I’d be a lot more wiling to go along with this if I thought East King County would return the favor if the situation were reversed.

This afternoon, the Sound Transit board’s agenda features a resolution selecting the preferred Eastside alignment for Link light rail, which includes a tunnel under downtown Bellevue. However, the tunnel would cost $329 million more than the amount allocated for this portion of the project when voters passed the ST2 extension in 2008. To cover that cost, the City of Bellevue has pledged to chip in $180 million and that leaves—depending upon various methods to slice and dice the shortfall—$138 to $150 million unpaid. Although Sound Transit staff have reportedly considered various options (selling real estate, shrinking the scope of the Eastide alignment, and delaying the project to save money on bonding), those weren’t the chief idea presented to regional leaders yesterday. Several sources say that Sound Transit staff specifically asked leaders in the North King sub-area cities (again, mostly Seattle) to contribute $150 million to support the East Link tunnel.

Of course the reason we have sub areas in the first place is that East and South King County (or at least their ST representatives) were opposed to the thought of having to pay for any of Seattle’s light rail. When we were building light rail in Seattle, we had to balance it out with East Side bus routes and park and rides. We had to build much of it at grade. We had to cut the Graham Street Station from the final route. So, no, if we have any money left over, I think a Graham Street Station and putting the money into bus service lost if King County cuts routes would be a better way to go.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve used the East Side buses and park and rides, and I think they have value. Also, I’d like to have good rail on the East Side. I don’t even mind paying for it as a Seattle person. Logically, with capital intensive projects like light rail sometimes the money should flow to Seattle and sometimes it should flow out of it. What I object to is that the money only seems to go one way.

And one more thing; during the last Seattle budget, Bellevue and other East Side people told me how awful it was that Seattle was raising parking meter rates. They were going to steal away business with their cheap parking and out compete Seattle. Now they want to use Seattle’s healthy budget to pay for rail on the East Side!

As I mentioned in the Open Thread, I’m trying to say something about how the County Council couldn’t decide what to do with Metro. But I really don’t know what I’m getting at.

Not knowing what’s next, hopefully there’s some behind the scenes maneuvering going on (I mean obviously there is; hopefully it actually moves things). Hopefully service keeps running into the future.

Still, he best case is buses remain crowded. I took the bus South of Downtown last Sunday, and it was standing room only at about 7:00 in the afternoon. It’s regularly crowded during rush hour, and worse when it rains. And I understand why the council doesn’t want this on the ballot. Not every policy decision needs to go to a vote, and if we have the majority, we ought to be able to pass it.

Preferably, I’d like to see the legislature just let King County (and other counties) do what King County (and other counties) wants to do without arbitrary impositions like the 2/3. Still, if for the foreseeable future we have this 2/3 requirement, and the legislature is going to impose it on King County for various things, maybe we should shrink the council down to 3. That way any majority is a 2/3 majority. I mean we have the dumbass precedent for shrinking the council to 9. Why not go to 3?

– I don’t know if it’ll come together, but I’m working on something about King County punting on Metro.

– Rachel Beckwith’s story has been discussed in the comments already, but for those who missed it.

– I haven’t said anything about Norway because what I don’t know what I could possibly add. But David Futrelle and William Saletan (h/t) explore the narratives that surrounded him online. Neil Sinhababu notes who might be happy about the whole thing. And Glenn Beck can still go fuck himself (h/t).

– Figgins’ line is “.182/.236/.240 on the season. Each of those numbers feels dramatically worse than the last.”

– What scandal?

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.