Archives for November 2007

I hate to get into the business of reporting the future — because sometimes the future proves me wrong — but the big headline nobody seems to be reporting today is that Simple Majority seems likely to pass. Darryl first pointed this out Saturday night, when it was still trailing by about 11,000 votes statewide, and by the end of the day yesterday the gap had narrowed to 2,620. EHJR 4204 is a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the 60-percent supermajority requirement for passing local school levies.

I’d previously argued that low turnout and the lack of partisan contests meant there was no discernible message coming out of Tuesday’s generally disappointing results, but the repositories of conventional wisdom argued otherwise, seeing the defeat of 4204 and Prop 1, combined with a win for Tim Eyman’s ridiculous I-960, as clear signs of an imminent tax revolt. It is in this climate of fear that Dems promise to reinstate one-percent limit on property tax revenue growth after Eyman’s unsustainable I-747 was tossed out by the Supremes. Hmm. Maybe they should have waited a few days before falling on their swords?

What little evidence there was of voter rebellion is steadily dissipating as late absentees continue to be tallied here in Western Washington… you know, where most of the state’s people actually live. Simple Majority seems on its way to passing, while I-960’s once convincing election night performance is heading toward squeaker territory. And while the controversial Roads & Transit measure was soundly defeated, Medic One, the only countywide property tax levy on the King County ballot, is passing with an astounding 83-percent of the vote. So I-960 barely passes in a low turnout election. Yeah, that’s some tax revolt.

The truth is, taxes pay for things that voters want, things like schools, Medic One, and cleaning up after windstorms. They also sometimes pay for things that voters don’t want. And unless they intend to finally do something about our state’s bizarrely regressive tax structure, I think Dems would be better off giving voters what they want, rather than pandering to a Republican minority whose sole goal is to cripple government

I forgot to post this…

This is an open thread

UPDATE: Apparently response from developers has been so thunderous that Google is now offering to pay them to write programs. Yeah, that’ll work…

I’m playing catchup on this, but my take on Google’s new phone platform, Android, is a lot less breathless than what you might have read elsewhere last week. Promising to turn cell phones into pocket PCs, whatever that means, Android was front-page news here in Silicon Valley, and even in The New York Times, which also effused editorially. I consider Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer closer to the mark, though, in calling it a mere press release and “a bunch of words.” That’s what I love about Steve, he never speaks in code. Ballmer of course took the opportunity to boast about Windows Mobile’s staggering success on 150 different handsets from 100-plus operators. Silly me, I can’t name a single one.

But Ballmer knows mere press releases when he sees ’em, as any veteran of Microsoft FUD knows. My favorite example will always be the hugely trumpeted mid-1990s Microsoft At Work (MAW!) initiative to put Windows on all office machines — copiers, fax machines, printers. That one was front-page news, too. Unless I missed something, though, I never saw a “File/Edit/Format” etc. interface on a fax machine.

The fact is, these industry-wide initiatives get lots of feel-good ink and very little traction. Standards, as a friend likes to joke, are useful mainly for giving everyone something to unite against. If they were really crucial, digital camera makers would have figured out the best interface for setting and unsetting automatic flash, for example. Remote controls would all have the “Enter” button in the same place. And cell phone makers might even agree on where to put the SEND button.

As it stands, phone makers have little incentive to adopt a Google platform because 1) it gives any of their really good ideas (albeit rare) to their competition, 2) they lose the ability to differentiate features (often tied to handset UIs) from competitors, and 3) the bulk of any monetization of the platform (in this case, advertising) is sure to go into the already deep pockets of Google.

The other reason this thing won’t go anywhere, though, is the curiously unchallenged role of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It so happens that Schmidt sits on the board of Apple Inc. and is a BFF of Steve Jobs. So if Android is a mobile platform and the iPhone is a mobile platform, isn’t that what you call your classic conflict of interest? Apparently Schmidt is skating this with one of his engaging winks and some vague blather about the ecosystem of mobile technology nurturing many forms, but in reality what it says to me (absent a shareholder revolt) is that, yeah, the whole enchilada is meaningless. Apple can keep doing its closed iPhone thing (although my bet is that after its AT&T commitment runs out, we’ll see iPhones on other carriers as well) with no fear from Google’s putatively open-platform let’s-all-hold-hands-and-sing “press release” … while Ballmer pouts about someone else getting lots of attention for a hollow gesture. Android is just a straw dog to freeze potential competition to the iPhone till Apple can license it to other vendors or build a monopoly so fast and strong it doesn’t matter what the phone makers do. Whether conflict of interest or backroom collusion, the whole thing deserves regulatory inspection.

