– Senate Republicans unveil pavement-heavy transportation plan laden with bad provisions

– The GOP braintrust is really a thing to behold.

– It has been enlightening to watch this entire spectacle play out over the past week. There are now intelligent people going on television to tell us that the president should not use the word “crusade” to describe … The Crusades. The problem is history. Or rather the problem is that there is no version of history that can award the West a stable moral high-ground.

– Pam Roach is the worst.

– I know, I know, Carl is impressed that The New York Times has heard of Washington is pretty boring. But I don’t care: I’m glad they know we’re working on weaning ourselves off of coal.

– Sometimes one note will do.

I’m feeling a lot better, and am headed back to work. But I didn’t prepare anything in the last couple sick days. So, yeah.

Still feeling kinda not great, so here’s a Thursday thread.

I’m feeling a bit blah today. It’s probably nothing, but I’m going back to bed.

I don’t want to pick on the Spokesman-Review since this is a pretty wide spread phenomenon. Still, their Spin Control blog has a piece about bills that are getting a hearing that are “first world problems.” I’m not sure they’re either first world issues in general or, for that matter, problems.

For example: How many tasting rooms should Washington wineries have? Current law says two, a proposal before a Senate committee last week said that should be four, to better extol the goodness of the state’s fruit of the vine. Why four, asked Sen. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma. Well, Oregon wineries get three, he was told.

Expanding the number of tasting rooms seems like something they could do in a country in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance. I’m not much of a wine drinker, but I just Googled “African wine” and the first hit was a pretty interesting Wikipedia article on South African wines. Seems like a long history, and something ripe for tasting rooms.

I’m also not sure how having 2 or expanding it to 4 is a problem. It seems like we’re having success with the tasting rooms we have and want to expand. Is it a problem because, 4 is still pretty small for the state? I honestly don’t know!

Or a bill recognizing the fourth Saturday in July the National Day of the Cowboy, which another Senate committee took up. The hearing revealed – maybe you knew; I sure didn’t – that cowboy is gender neutral and refers to both male and female cow-persons. Both deserve recognition because of their legendary integrity, said supporters, who brought honorary headgear for Government Operations Committee Chairwoman Pam Roach, R-Auburn.

Look, if there’s one thing we can agree about the first-world, it’s that we are the exclusive domain of people who recognize agricultural workers. Also, it seems like not a problem. It seems like kind of a neat thing to celebrate. Were they not getting celebrated before? I still don’t see a problem.

The House State Government Committee took up an issue that annoys a sizable chunk of us two days a year, the switch between Standard and Daylight Savings time. There’s a bill to keep the state on Standard time year-round, and a resolution aimed at keeping us on Savings Time.

Rep. Elizabeth Scott, R-Monroe, offered perhaps the quintessential First World Problems defense of her Standard Time bill, albeit with a smile: “It’s still a hassle to change all the clocks. . . It’s a hassle for pet owners whose pets wake them up an hour early. I hear that milk cows are particularly annoyed.”

This is the closest in that it mostly involves actual first world stuff, is stuff, kinda. And technically identifies a problem: I was kind of surprised, but if you look at the map of countries that use daylight savings, it’s primarily Europe and North America. But there are plenty of Middle Eastern, African, and South American countries that use it.

Also, I don’t think it’s a problem. We get somewhat more sun, but it doesn’t work for everyone, depending on your job and your temperament. Also, in the age before all your clocks automatically changed, it was slightly annoying to have to remember, I hear. It seems like on balance, it does more good than bad. Maybe we should only spring forward, and every year, we’ll move an hour ahead of everyone else.

In conclusion, they have clocks in Uruguay and Namibia.

– It still seems to me like a bigger problem that a president is expected to attend a national prayer breakfast.

– Anti-vaxing is a labor issue, too

– Marchers Carry Golf Clubs to Protest the Arrest of William Wingate and Racial Profiling

– I haven’t noticed the unicorn bike in a rack or out in the wild, but now I’m looking for it.

– Valentine’s Day cards for 2015

– A couple different takes on Andrew Sullivan retiring.

– I remain both excited about the future of cell service in the bus tunnel and horrified that more people will be on their phones more times.

– Cathy McMorris Rodgers is not concerned about the millions of people who would lose their health care coverage if this bill were signed into law. Returning back to the days when insurance companies could terminate your coverage for any reason, refuse to cover you for pre-existing conditions, refuse medical treatment, and increase your rates at will does not concern her. Bringing back the rampant increases in health care costs does not concern her.

– While listening to this podcast, it occurred to me that Bertha the drilling machine may well be stuck for more days that Bertha Landes was mayor.

