Goldy

I’ve never been all that enthusiastic about the city council’s move to district elections—I didn’t like the district boundaries, and thought it should have been 9-0 or 5-4 rather than this weird 7-2 district/at-large split. I’m also not convinced that it makes it easier to run a grassroots campaign, as big money now buys an even bigger advantage in these smaller districts. Public financing is the the more pressing reform. Or if you really want to fix what ails the council, their’s a much better and bolder reform than district elections: Proportional ranked choice voting.

But if you had hoped that the move to districts might shake up the composition of the council, forcing some of the old timers out, then you’ll be pleased with the news that council member Tom Rasmussen has decided not to run for re-election in Council District 1:

“I am profoundly grateful to have served the people of Seattle for more than 25 years, both as a member of the City Council, as Director of the Mayor’s Office for Senior Citizens and for former City Councilmember Jeanette Williams. I’ve sought to contribute to Seattle in ways that I hope will be meaningful for future generations.

“This wasn’t an easy decision but, it is the right one. It is now time to direct my efforts toward the same causes I have always been most passionate about — in exciting new ways.

Well, it probably wasn’t all that hard a decision. Rasmussen may have been the most vulnerable incumbent on the council, facing a credible challenger in community activist Chas Redmond, and a vocally dissatisfied constituency back home in West Seattle. Nobody wants to be conlined. Better to go out a winner.

As for what it means for city government, I dunno. Didn’t have much of a relationship with Rasmussen, who was good on some issues and not-so-good on others. Like I wrote earlier this week, Nick Licata and his passionate liberalism will be missed. But I never really thought of Rasmussen as standing for much of anything. So I’m happy to see somebody else get a chance.

So… is Jean Godden the next to go? She’s got a couple of credible challengers in District 4, and, well, let’s be honest: She’s very old. But Godden pretty much retired to the council, so it’s hard to see much motivation for her to retire from it.

New York political bloggers/reporters have all the fun:

The speaker of the New York State Assembly, Sheldon Silver, was arrested on federal corruption charges on Thursday and accused of using the power of his office for more than a decade to secure millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks and then covering up his schemes, according to court documents.

Mr. Silver, a Democrat from the Lower East Side of Manhattan who has served as speaker for more than two decades, is accused of a range of corrupt dealings that capitalized on his official position. They include using his position to obtain corrupt payments misrepresented as referral fees from a law firm, funneling state research funds and other benefits to a doctor who in return referred asbestos claims to the law firm where the speaker worked, and secretly helping real estate developers win tax breaks.

Say what you want about Washington State House speaker Frank Chopp, but he’s not corrupt. Hell, as loathsome as they are, not even our Republicans are corrupt (at least not in any legally actionable sense of the word). I suppose our relatively scandal-free politics is a good thing, but it sure does make it boring to cover.

Perhaps it was a surge in demand that brought down the Seattle Channel’s live stream (or perhaps it was a Comcast/Centurylink conspiracy), but for those of you who missed all or most of council member Kshama Sawant’s Socialist response to the president’s State of the Union address, I’ve embedded the entirety, courtesy of YouTube.

My challenge to my fellow members of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party is: Watch Sawant’s speech and tell me what you disagree with apart from maybe your knee-jerk defense of the president and your discomfort at her call for an alternative to the Democratic Party. Seriously… don’t you wish more Democrats would talk this way?

It’s no surprise really, but Seattle City Council member Nick Licata officially announced today that he will not seek reelection in November:

“I’ve been lucky to have an exciting life filled with challenges taken on voluntarily, not out of hardship.

“Perhaps the greatest challenge we all face is the need to improve the lives of Americans who are seeing their future increasingly impeded by the outrageous growing concentration of wealth, and I would add power, in this nation.

“No one city can resolve this problem. But Seattle has done much in attempting to do so. I would like to play more of an active role in that effort. And see what I can do to have Seattle’s accomplishments duplicated elsewhere.

