The Congressional District conventions are this Sunday. If you’re a delegate, and don’t know where yours is, check your email or your mailbox, because I suspect someone is trying to find you and asking you to support them. Or you could check here. Anyway, I’m going to try to get in, and since people are calling me (hi) I thought I’d share the draft of it here. I obviously need to flesh it out a bit.

Hi, I’m running for delegate to the national convention. I’ve been involved in Democratic politics since I can remember. It seems there were always mailers being stuffed or precincts being walked when I was growing up.

Since I could vote, I supported Bill Bradley, Wes Clark, Hillary Clinton, and now Barack Obama in precinct caucuses. This is my first Congressional District convention.

In January 2004, before most people had heard of blogs, I started one, pseudonymously as Carl Ballard, called The Washington State Political Report. That lasted for several years, and now I write for Horse’s Ass, one of the largest liberal blogs in the state. If I’m at the convention, I’ll write up the experience. I’ll be honest, if you vote for me, I’ll probably swear the most while writing about the convention of any delegate.

When I started trying to be a delegate, I was hoping to get to the convention to push a marriage equality plank in the platform. It looked like that would be a real fight, but fortunately, it got a lot easier since Obama now supports marriage equality. But I’m still hoping to do what I can to make the platform as liberal as possible.

Thank you for your consideration.

– I know Reichert is safe, but the 8th Congressional District’s right turn has prompted a challenge from the right.

– Dennis Kucinich won’t run for Congress, so now people covering the 1st district will have to cover the actual candidates in the race.

– Americans Elect isn’t working out so well.

– Big Fat Love

– Maybe after his book on economic growth, George W. Bush can write a book about not going to war in Iraq.

– Bad publicity is like kryptonite to big corporations

– This is embarrassing, Daddy. Aren’t you a sportswriter?

I know this has been a bad week for Executive Constantine with the media. And every week is a bad week for Mayor McGinn with the media. But does anyone think the city and the county would be getting this good of a deal on the potential NBA/NHL arena if their predecessors were still in office?

Honestly, Ron Sims is as responsible as anyone for the bad deals we got on Safeco and Seahawks Stadium* and Greg Nickles attempts to keep the Sonics were perfectly willing to overspend public money. Of course it helps to have a willing, honest partner, and nothing has actually finished yet. We’re also in a different era where the appetite for public spending in this economy is less than it was a decade ago. Still, the elected officials are deserve a lot of credit for not giving away a lot of public money and still moving forward.

[Read more…]

In most business, when a company loses $2 Billion as part of its core business model, we usually let the market take care of things. Maybe have regulators look into it if the loss was caused by deceptive practices. But generally speaking, the market effects of their decision are a good enough punishment for whatever business. If a company loses $2 Billion and has to go in front of Congress or regulators, the worst part is generally the loss of money.

But banks are different for a few reasons. First, their role in the economy is different than other companies. The financing they provide is not the same as what most companies do. So they should be treated differently.

But even if you don’t buy that, surely, given that they are covered by the FDIC and have been given a fuckton of free money as an industry means that the banks have a different responsibilities to the general good than a manufacturing firm or a tech startup (that I think also have some responsibility, but not as much). As long as banks have the taxpayers funneling money to them, and acting as a backstop, they should act as models of responsibility.

But they haven’t been responsible. JPMorgan Chase isn’t even bothering to make original fuckups.

So, a few heads should roll. I still don’t understand why no CEO’s lost their jobs. We should also make sure the regulations are as tight as possible. Or at the very least, we could stop giving free money to the people who will just gamble it away.

– Maybe BP should, instead of buying elections, use the money to make sure they don’t have another Gulf disaster.

– The Seattle City Council wants an amendment to the Constitution to overturn Citizen’s United.

– Happy filing week

– John Stossel is going to do an anti-union hit piece at some point. I guess it’s a scandal that unions operate in buildings.

– DNC, WTF?

– No, Bubba Carpenter. Mississippi has NOT stopped abortion. You have only stopped SAFE abortion.

– Seattle just awarded grants for job training for immigrant and refugee youth and families.

– Seattle’s bike score: not great

Nick makes a good point about public transit being improved by smart phones.

