Oh hey, it looks like people are using the Viaduct closure to bike from West Seattle to Downtown. Good news. Now that it’s overcast, maybe that number will go down a bit. But still. I hope some of them keep going.

Darryl mentioned it in this morning’s Drinking Liberally thread, but it’s kind of a big deal that the US Supreme Court won’t hear the Seattle minimum wage case. There are 2 reasons why it’s mass rad. First, for Seattle and other places where we want to set a minimum wage, and are going to have the sort of slow, multi-tiered implementation that we got. We can keep the law in place without this imaginary legal hurdle. For the fast food workers and other franchise employees who’ll get a raise going forward, it’s worth it on its own.

But, it also signals that with Antonin Scalia off the court, maybe the country won’t slip further into a new Lochner era. Maybe we won’t decide as many cases primarily on the basis of what’s good for business.

I hope you survived your May Day (or your m’aider as the news seems to think). For me it consisted of walking home and seeing a lot of cops, and wondering why there are so many. Then kind of remembering and keeping walking. And then having someone in my building freaking the fuck out. Also some people on Twitter. In conclusion, I almost feel like we need better shitty anarchists.

Oh hey, it’s super on-brand* if I talk about highways for 2 open threads this week. But here we are:

Are you planning anything different for when the Viaduct is closed? Going to telecommute? Going to tough it out? Live in the Tri-Cities and just going to laugh at us Wet Siders? Using this as an opportunity to start biking or walking to work? Going to take I-5 and hope for the best? Going to plan for some more time, and just make it happen? Unemployed? Taking the Light Rail? Working odd hours?

[Read more…]

Of all the books I’ve read while out to eat or on a bus, or whatever, I’d say this is the one that I’ve had the most people ask me about. I don’t know if the Supreme Court is an interesting topic generally. Or possibly it’s because you hear so many conservatives ranting about the court, a long haired Seattle person reading “Case Against the Supreme Court ” might seem incongruous.

Anyway, if you want to be super depressed, it’s one I’d recommend. Very interesting and really shows the importance of the court.

The Eastbound lanes of 520 are now open for bridgeness. Anyone taken them yet? Notice any difference in your driving experience?

While I haven’t read it, can’t imagine I won’t support the SEIU backed initiative to fund enforcement of the $15 minimum wage, of the sick leave/safe leave law, and other workplace issues in Seattle. While, generally I don’t think dedicated money is the way to go on those sorts of things, the city hasn’t been very good at enforcement so far. So better a dedicated tax than it being under-resourced.

When liberals and conservatives have conversations about things like homelessness, it can be frustrating. Conservatives want individuals to take personal responsibility. And while liberals find individual responsibility important, we also understand that there are systemic problems that have to be dealt with. That it’s really tough to bootstrap yourself into a house if you’re homeless and there isn’t enough supply. So, sometimes we talk past each other. Jason Rantz tries to circle that square by showing how liberals being tolerant is the real systemic problem (h/t).

I’ve been meaning to do a longer piece for a while, but it keeps being nice out. After like 4 days, it’s still too nice of a day to do a metacommentary piece on the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

But why so many in this neighborhood? I’ve never seen as many until recently. As other neighborhoods are engaged in trying to help deal with the problem, Capitol Hill seems like they’re allowing it to develop unfettered. I think I know why: ideology.

Homelessness is everywhere. I don’t know what neighborhood doesn’t have homeless people. Including suburban and rural places in King County. Also, is Cap. Hill’s tolerance new? Because otherwise, it doesn’t really apply to this supposedly new problem. Also, too, I walked from the light rail station to Drinking Liberally last Tuesday, and back fairly late at night. It was after reading this piece, so I was on the lookout for homeless people. It didn’t seem like a whole lot, at least compared to other neighborhoods. Sure, I passed by some people sleeping in doorways, but I don’t think more than Downtown or Belltown. Certainly not more than, say, the Terminal 91 Bike Path or SoDo, if we’re trading anecdote for data.

Progressive ideologues like to preach how tolerant they are. You ask them and they’ll proudly tell you. Now, they don’t support ideological diversity, but they’re pro-LGBT, pro-people of color, pro-atheist, pro-multicultralism, pro-whatever. The only things they’re against seem to be capitalism and cisgendered white Christian Republican men. And to show how tolerant they are, they seek to ban microaggressions; they support college students who need “safe spaces” from opinions that make them uncomfortable. They like to declare themselves allies of any group they believe to be oppressed.

