Archives for May 2014

I am not a reporter and HA is not a news site. Just thought I’d take a moment to make that clear.

It’s been a couple months now since I left The Stranger and yet I’m still getting phone calls, text messages, and emails asking me to show up at some press event or another, or badgering me about why I haven’t shown some important issue enough love, and the answer of course is, because it’s not my job. Absent a steady (if meager) paycheck, I’ve been forced to take on some regular contract work that leaves me free to pursue my journalistic passions without conflict or compromise, but which doesn’t leave me much time to do it.

So to be clear, I have not returned to HA as a full time blogger. I will continue to post to HA on a regular basis—mostly political commentary and media criticism—but I simply cannot afford to write for free full time. And since there’s only so much time in the day, my first obligation when divvying up my work schedule has to be to the people who are paying me money.

It sucks, but that’s the way capitalism works, folks.

The five-plus years I spent as a full-time independent blogger were the most gratifying work years of my life (my three-plus years writing at The Stranger a bit less so), and if there are patrons out there willing to subsidize my folly, I would gladly recommit myself to the project. But for the moment, I can’t. And so to all my friends in the broader progressive community who have come to rely on me to cover your issues and events, well, tough nuts. I’ve got bills to pay and deadlines to meet. Welcome to the new HA.

I’d been meaning to comment on Danny Westneat’s recent column suggesting real estate development impact fees as an alternative to the current round of proposed tax increases, and I want to start by thanking Danny for at least attempting to think creatively on the issue. Really. I’m a big fan of using one’s media presence in the service of public brainstorming.

That said, while I’ve got nothing against them in theory, I don’t think impact fees can or should be a big part of the solution here in Seattle.

For example, take Danny’s inspiration: being crowded onto a sweaty No. 8 bus. “By state law impact fees can’t be used directly for transit,” Danny writes. So then, um, what’s the point? Seattle’s transportation benefit district—the same authority Mayor Ed Murray has proposed using to raise vehicle license fees and sales tax in order to buy back Metro bus service cuts—also has the authority to levy impact fees on commercial (nonresidential) development. But that’s not going to add any service hours to Danny’s No. 8 bus.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t use this authority to help fund roads and stuff, just that it does nothing to solve our immediate crisis.

Second, the notion of charging residential impact fees (Danny says that Bellevue charges $2,600 per house and $1,300 per apartment unit) would run headlong into Seattle’s efforts to address our city’s growing affordable housing crisis, both by making new housing more expensive, and potentially more scarce. Furthermore, anything that holds back new construction ends up adversely impacting property tax revenue, as new construction is exempt from I-747’s absurd 1 percent cap on regular levy revenue growth, and thus the engine of revenue growth in general.

Third, the logic of impact fees just doesn’t hold in a dense urban center like Seattle the way it does in a sprawling suburb, where new developments on virgin residential land often require the construction of new roads, new sewers, new fire stations, new schools, and so forth. Most residential development here in Seattle consists of in-filling in areas where all of these basic services already exist, so it just doesn’t carry with it the same sort of additional public infrastructure costs as a new suburban subdivision.

But finally—and this is my biggest complaint with Danny’s solution—impact fees do nothing to address the heart of the problem: our refusal to tax the people who can best afford to pay higher taxes. You know, the wealthy!

Implicit in Danny’s column is the acknowledgment that Seattle’s public services and infrastructure are underfunded. He’s not arguing with the need to expand bus service, maintain our parks, or fund universal preschool. He just seems to think that the latest round of proposed taxes are too much for the average taxpayer to bear. That’s debatable, but if you presume that it’s true, simply shoving the burden onto the backs of newcomers isn’t much of a solution. Instead, we should be looking for ways to ask our under-taxed wealthy to pick up more of the cost of maintaining the city in which they prosper. Not just out of fairness, but out the very pragmatic logic that they are the people with the most extra money to spare.

I look forward to Danny joining me in attempting to brainstorm a solution to that vexing problem.

Tuesday is election night, with primaries in Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. There is bound to be some surprises and, with the Idaho gubernatorial GOP primary alone, much entertainment. So please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. The starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks show up before that for dinner and the early election returns.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state chapter of Drinking Liberally over the next week. The Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters also meet this Tuesday. The Lakewood and South Seattle chapters meet this Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Woodinville and Spokane chapters meet.

