– I’m pretty amazed that the requirement in the health care law that men and women pay the same is the hill the GOP have decided to fight on.

– Congrats to Whatcom County on electing anti-coal export terminal candidates (Seattle Times link).

– I think the fallout from the district elections will be interesting. Erica C. Barnett teases out some of the political implications.

– I liked reading about Jeff Merkley’s role in ENDA.

– I think I knew the date that the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapsed, but 1940, on this date seems ludicrously recent in my mind.

– Flying is safe.

I’m pretty disappointed with the result of I-522. I’m not sure anyone has called anything yet, but after today’s 4:30 ballot drop, it’s still no at 54.33%. And yes, it still proves –as if further proof were needed — that rather depressingly, big money can buy elections in this state, at least initiatives. Still while the $22 million spent to get a victory can be thought of as dispiriting: breaking records of spending made a big difference in the end. Suck!

Still, I think there may be a small bit of hope in a staggeringly large number. First, given that only a tiny tiny ity bitty fraction was from in state, that’s money flowing in here. More important though is that they had to spend that much money. Sure, they won, but it might put some big money interests off in the future if they think they might have to spend that much on a campaign.

It may be a hollow victory in the face of an actual loss, but it’s better than nothing.

Boo.

Flanked by Boeing and union leaders, Gov. Jay Inslee on Tuesday announced a tentative deal to win assembly of the Boeing 777X in Washington state.

The deal hinges on a legislative special session to pass $8 billion in tax incentives for Boeing through 2040. Other elements of the plan are a long-stalled $10 billion, 10-year transportation package, fast permitting for manufacturers, and education for aerospace workers.

“The bottom line is that this is what Boeing and the Machinists need to compete in the global marketplace and build this airplane in our state, and for us to secure our economic future,” Inslee said, adding that he hopes the package will be passed in the next week.

Look, I know that politicians know that if they don’t offer these sorts of deals, and Boeing up and moves production elsewhere, they’ll get some blame. And they should do some things to make sure Boeing does stay. But man are these sweetheart deals annoying. And as Goldy points out, Boeing is a profitable company.

Hopefully, as long as they’re using the special session to give Boeing everything it wants, the legislature can find time to pass a decent transit package.

– Vote if you haven’t already. The Washington State Democrats want to make sure you do. Remember Seattle, if you don’t vote, the slightly worse candidate might be mayor.

– You don’t say, coal trains cause coal dust? Actually, in all seriousness, these sorts of studies are important, and even if the answer seems obvious, it’s important to have data.

– Construction starts in a few weeks on the seawall.

– Oh look Rachel Maddow mentioned the I-522 campaign:

$550 of the $22m raised against WA proposal to label GMO food comes from in-state. Not $550k, but $550: http://t.co/nJNuRFtlKu

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) November 4, 2013

– So how is it that the US government was caught flat-footed about foreclosuregate? How is it that the UK government was caught off guard by the London Whale and Libor Rate-Rigging scandal? How is it that ANY of the financial shenanigans of the past decade took place and yet there have been few, if any, prosecutions?

– The Parks Legacy Citizens Advisory Committee (PLCAC), appointed to consider Seattle Parks and Recreation’s future funding options, has released a first draft of 37 newly prioritized investment initiatives (funding recommendations) that are being considered for a possible ballot measure in August 2014.

– I’m not sure why zombies are so popular right now, but they can draw in cartography nerds.

I like Linda Thomas. I think she’s one of the smartest people doing radio, and I’ve linked positively to her on numerous occasions. But I think there’s a hook she has used in some of her pieces.

You might drive by public art and not realize you paid for it. The Ballard bridge, for example, has eight sculptures attached that represent fish nets, propellers and other aspects of the neighborhood’s history.

And

He walks with a limp along North 105th Street in Seattle at the intersection with Aurora Avenue. He asks motorists stopped at the traffic light, “Could you help me please?” His sign says he’s “severely disabled.” I’ve seen him talk on a cell phone. He often wears Seahawks clothing. That’s all I know about the man who carries a cardboard sign at the same spot every day.

You know, if you’re in a city, one of the nice things is that you can get places outside of your car. I mean maybe not 99 North, but for much of the city, you can walk past people and art. You can get a lot out of Seattle on a bike or on foot, that one of our smartest newspeople thinks it’s natural to miss. I hope for those of us who take advantage of it, being able to get around in non-car ways lets us appreciate the artistic, and natural beauty, as well as seeing more of the people around us.

And I will add that, obviously, I’m not telling anyone how to get from point A to point B in this town. If you want to drive, God bless. And as an able-bodied guy, it often is, or can be perceived to be, safer for me to be on the street than for other people. Still, being on ground level out of a car is a valuable part of city life.

