The Seattle Times has an editorial about the Initiative 1053 ruling.

We do not argue that Heller is legally mistaken. The Washington Constitution does not allow an initiative to raise the threshold for passing a law. Nor does it disallow it. Given that the Supreme Court can decide either way, we believe the court should let the people have what they want.

If it doesn’t allow it, it’s kind of the definition of beyond the prevue of the initiative process. And as Goldy notes, the state constitution is clear about what requires more than 2/3 to pass. And it’s not taxes.

But whatever, this is a particularly poor way of putting it but the logic that a majority vote should trump the constitution is pretty pervasive. So in the spirit of goodwill, here’s a list of other potential initiatives we could have that modify what the state constitution does without, I guess, bothering to modify the state constitution. These are all things I’d support in theory, but should be overturned if they passed as an initiative. I’m not sure any of them would pass, but you never know until you try.

– Obviously, a requirement that it takes a 2/3 vote of the legislature to cut social services and education. They’ve been cut to the bone, and beyond. If that passed, maybe we could have a reasonable discussion about tax policy versus spending. Obviously, I support this in a world where there’s a 2/3 requirement to cut taxes, not in the ideal world.

– Severe gun control measures. Sure, the state’s version of the second amendment (article 1, section 24) is stronger than the federal one. I think there are some reasonable gun control measures that can be passed, but would run into that if we go too far. But never mind that if 50% + 1 voters say it’s a good idea, we can outlaw firearms.

– A parliamentary system. Sure, sure, our constitution is pretty clear about us having a bicameral legislature and an executive. But if the people vote for a different system, why go through the hassle of changing the constitution?

– Or we could maybe change how legislators are elected. A lot of democracies have the percent of the vote be the distribution in the legislature. If 50% +1 want it, no need for a pesky, difficult to get constitutional amendment.

I still think a closed primary is better than an open one. But I’m coming around to the system we have. So reading my friend Ray’s piece on the California top 2 system, here are some rambling thoughts on the process here.

The goofiness of having Democrats run against Democrats in a general election is both the main hurdle to acceptance and what I’ve come to like about it. So, yeah, it makes it tougher for Democrats to elect the most liberal person in liberal districts. And it makes it tougher for the Democrats to control who is their nominee.

On the other hand, we’ll have campaigns in 2 of Seattle’s Legislative Districts doing independent GOTV. It can help statewide elections to have local elections that matter. And, I like having some choice in November.

I’d prefer if we went back to the old system, or better yet had a primary where Democrats couldn’t help pick the Republican nominee or Republicans pick the Democratic nominee. But I’m not as opposed to the system as I was when we got it.

– These people aren’t advocating for “life.” They are advocating a political strategy that stigmatizes a legal medical procedure in order to punish those they see as sexually transgressive with either death or the financial instability that follows from a lack of reproductive choice. [h/t]

– The gun violence problem is in Seattle. The solution is in Olympia. Maybe, but let’s not ignore what Seattle can do and let’s also not ignore the gun violence in the rest of the state.

– Chart of the day.

– Lord knows I’m a terrible speller. But Amercia?

– I found this piece on dead pigeons quite fascinating, but note there were some graphic videos/pictures.

– Sometimes I listen to Mariners games on the other team’s feed (you get a different assessment than from the Seattle announcers). Early this season, when they were playing the A’s, the radio guy said that there was another event at the same time as the game the following day, so everybody take public transportation. It wasn’t a wishy-washy you might want to consider type of thing. I don’t know if we need a system as comprehensive as BART before we can not be worried about getting stuck in traffic when we build sports stadiums.

– Honk if you love Jesus

As I was leaving work today, I was told to be careful. The implication, I suppose, that because of the awful things that had happened earlier today that with the suspect then still on the loose, that I should be afraid walking home. That perhaps I shouldn’t go out for dinner if I was planning it. That maybe I shouldn’t go out for a bike ride after work even if it’s nice out, because who knows?

And I appreciate the concern. I get the fear. But you can’t wall yourself off from life because of some slim possibility that something will happen. You can’t hide from fear. For those of us who live or work or play in Seattle, well, it’s our city.

It’s not the city of the gunmen. It’s not the city of the drug dealers or the gangsters. It’s not the city of criminals. It’s our city.

Obviously, none of this is to say that we should ignore crime or murder on a policy level, or that there aren’t policies that we should implement to prevent future tragedies of this nature. I hope this prompts us to look at our gun culture and our culture of violence. What it should mean is that we can still live our lives in our city.

These anti-choice acts of violence that have nothing to do with any other act of violence have come fast these last few days.

A New Orleans women’s health organization was destroyed last week by an unknown arsonist, becoming the latest target of attacks on women’s health clinics in the south.

