Goldy

With the Minnesota Supreme Court rejecting a last minute appeal by Republican Norm Coleman, Al Franken is expected to be certified the winner in the North Star State’s US Senate race… great news for foul-mouthed satirists everywhere.

I mean, if Franken could pursue a political career after the things he’s said, I suppose that doesn’t entirely rule out a political career for somebody like me.  I’m just sayin’….

Seattle Department of Transportation officials spread salt on roads last night as snow started to accumulate throughout the city, even as meteorologists forecast warmer temperatures and rain overnight.  This morning, salted or not, Seattle roads are mostly clear, and slushy at worst.

Road salt in this kind of weather is a waste of money and salt; there’s not much chance of anything icing up when the temperature is above freezing.  But you know, this is what the Times and many other media outlets demanded, and this is what we got.

State Rep. Bill Grant (D-Walla Walla) died Sunday morning at the age of 71.  He was diagnosed with a rare form of lung cancer just last month.  My condolences to his friends and family.

Awoke this morning to the sound of the power going out (my carbon monoxide dectector gives out a death shriek at the moment of disconnect), and the chilly thought of the five-day outage two years ago.  About 45 minutes later, the power came back on.

It’s amazing how powerless we modern humans feel in the absence of the power.

Even the Wall Street Journal has taken notice of Washington DOT’s innovative, home brew road de-icer:

The mix consists of molasses from a local supplier, calcium chloride and brine donated by a local dairy company. Mr. Simonsen had been experimenting with the right proportions and ingredients for several years, blending them in a 1,000-gallon vat and dispersing the liquid with the same salt trucks. He first used it last year on a busy mountain pass in southwest Washington.

This season, the state’s department of transportation has been spreading the solution throughout 11 counties, up from one last winter, with the help of a new automated system that can churn out 5,000 gallons of it in an hour. It has come in handy during a particularly heavy winter.

DOT is brewing the concoction at a Darigold farm in Chehalis, and the savings to taxpayers have been significant… only about $0.48/gallon for the home brew mixture compared to $1.30/gallon for commercially available de-icer.  Transportation officials are new considering building production facilities in each of the state’s six regions.

But wait… is de-icer production really the proper role of government?  Isn’t the private sector always more efficient than the public sector, and doesn’t this amount to unfair, taxpayer subsidized competition to the hard working folks in the de-icing business?  Perhaps all you free marketeers out there can explain this to me?

I slept in this morning, emptied my bladder, brushed my teeth, let the dog and cat out, made myself a pot of green tea, let the dog and cat back in, mixed up a yeast dough, ate a banana, fed the dog and cat, started cooking a split pea soup, drank some more tea, and wrote this post.

So far, that’s about it.

UPDATE:
I just updated this post.  Not much else is doing.

No doubt the snow storms and sub-freezing temperatures that iced over our roads for much of last week were frustrating to a region unaccustomed to and unprepared for ice and snow, but in the end, it was only a week, and it was only the first time since 1990 that such wintry conditions survived for more the a few days, before being melted away by our typically warmer and rainier weather. So while I was as inconvenienced as anybody—not even the Postal Service was willing to brave it up and down my hill for seven days—I’m not particularly angry or concerned about the way the city responded to the mess.

Shit happens, and as Mayor Nickels acknowledged today, the city is ready to reevaluate its snow clearing procedures and work with Metro to provide more reliable service during future storms.  But if it’s another 18 years before shit like this hits the region again, I’ll be neither surprised nor disappointed if the city’s performance isn’t any better.

But those of you demanding truckloads of salt and an army of steel-tipped snowplows to scrape the streets clean the next time a couple of inches of white stuff blankets the region better be prepared to deal with the consequences, because even the city’s minimal response has created or exacerbated damage that will take months, and hundreds of thousands of dollars to repair.

Case in point, the hundreds of reflective “turtles” lying dead and dismembered on the sides of our roads, their shells cracked and broken in the wake of even rubber-tipped plows.  As a transplant, I’ve learned to love these turtle markers, visible even on rainy nights, and ready to provide a rumbling warning when you  stray over the line.  We had plenty of salt and snowplows back in Philadelphia, but few turtles, as few would survive a typical winter of frequent plowing.  Given the rarity of extended snow events here in Seattle, I’d choose the turtles over the plows, and while I don’t have any numbers to support my assertion, I’m guessing so would traffic safety statisticians.

You don’t get something for nothing, and there are costs to salt and plows beyond the cost of the actual salt and the plows.  Of course we could do a better job clearing the roads, but I’m just not sure it’s worth the tradeoffs.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced today that the city has reversed its policy against using road salt to combat ice and snow.  Sorta.

The mayor set certain conditions for using salt: on hills, arterials or snow bus routes, and on routes to hospitals and other emergency facilities when at least 4 inches of snow is predicted, if ice is predicted, or if extreme cold is expected to last more than three days.

So they’ll use salt on some roads, every few years or so, when the conditions warrant.  There.  Is everybody satisfied?

A final decision due this week on replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct has been postponed, so that transportation officials can reconsider the option of a deep-bore tunnel.

“I think the governor would say that if we could make the numbers work, that is probably the most viable option,” Judd said. “But that option is going to mean that there has to be a real meaningful partnership with the city and county and Port [of Seattle] to make it happen.”