– Shelter Beds or Westlake Park

– You know what, I’m sort of coming to the conclusion that I don’t like that Mitt Romney fellow all that much.

– Cascade Bikes is going to make a push for safe routes to parks in a levy in 2014. Here’s a change.org petition if you’re interested.

– The tea party has the same political effect that original Bircherism had — making good and necessary things harder to do. And it has the same human effect — ensnaring the gullible and the fearful in a miserable cocoon of falsehood, fright, indignation and baseless resentment.

– My biggest hope here is that Jay Inslee embarrasses Dori Monson on the basketball court half as much as Monson embarrasses the medium of radio on a daily basis.

Tom Foley’s memorial service was today. I haven’t had the chance to watch it yet, but if you want you can see it here. I do love the phrase Titan of Democracy; I think that really sums him up.

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee (D) called Foley a “Titan of Democracy” during the service.

“He was a representative of the best the state of Washington had to offer,” added Gov. Inslee.

You can see President Obama’s speech at the DC memorial here. Darryl has already memorialized him here on HA.

In a sales tax reliant state where we recently voted privatize and tax the poop out of liquor sales, there are high taxes on hard alcohol. This PI piece seems to forget that we just taxed ourselves, not as punishment to boozehounds, but to replace the revenue that privatization cost the state. You can get booze at your grocery store, but you have to pay higher taxes. It wasn’t a deal that I was comfortable with, but the voters went ahead with it. So, fine.

I would like a little more context than just complaining:

And, when it comes to increasing taxes to fund said government, it’s easier to get people to agree to a sin tax. You know, we’re supposed to feel bad about doing it and thus willing to punish ourselves: Bad drinker! Bad drinker! Barkeep – pour me another one! Also … add in the extra tax burden placed on booze for these first few years of privatization, and you have a recipe for a winning statistic.

There’s a reasonable debate to be had about the level of alcohol taxes we have. I’m just not sure this contributes to that.

Obviously, as the economy improves, stimulus that was designed to get us out of a caving, crashing recession will have to be scaled back. And of course the things that were set to expire are going to expire, especially with a House of Representatives dead set on anything decent for the Republic. So I guess nobody should be surprised that the expanded SNAP benefits are going to be back to what they were before the stimulus starting tomorrow.

Extra funding for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, one of the most impactful elements of the 2009 economic stimulus, expires Friday, meaning poor families in all 50 states will immediately see steep cuts in government food aid.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided a 13.6 percent funding increase to SNAP recipients beginning in April 2009, money the bill’s backers said would make its way quickly into the economy. But that extra funding ends Nov. 1. Every one of the 48 million SNAP recipients will see their benefits cut in their next checks.

Given the need, it seems early from a purely moral standpoint. The top earners are recovering nicely, and good for them and all, but the need for SNAP for people who aren’t earning that is still there.

SNAP benefits disproportionately help families with children. More than 21 million children — one in four children in the country today — live in households that participate in the program. More than two-thirds of the $5 billion the government saves will come from households that include children.

But instead of recognizing that the need is real, and that we should do more, we have a House of Representatives that last month voted for major cuts to the program. The GOP in the last election cycle ran candidate for President who doesn’t believe people are entitled to food, and they’re living up to that even though he lost.

– Happy Halloween

– Nevada Republican would allow slavery

– The Chamber of Commerce is the worst.

– One of the biggest challenges to gender parity in office is that women don’t run. According to a national study by the Center for American Women in Politics, women are much more likely to run if they’re recruited by others. Men don’t wait to be asked. (Trib link)

– I’m all for environmentalists working to make broad coalitions, but I’m not sure corporate interests and reactionaries will stop mocking them needlessly.

– Your guide to celebrating Dia de los Muertos

Representative Dan Kristiansen — who convinced a group of humans to elect him on multiple occasions and everything — has a post about a web poll he conducted earlier. My most fervent hope is that he finds a way to start it off that seems like it’s reaching too hard to have a catchy intro but ends up kind of creepy.

Last week, you allowed me into your homes and/or mobile devices to offer a short survey [the link to you’ve completed the survey is his — Carl] on a proposed transportation revenue package. The response was great and very informative for me. I wanted to share some of the results of this virtual listening tour. While the survey remains open and I will continue to request public input, below is an update on where results stand as of October 29.

So a few questions: “You allowed me into your homes and/or mobile devices,” huh? You’re going with that? What if people didn’t think they were letting him into their homes, but just taking a simple web survey? What if someone took it on a laptop but not at home? Does he need to specify and/or? Really wouldn’t “thanks for taking a minute to complete my survey, if you did” work just fine?

Also, “the results of this virtual listening tour” is an interesting way of saying “the results of a poll of people who were on a Republican’s email list and/or found their way to the state House GOP website.” Anyway, on to the results.