The organization, Women With A Vision, was likely singled out because it offers AIDS prevention help, HIV testing, and substance abuse assistance to sex workers, transgender women, poor women, and women of color. The clinic also does community outreach and education on those issues. Like two incidents in Georgia last week, no one was injured in the fire, but the clinic lost a good share of its resources.

This incident and the countless — unrelated — ones like it that have nothing whatever to do with the political rhetoric that opposing women’s rights to control their own bodies. It certainly has nothing to do with a climate of violence.

[h/t]

– If you drove hundreds of miles out of your way for booze this weekend because of the transition between state and private stores, it may be because you’re a lush.

– Washington state politics are this fucked up.

– I think this sort of writing about race–and really about American politics–as though history doesn’t exist is a problem. Specifically, journalists are fond of saying “racism is only one factor” without realizing that any racism is unacceptable.

– I’m not saying the fact that Nickleback is Rob McKenna’s favorite band should disqualify him from being governor (that’s what his policies are for) but it’s certainly a mark against him.

– How the GOP is fighting for you.

Over at Shakesville, there’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. It’s part of an announcement that you can enter yourself to win a dinner with Donald Trump if you donate a small amount of money. I can’t imagine wanting to have dinner with Donald Trump, but whatever. That’s not the thing that I find amazing.

Lots of candidates have that sort of thing. Obama has the same thing for his supporters.

No, the amazing thing is you’ll also win a trip from the airport in “the Trump vehicle.” I mean, I know he named most (some? all but The Apprentice?) of his business ventures after himself. Business people do that. No he named his car after himself. The only other wealthy business person who names his car after himself that I know of is Batman.

And he’s fictional. Also, he has the good sense not to call it the Waynemobile.

As I discussed a while ago, I’m sending out these questions to various Democratic candidates for contested races. I’m being somewhat more selective than I was with City Council where I just asked both people going on no matter how serious people might consider their candidacy. So no questions for Inslee’s or Cantwell’s Democratic primary opposition. Also, no Kastama since it’s Democrats only. I also didn’t do the 1st Congressional District since it’s being fairly well covered, and I didn’t do Superintendent of Public Instruction since it’s non-partisan and I may do some more of these for the general.

These will go Monday, so it’s your last chance to get something in. It’s the same question to every candidate, and it has to be fairly general, and since it’s email there won’t be follow up; if people give bullshit answers, you should feel encouraged to call bullshit in the comments.

Sec of State

1) How will you make sure elections are fair?

2) The last Democratic Secretary of State retired in 1964. What makes you think you’re going to finally flip that?

3) Sam Reed has been pushing to count the ballots that are received by election day (like in Oregon) rather than the ones postmarked by election day. Do you support or oppose this?

4) What legislation, if any, will you lobby for as Secretary of State?

Auditor

1) How will you use the performance audits as a tool to improve governance.

2) What in your background would make you a good auditor?

3) What legislation, if any, will you push as auditor?

36th and 46th Legislative Districts

1) The state’s paramount duty is education. Do you feel the state is living up to that duty? If not, what needs to happen to live up to it?

2) Washington State voters recently rejected an income tax. Most of the revenue that the legislature might be able to pass is quite regressive. Will you push for revenue, and if so, how will you make sure the burdens don’t fall on the poorest Washingtonians?

3) There is a good chance that the State Senate and/or the Governor’s Mansion will be controlled by Republicans after the next election, and certainly most legislators will be more conservative than people who would be elected in a Seattle district. Given that how will you get your agenda passed?

4) You’re running in a race with many Democrats who share similar positions. What separates you from the rest of the field?

5) Seattle and King County give more to the state than they get back. Part of this is reasonable things like the cost of providing education and social services in rural and suburban areas, but part of it is a lack of respect for Seattle and King County with the legislature that treats us as an ATM. How will you make sure your district gets its fair share of revenue without harming education or social services throughout the state?

…And they’re sent. I edited them a bit from when I first posted them.

– The Democratic Conversation.

– Rob McKenna’s time at the County Council was totally above board.

– On the one hand Hustler is misogynistic is hardly a story on the other hand yiiiiiiiiikes.

– This is quite old and I don’t remember who gets the hat tip, but this map of Seattle’s racial profile as of the last census is pretty interesting.

– Some of these are a bit of a stretch of either “Seattle” or “under $25” but I can recommend many of them.

– Folklife is this weekend. The Flying Blind Blues Band at 2:05 on Friday features HA’s own Darryl.

This afternoon, for the first time since it opened, I walked by the new Chihuly exhibit. I wasn’t going to pay $19 to get in* so I can’t speak to the exhibit itself. Still, walking by I was struck by having to walk by it. Where once you could cut through the fun forest, the area is now fenced off.