“I hope after my current term ends this year that I may have that opportunity in some capacity. So, I will not seek re-election.

It’s a shame, really. Long the most liberal member of the council, Licata’s energy and influence had arguably faded in recent years, but Kshama Sawant’s election as an honest-to-godless socialist appeared to reinvigorate him. 2014 was a very good year for Licata and his issues. He’ll be missed.

If Licata’s retirement was making room for bringing some young blood to the council, I suppose I’d feel more sanguine about the prospect of replacing an old white guy. But it won’t play out that way. The move to district elections had put Licata in the position of running against another incumbent, either Mike O’Brien in District 6, or more likely Sally Clark in one of the two at-large seats. So Licata’s retirement just makes the other incumbents more secure, and the council as a whole more conservative by subtraction.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally is meeting a couple hours early tonight to watch the State of the Union address the way God intended: At a bar. The Roanoke Park Place Tavern to be exact. Please join me. Or if you don’t have the civic pride to join me at a bar, then follow my commentary on Twitter—it’s just like watching the SOTU with me in person, only more concise.

Afterwards, fuck the Republican response. Though I’ll probably watch anyway, if only to hurl insults. Rather, I’m looking forward to Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant once again live-streaming her official Socialist response to the president’s speech. Really. Listen in. I wager you’ll be surprised by how much of Sawant’s speech you agree with.

Hey, Federal Way City Councilmember Martin Moore… don’t let the door hit you on the way out:

Like Miloscia, Moore said he no longer felt welcome in his former party as a “pro-life” Democrat opposed to abortion.

“The party has become so incredibly intolerant of people who might disagree with them on some issues,” Moore said in an interview.

Uh-huh. So Moore is lambasting the Democratic Party for being “incredibly intolerant” of his incredible intolerance. Because if you think about it, that’s exactly what Moore’s so-called “pro-life” stance is: An incredibly intolerant demand that the rest of us be legally barred from exercising our reproductive rights, on the grounds that abortion violates Moore’s own peculiar religious sensibilities. Sound familiar?

The morality of abortion is a religious issue. Don’t believe in it, don’t have one. I can tolerate that. Even respect it. But your religious convictions have no fucking place in our law.

Jesse Hagopian is an award-winning history teacher at Garfield High School, an author, an outspoken activist, and a leader of the fight against excessive school testing. And yesterday, near the end of the MLK Day march, he was assaulted by Seattle Police without provocation.

As Hagopian explains in further detail on his Facebook page:

I was marching for Martin Luther King day today–amazing march! At one point after the big main march, group of bike cops set up a line to keep us from marching. Some people walked through the line, but I didn’t. When my phone rang, I turned away from the cops and began walking away to answer the phone. A cop then ran up in my face and pepper sprayed me right in the face. The milk has helped a lot and I’m beginning to feel better. Wish we had a better world.

Hagopian is a public figure of sorts, a fixture at social justice rallies and protests, and a relatively frequent subject of media coverage. He’s not known to be violent in any way, but he is known to be a leader. So not having seen the incident, here’s my bit of informed conjecture as to what might have happened: The police recognized him, saw him reach for his phone, and suspected he might be organizing activities on the ground. So they disabled him.

That’s right. My guess is that the police pepper sprayed Hagopian in order to prevent him from using his phone.

I suppose it’s possible the officer in question is just an asshole who indiscriminately assaulted Hagopian for no apparent reason (or an asshole who recognized Hagopian and saw an opportunity to assault him just because), but in any case, the point is that once again an officer assaulted an innocent person and got away with it.

And yes, pepper spraying somebody in the face is assault. If I were to walk up to you and pepper spray you in the face, I would be charged with assault. And if I were to walk up to a Seattle police officer and pepper spray him in the face I would certainly be charged with assaulting a police officer (assuming I survived the encounter). But police have learned from experience that they have near absolute impunity to pepper spray anybody, with no legal consequences whatsoever. It’s gotten to the point where they even laugh about it. Pepper spray—It’s funny! Ha-ha!

