Archives for December 2008

Mount the studded snow tires, slap on the chains, borrow the neighbor’s Hummer, or strap on your cross country skis. Whatever it takes, please join us for a pre-holiday evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally. We start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some folks will show up earlier for dinner.

If you’re not in the Seattle area, no worries. check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter within snowshoeing distance from you.

Apparently, unlike the state Department of Transportation, and transportation officials in most major cities, Seattle refuses to apply salt to city’s icy roads, for fear of runoff into Puget Sound… which is, of course, salty.  Huh.

Whatever.

No doubt our city’s salt-free road clearing policy is an inconvenience to folks like me without four-wheel drive, but there is a side benefit that every car owner enjoys… our cars last longer out here.  A helluva lot longer.

My first car was a 1964 Mercury Comet, which I acquired shortly after moving here in 1992, and it sure wasn’t the oddity it would have been back in Philadelphia or New York, where road salt would have long ago digested its parts into a pile of rust.  Folks simply didn’t drive thirty-year-old cars back East, unless they were well cared for classics, but hunks of steel like the Comet were a pretty common sight back in the 1990’s, before the invasion of the Priuses.  (Prii?)

So I don’t know how much Seattle DOT’s salt-free diet does to save the Sound, but it certainly saves our cars, thus I and my rust-free, 8-year-old Altima have no complaints.

House prices continue in free-fall.

In the past year the median sales price fell 13.2% — the largest decline since data collection began in 1968 and likely since the Great Depression — to $181,300. Separately, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that U.S. home prices fell 7.5% over the 12 months ending in October, according to a monthly index that includes prices for houses with mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae… (or Freddie Mac.)

At The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz observes:

I find the monthly spin from the NAR laughable. They attribute November’s results to a “weak stock market, job losses and low consumer confidence.” They never seem to recall that Real Estate prices remain too high relative to incomes and rental prices. This is the hangover from the credit bubble.

With the always necessary caveat that there are individual real estate agents and builders who are honest, stand-up individuals, the house building and selling industry bears a huge portion of the blame for this hellish economic mess. It strains credulity to think that the absurd loans and absurd prices came about without widespread criminality and malfeasance.

True capitalists will realize that effective regulation is required in the future. Of course, that won’t stop the stink tank denizens from railing against all things governmental, but I still fail to understand why progressives have to be the only pragmatists.

There needs to be a dramatic change in the zeitgeist in this state and country that defines conservatives in terms of their outdated, delusional and dangerous preconceptions about economics. It’s kind of sunk in, but not widely enough. Neo-liberalism was not only wrong, it failed so miserably that I wouldn’t be surprised if historians someday equate it with the demise of Soviet Communism.

The bidness guys and gals have sneered at everyone for so long, with such utter contempt, that this is the perfect time to teach certain corrupt industries that the government is there to protect all the people, including consumers of major purchases like houses. I mean, you buy a car you get a warranty, you buy a house, well, you know, good luck with that! You should have known the plumbing contractor hired summer help and inspected each pipe yourself before you bought it, and you should have waited out the housing bubble even though you like, needed a place to live.

When the corrupt industry starts its facile whining that they are being “punished” and promise doom and gloom forever, as they do with any proposed regulation whatsoever, they can be sternly reminded that basic consumer rights are not a punishment, they are a normal way to regulate industries that have proven they can’t be trusted. And right now there is no industry more untrustworthy than the house building, selling and finance industry. If restoring the house market requires restoring consumer confidence, reform at both the state and national level is urgently required, seeing as we’re throwing trillions of our dollars at the problem.

Bernard Avishai writes about Hebron and the difficulties that lie ahead in negotiating peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In Afghanistan, it appears that we are dead set on starting a full-fledged civil war. I’m working on a much longer post about how much of a disaster we’ve made there. It should be posted late January.

We often pick on the Seattle Times here for being comically out of touch, but that’s nothing compared to what Scott Henson found in the Dallas News.

It looks like child-rapist Kenneth Freeman will be spending a long time behind bars (some background on my coincidental connection to this case here).

It’s been an adventure riding the buses through the snow this past week. My total commuting time today was 3 1/2 hours. I especially want to give a big fuck you to the 67 driver who refused to stop for me at 78th and Roosevelt this morning. Buses were stopping across the street (on the very slight downhill slope) all morning. But on the other hand, I also want to thank the 271 driver who waited for me as I ran from two blocks away. And to the guy who I bumped into at 50th and Roosevelt this evening who’d walked all the way there from Westlake Center, please feel free to vent in the comments if you see this. You deserve free bus fares for life.

Just spoke with Will, who reported with pride the SUVs braving Belltown’s icy streets to buy crack from the dealers in the alley behind his building.  I guess all it takes to keep our local economy going through this wintery mess is a little motivation and a good, old fashioned, American entrepreneurial spirit.

While one needn’t design a transit system to deal with weather conditions that occur once or twice a decade, it’s important to note the failure of our region’s bus system to operate anywhere near full capacity during our week of snow and sub-zero temperatures.  Light rail and street cars, on the other hand, they can handle nearly anything our Puget Sound climate can throw at them, as long as trains are run frequently enough to prevent the overhead power lines from icing over.

I don’t point this out as some sort of I told you so, or as a bit of advocacy for even more rail, but rather as an observation about differing attitudes toward transit in cities with rail versus those without.  Those of us who grew up in cities with extensive rail systems expect transit to be reliable, because… well… it generally is.  In cities like Seattle however, we merely expect transit to be somewhat reliable, conditions permitting.  Snow, floods, traffic jams and accidents… that sorta shit happens, and bus commuters learn to deal with it.  (Whether your employer is willing to deal with you missing a week or more of work because your bus route was canceled, well, that’s another story.)

