The Seattle City Council actually does something decent.

The Seattle City Council approved new campaign finance rules today. Under the changes, candidates for local office can’t roll over campaign funds from one election to the next and can’t start fundraising until Jan. 1 of the year before an election.

Vote was 7-2 with Council President Sally Clark and Councilmember Tom Rasmussen voting no.

Council members said they took the steps to limit the influence of money on local elections and reduce the amount of time that elected officials are fundraising at the same time they’re making policy.

They’ve still given themselves the chance to transfer their money into their next election, because of course they did. But over the long run, this is a positive step to getting good challengers who aren’t scared off by the large piles of money in the incumbent’s war chests.

– I’m sure all of the reporters who were concerned about Darcy Burner’s inelegant explanation of her Harvard degree will be equally upset with Brad Toft’s makie uppie degree.

– Me too, too.

– Important news about the Northwest in national publications.

– Those who know the history of state hotline slipups involving Republican governors is clearly the greatest phrase ever.

– Gee, it’s almost like running a campaign full of racist dog-whistles and overt racism attracts racist supporters! GO FIGURE!

– Happy Reloan Day, people on Kiva

– Yay for parks; boo for the accompanying picture that I can’t put my finger on it but creeps me out.

– No question about why these creep me out.

– The attempt to elicit sympathy for Romney by anecdotal proxy is a poor enough of a play. The decision to do so via an anecdote about a tragic car accident in a debate with Joe Biden means you’re either a sociopath or possessed of an idiocy of immeasurable power.

– Biblical family.

– Merry Christmas, Yakima.

– I would like to see some random questions from children in the next debate.

Even in this fairly straight AP piece reporting on McKenna’s supposed moderation, there’s this:

A political action committee funded by unions has been running attack ads with the message that McKenna is “not who he says he is.” A recent ad from the group tries to tie McKenna – in misleading or incorrect ways – to Republican positions on abortion, the national budget and health care.

I don’t have a TV, so I’ve only seen the ad once with the sound on. But it seemed more fair than not to me. The article mentions McKenna’s support of abortion rights (a better characterization might be that he knows he doesn’t have the votes to win on the issue), although abortion rights will probably be worse in the state after 4 years of McKenna than 4 years of Inslee. And the the other ones seem about right to me.

McKenna put himself, as the article notes several times, at the forefront of opposing the health care law. And while he personally only claimed to be opposed to part of it in court, that isn’t what his lawsuit argued. So he was happy to be part of that GOP extremism.

And as to the budget: well he has supported GOP budgets at the state that would have gutted education and social services. Maybe the ads should have focused on those instead of the federal budget, but they’re coming from the same place.

Finally, although the races for President and Congress will be the bigger story on election night, the races for governor will be part of that picture. And a McKenna win (or the aggregate of GOP victories at the state level including his) will be used at the federal level to argue for more restrictions on abortion and deeper cuts to social services. So maybe it’s not fair, but it is the reality.

Mike McGinn has a post on his city blog where he thanks several companies for pitching in and helping to pay for the streetcar in South Lake Union.

Today we gathered in South Lake Union to thank four local employers who are investing $204,000 to increase service on the Seattle Streetcar. These employers – Group Health, Amazon.com, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and UW Medicine – know that more frequent service on this line is a good thing for their employees, and are stepping up to the plate to make a private investment in a public service.

Now to be clear, I’m glad they pitched in. And thanking them for it is perfectly appropriate. More frequent trips are good. And if this is the way you do it, well fine.

Fine, but not great. Because if we need more frequent trips, the city government should be able to figure out a way to pay for it that doesn’t rely on the generosity of a few large employers.

– The Bill of Reproductive Rights.

– I know Brad Owen is pretty shitty. But Democrats who don’t like him should have put some effort into a primary challenge instead of supporting a Republican.

– Romney Proudly Explains How He’s Turned Campaign Around ‘I’m Lying More,’ He Says

– The headline style of the Baptist Press, on the other hand calls for them to capitalize only the first word, followed by lying nonsense pretending that contraception and abortion are the same thing.

– Lord Player is now Archbishop Poopypants

– What could go wrong?

That if you were reading The Seattle Times’ endorsement of Rob McKenna, and you came across this paragraph:

McKenna has an independent mind. He is willing to work with Democrats and he is willing on occasion to buck his party. He defended Washington’s top-two primary before the U.S. Supreme Court, despite pressure from his own party seeking to overturn it. And he won.

