– We’ve got ourselves a new Pope whose archdiocese did some terrible shit (h/t). But the horror in Argentina did lead to my favorite short story (I could only find a Spanish version online, and I’ve only ever read it in translation since I don’t speak Spanish).

– It turns out repealing the sick leave portions of the sick leave/safe leave law will also hurt actual people.

– The Bellevue Gap.

– Rape Is Not Inevitable

– The cowardly legislature refuses to enact background checks for firearms.

– The ethereal form of Judge Scalia

[This post talks about the law related to rape, stalking, and domestic violence]

I was thinking about the Senate voting to repeal the Seattle Sick Leave/ Safe Leave law in many cases when I read this piece from Cienna Madrid on Tom sending the Reproductive Parity Act to die in committee.

You see, as Senate Majority Leader (a position he also attained with his weasely prowess), Tom is responsible for assigning bills to the appropriate Senate committees. And instead of assigning the Reproductive Parity Act to the Senate’s Financial Institutions, Housing & Insurance committee where it was promised a fair hearing and vote from the committee’s Democratic chair, Tom instead sent the bill to the Senate’s Healthcare Committee, headed by anti-choice Sen. Randi Becker (R-Eatonville).

Yeah, that’s pretty terrible. It would have been an important law to have, and would have been a step in the direction of fairness in Washington. It’s one the reproductive justice community has rightly been fighting for for years. It also would have been important to say Washington affirms that abortion is a right. But we all pretty much knew this was going to happen when they said that social issues weren’t going to be the focus of this session. So while it’s awful, it isn’t actually moving back any laws, and Tom would argue that he still supports the law and whatever other excuse.

No, for Rodney Tom’s moving us backwards on safety and decency for women, you have to look at the Sick Leave/ Safe Leave law. Specifically the safe leave portion. You see when a woman who works in Seattle is stalked, or raped or beaten by her spouse, she can take safe time off. In the rest of the state, there aren’t as many protections.**

Rodney Tom looked at the difference between Seattle and the rest of the state and decided that the problem was Seattle. He co-sponsored SB 5728 to preempt that for the whole state, and ESB 5726 to make it only apply to Seattle based employers. The later passed, and the former might still.

I know the point of these laws is just to fuck with Seattle, but I wish the people passing them would give some consideration to the people actually hurt by them. I emailed Rodney Tom to ask him what he might say to a woman in his district who worked in Seattle and didn’t have the protections if she needed them if the law passed. So far he hasn’t responded.

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The other night, I was a bit early for an event in Queen Anne. I walked passed Mercer where Easy Street Records used to be for the first time since it closed. A half demolished building with no signs that it used to be a a hip music store stood exposed to the elements and fenced off. It’s rather sad.

Don’t get me wrong: the Internet is objectively a better place to get music than a record store. It has a wider selection and your MP3’s don’t scratch.

Still, the thing of it is when you’re 20 minutes early to an event, the greatest way in the world to kill that time is to find a local record shop and fart around. Sometimes you buy something and sometimes you don’t. The next best place of that sort is a book store, and those are experiencing the same sort of existential problem.

I don’t know what in the Internet era replaces that for places to hang out on a rainy Seattle day with some time to kill. Coffee shops are fine, but you really have to buy something, and maybe you don’t want something to eat or drink.

– I support the rights of police to collectively bargain. But this is a pretty shit reason to sue.

– Cut cut cut cut. NOT ME!

– It’s hard to get a full sense of it from a Twitter conversation, but predictive policing seems to be a positive idea.

– The full state senate repeals Seattle’s sick leave/safe leave law.

– Good news everybody! Scott Brown landed on his feet.

– The right is its own best argument against taking anyone in the movement seriously on matters of national security.

For serious, when the Spokane police need to put this warning up, it’s probably bad news.

Due to the recent high volume of citizens applying for concealed weapons permits, the average wait time for applicants is currently 2 – 3 hours. Customers visiting Police Records for other transactions may also experience higher-than-normal wait times. In order to serve customers within our hours of operation, any concealed weapons permit applicants arriving after 1:00pm may be asked to return on a different day to complete their transaction. Thank you for your understanding, and we apologize for any inconvenience.

