Goldy

Ten years ago today I received the following email from an HA reader:

I think I’ve told you that I’m into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago. He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.

After a little bit of sleuthing I turned the tip above into this scathing post that quickly went viral, transforming FEMA’s inadequate response to the tragedy in New Orleans into a national conversation about cronyism. Within days, FEMA director Mike Brown was out of a job. A month later, while testifying before congress, Brown would blame HorsesAss.org by name for his agency’s failures:

The path this story took—from a single reader’s small piece of specialized knowledge, to a local blogger, to a national blog, to the national media—may not be the first example of the transformative power of blogging. But it’s certainly one of the clearest. And I’ll always be proud to have played my little role.

I am not a Seahawks fan. I will never be a Seahawks fan. At best, I couldn’t give a flying fuck about the Seahawks; at worst, I root against them, if only to return the schadenfreude some local friends and family members have enjoyed in rubbing the Seahawks’ recent success in my face.

One score and seven years since leaving my native Philadelphia, I remain a loyal Eagles fan. And any Seahawks fan who questions the depth of my unswerving loyalty doesn’t really deserve the designation “fan” at all. (Note: this is different from all you Packers fans and Cowboys fans who have no geographic or familial connection to your teams. You’re just assholes.)

Which brings me to my annual preseason rant: Why won’t the NFL let me pay to watch my team?

Yes, DirecTV offers a streaming only version of its NFL Sunday Ticket, but I’m not sure to whom—every zip code I plug in doesn’t qualify. And even if I did qualify, I’m not sure I’d be willing to pay $400 (plus tax, I presume) for 10 or so Eagles games (some are available broadcast, others I’ll miss due to other commitments), let alone the minimum $1,000 or so a year it would cost to fully subscribe to DirectTV and Sunday Ticket.

I don’t want to purchase every out-of-market game. I just want the out-of-market games of one team. My team. The Philadelphia Eagles. So why won’t the NFL let me stream my games legally?

Charge me a reasonable price for a high-quality stream of just one team—say, $200 a season, or maybe $15 a game—and I’ll happily pay it. But if the NFL continues to put its head in the sand and pretend expatriate fans like me don’t have other options, don’t blame us if we look to the black market.

Genesis 11:10-24
Two years after the flood, when Shem was one hundred, he had a son named Arpachshad. He had more children and died at the age of six hundred. This is a list of his descendants:

When Arpachshad was thirty-five, he had a son named Shelah. Arpachshad had more children and died at the age of four hundred thirty-eight.

When Shelah was thirty, he had a son named Eber. Shelah had more children and died at the age of four hundred thirty-three.

When Eber was thirty-four, he had a son named Peleg. Eber had more children and died at the age of four hundred sixty-four.

When Peleg was thirty, he had a son named Reu. Peleg had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty-nine.

When Reu was thirty-two he had a son named Serug. Reu had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty-nine.

When Serug was thirty, he had a son named Nahor. Serug had more children and died at the age of two hundred thirty.

When Nahor was twenty-nine, he had a son named Terah. Nahor had more children and died at the age of one hundred forty-eight.

Discuss.

Revelation 18:8-10
Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, shall bewail her, and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgment come.

Discuss.

Nineteen members of WA’s Republican Senate Caucus (and yes, Tim Sheldon is a member of the Republican caucus) have issued a letter calling on their Democratic colleagues to join them in defying the Washington State Supreme Court over its recent McCleary contempt order. The Senate GOP caucus (the press still dutifully refers to them as the “Majority Coalition Caucus,” but that’s just Orwellian bullshit) goes so far as to cite Abraham Lincoln’s own unconstitutional actions as precedent for their call to follow suit. Really. Personally, that’s not the part of Lincoln’s legacy that I would choose to honor, but I guess that’s what the GOP means these days when it proudly proclaims itself “the party of Lincoln.”

Well, now that these 19 Republicans are on the record in favor of violating the rule of law, it’s time for the citizens of their districts to respond by filing recall petitions against them—at least those senators who aren’t already up for reelection in 2016.