That’s been true for some time, of course, but with the construction fencing down, and seeing Seattle Center how it’s going to be for the foreseeable future, now is as good as any time to reflect what we lost.

I know thinking of privately owned silly amusement park rides as a public amenity is over the top. But it’s more of one than a walled off courtyard. And I know there are plenty of areas in Seattle Center that are walled off. I’ve been to enough plays and concerts there. I know with the Science Center, the Children’s Museum and the Children’s Theater, (not to mention plenty of open space) Seattle Center is still more family friendly than much of the rest of the urban core. But it still feels like the loss of a public good.

[Read more…]

Last week, I posted about how I was mystified that newspapers ever oppose transit. Transit is the best time to read newspapers. Compare that to the attempts to replace the King Dome and to keep the Sonics. They kept pushing to make a deal no matter how horrible it is to Seattle and King County; I had always figured their editorial board were at least partially doing it to keep the newspaper afloat (not necessarily consciously, but at least in the back of their minds).

I mean, I care about what’s in the news and editorial sections, but I also care about the sports. And a lot more people care about sports than they do about another piece on how we need charter schools, or even good reporting. When Goldy asks, “what’s changed between now and then?” in relation to The Seattle Times’ editorializing against the new stadium, he means in terms of policy. After all, whatever problems this stadium proposal has, it’s better than ones they shilled for. But I wonder if maybe there’s a business model factor.

20 years ago, the two papers were the only game in town in terms of covering sports. Now though, if you think bloggers and other independent agents have done a number on the news, well that’s nothing compared to sports. The Seattle Times won’t be the only place to get the scores on the new Sonics or the new Seattle Metropolitan Hockey Club.

Another thing is that The Seattle Times pissed away a lot of its credibility pushing for the stadiums that turned out to be a bad deal. I go to Mariners games regularly and absolutely love it. But I wish that public money hadn’t been used to build it. When the people who shilled for the stadium see it 2/3 empty, well, it makes it tough to demand another one.

Finally, it’s a different editorial board than it was 20 years ago. It’s not the same thing for it to have different positions as an individual changing positions willy nilly.

– There was some discussion in the comments of George Tierney Jr of Greenville South Carolina.

– Save LBA Woods (h/t)

– John Hodgman on the importance of restoring civility to politics.

– For every wrongful conviction there is likely a criminal out and about in our communities…the wrongfully un-arrested who are free to continue and often shielded from arrest by a system allergic to self-examination.

– This piece on George Romney (h/t to Howie‘s Facebook) contains one of my favorite opening paragraphs in a long time.

– Chart of the Day

Yesterday the 7th Congressional District, along with every district in the state, picked delegates to the Democratic National Convention. As I mentioned on Thursday, I was trying to be a delegate to that convention. So I was there. Here’s a little bit of what happened that day.

Sign in was 9:00. AM. Sunday. Nine fucking O goddamn Clock. On a weekend day. But because the bus only came once every half hour, and I’m paranoid about being late for these things, I was there by 8:50. I just grabbed some coffee before getting on the bus and will grab some food there.

So I got there and was told not to sign in yet. So I looked around and it turns out there’s no food. This is going to be a long day. I found some friends including HA’s own N in Seattle who wasn’t trying to be a delegate, but was thinking about becoming an elector. I also got to meet Vashon Dogboy.

As I mentioned, I had originally hoped to go to the convention to push for a marriage equality plank in the platform. But now that President Obama supports it, it doesn’t seem like it needs my push. So I didn’t bring any material, but I still wanted to see this thing through, so I made my pitch as to why I’d be a good delegate to people individually for a while. Then I found a seat.

Soon enough they announced that there were 140 delegates and 35 alternates. Since a fair number of people hadn’t shown up, most of the alternates were seated. In the time it took to make sure the alternates got their proper credentials, we had speeches from a representative from any presidential candidate who got over 15% of the vote, Jim McDermott, and Kathleen Drew.

I believe Obama had all 140 delegates, but in any case, he was the only candidate to get 15%. Someone from the Obama Neighborhood team (I’m sorry, I didn’t write the name down) encouraged us to all go onto barackobama.com and get involved. A plea for time more than money is always appreciated from me.

Then McDermott gave a speech similar to the one he gave at my LD and at the King County convention. The main addition was that that he mentioned that there was no coffee at the event. He said at the legislative district caucuses they had expected about 10% of the delegates to come and instead only 2% came, so they didn’t know what to expect at this one. He used that to say if we want to do good we have to show up.

Kathleen Drew spoke next. She talked about how she won in the 5th district supporting Democratic values. She was the only Democrat to win that seat in 50 years and the first Democratic woman to defeat Dino Rossi. She is the only Democratic woman running for statewide executive office, and that Sec of State is important because it’s where we stop efforts to block legitimate voters from practicing democracy.