Would you be willing to pay 10 cents or more per gallon of gas to pay for transportation projects around the state?

• 13.4% Yes
• 85.6% No
• 1% I’m not sure

If you had to pay 10 cents or more per gallon of gas, how would this impact you financially?

• 7.7% It would have little to no impact on me financially
• 41.2% It would have a moderate impact on me financially, but I could probably afford it
• 51.1% It would have a negative impact on me financially and I cannot afford it

Gosh, it sounds like the people who answered this survey really are a representative sample… of the people who took the survey. Or maybe they’re demanding price controls on gas? That would be an interesting follow up question. To the extent that’s possible when you’re talking about the results of a web poll. Also, his district is pretty close to the I-5 bridge that collapsed. Maybe he could have asked a question about if that had more or less impact than a 10 cent a gallon tax increase. But I guess we’ll never know because we can only ever look at the cost of taxes, not the cost of losing what those taxes pay for. The closest we get is the next question:

If our state moves forward with a transportation revenue package, please rank what you think the funding priorities should be:

The numbers below are rating averages. The lower the number, the higher prioritization participants gave that particular issue. As you will see below, participants believe “Maintenance, including bridge and road preservation” should be the state’s top funding priority. And they believe that “More pedestrian and bicycle paths” should be the lowest priority of the six options.

• 1.55 Maintenance, including bridge and road preservation
• 2.24 New lanes for congested roadways
• 3.53 Large projects
• 4.08 Washington State Ferries
• 4.52 Transit agencies
• 5.08 More pedestrian and bicycle paths

Does he mean sidewalks instead of “pedestrian”? Just general pedestrian, like paying someone to walk more? Is it infrastructure, and/or paths, that pedestrians and bikes have to share?

Just to tack on to what Darryl wrote last night, as this blog will testify, Tim Eyman is just unpopular. Oh sure, people like tax cuts and don’t like red light cameras, so when the focus is off Tim Eyman and on those things, he can win some elections. But he’s also an embarrassment who has cost the state so much.

And of course the actual issues are also not on Eyman’s side. People don’t particularly want signature gathering everywhere, or all the time. I’ve done signature gathering for various things, and people are mostly cool about it, but it is taking some of their time. Making that more intrusive and for a longer amount of time can be a problem.

– A grand bargain is probably a bad idea politically as well as on policy grounds.

– If any of the attorneys have any opinion on the judge who was admonished for not wanting to perform same sex marriages, I’d like to hear it.

– Lindsey Graham is pretty terrible. Doy.

– The deadline for early applications for The Institute of a Democratic Future is coming up. I haven’t done the program, but for everyone I know who did, it has been a positive experience.

– Oh no Canada

– The of course teens should have access to condoms argument isn’t new ground, but Lindy West makes the argument about as humorously as anyone will.

– This Halloween, you could be sexy capitalism.

When I first heard what the West Coast governors (CA, OR, WA, & BC) were going to get together to kick climate change’s ass, um more or less, I was pretty excited. I’m not sure we came away with all that much, but maybe.

Through the Action Plan, the leaders agreed that all four jurisdictions will account for the costs of carbon pollution and that, where appropriate and feasible, link programs to create consistency and predictability across the region of 53 million people. The leaders also committed to adopting and maintaining low carbon fuel standards in each jurisdiction. In a joint statement, the leaders committed to “meaningful coordination and linkage between states and provinces across North America.”

“This Action Plan represents the best of what Pacific Coast governments are already doing, and calls on each of us to do more—together—to create jobs by leading in the clean energy economy, and to meet our moral obligation to future generations,” said Governor Inslee. “Each of the governments here is already taking bold steps on climate change; by joining forces, we will accomplish even more,” Inslee said.

[…]

Under the Action Plan, California and British Columbia will maintain their existing carbon pricing programs along with their respective clean fuel standards, while Oregon and Washington have committed to moving forward on a suite of similar policies. The leaders further agreed to harmonize their 2050 greenhouse gas emission targets and develop mid-term targets where needed to set a path toward long-term reductions.

I don’t want to downplay it, exactly. It’s certainly better than not having an action plan. But I’m not sure that this is going to amount to much in the end. I don’t know how much Washington can do with our jackass legislature. And it’s great that British Columbia and California are committed to doing something, but that something seems to be what they were already doing.

– On Friday I had a piece making fun of The Seattle Times for a guest editorial they had poo pooing these kids today in downtown Seattle. But apparently, there are kids today in downtown Olympia too. Horror!

– The new health care law is more than just a website. And people are actually getting insurance.

– The Cruelty of “Medical Necessity”

– RIP Lou Reed

– Just re-read this short bit by Cortazar over the weekend, and you should too.