One of the questions with the Oso disaster that people are asking now is why did we let it happen? We knew that the hill was in danger, and yet people were allowed to live below it. Emmitt tries to tackle that with a bit of a historical perspective. And as is often times the case when he does a historical overview, the early settlers to the area from New England and from the Appalachian region play a large part.

But, the ability to do anything about it stopped where it became obvious that no one wanted to listen to them. The deep sense of individualism that came west with the Appalachians in Cascadia still rules the point of view, especially along the Stillaguamish River.

Sadly, one of the former political leaders on the Appalachian end of the spectrum likely died in the Oso mudslide.

Sure, it is possible to offer enough money to make anyone want to move. But, it isn’t like Snohomish County had magic public funds growing fairy dust. And, when it came to spending that limited public money on someone that really didn’t want to move in the first place. Well, you see where the attention of Snohomish civic leaders can be distracted.

Its easy to point to the available evidence and blame well intentioned people for not doing more. But, it is worth looking back at our origins here and seeing that it isn’t simple.

I don’t know how much we can to do to prevent these sorts of things as long as we’ve decided that the government is going to enforce property rights (something I’m generally for), and it has limited funds. Maybe there isn’t a way. I mean if the state took money out of education, or whatever, to pay to move some people who chose to live in dangerous places (and there must be thousands of dangerous places across the state), or if the county took money away from fire or police protection, people would rightly scream bloody murder.

None of this is to take anything away from the rescue efforts or to say that this was what they had coming, of course. As a liberal, I think we’re all in this together; as a human, I have nothing but sympathy. And as someone who lives in the city of Seattle where the next big one is overdue, I know it’s only a matter of time before I or my neighbors need the same sort of help. And nowhere is perfectly safe. Still, the tough decisions about how we minimize the damage from future events haven’t suddenly become as clear as we might like.

– Your April Fools joke isn’t as funny as you think it is.

– Vote Yes on Prop 1

– Fox News is awesome at graph making.

– And it’s not like we won’t know that people signed up.

– It’s sort of precious, isn’t it? Kind of like a 5th grade essay about a little girl’s puppy.

– Anyone doing 30 days of biking?

– Leave it to Darrell Issa to infuriate Democrats with his pointless obsession, while infuriating Republicans for being bad at it.

This Sunday’s New York times had a story about worker owned cooperatives. The main example that they use is in San Francisco, but

If you happen to be looking for your morning coffee near Golden Gate Park and the bright red storefront of the Arizmendi Bakery attracts your attention, congratulations. You have found what the readers of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, a local alt-weekly, deem the city’s best bakery. But it has another, less obvious, distinction. Of the $3.50 you hand over for a latte (plus $2.75 for the signature sourdough croissant), not one penny ends up in the hands of a faraway investor. Nothing goes to anyone who might be tempted to sell out to a larger bakery chain or shutter the business if its quarterly sales lag.

Instead, your money will go more or less directly to its 20-odd bakers, who each make $24 an hour — more than double the national median wage for bakers. On top of that, they get health insurance, paid vacation and a share of the profits. “It’s not luxury, but I can sort of afford living in San Francisco,” says Edhi Rotandi, a baker at Arizmendi. He works four days a week and spends the other days with his 2-year-old son.

Arizmendi and its five sister bakeries in the Bay Area are worker-owned cooperatives, an age-old business model that has lately attracted renewed interest as a possible antidote to some of our most persistent economic ills. Most co-ops in the U.S. are smaller than Arizmendi, with around a dozen employees, but the largest, Cooperative Home Care Associates in the Bronx, has about 2,000. That’s hardly the organizational structure’s upper limit. In fact, Arizmendi was named for a Spanish priest and labor organizer in Basque country, José María Arizmendiarrieta. He founded what eventually became the Mondragon Corporation, now one of the region’s biggest employers, with more than 60,000 members and 14 billion euro in revenue. And it’s still a co-op.

Does anyone know about cooperatives in the Seattle area if people want to support them with their dollars? I was trying to think of any, and I couldn’t. I mean the advantages of capitalism without, you know, creating more capitalists (except their financiers, and I guess customers). If they make a decent coffee with good enough pastries, that’s really all I want out of a coffee shop.

If people know of local worker cooperatives, especially ones that provide good goods and services, please leave a comment.

– It’s the last day to get signed up for health care for the year, so if you haven’t yet, here’s the website for Washington.

– GOP Condemn A Black Woman Over A Tweet: A Timeline

– Not even really sure what a Chinese backed company would mean in that case.

– Congrats to Robert Cruickshank for being the new President of NPI.

