I know I’ve been complimenting the legislature a lot recently. It feels quite strange. But fortunately, the state Democrats are back to being gigantic pissants who’ll fuck over their constituents for no reason.

The senate passed a compromise teacher evaluation bill this afternoon, 46-3. Republicans and moderate Democrats had been pushing a teacher evaluation bill for a couple of sessions now, but liberals had balked, echoing union concerns that it was unfair to teachers, who’ve already seen K-12 funding cut by $2.5 billion during the recession and who have already been working on district-by-district pilot projects to determine evaluation criteria.

…

However, Sen. Ed Murray (D-43, Seattle), with an eye on counting moderate Democratic and Republican votes necessary to pass his budget, resuscitated the bill, triggering negotiations between the reform contingent and the opponents.

Yes, as part of an effort to make deeper cuts to education, Ed Murray has decided to fuck over teachers by imposing an arbitrary evaluation system. This will be more teach to the test instead of quality learning in an effort to punish the teacher’s union.

Rich Wood, spokesman for the teachers’ union, the Washington Education Association, complained that the union was left out of the negotiations and didn’t see the bill until a few hours before the vote. He said: “This new legislation must not derail, short-circuit or otherwise interfere with the evaluation pilot work that is already underway, and educators must be allowed the flexibility to meet the unique needs of students in their local schools.”

You know what, I can’t say it strongly enough: if you don’t give teachers a spot at the table when drafting legislation, you obviously don’t give a shit about education. You obviously want it to fail. That any Democrat would vote for that is a fucking disgrace.

There are ways to have testing that let teachers know what they need to work on, and how they can improve. This is clearly not that.

– Who could have predicted that Obama’s birth control compromise wouldn’t placate conservatives?

– A joint press release from Metro, Sound Transit, Community Transit, Pierce Transit and Kitsap Transit on the awful transportation bill.

– Neighborhood greenways

– Conservatives are good at articulating the complete visions of the society they want; we aren’t so great at that.

– Both left Congress under reasonably disgraceful conditions and were soon rewarded with millions of hard-earned dollars by our meritocracy. When you hit the bricks, new whips, money ain’t a thing.

– Happy Anniversary Shaun

Obviously, the big news is that Gregoire signed the marriage equality bill into law. While we’ve known it was going to happen for some time, it’s still quite amazing. Very recently this seemed like an impossibility, and now it’s a reality. Of course there’s a real possibility that it will come before voters in November, but for now, it’s just wonderful.

Also, even though the bill info isn’t updated in the legislative web page [sorry, I linked to the senate version, here’s the correct link, and it works fine. I remain an idiot], I’m getting a press release from Washington NARAL that:

This evening the Washington House stood up for women’s health and passed the Reproductive Parity Act (HB 2330) by a vote of 52-46. This legislation, sponsored by Rep. Eileen Cody (D-34), requires all health insurance policies that cover maternity care to cover abortion care. NARAL Pro-Choice Washington thanks the representatives who voted to protect women’s access to basic reproductive health care coverage.

And it looks like it’s going to pass the state senate.

And I’m not.

So on the one hand, who cares about the inside baseball stuff? But on the other hand, here’s a story about how the Rick Santorum campaign still feels like it’s amateur hour.

On Friday, I heard that Santorum would be in the area, so I went about trying to find a press person. First, to the campaign website. None of the tabs were a press person, and it looked like there were only a few offices, none in Washington. But! There was an 800 number.

So I tried it on Friday night, but it was pretty late. I tried it again Saturday morning, and was on hold for quite a while, before I decided “fuck it, it’s just not that important that I go.” So the end, right? There have been plenty of campaigns and elected officials who don’t get back to me. I also emailed Romney about his campaign appearance, and they also didn’t get back to me. I assume they see Horse’s Ass, and are like “fuck it, it’s just not important that we have him at our event.” That’s really fine. This blog is written by people in our free time and we don’t have time or the staff to follow up on this sort of thing like the professionals.

So, why am I writing this? Well, about 7:00 on Sunday I get a call back from the Santorum campaign (I didn’t leave a voice mail; I was just on hold for a while). I told them I was a blogger here in Seattle, and would very much like to attend Santorum’s rally. They said, I’d have to contact Nathan, their contact in (I think, but I didn’t write it down) Colorado, but that they’d love to have me. So fine, I left him a voice mail yesterday and again this morning. I called several other times and he never picked up. So I wasn’t making a trip to Tacoma if there was no WiFi or no electricity, and thus am heading home.

I know it’s a minor thing, but, don’t tell me I’m going to be able to attend and then not get back to me with any sort of arrangements. And really, nobody could direct me to someone in Washington who might be able to answer questions?

