I like this idea from Goldy.

When nature destroys a US city, we open up our hearts and our wallets. But when economic forces beyond the control of local citizens—forces that are the direct result of our nation’s free trade policies—wipe away jobs and savings and even entire landscapes, we turn a collective blind eye. Why?

US taxpayers have spent over $60 billion rebuilding Iraq and nearly $100 billion in Afghanistan, and with questionable results. So what would be so awful about spending $20 billion to help rebuild a major American city?

This! We have lost the notion that we’re all in this together. We have lost the notion that there is a common good. You can lecture about moral hazard, or responsibility, or bootstraps all you want, but we have lost our collective responsibility to help one another out in this country. On the individual level and from region to region.

We have lost the idea that when our policies, quite naturally, produce large swaths of economic losers that it is up to the places that have gained to help out. Much of the country has benefited from free trade, but Detroit has been crippled. It is up to those of us who gained by being able to sell planes, software, and agricultural goods around the world to help the places that have lost their advantage selling cars. We have to be able to help them find out what’s next for them.

While Detroit, or the Midwest, or the rust belt, or however you want to define it is the place currently in trouble, it’s only a matter of time before Seattle’s — or Washington, or the Northwest or however you want to define it — turn comes. That’s how our current vulture capitalism works, I’m afraid. When our hour of need comes, I want us to be able to say to Detroit, “we had your back” and be able to mean it. It’s the moral thing to do and in our long term best interests.

As promised, here are some groups that have endorsed for the primary.

– The Stranger has their endorsements. Other newspapers have their endorsements, but I don’t really care. I mean on the one hand, it seems to be the only time The Seattle Times notices downticket or suburban races, and I’d like to encourage that. On the other hand, do I really think people who normally can’t be bothered to figure out about downticket or suburban races should tell people how to vote in those races? No, not really. I also don’t know what other newspapers are behind soft paywalls and I don’t want to waste y’all’s or my limited hits.

– NARAL Pro Choice Washington and Planned Parenthood Votes Northwest have endorsements to let you know who will be most pro reproductive rights.

– The Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club has endorsements in only a few races, and as far as I can tell, Washington Conservation Voters has only endorsed in the Mayor’s race if the environment is your issue, and you literally only live in Seattle [via Willisreed in the comments, WCV has endorsed in multiple races].

– Individual unions have also endorsed in the mayor’s race, but I can’t find anything downticket or for the rest of the state on any of their sites. And there isn’t a more general labor friendly voting guide or scorecard as far as I can find.

– The Downtown Seattle Association put out a scorecard in the mayor’s race. My instinct is that they’re wrong about everything, so pretend that unfilled in circles are good (except the transit half of the transportation one, that I can’t figure out how they separate for people who got half).

– And finally and least importantly, the only individual in this list: I’m endorsing Kate Martin for mayor. She was the only candidate to turn in answers to the candidate questions, in essence the others were saying “I’m terrified of a few open ended questions that I can answer in writing at my leisure. I’m too lazy to even just give it to an intern, and that’s probably indicative of how I’ll govern if elected mayor.” Other candidates can feel free to answer, but I’m assuming they won’t since the ballots have already dropped and the questions were sent out quite some time ago.

If you think some other group’s endorsements are important, please leave them in the comments.

– The bitter truth is that this verdict is neither an aberration, nor is it exceptionally unjust when viewed from the point of design. It is a systemic byproduct of our legal framework attempting to expand to accommodate those it was never designed to fit.

– If we increase maternity leave, then employers will treat women poorly. Oh you need proof? How about the fact that France exists?

– Four things that happened

– Love your neighbor as yourself.

– This Is Not a Post About Trayvon Martin

– I’m going to be doing a roundup of the various endorsements from groups. If you have ones you’d like included, let me know.

Ben Schiendelman at Seattle Transit Blog has the latest on studying the Ship Canal Crossing.

In order for this study to give answers that the city needs in time for Bridging the Gap and Sound Transit 3, it needs to start at the beginning of 2014. It takes three to four months after the council approves funding for a project for the scope to be written, bid on, and the contract awarded, so the funding has to come well before the beginning of 2014 – really, now.

So on Monday, council member O’Brien ran an amendment to the first quarter supplemental budget to fund the study starting now, instead of in 2015, where it’s currently scheduled.

