti-tax climate to me. Indeed, I’d wager that Prop 1’s defeat made it easier for the council to raise taxes, as it left more of the tax base available.

So if you voted against Prop 1 thinking you were going to save yourself money, think again. Somehow, someway, you’re going to pay for RTID’s major roads projects, and without Sound Transit competing for your tax and toll dollars, probably a few more projects to boot. Tax revolt, my ass.

Let’s start with the most taxing of all: Your Their Oklahoma City Sonics stunk out the joint against Orlando last night, losing 103-76 in a game that wasn’t that close. Rashard Lewis, one of the two Sonics stars dumped in the offseason by new Oklahoma owner Clay Bennett, had 19 by halftime. The Sonics are now 0-8, and, having lost the last five games last year, have now lost 13 straight over two seasons, a new club record.

Lee may well be right that the plot may be to make the Sonics so bad that nobody will care if they leave, but if so the ploy is backfiring: the Sonics are so bad one can’t help but watch, like a slowly unfolding car wreck or a grisly horror movie. They’re that bad.

The local papers are reporting this morning what HA readers already know: EHJR 4204 is now passing. The measure to allow school districts to pass levies with 50 percent, rather than 60 percent, of the vote, while dropping the requirement of a 40 percent voter turnout, has pulled ahead primarily on absentee ballots from King County, which has solidly supported the measure (unlike much of the state).

King County Council passed three new taxes yesterday: a one-tenth of a cent hike in the sales tax for a dedicated fund for substance abuse and mental health programs; 10 cents per $1,000 valuation in additional property tax to pay to repair substandard flood control levees; and 5.5 cents per $1,000 valuation to pay for new passenger ferry district.

Anti-war protests continued yesterday at the Port of Olympia, where protesters poured cement onto railroad tracks to try to keep trains from leaving the Port with military shipments. The brief, unbylined Seattle Times article on the topic is notable for relying solely on Olympia police as a source, without bothering to pick up the phone and call, you know, anyone from the Port or any protesters. Without any context at all (e.g., the protests that have been going on since last Friday down there), the article is a complete cipher. If you want context, try this much better piece from yesterday’s Olympian.

Nationally, after carefully taking a full working day to consider the seven hours of public testimony at last Friday’s FCC public hearing in Seattle, on Tuesday FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin issued details of his proposal to further deregulate broadcast station ownership, specifically lifting a ban on newspaper/TV cross-ownership in any one market. A tale of two headlines: New York Times: “Few Friends for Proposal on Media.” The always-friendly-to-DC-bureaucracy Washington Post: “FCC Chief Offers New Plan On Cross-Ownership.” Amazingly, neither article mentioned the overwhelming public opposition to Martin’s proposal, choosing largely to focus on the Tribune Co., Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and other large broadcasters that would be affected by the change. The Times’ “Few Friends” headlines refers to broadcasters who want still more lenient rules — not the public that thinks media has already consolidated quite enough, thank you. But then, it’s kind of hard to expect that public concerns would be acknowledged, let alone that we get (God forbid) balanced coverage on this issue, when both the Post and the Times have extensive newspaper and broadcast media properties themselves.

Another disaster, another delayed response. Another round of finger-pointing, another chorus of denial. The San Francisco Bay oil spill isn’t getting the nation-wide attention of Hurricane Katrina, the Minneapolis bridge collapse or the SoCal wildfires, but its aftermath is depressingly similar.

Having been in the Bay Area since the spill happened a week ago, I have no feel for Seattle’s level of awareness. Think of it this way: If inner Puget Sound was coated with brown gobs of sticky goo, if beaches were closed to the public (even to volunteer cleanup), if boats at local marinas had tarred bathtub rings marring their hulls, and if waterfront property owners had days of cleanup on their hands…well, you might be seeing some play in the local media.

Puget Sound and San Francisco Bay have a lot of physical similarities, which makes it all the more puzzling that oil-spill experts from the Seattle area were not hustled down here as soon as the magnitude of the spill became apparent. (They may have been, as were crews from Texas and elsewhere, but it reportedly took three to four days to summon any outside assistance.) In any case, once oil spills in an enclosed estuary, it doesn’t exactly disappear in the wash. Expertise in current patterns, containment technology, weather and other variables is badly needed, and response time is absolutely critical.

