Although not a defense of NOTW.

I can imagine a situation where some Democratic operative came up to me and said, “we hacked into Rob McKenna’s phone and found something important.” Sure, almost certainly not me; a more reputable journalist, columnist, or blogger. But hear me out.

So let’s say this party hack came to me with definitive proof that some Republican of import had broken the law in some way that was worse than phone hacking itself. I’d imagine that I’d post something about it, or at least dig further based on their hacking. I’d presumably mention the hacking in the post if if was worthy of a post. Basically if it’s important enough a story, I can imagine being honest and letting the chips fall where they may.

That’s a very different thing from finding out whatever Jude Law and Hugh Grant are doing. And of course corrupting the police and deleting messages is so beyond the pale, I can’t imagine there ever being a circumstance I’d find it OK.

The point isn’t of course to exonerate News of the World or News Corp, only that calling it a phone hacking story kind of makes it sound not as terrible as it is.

– (a) This was a horrible column. (b) “Americans Elect” sounds to me like an attempt to reference the country’s puritanical roots. (c) I feel like a decently organized group could sway them, and cause trouble. If Democrats all decided to nominate a conservative to draw votes away from the Republican nominee, for example.

– Why not Washington indeed.

– The Weekly seems to have no standards.

– “You can drop a subcontractor as easily as you can cancel a date. That’s not a good union job. That’s not the kind of job that Longview needs” (h/t Ivan on Facebook)

– You can’t look into what News of the World did if there’s anything worse going on anywhere in the world.

– There is a value in sending people into space beyond the scientific value.

Reading this editorial, I think perhaps The Seattle Times does the “family newspaper” thing as an excuse. Maybe it’s just that they’re bad at making a decent edgy metaphor or joke. Take for example the idea that Rupert Murdoch gave news outlets STD’s.

RUPERT Murdoch’s malicious contagion, News Corp., has spread through journalism like a social disease. British politics picked up a nasty NC infection for Prime Minister David Cameron.

For what it’s worth, I agree with the premise that media consolidation is bad in general and in Murdoch’s case. I just question if a corporation had sex with the British Prime Minister.

– Good news on the Metro front.

– McGinn on KUOW about Back Page. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the audio yet, but from what I’ve read, it sounds like a drubbing.

– Also, The Weekly has awful content (h/t).

– The lightbulb debate.

– A damn shame that Elizabeth Warren won’t head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

– Community input for the Northgate light rail station.

The thing that I’ve been most perplexed about during the debt ceiling debate is that the Republicans in the Tea Party have to live in the same country as the rest of us. They’ll suffer the consequences of a default the same as the rest of us. It’s not as if they and their constituents are going to be shielded from the horror show if we hit the debt ceiling. If anything, it’ll be Republican constituents hit harder. After all, the money spent goes (in general) from Democratic urban areas to Republican rural ones. If we stop sending out Social Security checks, every state will suffer, but Republican Arizona and Florida will suffer worse. If we have to stop farm support all states will suffer, but rural Republican states (and here in Washington, Republican Congressional districts) will suffer worse than urban Democratic ones.

Additionally, the liberal cities and counties aren’t the ones teetering on the edge in danger of default if their credit rating worsens. While Seattle will surely suffer through a default, Jefferson County, Alabama will suffer worse (h/t). In short, the pain isn’t distributed evenly.

Of course, I don’t want anyone to experience the pain that will come from unnecessarily defaulting (I don’t think it’ll be awful, but I do think it’ll be bad, and totally unnecessary, if it happens). The point is that on the policy alone, Republicans should want a clean bill. Nobody benefits from hitting our heads on the debt ceiling, but Republicans stand be hit harder.

This is a bit old, but good for the state for rebuilding state route 410. And now that the precedent has been set, I assume there’s a cost overrun provision. I mean to have a cost overrun provision in a county that gets $0.62 back for every dollar it puts into state coffers, but not one that gets back 2.24, well that would be madness. So while I don’t like the idea of cost overrun provisions in general, at least we’re being fair.