O’Brien, Conlin, Bagshaw and Harrell voted for it, and the other 5 opposed it. So it failed, and as such:

This may have been the last chance to have the ship canal crossing study done early enough that it could influence BtG or ST3. I plan to get more details from SDOT about the shortest possible timeline for the work, and whether it could still provide guidance before being entirely complete. I’ll report back on a path forward in the next few weeks.

OK. Ben goes over the reasons they opposed it and here’s what he has to say about Licata:

Licata, the same day as the amendment, ran an insert in the Seattle Times with one of the worst false premises I’ve ever seen in Seattle politics. On Metro, it says: “We must not reduce its service in order to build major new rail projects.” This is unreal – in no universe is Metro’s funding shortfall related to rail. The worst part about a campaign message like this is that it makes people less able to understand what’s going on with transit funding – and because they’ll waste their time on a fake battle, it makes getting Metro revenue harder. It’s completely irresponsible on Licata’s part.

Sound Transit has a different budget than Metro. Neither one is controlled by the Seattle City Council. Spending city money on rail, or in this case, studying a rail corridor doesn’t take county money away from buses. This is so confusing. I really just wish I could follow his argument here.

Also, I feel like maybe with the ad implying that buses are the most reliable form of transit, neither he nor whoever wrote the piece has ever been stuck on a bus as it inched along stuck in traffic. Maybe they never had a bus pass them at a stop even though it isn’t even near full (or for that matter when one is full). Maybe they’ve never seen two or three of the same route bunched up together after waiting a long time. Maybe he’s never had One Bus Away screw up* or been on a snow route.

Don’t get me wrong: yay for our many aspects of our bus system. It’s pretty amazing in the urban core with the bus tunnel and with 3rd Ave closed off to traffic. If you don’t mind waiting you can get pretty far out. What it isn’t, what it can’t be as long as it uses the same lanes as cars, is reliable.

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– RIP Kip Tokuda

– “I’m appalled that Alaska Airlines is trying to stop SeaTac citizens from being able to vote on the good jobs initiative. What are they afraid of? Why don’t they want to share the success of the company with me and my community?” asked Chris Smith, a SeaTac resident and worker at Sea-Tac Airport. See also, Goldy.

– This is not our system malfunctioning. It is our system working as intended. To expect our juries, our schools, our police to single-handedly correct for this, is to look at the final play in the final minute of the final quarter and wonder why we couldn’t come back from twenty-four down.

– It is strange that the city cut down the cycle tracks that activists put up and then put up its own. But whatever, it looks nice, and I’m glad they responded to activist’s concerns.

– The overall push is laudable. Indeed, given Tukwila is so diverse and yet economically disadvantaged, transformation into a truly urban center, with plenty of transit access and walkability, could improve things. Tukwila seems to be making a real push for renewal, so hopefully it continues successfully.

– Zimmerman gets justice

I don’t own a TV box, and although I could find it, I rarely watch breaking news on television. But judging from my twitter feed, the coverage of the reaction to the George Zimmerman verdict was infused with the assumption that riots would happen, and surprised that they didn’t.

I've heard the word "peaceful" at least four times in the last 20 minutes.

— Grace (@graceishuman) July 14, 2013

Obviously, first and foremost the problem with this is the dehumanizing nature of it. It treats the black (and other, to the extent they’re acknowledged) folks who would protest this verdict as simply violence just waiting to happen. It certainly doesn’t give voice to the actual reason people were out to describe the level of violence.

Now sure, it’s more complex than just that. This has something to do with media sensationalism in general. Here on May Day even before some smashed windows, the story of some anarchists overshadowed much larger peaceful protests for immigration reform.

And it all adds up to a disincentive to participate. Don’t go to that march, it might be violent.

– I think I will go on twitter and start another trend: #AmericaisGeorgeZimmerman

– Seriously, gents, get a different sign.

– Washington is taking steps to keep Boeing here (Seattle Times Link). The thing they could best offer is that they aren’t South Carolina.

– So white people who kill black teenagers shouldn’t even go to court. Because blacks are violent … even if conservatives have use video of rioting (white) hockey fans in Vancouver to prove it.

– Harrell’s attitude about speeding is disappointing; it reveals how ingrained speeding is in American culture, and reminds us that traffic crashes are thought of as “accidents” – things that just happen, and we have little control over. Little could be further from the truth.