Then we got to delegate selection. The men and the women went back and forth one each giving one minute speeches. We picked 6 each. I was incredibly nervous and didn’t say my line about the most swear words and according to N in Seattle, I said that “I moved out here when my family was 11,” so that’s something.

I didn’t know that many people running for delegate but my criteria for who to vote for was as follows:

– Me
– People I knew
– People who rode the same bus as me
– Based on the speeches
– Based on people trying to convince me one-on-one or in small groups
– Minus points for the one person who called me after 8:00.

While they were tallying up the votes for delegate, we voted for elector. N in Seattle decided to put his name in, and he gave a speech with a little history of the Electoral College and saying he’d write about the process here and on Daily Kos to shed some light on it. I voted for him basically with the same criteria as above.

Then when they tallied the votes for elector, we found out who won the delegate elections. While I won’t be going on, I think we have a pretty strong delegation from the 7th district.

Then the results for elector came in. Because nobody got a majority and because the elector and the alternate had to be one each, a man and a women we had a second round with the man and the woman who got the most votes. N in Seattle was the man who got the most votes in the first round, so we knew he’d be a delegate or an alternate. We had another round of voting and he’ll be the alternate elector from the 7th district. I look forward to him writing about the process.

It was a long day and I was hungry by the time I got home. But I’m glad I went. It’s farthest in the process that I’ve ever been.

– A proper (or as proper as I do) write-up will come later today, but I didn’t make delegate at the 7th district convention. These people did.

– The NAACP endorses marriage equality.

– It’s not just that men and women both engage in slutty behavior and therefore no one has a right to throw stones—it’s that there is nothing wrong with slutty behavior (or, as I like to call it, behavior) in the first place.

– It’s a bit of a clusterfuck, but I’m basically fine with the candidates running in both first districts.

– Lies about Elizabeth Warren are going to come in fast the rest of the campaign.

– Ask before unwrapping.

– The free market is speaking.

The Post Office should be run more like a business than a lot of government agencies. But it still has a need to serve everyone in a way business never would. The Tacoma News Tribune disagrees about any of that public service crap.

The world changes. Heaven forbid that the U.S. Postal Service should change with it.

You can go on the Internet and print stamps right now. You can then go over and schedule a pickup. Just like when Franklin made it! If only they would advance with the times.

The USPS is supposed to operate like a business – which includes adapting to the real world – but the U.S. Senate has again made certain that it operate as a vehicle for patronage and political pandering. It has just pressured the organization into abandoning an emergency-cost cutting plan to close hundreds of money-losing post offices and mail-sorting centers nationwide, including several offices in Pierce County and the processing center on Pine Street in Tacoma.

What business funds its pension obligations 75 years into the future? But, no, the post office doesn’t have to be run just like a business. If they were, they’d probably try to stop FedEx and UPS from using zip codes because they’re propriety. Stamps would probably be a significant amount more. And the Postmaster general would be paid in the 7 or 8 figures. The Post Office is a public good that’s very different from a business. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t hard choices: there are. It just means that the calculus is different than if it were a private business.

Result: The postal unions and the nation’s remaining snail mail fans are happy. And the Postal Service – which has been losing $25 million a DAY – will keep on running immense losses unless Congress permits it to restructure itself for the 21st century.

And a result of the bad economy. Businesses are shipping less to fewer locations. The Internet exists so people aren’t sending as much mail (although I still get plenty of mail, including junk mail and legit correspondence). I doubt other shipping interests are doing well either, but they don’t work in the public interest.

On hold, too, is the USPS plan to end Saturday mail delivery – another fossil from the age when snail mail was the only game in town. Ending that tradition would have saved the system – and ultimately the taxpayers – royal sums of money. It would also have antagonized the people who don’t the status quo to change, ever.

Fair enough, but there are real consequences if the post office doesn’t run on Saturdays. Also, does whoever wrote this think the taxpayers are on the hook for the Post Office? Because, that’s not how it works:

In 1982, U.S. postage stamps became “postal products,” rather than a form of taxation. Since then, The bulk of the cost of operating the postal system has been paid for by customers through the sale of “postal products” and services rather than taxes.

Each class of mail is also expected to cover its share of the costs, a requirement that causes the percentage rate adjustments to vary in different classes of mail, according the costs associated with the processing and delivery characteristics of each class.

So I guess the good news is that the Post Office is already run more like a business than this article calling for it to be run like a business thinks. Anyway, I’m getting bored, but I’ll give you a terrible metaphor.

Communities defend their post offices like Rottweilers, and they terrify members of Congress who otherwise wouldn’t spend a penny bailing out an archaic mail system.

Rottweilers are well known for defending post offices and terrifying members of Congress.