Till then, the annoyingly named Android — and by the way, why didn’t anyone ask what the name means, other than the company that Google bought…and shouldn’t it have been called Handroid instead? — is something everyone can smile and nod about. Isn’t that nice, we’ll all be able to IM one another and post photos to Flickr when the next earthquake hits. Remind me to check back in a couple of years. About then, hopefully, Google will be announcing an open platform for digital camera software.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Is the Democratic majority torture?
Newly confirmed US Attorney General Michael Mukasey couldn’t tell us whether water-boarding is torture, but for many of us progressives, the lack of resolve of the Democratic majority in Congress is. In what I hope will become a regular feature on the show, Daily Kos frontpage editor Kagro X joins me for the hour to discuss the Muskasey confirmation and other issues of national import.

8PM: Election recap rewind
Former state Democratic Party chair Paul Berendt and former state Republican Party chair Chris Vance join me by phone for an on-air reunion and a recap of Tuesday’s election. A Republican resurgence? A tax revolt brewing? A bad night for Dems? Or was it just a really, really, really low turnout election? Tune in and find out what the ex-chairs have to say.

9PM: Where does Sound Transit go from here?
Last night Josh and Erica seemed almost buoyant about the prospect for a transit only ballot measure in 2008 or 2009, but this morning the Seattle Times comes out with mostly roads “Plan B” I’ve always predicted. Sound Transit Director of Policy, Planning & Public Affairs, Ric Ilgenfritz joins me for the hour to talk about the failure of Prop 1, and what if any future there is for Sound Transit and light rail expansion.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

I filled up the van in Palo Alto and paid $3.81 a gallon, a new personal record. I felt so proud, doing my bit to get American kids killed in Iraq and start a nuclear war with Iran. In reality, of course, I support $10-a-gallon gasoline, so long as the obscene profits go to light rail and renewable energy instead of the oily companies and Bush’s fatcat pals.

It’s intriguing, comparing the psychology at the pump today with the Arab oil embargo back when. The issue then wasn’t price but supply. Americans were outraged when they could not actually mosey on down to the gas station and fill ‘er up any time they felt like it. They kicked Carter out of office for it. So as long as there’s plenty of gas, it seems, folks are not going to get unruly, no matter what it costs. But here’s a safe bet: If a Dem gets elected President, we’ll be back to gas rationing before you can say Homeland Security. And it’ll all be the Democrats’ fault.

Normally you get tens of thousands of people in one building over a weekend, you figure on a lot of garbage. At the Greenfest here in San Francisco (coming to Seattle in April), you get a glimpse into the future of trash.

It’s called compost. Inside the concourse are big bins for throwaways marked liquids, recyclables and compostables. Last year’s Greenfest managed a 96 percent success rate in keeping garbage out of landfills. This year they’re aiming higher.

Here’s how: All food is natural, much of it is organic and/or vegan, and there’s no meat (or animal milk). So all uneaten food is compostable. So are plates, cups, bowls and so on, most of them paper or a similar fiber-based product. As for utensils, they’re potato or corn. You’re done eating, you don’t have to separate out the plastics from animal byproducts and the dishware. It all goes into the compost bin.

Much of this has to do with screening of vendors by Greenfest organizers. The festival was founded, and remains spearheaded, by Global Exchange, which has done more for Fair Trade than just about any organization extant. Greenfests are billed as “parties with a purpose” to promote environmental, social justice and community causes around the world.

So what’s to keep this year’s Greenfest from reaching 100 percent sustainability — no landfill junk at all? “Well, there’s these things,” said one of the trash-monitors, holding out an energy bar wrapper. They may look and feel like paper, but they have foil liners, sometimes with plastic sealers as well. Their ingredients may boast organic this and natural that, but their containers are anathema. Maybe by the time the festival makes it up to the Convention Center April 12-13, even those wrappers will be history.