– Trayvon Martin was stalked by George Zimmerman because he was black. Trayvon Martin is dead because he was black. George Zimmerman was acquitted of killing Trayvon Martin because the boy Zimmerman killed was black.

– The GOP press release failing Rep. Mark Takano’s grading is hilarious.

Hmm. It turns out that at the debate on HB2 in Texas today, they forbade bringing tampons into the building. I can’t think of a more ham handed way they could try to exclude women from meaningful participation in this debate.

I mean literally, I can’t. This is where my schtick would be to do a list of outrageous over the top things. Usually when I want to make a list like that a few ideas spring to mind quickly, but not this time. The only thing I thought of that is in the league of that is “just outright ban vaginas.”

I’m sure when tunnel proponents talked about our once in a lifetime opportunity for a revitalized waterfront what they meant was this.

The new Alaskan Way, located mostly within the current footprint of the viaduct, will be four or five lanes for most of its length until it reaches Columbia Street. South of Columbia, it completely explodes with travel lanes and starts to look a whole lot more like a freeway than a waterfront boulevard. Near the Ferry Terminal, there are even sections with eight travel lanes and a parking lane (though some are transit-only).

You know, 8 lanes and more coal trains are just what the waterfront needs. Maybe we can transport nuclear waste in open top containers next.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m reading Edmund Wilson’s Patriotic Gore. In the section on William T. Sherman, it has a long section on his son. Sherman wasn’t religious, but his wife was a rather devout Catholic. And one of his sons, Thomas, became a Jesuit priest. Thomas eventually went mad. To quote the second to last paragraph of the chapter:

The story of his last twenty years is most painful. He was able to travel and to live alone, and he engaged in a whole forlorn series of self-invented ministries and projects. Father Sherman first set out to organize a Catholic Colonization Society designed to resettle, in the state of Washington, recent immigrants of Catholic faith from the big American cities

On reading that, I wondered, why Washington? I mean on the one hand, there’s only so much you can question the schemes of someone who was in and out of mental institutions. On the other hand there were 40 some states when this happened, why should he pick Washington for his Catholic homeland in the US? Is it just our remoteness to the rest of the country or is it something else? I don’t know, but it put me in mind of a somewhat more creditable idea for resettlement in Washington. It starts off kind of in a strange place, so bear with me.

Before the Civil War, the United States would occasionally chide foreign governments for being bad on something or another related to human rights, and those governments would essentially respond, “fuck off, you still have slavery, so you can’t lecture us” except in more diplomatic speak. So it wasn’t until after the Civil War that US foreign policy had any sort of systematic human rights component.

All this is to get to Benjamin Franklin Peixotto, who was a consul in Romania. His official diplomatic posting was the same as any other consul, but unofficially, he was President Grant’s Jewish representative in a country that was persecuting its Jewish population. After failing to get anywhere in defense of that population, he according to this book:

In response, Peixotto advocated large-scale Jewish emigration to the United States, an objective that Romania’s antisemitic government, eager to be rid of its Jews, enthusiastically encouraged. He even contacted his old friend Governor Edward S. Salomon…about the possibility of settling Romanian Jews in Washington Territory.

I’d always assumed that in that case it was probably Governor Salomon more than Washington qua Washington that would have made us a homeland for those Romanian Jews. But in light of Father Sherman, maybe there’s something about us in the imagination of the late 1800’s?

– “I can tell you this: No matter who introduces it, it is not going anywhere in the Senate,” Murray said. “We are not going to let it come up in the Senate. There is no reason for it. This is settled law. We are not going to be sidetracked by a debate on women’s health yet again.”

– I don’t know why I keep mentioning these and then not going, but there’s a Seattle Balloon Juice Meetup.

– So how long is it respectable to pretend that David Boardman was anything other than a right wing hack who survived at The Seattle Times for 30 years by being a right wing hack?

– You wouldn’t think this would be necessary to say, but in the last two days, I’ve seen 2 different cars that looked to me anyway to not be county vehicles on bike paths. Don’t do that.

– I haven’t had fruit flies yet this year (something something eat more fruit, Carl), but this is a neat idea for when they come.