They’ve made it more fun! When I worked at Microsoft ten years ago, you would occasionally see some twenty-something male bus rider with a Game Boy Advance. But no self-respecting person who’s not a twenty-something male geek would walk around with something like that. The [sic] will, however, walk around with an iPhone or Galaxy Nexus, which they can use to read news, play games, do crossword puzzles, or get some actual work done.

It has long puzzled me why The Seattle Times (for example, but it’s not the only daily paper where it’s true) is so hostile to public transit. I mean I usually write for HA on my laptop (like I’m doing now) when I’m on public transit. But people are always on their phones and reading newspapers and books.

Maybe it’s different for me because of the stories of my grandfather riding into New York City from Connecticut for decades. He started the day with The New York Times, and ended each day with the evening paper. Nowadays, my uncle takes the same route. He reads the paper every morning, and writes letters to his elected officials most evenings. You can’t really do that if you’re in traffic.

– I liked reading about social columns.

– Newsweek continues its tradition of brilliant, well thought out covers.

– How dare Obama campaign?

– I’m still having trouble — you know morally — wrapping my head around the GOP position on the Violence Against Women Act (h/t).

– I can get behind Bill Murray as FDR.

– The Austerions

Someone brought this to market (h/t).

An unidentified entrepreneur admits he is trying to profit off Trayvon Martin’s death by selling gun range targets featuring the teen who’s death has sparked a nationwide controversy.

Although Martin’s face does not appear on the paper targets, they feature a hoodie with crosshairs aimed at the chest. A bag of Skittles is tucked in the pocket and a hand is holding a can resembling iced tea.

Seriously, fuck everything. Fuck this seller. Fuck the people who bought it, selling out in 2 days. 2 goddamn days. Fuck the people who think this is cute. Fuck the NRA and the gun nuts who brought us this stand your ground bullshit in the first place.

Fuck anyone who thinks we’re in a post racial country. No, racism still exists and it’s still ugly. Fuck the people who are so frightened of living in a multiracial society that they’re so terrified of children with Skittles. Fuck the people who think their gun rights trump the rights of a child to live.

Fuck it. There are no words.

They just installed a new light at the crosswalk at Yesler Way under the Viaduct. It seems to be a temporary thing until the Viaduct comes down.* So for now it’s a pain in the ass to cross. Previously, there was a crosswalk under the Viaduct, and then another one between the Viaduct and the waterfront.

The crosswalk under the Viaduct never had a light until now. This wouldn’t mean much if the lights were coordinated. But they are not. I’m sure it doesn’t actually add much time to the commute but it feels like forever.

This may be a bit of a problem as the days get nicer and more people who live and work in Pioneer Square want to walk to the waterfront. So hopefully it isn’t too long until they either get the Viaduct down or at least synch up the crosswalk lights.

And for the record, this isn’t an anti-viaduct post. I realize my preferred option (Surface/Transit/I-5) would have plenty of construction right now if it had been implemented.

[Read more…]

I really like this story in the LA Times about the opening of the Vashon Island branch of Puget Sound Cooperative Credit Union (h/t to Occupy Seattle’s Facebook).

The movement has spurred thousands of Americans to move their accounts out of mega-banks, but many have had to resort instead to big regional credit unions. Here, a group of hard-core Vashon activists, already seasoned in anticorporate campaigns, hit on the idea of merging with a small credit union to create a new branch on the island.

That office has managed, in its first year of operation, to enroll an astonishing 16% of the population and collect local deposits of almost $20 million.

“What surprised me about it was how rapidly the community embraced the credit union,” said Rob Harmon, a green economy pioneer who was part of the organizing committee. “We had wild dreams that in the first year $10 million would move. … And in the first year, $17.5 million moved. So we’re 70% above our wildest dreams.”

Last year, 1.3 million people across the U.S. joined credit unions, the lower-fee, not-for-profit alternative to commercial banks — double the rate from 2010. Once relegated to small offices at big companies, credit unions over the last 15 years have taken advantage of relaxed federal regulations to expand their membership.

