I was at a candidate’s forum for the open seat in the 36th district and it was pretty standard for one of the most liberal districts in the state. They all support marriage equality and an income tax. But one thing that Sahar Fathi said in passing was that we could have a local option income tax. I wish the forum allowed for a follow up on that, but it seems like a reasonable thing to have, but how would it work?

I’d assume you would allocate a certain amount to the counties and a certain amount to the cities. It would presumably be the sort of thing that could be done either by a city or county council or by a vote of the people.

While, I would prefer a statewide income tax, that was rejected at the polls recently, so it probably won’t happen for a while. We can at least enact it in places where it’s popular and either generate more revenue or make the local tax structure more fair. And that money would stay in Seattle or King County.

– Am I the only person who thinks Dennis Kucinich shouldn’t come to Washington to run for Congress, but is fine with it if he does?

– Father Michael Ryan, head of St. James Cathedral, tells parishioners in a letter that gathering signatures for Referendum 74 would “prove hurtful and seriously divisive in our community.” (h/t to Howie on Facebook)

– Bravo! Welcome to the proper side of this debate!

– Obama wins the WA Caucus.

– New menu items at Tutta Bella.

– Kings of the AL West’s second tier is maybe all the Mariners can hope for.

If you’re interested in nominating Obama and improving the Democratic platform, Saturday Sunday is the first day in the process.

Those of you who were able to resist attempting mischief in the Republican caucuses and thereby retained your eligibility for the Democratic caucuses can collect your reward this Sunday, as Washington Democrats begin the process of selecting 130 folks to represent us at the Democratic National Convention.

Even though Obama has already accrued enough delegates to get the nomination, it’s nice to be able to voice your support. I’ve never caucused for a winner, so maybe I’ll go just for that. But the other thing is to improve the platform. The big push by activists will be for a marriage equality plank.

I’ll be caucusing Sunday afternoon, and running for delegate to the LD/County level with a pledge to support the nomination and re-election of President Barack Obama and the inclusion of explicit marriage equality language in the county, state and national platforms. I’ll be asking for a similar commitment from those who seek my vote for delegate to any level as the process advances.

If anyone knows of any other planks activist groups are pushing, I’d love to hear about them in the comments. Universal single payer health care and an end to the drug war are two ideas off the top of my head that would probably benefit from a platform fight, but I don’t know of any activist groups pushing for them in the platform.

Anyway, you can find your caucus here. Good luck.

It’s not too surprising.

State Rep. Roger Goodman (D-45, Kirkland), one of six candidates who announced for the First District Congressional seat being vacated by US Rep. Jay Inslee (D-1)—Inslee, of course, is running for governor—announced today that he’s dropping out of the race. Goodman’s decision comes on the heels of what he himself called an “anemic” quarter of fundraising, which prompted rumors last month that he planned to withdraw from the race.

It’ll be interesting to see if this puts any pressure on any of the remaining non-Darcy Burner candidates to drop out and coalesce around an anybody but Darcy candidate, or if the rest of the pack stays in. It’ll also be interesting to see (if you can with small numbers) where his support goes. As I’ve said, I like all the candidates I know in the race.

– Once you write the fragment “it’s based on speculation rather than inside knowledge”, it should be clear that you would be providing your readers with a more useful service if you were to close your laptop, head to the nearest public park, and enjoy the nice weather. Why not do that instead?

– Misplaced priorities indeed.

– I’ve never thought much about Ashley Judd beyond the blandest adjectives—she’s pretty, she seems nice, her pores look really small—but it turns out she’s also a smart, bold, kickass feminist.

– Our awesome legislature.

– Who Seattle parks were named after. (h/t)

Atrios is right that the housing market isn’t going to recover while the crooked, thieving banks are all crooked and thieving.

I’m not sure how anyone expects “the housing market” to “recover” when buying a house now involves handing a bunch of money over to a bank which will then proceed to steal your house from you.

This behavior will continue until lots of people go to jail. And that, apparently, is off the table.

Of course there is another option. And that’s to make it impossible for the banks to steal your house from you. And it seems the simplest way to do that is by putting a moratorium on banks foreclosing until the documentation gets sorted out. It might increase the cost of lending since there are a number of legitimate foreclosures that wouldn’t happen.

Ideally this would happen at the federal level, but I don’t think it’s something you can get done with the current House of Representatives. So, it can happen at the states. It’s 4 years past time, but I’d like to see some creative state legislator here in Washington propose it in the next session.

