There’s a proposal before the Redistricting Commission to draw a map that would make one of the Congressional districts 50.1% non white. Basically South Seattle and the suburbs would form a district. A few quick thoughts:

• I’m not thrilled about splitting Seattle into multiple districts. Presumably this would weaken McDermott but I don’t know how much. I don’t know where in the district he lives, but presumably he could win a West Seattle – Vashon to North King County district. It would (obviously) make the 7th district whiter.
• 50.1% and the fact that minorities don’t vote as frequently as white people probably means that the district’s voters will still be majority white. Still things like service academy opportunities and constituent services might be different in a majority nonwhite district.
• Majority minority and majority any one race are two very different things. The district would still be whiter than any other race.
• Race is obviously not the only factor in how people vote.
• Other than splitting Seattle, the proposed map doesn’t set off any alarms by being oddly shaped or on both sides of a geographic boundary. In fact, it’s not as screwy as some of the districts we have now. (Special note to The Seattle Times: When I click on your button that says “enlarge” a smaller map probably shouldn’t pop up)

Will (who you may remember used to write here, and could theoretically once again) has a piece on Slog where he argues that Seattle needs to be afraid of what the Olympia might do if we reject the tunnel. Bold mine because bolding on Slog seems mostly random.

If we reject the tunnel, the money will go away, and will be turned in to a north-south freeway in Spokane, or added lanes on I-405. Or part could be used to widen I-5 under the convention center, which might be the best-case scenario. Or it could be moved to the 520 bridge replacement project, which is short of funds. Or, just to spite us, they could give us a brand new viaduct, a wider, bigger, quieter replacement of the current structure complete with downtown exits and grand views of the harbor.

First off, the cost of a gallon of gas is rising just as quickly in the Eastside and Spokane as it is anywhere else. It’ll probably come down a bit off this high, but the trend is in the wrong direction. If they want to continue to tether themselves to foreign oil it’s not Seattle’s business, but good luck attracting skilled workers to the 21st century economy. Second, and more important, it’s past time Seattle (and frankly the rest of the urban-suburban Puget Sound, since the rest of the state hates them almost as much as Seattle) starts fighting spiteful bullshit with spiteful bullshit.

In 2009 when a few Tacoma legislators decided that they wanted to make sure that Tacoma Power could pollute more, they were able to gum up the works of the whole state. There’s no reason that the Seattle legislators who oppose the cost overrun provision couldn’t start demanding cost overrun provisions in any project (not just any road project) outside the net donor counties until the tunnel cost overrun provisions are repealed. And if they don’t get that to gum up the works. Seattle gives away our hard earned tax money to those counties and doesn’t see much of a return on their investment.

Partly this plan is out of spite for the state trying to saddle us with a freeway we don’t want, and then trying to make us pay for it. But you’re never going to get good policy until you’re willing to put your foot down against bad policy; while putting cost overrun provisions on counties that don’t pay their fair share is bad policy, it’s better policy than putting those provisions on a city that does.

And yes, the plan relies to some extent on the Seattle delegation asserting themselves. Relying on Seattle legislators to have any backbone is like relying on jelly fish to have any backbone. Still, if the tunnel loses an election in August and a few City Council members lose their jobs in November, it might put some steel in the legislature’s resolve.

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Also, just as a side note, I supported Roads and Transit. Given how easily the Transit portion passed the following year, it’s probably fair to say that I’m more pro having the Seattle area pay extra for car infrastructure than the average urban King County resident. So call me a dirty hippie or whatever but if the state antagonizes Seattle enough, you can look forward to mayor for life Mike McGinn.

Now that we’re in the middle (or, probably at the beginning) of our third war, can we maybe do the things we’re supposed to do during a war? Start with a tax increase. After all, those cruise missiles and fighter jets aren’t free. If this war is worth it, (and I have my doubts) then it’s worth paying for.

Of course the people risking their lives, not to mention their health and their relations back home, are the men and women in the air and at sea, and possibly in the future on the ground. We need to make sure that when they come home, the VA is in as tip top shape as possible, and that when people come back, they have the physical health, mental health, and family support they’ve earned. We need to make sure they have jobs to come back to. Especially since so many of the people deployed are in the National Guard and Reserves, it means we need to do everything we can to make sure they can return to the lives they’ve left, sometimes two and three times. It means their jobs have to still be there for them government agencies like ESGR need support and private businesses need to be willing to hire and to go above the bare minimum required by law in retaining and supporting their service member employees.

But those of us who don’t ever suit up ought to sacrifice in other ways. We need a renewed push away from oil in the short term because that’s where Gadhafi gets his money and in the longer term because we’ve been in a hot war in the Middle East for a decade, and it doesn’t show signs of stopping. We ought to consider rationing, to force us to use less oil.