Generally, I’m not a big fan of recall elections, and I think Washington State does it right by making the process so difficult. Unlike say, California, you can’t just file a recall because you don’t like a politician or their politics. In Washington, you can only recall an elected official on grounds of “malfeasance,” “misfeasance,” or “violation of the oath of office.” And that latter ground is defined in statute as “the neglect or knowing failure by an elective public officer to perform faithfully a duty imposed by law.”

I’d say refusing to obey a Supreme Court order more than qualifies under that definition.

No doubt most or all of the signatories to this letter would win a recall election—I mean, being a total dick is pretty much a prerequisite for office in some of these districts—but they’d still have to spend time and money running their campaigns when they might otherwise be raising money on behalf of colleagues. And that couldn’t hurt Democratic efforts to retake the senate and restore some sanity (let alone respect for the rule of law) to the body.

So yeah, now that they’ve given us the legal grounds, let’s recall the bastards. Because the only way to avoid a constitutional crisis may be to replace the lawmakers who spit on our constitution.

Exodus 20:7
Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

Fucking discuss, goddamnit.

Every time I return to my native Philadelphia I’m reminded of how small Seattle is, and I don’t just mean square miles or population.

With about 65 percent of its land devoted to single-family detached housing, most of Seattle doesn’t feel like a city at all, but rather a mature inner ring suburb. The remainder of Seattle is actually pretty dense—probably denser than most of Philadelphia—but the housing choices are limited: mostly high-rise apartments and condos or those non-descript 5-story blocks that are busy making every urban neighborhood in Seattle look like every other. Missing are the brownstones and row houses and mixed-use neighborhoods that give older cities—from Umbrian hill towns to megalopolises like Philadelphia and New York City—so much of their livability and charm.

What really makes Seattle feel small to me is the lack of choice.

I’m not one of those free-market extremists who wants to do away with single-family detached zoning entirely; the Seattle bungalow is an integral part of the city’s character. And that’s a character worth preserving (even if we’re only preserving it for the relatively well off). But we do need to be more open to different kinds of housing, and that will require being more open to rezoning at least some single-family land. We need to be open to experimentation. We even need to be willing to make mistakes.

And we need to acknowledge that some of the most desirable urban settings in the world were built long before the arrival of the automobile, and have refused to fully accommodate it to this day.

To be clear, I don’t want to turn Seattle into New York or Philadelphia. There’s a lot that’s gone terribly wrong with these cities. But there’s also a lot that Seattle could learn from the things that these older, denser, bigger cities do right.

Huh. Can’t help but wonder if this:

Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers.

… has anything to do with this:

Righties constantly lecture me about the virtue of markets in efficiently allocating scarce resources: if there’s a shortage of apples the price will rise, prompting farmers to grow more apples, until supply eventually meets demand, and all that. And yet oddly, not once in this article about the scarcity of teachers does anybody ever mention the idea of paying teachers more money. Weird, right?

My mother was a school teacher, but if my own daughter came to me and said she wanted to be a teacher too, I’d do everything I could to talk her out of it. Because why would I want my daughter to work so hard for so little money and such utter disrespect? No, not disrespect. We don’t just disrespect teachers these days. We vilify them.

You want to attract more great teachers to the profession? Pay them more. And stop threatening to punch them in the face.

[Cross-posted at Civic Skunkworks]

Nahum 1:2-8
The Lord is a jealous God, filled with vengeance and rage. He takes revenge on all who oppose him and continues to rage against his enemies! The Lord is slow to get angry, but his power is great, and he never lets the guilty go unpunished. He displays his power in the whirlwind and the storm. The billowing clouds are the dust beneath his feet. At his command the oceans dry up, and the rivers disappear. The lush pastures of Bashan and Carmel fade, and the green forests of Lebanon wither. In his presence the mountains quake, and the hills melt away; the earth trembles, and its people are destroyed. Who can stand before his fierce anger? Who can survive his burning fury? His rage blazes forth like fire, and the mountains crumble to dust in his presence. The Lord is good, a strong refuge when trouble comes. He is close to those who trust in him. But he will sweep away his enemies in an overwhelming flood. He will pursue his foes into the darkness of night.

