Nothing too egregious about this press release from Senator Joseph Zarelli about the budget forecast being tighter than we’d thought, but this was a bit off.

I would have been more comfortable leaving an even larger amount in reserve, but reaching this new budget agreement required a number of compromises, and the size of the ending fund balance was one. Our side figured the June forecast would be down significantly, just like the March forecast was, which is why we insisted on policy reforms that will save money going forward, and made sure this new budget was the first one since 1997 to spend less than anticipated revenue.

If he was that interested in having a larger reserve, he might have considered raising taxes. Yes, there was a 2/3 requirement, but if the chief Republican budget negotiator in the state senate had decided to push for higher taxes, it would have done a lot. So it seems like the things that made him most comfortable were (a) passing a budget since it was a special session, and all the legislators just wanted to go home already, (b) no tax increases, (c) having a reserve. Although (a) and (b) may not be in that order.

Sorry, I’m still writing about Anthony Weiner. His personal life isn’t of concern to me, nor is the fact that he lied about his personal life, but harassing women concerns me greatly. There is another side to Nick’s piece that I linked to in the open thread that “female members of the House Democratic leadership, as well as the female members of the rank-and-file, are actually personally upset” with his conduct. Namely, Democrats are the party of everyone gets a seat at the table, and as such we have more women in leadership and the rank and file, so more of our leadership and rank and file have got harassing nonsense at work or, for participating in politics, and are less likely to forgive it.

I’ve been thinking about what isn’t a good excuse for such behavior. So here’s a partial list of things that aren’t a good excuses for sending nude pictures of yourself or other harassing email/tweets/Facebook messages without consent:

• It’s the Internet, what do you expect?
• Other people cheat
• Other people are doing/have done something worse
• It was a joke
• Don’t you have a sense of humor
• It’s not a big deal
• He’s a good Congressman
• One of them was a Porn Star, so it’s OK
• Come on
• He’s taking on corporate crime, and that’s worse
• You’re playing into the hands of the GOP
• You’re playing into the hands of Breitbart
• You’re playing into the hands of corporate crooks

– What Nick said (except to add that it doesn’t have to be women who were offended).

– We really need universal single payer.

– I want a Democratic Party primary for governor and I want Jay Inslee to win it (probably, but I want that primary to be sure). It looks like it’ll be one or the other.

– Can we at least put disclosure on Citizens United now?

– Goodbye Point.

– This story about international cricket was really long and way too Boston centric, but I enjoyed it.

– What the fuck?

A helpful primer from a fellow driver who was on his bike this morning and observed worse than usual behavior from the cars on the road:

First, look to your left behind the steering wheel. Do you see a stick? OK, good. If you pull that stick up a bit, it will indicate that you are turning right. If you press it down, you’ll show the world that you’re turning left. Use it.

Also, I know I recently wrote about when bicyclists can ride through a red light, so take this with a grain of salt. If you’re in a car and there’s a red, you probably shouldn’t go through it. Especially, if I’m on a bike going through the green, there are pedestrians in the crosswalk, and you’re just going to have to wait in line for the onramp anyway.

Finally, some roads have a yellow stripe down the middle. This lets people know that cars will drive in both directions down this road. Keep to the right. No, your right. YOUR FUCKING RIGHT!

I’m glad that Senators Murray and Cantwell are among the senators pushing for a draw down of troops from Afghanistan. It’s past time we got serious about getting out. Bin Laden is dead. I’m not sure what good we’re doing there any more.

This is to say nothing of the money we’ve sunk and the lives lost there. So, yes, it’s very good to see Democrats pushing a Democratic president on this.

And yet, with Libya it’s not a lot of mainstream Democrats. Any time Kucinich gets to take the lead on something it’s because there aren’t a lot of other Democrats lined up. While I understand that unlike Iraq, the humanitarian mission isn’t total bullshit, Congressional approval ought to come before the bombs start falling. And that’s a principal that Democrats should stand for no matter who is in the White House. So even though I have nothing but contempt for the people who turned a blind eye when Bush was doing worse, I still hope they succeed in stopping our involvement in Libya.

– Cool bus shelter for a great man.

– If you want to scare an English person, tell them their health care might become more American.

– Fuse does the arrhythmic on McKenna’s education plan (h/t, Howie on Facebook).

– Pretty horrible effects of having busy highways and a port in your neighborhood. I’m glad the port is mitigating some of the worst of it.

– Kill Rockstars’ spring cleaning sale.

From CNN Money (h/t) more about the increased costs of college.

The numbers confirm what most middle class families already know — college is becoming so expensive, it’s starting to hold them back.

The crux of the problem: Tuition and fees at public universities, according to the College Board, have surged almost 130% over the last 20 years — while middle class incomes have stagnated.