– The only one of these proposed Constitutional amendments I’d support is number 5.

– If fantasy baseball was more like this, I could probably get more into it.

So, my friend is holding a fundraiser for the American Red Cross for the Oso victims. If y’all are in Seattle on the 9th, you should probably go. And if you’re not able to go or don’t want to wait until the 9th, you should probably consider donating at the link.

When I was discussing the mayor’s race last year, I said that the thing that most worried me about a second McGinn term was his foot dragging on police reform in his first term. Since Ed Murray has come to office, he has been worse than foot dragging.

When Murray demoted Jim Pugel, that was a worry. When the new interim chief overturned officer discipline, that was trouble. Now Pugel is out, and it’s one more nail in the coffin.

Nobody knows, of course, if this is a direct payback for the union endorsing Murray or if the Mayor’s Office actually believes this is the best way to police the city. Either way, it doesn’t bode well for people having interactions with the police.

I know, I was late to the party with my original post. And then only an update of that post and a link in an open thread when they reversed their policy. Still, I was glad that this former World Vision employee [h/t] was so blunt about what’s wrong with the reversal.

“The effect is going to be the children and those that we serve,” former World Vision financial analyst David Tobias said.

Tobias is disappointed in his former employer, which he says is as financially complex as any major corporation.

On Monday, the Christian nonprofit announced it would open employment to people in same-sex marriages. After an uproar from conservative donors, it reversed the decision just two days later.

“It was challenging for me to accept that my gay friends at work couldn’t be who they were,” Tobias said. “Really breaking their back and putting their heart and soul into World Vision, then being told publicly they weren’t good enough to do it.”

Unfortunately, King 5 felt the need to balance it with people who think World Vision should actively discriminate against gay people, and double unfortunately the person willing to criticize them is a former employee. I suspect that there are a lot of people inside the organization, probably people who were pushing for the policy change in the first place, who agree.

– So, yeah. More on World Vision.

– On year anniversary of devastating DUI, community rallies in call for ‘vision zero’

– Five Reasons Contraceptive Coverage Is Essential

– Glad to see that Oregonians care about climate change. Hopefully that will lead to real action.

– Olympia has ducks

– If you’re interested in the memorial service for Jim Compton, it’s Saturday at Town Hall 10:00 to Noon.

World Vision is a good organization that has had problematic hiring policies. They have a better policy now.

World Vision is decided an Evangelical Christian organization. And, as such, they have strict rules about hiring, requiring employees to be Christian and to adhere to sexual ethics which includes “abstinence outside of marriage, and fidelity within marriage”.

Now World Vision has decided to, well, NOT change the terms of those requirements. They have, however, decided that gay Christians who seek employment with them must follow the same rules as heterosexuals.

Yay. Yay?

Sure, it’s better than discriminating against gay folks (although they’re still discriminating against gay folks who can’t get married). It’s an important milestone that an Evangelical organization with this much clout is letting this happen. The no-sex-outside-of-marriage stuff is still problematic, but a step toward decency — especially for an org that’s generally good — should be celebrated.

Of course, the good that they do is still the most important thing. Since they’re being attacked for taking this small step in the right direction, now might be a good time to give. Fill in some of the gaps if assholes and gatekeepers are threatening to leave.

…Or not. See comments, the haters and the gatekeepers have forced World Vision to reverse their policy. They are still an organization that does good work, but this is too bad.

– Getting ORCA Cards to people who need reduced fares is a bit of a problem, so one more way is good. If Metro is going to have a reduced rate the next time it increases the fare, I hope that they have that figured out.

– “This case is about much more than contraception. It is about the principles of liberty that animate our Constitution.” Indeed! Which is why the IWF’s arguments should be rejected.

– Well, I’m sure if we let McMorris Rodgers get away with using public money for her campaigns (Seattle Times link), she won’t do it again.

– Let people play soccer in a hijab, for goodness sake.

– From Hans in the comments, this certainly helps explain trolls.

As someone who gives the slightest fuck about politics, I get plenty of email from various politicos. I get policy stuff from Patty Murray in the email associated with this blog, I assume since I write open letters to her here. I get political stuff at my personal email since I was a volunteer on her last campaign. I get emails from all sorts of campaigns for policies and politics. Usually lefty but sometimes others.

I just recently got on the national GOP list. And unlike the policy that lefty groups send, they seem to just be trolling. For instance, I got a link from them over the weekend to some shitty bumper stickers. They were anti-ACA bumper stickers with the odd phrasing OBAMA DOESN’T “CARE” OBAMA “COSTS.” Never mind that the law isn’t called Obamacare; That’s just their nickname for it. If they’re unhappy about the name they gave to a thing, why not stop calling it that instead of being angry?