You might reasonably say to yourself that they got the bucking his own party bit out of the way, so it’s time for an example of him working with Democrats. The next paragraph will surely mention the vast amounts of working with Democrats he did.

No?

It’s just an awkward transition to complaining that Democrats have mentioned that he’s a Republican. OK then.

I can only think of two reasons that Reagan Dunn has decided to make an issue of the end of the free ride area a week after it ended and several months after the decision was made. First: he thinks it’ll be to some advantage in his AG race against Bob Ferguson. Second: poor people are now getting services in his district and it’s scaring his constituents.

I suppose you could make an argument that he’s doing it because he cares about the issue. If you decide to make that argument, you’ll have to explain why he’d start to push it now. Why he thinks there ought to be a discussion after the policy is a done deal, voted on, passed and implemented. Why previously his problem with the policy was that there wasn’t a vote on the car tabs part.

Sorry this is so late.

– The New Southpark bridge is more than half way done.

– Liberals, don’t panic after one debate.

– Jack Welsh proves no matter how good at business you are, you can still say dumb things.

– Why does anyone want to be a Boy Scout anymore?

– Walking and biking improvements in the city budget are starting to look like they may be in the final product.

– I really liked Elementary, so far, but I fear it’s going to be murder every week. One of the things I like about the original Holmes stories is that there was a mix of types of mysteries (it’s one reason to have him not be a police officer with a particular beat) and so far that hasn’t been the case.

Not to pick on Goldy since you can see the same sort of stats everywhere. But the No President Since FDR Has Won Reelection with Unemployment Above 7.2 Percent stat has always bugged me. So let’s break it down.

There have only been 3 presidents who lost reelection since FDR. Ford, Carter, and G H W Bush. In all three of those elections the unemployment rate was above 7.2 (in the first Bush’s case it was 7.3, and in the other cases it was lower than it is now, but higher than that, you can get the historical data here). I bet in at least 2 of FDR’s reelection victories, unemployment was well above that. So it’s only 3 for 5.

Really, what people are saying is the last 3 times the unemployment rate was above 7.2, presidents lost their reelection bids. Well, there are plenty of streaks in politics that are larger than 3 that probably don’t mean a whole lot.

Of course there’s an implied corollary: that presidents won when it was below 7.2. All right. That gives us Truman, Ike, Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, and W Bush. That brings the streak up to a more respectable 9, if you’re willing to read more into what people are saying than they actually say. Still, I can’t imagine going up to too many political scientists and saying you have 9 data points (or actually more than 9, but don’t look back further than that) and having them take you seriously.

A 9 game winning streak doesn’t guarantee a win in the next match. That doesn’t mean the unemployment rate doesn’t matter. People who are unemployed, and people with unemployed friends and family, are going to vote based on that.

It’s not controversial to say high unemployment is probably a hindrance to a presidential reelection bid. But there are way too many other factors to assume that 7.2 is a magic number.

– The federal investment in public broadcasting equals about one one-hundredth of one percent of the federal budget. Elimination of funding would have virtually no impact on the nation’s debt. Yet the loss to the American public would be devastating.

– Romney Dominated Debate, Say Pundits Trying To Figure Out GOP Candidate’s Policies

– Rob McKenna wrote on Slog yesterday.

– Good jobs numbers. Also, it’s tough to find stories that don’t frame it as political (I understand why people frame it like that this close to the election, but still).

– In the choice between love and hate, choose love. Help stop bigotry against our Muslim neighbors.

– Bugs and poop are in our future.

I know you don’t come to HA for my opinions on a national issue. And the debate has been the main thing in the news all day. Still, there’s one thing that surprised me that hasn’t got much play. When I was listening to the debate, the thing that I thought was Romney’s biggest fuckup was his joke about wanting tax breaks to ship jobs overseas.

The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas. Look, I’ve been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you’re talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant.

It’s funny because of all the lives he’s ruined.

Sure, chronicling all of Romney’s lies and figuring out the policy is probably more important than getting into this. And since people are saying Romney won the debate, pointing out that this is a pretty big gaff goes against the storyline. But still, it seems like the biggest fuckup of the night.