What? The state only has the cost overrun provision in the King County project? Well then, I guess I’ll have to vote to Reject Referendum 1.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that the Seattle City Council passed the food truck ordinance. Having hotdog vendors and taco trucks downtown is great. You can grab one on the go. You can realize it’s 10:30 PM on a Saturday and you haven’t started anything, so you know what it’s time for a hotdog. In the suburbs or further out you don’t get that. Also, any additional eyes on the street and incentive to get people walking at night is going to be good for the city.

Of course, the quality varies from place to place. Generally though, they’re pretty good food. And if you’ve had a few drinks and are stumbling home, the quality of the food isn’t really the prime concern.

– Don’t neglect cities in these tough economic times.

– “We’re all together. We’re all going to jail as a union.”

– Class war

– Carmageddon!!!!!!

– Congrats Japan.

– Jesus’s face pops up on the strangest places.

The Seattle Times editorial on the possibility of letting some Seattle bars stay open past 2:00 (emphasis mine).

The 2 a.m. closing time, which is the rule across Washington, is fairly common — it is the closing time in Austin, Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, San Diego and San Francisco. Vancouver, B.C., closes bars at 3 a.m. and New York and Chicago close them at 4 a.m.

I don’t know who wrote the editorial, but it got me thinking about Joni Balter’s piece a while ago about how if San Francisco does anything, Seattle shouldn’t. It seems to me that the fact that San Francisco does or doesn’t do a thing can provide guidance (how did it work out there?), but isn’t in itself particularly useful as an argument for or against doing something.

I just finished reading this “Guest Op/Ed” by McGinn at Seattle Crime. It’s a good explanation of why the city went after The Weekly, and how McGinn thinks they can change their ways. Beyond the specifics, the fact that he went with Seattle Crime instead of The Seattle Times for this piece shows the respectability blogs are gaining. Especially ones like Seattle Crime that do a lot of on the ground reporting.

Of course, blogs have had elected officials guest post for some time now. HA has had guest posts by politicians before, and I think the trend is important. Where the issue is more general interest, the elected officials will probably stick with newspapers and their own websites. But it makes more sense for the mayor to run this story at Seattle Crime since they have been reporting on it more than anyone else.

While generally I think this sort of thing is good, one thing doesn’t translate from the paper form. And that’s the name Op-Ed. It literally means the page opposite the editorials. So for example in today’s New York Times the editorials are on page A20, and the Op-Ed is A21. When you close the paper they face one another. This physicality doesn’t exist in blogs, and I think we need another word or phrase. Here are my suggestions:

• Guest Post
• Guest Piece
• Opinion Piece
• Opinion
• Special To (whatever blog)
• Exclusive to (whatever blog)
• Written Thingamajig
• Guest Blog*

[Read more…]

– Of course it was a Murdoch paper. (h/t)

– Challenges of riding the bus with a kid.

– Shaun is right on about Dean Willard.

– The Weekly goes fishing. (For the record, I’m fine with papers doing this generally. You don’t know what you find until you look. Still, the self interest between the news and business sides is a bit odd.)

– Strawberry Festival.

– The girls who won Google’s science fair.

I love writing here in Goldy’s absence. But I don’t have as much time as I used to to do metacommentary posts on conservative blogs. And that’s something I do enjoy. So here‘s Sharkansky:

“Crowd lines up to oppose Metro bus cuts”

Seattle Times:

More than 400 people showed up for a sweltering Metropolitan King County Council committee meeting to protest proposed cuts in Metro bus service.

Some urged the council to adopt a $20 car-tab fee that would forestall cuts for two years

Why is Metro proposing to cut service?

Because the bottom fell out of the economy.

Metro’s main revenue source is sales tax, which has declined in an economic downturn.

Unmentioned in this article is the inevitable waste and inefficiency of a union-constrained government monopoly which depends mostly on taxpayer subsidies, not rider fares, to fund the service.

Strong media criticism. If only The Seattle Times would whine about unions! Also, roads get massive subsidies, and are a government monopoly. So I guess Sharkansky will oppose any future road work. What, you want to build a new floating bridge across Lake Washington? That’s constraining private enterprise who might want to build a bridge! Also, also, there’s plenty of waste in the private sector.