Or just don’t get a gun. Don’t get yourself a concealed weapons permit. Just, you know, it’s fine if you don’t have a gun. Getting a concealed weapons permit isn’t a reasonable response to Sandy Hook. It isn’t a reasonable response to moderate gun control measures proposed in the state, but that won’t go anywhere, or at the Federal level that might get a bit of traction.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that anyone trying to get a gun now is hoping to get in under the wire before the background checks.

– RIP Richard McIver.

– Telling women to get a gun is not rape prevention

– Can we close the gun show loophole please?

– David Brooks was wrong, wrong wrong on Iraq. Good thing they gave him the New York Times slot.

– Chihuly Broken Promises

– You Suck at Constitutionality Tim Eyman!

I know this is a few days old, but I want to applaud Seattle for considering allowing more emergency credit before it shuts off water.

The Seattle City Council is now considering legislation that would give a second emergency credit of up to $340 per year for any family registered in its low-income Utility Discount Program with children in the home. Currently, only one credit is available annually per household.

Seattle Public Utilities said it shut off water to 138 households in 2012 that were part of its low-income program. Of those, 68 had children under 18 years old.

Councilmember Jean Godden, who is sponsoring the legislation, said providing a second credit to those 68 families would cost the city about $20,000 a year. She called that a small subsidy in the context of the utilities’ nearly billion-dollar annual budget.

The article goes on to say that number is probably low because some people don’t know they qualify for the program. When people and families fall behind it’s unfortunate. And I’m glad in a relatively wealthy city like Seattle we’re figuring out how to make this situation a little less awful.

There was a shooting at the Parks Department. It looks like the police have the suspect in custody, but this is scary stuff.

Officers responding to a report of shots fired in a building near N. 80th and Densmore Avenue N. found a man with gunshot wound to the chest just around 2:15 p.m. Medics transported the man to a hospital; he was last listed in critical but stable condition.

Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation spokesperson Dewey Potter identified the victim as Bill Keller, 65, the executive director of the Associated Recreation Council, and the suspect as Carolyn Piksa, 46, a current Seattle Parks and Recreation employee. Piksa is described as a white female wearing a blue stocking cap and a beige or green camoflage jacket.

Since the shooter had the keys to all of the community centers, the kids who were going there after school have been rerouted back to their schools.

Meanwhile, Seattle police have asked several schools in the area of N. 130th and Linden Avenue N to be placed in lockdown as a precaution. The following schools are currently in “shelter in place,” which means exterior doors are locked, but classes are being conducted inside: Broadview Thomson Elementary K-8, Bagley Elementary and Wilson Alternative School.

As a result of the community center closures, Seattle Public Schools released the following statement about students en route to after-school programs at the centers:

Due to the City of Seattle’s closure of all community centers citywide, Seattle Public Schools is returning all students who were on buses bound for after-school programs to their schools of origin. In some cases, students were delivered to community centers before the closure announcement was made. In that case, the community centers are calling parents and asking them to pick up their students. Students returned to their school will remain at school with adult supervision until their parents can arrange for pick up.

I can’t imagine what any of those parents have been going through. Hopefully any parents reading this have found your kids.

The state house passed the Washington Voting Rights Act (second section). If passed it would allow minority groups that could prove discrimination at the local level some relief. The example in the piece, that’s the most common example I’ve heard relating to the act is Yakima:

His bill would give minority communities that can prove they’ve been disenfranchised at the polls (say, in Yakima, whose at-large city council lacks a single Latino member despite the city’s large Latino population) to move to districted elections.

Great. Now we can look forward to it dying in the state senate.

I hate that Metro has to go begging the state just to tax ourselves, but that’s the way we do it in Washington, so sure. Representative Farrell has a bill to let localities either have a $40 car tab or in some cases up to 1% of the value of the car go to transit.* She has a post on Slog in support of the bill.