Discuss.

By all means, the Seattle Times editorial board should feel free to argue that “rent control is not the answer for Seattle.” I look forward to a robust and informed debate on the issue. But they don’t. Rather, the editors insist that council members and candidates simply “should stop talking about rent control.”

I dunno, seems odd for an op-ed page to advocate for less opinion and editorials. But whatever. For the thing I really find silly in this op-ed is the second clause of their headline: “Rent control is not the answer for Seattle, and is illegal.”

Really? We should stop talking about rent control because it is illegal? You know what else until recently used to be illegal? Marijuana. Same-sex marriage. Charter schools. Private liquor stores. That’s the whole point of talking about rent control—it’s a conversation about changing the law! 

Look, I can’t really say whether I support or oppose rent control, because I haven’t actually seen a specific proposal. Would I prefer to avoid price controls? Sure. They’re messy. But might a cap of some multiple of inflation prove useful as a temporary complement to a comprehensive affordable housing program aimed at dramatically increasing supply? Maybe. I welcome that debate. And so should all serious parties.

After all, if rent control is such an awful idea then the editors have nothing to fear, right?

 

So I’m mostly out of the the electoral politics coverage business (praise the lord), but I couldn’t let yesterday’s primary results pass without a few quick and triumphal comments. Don’t know how one could spin it any other way, but it was a really big night for Kshama Sawant and the people and issues she represents. And it had to be a disappointment for her establishment opponents.

August primaries are typically low turnout affairs, with older more conservative voters disproportionately represented in the electorate. And yet Sawant still managed to capture 49.9 percent of the vote in a four-way race, and likely a few more points than that once the late ballots are tallied. That bodes awfully damn well for her with the much larger, younger, more left-leaning November electorate.

To be honest, these results were so far at the far high-end of my expectations that I broke into celebratory expletives when the ballots dropped. Of course, there’s still a lot of work that remains to be done; it’s still likely to be the most expensive city council race in Seattle history (by far), and that money buys you something. But Sawant and her campaign have once again demonstrated the effectiveness of grassroots organizing in local elections as well as the power of bluntly lefty message.

(And yes, I take more than a little pleasure watching the Trotskyists beat back an assault from the chamber-funded political establishment.)

As for the rest of the races, everybody I voted for or donated money to appears to have gotten through to the general election. And they weren’t all sure things to make the top two.

In the 4th district, kajillion-term incumbent Jean Godden looks to be coming in third behind Rob Johnson and Michael Maddux. It’s a shame she couldn’t retire more gracefully, but that was as much her choice as the voters’. And for the at-large position 8, tenants rights activist Jonathan Grant beat the better funded and better known John Roderick for the right to challenge council president Tim Burgess in the general. Building on what I wrote yesterday, Grant’s win along with Sawant’s robust results suggest that the affordable housing debate is resonating strongly with average voters.

Also, lifelong elections professional Julie Wise kicked ass against two politicians in the race for King County Director of Elections. So I’ve got no complaints from last night’s results. It was a happy primary election night for me.

Despite all the reports of low turnout, it looks to me like it’s going to be pretty normal for an odd-year primary—north of 30 percent, at least here in Seattle. But to be honest, I’m not sure what to make of the turnout disparity in the Seattle City Council races, where District 3 (let’s be honest, Sawant vs Banks) is proving an outlier with 20 percent turnout by the end of Monday compared to about 16 percent turnout citywide.

Publicola thinks it bodes well for Sawant, and I’d love to agree. But I really can’t say. It could be an indication that Sawant’s base—younger more lefty voters—are turning out earlier and in greater numbers than usual. Or it could be that it’s the older, wealthier, and more reliably voting Sawant-haters who are turning out in force.