Also unmentioned is any suggestion that those who ride the buses could get the service they want if they only start paying their fair share of the fare. The protesting bus riders apparently feel that they’re entitled to have their rides paid for by the people who don’t ride the bus.

We’ve been over the fact that people who ride the buses pay for more of the service than just the farebox. More important, you could make a similar complaint about any government service. I used roads as an example above because it’s the biggest parallel to Metro as far as a way to get around. But you could privatize fire protection as insurance agencies used to do commonly, and still do in some areas, so people whose house didn’t catch fire are paying for the people whose houses did.

Whiny mooching jerks.

Yes, nothing says whiny like people patiently waiting in line for several hours and showing up at a hearing to testify politely. What King County needs is less citizen participation.

Also, it takes a lot of gumption for someone whose investment plan is to sue King County to complain about mooching jerks.

There are a whole host of issues where Democrats are the party that believes in making the tough, rational choices. From taxes, to building the middle class, to environmental policy*. We’re the party that has to tell people the truth: we’re going to have to burn a lot less carbon. We’re going to have to make industrial polluters pay if we want to slow industrial pollution. We’re going to have to pay taxes if we want education and social services.

I sometimes hear this described as a messaging problem: We’re the party that tells voters that they have to eat their vegetables and do their homework. If most voters were under 16, this would be a problem. Fortunately, most adults understand the value of vegetables and homework.

The problem isn’t that Democrats have to sell eat your veggies, it’s that they can’t sell eat your veggies to adults. I’m not particularly health conscious, but my whole apartment smells of the vegetables I roasted for dinner tonight. Sure, I’d rather have chocolate cake for dinner but I, like most adults, understand that in the long term that’s not a good idea.

And I think that’s the attitude we have to take: Sure tax increases are annoying, but the things they fund are better in the long run. Sure, there might be a problem switching to greener sources of energy and it might be a drag for some people to drive less, but the oceans are dying and the globe is warming. We’ll try to accommodate that as best we can, but ultimately, there is going to be some pain.

I know, I know, Jimmy Carter gave a speech in 1979, and a year and change later lost a presidential election. So we always have to sugar coat things. But seeing the consequences of the last 3 decades of a policy of cake for dinner and no homework, we may be ready for politicians to treat us like we’re adults.

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– I hope the Seattle 8th graders who signed up for College Bound is a product of an aggressive push, and not a crappy economy.

– “After years of enduring rancid slavery analogies it should be hard to get pissed off at this conservative trend du jour, but amazingly its not!”

– Great turnout for the Metro hearing. If you didn’t make it, you can still make public testimony here.

– News Corp makes GE’s paying 0 taxes seem like a good deal for taxpayers.

– Republicans, stop pointing guns at journalists (even adorable guns).

– “if any of your readers would also like to send me the batteries that would be great“

I’ve enjoyed Darryl’s pieces on the polling and general speculation about 2012. And of course, with people throwing their hats into the ring, it’s important to see where we are. And our speculation can help inform the next year and a half. But, there’s still a long way to go, and as HA’s resident worry wart, I have to point out that the narratives may all go awry between now and election day.

Right now, for example, most people think the Governor’s race will be close, even if you can’t predict the winner. After all, the last time there wasn’t an incumbent, that’s what happened. And it’s what the polls show this far out. But a lot of people said the same thing about Cantwell’s last race this far out. Sure, you can argue that McGavick, with no experience as a candidate, was more prone to screw up than someone who has already won statewide twice, or someone who has been a candidate every other year since 1998, and many times before that. Maybe. And neither probably have a drunk driving record. Fine. But who knows what happens in the intervening time on either side?

Conversely, Cantwell’s race this time looks like it’ll probably be a cake walk, and hopefully it is. Hopefully Republicans won’t field a particularly serious challenger. Hopefully, the religious, Tea Party, and money interests will fracture. But they also may unite around a serious candidate.

But one of the great things about not knowing for sure is that there’s opportunity to make a difference. You can knock on doors, make phone calls, or give some money. Write letters to the editor, or even comments on blogs. You can call into talk radio or just talk to your friends.