Finally, it’s not the time for business to make profit. They can return to that when our 3 wars are over. Now is not the time, as FDR said for, “that small group of selfish men who would clip the wings of the American eagle in order to feather their own nests.” We need to tell all military contractors (including Boeing) that they’ll be delivering quality products, and doing it at cost. If they don’t like it, we’ll have to nationalize the factories at least until our wars are over. Same with the extraction industries. We really ought to nationalize oil drilling. At least enough that the operations in our 3 wars aren’t dependent on corporations. If the oil companies don’t like it, well there are wars on.

Here’s an amazing story mixed into the hell in Japan.

The life-long rice farmer lived alone in a house, now flooded, when the earthquake and tsunami hit. She told CNN:

“After the tsunami warning, I got on my bicycle, by myself, and rode away.”

Last year I put up my favorite poem by William Butler Yeats. I think a yearly Yeats is appropriate.

Hound Voice

Because we love bare hills and stunted trees
And were the last to choose the settled ground,
Its boredom of the desk or of the spade, because
So many years companioned by a hound,
Our voices carry; and though slumber-bound,
Some few half wake and half renew their choice,
Give tongue, proclaim their hidden name — ‘hound voice.’

The women that I picked spoke sweet and low
And yet gave tongue. ‘Hound voices’ were they all.
We picked each other from afar and knew
What hour of terror comes to test the soul,
And in that terror’s name obeyed the call,
And understood, what none have understood,
Those images that waken in the blood.

Some day we shall get up before the dawn
And find our ancient hounds before the door,
And wide awake know that the hunt is on;
Stumbling upon the blood-dark track once more,
Then stumbling to the kill beside the shore;
Then cleaning out and bandaging of wounds,
And chants of victory amid the encircling hounds.

After reading The Stranger’s coverage of the police department recently, I can’t help but think that beat cops shouldn’t have guns under normal circumstances.

I don’t mean to suggest that all, or most, of the Seattle Police can’t handle a firearm. They’ve all had psychological screening and extensive training. Uniformly, I’ve only had good experiences with Seattle police. But all it took was one bad day for one officer to put a wood carver in the ground. The day would have been better for Williams and for Birk if Birk hadn’t been armed that day. We’re told that these sorts of incidents of police shooting people are inevitable, but if we disarm the sort of people who think “Ian Birk is a good young man” we’ll probably have fewer of those sorts of incidents.

And I know the region has had a spate of police officers murdered recently. There are people gunning for our officers, sadly literally. Still their weapons didn’t save them from those premeditated murders. And in the case of Clemmons, since he took an officer’s gun, he was more dangerous because the police were armed. Shootings of officers in Britain where the police on the street don’t carry weapons is fairly infrequent (obviously there are other reasons).

I’m not arguing there is no place for any police officer in any circumstance to have a weapon. But it should be the exceptional case, not the norm.

You may say, so what? I’ll either be somewhat inconvenienced or I’ll find another route. Yes, you would, but Stefan Sharkansky decided that a mode of transportation he doesn’t like not working perfectly occasionally means that it’s time to pack in this whole public transit experiment.

Because trains are more dependable than cars

Usually, yes.

“Sounder train between Everett and Seattle canceled for Monday”

If only there was a commuter bus you could take you from Everett to Seattle, this whole post would be a fucking waste of everybody’s time.

There seems to be a lot of that.

My God, occasionally trains get delayed or canceled. Traffic jams literally don’t exist, because otherwise this post is so stupid that you’ll lose fewer brain cells banging your head against a wall while drinking grain alcohol than you would reading it.

As the Sound Transit enthusiasts have been telling us for years, the Sounder is “a dependable, stress-free commute” and a “reliable service”

Compared to driving, it sure is. Seriously, how many traffic jams have there been on I-5 between Seattle and Everett since Sounder opened? Do scientists even know have numbers that reach that high?

The taxes we pay for it are a reliable and dependable outflow.

Roads are literally free.

After the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the National Weather Service has issued a tsunami warning for the West Coast. You can see the forecast here, but fair warning, I have no idea what it means.

Illinois has ended their death penalty, making them the 16th state to abolish it. And there’s no reason Washington can’t go next. It’s too late in the legislature this year, but the problems in Illinois are the problems in every state. And while we aren’t offing people at the rate of Texas or Florida, it’s still a stain on us that we do it at all.

So we have a chance to say we believe as a state that we are going to have more compassion, more humanity, more decency than the people on death row. We can say no to an irreversible punishment and yes to our humanity. It’s time to end the death penalty in Washington, and make ourselves number 17.