Either way, there’s every reason to suspect the late ballots to trend young and lefty, so if these aren’t Sawant voters swelling the early ballot returns, expect a hard swing in her favor as the tally trickles in over the next week. Sawant closed a 7.5 point election night gap during the 2013 general, so the final primary results could look very different than tonight’s 8:15 drop.

As for the other races, the contest I think could be a bellwether of the mood of the electorate is the battle between John Roderick and Jonathan Grant for the right to challenge City Council President Tim Burgess. In a normal year, the affable, well-spoken, and well-funded Roderick should come in an easy second. But Grant has clearly positioned himself as the champion of beleaguered Seattle renters. If the under-funded Grant manages to edge out Roderick for the second slot on the November ballot, that’ll be a clear sign that affordable housing is resonating as the dominant issue with voters citywide.

All that said, other than determining the composition of the November ballot, I’m going to try to resist reading too much into the primary results (and I’m certainly going to be cautious about predicting anything from tonight’s lone 8:15 pm ballot drop). November will be a very different (and much larger) electorate than August.

Oh… and if you haven’t already, vote, goddammit!

Last week Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant* and I got into a conversation about rent control via email, and she provided such a clear and straightforward explanation of her position, that I asked if I could just repost it here to HA. Instead, she got back to me with the following slightly expanded, better formatted, and presumably copy edited version of her initial off-the-cuff response.

Critics have attempted to dismiss Sawant’s affordable housing advocacy as narrow, divisive, and unrealistic—at best a distraction from the real work at hand. But as you will read from the thoughtful response below, that is a gross mischaracterization. Sawant calls for a “comprehensive” approach. She supports using bonding capacity to build publicly owned housing. She supports most of the HALA recommendations, but would go further by including a “robust linkage fee.” Still, I specifically asked about rent control, and that is the focus of her response.

To me, the most compelling policy and political argument Sawant makes is the way she compares rent control to the minimum wage: they are both minimum standards necessary to protect against the natural imbalance of of power between landlord and tenant, or employer and employee. Rent control is not about repealing the market; it’s about reining in its excesses. And according to Sawant, the alleged construction-destroying impacts of rent control are just as unsubstantiated as the alleged job-killing impacts of the minimum wage.

Makes sense. But you can read for yourself:

Which Way for Affordable Housing in Seattle?

Seattle is booming with job growth and a major influx of working people. Yes, we need increased housing supply. Yes, we need zoning changes to build more housing, and to enable a denser and more walkable and accessible city. But why is there such a severe shortage of affordable housing in Seattle? And what is the solution to the problem?

Is It Just about Supply and Demand?
We are told that we need only rely on the so-called “free market.” We are told it is simply about supply and demand. Let developers build, let the supply of market-rate units increase. And at some point, magically, prices will come down and create housing affordability.

Not one of the proponents of this trickle-down theory can give a plausible idea, or even so much as a rough estimate, of how many units would have to be built for that point of affordability to be reached. We are asked to go on faith.

Amanda Burden, the director of New York City’s Department of Planning, a couple of years ago acknowledged that she had truly believed that NYC could build its way out of an affordable housing shortage. She said the city “built tremendous amount of housing” with that hope, “and the price of housing didn’t go down at all.”

Why Are We Losing Existing Affordable Units?
Supply and demand do explain why Seattle rents are going up. How much your rent increases, however, is determined by the relative balance of forces between tenants and the real estate lobby. Much the same way that wages and benefits in the workplace are a reflection of how much power workers have, including whether or not they have a union, to allow them to negotiate better working conditions.

In the absence of substantial tenant protections, rents tend to not only increase in a high-demand market, but to skyrocket. Why? Because developers and landlords can get away with it.

This opportunity to jack up rents means that tenants residing in market-available affordable units experience massive rent increases, which implies economic eviction. After the tenants are driven out, the previously affordable units are renovated, sometimes even minimally, and then rented for twice or three times the original rents.

