Goldy

Danny Westneat says that there’s a “buzz” coming from political newcomer Joe Mallahan in the mayor’s race. I haven’t met Mallahan yet, but folks I trust tell me he’s a personable guy and not a bad public speaker.

As it turns out, there was also a buzz at last night’s Progressive Majority fundraiser during Jan Drago’s brief speech, but unfortunately for her, it wasn’t coming from Drago herself.  Rather it was the buzz of audience members quietly talking amongst themselves as they lost interest in Drago’s words.

I had the opportunity to meet Drago for the first time last night, and we had a lovely conversation… a much more comfortable conversation than I tend to have with elected officials upon first meeting, especially those about whom I haven’t always written kindly. I came away genuinely liking her, at least about as much as one can come away liking a person after a fifteen-minute conversation, and I can understand why her supporters like her too.

But after watching her less than dynamic performance in front of a friendly, alcohol lubed crowd, I have to stand by my previous analysis:

The dilemma for the challengers is this: how do you defeat a competent, scandal-free mayor whose values you share, and whose policy agenda you largely support?  You beat him by being a better politician.

And that’s why I’m convinced that none of the challengers in this race, not even Drago, can beat Mayor Nickels, for as vulnerable as he is, and as grating as his style obviously can be, none of his opponents possess the force of personality necessary to get voters excited about change.

Drago struck me as likable enough and all that, but she just doesn’t seem capable of generating sufficient buzz to toss out the incumbent, however low his approval numbers. And while her 16 years on the council no doubt leave her well qualified for the office, it’s hard to see her dynamically selling the pitch to disgruntled voters that what we really need now is an infusion of old blood.

As for Mallahan, perhaps he really can generate that kinda buzz.  I dunno.  Then again, we tend to set an awfully low bar around here when it comes to exciting politicians, so perhaps he just comes off as buzzy compared to the rest of a less than exhilarating field?

I’m a big fan of neighborhood schools.

I grew up in a relatively affluent, suburban school district where nobody chose their schools, you just went to the one nearest your house. And I can’t tell you how convenient and comfortable it was to be able to walk to school from kindergarten through ninth grade.

That’s why the close proximity to Graham Hill Elementary was such an attractive amenity when, six month old baby in tow, we bought our house. For seven years, starting in pre-school, my daughter walked to and from school without even crossing a street, and there’s something special about being part of school community when that community is centered in your immediate neighborhood.

In 2006, when Graham Hill inexplicably found itself on the closure list, I joined with other parents to fight hard to save our neighborhood school, and against the closure process in general. And while Graham Hill was ultimately spared, and went on to thrive over the past few years, I sympathize deeply with families at other schools who were not so fortunate.

And so I read with interest the editorial in today’s Seattle Times—a paper that has strongly advocated in favor of school closures—arguing in favor of plans to redraw boundaries and limit school choice, not only as an effective cost-cutting measure, but also as a means of supporting and promoting neighborhood schools:

Set to take effect fall 2010, it offers a comfortable level of predictability and efficiency. Neighborhood schools, as opposed to citywide busing, offer cohesion and a level of intimacy among families. It allows schoolmates to move through the system together. Most parents would find the prospects of play dates and after-school activities easier to manage if their assigned school were practically within walking distance.

No doubt.

But in supporting an assignment plan that would limit choice and force more families into their neighborhood schools, the Times glosses over the circumstances that lead parents to inconveniently ship their kids halfway across the city in the first place: the gross inequity between schools from one neighborhood to another. Where I grew up, nobody chose their school; what would be the point when they’re all equally excellent? But as even the Times points out, that’s far from the case in Seattle:

The superintendent must make good on her promise to improve the quality of the city’s 90-some schools, particularly struggling ones in the Central Area and South End. The proposed plan’s foundation rests on the assumption that most families will accept their neighborhood school assignment. For that assumption to bear out, those schools must be academically up to par.

No, for the vast majority of families to accept neighborhood school assignment, their schools must not just be academically “up to par,” they must be equally excellent. And this simply cannot be accomplished unless the district, amongst other things, invests significantly more money per student in Central Area and South End schools than it does in those in more affluent northern neighborhoods.