Note that the officer didn’t run up to Hagopian and punch him in the face. That would have left a mark. He would’ve had to then arrest Hagopian and charge him with something (usually resisting arrest and/or assaulting a police officer) in order to avoid facing charges of his own—which, you know, is a hassle. So he pepper sprayed him.

And yes, I can only presume that Hagopian was innocent of any legal transgression, based on the fact that he was neither arrested nor charged. Which raises a related issue: The stunning number of citizens who are pepper sprayed (i.e. assaulted) by police and charged with absolutely nothing. No arrest. No charges. Nada. Because under our current rules of engagement, you apparently don’t have to engage in illegal behavior, present a danger to yourself or others, or refuse to comply with a legal order to be assaulted by the police. The caustic chemical burning your eyes is evidence enough that you were a valid target.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not totally opposed to pepper spray. I fully support its use as an alternative to deadly force. But its lazy and indiscriminate use as a means of crowd control or for forcing compliance from peaceful citizens should be a fucking crime.

About 2,200 guns were seized at TSA airport checkpoints last year, a 20 percent rise from the year before, and 230 percent more than 2005. And according to the New York Times, “a vast majority of the weapons were loaded and had bullets in the chamber.”

While defense attorneys and law enforcement officials said a vast majority of weapons cases at airports were honest mistakes, advocates of stricter gun laws said the number of incidents was alarming. “People say, ‘I’m so responsible with my gun,’ and here they are forgetting they have them in an airport where there are so many people and kids running around,” said Laura Cutilletta, senior staff attorney for the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence in San Francisco.

The case of a toddler fatally shooting his mother after fishing a gun out of her purse in an Idaho Walmart in December shows how easily tragedies can occur.

We need to start treating gun violations the way we treat DUIs. Even a minor violation should result in a suspended license; repeat violations should result the permanent suspension of one’s right to own and carry a gun. These aren’t tragic accidents. Most “accidental” shootings are the result of criminal negligence by people who simply can’t be trusted to responsibly own a gun.

Deuteronomy 23:12-14
Set up a place outside the camp to be used as a toilet area. And make sure that you have a small shovel in your equipment. When you go out to the toilet area, use the shovel to dig a hole. Then, after you relieve yourself, bury the waste in the hole. You must keep your camp clean of filthy and disgusting things. The LORD is always present in your camp, ready to rescue you and give you victory over your enemies. But if he sees something disgusting in your camp, he may turn around and leave.

Discuss.

Raising the minimum wage is very popular. So if Washington State Republicans were smart, they would join with Democrats in passing legislation that raises the state minimum wage to $12 an hour. Or if they really want to be dicks about it, they could try to negotiate the number down to $11.50, or maybe even $11, and still claim credit for increasing the minimum wage. It would boost our economy, make voters happy, and take a potent issue away from Democrats in 2016.

But Republicans won’t join with Democrats in raising the minimum wage. Because Republicans aren’t smart.

To be clear, if I were to walk onto the floor of Washington State’s house or senate chambers wearing a bulletproof vest atop my jacket and tie, I would be removed for violating the dress code. But asshole gun nuts like those pictured above are free to open-carry semi-automatic weapons into the galleries above the chambers. God bless America!

UPDATE: Lt. Governor Brad Owen has announced that openly carried firearms will no longer be allowed in the senate gallery:

Owen said it didn’t make sense to allow people to openly carry firearms while banning backpacks, signs and umbrellas.

Gee, ya think?

A stunning new poll conducted by Hart Research Associates finds that 63 percent of respondents support raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years. A less ambitious proposal to raise the minimum wage to $12.50 an hour earns an even more overwhelming 75 percent support, including support from a majority of Republicans. The poll additional finds that 82 percent of respondents support indexing the minimum wage to inflation, while 71 percent of respondents favor eliminating the federal tip credit. The survey of 1002 adults was conducted January 5-7, and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1 percent.