…

Vashon organizers say the key to their success — a template they hope to share with other communities — was the decision to abandon the capital-intensive process of chartering their own credit union. Instead, they joined a small, existing credit union willing to cede substantial control in exchange for new members and deposits.

Harmon and Moyer were talking one day in 2009 about how to create a coal-free zone on the island. They needed to help people weatherize their homes, but none of the three Wall Street banks on the island wanted to make those kinds of loans except as home equity loans.

With the news of JP Morgan Chase losing $2 Billion in a way that shows they haven’t learned thing one, it’s quite timely.

Of course Obama has been planning his fundraiser for quite a while now. So there’s certainly a possibility that it’s just a coincidence that Washington was the first state he visited after announcing his support for marriage equality. Still, he could have made his announcement at any time. And Biden’s trial balloon came the weekend before the trip. So, maybe they looked at the calendar and decided Obama is going to be in Washington, so let’s make it happen.

It certainly seems to me that Washington is the right choice of venue for that. Of course there’s a good chance, depending on the signature gathering, that we’ll have this question on the ballot. Obama coming here probably spread the news a little more among people who like him that he thinks marriage equality is something worth pushing. Of course, this was big news anyway, but it probably got to a few more low information voters today.

That’s not to say his speech was all this one issue. As Paul Constant says:

What President Obama offered was basically his standard stump-speech. This doesn’t mean he ignored LGBT issues—when he listed his accomplishments, DADT repeal was high on the list; he said that no American, “black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled” should be discriminated against; and he did state that nobody should be denied rights because of who they love. (That mention of the freedom to love came early in the speech, and it got a raucous round of applause.) But marriage equality was just one of a series of issues he set out to contrast himself with Mitt Romney, who he referred to frequently by name. Romney, he said, “is a patriotic American,” and he congratulated him for the “success he’s had as the head of a large financial firm,” which earned derisive laughter from the crowd.

His was a fundraiser for his campaign, not a marriage equality rally. And there are lots of issues where he has to keep pushing. Still, I’m glad he was here.

– Publicola calls it quits.

– Who would have guessed Jonah Goldberg isn’t the most honest person ever?

– One of the NY GOP Senators who voted for marriage equality isn’t going to run for reelection because of a tough primary challenge.

– Sensible Washington is hoping people will show up in Kent to protect access to collective gardens.

– I’m pleasantly surprised that McKenna losing a talking point is gaining traction from Obama’s support of marriage equality.

– Even in the war on women, this is outlandish.

– Start worrying about children

– Bike Fashion Show

Now that Obama supports gay marriage, it will presumably be much easier to get a marriage equality plank into the platform. Still, I haven’t seen him support plank in the national platform (I haven’t seen one way or the other, but I’ve only done a cursory Google search). So hopefully he lends his support to it, and it’s not a fight. But for now, I’m still going to push people who support that plank at the next levels.

I generally think it makes sense for Joni Balter to move to news. But the highlighted bit is strange.

In an email, Balter told PubliCola that her new title will be assistant political editor. “I have long wanted to try some editing,” Balter says. “I am taking the lead on the Politics Northwest blog, trying to give it a bigger presence on the site and make it a must read.”

More political reporting on the Politics Northwest blog sounds good. The best model would be Postman, but The Tacoma News Tribune’s political blog is pretty good, and has had more longevity than Postman. I hope she can pull it off, and as I’ve said, all in all, Balter moving to news is probably the right move for the paper, and hopefully for her.

Still, does Joni Balter not realize she has access to a blog now? She could have made some effort to make the Ed Cetera blog a must read. I’m sure the paper would have loved her to break some stories on that blog, instead of doing nothing with it for a while, and then giving it to an intern. And it seems that a breaking news blog would be more work than an opinion blog. Maybe it’s more different than I realize, but if the past is prologue, it’s not a good sign.

– Mother’s Day (week) actions for Macy’s workers.

– You probably wouldn’t want your dog off leash in this dog park.

– Oh, it looks like there’s a mayor’s race in Portland

– I’m glad the Obama administration is putting out feelers (h/t) on marriage equality, but it’s time to just make it happen.

– Here’s hoping Neil Sinhababu’s take on the Greek elections is right.

– How much latitude should artists have when copying photographs?