Meaningful partnership? In other words, Seattle taxpayers are going to be asked to pony up the extra bucks needed to pay the extra cost of a tunnel over the less expensive surface/transit option… which I suppose would be fair, if Seattle taxpayers actually preferred the tunnel… which they don’t.  Whether the money comes from the county, the city or the port, it still comes from us taxpayers, and I betcha if you put the two options on the ballot with the cost to local taxpayers clearly stated, the pricier tunnel option gets buried in a landslide.  That’s why, if chosen, you won’t see this on a ballot.

Oh, but wait… the Discovery Institute’s Bruce Agnew, the main advocate of The Big Bore, says the tunnel would actually cost less than engineers have previously estimated:

“We’ve always felt that, given the advances in deep-bore tunnels and the ability to build a deep-bore tunnel without interfering with the economy downtown and, given the experience we have in the region with deep-bore tunnel, specifically Beacon Hill, it would be a real tragedy to take it prematurely out of the running.”

Yeah, but then again, these are folks who don’t believe in evolution, so forgive me for taking their claimed scientific and technical expertise with a grain of salt.  As I wrote on this subject over a year ago:

In a city where completion of a 1.3 mile vanity trolley line is feted like some transportation miracle, the very notion that local voters might commit more than a half billion dollars a mile to an untested technology is a dramatic tribute to Discovery’s primary mission of promoting the exercise of faith over reason.

Of course, what Discovery really has faith in is the invisible hand of God—ie, the divine power of the free market to make gobs of money for themselves and their well-heeled friends—and buried along with their tunnel proposal is the notion that the extra cost will be paid for via some sort of “public-private” partnership… you know, taxpayer money heavily subsidizing a for-profit venture.  So now that we’re seriously talking about a deep-bore tunnel, get ready for the talk about privatizing it.

Get your New Years Eve drink on one day early tonight a the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, which meets every Tuesday night from 8PM onwards at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. As always, 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.

Sweet…

… Maybe it’s just me, but aren’t editorials supposed to express an opinion?

I was at a party over the weekend when somebody asked me if a woman had actually been elected county executive.  I was a little confused by the question, and had to think about it for a moment, but replied yeah, Pat McCarthy had just been elected Pierce County Executive.  Well, that should have been big news, the party guest informed me, wondering why she hadn’t read anything about it in the Seattle and Everett newspapers, as that would make McCarthy the first female county executive in state history.

Actually, it makes McCarthy the second female executive in state history, though the first in Pierce County, and yes, I suppose it should have been bigger news outside of Pierce itself, considering what an exclusive men’s club the executive office has been up until now.  And McCarthy’s exception that proves the rule victory highlights a curious anomaly regarding the gender imbalance in Washington state politics.

While the percentage of women in the state Legislature has fallen in recent years—now standing at only 32%, nearly nine points off the historic high a decade ago—Washington women have had great success running for local and state legislative offices over the past few decades, especially compared to most other states.  Women have yet to achieve electoral parity, but there’s nothing remarkable about a woman running for and winning a seat in the Legislature, or on a local school board, council, or board of commissioners.  And while women have had less success at the Congressional level, both our US Senate seats have been held by women for the past eight years.

But while Washington women have done relatively well running for legislative and judicial offices, at the executive level, not so much.  Sure, there’s a smattering of female mayors throughout the state, but for the most part that has defined the height of the executive branch glass ceiling.  In addition to McCarthy being only the second woman to win a county executive race in state history, Gov. Chris Gregoire is only the second woman to win the governor’s mansion.  In fact, over the past forty years, the period during which women have made their most dramatic electoral gains, only six women have been elected to any of Washington’s nine statewide executive offices:  Gov. Dixy Lee Ray, Gov. Chris Gregoire (also AG), Commissioner of Public Lands Jennifer Belcher, Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn, and Superintendents of Public Instruction Judith Billings and Terry Bergeson.

And as far as I know, these may have been the only Washington women to win statewide executive office, ever.

I’m not sure why there is such a disparity between the executive and the other two branches when it comes to women winning elected office, I just know that it exists.  And I don’t see many other folks paying attention to it.

Following up on Jon’s post from yesterday, the Seattle P-I joined the Columbian in abusing state employee unions for fighting Gov. Gregoire’s proposed freeze on scheduled wage increases.

Hmm.  Sure, the governor and the editorialists have a point that during hard budget times, everybody should be expected to sacrifice, and it’s just common sense for the unions to consider postponing wage increases if the alternative would be thousands of their members losing their jobs.  But… these wage increases the governor proposes postponing are part of a negotiated, legally binding contract, so shouldn’t the governor have negotiated with unions to roll them back before including them in her budget?

I mean, a contract is a contract, right?  So if the state is willing, able and right to violate the terms of their labor contracts, just because it’s having trouble balancing its budget, shouldn’t it be willing, able and right to violate the terms of other contracts as well?  Surely there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to save by trimming a couple percentage points from the cost of contracts with the state’s many vendors and contractors… so why aren’t these on the table?  Why just the union contracts?

Huh.

I’m not much into the “cat blogging” phenomenon, but I couldn’t help but pass along this fascinating piece of cat behavior.

I turn my furnace off at night, and during cold snaps like this one the inside temperature will often drop below 50 degrees, so my cat has taken to spending much of his morning patiently sitting in front of the air vent in my office, just soaking in the heat.  Of course, I rarely set the thermostat above 60, so the cat’s forced hot air paradise only lasts so long.  And when it does stop, he places his paws on the wall above the vent and gently kneads it, as if trying to coax out a little more warmth.

Kinda cute.  And a little pathetic.