No, whatever. You want to sell dumbass bumper stickers that don’t make a lick of sense, sure GOP. Who am I to stop you? But the subject of the headline was “Tick off the Democrats.” So I realize there are a lot of digressions for this short post, but here’s another one: just say “piss.” When you use the minced oath you just make it sound like you’re a 12 year old trying to get away with swearing in front of your parents. Well, your parents knew what you meant, and so do people reading your emails.

Second, and finally to the point, I’m not ticked off about a bumper sticker. I’m ticked off that the GOP policy is shit. Democrats and liberal groups email me policy, even when they’re going after the GOP. The GOP seem to think the most important thing is pissing people they don’t like off.

– I usually like it when national and international orgs mention Washington, but boo to having disasters bad enough for that in Snohomish County.

– What would you like to see from the next SDOT director?

– The video above shows the strange procedure that takes place on Sunday mornings in Father Nary’s church in Carnot. The Muslim refugee families clear out of the sanctuary so that area Christians — many of whom may share the anti-Muslim sentiment of the “Christian” Anti-Balaka militias — can come to celebrate Mass.

– Don’t turn off Twitter, national leaders.

– Purity culture needs to be exposed for everything that it is, everything it teaches, and everything that it does to the women and men growing up in it. I understand the you have GOT to be kidding me reaction, but this is not something that can be so easily dismissed.

– They are taking a lot of handouts in the financial districts of various cities.

Since he’s been back Goldy has, rightly, taken The Seattle Times’ editorial board to task for all sorts of nonsense. It’s a target rich environment, and it’s the largest paper in the state. But there are other editorial boards spewing other nonsense. And I think it does the Trib a disservice not to mention things like this.

Governor should veto overreaching drone bill

No, he should sign it into law.

Precious little got done in Olympia this past session on some truly important, much-needed issues, from transportation funding to teacher evaluations.

We’re $2 Billion short on McCleary, and the state only managed to pass a tiny addition to that in the supplemental budget, but teacher evaluations is the education thing they’re pissed off about? That isn’t even the main thrust of the piece, and I agree with them that the session was pretty well wasted. But holy shit. Anyway:

But somehow legislators found time to pass House Bill 2789, an overreaching mishmash of several measures. It would regulate drone use by state and local agencies in a way that could have unforeseen effects on public access to government documents.

All regulation “could have unforeseen effects.” That’s why we have a process to repeal laws. If this is too restrictive, future legislatures can revisit it. I realize this legislature is pretty dysfunctional, but it doesn’t have to be that way in the future. But the idea that law enforcement, or other government agencies, should have a blank check with this type of surveillance until we have the perfect plan seems unhelpful.

The issues at stake are too complicated to address without more study, and Gov. Jay Inslee should veto HB 2789. What’s needed is a task force composed of stakeholders to recommend a clear and more comprehensive proposal that would address all future uses of drones, from private to regulatory and law enforcement.

Governor Inslee could sign the law into place and then we could still have that task force. But it would be coming from a place where our rights not to be watched by state and local governments is the default position. I mean unless you think the drone issue requires immediate action.

It’s not as if this is an issue requiring immediate action. State and local governments have no plans in the near future to use drones, but this highly restrictive bill threatens their ability to someday take advantage of an important emerging technology.

So, OK. There’s more, it’s mostly just a list of stuff the government could theoretically do with drones. If local governments want to do that in the future, I’m sure future legislators will take it up, task force or no task force.

Just a reminder to the regulars and an FYI to the new people: there is, in fact, a comment policy here. It’s pretty loose anyway, and it’s sometimes enforced more in the breach than in actual fact. But, you know, stay on topic and if you want to say something, there are 3 open threads as well as the Drinking Liberally and Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza act as open threads that are basically unmoderated (other than spam and copyright violations).

Now, I realize that pointing to the comment policy means that I’m somewhat committing myself to more moderating. Fortunately, the page is loading quicker, so it won’t take as long to do. But try to behave.

And feel free to use this as an open thread.

– Like we should be protecting parking lots from the evil expansion of multistory housing.

– Someone will be president after Obama, and I wish I shared Oliver’s optimism that it won’t be any of these people.

– The pay gap for women working at King County is much better than the City of Seattle. More work needs to be done on the pay gap by race.

– Maybe not having the CRC was good for Oregon?

– A Stillborn Child, A Charge of Murder and the Disputed Case Law on ‘Fetal Harm’ [h/t]

– Why is there nutrition info for unpopped popcorn?