I’m glad that the city of Seattle is making a serious effort to crack down on wage theft.

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and other officials warned Thursday that the city will investigate and prosecute when businesses fail to pay employees what they’re due, after five fast-food workers filed police complaints saying they’d been cheated out of pay.

“Wage theft is a crime,” McGinn told a news conference and rally on the steps of City Hall. “An honest day’s work deserves an honest day’s pay.”

Seattle passed a law two years ago specifying that wage theft falls under the city’s regular theft statute and can be prosecuted as such, but no one ever has been charged with it. The law also allows the city to deny or revoke business licenses for those convicted of wage theft in the past 10 years.

Over at the SPD blotter, Detective Jeff Kappel lets people who have been the victims of wage theft know how to file a complaint.

They have opened the first segment of Bell Street Park (between 1st and 2nd). I walked through it the other night, and it looks pretty good. It’s concrete with some plants in between, more like sidewalk along the whole street rather than green. There were no benches; I don’t know if they’re coming later, or if the people who planned the park didn’t want it to attract homeless people or drug dealers (these were concerns of people I talked to before it opened).

It won’t compete with Seattle Center or Magnuson Park as a gem of the system, but it is nicer to walk through than it was before. Already it feels like a fit. I imagine that it will get heavy foot traffic, especially on Friday and Saturday nights when the sidewalks are already crowded throughout Belltown.

But of course that isn’t the only type of traffic in the area. I don’t drive Downtown when I can help it, but I’m sure people who drive in the neighborhood will miss the route and the parking. Bell has been closed there (and between 3rd and 4th) for a while, and people seem to have adjusted to it.

Tonight will be the first Friday night since it opened. It’ll be interesting to see if people use it.

I want to agree with Dan Savage here about Anthony Weiner.

Even if you find Weiner’s behavior disgusting, even if you’re mystified by Huma Abedin’s stand-by-her-mannishness (hey, maybe they have an agreement, people? Maybe she’s enjoys getting her virtual freak on too?), won’t you please think of the children? Think of your own children. I promise you, moms and dads of America, your kid is online right now sexting up a storm, swapping dick pics and boob shots, flirting with classmates, cranking up their BFs and GFs before school, during school, after school, etc., and all of their flirty chats, texts, IMs, and pics are going to wind up stored somewhere. Kids today: each and every one of them is creating a smutty digital trail that could be used against them one day—unless we defuse these ticking dick pic time bombs now.

That’s fine as far as it goes. However, I don’t think that Weiner’s penis is the one you want to hang your dick pic hat on.* The norms around these things are still evolving with the technology. They have new risks (like perminance) and new benefits (hotness, you’re not going to get a disease or preggers no matter how reckless you are with the pictures or texts you send). Still, those of us who want the rules to evolve into a reasonable direction should be defenders of consent and of honesty, and it’s tough to say Weiner lived up to either of those.

When the scandal first broke, what turned me from it’s none of my business to he should go was the fact that the pictures weren’t consensual (NY Times link).

“It didn’t make any sense,” Ms. Cordova, a 21-year-old college student in northwestern Washington State, said in her first extensive interview since Mr. Weiner confessed in a news conference Monday to sending her the photo. “I figured it must have been a fake.”

Ms. Cordova’s experience with Mr. Weiner appears to fit a pattern: in rapid and reckless fashion, he sought to transform informal online conversations about politics and partisanship into sexually charged exchanges, at times laced with racy language and explicit images.

Ms. Cordova, who had traded messages with Mr. Weiner, a New York Democrat, about their shared concern over his conservative critics, said she had never sent him anything provocative. Asked if she was taken aback by his decision to send the photo, she responded, “Oh gosh, yes.”

Surely those of us who think that sending pictures of your penis, or boobs, or whatever to strangers isn’t inherently immoral should be the ones who are strongest in trying to defend people’s right to not get unwanted pictures. Consent still ought to matter in our digital age.

Now, there has been no indication that his post-Congressional sending pictures was anything other than consensual. Maybe he has learned that lesson (I haven’t seen any evidence that he has discussed a lack of consent as a problem). If it’s intentional or not, it’s a step in the right direction. Still, he clearly lied to at least one of the women, promising to leave his wife for her (all of the articles I can find that I’d want to block quote use her name, even though she wants to stay anonymous so no link, I’m afraid; any comments with links to articles that name women who wish to stay anonymous will be deleted). That’s more forgivable, but it still seems creepy to me. I don’t think those of us defending the morality of sending pictures to people who want them should also feel an obligation to say lying to get pictures is no big deal.