Why do some schools require more money than others? Partially because their children are more expensive to educate. For example, during the years my daughter was at Graham Hill Elementary, the student population was about one third ESL and nearly two-thirds free and reduced price lunch. Children of immigrant and other poor and working class families simply face more challenges than children of affluent professionals, and generally have fewer resources to fall back on. And while school funding formulas do target extra money toward at risk and special needs children, it’s not enough to make up the difference.

But there’s another factor responsible for the growing disparity between individual Seattle schools, one which nobody seems to want to talk about:  the growing reliance on PTSAs in affluent neighborhoods to fund the services the district can no longer afford to provide.  At some North End schools PTSAs routinely raise over $1,000 per student per year to fund “extras” like art, music, tutors, teachers aides and other amenities (even, it appears, to reduce class size); indeed, upon taking the tour of Tops K-8, the guide explicitly told prospective parents that since admission would save us the cost of private school tuition, those of us who could afford it would be expected to cough up the difference accordingly.  Meanwhile, some Central and South End schools barely manage to raise a few thousand dollars a year total, if they have an active PTSA at all.

Think about it. A working class South End family lucky enough to win assignment to, say, Stevens Elementary, will see their children benefit from all the amenities the generally affluent parents of their Capitol Hill classmates can afford to provide. So why wouldn’t they be tempted to bus their kids halfway across the city? Meanwhile, those affluent families at Graham Hill—and there are some—know that their generous PTSA contributions on their own can never amount to enough to provide the whole school the sort of services and benefits afforded their North End counterparts. Rather than tutors and teachers aides, we could merely raise enough money to pay for field trips, assemblies, classroom supplies and little extras like that.

Seattle does not enjoy (or suffer from) the same sort of racial and socio-economic homogenity of the suburban Philadelphia school district of my youth (Lower Merion, in case you’re wondering), let alone that of Mercer Island or Bellevue, so I understand that 100-percent equity is not an achievable or even necessary goal. Seattle has done a wonderful job rebuilding and renovating schools, putting most on an even footing in terms of physical plant, thus most parents would happily choose their neighborhood school as long as its program is somewhat comparable to those offered in other neighborhoods. But we will never come close to that level of equity as long as we rely on PTSAs to pay for services that should be standard across the district as a whole.

Yes, promoting neighborhood schools is an admirable goal, as is the efficiency and cohesion that comes with it, but there are downsides as well, not the least of which being the continued racial and socio-economic resegregation that is already proceeding apace. If the Superintendent eliminates choice without first resolving the academic and funding disparities that already make busing such an attractive alternative for so many families, she will only widen the existing inequities between neighborhood schools, not narrow them. And that can only create the kind of unfair and untenable circumstances that led to our existing inefficient and “Byzantine” assignment rules in the first place.

Joni Balter warns Susan Hutchison and Jan Drago that they shouldn’t expect an automatic leg up simply by virtue of their gender, arguing that “Washington voters are too smart for that.” And while I only partially take issue with her thesis (gender will help them stand out in a primary field of men, but won’t do them much good in the general), it was this paragraph that caught my attention:

Seattle and King County are politically sophisticated places. As the only state with two female U.S. senators and a female governor, Washington is the most progressive state in the country when it comes to electing women. Year after year, the state ranks near the top of the list for highest percentage of women elected to the Legislature.

True, sorta. But the trend doesn’t look so encouraging for women these days, particularly at the legislative level.

Washington did indeed rank first in the percentage of women legislators from 1993 through 2004, reaching a high of 40.8 percent (60 out of 147) in 1999 and 2000, but has been trailing off ever since. In 2009 Washington is down to only 48 women legislators, or 32.7 percent, still good for sixth place nationally, but our lowest percentage since 1991.

I asked National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington President Linda Mitchell about the drop-off, and she says that the biggest hurdle to electing more women is recruiting more women candidates:

“We still have a long way to go toward equal representation of women in our elected bodies and one of the biggest problems is that more women are not running for office.  Another example, of the nineteen Seattle City Council candidates this year, only two are women. Well-qualified women often choose not to run because they don’t think they are qualified enough, they lack the money networks, and because they don’t have enough support and encouragement.”