I think over time, as more rail comes online, and more commuters grow accustomed to its comfort and reliability, attitudes toward transit in this region will gradually change.  No longer looked down upon as mostly an alternative for folks who can’t afford to drive, we will eventually become both more appreciative of our transit system, and more demanding.  And that’s a good thing.

I just watched a bit of 60 Minutes for the first time in God knows how long, and I learned that Andy Rooney is still alive.  Sorta.

Who knew?

I parked my car by my house Wednesday afternoon, not really believing the weather would live up to the dire forecasts, and there it remains for at least a couple more days, if not a week. Silly me.

Coming from Philadelphia, I know how to drive on ice and snow, and therefore I also know when not to drive.  I have no four-wheel-drive, no traction control, and no ABS, and while I might be able maneuver down my hill without fish tailing into the cars parked on either side… I might not.  The relatively passable Rainier Ave. tantalizingly beckons only a couple blocks away, but for now I can only reach it on foot.

I can’t say I’m bored, but I’m certainly a little stir crazy, so this afternoon I’ll pass some time by hiking a couple miles back and forth to the Viet Wah to pick up a few supplies.  (I’m out of goddamn garlic, and I’m craving fresh ginger.)  And I imagine tomorrow, I’ll take the bus somewhere… anywhere… if only for a change of scene and some face to face conversation.

I suppose I could get me one of those four-wheel-drive trucks or SUVs to get me off my hill on those handful of days every few years when the roads actually demand traction… and, you know… I actually need to go somewhere… but I’ve got a better solution.  A few years from now, the next time one of these big storms hit, I intend to be living walking distance from a light rail station.  Sure, I’ll miss the view from my hill, but I’ll love the year-round convenience.

The answer to last week’s contest was Vienna, VA. The big winner was ‘tgf.’ Extra credit to Toby Nixon for figuring out who actually owns that house. The internet really is a wonderful thing…

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

I’m still annoyed at Obama’s “diversity” justification re: giving Rick Warren such a prominent role in the inauguration. 

Warren leads the fourth largest church in America. It’s not like Warren and his supporters don’t already have a seat at the table in America. 

If Obama was in earnest about celebrating different view points, and he truly wanted to send a message about “the magic of this country” being “diverse and noisy and opinionated,” I bet Jeremiah Wright is available.

It’d be more poignant and symbolic to give the microphone to someone who actually represents a minority view like Wright than to someone like Warren whose church is hugely popular.

In less sarcastic terms: Obama was forced to dump Wright. Why is a hater like Warren any better?

Speaking of desperate Times, more bad news may be coming for the struggling Seattle-area newspaper as longtime advertiser Windermere Real Estate mulls pulling out of the Sunday Times, and taking its four pages a week of advertising with it.  And if Windermere goes, could other realtors be far behind?

In recent meetings, Windermere managers have advised agents of the possible end to the weekly, multi-page advertising buy, which has been a fixture in the Times’ real estate section for… well… forever.  Agents were told that with 87-percent of clients now coming to Windermere via the Internet, management is exploring whether newspaper ads still provide a sufficient return on investment to justify their cost.

Managers also cited what they saw as relentless and overly gloom-and-doomish coverage of the local real estate market on the Times’ front page, complaining that compared to the rest of the nation the local market is actually much healthier than the Times reports.  I guess the thinking is, why spend money advertising in a paper that’s actually hurting your business?

But whatever the reason, chalk up yet another formerly steady revenue source on which the dailies can no longer rely.

Hard times in newspaperin’ everywhere:

Less than a year after moving into a new building downtown, The Columbian newspaper’s newsroom and business staff will return this weekend to its former headquarters in an effort to cut costs.

The newspaper is looking for a buyer for the new building, and the asking price is $41.5 million.

But the threat of bankruptcy — mentioned in October when the building move was announced — appears to have subsided.

Editor Lou Brancaccio is taking stock in the spirit of the season:

I am grateful for those who oppose us and say bad things about us. Does this sound strange to some of you? It shouldn’t. Of course I’m most grateful for those who criticize us in a constructive way. Still, I accept those who simply are bitter. It takes all kinds to make the world go around. Ironically, it is the free press that has helped to guarantee that their bitterness is heard.

Meanwhile the editorial staff itself is brimming over with holiday joy:

Jeers: To the close-minded, agenda-anchored über-liberals who are castigating Barack Obama for inviting Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inauguration on Jan. 20.

Warren’s allies in California are spreading Christianist love all over the court system, with the help of none other than Ken Starr:

The sponsors of Proposition 8 on Friday argued for the first time that the court should undo the marriages of the estimated 18,000 same-sex couples who exchanged vows before voters banned gay marriage at the ballot box last month

Nice.

Look, if Obama wants to call Rick Warren in for a nice chat about why the fuck Rick Warren and his fundamentalist allies think it’s legitimate to revoke people’s basic civil rights, fine. They can talk all they want.

That’s not what’s happening. Warren will be delivering the invocation at the inauguration, with all the attendant symbolism that entails.

Progressives have a moral duty to point out what Rick Warren and his ilk actually stand for, and it’s not a pretty picture, all the glossy trappings aside. If it makes editors feel better to harrumph and snort about how middle-of-the-road they are, also fine, but they’re missing the entire point.

In the latest sign of their increasingly desperate financial situation, the Seattle Times instructed about 500 managers and non-unionized employees to take one week unpaid leave by February 28.  The Times would not reveal the amount of money it expected to save by the mandatory action, only that it needed to achieve cost savings early in the coming year.

Scary time to be in the news biz.

A horrible incident involving alleged police misconduct in Houston Galveston, Texas. More here.