And for better or for worse, a college education is becoming more and more a stepping stone to the middle class in this country. As we’ve moved the factories and other lower skill middle class jobs out of the country, there is a greater and greater premium on post high school education. If we’re no longer going to have a manufacturing economy, the least we can do is to prepare the next generation for the economy we will have.

Of course, there’s so much more to an education than just job training. Hopefully, people come out of college more well rounded and better thinkers, the kind of people we need around the state. Maybe some will create the next industry, maybe someone will find a passion they never had before but maybe some will just be better able to help their kids with homework or become smarter, more well rounded, more engaged citizens. The state shouldn’t short change itself of that, either.

The Washington State reporter shield law that Rob McKenna supported was written in a way that excluded us dirty fucking hippie bloggers. As Goldy explained at the time:

Like those hoity-toity salaried reporters, I often get tips and quotes from sources who choose to remain anonymous, and I don’t see why I should have to go to jail to protect their confidence, when, say Chris McGann wouldn’t? (And I will protect my sources, with or without a shield law, because that’s what journalists do.)

Well, things change. And now Goldy, formerly excluded by the law has its protection.

It’s an odd idea that candidates for public office (let alone an open government champion) should get to pick and choose which professional journalists get to attend their press conferences—and yes, that paycheck I get from The Stranger makes me a professional journalist as defined in McKenna’s own reporter shield law, so suck it up.

And the definitions still seem unworkable. For instance, so long as Goldy is being paid by The Stranger, he’ll have the force of law behind any sources he protects. If The Stranger doesn’t want his services any more and he comes back here, he may have to go to jail to protect sources. If he somehow makes enough money from ads and donations that he can pay the rest of the front pagers, and we break a story with anonymous sources, then I think the protection will apply to us, even as they still don’t apply to him.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the shield law we have is certainly better than no shield law. It works for most anonymously sourced news as newspaper, TV, and other “professional” outlets still dominate coverage, especially original coverage of the type that has the most anonymous sourcing. But as a country and as a state we’re moving (however slowly) away from that model. And the people who need the shield the most are the ones who don’t have it.

Eventually, a reporter who doesn’t fall under the statute’s protection is going to have to chose between prison and giving up their source. On principal, I’d chose prison, but it would be hard to justify to my family and to my employer. News is news, and while we amateurs tend to be more partisan and more over the place in terms of quality, we deserve the same protections as the paid media. The law is fairly new, but it’s already time for an upgrade.

– The deadline for the College Bound program is coming up (h/t).

– I’d still rather have higher taxes, especially on the wealthy, but facts are facts.

– Rob McKenna For Governor.

– Strike up the band, baby. It’s our chance to see who the GOP field has to pander to (also, what a great sidebar).

– Of Course.

– I didn’t know what a globular cluster was before reading this post.

While last week, I made fun of the Seattle Times’ online content, they do have some original content, and I think the newsroom to make more of a go of it online. In short, it could be worse. It could be The Tacoma News Tribune whose Inside Opinion blog consists of a list of their editorials. In a time of shrinking newsrooms and less news in general, it may be too much to ask the smaller papers to put out content that doesn’t even make it to print.

And of course I’m not being entirely fair here, there are other blogs on The Trib that provide original content. Still, it feels like the focus is on the paper. What you see on Political Buzz will eventually find its way to the paper. Of course, that focus has value. The Tribune puts out a product that especially on the news end is worth a read for people in the South Sound.

Roughly, it seems that the dailies tend to ignore online, or they use it in service of the printing and the weeklies (and now the P-I) have more freedom. While yes, you’ll see content on Slog that will eventually make it into The Stranger, it doesn’t feel like with the Trib or Fairview Fanny. Maybe that’s illusory, and if The Stranger had to put out content every day, we’d see more of what’s on Slog in the paper.

– When I read that headline in Crosscut I thought to myself “That doesn’t seem to jibe with many of the people I know in the city” and then made a note to come back to read it. But it looks like it was wrong, and there are plenty of families in Seattle.

– Seems like the Yakima law enforcement authorities should have shown up for the forum on the Secure Communities program.

– I’ve written before that my mind what should determine if Anthony Weiner has to go or not is if he had consent to send those pictures, and sadly it’s looking more like he didn’t.

– And speaking of disappointing Democrats: Jon Tester.

– In fairness to Newt Gingrich his is just a nonsense vanity campaign for him to keep his name in the news, so it doesn’t really matter to his presidential hopes, and hey his name is in the news.

I mostly agree with Goldy that we shouldn’t judge the Martin Luther King Elementary sale solely on the money.

Perhaps the higher bid from the exclusive Bush School, along with its promise to keep the play fields open to the public on weekends would have been the best option for the community. Perhaps the investigation will ultimately uncover something improper about the First AME deal. I don’t know. But there’s nothing scandalous in itself about taking less money for the property in the interest of best serving the needs of the surrounding neighborhood.