And it doesn’t sound like Mitchell thinks Balter’s characterization of the candidates and their races does much to help the cause:

“I disagree with Balter’s assessment of these two candidates.  Hutchison is not “riding on her gender by sitting out public forums”, it’s her huge name familiarity.  Drago is not “counting on gender politics for a win”, but on a different leadership style – and polling indicates she’s not off-base. I give both women credit for running and hope we can find ways to encourage more women to do so.”

There is this commonly repeated notion that being a woman confers some sort of electoral advantage in Washington state—a notion that Balter ironically reinforces through her “voters are too smart” refutation—when in fact the numbers clearly say otherwise. Women make up slightly over half the electorate, and consistently turn out in higher numbers than men, yet now comprise less than one third of our state legislature, and one ninth of our US House delegation.

Sure, as Balter points out, the top three elected statewide offices are currently held by women, but this is the exception, not the rule. Indeed, over our state’s 120 year history, we have elected only two women to the governor’s mansion, two to the US Senate and seven to the US House. And of the seven remaining women to have won statewide executive office, four of these served as Superintendent of Public Instruction, primary education long being a profession stereotypically deemed suited to women.

Forgive me for not showing my math, but I’m pretty damn sure that if “female contenders somehow get a leg up”, we’d be electing more women than men to office, not substantially less. So obviously, Joni, there’s no need to “bristle” at an assumption that clearly doesn’t hold true.

The Seattle P-I’s Joel Connelly writes about the rush of local politicians scrambling to take credit for light rail ahead of next month’s inaugural ride, sparking bemused (and deserved) condescension from The Oregonian’s Jeff Mapes:

Seattle’s first light rail line – yes, you read that right, it’s only taken the Emerald City 23 years to catch up with Portland – will start service in just 43 days. And it’s a big issue in local politics, with everyone jostling to claim credit.

As Mapes points out, the long debate over the high initial cost of investing in rail vs. bus service may never end, but… “if Portland serves as an example, once this train gets going, it will have a lot of momentum.”

It’s one kind of crazy to believe these sort of things, as many Republicans obviously do, but it’s an entirely whole new level of crazy for a sitting US Senator to come out and say it.

Sen. Jim Inhofe said today that President Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo was “un-American” …

“I just don’t know whose side he’s on,” Inhofe said of the president.

Good thing for Inhofe the Sedition Act was repealed in 1920.

A lot of folks came out of the past legislative session awfully pissed and/or disappointed about the performance of our Democratic majority, but there is at least one special interest group that is celebrating the results:

Our state’s most vehement conservative lobby, which spent $7.2 million trying to defeat Gov. Chris Gregoire, boasts how the majority Democrat Washington Legislature did its bidding in the just-completed session.

“After coming in like a lion, the 2009 Legislature went out like a lamb,” reports the lead article in “Building Insight,” newsletter of the Building Industry Association of Washington.

The BIAW newsletter lists 14 legislative proposals that it opposed, ranging from solar water heaters in new homes to including climate change in the Growth Management Act. The word “Dead” is attached to 12 of them.

One of the slogans of the progressive netroots movement is “More and Better Democrats,” a motto by which we recognize that the straightest path toward implementing a progressive agenda is through a Democratic majority, but that quantity of representation doesn’t always translate into quality, a truism clearly demonstrated by the near super-majority Democratic control of the Washington State Legislature.

So what’s the solution for frustrated progressives? It sure as hell ain’t electing more Republicans, so vindictively undermining the electoral prospects of conservative Democrats in swing districts, as some have suggested, would be more than counterproductive. No, it’s time for us in the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party to start targeting “safe” Democrats who have proven themselves to be either ineffective or out-of-touch, or both. That means working outside the traditional party hierarchy, and yes, that means primary challenges.

Let Frank worry about the swing districts, while we focus on electing better Democrats from the party’s urban base. Either that, or be prepared to see the BIAW celebrating their legislative successes for years to come.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgrYDp55p2Y&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

The Seattle Times editorial board has strong words for the Glorious Leader:

NORTH KOREA, which apparently relishes its oddball, unpredictable behavior on the world stage, has another opportunity to zig when everyone expects it to zag. Release two American journalists held without formal charges, and send them home.

Yeah, sure, but… and? I mean, it’s not like even most Seattleites routinely scan the Times’ op-ed page, let alone Kim Jong-il, so what exactly is the point?