Random sightems: More people are bringing their families to Greenfest, so this year an entire section was set aside for “Green Kids”… I didn’t see any on display but ran across a card for Portland’s Natural Burial Company showing off the “Ecopod,” a coffin made of recycled paper. Fine for you and me, but would this make sense for Republicans — I mean, with all the toxins in their system?… You’ve seen electric bikes, you’ve seen foldable bikes. Now there are electric foldable bikes, tipping the scales at 37 pounds. That sounds lighter than it is, but for their intended use you’re probably not going to be racking up e-f-ables. The speed and range are variable depending on cargo and your BMI… I didn’t go hear him, but the line for Deepak Chopra stretched across and down the street more than a city block…

My wife Cecile, who was on the program here and is involved in the Seattle event planning, came up with a new rallying cry for localism. Talking about how we Phinney Ridgers had helped defeat the Zoo garage and turn relentless garage booster David Della out of office, Cecile said our new motto (inspired by Jesus in “The Big Lebowski”) is “You Don’t Phuck with Phinney!” Despite the fact there’s no Phinney in ‘Phrisco, it got a big laugh.

I’ve just returned to the Seattle area after an extended spell on the East Coast, and missed all the election brouhaha back in Washington State. So now that I’ve returned, I’ll share a couple of thoughts about those elections….

Last week I spent a couple of days in Chapel Hill, NC and then flew into Reagan/National Airport near Washington, D.C. From there I jumped on the MetroRail (a.k.a. The Metro) and within 15 minutes of leaving the airport got off at Foggy Bottom and walked a few blocks to a friend’s apartment. That night we took The Metro to some other part of D.C. to eat dinner at a funky Japanese-Mexican fusion restaurant. The next day we grabbed the metro again an visited museums. In fact, I used The Metro repeatedly in the week I was in D.C—and always with a big ol’ smile on my face. This afternoon, I took The Metro back to Reagan/National for my trip home. I LOVE The Metro. I travel to D.C. once or twice a year for work, and I almost never have to take a cab (and rarely a bus) because of that wonderful MetroRail.

Man…I can’t wait until Seattle becomes a real city too. You know, one that includes a rail-based regional transit system.

So, it is really too bad about Prop. 1 (RTID). To the fools who voted against it, I just have to say, haul your ass out of Seattle once in awhile and visit a real city (like Chicago, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, D.C.). Folks in real cities consider a rail-based transit system absolutely essential.

Okay…off my soapbox.

The other thing I want to mention is this…it sure looks to me like Joint Resolution 4204, the school district tax levy Constitution Amendment thingie, is going to be approved.

This evening I went to the Washington State election results page and the vote spread has narrowed considerably.

Right now 4204 is down by 11,000 votes. But King County still has some 90,000 absentee ballots to count. If the absentee ballots break at roughly the same proportion as the tally so far, my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that 4204 is going to win by about 8,000 votes. It looks to me like absentee ballots counted in Snohomish, Thurston, and Watcom counties—all largish counties that voted in favor of 4204—will easily offset most of the other counties. (Pierce is the only big county that went against 4204.) That means the King County absentees are really going to decide this election.

I predict that 4204 will be approved by a narrow margin and a mandatory recount will be required, which will ultimately uphold the original vote. And Gov. Christine Gregoire will have to declare a state of emergency as Republican heads all across the state spontaneously, and nearly simultaneously, explode.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: The Stranger Hour election recap
What better way to recap a strange election than with Josh and Erica from The Stranger? (It’s always nice to get a fast-talking Jew on the show for a change of pace, huh?) Is light rail dead? Is the GOP reviving? Are the Democrats a bunch of spineless cowards? Tune in and find out.

8PM: Funny thing happened on the way to the studio…
I’ve lived in Seattle for 15 years now, and from the looks of this week’s election I still can’t make heads or tails of the place, so who better to explain things to me than local comedian Joe Vespaziani, who joins me in studio for the hour. Joe is a regular at local comedy clubs; you can hear him on his recently released CD, “Ribbed.”