Now, compare that to when I saw Hillary Clinton 4 years ago. A few calls and I’m on the list, no problem. Compare it to Obama who could organize the Key Arena quickly and who had bloggers (although not me, I had to work) attend. Both of those were on almost as short notice as the Santorum campaign.

– Blue-green alliances.

– I’m as big a McGinn supporter as you’ll find and I agree with most of this. But I don’t think either the business community or Occupy Seattle are very happy with his handling of Occupy Seattle.

– And keep in mind; we’re not talking about abortion anymore. We’re talking about birth control.

– Obama’s Spotify playlist is pretty pedestrian.

– United States Bureau of Chronology

I have some errands to do, so nothing substantive here, but here are the results if you want to talk about them:

Willard “Mitt” Romney ………….39%
Ron “Mitt” Paul ………………….36%
Rick “Mitt” Santorum ……………18%
Mitt “Newt” Gingrich ……………..6%

During the Tacoma teacher strike the Tacoma News Tribune had by far and away the best news coverage of any mainstream media source. But man alive were their editorials brain numbingly awful. Well, congrats to the Trib for keeping up that fine level of nonsense. In an editorial about how we need the kind of bullshit education reforms that haven’t worked in other states, they serve up this gem:

As usual, the Legislature’s powers-that-be crouch like defensive NFL linemen, ready to tackle anything that might challenge the failing trade-union model of public education.

I don’t have clue one what “trade-union model of public education” even means. Most of these reforms seem to be just ways to commodity children and sell them to charter school corporations regardless of performance. The rest seem to just be ways to break the union. If the I-saw-Waiting-For-Superman-and-now-I-hate-teachers crowd were serious about reform, they’d work with the teachers: they are among the most interested parties after parents and possibly students.

I mean the idea here seems to be that politicians (and editorial board writers) demagoguing the issue or bureaucrats administering tests are the ones who really care about education. Yet those politicians who’ve spent far too much time cutting education funding and the ed boards who cheered them on at every tax cut that made those cuts inevitable continue to attack, attack, attack the unions. They have far less credibility than teachers unions that have been fighting those cuts and the bullshit reforms at every step of the way.

And yet instead of working with the teachers’ unions to both fund K-12 education and make reforms that make sense, it’s attack, attack, attack. No, let’s trust teachers.

Also, “defensive NFL linemen” for serious is how you’re going to construct that phrase? Not “defensive linemen” and trust your readers to know what that means? Not “NFL defensive linemen” that at least has the advantage of not putting NFL in the middle of what the position is called for no reason?

Earlier today, I linked to Goldy’s piece about caucusing for Santorum. While I think that there’s a case to be made that the negative campaign and the extended primary hurt the GOP, I’m not as sold on that as he is. And Goldy is hardly unique among commentators who think that it’ll be bad for them.

In general though, I think primaries are good for the party that holds them. The continued free media for Romney and the GOP’s ideas (such as they are) are not what I’d consider wonderful. And it’ll give them time to test their messaging and build their organization in various states.

That’s more or less how it played out in 2008. I remember Democrats fretting that if Hillary Clinton didn’t drop out that the nasty campaign would destroy Obama. That obviously didn’t happen. So take it with a grain of salt when those same people talk with assurance about what a primary will do to the GOP.

The biggest thing about the 2008 primary was it got a lot of people excited about Obama or Clinton. And that excitement stayed through the election. But that really hasn’t happened in 2012 so far. I see for example that fewer people are showing up for the GOP contests, and given that the only action is on the GOP side this year, that bodes quite ill for them. I mean, who the hell is excited for Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum?

– You’ll all be shocked to learn that the Weekly Standard are a bunch of war mongers.

– I’m not thrilled with Obama’s decision to give his blessing to a super PAC to support his reelection. Of course I’m not a fan of campaigning with one hand tied behind his back. But I think given American’s dislike of them (and the fact that he will be well funded anyway), he could have spun his not having one for more value than I think it will add. But I don’t think it’s hypocrisy to oppose them in principal and have one when the other side already has several.

– Goldy has picked up on the idea of messing with the GOP Caucus. I’m leaning toward Fred Karger, even though I’d vote for Obama in a general election between the two of them.

– New Ventures Facility

– Planned Parenthood has a lot of allies.

– And it’ll need them, because there is a hell of a lot of anti-choice crap at the state level.

– I’ve been thinking for a couple days now about the athlete I’d have play for my soul and the best I can come up with is it would have to be in an individual sport. What I’m saying is I’m not very good at this game.

– Oh, look what they’re doing with spider webs these days.

During the Komen debacle one thing that I was pleasantly surprised to read was Patty Murray’s reactions. Not just that she was out on the issue early and that she was quite right, but also that people actually quoted her. And not just in the local papers. I’m not entirely sure that local people are really picking up on it, but Patty Murray is sort of becoming a rock star.