I suppose if the Times had used the incident as a springboard to critique the Obama administration’s policies toward North Korea, to argue pro or con on further engagement with the communist dictatorship, or even, in a controversial twist, to berate the two journalists for carelessly sparking an international incident, well, that might have made for an interesting and/or relevant editorial. But why waste precious op-ed space merely stating the obvious?

What’s next? A bold, sharply worded editorial arguing that puppies are cute?

As proprietors of Seattle’s only remaining daily newspaper opinion page, the Times’ editors have an awesome platform from which to drive and shape our state’s public debate, and with it, a special civic obligation to do so—a platform, I’m not ashamed to admit, bloggers like me envy. And yet, too often, there’s nary an opinion of any consequence to be found. For example, from today’s two unsigned editorials, the combined 558 words can essentially be summed up in seven: North Korea bad, Husky women’s softball good.

I can’t argue with the sentiment, but I mean, really, was there nothing more pressing to write about? No important public policy issue on which to educate readers, no compelling controversy on which to opine? That’s it… a glorified sports column and a current events blurb about as challenging as one might find in the Weekly Reader?

All of which makes the Times’ closing sentence a touch ironic, for while it does in fact hit the nail on the head, it’s not exactly the nail they were thinking of:

Mindless, pointless acts of obfuscating petulance serve no purpose and make no point.

Get it? “Pointless acts … make no point.” In both form and content, it’s like they’re writing about themselves.

Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer shows us why he should remain retired from politics:

The King County Executive’s job has become officially non-partisan, thanks to a voter initiative. In seeking the interim job, however, Royer discovered that the council still caucus and think as party members.

“They have not yet learned that they are non-partisan,” he said.

And I keep telling my dog and my cat that they are members of the same family, but they have not yet learned that they are non-enemies.

I mean, duh-uh.

I’m proud of my own contribution to Publicola’s start-up and its early success. But I’m also a little bit jealous.

The cold, hard truth about the right’s reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller—the truth that most anti-abortion activists are reluctant to admit, at least publicly—is that they’re happy he’s dead.

Well, maybe not “happy.” “Relieved,” might be a better word. Or, less succinctly, I think it is safe to say that there are many anti-abortion activists who genuinely believe that the ultimate good that comes from Dr. Tiller’s death far outweighs the inherent evil of his murder.

Our ever-absent blogging partner Will uses an apt analogy (though since he’s too lazy to write the post himself, I probably should’ve just presented it as my own), the oh-so-cliche thought experiment: If you could go back in time to pre-Nazi Germany, would you kill Adolf Hitler?

Murder is wrong; I think that’s a pretty universal moral standard.  But knowing the crimes Hitler committed and the horrors he wrought, few would consider it immoral to preemptively kill a man who would ultimately be responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of innocent men, women and children. And while many of us might lack the fortitude to commit the act ourselves, neither would we mourn Hitler’s death. Indeed, we’d welcome it.

Yes, murder is wrong, but not all killing is murder, and as a society we tend to make moral exceptions in circumstances such as war, executions, and self-defense.

Now let’s look at the rhetoric anti-abortion advocates have used to describe Dr. Tiller, both before and after his death.

Few on the right have publicly condoned Dr. Tiller’s murder (though the crazies like those at Free Republic are always willing to to jump to the defense of any moral outrage), but even in disowning and/or condemning the assassination, some very public figures continue to describe Tiller as a “serial killer,” a “baby killer,” a “mass murderer” and worse.  Even anti-abortion activists and organizations who genuinely disavow violence have referred to Dr. Tiller as “Tiller the Killer” and “Dr. Death,” comparing him to the infamous Nazi war criminal, Dr. Josef Mengele.

Many, many people in the anti-abortion movement, mainstream and extreme alike, have used and embraced this sort of rhetoric, and I see little reason to doubt their ingenuousness. These people believe that Dr. Tiller was a serial killer who brutally murdered thousands of babies, and who would have continued his killing spree for years to come… had he not been stopped by an assassin’s bullet.

Undoubtedly, most would have preferred that he were stopped through legal means, and damn few would have had the personal fortitude to pull the trigger themselves. But don’t kid yourselves. They don’t mourn Dr. Tiller’s death any more than I did the deaths of Saddam Hussein and his two odious sons, regardless of my opposition to the Iraq war itself. And they don’t think his killing was particularly immoral, especially when balanced by the thousands of babies who might have been saved in the process.