When King County Metro was last facing service cuts, the legislature authorized a temporary congestion reduction fee that temporarily stabilized budgets of transit agencies. It was temporary because the state expected to move quickly to provide a more stable, comprehensive funding source for public transportation.

That state support has not materialized, however, and with transit services in jeopardy, we need to take action to ensure our economy, our environment, and our quality of life aren’t degraded. My legislation would give King County the local funding options they need to save core programs and high-demand service routes.

OK, I’m sold. You can find your legislator here.

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– I’m all for Rand Paul’s talking on the Senate floor (and Wyden supporting it). I also still oppose Brennan’s nomination in general. But Paul is still an asshole.

– What to do with Hanford’s waste.

– Financial fitness day is Saturday in Seattle.

– The sequester is good news for coke heads (h/t).

– “If we really want to change the food system, we need to change some of the rules”, says Hauter. “This is more than just about voting with our forks”.

– The idea that racism lives in the heart of particularly evil individuals, as opposed to the heart of a democratic society, is reinforcing to anyone who might, from time to time, find their tongue sprinting ahead of their discretion.

– Gun Exchange

I’m sometimes struck by the difficulty of the mundane for lesbian and gay couples. reading this press release from Patty Murray was one of those times.

(Washington D.C.) – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a senior member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, led a letter to U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki calling for an expedited waiver process granting same-sex veterans and their spouses burial rights in national cemeteries. Currently, only members of the opposite-sex are buried next to their veteran spouse in national cemeteries.

Christ. It’s 2013 and we’re having this conversation. It’s 2013 and this isn’t an obviously done deal. It’s 2013 and instead of this just being a matter of some paperwork because vets’ spouses should be buried with them as a matter of course if that’s what they want, this is a fight. It’s 2013 and only 15 senators agreed to sign the letter.

When you think of the progress we’ve made in the last few decades as a society in treating same sex couples with basic respect, and then think this is still a fight, it’s jarring. When you think the solution — at least for now — is a waver and not fixing the policy, it’s dispiriting how much work is involved in just getting half measures.

The US Department of Education is investigating Seattle schools for disciplining black children more than white children.

According to district data, in the 2011-2012 school year, nearly 13 percent of black high school students received at least one short-term suspension. The equivalent figure for white students was just under 4 percent. In middle schools, the rate was 7 percent of white students and 27 percent of blacks.

The district has long been aware of the disparity, and recently held community meetings that addressed its discipline rates.

This, coming in the wake of the DOJ investigation of Seattle Police, is troubling for Seattle. Of course I’d rather address these problems head on than to have them go unaddressed. Hopefully we’ll have some actual change in school policies.

– Anti gay laws are bad for business.

– Mark Sanford is gross.

– The sequester is gross because it’s suspending housing vouchers in King County.

– And the sequester is gross because of what it does to women.

– The Daily Caller is gross.

– Having concubines may be gross, but they’re Biblical.

– Dan Sytman’s wingnut welfare job.

– Legislators who play music are pretty much awesome, (PS, if someone has video, I’ll post it).

OK, that’s bit more than the data actually say. But Goldy has a piece on a study of economic growth in the last decade.

According to a new report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), the economies of the nine states without a personal income tax (Washington included) have actually underperformed both the economies of the nine states with the highest income tax rates, and the 41 income tax states as a whole. Over the past decade real per capita GDP growth was only 5.2 percent in the non-income-tax states, compared 8.2 percent in the nine highest taxed states. Real median household income also fell further in the non-income-tax states, while unemployments were largely uniform across all three groups.

Washington actually did better than average on both per capita GDP and median income growth (while slightly worse on unemployment), but given the aggregate performance of the non-income-tax states it is impossible to argue that our lack of an income tax had anything to do with it. Unless you’re an idiot. Or a liar.

So yeah, 50 quite different states over a relatively short period of time is hardly the last word on what types of taxes make the most sense. But it certainly puts the lie to the notion that we’re getting ahead as a state because of our tax structure. If anything, it’s holding us back.