9PM: GOP FCC MOUSE?
FCC chair Kevin Martin gave only five days notice in announcing last night’s public hearing in Seattle, apparently hoping to suppress attendance. It didn’t work. Jonathan Lawson and Amanda Ballantyne of Reclaim the Media deserve much of the credit for publicizing the meeting and turning out such a passionate and boisterous audience. They join me in the studio to discuss the politics of media consolidation and what’s at stake.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

Carless in Seattle:

This is the first salvo in the post-Prop 1 debate, and the gates are wide open for every proposal under the sun. I know the pro-bus, anti-rail Left is going to do their damndest to kill more light rail–assuming we get a chance to vote on mass transit independently from roads. I beg the pro-bus, anti-rail Left to think twice about this, and here’s why: we rail supporters and mass transit users don’t believe a word of what you’re saying, and if we split, the pro-asphalt crowd will win.

Read the whole thing.

…doesn’t mean that the nightclub doesn’t deserve it, Dan.

From the P-I:

In a move that is sure to rile Seattle’s hipster crowd, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels wants to shut down another Belltown nightclub.

Nickels said it was not an attempt to extinguish all night life in Seattle but a public safety issue.

Nickels has asked the state Liquor Control Board to suspend the license of Ximaica, a bar at Second Avenue and Blanchard Street, after an alleged incident last month in which two patrons were allowed to enter the club while brandishing guns. Club employees failed to call 911, according to security at a neighboring club.

I know this club (I live within a few blocks) and they’re fucking clowns. They have fights every night (almost), and their music is plainly audible from a block away. All of this says “please shut me down” in no uncertain terms. They’ve been asking for it.

Also, you gotta love the first line of that P-I article. Right after midnight, it read “sure to rile Seattle’s non-voting hipster crowd,” but I guess they thought that was pouring it on a bit much.

This past week Rep. Jim McDermott suggested that Congress participate in a nationally-televised Iran war game. The exercise would help Congress and the American people evaluate the consequences of an attack on Iran.

“We know the Pentagon has conducted war games to examine the casualties and consequences of a U.S. military strike against Iran….We should too.”

“Think what we would have learned if we had done it before Iraq.” It’s hard to argue with that!

(This and some 60 other media clips from the past week in politics are posted at Hominid Views.)

If FCC chair Kevin Martin thought he could depress turnout at tonight’s public hearing on media consolidation by scheduling it with only five days notice, he shouldn’t have located it in Seattle. By 7PM, Town Hall’s 800-seat auditorium was comfortably full, with more people still streaming in. Even now, over three hours into the proceedings a large crowd remains, with many more people milling about downstairs. I think it a safe bet to estimate that over 1200 people will have come through the doors by the end of the night.

The audience is not only large, but extremely enthusiastic, and almost entirely opposed to the FCC’s proposed rules loosening limits on cross ownership and consolidation. It is also (gasp) bipartisan. The meeting opened with live statements from Gov. Chris Gregoire, AG Rob McKenna, state auditor Brian Sonntag, and KC councilmember Reagan Dunn, plus prerecorded statements from Sen. Maria Cantwell, Rep. Jay Inslee and Rep. Dave Reichert. Needless to say, all opposed the rule changes. A panel of speakers including Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen and KVI radio personality John Carlson also spoke to the commission, and again, overwhelmingly against the rules. Indeed, the only speakers the FCC could find to support further media consolidation were a handful of representatives from media companies that would benefit from the rule changes.

Meanwhile, over 251 audience members have already signed up for a two minute speaking slot — if everybody gets their turn we’ll be here for another eight hours! And of the dozens of concerned citizens who have already spoken, only one has argued in support of loosening ownership rules… my colleague and KTTH morning host, David Boze. (Talk about a brown nose. I sure hope that’s not what it takes to get ahead in today’s corporate-owned media, because if it is, I’m screwed.) Each speaker (except for Boze) has been thanked with loud and boisterous applause, a level of enthusiasm all the more amazing considering we all realize that the Republican majority on the FCC has already written the rules and made their decision, and that this whole hearing is little more than show.

I’m not sure how long I’ll stick around, but I’ll certainly post more later….

UPDATE (11:30PM):
I gotta admit, I couldn’t sit through the whole thing, so I went out for a drink, but I just got back, and it’s still going strong… maybe 200 people still sitting in the audience, more than seven hours later. Amazing. Over 280 concerned citizens signed up for their two minutes to speak, but they’re planning to shut things down at midnight. According to Andrew, who’s been live blogging the whole time, only a couple people have spoken in favor of loosening the ownership rules.