Now, I say it didn’t get much play. But one important person brought it up the next day, even if he soft peddled just how disgusting it was:

The Mitt Romney we all know invested in companies that were called pioneers of outsourcing jobs to other countries, but the guy on stage last night, he said that he doesn’t even know that there are such laws that encourage outsourcing. He’s never heard of them! Never heard of them. Never heard of tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. He said that if it’s true, he must need a new accountant. [laughter] Now, we know for sure it was not the real Mitt Romney because he seems to be doing just fine with his current accountant. [laughter]

That’s President Obama, who probably would have done better to say that on the stage, but nonetheless is saying it now. I know the difference between them on outsourcing isn’t as great as I would like. Obama still favors policies that will let too many of America’s jobs get outsourced. But at least he doesn’t want businesses who do that to be able to write it off as a business expense.

I don’t really know how the pool report is supposed to work. But when the First Lady came to town, I asked if I could go. But they weren’t letting reporters, or whatever I am, in. But they were gracious enough to let me have a copy of the pool report. For the most part, it was a fine recap, but it starts out oddly snarky.

She delivered a very similar speech to the one she gave in August at the Democratic National Convention. In fact, there was nothing new.

She started by sharing a “little secret” that she has shared many times before: that she fell in love with her husband because of his character.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to see that sort of thing in the papers. But does complaining that it’s the same as the speech at the DNC or saying that a “little secret” has been shared before really help other reporters, and whatever I am, know what happened at the event?

This is on domestic issues.

6:04: The economy. Jobs. What are the major differences between the two of you about how you would go about creating jobs.

– Obama: 4 years ago, we went through the worst financial crisis since the depression. We’ve begun to fight our way back. The auto industry and housing are coming back. Romney’s perspective is if we cut taxes, skew to the wealthy, we’ll be better off. I think we have to invest in energy and education. Fix the tax code to help people who invest in America. Are we going to double down on the old policies that got us into this mess?

– Romney: I’ve met people across the country. Mentioning swing states. Can you help us? The answer is yes. Get energy independent, open trade, make sure people have the best skills and education, balance the budget, champion small business. Complains about big government without mentioning that shrinking government is part of the problem (in the recession).

6:10: Obama wants to lower corporate taxes. Lovely. Fucking lovely. And he’s being a deficit hawk. Boo.

6:13: Romney is talking about clean coal. So that’s a lie, because that doesn’t exist.

6:14: Obama is now talking about tax cuts for the middle class. Sure. Now he’s going after Romney’s tax plan because there aren’t the specifics about the loopholes that he says he supports.

6:18: Romney is saying he won’t add to the deficit. But the math doesn’t really work.

6:19: Obama: “Romney’s big bold idea is ‘never mind.'” My tax plan lowered taxes for 98% of small businesses and families, but for incomes over $250,000 we should go back to the rates under Clinton.

6:21: zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

6:23: Obama: The approach Governor Romney is talking about is the same that was tried in 2001 and 2003.

6:24: Romney is whining about not having the last word.

What to do about the federal debt. My answer is don’t care until we’re out of a recession.

6:27: Romney: The debt is immoral. Raising taxes slows down the rate of growth. I want to cut spending. He doesn’t seem to realize that cutting spending hurts the economy.

6:28: Obama: When I came into office we had 2 wars that weren’t paid for, 2 tax cuts that weren’t paid for and an economic crash. Now we’ve cut discretionary budget the most since Ike. $2.50 in cuts for every $1 of income.

6:31: Romney says Obama should have supported Simpson Bowles, but his plan isn’t Simpson Bowles.

6:34: Obama is going after the oil companies’ corporate welfare “when they’re making a profit every time you’re at the pump.” Don’t take a deduction for moving a plant overseas.

6:37: If you drink every time one of these people mentions a swing state or a city in one, enjoy blacking out.

6:38: Is Romney joking about how he shipped jobs overseas and didn’t get enough of a tax cut???????

Entitlements. Do you see a major difference on Social Security?

6:40: Obama: Social Security’s basic structure is sound, but it may need some tweaks. My grand mother raised me, and she ended up living alone by choice. The reason she could be independent is Medicare and Medicaid. And that’s what I think of when people talk about entitlements. So strengthen the system over the long term. Don’t overpay insurance companies or providers. Use that money to lower drug costs to seniors and preventive care.

6:43: Romney: Neither the president nor I are proposing any changes for retirees or near retirees. So stop listening. Now he’s saying Obama cut Social Security. I doubt he’ll mention that it’s the same as his VP proposed.