With 209 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Seattle City Council members Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant announced today a plan that would avert scheduled bus service cuts within Seattle through increases in the commercial parking tax and the employer head tax. You know, just like I had suggested.

“I have asked our policy staff to research exactly how much revenue could be raised through these means, and to begin drafting legislation to introduce to the City Council,” said Licata in a prepared statement.

Unlike Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed vehicle license fee and sales tax package, or the competing property tax proposal, hikes in the commercial parking tax and the employer head tax could be passed councilmanically without having to be put to voters. The council could pass these tax increases now, in time to avert the first round of Metro cuts that are scheduled for September. The other packages couldn’t go to voters before November, well after the first round of cuts are implemented.

Also unlike the other proposed taxes and fees, the commercial parking tax and the employer head tax aren’t particularly regressive. So that’s a big plus in their favor.

While only Licata and Sawant have put their names on this proposal, a birdie tells me that at least one or two other council members have expressed interest. So there is a real shot at preventing in-city bus cuts entirely instead of just preventing them from getting any worse.

Last fall I walked into the McDonald’s on Madison Street in Seattle to order myself a metaphor. The point was to demonstrate how incredibly cheap fast food is by historical standards, and how little impact a $15 an hour minimum wage would really have on fast food prices.

I estimated that even if the entire cost of raising the minimum wage to $15 was passed on to consumers (and it wouldn’t be), menu prices would rise by only 20 percent, tops. Probably closer to 16 percent. Maybe as little as 10 percent.

And considering that, adjusted for inflation, the same 15 cents that bought you a McDonald’s hamburger back in 1948 buys you a $1.49 double cheeseburger today, it’s hard to argue that consumers can’t afford to pay a little bit more for their burgers.

Friday I walked into that exact same McDonald’s and paid $1.69 for the exact same double cheeseburger, a 13.5 percent price hike in less than six months. And yet for all the warnings from the industry that higher prices would drive away customers, it was business as usual at the Madison Street McDonald’s.

The fact is, restaurants and other businesses implement price hikes like these all the time, for various reasons, and nobody notices! In the worst case scenario for franchise owners under the proposed minimum wage ordinance, their labor costs would rise by no more than 18 percent a year over three years, before being indexed to inflation. But labor only accounts for a third of their costs. Pass all of that along to consumers (and again, they won’t), and you are looking at just a 6 percent annual price hike—less than half the rise in double cheeseburger prices just since December.

To put that in perspective—using the industry’s same minimum-wage-hikes-equals-higher-prices math in reverse—if all of the gains from a 13.5 percent price hike were passed on to employees in the form of higher wages, Madison Street McDonald’s workers would be making about $13.35 an hour today! Just from charging the equivalent of 20 cents more for a double cheeseburger! A price hike that customers apparently accepted with a shrug, if they noticed at all!

So let’s not pretend that fast food franchisees can’t afford to cover the cost of raising the minimum wage to $15 over three years, when they routinely pass on to consumers similar cost increases all the time.

– On Friday I had a breezy piece on the filing deadline. Joel Connelly has more info.

– Spitting, Stalking, Rape Threats: How Gun Extremists Target Women

– I’m excited about a possibility of a coal free state of Washington (Columbian link).

– You know the GOP are extreme on immigration when their leadership won’t even let the ENLIST Act come up for a vote.

– Rep. Matt Manweller’s plan to put a surcharge on one concert venue only to pay for medical bills seems maybe not as thought out as he would like.

– In Which I Cross All Limits To Acceptable Human Law

– Anyone enjoying museum week?

Last week’s contest was a tough one, it went unsolved as of Saturday morning. It was Rosario, Argentina.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere in the state of Hawaii, good luck!

Deuteronomy 28:53
And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.

Yummy. Discuss.

Got student dept? So do these politicians.

Greenman: Dark Snow Project, 2014:

Massive Right Wing March on Washington to Overtake the Government:

• David Pakman: “Patriotic” group march on D.C. to drive Obama from office.
• Young Turks: Operation American Spring!!!
• Maddow: Arrest Obama, Pt 1
• Maddow: Arrest Obama, Pt 2
• Sam Seder reports on “Operation American Spring” that calls for millions to overthrow Obama.

Thom: Why Mitch McConnell should be fired for VA Death Panels.