You can argue the merits of the proposed rule changes all you want, but one thing is absolutely clear from this FCC hearing… the public is overwhelmingly opposed. Nearly unanimously. This whole hearing may be a farce, but if so, the people here tonight are playing their roles with passion and verve.

San Francisco’s sixth annual Green Festival opened today, cosmically juxtaposed with a nasty oil spill in San Francisco Bay. The best and worst, simultaneously in real time, that’s Cali for you. I wanted to be on hand not just because this is the grandaddy and you can talk to Kevin Danaher himself while strolling down the aisles, but also because Greenfest is coming to Seattle for the first time next April. “We think it’ll be huge,” Danaher told me, recounting how Chicago’s first event last May drew more than 31,000. “They were lined up two hours before the doors opened,” Danaher said. Keynoter Mayor Daley was going around saying “his festival this, his show that,” Danaher laughed. “I don’t care if he takes the credit, in fact, it works better if he does.” That’s good, Kevin, because we’ve got this Daley groupie mayor in Seattle…

I’ve been coming to the Greenfest since the beginning, when it was funky, crowded, sweaty and a bit contradictory as too many plastics and toxins were still in evidence. This year’s event, though, has to be the cleanest yet (last year only 4 percent of all the waste generated during the three-day event drawing 35,000 people found its way to the local landfill; we’ve come so far since Woodstock). On exhibit are flushable green diapers, highway-certified electric scooters (62 mph, 66 miles on a charge), artworks made of recycled chopsticks (so if you happen to get hungry…) and hemp oils, underwear, energy drinks, garden furniture, smokes. Er, I made that last one up. Unlike Hempfest, Greenfest is only about the planet.

Anyway, this year’s show is the graying of green, as it reminds me of the countless tech fests I used to go to back in the day. Free goodies everywhere, Clif bars, Organic Valley cheeses, Real Foods apples and bananas, Fruitabo fruit leather, Seeds of Change chocolate, lots of mags and lit, all portable in bio plastic or canvas bags. More suits (albeit natural fibre) than tie-dyes, and lots of big-ticket items like cars, adventure travel, homes. Green is going corporate all right, and no harm in that. Like I kept hearing, the price of oil isn’t going down any time soon.

A lot of the stuff here will be familiar to Seattle greenies, but a couple of booths caught my eye. One had paper products made from elephant dung all the way from Sri Lanka, which seemed fine till I caught myself unconsciously putting its promo sheet in my mouth to free my hands. Apparently elephants are being killed in Sri Lanka not for tusks (few have tusks) or for hides but because they get in the way of agro-business. If they can find a way to make money off elephants, the reasoning goes, the farmers will stop killing them. Not sure how many trees it saves, but one elephant churns out 500 pounds of poop a day.

My show fave is Reware, which makes solar-powered backpacks you can plug your cell phone or iPod or whatever into for recharging while you cycle along in the sunshine, or even, um, bright cloudy days like we have in Seattle (they’re waterproof too). There’s even a fold-out cordura panel for recharging laptops. The bags are pretty sturdy and you can even puncture a panel and have them keep working. You mainly want to avoid surface abrasions (like a sandstorm, for instance) on the clear plastic. A Kenya user sticks his on top of the roof of his jeep. Other folks use them to trickle-charge their car batteries parked at airports during long road trips. And so on. Really clever. I’d write more except my PowerBook is running out of juice…

It is not often that I find myself passionately on the same side of an issue as the likes of Frank Blethen and John Carlson, but that’s the Bizarro World alternate universe I’ll find myself in later today as I join them at Town Hall voicing opposition to the proposed loosening of the FCC’s media ownership rules. This is the FCC’s sixth and final public hearing on media ownership rules, and to show you how much the Republican majority on the commission fears a public backlash, they scheduled it with only five days notice.

All the more reason to fill Seattle’s Town Hall to the rafters. 4PM to 11PM, 8th & Seneca, Seattle.

If you want less localism, less original reporting, less diversity and less independence, then by all means stay home tonight and watch Deal or No Deal, or Friday Night Smackdown. But if you care about maintaining the vibrant and independent media that is final guarantor of our democracy, then I urge you to join me tonight in expressing righteous outrage.