And finally, there is the cheating aspect. Maybe Dan Savage is absolutely right, and Weiner’s wife, doesn’t mind or is in favor of it. But publicly, their stance is that she’s against it. And for the discussion of the ethics of sending pictures, I think we can say it’s wrong to go outside of the agreed upon boundaries of a relationship. We can do that even when we’re defending people’s right to define their relationships however they want. And look, I’m not going to judge their marriage from the outside: the fact that they have both decided to stay together, is enough, and frankly that part is still none of my business. We say that isn’t a deal breaker for electing people, and more generally that people probably shouldn’t be fired over it, but we can still say it’s not OK.

As I say, I agree with a lot of what Dan Savage says here. I just don’t think defending people’s right to send raunchy pictures means we have to defend Anthony Weiner in this case.

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– Jean Godden wants to hear from you if you’ve been affected by the gender pay gap.

– Congrats to the couples in Pennsylvania

– Patty Murray is (with other senators) asking people to thank Wendy Davis. I assume this is just an attempt to get your name, email, and address, but she’s going to need a lot of names, emails, and addresses if she’s going to run for statewide office in Texas.

– I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had seen some people taking cars on bike paths. None of them were this person, fortunately. Stay safe everybody.

– Predicting a train wreck.

– Anyone going to enjoy Seafair? I’m already annoyed with the pirates, so well done so far.

– Can the US extradite Superman? Part 1 and Part 2.

In his inaugural address in 1909 William Howard Taft said:

The negroes are now Americans. Their ancestors came here years ago against their will, and this is their only country and their only flag. They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it. Encountering the race feeling against them, subjected at times to cruel injustice growing out of it, they may well have our profound sympathy and aid in the struggle they are making. We are charged with the sacred duty of making their path as smooth and easy as we can.

And it really is shocking to read that nowadays. That it had to be said not that long ago that Black Americans are fully American. On this side of integrating the military and other public organizations. On this side of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. On this side of electing a Black president, it’s a shock to read that it had to be said. Lord knows it never felt like we were where we needed to be, but at least we had progressed to the point where we could agree on the fundamental truth that Black Americans are Americans who deserve to be treated as such.

And yet, after the Trayvon Martin verdict and the Voting Rights Act decision, those words keep ringing in my ears. Because it feels like that’s a debate in America for the first time in a long time. Not just on the fringes. Not just with a wink or with dogwhistles, but it’s an underlying part of the debate.

Just engaging on those things feels like it’s having the debate on if Black people are fully American, and if their lives matter as much as any other American.

I can’t have the argument with people who assume that a Black boy isn’t American enough to walk around in a hoodie in the rain. That his life is worth less than the fear of a neighborhood watch volunteer that he might be a thief. I can’t have the argument with people that it’s OK to bring a gun and stalk him, to ultimately shoot him dead. I can’t have the argument that Trayvon Martin’s parents — brave as they were in public, remarkable as they were — should have to have that much grace just to get their son’s killer put on trial. The fact that they are in America ought to have been enough. Even taking the side of human decency on that feels like it puts some legitimacy on the other side.

And I can’t believe we have to argue that Black folks deserve the right to vote, that precious, American right. That they aren’t considered American enough to have to stand in line in many places as quickly as White people. That they should be considered American enough not to need ID’s that they disproportionately don’t have. That in places with a history of barring minorities from voting, that can’t prove they’ve stopped it, deserve extra scrutiny.

I don’t know where it goes from here. But it feels like for the first time in a long time, it’s going backwards.

The New York Times has a piece on people who encouraged Chris Christie to run for president before the last election:

Sixty people, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and prominent business executives, sat facing a small table with a phone on it. The phone allowed David Koch, the industrialist and conservative billionaire, and John J. Mack, the former chairman of Morgan Stanley, to call in and encourage his candidacy.

After Mr. Langone announced that the group would raise as much money as Mr. Christie would need, Mr. Kissinger picked up his cane and made his way to the front of the room. (In a previous conversation, Mr. Christie recounts, Mr. Kissinger had told him that he hadn’t “seen a politician connect with someone in a long time” the way Mr. Christie did with people.)

“Your country needs you,” Mr. Kissinger declared, and the room erupted in applause. (Mr. Kissinger declined the author’s request for an interview.)