The Seattle School Board has let Maria Goodloe-Johnson go as superintendent in the wake of the auditor’s report. I don’t know anything about Susan Enfield, who the board chose as interim. I know nothing about the process to pick the next superintendent, but I have a suggestion.

Involve the teachers union as much as possible. They were right about her last year. They’ll be the ones on the ground when further cuts get made, and they’re the ones who will be able to spot any bullshit since it effects them directly. They will know what works best and what doesn’t for their students.

Although you can count me as a supporter, I didn’t make it down to the rally in Olympia for Wisconsin public employees on Saturday. I did manage to get to the walk for choice. And as I’ve done before, here are some of the slogans that were on the signs. As always this isn’t meant to be comprehensive, and if I missed your sign, sorry. Also, most of the signs were in all caps and while that works for signs, I’ve made capitalization, and less frequently punctuation choices for the blog that I hope still capture the meaning of the signs.

– $75 Million for 800 clinics/year = 4 Hours of war
– American freedom – freedom of choice
– Don’t take away my breast exams
– Don’t take away my cancer screenings
– Every child wanted every mother willing
– GOP Cares About: union members immigrants women teachers fetuses
– Health, safety, & choice for all
– Hey GOP! Where are the jobs? Not in my uterus! Promise!
– I can’t believe I have to protest this
– I stand with Planned Parenthood
– If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention
– I’m a theist for choice
– Keep your laws off my body
– Keep your rosaries off of my ovaries
– My family stands with Planned Parenthood
– Planned Parenthood is the best parenthood
– Roe, Roe, Roe your vote
– Trust Women
– Walk for choice
– We are midwives for reproductive rights
– We have a choice
– We stand with Planned Parenthood
– Women’s rights are civil rights

PS, sorry this is so late.

If you can I’d encourage you to attend one of these rallies Saturday:

The Walk for Choice in Seattle. Noon to 3:00. At Broadway and Pine.

If you’re in or can make it down to Olympia, there’s a rally in solidarity with Wisconsin’s public employee unions. At the Tivoli Fountain. (updated originally had the wrong location, and updated again with a better website).

Patrick O’Callahan of the Tacoma News Tribune has an editorial about public sector unions. Because daily newspapers in this state exist mostly to serve the powerful, he doesn’t like them.

In Wisconsin, the backlash against government unions has taken the form of a GOP drive to repeal collective bargaining for most public-sector employees. Similar drives are happening in other states where Republicans recently won governorships and gained control over legislatures.

In Washington in 2 years it may take the form of Rob McKenna if we’re not vigilant. But of course these types of editorials serve as a test run for their pro McKenna propaganda. So here’s my test run of opposing that bullshit.

This would not be happening if the unions had the support of the public. Many of those unions have forfeited that support by clinging to lush compensation packages at a time when workers in the private sector – including union members – are enduring the toughest economy in generations. A time when public services are being scaled back ruthlessly while generous labor contracts have continued on autopilot.

Yes, if only teachers agreed to live in poverty for the privilege of long hours ensuring the next generation has the requisite skills to survive as adults. If only firefighters would pay for all of their own health care for the honor of saving your life and property. If only police and prosecutors would demand extra, uncompensated work because putting criminals away is just so inherently rewarding. If only doctors and nurses were demanding to pay for their own training. Then perhaps the editorial writers in this state would support them.

Too many examples are found in Pierce County. Although the cost of living has been flat, some union leaders have adamantly rejected pleas to reopen their contracts to reduce “cost-of-living” raises that considerably exceed the actual rate of inflation.

That’s how it’s supposed to work in a healthy economy. Wages are supposed to rise beyond inflation. What do you want all public employees to make, inflation adjusted, the same as they were making in the early days of the Oregon Territory? As if there shouldn’t have been any raise in the standard of living for public employees ever? Come on. That attitude is why we have public employee unions.

County workers saw their compensation increase by 23 percent between 2005 and 2009, when their private sectors saw 14 percent. They’re doing quite well. Yet their leaders last year refused a request to roll back another round of raises, though the rollback would have helped spare county services.

This is such bullshit. This editorial and the thousands of others we’ve read and will read about public sector unions in all the papers across the state never seem to have any suggestions to bump up those numbers for private sector employees. It’s always cited as fucking gospel that the private sector numbers are a fact of nature as immovable as a boulder in your path. But if you believe these numbers and want public and private employees making roughly the same, then you need to figure out how improve the pay of private sector employees. It seems to me that the numbers you’re throwing around are a pretty damn fine case for more and stronger private sector unions.

I can’t believe I’m talking about 2012, but Bob Ferguson threw his hat in the ring for AG so I guess now is as good a time as any. Mostly, I just want to say that there are going to be Democratic primaries in several races, and that’s a good thing. In a lot of executive positions, at least the governor and AG, we’ll probably have more than one Democrat. These primaries have a tendency to get heated.