So what did we have in the Bay? The Cosco Busan, a 902-foot-long container ship heading out of harbor in a heavy fog, apparently was warned by the Coast Guard that it was on collision course with the Oakland Bay Bridge, but kept going because, as the ship captain evidently radioed back, radar showed the ship position to be safe. One might think you call a time out in this situation to do some trouble-shooting, but the boat kept going. The next thing anyone knew, it had “touched,” as Capt. John J. Cota termed it, a bridge tower. He could have said “kissed,” he could have said “nicked.” But what really transpired was a demolished wood-and-wire tower bumper and a 160-foot-long, 4-foot-deep tear in the vessel’s side. Within half an hour, 58,000 gallons of really toxic diesel fuel had seeped out, the bay’s biggest spill in 20 years.

But we didn’t know that, either. Initial reports were that only 140 gallons had spilled. It took more than 8 hours before the full magnitude of the spill became apparent, more than 12 to send out a full alert. The fog had something to do with this, hindering air surveillance. But let’s face it, some folks weren’t using much common sense, either.

The initial fumble made everything else about the spill just that more awful. Bay Area jurisdictions weren’t notified in a timely fashion. Additional equipment and expertise took that much longer to get in motion. Days after the spill, hundreds of volunteers still were being physically barred from the beaches (at least one was arrested for disobeying authorities) with the warning that they could do more harm than good, and might get sick from the stuff. Hundreds of oiled birds, many dead, were found, the crab and oyster seasons have been affected, and experts say that the bulk of the oil will never be recovered and may play havoc with the bay’s ecosystem for decades. Next to history’s really big oil spills, 58,000 gallons seems like a spitball. But diesel fuel is heavier, more toxic and more persistent than oil, and the Bay is more bathtub than washing machine. The stuff doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Official response has ranged from the ludicrous (Dianne Feinstein called it a “learning experience” — like Exxon Valdez wasn’t?) to the litigious, with one attorney estimating damage claims will total “well into nine figures.” The crew, all Chinese, has been subpoenaed. After visiting the magnificently restored (before the spill) Crissy Field, which must have taken a nasty hit, Nancy Pelosi suggested it might be time to double-hull retrofit fuel tanks of container ships, a costly requirement surely to be resisted by the shipping industry. The Coast Guard, now in high dudgeon, says the incident was “preventable human error” without embracing an iota of culpability. There’s even the suggestion that Coast Guard resources have been so diverted to Homeland Security that it cannot be bothered with mere oil spills any more. But hey, couldn’t anyone at least have ordered the ship to cut engines or something?

Meanwhile, a solitary eeriness haunts Bay beaches during remarkably balmy 75-degree, sunshiny, Indian summer days. If you doubt martial law could succeed in the U.S., all you have to do is spend a little time encountering guard after guard, blockade after blockade, barring access to the Bay’s multitude of public beaches.

Like Katrina, the Minnesota bridge and San Diego fires, the Bay oil spill will fade all too soon into our domestic-disaster woodwork. But one more brick has been laid in a disturbing bulwark of flubbed response and feckless hand-wringing, with the expectation of eventual cultural amnesia and resultant whitewash.

It all may seem like institutionalized ineptitude, starting at the top with G.W. Bush and his pernicious band of neo-con merrymakers. Listening to the Coast Guard commandant on the radio gave me the deja vu of Heckuva Job Brownie and Do Not Recall Gonzales, putting on airs of genial but simple-minded folk in way over their heads.

Instead, watching Bush himself fly over the devastation of Katrina back when, it occurred to me that incompetence is the strategy. We know neo-cons hate government, that they want to, as Grover Norquist puts it, drown the baby. But were they to act like it and execute on it, they know a compassionate and democratic public would revolt. So they simply act like they just can’t do any better. They appoint political hacks to make sure all the public’s money gets given away to their lackeys, and when a real crisis hits they simply fart around. Let the levees breach and the bridges collapse and the fires rage and the oil slime. What better opportunities to show how evil, useless and unnecessary government really is?

King County just dumped today’s results, and added to ballots counted earlier today elsewhere in the state, EHJR 4204, the Simple Majority amendment, now leads by over 5,000 votes statewide.

No doubt there may be a little seesawing over the next few days as ballots get tallied county by county, but this is first time since the polls closed that Simple Majority has been in the lead, and you’ve got to be encouraged by the trend. Late absentees apparently broke for the initiative, and it sure looks like Darryl’s prognostication is being proven true.