6:44: Obama: I think it’s important for governor Romney to present his plan. It’s called premium support, but it’s actually a voucher program. If you’re 54 or 55, you should listen because it will effect you. You can have a voucher, but it won’t keep up with inflation.

6:46: I have become fond of that phrase Obamacare. If you repeal it, seniors will be harmed, and insurance companies will be the primary beneficiaries.

6:48: Romney is talking about means testing for Medicare. Boo.

On the economy: What is your view on federal regulation? Should there be more?

6:52: Romney says regulation is important, at the same time it can become excessive. It can become out of date, and hurt the economy. Dodd Frank designates banks too big to fail (?). I would repeal and replace it. He doesn’t say what he’ll replace it with (but he does say he’ll keep some of it).

6:54: Obama: We had excesses from all sectors. So we had the toughest reforms since the 1930’s. We made sure all the help was paid back with interest. Does anybody think the problem is we had too much regulation of Wall Street?

6:56: Romney:Try to get a loan today. As if loans were easy to get before Dodd Frank.

Do you want to repeal health reform?

6:57: Romney: Health care is too expensive. Craft a plan at the state level, and get costs down.

6:59: Obama: When I was running for office, people weren’t able to get insurance. Families would go bankrupt if they got sick. If they had a preexisting condition they couldn’t get coverage. There might be an arbitrary limit. We worked on this and on jobs. If you’ve got health insurance, companies can’t jerk you around. If you don’t have insurance, you can essentially have a group rate. The irony is we’ve seen this model work well in Massachusetts.

7:02: Romney: In my state Republicans and Democrats worked together. OK, fine, but why didn’t he ask other Republicans to work with Democrats?

7:03: Romney: A president has to work across the aisle. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

7:04: Romney: The Democratic legislators in Mass could give some advice to Republicans in Congress about working across the aisle.

7:06: I was hoping for more zingers.

7:08: Are there any clinics not in swing states?

7:11: Obama: Romney will replace it but won’t tell you what he’ll replace it with. We don’t know the details of his tax plan, of his replacement of Dodd Frank, of repeal of Obamacare. Is he doing this because his plans are too good? No.

The role of government. Do you believe there’s a difference as to how you view the mission of the Federal government.

7:14: Obama: The first role of government is to keep people safe. But also, the Federal government can create the opportunities. There are some things we can do as individuals, but there are some things we can do together. Now he’s talking about Race to the Top. Boo, again.

7:15: Romney: I love great schools. Every state should make the decision on their own. The pursuit of happiness means something something God.

7:18 All federal funds should follow the child, not to the school district.

7:19: Obama: The Ryan budget would cut the education budget by 20%.

7:22: Obama: We’ve cut out the middle men on student loans. Our priorities make a difference.

7:23: I hope that “your own facts” line wasn’t his zinger.

A meta question about partisanship.

7:25: Romney: Since I worked with Democrats when they were 87% of the Mass legislature, I can totally work with them in Congress.

7:26: Obama: I’ll work with anyone as long as they have good ideas for building the middle class.

Closing statements:

7:28: Obama: Thank you and Romney. This was a terrific debate. 4 years ago we were going through an crisis. I still believe in lots of people in swing states. Make sure everyone has a fair share and plays by the same rules. I fought every day for the middle class and those trying to get into the middle class.

7:30: Romney: This is about the course of America. There are two paths and they lead in 2 different directions. I’ll get incomes up again. If I’m president I’ll create 12 Million jobs. If Obama is elected, Obamacare will be installed, and there will be a made up amount of health care premium increase.

7:33: I actually think this was a pretty good debate. People had a chance to get into the weeds a bit, but there was some real discussion. I’ve edited it a bit to make it more clear who was saying what.

– Michelle Obama came to town.

– Another anti-Inslee ad with someone who isn’t a great spokesperson.

– More Italians bought bikes than cars last year. Next year, Washington?

– I like the idea of Olympia as mighty metropolis.

– The Thurston County Chamber of Commerce opposes it. The Olympian opposes it. If that is not reason enough right there to support Thurston County Proposition No. 1, it’s time you turn in your Occupy Olympia underpants.

– Richard Conlin makes the case for Surface-Transit-I-5.

– Twitter has really given people the opportunity to pack so much wrong into so few words.