Atheism and multiculturalism are both ideologies. So that third sentence is self-refuting. Some progressive ideologues are against capitalism, but I think most aren’t. Also, I don’t know what against “cisgendered white Christian Republican men” even means. Like, don’t think they should dominate the conversation, sure. But progressives are not the ones trying to regulate where cis people can poop or poised to nominate someone who wants a travel ban on Christians. Anyway, I guess we should just be glad he learned the word cisgendered and this isn’t a rant about that.

Oh my God there was so much wrong with that paragraph. OK. Keep going.

Nobody is trying to ban microaggressions. Pointing out how harmful they are? Sure. You can go yell racial epithets (macroaggressions if you like) in the park, and nobody is going to ban you. But you think a ban on microaggressions is in the works? Also, safe spaces and being allies to the oppressed is pretty rad. Like everywhere should be unsafe in general and harmful to oppressed people? What the fuck even is that? In fairness, he walks that back a bit in the next couple paragraphs, that I’m skipping. But still.

I think some ideological activists won’t help the homeless because they subconsciously want to live around them. They can say that they don’t judge people based on their appearance or status as someone who lives on the street, and this gives them a sense of superiority to those of us who want to intervene.

This describes literally nobody. The solutions to homelessness include build more housing and make it affordable. It isn’t just tolerate it. The closest thing I can think of to being tolerant as a policy was housing for chronic public inebriates, but that has been a success story among King County’s mixed-at-best record.

I’m going to see if some small talk spurs discussion.

Geez, 3 days of more than 80 degrees is quite enough. I’m giving up: Shorts to work. And it’s only April. Man. I’m actually looking forward to some rain in a few days. Can you believe it?

I can sort of understand grandstanding against trans people. It’s a cheap way to say you’re a horrible person. It signals to a certain type of horrible person that you’re in the tribe, and it lets you rail against imaginary horrors like people pooping in a place you’ve claimed are wrong. Also, you get to make stuff up like trans rape without actually doing anything about rape. And the costs of being an ass are borne by other people.

But what I don’t get is why people would pay money for a trans-hate initiative. I mean a fool and their money and all that, I guess.

Yeah, it is an open thread.

Feel free to talk about whatever. I mentioned candidates in a recent open thread, and I think it kind of killed the conversation for anyone who didn’t want to talk about that. So I just want to underline that barring violations of the comment policy, you can talk about whatever in the Open Threads. In theory I’ll get back to more threads with topics soon.

As we get further and further from it, the more people are going to try to write their own narrative on to the time BLM activists interrupted Bernie Sanders at Westlake. I have been genuinely surprised at how quickly people — often time the same person — could go from saying how awful and uninformed they were to pushing the narrative that Sanders politely listened to them.

I’ve been interested to see Marissa Johnson push back on that. Both in an interview with TWIB a month or so ago (plays automatically) or writing it in her own words.

I was watching this, video of the sister of one of Dennis Hastert’s victims (video audio plays, h/t). She has clearly been pushing this story. And fuck all happened. Some decent shoe leather reporting might have cracked this open when he was in power.

Since this is a local politics blog, ostensibly, I was wondering if y’all have any interest in any local or statewide candidates this cycle. I’m generally pretty big on Angie Marx who I wrote about here, Darcy Burner, who Goldy wrote about, um just do a Google Search, and Tina Podlodowski who we haven’t really written about much, but she’s great. Also, despite my disappointment on charters, I’m still mostly positive on Inslee’s time in office, and will be enthusiastically voting to reelect him.

But I’m probably missing some great candidates. Those are all Western Washington and all white, for instance. So if you’ve got any candidates you’re liking this cycle, this is as good a place as any to drop a line.

I’m never particularly thrilled when debate behind the scenes are the news. But there will be another debate in New York. I’m generally happy with more debates, so yay.

But I’m even less happy when I see the names of the moderators. Not because I think, in this case CNN people and a local reporter, will be fuck ups. But I don’t think we actually need moderators. I say just have the candidates have a conversation. Sanders and Clinton are both smart people with interesting things to say. They don’t need Wolf Blitzer to coax a debate out of them. If it’s on a network like CNN, you can have someone say they’re going to commercial, but otherwise butt the hell out.