Liberal Viewer: Are most terrorists Muslim?

Ann Telnaes: Chris Christie is back to his charming self.

Stephen takes on #BringBackOurGirls.

Pap: Big Pharma’s deceitful practices.

The Totally Normal Idaho GOP Gubernatorial Primary Debate:

• HuffPo: Lessons from the Idaho GOP Primary debate
• Highlights from the great Idaho debate.

• Young Turks: Idaho GOP debate gets kkkraaaaaaazzzzzyyyyyy.
• Chris Hayes: The Cartoonish GOP debate
• More highlights from Idaho.

Stephen calls BS on Amazon’s newest patent.

Thom: The GOP is no different from Boka Haram.

Donald Sterling’s inner monologue.

Jon explains India’s election.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Jon on Rush on Michelle on the kidnapped Nigerian girls (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Mental Floss: The surprising hobbies of many well known persons.

Sam Seder: The humiliating GOP Obamacare hearing.

Thom: Cliven Bundy is The Ugly American.

John Oliver’s How is this Still a Thing? Dressing up as other races.

BENGHAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZIIII!I!!11!!1!!!!!:

• Mark Fiore: Learn to speak BENGHAZI.
• Ed: Republicans engage in some more dishonesty….
• Sharpton: Why GOP’s Benghazi witch-hunt will never be Watergate.
• Ari Melber: The GOP fundraising stunt, Part I
• Ari Melber: The GOP fundraising stunt, Part II
• Alex Wagner: The big GOP recycle job, Part I
• Alex Wagner: The big GOP recycle job, Part II

White House: West Wing Week.

Stephen does Glen Greenwald.

Young Turks: White bred Republicans.

WaPo: The private life of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Morgan Ferretti: Brain damage and other awful things.

Dr. Karl Rove, M.D.:

• Young Turks: Karl Rove’s latest dirty trick
• Stephen is worried about Karl Rove’s brain AND ass.
• David Pakman: Hillary’s brain injury.
• Sam Seder: Disgusting Rove
• Jon: Donald Sterling and Karl Rove.
• Sharpton: KKKarl Rove gets schooled.

David Pakman: Right wing policies are literally killing women.

Eric Schwartz: STFU Ann Coulter:

Jon: The Media receive a miracle!

Thom: Why can’t we all be Sarah Palin?

Ann Telnaes: One man…lots of votes.

Young Turks: Free health clinics are closing…THANKS ObamaCare!!!

The FCC wishes happy 25th to the World Wide Web.

Sam Seder and Ari Berman: The Voter Fraud Myth.

Rubio Goes to School:

• Young Turks: Prof. Marco Rubio (R-Nutsville) on anthropogenic climate disruption..
• Sam Seder: Rubio thinks he knows more about climate change than climate scientists.
• Ari Melber: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul & the GOP’s “Flat Earth Society”
• Chris Hayes: Rubio and the GOP Climate Denialists
• Ed and Pap and Gov. Schweitzer: The dull brain of Marco Rubio.
• Joy-Ann Reid: Rubio on climate.
• David Pakman: Rubio is no climate scientist.

David Pakman: Even Mitt Romney says raise the minimum wage.

Jon rips Harry Reid for his Koch obsession and Adelson amnesia.

A Republican explains Godzilla:

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

It snuck up on me this year, but it looks like if you had to file for office, in Washington, your chance is up. Here’s the list for Congressional, legislative, and court races.

Not much jumped out at me, but I will say as a history/civics nerd, kudos to Mike The Mover for running on the National Union Party line. Not enough to make me vote for him if I lived in the district, but well done nonetheless.

With the last few days so nice, a lot of people have decided to take their bike to work (yay!). And some of those people are riding on the otherwise bus only 3rd Avenue Downtown (boo?). Most of the time, as someone who bikes and takes buses in bike and bus lanes, I love that they exist, and can mostly coexist. Going from Downtown to Ballard in either mode is enhanced by lanes that bikes and buses can both use. And normally when someone complains about those damn bikes in the car lanes, the proper response is to complain about how poorly they must be driving if they can’t get around and to remind them that the roads are for everybody.

But 3rd Ave, at least during rush hour, isn’t for everybody. It’s to get buses as quickly through downtown as possible given how shitty the rest of Downtown is for traffic. If you slow down a car that was already inching along, or that could go around, it’s not as big of a deal as slowing down a bus in a corridor where that isn’t the case.