What Policies Would Make Housing Affordable?
To actually create new affordable housing, we need a comprehensive policy program. I support most of the recommendations of the HALA committee, although they don’t go far enough. We need a robust linkage fee on big developers to generate a billion dollars to build affordable housing. We must also leverage the City’s bonding capacity to build thousands of units of City-owned affordable housing.

But it will take years to build the thousands of affordable housing units that Seattle desperately needs. In the meanwhile, policies that stabilize rent increases are essential in order to prevent price gouging. The citywide wave of economic evictions and displacement will not be stemmed without rent regulation.

Why Rent Control and What Does it Mean?
Price gouging is not inevitable. It happens in the absence of any real protections for tenants in the form of regulation on rent increases, just like worker exploitation happens in the absence of a minimum wage. That’s where rent control comes in.

By rent control, we mean linking rent increases to inflation. Landlords could still make profits and finance maintenance, but the massive rent hikes and economic evictions that we are seeing in Seattle would be prohibited.

Contrary to the myth that rent control slows construction and hurts housing supply, the two largest building booms in New York City history occurred in periods of strict rent control, first in the 1920s and again from 1947-1965. Demonizing rent control is inconsistent with what the numbers tell us.

But Republicans Control Olympia, So We can’t Win Rent Control Anyway, So Why Even Discuss It?
Rent controls are most needed in areas with runaway prices, which is typically localized metropolitan regions such as cities or counties. So the real estate lobby has always fought rent control by pouring money into the campaigns of conservative state-level politicians running from rural districts, where constituents are not demanding rent stabilization. Nothing unique about Washington State there.

And the only way metropolitan areas have won rent control despite all the real estate lobby money is by building a mass movement in their cities and counties and pushing back against the state. This is exactly what I have proposed as a political strategy here in Seattle. As a first step, Councilmember Licata and I have introduced a resolution to demand that Olympia repeal the ban on all rent regulations. I urge you to sign the petition in support of this resolution.

Rent Control is One of Many Tenant Protections Seattle Needs
We need rent control, but in the meantime we also need to urgently enact other laws to protect tenants. Developer loopholes need to be closed so relocation assistance can be expanded to tenants experiencing economic evictions. Tenants need more than 60-day notice in case of large rent increases (greater than 10 or 20%). Tenants with expiring leases need just-cause eviction protections.

Additionally, late fees and move-in costs for renters need to be capped. Penalties for deposit theft need to be increased. And we need a law that will require interest accrued on deposits to be returned to tenants.

To make all this possible, the City must fully fund the enforcement of tenant rights in the same way that we are setting out to enforce labor laws with the new Office of Labor Standards.

I would view the full spectrum of tenant protections (including regulating rents) with a lens similar to workplace rights. Laws such as minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination, occupational safety, and the right to unionize haven’t killed jobs or prevented companies from making profits.

These laws protect workers and provide for a better quality of life for working people. Even the proponents of the free market theory are themselves beneficiaries of the gains of labor struggles. The gains from successful housing affordability policies will be no different. The victory on the $15 minimum wage shows what workers can win when they organize and fight back. We need to build a similarly powerful organized movement for housing justice. Let us begin.

* Duh-uh, I’m a Kshama Sawant supporter. Only an idiot would need this disclaimer, but, well, you know….

I’m getting my house painted in a week or so, and I’ve yet to pick out colors because A) I’m a guy; and B) I’m one of those guys who is, um, differently color-vision-abled. So I thought I’d try crowd-sourcing the decision. What colors should I paint my 1912 craftsman (currently a pale yellowish base with brownish looking trim)?

Seriously. Here’s the Benjamin Moore online color selection tool.  I’m open to your suggestions.*

* (Though please don’t suggest some stupid color combination like the elementary school kids who would rip the wrappers off the crayons the minute they learned I was colorblind, and then tell me that the brown crayon was green—I’ll run my options by some actual women first just to make sure I’m not being fucked with.)

Via Digby:

Not quite sure Republicans fully get the meaning of the term “bully pulpit.”