And that’s why the Seattle Times’ editorial that followed was so dispiriting.

In a time of teacher layoffs, postponed schoolbook purchases and curtailed library usage, the district ignored the highest bidder — using private capital — to go for the lowest bidder using a state grant — taxpayer money.

The Seattle Times finds no need to mention WHY we’re in that “time of teacher layoffs, postponed schoolbook purchases and curtailed library usage.” Subtlety implying that the sale is the reason teachers have to be laid off. No need to mention how much their preferred budgets hit schools versus this sale. No need to even see if they had another reason for the sale. I mean, to take an extreme example, if a nuclear waste dump was the highest bidder, I doubt the Seattle Times editorial would demand we go with it.

And given that, I find their attitude a bit much.

This transaction needs to be sliced and diced in bright sunshine for all to see. Much more is at risk than the lost revenue and opportunity costs of a tawdry deal.

OK, I agree (except, perhaps, for the tawdry part) that more examination of what happened is a good idea. Still going out with the assumption that it must be tawdry, it must be the wrong deal isn’t going to help.

The school district is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of tax dollars. A legacy with consequences.

The Seattle Times is developing a grim reputation for sloppy stewardship of our tax cut dollars. While the news side still does good work (including the story that prompted the editorial), it’s hard to believe that the B&O and sales tax money that the Seattle Times saved over the years wouldn’t be worth a few more teachers at schools around the state.

A few years ago when Frank Blethen lobbied for the B&O tax break, he argued that newspapers were vital to the state. They force politicians out into the light and expand the dialogue in meaningful ways, that they are in some sense a good for the public. Then when an important job at the editorial page opened up, he gave it to his son who can’t write worth a damn. It seems to me if their goal was to perform a public good, they would have hired someone else rather than that tawdry nonsense.

– Here’s the Families and Education Levy website.

– Dori Monson is an awful person.

– Paying for a college education is going to be harder and harder (PS, while this article itself is worth reading, I’m not sure when Publicola decides to label things “other blogs.”

– I don’t know what’s more surprising about the Arizona Diamondbacks: the how many former Mariners they have or how well they’re doing (PS on the Podcast, I love how many different ways they pronounce “JJ Putz”).

– While I’m generally opposed to using nouns as verbs, I totally use MacGyver to mean make something on the fly.

OK, one more quick Anthony Weiner post and we can all get back to local issues or The Amazing World of Tomorrow, or whatever. This hyperbole in Joni Balter’s Ed cetera piece that’s otherwise a bit moralistic but fine is really bad.

Rep. Anthony Weiner embarrassed the House, the Democrats, himself, his wife and everyone by taking a picture of himself in his now famous gray undies, then tweeting it to a college student, and then standing up and facing the cameras and blaming a cyber-hoax.

Weiner, obviously. He’s embarrassed. His wife probably. The House, you could make a case, but it’s pretty weak. Democrats called for an investigation. Everyone? I’m not embarrassed by it. I liked him because for the most part I agreed with his policy agenda. But now there’s a serious black mark.

I commented in Darryl’s piece that the consent issues are the most important. If he’s just cheating, or whatever you call it with just pictures, then it’s between him and his family. If he sent the pictures to women who hadn’t given consent, then no doy, he’s got to go. So far he claims it was consensual and if that’s the case, his family and his constituents can decide if this is serious enough. And for the record, I thought Larry Craig shouldn’t step down even though he had committed a crime, because really it was none of my business.

But back to Joni Balter. Is everyone really embarrassed? Balter can’t think of a single person in the entire world who wasn’t embarrassed by this? In order I’d say he embarrassed:

Himself
His wife
His supporters who went on a limb for him
Possibly the women who he sent pictures to
NOBODY ELSE

Also, we need a better name for this scandal than “Weinergate.” Yes, I realize it’s a pun because his name sounds like a thing we call penises, but really it’s just the guy’s name and then “gate.” It might be easier if all scandals were scandalized person’s name gate, but otherwise, couldn’t half of all scandals in DC be called weinergate? Here’s a list off the top of my head of better names to call it. The list ignores that “gate” is a dumb suffix for scandal:

Undiegate
Boxerbriefsgate
Trousersgate
Twittergate
Textingladiesinappropriatepicturesgate
Gaitgate
Cockgate
Sextinggate
Anexcuseforthemediatouse”sexting”asifit’sarealwordgate
CreepyInternetdudewhoisalsoaCongressmangate

OK, maybe Weinergate isn’t as bad as I’d thought before I made this list, but I’m still unhappy with it.

I couldn’t find a statewide list, but the Sec of State’s office has links to the individual counties auditors/election departments. Here are the King County people who’ve filed for election so far. Good luck to the ones I support, bad luck to those I oppose, and if I don’t have an opinion on the race, I hope everyone is healthy, and enjoys at least part of the process.