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.

For the most part, I’ve been happy with the coverage of the 1st Congressional District primary. While there’s some bullshit coverage of Darcy Burner, that’s sort of what you expect from the mainstream sources. There are plenty of good candidates, and for the most part they’re covered about as well as you can expect.

But one thing in particular just drives me off the wall. And that’s whenever I read that they’re competing for “Jay Inslee’s old seat.” The fuck they are. They’re competing to fill a seat with the same number as Jay Inslee’s old seat, but since the redistricting looks nothing like that seat. Hopefully this will die down a bit since there will be an election to fill the old seat until redistricting kicks in.

– Seattle’s Road Map to a Climate-Friendly Future

– It’s worth noting that the quickest way to enact restrictions on walking around while carrying a gun is probably for the “wrong” kinds of people to start carrying firearms, causing a freakout among the people who wrote the laws in the first place.

– Call me a skeptic, but I think corporate compassion is mostly PR.

– Pictures of the U-Link breakthrough.

– You, gentle Times reader, should your accept your trite generalizations about female sexuality from noone less than a Latin-spouting Harvardian.

– Our awesome banking system.

– Health care glossary.

Another act (h/t) that again has nothing to do with any other incident like it or the noxious political environment the GOP is pushing. Just another nut. No connective tissue. It’s all completely senseless and unpredictable.

Grand Chute police are investigating an explosive device that blew up at Planned Parenthood.

It happened about 7:40 p.m. Sunday at the Planned Parenthood office at 3800 North Gillett Street.

Authorities say a plastic water bottle filled with an accelerant caused the blast and fire, which quickly extinguished itself by the time firefighters arrived.

Fortunately nobody was hurt, and it doesn’t seem to have done much damage. Still, it could have been much worse. And I feel like a broken record here, but while of course the person who did this is responsible for their actions, the anti-choice people should recognize their contribution to this, especially the ones using violent, eliminationist rhetoric.

– Trayvon-like Dudes

What the hell is up with white hipster Jesus, Newsweek?

– I don’t buy the idea that a large group of black bodies = crime, but I know a lot of people who trumpet on & on about the joys of gentrification do.

– I think no one really was identifying him with white conservatives until white conservatives adopted Zimmerman as their Mumia Abu-Jamal.

– Urban agriculture discussion in Olympia.

– Waspzilla

– Too far

I was looking around editorial pages for something to make fun of, and instead I found this great opinion piece in the Yakima Herrald-Republic.

My faith is important to me. And I believe that religious faith is a fundamental human right that government should not restrict. My faith may be different from my evangelist neighbor’s in that I believe that two consenting adults who love each other should be allowed to be married no matter what their gender mix is, and I believe that more ethically responsible decisions can be made by women who have access to contraception and abortion services. So no, I don’t feel that my faith, anyway, is under attack.

But I do feel that something is amiss. Our Constitution, thankfully, says that government shall not restrict the free exercise of religion; but I don’t see in any of these examples the government doing that. The government is not requiring people to marry someone of the same gender, or mandating that people take birth control. I understand that filling a “Plan B” prescription may be counter to someone’s religious values, but that is not the same as exercising one’s religion. The Catholic Church is not being asked to actually take birth control pills; they are only being asked to provide reasonable coverage for health benefits like all other employers, and pharmacists are being asked to simply do their jobs. These examples have nothing to do with religious practice.

Yesterday I attended an open house for several transit agencies to discuss the elimination of the free ride area in September. It was mostly what you know already if you’re paying attention. Starting September 29, every route will be pay as you enter, and what’s now the free ride area will just be part of the Seattle zones for Metro and ST.

The one thing that I hadn’t realized (and I didn’t notice until I was reviewing one of the handouts on the way home, so I didn’t get to ask anyone about it) was that they are considering ways to help poor people get around. These include “increase the number of human service tickets provided to the agencies” and to “operate a free circulator.”

I wish I had a chance to ask someone about it, but the two questions that come to mind are who would operate it and how do they keep it from becoming a rolling homeless shelter? I assume that the question of who operates it hasn’t been worked out since the entire idea seems to still be up in the air. As for the homeless people: of course there should be services for them, but the bus isn’t that.

I’d like a circulator through the urban core (and both ways if it’s not just up and down the same street), free or not. But I’m not sure free is the better way to go.

You know, I hate to say it, but the trolls are right. This blog isn’t fair to conservatives. We exclude their voices and we don’t take them seriously. That’s why I’m glad to see we’ve added Rob McKenna’s Twitter feed to the side bar. Sure he’s a Republican who presumably nobody writing on this blog will vote for, but it’s important to have his voice.

We can dramatically increase state spending on K-12 education by dramatically decreasing spending on teachers. It’s #McKennaMath

I endorse Michael Bumgardener for US Senate! Watch out, Miss. Cantwell!

I’ve always felt it inappropriate for elected officials to endorse in pres. primaries. Except for 2008, 2004, & 2000. That was different.

So welcome aboard Rob.

An all local open thread, but feel free to talk about whatever you want in the comments.

– Puget Sound Energy owns the biggest chunk of the power (and the pollution) coming from the Colstrip coal plant in eastern Montana, which is the second-largest coal-fired power plant west of the Mississippi.

– This is about the greatest picture I’ve ever seen.

– City Council member Tim Burgess failed to pass a proposed amendment to the city’s comprehensive plan this morning saying that the city supports homeless encampments only at religious institutions.

– Solid endorsements for DelBene.

– Financial fitness day.

– Trail updates

– Strangest opening day ever.

I’ve been reluctant to write the following piece. I mean, what about the white guy’s experience isn’t the most useful frame for the Trayvon Martin case. And unlike the founder of this blog, I try to keep my personal life personal; the most I usually write about myself is I took my bike somewhere. Still, the discussion of the stand your ground laws make me think of the time my housemate was killed, and I wonder what might have happened if we’d had stand your ground laws here in Washington like those in Florida.

Basically, the story is this: After college, I was underemployed and bumming around suburbia. Eventually, I moved into a house with several other people. The house was advertised in the local paper and I didn’t know any of the people before I moved in. It was cheap while I got myself onto a better situation.

It was a large house and people moved in and out all the time. One couple moved in and was constantly late on payments and was constantly getting into arguments with the landlord.

One weekend the landlord shot him and then claimed self defense. The forensic evidence didn’t back up his claims, and eventually he plead down and will be in prison for a long time, but I wonder if it would have been easier for him to concoct a story if we had those sorts of laws, and if it would have been a tougher case for prosecutors.

I’m thinking of doing another round of candidate questions like I did for Seattle City Council last year. Since unlike City Council, most of these races are partisan, and I have no qualms about being a Democrat, I’ll have to start asking questions sooner, so they cover the primary. I was thinking the open seats in Seattle and the the executive offices with more than one Democrat running.

Like last time, it would be the same set of questions emailed to all of the candidates, so no when-you-were-mayor questions to Nickles, for example. And of course, they may or may not answer them. But I’d be willing to ask different things of different legislative districts. So my question: is this something you’d like to see. And if so, are there any questions you’d like asked, or positions other than those that you’d like me to ask questions to?