UPDATE:
More counties have reported, increasing 4204’s lead to 7,198. Although the ballots left to count number is always a rough estimate, nearly 60-percent of ballots remaining come from counties where 4204 is leading, while late absentees continue to trend Yes throughout the state. If trends continue, 4204 will likely exceed the roughly 7,900 2000 vote margin needed to avoid an automatic recount.

UPDATE, UPDATE:
In the comment thread RonK points out that an automatic recount occurs if the margin is under 0.5% and 2000 votes. My bad. Oh… and the latest count has it up by 6,952.

Join us tonight for a fun-filled evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

No doubt there will be cries of angst over media consolidation and, more importantly, beer consolidation.

Tonight’s activity might just be a redneck handyman contest for the best constructive use of a firearm in the categories home repair, automotive maintenance and politics.

Finally, tonight’s theme song: Rock The Boat by The Hues Corporation.

Not in Seattle? Check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

UPDATE [Lee]: I believe tonight’s Seattle DL is canceled due to Husky basketball.

UPDATE [Darryl]: Naaaa….there WILL be a DL this evening. The Husky basketball crowd will be gone by 8:00, which is when the game starts.

UPDATE [Goldy]: Darryl and I will be there, and that makes it a quorum by my count. If the rest of you don’t show up, that’s more Manny’s for me and Darryl.

UPDATE [Carl]: I’ll be there too, but I’m still two buses away, so who knows when that will actually be?

Kudos to Sam Machkovech at the Slog for making the inevitable comparison between the Sonics situation and the plot of the movie “Major League,” where the widowed owner of the Cleveland Indians wanted to move the team to Miami. In order to do this, she filled the roster with a bunch of washed-up no-names so that the attendance would fall to levels that allowed her to move the team.

If nothing else, the speculation that Clay Bennett is secretly trying to lose for the same reason might be the most intriguing thing about the Sonics right now (they’re now 0-7, the worst record in the NBA). I think we’ll know the fix is in if Jim McIlvaine ends up back in a Sonics uniform sometime this year.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out the strategy of the anti-rail/pro-roads camp. Of course, they wanted most of the proposals in the RTID package — and more — but they knew they’d get most of it without Prop 1… eventually. So while cockeyed optimists like Josh and Erica appear buoyant at the prospect of a transit-only measure appearing on the ballot sometime this decade, “Plan B” is moving quickly apace. And yes, there always was a Plan B, as outlined in an editorial Sunday in the Seattle Times:

• Highway 520 has to be redone before it falls into the lake. While redoing it, it must be expanded to accommodate traffic to job centers in Bellevue and Redmond. Pay for it in part with tolls.
• Replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, either with a new structure or a sensible surface option.
• Perhaps extend light rail to Northgate. The density is already there, but this may have to wait until the first light-rail line opens.
• In Snohomish County, do key interchanges to Interstate 5, expand Highway 9 and improve Highway 2. Pick only the must-dos.
• Pierce County: Do Highway 167. Make that the priority.
• Bring on congestion pricing to change motorist behavior at peak times. In other words, get the most out of roadways we already have.

Huh. Sounds pretty much like the bulk of the major projects from RTID, with the Viaduct thrown in for good measure. As for light rail, perhaps we should extend it to Northgate… you know, if we can get beyond the fiscal reality that Sound Transit lacks sufficient taxing authority to even bond the half-billion dollar a mile project from revenues in the Seattle sub-area alone.

If I were to make a proposal like this, I’d just be talking out of my ass, but the Times editorial board has always been an official organ of the Eastside political establishment, so I’m guessing it was pretty well vetted before publication. And the very next day, surprise….

Now that Puget Sound-area voters have killed the ambitious roads and transit plan outlined in Proposition 1, the state will take back responsibility for replacing the state Route 520 Bridge, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Monday.

“I’ve already asked the Department of Transportation and the Office of (Financial Management) to come up with a new financing plan,” Gregoire said. “We will split off from the Regional Transportation Improvement District, because the 520 Bridge can no longer wait. It needs to be replaced.”

Gregoire said she wants to keep her commitment to begin construction on the 520 replacement by 2012.

If you think the timing is just some lucky coincidence, I’ve got a floating bridge to sell you.