And look, I realize that 2nd and 4th are one way, and on a hill, so it can be problematic to ride a bike from one to the other to get going the right direction. And I’m certainly not advocating ticketing bicyclists like they ticket cars. It’s one of the few situations where I’m not sure it’s better to have bikes.

Really, Ed? It’s not even worth talking about?

Murray said Thursday he let the group know that the city council is not prepared to rework a Memorandum of Understanding between the city, county and Hansen to build a Sodo arena for a hockey team ahead of an NBA franchise.

“They wanted to explore the possibility of opening the MOU so a hockey team would go first,” Murray said. “My read right now is that opening up the MOU is not something the council is interested in at this time.”

Why? Why on earth would we be unwilling to even consider reopening the MOU in the interest of bringing an NHL team to Seattle? I presume, because Murray just wants to kill the whole McGinn-branded SODO arena deal. You know, because.

Sorry, sports fans. If he can’t stamp his name on it, he’s not interested.

This July, five Washington medical marijuana patients will be tried in federal court in Spokane. The plight of these defendants, known as the Kettle Falls Five, has started to gain national attention. Despite the passage of I-502 and the overwhelming popular support across the nation for allowing the use of medical marijuana, the ugliest aspects of the drug war continue in this state, if only in the parts where fewer people live.

The facts of the case are relatively simple. On August 9, 2012, police came to the home of 70-year-old Larry Harvey and his 55-year-old wife Rhonda Firestack-Harvey in Kettle Falls, WA. The Harveys had a collective garden of marijuana plants used to provide relief for themselves and three others patients – their son, his wife, and a family friend – all with valid doctor’s authorizations. Here in Washington state, where an attempt to create a fully regulated medical marijuana distribution system failed in 2011, this was still the only proper legal avenue for medical marijuana patients to provide for themselves.

During this initial visit by police, Harvey was in violation of state law in only one way. He had too many plants in his garden. Collective gardens are limited to 15 plants per patient with a maximum of 45. Many gardens have tried to get around the maximum limit by establishing multiple plots on a single property, but officials generally don’t allow that when they come across it. As a result, police confiscated the 29 plants over the limit and left them with 45.

In most parts of the state, that would be the end of it. Here in very rural Stevens County, it wasn’t. A week later, another group of law enforcement officials showed up. These were federal officials, and federal law still maintains that any amount of marijuana is illegal. During this raid, they took all the plants and confiscated their car, motorcycle, ATV, computers, cash, and several legally owned firearms. The U.S. Attorney’s office for Eastern Washington is charging all five as drug traffickers, using the confiscated firearms as justification for the harsh charges. Because of federal mandatory minimums, all five are facing minimums of a decade or more behind bars.

Ever since Obama came into office, there have been assurances that the federal government will respect state marijuana laws. But the memos issued by the DOJ to provide guidance have given individual U.S. Attorneys enough leeway to bring about these types of senseless prosecutions. In Washington, the more liberal western half of the state has been more lenient. In the more conservative eastern half, under U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby, we’ve seen several prosecutions of individuals who were attempting to comply with state law.

In the end, five individuals who pose no threat whatsoever to society will be sitting in a Spokane courtroom this summer fighting to stay out of jail for decades. None of these individuals were doing anything different from what thousands of other Washington residents have been doing. And yet, because of the way federal trials are stacked against defendants, none of the five will be able to present evidence that they were medical marijuana patients or that they were attempting to comply with state law. None of those facts are relevant in a federal trial so federal judges routinely bar those defenses from being made.

Even worse, the seriousness of the charges being thrown at these defendants comes from the fact that they were also legal gun owners. Even putting aside the fact that gun ownership in rural Stevens County isn’t unusual, folks who maintain medical marijuana gardens across the state are at a higher risk of having armed intruders trying to rob them. It makes sense for them to be armed. They’d be crazy not to have guns for their own protection. Yet this fact has allowed Ormsby’s office to charge these five innocent people as if they were operating as some kind of dangerous drug cartel. This is completely insane.

