Councilmember Sawant’s Wells Fargo, disinvestment bill is pretty rad. The city shouldn’t undermine its own values and positions with how it spends its money. I like this a lot better than Seattle boycotting states or cities.

I go to West Seattle via bus quite frequently, and I never noticed any problem with the bus shelters Metro is removing (h/t). That shelter in particular has some very neat history on it. I always appreciated those plates. Hopefully they can at least go somewhere. Also, maybe my least favorite thing in Seattle is when it rains hard and too many people share too few bus shelters.

Congrats to The Sounders! There will be a parade tomorrow and while good on the Sounders, I just hope it doesn’t screw up traffic too much.

When we get a little closer to the start of the legislative session, I’ll write my regular what do you want post. But for the legislative Republicans, they’ve already decided what they want. From being the worst to leaving and making their own state. They could chose to not be assholes instead of restricting abortion access, destroying the environment, and trying to make their own shitty state East of the Cascades.

I’m going to write a few letters to various state and local officials (and maybe my member of Congress and Senators). Mostly it’s urging them to do as best they can to resist Trump, but also other things maybe. Here’s the first one. I wrote the following to my city council members (at large and the one who represents me) and Mayor Murray and City Attorney Holmes. Murray’s has 2nd person language in the executive order section, but otherwise it’s the same.

I was heartened when Mayor Murray reaffirmed his commitment last month to make Seattle a sanctuary city. I hope you’ll do everything you can going forward to make that a reality.

I’m asking specifically that you use your power to have the city not to assist in deportations. People’s immigration status is not their value to the city. This is a moral issue in and of itself and it’s also a test for future issues.

Donald Trump has already threatened to do even worse. From Muslim bans to national stop and frisk. If you give in on the sanctuary city front, it will make it easier for him to do these other things.

Thank you,

Carl Ballard
horsesass.org

I don’t actually care about a temporary blip in Boeing stock. But I do care if Trump is trying to punish someone for saying they like trade. So here we are. Trump claims to want more manufacturing in the United States but is apparently prepared to lie about one of America’s biggest manufacturers out of spite.

More bike lanes. This time a 7th Avenue connector. It really looks like Seattle is really moving to a network of bike lanes and paths that connect as opposed to a few lanes in some places and some trails.

It’s obviously horrendous that we’ve set up a system where you have to drive for hours if you want an abortion. I do wonder how much we as a state can do. If people are driving to Yakima, a city not on the border, maybe there are ways to encourage more clinics closer to Idaho and Oregon. It’s probably the part of the state that’s the most hostile to that sort of thing.

In a lot of the open threads since Trump’s election, I’ve been harping on how Seattle and Washington State can push back against the worst of Trump’s policies. I’m glad to see I’m not the only person thinking about local resistance to these national issues (h/t). That leaves a lot of problems for people in a lot of places without much protection. And, frankly, I’m not sure how up to it, our local politicians are.

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffff. Man. Trump is like the worst, right? I don’t just mean whatever Godawful nonsense he’s decided to do between when I wrote this and when you’re reading it. I mean he’s so bad he’s making children sad.

If you were wondering “what’s up with those outlines of people around Seattle?” well here you go. Dead pedestrians. My primary means of getting around the city is walking, and I’ve noticed a few. I hope drivers see them too.

On top of all the problems Seattlish raises with this bullshit petition to impeach Council Member Sawant, it’s a waste of her time. She’s doing incredibly important work on housing. It’s city budget season. Yeah, she’s an important part of these protests. I hope anyone in the media keeps their focus when they’re covering her, but too late.

In Monday’s Open Thread, I mentioned that I’d like to keep a Washington State exchange. But the more I think about it, the more I would like Washington State to just set up a public option of our own and sell it across state lines. Maybe we can keep our exchange and sell the public option to Washington State residents at cost, but sell it to the rest of the country at a profit. Of course, we’d probably need a Democratic State Senate to make that happen, but it’s worth the push.

There may be a lot of internally displaced refugees in Trump’s America. If Kansas collapses under its own weight, it may be that nobody can save them. If ICE raids are as bad as we fear, people might move to sanctuary cities. If police aren’t even doing the basics to protect Black people, Latin Americans, or gay people, they might have to move to other parts of the country where they feel safer.

I say this as a warning for Seattle and Washington: We have to get our shit together. We have to solve our homeless problem because more people are coming (and because it was always the right thing to do). We have to make sure people still have health care here because healthy people in Washington are more productive, and more people coming are going to need it (also, because it’s the right thing to do). We have to get serious about police reform so people who come here aren’t afraid of them (also, it’s the right thing to do).

I generally push back against people who say people who don’t like policies in their state should move to a more liberal state. But if we want to be an option for people, we have to work on ourselves.

Soooo, does anyone have the first clue what happens to states like Washington that have our own health care exchanges if Obamacare is repealed? If they replace it with a you-can-buy-plans-across-state-lines, what sort of restrictions can and should we add to it then? Can we do a multi-state, West Coast exchange? It would probably require Congress if it’s a governmental thing.