The Kemper Freemanites’ opposition to rail wasn’t just ideological, it was politically pragmatic, for with light rail extension effectively killed for the foreseeable future, that frees up additional tax and toll revenues for other items on their asphalt wish list. They might not get everything they want — the Cross-Base Freeway and the mythical I-605 will likely never see the light of the day — but they’ll get most of what they want, including “hot lanes” and congestion pricing for those who can afford it. Meanwhile, we’ll buy a few buses, append the “Rapid Transit” suffix, and tell the common folk they’re getting a good deal for their money. Sweet.

But then, what do I know? I’m just some dumb blogger, not a savvy political strategist like those polar bear clad geniuses at the Sierra Club and their fellow travelers at The Stranger.

Here’s your noon sandbox, kids.

Sweet jeezy:

King County would take over the Vashon Island foot ferry and try out passenger ferries on up to five other routes on Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with property owners financing the service through a tax levy slightly higher than indicated earlier, County Executive Ron Sims proposed Thursday.

In a letter to the County Council, which also serves as the board of the recently created King County Ferry District, Sims called for a 10-year property tax of 5.5 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

What will they do with these taxes?

Conduct two-year tests of five other ferry routes, beginning with one route in 2009 and adding another each of the next four years. The routes have not been selected, but possibilities include Lake Washington runs to central Seattle from Kenmore, Kirkland and Renton and Puget Sound trips to downtown from Shilshole and Des Moines.

Is this the first step of the “greenest package you have ever seen” transportation plan Ron Sims had in mind? What’s the carbon footprint on one of those suckers? Those diesel engines don’t run gypsy tears or lollipops, that’s for sure! (Or biodiesel for that matter).

Really, what the fuck are we doing even considering putting ferries into Lake Washington when King County’s South Park Bridge is deteriorating before our eyes?

To be clear, I think King County is right to invest in passenger only ferries to Vashon Island, because, well, it’s a fucking island. Kirkland, from what I remember, is not an island, and that Kirklanders manage to get around pretty well without boat service. Even the West Seattle Water Taxi, a sort of quasi-novelty item propagated by West Seattle-based county councilmen from the past and present, seems like something worth keeping.

I find it funny that Sims, who attacked the South Link light rail line for not being “worth the money”, is proposing a new transit system that will have an astronomical per-rider subsidy. Besides, people like to criticize light rail for being “two hundred year old technology,” but what about ferries? Isn’t that, like, four fucking thousand years old?

To recap: Vashon Island ferry, yes. Water Taxi, sure, why not. Ferry from Kirkland to UW? No way.

Seahawks beat the 49ers edition.

* The wingnut welfare squad sure are upset that their publishers cheated them to the New York Times best seller list.

* The scene in The Godfather II where Michael beats up Kate after she tells him she had an abortion is apparently inspirational to crazy people.

* Hillary Clinton is a terrible debater who simultaneously shows too much and not enough emotion. And who was a good debater in real time.

* Those of us who say torture doesn’t work? Alan Dershowitz has the answer for us.

* You need 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate, except when you only need 50.

* I for one don’t miss the old old days of blogs.

* Bush is still our president. Sigh.

Locally:

* Lets not run back to reinstate the I-747 limits quite yet.

* Is there anything about Doc Hastings that isn’t bullshit?

* I think it’s been discussed on this blog once or twice before, but the political class sure knows the meaning of the Prop. 1 failure.

This is an open thread.

Apple Insider has the scoop, with fingers crossed as always: Macworld’s big bust-out will be the long-awaited, much-speculated (including here), disk driveless ultra-lite notebook. Drat, and I was planning to upgrade from my PowerBook next week!

There’s so much pent-up demand for this baby, and combined with the Leopard upgrade it promises to give so much pop to Apple sales, that some boosters have put a target of $350 for the stock price (currently around $155 on profit-taking and general jitters after passing $190). Even conservative analysts are talking $225. So if you’re looking for a safe haven from the weak dollar, the shaky financial market and the DJ index, here’s your chance. You might want to wait till the profit-taking ride ends to jump in. If recent history is an indicator, the stock will roll back up as fast as it unraveled.

Of course it could all be smoke signals aimed at backstopping shares and pimping Macworld…but that would freeze current Apple sales during the crucial holiday period.