Goldy

For those of us who really like Ron Sims, yet were dreading the prospect of a campaign for a fourth term as King County Executive, his announcement today that he has accepted the number two position at the Department of Housing and Urban Development is a welcome relief.

Fourth terms are difficult for executives to win at all levels of government, as voters and the media tend to grow weary of their executives in a way we don’t seem to grow weary of legislators. It would have been a difficult campaign, and he might have lost, and I’m not sure Ron’s heart was really in it in the first place.  And so this plum position at HUD—overseeing the day-to-day operations of a department with a $39 billion budget and 8,500 employees—is exactly the kind of graceful exit Ron deserves, and for which many of his friends and supporters had hoped.

So congratulations Ron.  (And congratulations to Publicola for sticking with this scoop even while Sims’ office vehemently denied it.)

UPDATE:
From the HUD press release :

"Ron’s track record as an innovative leader with an exciting vision for the future of our nation’s communities make him the perfect Deputy Secretary candidate as we tackle the nation’s housing crisis amidst the biggest economic downturn in decades," said HUD Secretary, Shaun Donovan. "His experience at the helm of a large urban government provides a critical perspective and his collaborative approach to problem-solving has prepared him to effectively lead HUD’s operations as the agency charts a new aggressive course."

[…] "I am thrilled and honored that Ron has agreed to be considered for this role," added Donovan. "He is the perfect person to help HUD return to national leadership on metropolitan planning. Together, we will work with President Obama to ensure HUD is doing all it can to help the nation’s communities recover from today’s economic realities and to better position them for the future."

Word is, the Blethens have enough cash on hand to keep the Seattle Times operating through at least March, but they’ll reach a major decision point by May:

While a bankruptcy filing is not imminent, if things play out as expected (no last minute reprieve for the P-I, no big concessions from the Times’ unions), Times executives believe a Chapter 11 filing is more likely than not. Such a filing would not necessarily mean the paper is doomed; rather, a Chapter 11 reorganization would buy the paper time, allowing it to continue publishing as it restructured its operations, figured out a way to pay off its debt, and renegotiated its contracts in an effort to make the paper viable when the local economy recovers.

In other words, the Times will use bankruptcy as an opportunity to break the unions.

More from Publicola’s News Junkie.

Not surprisingly, the Seattle Times editorial board urges Seattle School Board members to “maintain your resolve” to close five more schools, while chastising affected parents fighting to save the schools they love:

Some families found this process hurried and may mistakenly see the flurry of amendments as a way to prolong the outcome.

So here’s my question to the ed board and other opinion writers at the Times:  how many of you have children who are now attending, or have graduated from Seattle Public Schools?  How many of you even live in Seattle?

And if you don’t have a personal stake in this battle, who are you to tell us how to run our district, or to belittle dedicated parents for doing whatever they can to save their neighborhood schools?

Given the choice between closing more schools and paying a few dollars more on our property tax, I’m betting Seattle voters would choose the latter.  So instead of just presenting a false choice between school closures and budget crisis, here’s a novel idea worth editorializing about:  perhaps the Legislature should give school districts the ability to weather the current economic downturn by granting the authority to temporarily exceed the current cap on the percentage of revenues that can be raised through local school levies?

And since the Times owns property in Seattle, they would be free to editorialize on the subsequent levy vote all they want, without coming off as a bunch of holier-than-thou outsiders.

UPDATE:
Bruce Ramsey answers my question via email:

I was born in Seattle, went to university in Seattle, I live in Seattle and I have a child in the Seattle Public Schools.

Of the four editorial writers, two live in Seattle and two live in the suburbs in King County.

By my count there are six editorial board writers, when you include editors Jim Vesely and Kate Riley, neither of whom live in Seattle.  Not that I think residency should be a prerequisite for commentary, but… well… I’m just sayin’….

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Brian’s post on the new domestic partnership legislation wending its way through Olympia.  (It’s the kinda thorough, original reporting I’m told you’re not supposed to be able to find on the blogs… and that you’re seeing less and less of in the dailies.)

The bill would add over 300 rights and obligations to domestic partnerships, essentially marriage equality in everything by name, at least under Washington state law.  (Federal law would still have to change to allow for true marriage equality, whatever we call it.)  But as Brian points out, the big story here is how noncontroversial this issue has become:

Those blatant displays of humanity aside, [Sen. Ed] Murray commented that one of the aspects most worthy of celebration with the announcement of these bills was the relative lack of fanfare from the other side.

“I would say the most remarkable thing about this bill is that it is unremarkable,” Murray mentioned, explaining that many of the fiercely fought battles that had been fought in the last few decades were inconspicuously absent from today’s atmosphere, even resulting in the aforementioned Republican sponsors of the House bill.