Democrats have pushed the fact that Senator Zarelli wants to eliminate Disability Lifeline, but is on a different disability program. I’ve never been a fan of accusing people of personal hypocrisy because they live differently from how they govern. So someone supports public transit, but drives a lot doesn’t concern me; I’ll take the transit, and if other people want to drive a lot with these gas prices, go for it. People who take farm aid and oppose it don’t concern me. And Zarelli opposing disability programs is much worse than the fact that he opposes the program while he benefits from a similar program. But the Tacoma News Tribune feels the need to not only defend him, but to make strange metaphors.

The two kinds of disabilities involved aren’t merely apples and oranges; they’re apples and zebras.

Are apples and zebras the most dissimilar things the Trib can think of? I mean you could eat both of them, for example. Here’s one of my nonsense lists to help them out the next time they want to grope for a metaphor about how things aren’t the same:

• Apples and plastic
• Apples and the concept of fear
• Apples and explosions
• Apples and cars
• Apples and people with black mold in their brain who benefit from the program that Zarelli wants to cut
• Apples and the people who Zarelli would make homeless with his awful budget
• Apples and the people who’ll die if we pass Zarelli’s budget
• Apples and declining state revenue as a share of the economy
• Apples and the concept of time
• Apples and mustaches
• Apples and TV shows
• Apples and Higgs particles
• Apples and corporations
• Apples and Unnecessary Capitalization
• Apples and Mispellin the word Misspelling

– Just put a school downtown.

– It’s not a future many in the Northwest had considered in the past. A region that prides itself on green energy, new economy jobs, and a clean environment is about to crown a new king—coal.

– Republicans on Twitter have found the real racists.

– The best encapsulation of every problem with Slate.

– Because we were in Iraq promoting freedom (h/t).

– Whatever you think of Obama’s policies, this GIF of him reading Where The Wild Things Are is pretty great (h/t).

– Middle aged is different for sports stadiums than for people, but I think the Safe is going to be around for a while.

When I talk about car culture, people say I’m being overblown. But how else do you explain The Seattle Times deciding that it’s super important for the city to continue forcing builders to build more parking spots? I mean, I don’t think the market will solve all of our problems, but usually The Seattle Times does. Not today.

The proposal is part of a package to lighten regulations that discourage investment and development. Seattle is a highly regulated city, sometimes to the detriment of reasonable development, and generally this package of reforms is good. But to allow the spread of housing without parking is utopian and anti-family.

No. Plenty of families don’t have cars. When I grew up in a city with functioning public transit, we took it everywhere. When we moved out here, we became a 2 car family.

It is utopian to think that many people will abandon their cars. A few will, but the vast majority who can afford market-priced housing in Seattle will have a motor vehicle, now and always. If they have a vehicle, they will park it — somewhere.

This is such a circular argument. One part of the reason it’s expensive to live, and raise children, in the city is because it has tacked on the cost of parking even to families that don’t drive. I mean people on the cusp could afford a house in the neighborhood and give up their car. Let them chose. If there’s still the demand for parking, people will still build parking.

Anyway, the type of person who buys a house near light rail or a well used bus stop is less likely to drive than the typical person moving into the city, or if it’s a family with 3 people over 16, maybe they’ll just have 1 or 2 cars instead of a car for everyone. Maybe it’ll be a good house for people who’ve retired and don’t have to drive to work every day. The list goes on and on. Let them decide for themselves.

More city people these days have bicycles also, as the mayor does, but they still drive, particularly if they have children or elderly people to take care of. Seattle is famously a city with a low proportion of children, said to be second only to San Francisco. Still our leaders should think twice about making Seattle any less welcoming to families than it already is.

First off, thanks for the random shoehorning of hatred of bicycling, McGinn, and San Fransisco in case anyone needs to prove that this piece was written by Joni Balter. Second, if Seattle residents are disproportionately childless, that undermines your argument that we should build houses to accommodate your version of child rearing. Finally, and once again, you don’t have to drive to get your children around. Yes, it can be tough in Seattle’s not great public transit system, but plenty of people make it work. It saves money. And many people prefer the interactions with their kids on public transit (where parents can give them their full attention) than when they’re driving.

– I had seen links to the John Derbyshire piece, but hadn’t read it until he was fired.

– I’m all for leveling the playing field, but I don’t think rejecting bus ads is the way to go.

– Who knows why people take the Ryan plan seriously.

– I don’t know who God prefers, but I like kind atheists.