– I’m not sure running against the Kochs worked particularly well last time, but maybe.

– The Unicorn Whose Tears Were 1976 Ford Fiestas

The House Transportation Committee passed a bill to allow the next phase of Sound Transit to go forward, if approved by the voters in the ST region. Since it didn’t get any GOP votes, and since the GOP control the state Senate, that’s going to be a tough step. Anyway, good news: The most coherent, most decent, just generally best person you’ll ever hear of, Rep. Ed Orcutt, has decided to be an ass about it!

The bill passed 13-12 almost strictly along party lines. All but one Democrat voted yea, and every Republican voted no.

“Okay, Seattle” representative Ed Orcutt (R-20, Kalama) said, “go ahead and tax yourself into oblivion.”

So first of all — and I’m aware that this is me being a broken record — the thing that’s killing us here in Seattle isn’t taxing ourselves and getting the benefits. It’s the state taxing us and sending the money to places like Kalama. Also, that isn’t killing us too badly as we’re doing fine.

Second, what does “Okay, Seattle” even mean when you vote against letting Seattle do a thing? The bullshit paternalistic rhetoric doesn’t match the bullshit paternalistic action. Pick a bullshit paternalistic lane, and bullshit paternalistic stay in it.

Third, it’s the job of a state representative to do what’s best for the state. They really shouldn’t be gleeful about the failure (even if it’s just in their head) of a part of the state they don’t represent. Honestly, if he believes his nonsense, he isn’t fit to serve.

Fourth, Sound Transit isn’t just Seattle. When Seattle needed to tax ourselves to preserve transit service, we just went ahead and did it. This is for a regional transit plan, for goodness sake.

And finally, the whole premise is silly since Sound Transit will almost certainly be a net good for the region.

I wrote most of this post on public transit. In fact, most of the writing that I do for Horse’s Ass is during my commute. If we didn’t have decent public transit, I doubt I’d have the time to write on HA. I also do some actual paid work work on my commute from time to time. I’m not really sure what the economic value of that is, but it’s not zero. It’s certainly more than my output when I drive.

Beyond just me personally, this is a growing region, and we’re going to need to get people around. Better transit isn’t just a luxury. We’re going to have to pay for it somehow, and Sound Transit, while hardly perfect, is the best option we’ve got.

Sorry for the short OT, this is from my phone.

Sen. Sharon Brown has a press release about how she wants to modernize, ahem, what we call clean energy.* Some of it is fine (I think, but anyone with more knowledge of energy issues than me, please pipe in). Some of it is of the oh, let’s count the hydro power toward our clean energy requirements despite the initiative that people already voted on.

“By allowing some of the incremental electricity produced by efficiency improvements to hydro projects to qualify as an eligible renewable resource, we not only save consumers money, but we also help our employers free up the resources they need to hire more employees and give raises and better benefits to those already employed,” said Brown, R-Kennewick.

Efficiencies are awesome! But the good news is that there’s already an advantage to utilities to being efficient. It’s the market. The reason we have regulations like these are because we’re trying to accomplish things the market won’t do well. Also, is there ever a GOP program they can’t pretend is a jobs bill. We need to rely more on hydro than on energy sources with less downside because jobs. Also, didn’t we vote on this already?

Efficiency changes made to hydro projects allow more electricity to be produced from the same amount of water without any new diversions or impoundments. Currently, the I-937 law only recognizes hydro-efficiency improvements associated with projects owned by a qualified utility. Under Brown’s bill, this recognition would be extended to incremental electricity marketed by the federal Bonneville Power Administration.

Will of the people, and whatnot.

“As lawmakers heard from some of those who testified today, Washingtonians who have paid for these efficiency improvements to hydro projects should be able to see the benefits of those improvements,” said Brown. “Instead, Washington is sending its affordable hydropower to other states who consider it renewable, while our utilities are force to purchase costly power required to meet the state’s mandate.

Ignore the typos. This post can’t all just be me making fun of typos, and I’ve already done it once and will do it again. It’s just some intern, probably. Good for you for being here, and I hope you earn credits toward your middle school graduation.

Obviously, the thing to concentrate on here is that our standards for renewable should be rigorous. Our standards should be tough to hit because how we get our energy is valuable!

Also, not for nothing, but energy is incredibly cheap in Washington. For example, my apartment is pretty small, but I paid less than $15 for my December bill,** and that was with a fair amount of heat, what with it being December. A lot of that is, as Goldy has written, our socialist utility here in Seattle. So clearly socialism is a jobs program — QED — and I hope Senator Brown will lead a chorus of The Internationale. Unless she hates jobs.