It’s hard to accept that this level of bullshit still happens in Washington in 2014. When this trial begins in July, adult residents of Spokane will be able to walk into newly-opened state-licensed retail stores and buy marijuana for recreational use. Yet this trial will continue in that same city, within a giant bubble of bullshit carefully crafted to blindfold the reality that the Harveys are the real victims here. Hopefully, the pleas to Attorney General Holder will be heard and this outrageous abuse of power will be ended before then.

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray released a 22-page proposal (pdf) today for implementing high-quality universal preschool in Seattle, starting with a four-year demonstration project that would serve 2,000 three- and four-year-olds in 100 classrooms by 2018. If approved by the city council, a $58 million property tax levy ($14.5 million a year) that would add about $43 a year to the average Seattle homeowner’s property tax bill would be put before voters on the November, 2014 ballot.

(FYI, while the document is boldly labeled “Mayor Murray’s Proposal,” it is largely the result of an effort led by city council member Tim Burgess long before Murray was sworn in as mayor. So credit where credit is due.)

I’ve only just skimmed the proposal, so you’ll have to wait for a more detailed analysis, but my initial response is that it is very thorough, very promising, and not quite as ambitious as I had hoped for.

During the demonstration period, enrollment would be open to all 4-year-olds, and all 3-year-olds from families earning less than 300 percent of the federal poverty level ($71,550 for a family of four). Tuition would be free for students below 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($47,700 for a family of four), and subsidized on a sliding scale based on income. Families up to 600 percent of poverty ($143,100) would pay no more than 40 percent of the project $10,700 per student costs.

That’s a bargain. So of course demand will far outstrip supply. Enrollment will be prioritized to children already in the program (the previous year’s three-year-olds), children with siblings concurrently in the program, and geographic proximity to the classroom. The plan calls for prioritizing the initial placement of classrooms in neighborhoods with the lowest levels of academic achievement. These enrollment and location priorities will tilt demonstration project access to Seattle’s neediest families.

The stated 15- to 20-year goal is to serve 80 percent of of all three- and four-year-olds from families under 300 percent of poverty by 2035. Which like I said, could be more ambitious. But considering the existing constraints on both classroom infrastructure and trained teachers, the demonstration program looks like a very good start.

Again, this is a very thorough proposal, so a more thorough analysis will have to wait. But with both $15 minimum wage and universal preschool proposals working their way through council, 2014 is shaping up to be a very exciting year.

In the comment threads at HA and elsewhere, some critics have shrugged off the looming Metro bus service cuts in suburban and exurban King County by asserting that most folks out there already have cars. Eliminate the less efficient feeder routes, they argue, and just focus on providing more park and ride spots. Which I suppose would be a welcome solution for Mercer Islanders accustomed to fighting for spots at its overcrowded park and ride.

But for the suburban poor, not so much.

The problem is, not everybody owns a car and not everybody who does own a car can really afford one. According to AAA’s annual Your Driving Costs report (pdf), released just this week, the average cost of car ownership is $8,876 a year.  By comparison, a full-time worker earning the Washington State minimum wage of $9.32 only takes home $19,385 in pre-tax income.

Of course, you can drive for less. But not as much less as you might imagine. AAA estimates average depreciation and finance charges at $3,510 and $847 respectively. So if you inherited a 15-year-old car from your grandmother, you can subtract that. But older cars generally have lower average fuel economy and higher annual maintenance costs (AAA estimates about 5 cents a mile for normal routine maintenance and wear and tear just over the first five years of the car, plus another penny a mile for tires), so you gotta figure those costs would be substantially higher on your typical beater. As for insurance, sure you can save bucks by declining collision and comprehensive on grannie’s clunker, but the poor generally have lower credit ratings and thus higher insurance rates, and the young (or their parents), well, they’re just generally screwed when it comes to auto insurance.

So when every penny is counted, I’d be surprised if there are many folks who can drive a car for much less than $4,000 a year. By comparison, a two-zone Metro bus pass costs $108 a month.

One of the side effects of Seattle’s booming economy and relatively strong real estate market is that we have been relentlessly driving our middle class families, let alone the working poor, out of the city and into cheaper suburban housing. It’s a tradeoff: longer commutes in exchange for lower rent. But for many households who rented an apartment or purchased a house based on proximity to a bus route that is no longer there, adding a car to their monthly budget just doesn’t pencil out.

Short term, there’s not much Seattle voters can do for suburban bus commuters. But we shouldn’t just shrug off their plight.