The cold, hard truth is, political and PR considerations aside, many in the anti-abortion movement are happy Dr. Tiller is dead. Or relieved. Or at the very least, comfortable with a moral calculus that, in their minds, balances the life of one guilty man against the lives of thousands of innocent babies.

And that is a disturbing truth the so-called “pro-life” movement needs to come to terms with.

Perhaps tiring of sucking off Michael Dunmire’s teat, longtime Tim Eyman lackey Mike Fagan has announced his candidacy for Spokane City Council.

“While the city of Spokane braces itself for some lean budget years…the taxpayers of this city deserve to be protected from wanton taxation in order to maintain basic services,” Fagan said in a press release this morning.

Good for him.  I mean, not the anti-tax bullshit, that’s a load of irresponsible crap. But good for him for attempting to be part of the process. I look forward to seeing how (whether?) Fagan intends to maintain basic services while reflexively opposing new revenues.

Over on Fuse’s Dr. Scoop, a reader asks why middle and lower income people so often vote with Tim Eyman and against their own economic self-interest, to which the good doctor rephrases the question:

First, it would probably be more accurate to ask, “Why do white middle and lower income people often vote with Tim Eyman and oppose progressive tax reforms?”  I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest that people of color have this voting pattern.  In fact, my data geek friends at Win/Win did a quick analysis and didn’t find any Eyman initiatives that passed in precincts dominated by non-white voters.

Huh.  Now that’s an interesting bit of data analysis that at the very least says something about Eyman and the image he projects.

The Seattle P-I has an article today supposedly exploring the future of tolling on Washington state roads, but which essentially just ends up serving as a forum for a debate between Matt Rosenberg of the Discovery Institute and Michael Ennis of the Washingon Policy Center… two conservative think tanks.

I’m not saying that Matt and Michael don’t make any reasonable arguments, but really, is this the best we can do? Two conservative think tanks duking it out over creating state transportation policy that will largely impact the predominantly progressive Puget Sound region?

A group of prominent conservatives have sent a letter to Republican senators urging them to filibuster President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court:

Our national experience in the past decade has changed the standard by which Republicans should cast their confirmation vote for a Supreme Court nominee of a Democrat president.  The benefit of a doubt that once arguably might have justified the indifference over the last two nominees of a Democratic president is no longer tenable.

Huh. Actually, this obstructionist approach might not be a bad political strategy… if Republicans are resigned to remaining a minority party for the foreseeable future. But if they ever plan to win back both the trust of the American people, and/or the White House, well, not so much.

Because, you know, what goes around comes around, and all that.

It wasn’t so long ago, during the Alito nomination, that Republicans reviled Democratic talk of a filibuster as unAmerican and unconstitutional. This was during the heady days following the Democrats’ disastrous showing in the 2004 elections, a time when Karl Rove was boasting about a permanent Republican majority, and Senate leaders threatened the “nuclear option”—eliminating the filibuster altogether—should minority Democrats put up too strong a fight. They didn’t.

But if a mere 40 Republicans follow this letter’s advice, and do vote as a block to hold up the Sotomayor confirmation over issues of judicial philosophy, then the standard by which senators cast confirmation votes really will have changed. And it will be a standard by which Democrats will measure their own actions the next time a Republican president nominates a justice.

The letter argues that “Americans have been awakened to their own stewardship of the federal courts,” pointing to 2008 exit polls that showed three quarters of voters considered Supreme Court nominations a significant factor in their vote, and 7% the determining issue. But it might behoove the authors to remember that this was an election Obama won by a comfortable margin, capturing electoral votes in every region of the country, and one in which Democrats made substantial gains in the Senate, thus making the “stewardship” argument profoundly self-defeating to the conservative cause.

With Republican presidents having appointed seven of the nine sitting Supreme Court justices, and one Republican-appointed Chief Justice after another having run the court for more than half a century, I understand if Republicans feel they have some sort of unique claim on the institution. But they don’t. Obama has just as much of a right to leave his imprint on the court as the presidents who preceded him.

So it would seem an odd political calculation to choose now, when the balance of power on the court isn’t even at stake, to seek a confrontation that could redefine the confirmation process for decades to come. And I’m guessing that cooler heads in the Republican caucus won’t.