– My favorite local news stories are the ones where they can’t decide if they’re trying to titillate or moralize.

– Yep, they are consolidating behind Romney…like a jar of bacon grease in a cold ass room is clearly the greatest political metaphor ever.

– Obviously, the standings in early April don’t matter too much, but it is nice that the Mariners are 3-1.

Because the governor might die, or otherwise have to leave. And also because Owen often does annoying things. Mostly deciding the unconstitutional 2/3 requirement was rad. Also, on the plus side of the ledger, he doesn’t fuck around when Gregoire is out of the state, and he could. But while I want the Democrats’ budget to pass, I don’t know that this is the best thing (if he’d actually do it).

It’s a 24-24 tie in the senate because Republican minority leader Sen. Mike Hewitt (R-16, Walla Walla) one of the 25 votes that gave the GOP (and a couple of conservative Democrats) the majority for the GOP version of things, is out recovering from surgery.

Conservative Democrat Owen, who’s made momentous decisions before (ruling against the Democrats by deciding that repealing tax loopholes is tantamount to raising taxes and requires a two-thirds vote), could step in a give the Democrats the budget vote they need.

I mean I’d prefer we win the day because someone realizes that the GOP position is horse shit not because someone needs surgery. I mean the people of Walla Walla deserve representation in this budget mess. That said, I wouldn’t shed a tear if it happened. The Democrats have a better budget than the Republicans and the people voted for Democrats in the majority of both houses.

According to some Travel and Leisure magazine (no, I didn’t know it existed either). Seattle is America’s 6th greenest city.

Seattle did, after all, come in fifth runner-up. And No. 1 was our sibling rival to the south: Portland.

Savannah, Minneapolis, Denver and Chicago also beat out Seattle on the list. But at least the magazine had a lot of nice things to say about Seattle

Yes, if you click the link, one of the things that gets mentioned is that if you bring your own cup to coffee places, you might get a discount. Is that really one of the top 40 environmental things about Seattle? I don’t know what it takes to get higher on a probably mostly arbitrary list, but I say let’s keep trying.

… Sorry, I put the wrong link. I meant to direct you to the Big Blog post that was blockquoted instead of the article mentioned.

If you know you’ll be getting into an argument with your conservative relatives for this weekend, you might want to bookmark this graph Shaun and others around the web have been posting.

– Good for Bruce Harrell for his proposal to allow women to file a complaint with the city’s Office of Civil Rights if they are asked to leave a public place or cover up while breastfeeding.

– I’m not sure weirdness is really something you can measure legislative session to legislative session.

– Eliminating Disability Lifeline, on top of being horrible policy on its own, doesn’t even save money. (h/t)

– War Crimes

– Finally, we need to stop shrugging off the concerns and cries of people in states that feel like lost causes or bastions of GOP influence because those people matter too. We need to stop telling people to move (most can’t), to secede (we don’t want to), or to start fighting (we already are, you just aren’t looking).

– Possibly the dumbest use of I was just asking for people’s opinion ever.

– Where’s my Higgs?

Remember last year after the legislature passed a biannual budget — that we’re still operating under — and the Seattle Times Editorial Board praised them to high heaven?

The session in the spring was bloody — but also successful. It was an honest budget, with fewer gimmicks than in earlier years. And in the Senate it was done with the cooperation of both parties. If legislators come back, they should do it that way because it is the way that works.

Like it or not (and I didn’t like it) that budget was bipartisan, especially from the Senate. But the Seattle Times thought it was a success. It works. So now, we’re operating under the same budget, and we need urgent reforms.

THE deadlock in Olympia is not about the budget. Really the deadlock is about whether to accept three reforms demanded by Republicans and moderate Democrats or to pass watered-down versions. We urge legislators to go for the full reforms, because they make the state budget more sustainable in the long run.

My God! The budget is unsustainable. And how do we reform our unsustainable budget? With bipartisan (3 Democrats in one house of the legislature and zero in the other so far is bipartisan, FYI) reforms. Reforms like making retirement worse for state workers. Reforms like having a shittier health care package for teachers than the one they negotiate now with their districts. Reforms like 4 year budgets. You know, because we can’t do 2 years, why not 4?

No reforming our taxes to make them more fair or to raise more revenue. No making sure revenue keeps up with the size of the economy. Of course if the legislature passes those types of reform and it doesn’t pan out, expect the Seattle Times to freak out and demand another round of “reforms” of the same type.