As Dan Robinson notes (and he also gets the hat tip):

Henry Kissinger intoning,"Your country needs you" should be all the reason needed to run from Christie. http://t.co/kSmI0AbKrF

— Daniel Robinson (@daguro) July 24, 2013

Yes, quite. I know Kissinger is thought of more as village elder these days than as the terrible person he is. It’s also probably a reminder, as if any were necessary, for those of us who are frustrated by the slow pace of change in foreign policy in the Obama administration. If people like Kissinger think there are real differences between him and Obama, then whatever Kissinger wants will be less likely to bomb Cambodia, or whatever the 2013 equivalent of that is.

– All the people who don’t like Elizabeth Warren make me like her more.

– Seattle Children’s Hospital will be a major sponsor of the Puget Sound Bike Share.

– I am very glad to see the advice that General Martin Dempsey gave President Obama on Syria. Even if it took John McCain being John McCain to get it.

– City Council set a target to prevent flooding around Seattle’s drains and pipes by capturing stormwater and reducing rain runoff by implementing emerging green technologies. This “Green Stormwater Infrastructure” (GSI) includes raingardens, vegetated roofs, rainwater harvesting and use of permeable pavement in Seattle neighborhoods.

– If you believe in the Bible, then abortion is never an option — it’s a requirement. And it must be performed by a member of the clergy in the house of God, just as the Bible says.

Jean Godden has an opinion piece in The Seattle Times on Seattle’s unacceptable wage gap by gender, the city taskforce to fix it, and what can be done now (h/t, Seattle Times Link, obvs).

In response to the city’s report, Mayor Mike McGinn announced the formation of a Gender Pay Task Force to “develop short-term and long-term strategies to address gender-pay inequities.” The task force would report this fall and develop a gender-justice initiative by January.

We know the causes of the pay gap are complex. We know that our male colleagues find the study conclusions as maddening as we do.

The task force should be bold and innovative in finding solutions both inside city government and beyond, such as ensuring that workforce-development training and apprenticeship programs — programs designed for family-wage jobs — are targeted at and utilized by women. My council colleagues and I should consider adopting elements of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which has yet to pass Congress, to strengthen equal-pay laws.

We should encourage flextime policies that make it easier to balance family obligations with a career. Only about a third of employers allow some of their employees to work from home on a regular basis. We should expand access to child care so that women do not have to choose between higher-paying jobs and taking care of children.

I’m encouraged that Council Member Godden isn’t going to just wait around, and I hope that her Council colleagues will join her. It’s great that she has some solid proposals (I’m not thrilled about the bit making public employee pay easier to access, but in general, I think what she’s saying is good). That whatever the task force ultimately decides, the city can get started now.

I also want to echo her call for the task force to be bold. Sometimes task forces and other government agencies looking for solutions to problems will come up with a pre-compromised version in the hopes that it can get passed. It’s understandable, but Seattle deserves the best solutions presented for this problem, especially with the Seattle area being the worst of the top 50 metro areas for gender pay equality. It’s up to our elected officials to see how far they are willing to take any recommendations (and it’s up to the public to hold their feet to the fire). If the Council and the Mayor don’t like all of the recommendations, they don’t have to implement them, and the public can decide if they want members who will. But they ought to be given the best options, so we can judge them against that.

Of course, I hope that elected officials actually pass something, and that the recommendations of the task force don’t just get reported on and then sit on a shelf collecting dust.

– “One of the things over the years that have begun to lay the foundation for it are opt-in principles. In other words, people very much in this country want to be able to say: I’m in charge of my information and my data,” Wyden told a noontime audience of several dozen tech workers. (h/t)

– The Klan is handing out fliers in Des Moines.

– I think the most likely explanation here is that Issa was simply trying to cook up a scandal, even though it did nothing to address the genuine problems with the way campaign finance and tax laws are written. He probably figured that in the best case scenario, he’d be able to get away with his fraud. And in the worst case scenario, he’d get a slap on the wrist from a few reporters, but endless approval from his political supporters.

– Darryl mentioned the president’s Trayvon Martin speech after it happened on Friday. Some conservatives weren’t happy with it.

– And if I’m linking to Salon, in fairness, what the fuck, Salon?

– I don’t know what’s strangest about this scene: how much of Downtown I recognize, how much is different or the fact that there are no people out during the entire chase.

– You can talk about the royal baby if you want (of course), but I can’t be assed to find a link.

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.