Goldy has the latest Rodney Tom is full of shit news. First quoting the Seattle Times:

Tom created a buzz after broaching the idea of a $250-a-day fine for each day lawmakers go past the time allotted in the regular session.

Then Goldy notes:

For wealthy lawmakers like Senator Rodney Tom (R-Medina), $250 isn’t all that much money. Hell, that’s less than Tom spends a day just murdering kittens. (Actual Rodney Tom 2012 campaign slogan: “Because Those Kittens Aren’t Going to Murder Themselves.”) But for legislators who mostly rely on their $42,000 a year salary, the $15,000 in fines they would have accumulated this year could’ve been the difference between keeping and losing their homes. The end result would be those lawmakers who can’t afford to pay the fine caving to lawmakers who can.

Aah. Nothing like fake populism from a dirtbag millionaire in an effort to advance their dirtbag millionaire goals. Look, if Rodney Tom had wanted to end either special session early, he could have done it at any point simply by resigning. Since a Democrat would replace him, a Democrat would caucus with the Democrats like Democrats are supposed to do, and then they could have passed a budget. Done and done. Or barring that, he could have gone back to caucusing with the Democrats. Either event would involve Rodney Tom eating a lot of shit, but if he’d wanted the special session to end earlier, that would be the thing to do.

Also, as the person who is most responsible for the legislature adjourning with a lot of work yet to do, Rodney Tom should really not be discouraging the legislators actually doing the people’s business. I mean honestly, the legislature should have passed the Reproductive Parity Act. It should have passed the DREAM Act. It should have passed a transportation budget, or at least let municipalities pass their own. But Rodney Tom was a roadblock that kept that important work from being done. To say the legislature should have got even less done is highly insulting. Honestly, the goal should have been to pass legislation that makes Washington a better place, not to simply avoid a special session.

I have been reading with interest about the so called zero option in Afghanistan. That is, after the end of the war to have 0 American troops in the country. I don’t know if it’s serious or an attempt to wring concessions out of Karzai or if there’s some other plan at work. But I hope you’ll use whatever space you have in the Senate to make the zero option more viable.

America’s longest war has gone on long enough. It’s time, frankly it’s well past time, to bring all of the troops home. They have done their jobs admirably, but the mission was never clear and has only managed to get more muddled with time. So I hope we leave that country a clean break.

Thank You
Carl Ballard
HorsesAss.org

You can write them about this or whatever you want here.

– A swap of development rights from rural King County to South Lake Union.

– Rick Perry won’t run for another term as Texas governor. People are saying it frees him up for a presidential run, but I’m not sure it’s actually helpful.

– Unfortunately, he’s still the governor now.

– I want you to start asking why every salon doesn’t have at least one person who knows how to handle textured hair. Because the world is getting more and more diverse and your niece, your grandson, your daughter – they might have hair like mine.

– Jim McDermott’s article about what America’s relation to Iran should look like in the wake of Hassan Rouhani’s election.

– Anyone going to Bastille Day?

On this lazy Monday evening, I thought I’d mention some of the free things in and around Seattle, and hope that you add your own in the comments.

– First, art walk is first Thursdays most months, but the second Thursday this month since the 4th of July was a Thursday this year. And the neighborhood art walks are often lovely also.

– Also free and artsy fartsy, Seattle Shakespeare Company is doing outdoor productions in the Puget Sound area. I’ve never seen The Tempest, so I might stop by one of those productions.

– Those will be in some lovely city and county parks, and even if you’re not going for the Shakespeare, the parks are great. I should also make a pitch for Port of Seattle parks, just because they’re rad. A few weeks ago, I was at Jack Perry Park and a jazz band were practicing. I just read my paper and listened for a half hour or so with a view of the water. Jack Block has the best views of the Seattle skyline.

– Port of Seattle has some great trails, as well as those city and county parks. Obviously, the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River trails are great. The Interurban trail is barely more than a bike lane in the City, but it opens up in North Seattle and in the suburbs. Seattle Bike Blog links to another blog making the case for the Iron Horse Trail.

– I’ve mentioned the Seattle library system recently, and I’ll put in another pitch for it here. I’ve recently decided to return books at some other branches. So far only ones in walking distance of me or on the light rail, but it gives a chance to see some of the rest of the city that I might be too lazy to go to very much otherwise.

So what do you like to do that you don’t have to pay for?