It took decades of bitter political fighting simply to make it illegal to discriminate based on sexual preference (yup, up until a couple years ago, it was perfectly legal to deny somebody a job, a loan, housing or insurance, simply because you thought they might be a little faggy), and now it looks like almost marriage equality is going to sail through the legislature with nary a fight.

Part of this has to do with the Democrats’ near super-majority in both houses, but a lot of it has to do with growing public acceptance of same sex couples.  Hmm.  I guess the rabid opponents of the anti-discrimination laws were right—it is a slippery slope after all.

A slippery slope toward greater freedom and equality, that is.

Those of you trying to read HA and Publicola tonight between about 9PM and 10:30PM (and for about 15 minutes this afternoon) were greeted with the dreaded White Screen of Death.  No error message, no nothin’, just a blank, white screen.

At this point, I don’t know what causes it, or what fixes it.  It’s pretty damn frustrating.

Anyway, if anybody out there has some expertise with WPMU, and would like to offer their help, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Thanks mostly to its bizarre name, HorsesAss.org is probably one of the leading political blogs nationwide… in terms of traffic from Googling pornographic search terms.  And yet, I almost totally ignored the sensational Enumclaw horse story, and the easy page views that would have come with it.  Go figure.

So to make up for that business miscalculation, I thought I’d block-quote this paragraph from an AP story today about an Oregon couple, jailed for sexually abusing their dog :

Chase said Baalbergen performed oral sex on the dog and received oral, vaginal and anal sex. He said Baker received anal sex.

Ugh.  But two thoughts.

First, I’m no dog whisperer or anything, but I’m not sure most dogs would classify that as “abuse.”  And second:

The dog, Max, had to be killed.

“Because of the way it was taught to interact with people, it couldn’t be placed in another home,” Chase said.

I’ve known plenty of dogs who were incorrigible leg humpers, but unless you cooperate by pulling your pants down and getting on all fours, I’m not sure what the big problem is.  Maybe they could have tried a couple squirts from a spray bottle before offing the poor dog?

After reporting a quarterly loss of $56 million ($968 million in its commercial airplane division), Boeing announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs in 2009.

That number includes the 4,500 job cuts previously announced, mostly in the Puget Sound area.  And how many of the remaining 5,500 job cuts will target our region?  According to the P-I, “some“… with the cuts being spread across the company geographically.

Considering that almost half of Boeing’s 162,000 employees are in WA state, I suppose we should expect to absorb almost half of these newly announced cuts.

I few thousand here, a few thousand there… pretty soon this starts to add up to a bad recession.

With the economy in the drink and state coffers running dry, Gov. Gregoire has proposed adding 10 new state-run liquor stores, while allowing the sale of alcohol related items like cork screws and ice, in an effort to pump up revenues.  (Existing law currently prohibits State Stores from selling ice?  That’s just plain silly.)  At the same time, kinda-sorta Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon will propose shuttering the State Store system entirely, and privatizing the sale of liquor, because… you know… there’s no time better than a $6 billion revenue shortfall to hand off $322 million in revenues to the private sector.

I’ve often heard my fellow Washingtonians complain about their inability to buy a bottle of Makers Mark at 3AM at the local 7-Eleven, but coming from Pennsylvania, with an even stricter state store system—grocery stores can’t sell beer or wine either—I don’t find it much of an  inconvenience.  After all, it’s not like the stuff goes bad, so you can always stock up… and if you really need a bottle of rotgut at 3AM, perhaps it’s best that it’s not so freely available anyway?

But what really galls me in nearly every debate about the state store system, are the knee-jerk arguments from the invisible hand crowd about unfair state competition:

The proposals, particularly increases in nonliquor sales at state-run stores, have drawn fire from grocers as an anti-competitive encroachment on private business.

[… ] Jan Gee, president of the Washington Food Industry, said the independent grocers belonging to her organization would be hurt by increases in the number of state-run liquor stores. … “We want them out of competition with us,” Gee said. “We want them out of beer and wine, and we don’t want them to even be considering an expansion into what they call bar products.”

Yeah… sure… the state sells a limited selection of beer and wine from drab storefronts staffed by well-paid, union workers with good benefits.  How could independent grocers possibly compete with that?

I mean really… if a private business can’t out-compete the state in the sale of ice and corkscrews, perhaps it shouldn’t be in business in the first the place?  They’re gonna have to come up with a better argument than that.

The appropriateness of a state monopoly on the sale of liquor, well, that’s an entirely different debate, but given alcohol’s quantifiable impact on public health and safety, there are plenty of strong arguments in favor of the status quo, however inconvenient it might be to late-night boozers or “antiquated” it may appear to Sen. Sheldon.  In fact, if we really want to increase revenues and cut government expenses, I’d not only keep the state store system and its liquor monopoly intact, but expand it to include a state monopoly on the legal sale of marijuana.

Our current state store system grew out of the end of prohibition on alcohol.  I’d say it’s past time to end the failed prohibition on pot as well… and then tax hell out of it.