And thank goodness. Primary elections are the best way we have to clarify what the party stands for. There may be different ideas or perhaps just different emphasis and style. But we’ll get to have a debate about where we want the party to go and how best to achieve it. And all of us who make phone calls or knock on doors or write blog posts and comments or do any of the thousands of things that regular people do in the course of a campaign can all be a part of it in a meaningful way.

Sure we have a platform to work out where we stand officially on issues. And the platform is important. But the truth is that outside of the platform committees at various levels of the state party, people don’t think of the platform very much. You won’t see a headline, “Democrats still support labor rights according to platform” because it’s hardly news.

But you will read plenty of articles about the various stances of candidates, especially for governor. You’ll get to see them debate on TV.

And that media, especially if there’s a legitimate question about who we’re going to nominate, is worth more than whatever the eventual nominee loses by having a negative campaign against them in the primary. The candidates will have time to craft their message on television, reporters will return their calls much earlier, they’ll do stories on them.

All this is to say, we don’t know everyone who will run for governor (although I can make an educated guess about some), but I hope the Democrats resist the urge to clear the deck and unite behind a candidate. We’ll have time to unite around whoever does win a primary, but let’s let the voters decide first.

If I’d told you that Joni Balter had a piece up about an election, would you think, maybe she’s going to write about the bond and levy elections that happened yesterday? Or perhaps the elections this November for Seattle City Council, King County Council, and various other municipalities around the state? 2012, and what the redistricting might do to state and Federal elections here in Washington? What will be the lines of the 10th district? Will she write about how Gregoire’s probable retirement means a reshuffling of the state’s executive branch? The president? No, stupid, none of those things, something that will happen after all of them. She’s writing about the mayor’s race.

It’s summer 2013: The southern half of the Alaskan Way Viaduct came down 10 months ago, creating dust, noise and predictable simmering feuds. But at least the project advanced before a feared earthquake. At Seattle City Hall, the ground rumbles in another way.

Construction projects never have any delays. True fact. Also, did the demolition create predictable simmering feuds, or am I diagramming that sentence wrong?

A humdinger of a mayor’s race is taking place, pitting the biggest foe of the tunnel, Mayor Mike McGinn, against City Councilmember Tim Burgess and state Sen. Ed Murray, two project supporters. As the city keeps growing, the public is comfortable that a tunnel is being built to keep traffic moving.

Remember that list of elections that happens before the one we’re talking about? I’m not sure Burgess wins it. If the cost over runs measure gets on the ballot (a big if), I think a few members lose.

Also, Balter is awful confident that there won’t be any more traffic than when the Viaduct was up. That nobody will feel any ill effects from the tunnel. To be clear, the 2013 tunnel is coming in on time, under budget, and not negatively effecting anyone in this fantasy of hers. Since construction on 1st is already fucking up my commute, I find that tough to believe.

Also, also, humdinger? There are mummies who don’t use that phrase because it’s too passe. Anyway, skipping past bullshit digs at McGinn, we get back to the Burgess.

Burgess skated to re-election to his council seat in 2011 and has been a leader on the viaduct, parking, education, police accountability, the sea wall. Voters lapped up that Families and Education levy he and the mayor worked on in 2011.

Since Burgess in 2011 punts on police accountability and the seawall, it’s tough to imagine why he’ll be taking the lead in 2013. Everyone thinking about running for anything in Seattle will support the Families and Education levy, so I’m not sure why that’s his. On parking he’s mostly modifying McGinn’s proposal, and it will be 3 years old by the time of the election. I’m not familiar with his education plank (or if it’s made up like some of the other things). So mostly that’s things McGinn has done better through 2011. But if you think the tunnel will be made of pixie farts, and not cause any problems then score one for Burgess.

Look, I’m probably McGinn’s biggest supporter among bloggers. I voted for him somewhat reluctantly in the primary, and volunteered for him in the general because I really didn’t like his anti-choice-corporate-bigwig-I’m-going-to-buy-the-election opposition. But I was skeptical that the Mike Bikes thing was real. I was skeptical that he’d pull for the city when things got tough. I was wrong, and he’s the rare breed of politician who has exceeded my expectations.

But I understand that our last 2 mayors lost primaries for reelection. And that not everybody likes his style. So, he could lose. I’d rather someone who loses by doing good for the city than the seat warmers we’ve had for the past 50 years or so.

Anyway the conceit of this piece after I read Balter’s column was to spin out things that could happen to those people that weren’t that much more unlikely. Burgess loses in November, Murray decides to run for governor. And that the Seattle Times folds in early 2013. But the way I wrote it, it’s mostly just Burgess bashing instead. Since I’ve lost the whole thread, I’ll just end here.