“With so many families having to make the difficult choice between paying the light bill and putting food on the table, we have an obligation to look for ways to make energy more affordable. My bill would do just that by allowing our utilities to use clean, affordable incremental hydropower and pass any cost savings onto their customers.”

Right, so let’s take out the profit motive from things like utilities. Acknowledge that they make more sense as infrastructure and then everyone who uses the product will have more money. Brilliant! Oh, no, it’s just loosening regulation.

Anyway, one more typo to make fun of from a part of it that I’m basically fine with.

We really need to look at what we are going to use for baseload energy in the future. Wind power cannot replace wind power. Utilities have to balance every minute of our load with our resources and the power that our customers need.

Again, I’m not really one to make fun of typos, but this has been up for several days. And presumably it was a draft at some point. “Wind power cannot replace wind power” is like a riddle in a children’s book.

[Read more…]

– No charges for person who killed man walking his dog in a Kirkland crosswalk

– There are new rules for attending Seattle City Council meetings and after reading this Seattlish piece, I’m also interested to see if they’ll just be used on Zimmerman and Bellomio or if there will be a larger crackdown.

– Tim Eyman’s “analysis” of initiative-related bills and amendments isn’t to be trusted

– Always glad when someone changes their mind to become pro-choice, but yeah, the follow up is important.

– If you were actually worried about the quality of the new Ghostbusters movie and not just of girl cooties getting on a classic, I would think the addition of Kristen Wiig and Melissa McCarthy would be the surest sign that it’s in good hands.

– But describing Wing Commander as unsophisticated sci-fi makes it too easy to write off as…unsophisticated sci-fi

– I’m always more willing to look at a candidate who Cascade endorses, and occasionally they’ve tipped the scale for me, so it would be sad to not have that any more.

– I don’t know how realistic the prospect of a $15 minimum wage would be for Oregon, but the fact that its opponents are into the scare tactics phase probably means something good for its chances.

– Chart of the Day: An uptick in threats against abortion providers

– I am not on a jury, and I didn’t contribute much here. Best of all possible worlds! I did get some reading done in the jury room. Pit? Juror dumping ground?

– My mustache is better than either the Senate Majority Leader’s or the Speaker’s. Also, I haven’t just had a mustache in like 5 years.

– Marshawn Lynch’s Quiet Riot [h/t]

– Dori Monson is so, so awful.

– Two important nutrition/education bills to keep an eye on

– It’s kind of late in the game to be researching new transit alternatives for Highway 99.

– Looks like Obama can walk and chew gum at the same time (not a metaphor).

– Tacoma has a brand-new sick leave law.

– I have jury duty starting today (yes, again), so who knows? Maybe I’ll have lots of time to write or maybe I’ll be my usual hardly posting self.

There’s a bill to raise the minimum wage in the state to $12, and it got a hearing in the House Labor Committee yesterday.

Washington, one of nine states where minimum-wage raise bills have been introduced in 2015, would go from $9.47 an hour to $12 in a series of 50-cent hikes every Jan. 1 under the bill.

House Labor Chairman Mike Sells, D-Everett, said the bill “has a lot better chance in the House” than last year’s failed attempt for a $12 minimum wage because it phases in the raise slower. He is one of 41 co-sponsors of the bill, all Democrats. It could face longer odds in the Republican-led Senate, where all but one of the 20 names attached to the bill are from the minority Democrats.

If you’re interested in writing your legislator and telling them, politely, that you support this bill, you can find them here. Either ask you member of the House to support the one that just got the hearing, or your Senator that you’d like the bill to get a hearing. If you’d like to contact a member of the House Labor Committee, you can find them here.

– The health care law does whatever the GOP says it does, even if they said it did other things in the past.

– If you’re not happy about unfunded mandates, you could fund the things the voters passed rather than have a crappy amendment to the state constitution.

– Another reason to eat at Tutta Bella

– Since we’re going to hear a lot of har-har-har Algore since there’s a storm in the Northeast in January, it might be a good time to remind your uncle on Facebook or the Superbowl party next week that we had record highs here. Also, neither of those proves nor disproves global warming so much as the overwhelming scientific evidence.

– Lindy West talking to one of her trolls on This American Life was maybe one of the most amazing things I’ve ever heard.

– Either the NFL is opposed to the Marshawn Lynch victory celebration or they try to make money off it. [h/t]

– Such exquisite concern-trolling hardly needs explaining but basically Hemingway thinks we can all agree it’s bad when the GOP trips over its dick because “if Republicans can’t pass wildly popular legislation protecting innocent unborn children, what’s going to happen when they face difficult legislative battles?”

– Youz guyz, I’m so sad that the Ark Park is probably going to have trouble finding an audience.