I mean we all know she’s a leader on veterans’ issues and that she co-chaired the super committee. She’s also done quite a bit for health care for women, but sadly that doesn’t seem to get recognized as much locally. These are clear signs of respect from her colleagues. And it’s been happening for quite a while now.

But in many ways because she’s been quietly competent* instead of a show off, she’s not recognized as much for the things she does. I hope the old timers who talk wistfully about Scoop and Maggie realize what we have now.

[Read more…]

– Yesterday was the anniversary of the Seattle General Strike.

– Today is a much worse anniversary for Seattle.

– the real winners are the banks and the one percent.

– Fuck you Penn Jillette.

– Karen Handel has resigned from Komen.

– We need to preach what we practice: Catholics like sex as much as the rest of y’all, and 98 percent of us plan our families. The president shouldn’t be punished politically for doing the right thing. He should be praised.

– The rightwingoverse

Before it gets too stale, here are some Komen links:

– Erica C. Barnett has a good overview of the situation as of Friday.

– Joan Walsh and Rebecca Traister on how the decision woke the country up to an alarming rightward drift, and gave new life to women’s health advocacy

– Pondering breast cancer, politics, and the 2 percent

– 5 Important Lessons from the Komen/Planned Parenthood Fiasco (Don’t Mess With Women’s Health)

– In case you missed it, a strange local connection. Some of the sales from the pink gun were donated to the Seattle Branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. (h/t to Geov)

Non-Komen items:

– You’ll never believe this, but sometimes The Seattle Times’ Ed Board say dishonest things.

– Nearly 150 truck drivers effectively shut down shipping out of the Port of Seattle when they went to the state capitol in Olympia instead of the port, to protest dangerous work conditions in the trucking industry. Drivers were so concerned about the way the industry treats them that they risked their careers to make their voices heard.

– The thing is, highly publicized “boy meets girl” (and “boy meets boy”) stories are nice, but they’re not the reality for most riders. And (if I may keep it real for a moment) sometimes, they’re a bit gag inducing. What I find most romantic about buses (no disrespect to Smooth Jazz) is the possibility of meaningful connections with strangers–not the kind that lead to a subway platform proposal or a bus-themed wedding, but the kind that leave you energized, enriched, and educated. The kind that make a difference in your day.

– An unusual wasp

Reading this post by Senator Paull Shin (h/t) on his vote against the marriage equality bill, this really bugged me:

My adopted family raised me as they raised their own children, with strong Christian values. To this day, I cherish those values and try to live my life in accordance with their teachings. Therefore my vote against passage of this bill was one that was deeply personal.

Senator Shin is free to find his values wherever he wants, of course. And if he lives his life according to those values, well great. But the job of state senator is to represent our secular, multi-religious, multicultural state and our secular, multi-religious, multicultural country. Those values should inspire legislation, not the values of any one faith.

The other bad thing about that argument (although he walks it back later in the piece) is that it implies that there’s only one way for Christians to vote. That Christians should unthinkingly all agree on public policy in 2012, in America, based on a book written thousands of years ago. That they should all agree with the most regressive version of Christianity not just in their personal lives but in public policy. As if the main Senate sponsor, and the governor who pushed it weren’t Catholics. As if most of the people who voted for it weren’t Christians.

If you want to make horrible arguments for a bad vote, go ahead. But don’t tell me Jesus made you do it.

Erica C. Barnett reports on a new study on gendered disparities in public transit. And while the study didn’t apply to Puget Sound transit orgs, Barnett looks at their conclusions and at Sound Transit, finding them lacking in at least one area.

What are the implications? The Atlantic suggests that if transit agencies take women’s needs into account, they will provide easier boarding and wider aisles (for women with strollers or heavy bags) and more transit service in care-related sites, like parks, daycares, and schools. Additionally, transit agencies could include more women on their boards, the Atlantic suggests. Although Sound Transit, the regional transit agency for the Puget Sound, is led by a woman, Joni Earl, its 16-member board is dominated by men, with just four female members. (It’s all-white, too).

Also, the King County Council Transportation, Economy and Environment Committee that deals with public transportation is 2/3 men (the same makeup as the entire council) and that the chair and vice chair are both men.

– Reproductive Health and Rights Lobby Day

– Darryl noted the state senate passing the marriage equality bill. Andrew has more details including the roll call.

– And a couple bad bills fail to make it to the floor.

– In other states: Do not let the media silence fool you: Hoosiers are making noise.

– Republican Jesus supports Mitt Romney.

– Weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) contend with a number of ant-like spiders that look similar enough to their favored food to avoid detection by the ant guards. They lurk around the ants’ trails, pretending to be ants and grabbing a meal when the opportunity arises.