The federal minimum wage currently stands at $7.25 an hour, and at just $2.13 an hour for tipped employees.

Why Democrats aren’t flocking to this issue, I just don’t know. It’s a political no-brainer.

So the apparent success of Car2Go in incentivizing members to give up their personal vehicles—about 2,000 Seattleites, according to the company’s statistics—got me thinking about a recent article I’d seen on what it really means to live and work “close” to transit.

The conventional thinking among urban planners is that few Americans are willing to walk more than a half a mile to a transit stop; after that, ridership supposedly falls off precipitously. But a new study on the impact of proximity to a light rail station on office rents in Dallas found that a quarter of the rent premium persists nearly a full mile from transit, and at least some rent premium can be detected as much as 1.85 miles away.

That’s right: Businesses are willing to pay significantly higher rents to be about a mile from a light rail station. Which clearly implies that a significant portion of their workers are willing to walk that mile. In Texas.

That doesn’t surprise me. I live about a mile from Othello Station, and Link Light Rail has become my primary means of commuting downtown to work. No traffic, no expensive parking, and rarely an unexpected delay. It’s simply much less expensive and more convenient than driving.

To be honest, the majority of days I don’t actually walk the full mile. On days I need to drop off or pick up my daughter on Mercer Island, I park just outside the restricted area around Mt. Baker Station—the closest station to the I-90 bridge. And, I admit, on many other days I drive halfway to Othello Station, due to poor time management on my part, or bad weather. (Mostly poor time management.)

But—and here’s my main observation—I already own a car. If I did not own a car, I certainly wouldn’t buy one to take me a half mile closer to the rail station. I’d just walk it. No big deal.

According to AAA, when you add everything together, the average cost of car ownership comes to $8,876 a year. Of course, you can own a car for less. I figure my car is costing me less than $5,000 a year. But that’s not nothing. And as our transportation options increase—rail, bus, Car2Go, ZipCar, taxi, and yes, even the economically predacious TNCs like Uber and Lyft—more and more Seattleites will choose to steer clear of car ownership.

And the less we own cars, the further we’ll be willing to walk to transit. Having transformed the choice between walking and driving into a choice between walking and owning a car, a one mile walk—even a mile and a half—just won’t seem all that far.

Hey, remember all those times the Seattle Times editorial board lauded the so-called Majority Coalition Caucus—consisting of all 23 Republicans and just two turncoat Democrats—for their bipartisanship? Well, oddly, it seems that caucus math isn’t commutative:

But bipartisanship is already in short supply, just one day into the session. Moments after the two-thirds-rule vote, the minority Senate Democratic caucus engaged in their own parliamentary high jinks, getting conservative Republican state Sen. Pam Roach installed as president pro tempore, a top leadership position, over renegade Democratic state Sen. Tim Sheldon, who caucuses with the GOP.

Right. So 23 Republicans plus 2 Democrats equals bipartisanship, but 2 Republicans plus 23 Democrats equals the opposite. Weird.

Other than that, it’s not actually an awful editorial. I’m beginning to see a glimmer of hope that this revamped editorial board might even be open to endorsing new tax revenue.

In a hardy “fuck you” to turncoat Tim Sheldon, all 23 Democrats joined with two crazy Republicans to elect shooting-spree-waiting-to-happen Pam Roach the new President Pro Tempore of the Washington State Senate. Back in 2010, Roach was famously “physically separated” from her Republican caucus after an internal investigation found that she had repeatedly mistreated Republican staffers. In 2008 she was sanctioned by her caucus for creating an “intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment.” And now she’s their president. Hooray for Democracy!

And so in honor of President Roach’s unique brand of statesmanship, I proudly repost her famous “Roses” speech:

Looks like this is shaping up to be quite a productive legislative session.