Seattle Untimely explains the WGA strike (which ended recently) using video games:

Ryan Blethen says that Democrats should give up their constitutional right to freedom of association because it inconveniences his wife.

My wife’s frustration with the caucus and primary are emblematic of many who are sitting out this round of voting. The logistics of caucusing did not work for her on a Saturday with two kids at home and me out of town. She will not vote in the primary because the ballot requires her to sign a party oath.

First: Hire a babysitter. Second: It’s not unreasonable for a political party to insist that the people who participate in their nominating process actually be, at least nominally, members of that political party.

If the parties cared about democratic input from an energized public they would scrap the Tammany Hall caucus for the presidential primary, which the voters passed into law in 1988.

That’s really one of the more dumb things I’ve read in a while. I saw no party bosses at my caucus, no one telling anyone how to vote. All I saw were excited, energized Democrats expressing their presidential preference.

What this state needs is party registration at the polling place. We could do away with a caucus and just vote, but I’m sure some folks are turned off by the icky thought of actually having to register for a party.

Even if we do all of this, I get the feeling that Blethen (and others) would still bitch and moan.

Mr. 87 Percent:

In case you can’t read the small type, it says “If you can’t give 100 percent, 87 is just fine.”

Joel:

One feature of the four-year political struggle between Gov. Chris Gregoire and almost-Gov. Dino Rossi has been an abundance of suspect and self-serving opinion surveys.

At last comes a poll, albeit with a few weeks under its belt, that surprised its takers.

[…]

In a trial heat, the incumbent Democrat had 43 percent, her Republican challenger received 41 percent, and 16 percent were undecided. The poll was based on interviews with 588 likely general election voters. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

Joel quotes a poll that was commissioned back in November, but an Elway poll done much more recently shows the race to not be as close:

Seattle public opinion researcher Stuart Elway has released a good-news, bad-news poll on this year’s gubernatorial election rematch between Democratic incumbent Chris Gregoire and Republican challenger Dino Rossi.

[…]

The good news for Gregoire is that while she defeated Rossi by only 133 votes in the 2004 election, she now has a 13-percentage-point lead over him in voter preference. Only 35 percent of the respondents said they definitely or probably are inclined to vote for Rossi. Eighteen percent said they were undecided.

I’m not knocking Joel. I think the newspapers, to a degree, have a bias in favor of making this race closer than it really is. I’m not saying it’s a shoo-in for Chris Gregoire, but I think local media flacks are going to go out of their way to frame this thing positively for Rossi.

Looking back at ’06, Joel went out of his way to pitch Mike McGavick as an “Evans Republican”, or at least in a much more favorable light. He’s doing the same for Dino:

Republicans used to be big-time greens, passing the state’s first package of environmental laws. They helped forge the Washington wilderness bill and legislation protecting the Columbia Gorge. Lately, however, the party has demanded repeal of the Growth Management Act.

Rossi might do well to get with tradition.

Republicans haven’t been leaders on enviro-issues for decades. Guys like Rossi, totally in league with the looney tune base of his party, doesn’t think global warming is even a big deal:

Q: “Where are you on global warming?”

Rossi: (scoffs) “Where am I on global warming? The uh, I mean it’s clear that the earth, the earth is warming. That is clear, I mean, I think if we were to count how many feet of ice we were under many, many, tens and hundreds of millions of years ago – right where we are standing, right here – the earth has been warming and it will continue to warm. Apparently we’ve hit, we’ve hit the same temperature that it, that it had increased to in about, oh, twelve hundred AD I think it was. So, I mean, it was warmer then too. Uh, there are cycles.

There are things that we can do obviously to, to make sure that the environment is clean. That the air is clean, that the water’s clean, all those sorts of things that need to be done.

I think you also need to make sure that you look at the real science of this too and make sure that it makes sense. And so, uh, well-uh I-uh there’s still a lot of debate going on this, we see it out there and there’s going to be a big debate coming up in the next two, three years. Because there are, you know, I’ve listened to other scientists who disagree with, you know, I know – why are people even bothering about long term planning if Al Gore says the world is going to end in ten years or fifteen years – but there are a lot of scientists that disagree. So, I mean, we’ll see how this debate goes, but I don’t think anyone should panic at this point.” [Rossi at Port Orchard Chamber, 3/08/2007]

The guy’s a lightweight on all sorts of issues, especially the environment. While I understand Joel’s impulse to give Dino an out, it ain’t going to happen. “Evans Republicanism” is as dead as Julius Caesar, and Rossi has absolutely no inclination to run under that banner in ’08.

I think it’s worth noting to whom exactly they gave the seat on the Appropriation Committee.

Rep. Jo Bonner, Republican, from the 1st congressional district of Alabama. He represents Mobile in the SW corner of the state. His district borders Mississippi and Florida. What’s the most interesting thing about his district?

It has a Cook Partisan Voting Index (what is that?) of R+12. This means that the district is eleven points more conservative than the national average.

Dave-o’s district is a D+2.

Hmmm… So instead of giving the choice seat to the Republican in the “slightly more liberal than average” seat, they gave it to the guy who doesn’t need the help.

Talk about a “fuck you” from the party.

To put that into context, Wasington’s 5th CD (with a R+7) is actually less conservative than the Alabama 1st.

I think the GOP is hunkering down, ready to ride out life in the minority.

Crosscut is on fire today. I don’t know if our readers can handle it, so I won’t link to any of the stories, but here’s the rundown:

Knute Berger picks a coffee shop. (Tully’s)

David Brewster talks about skyscrapers. (A bland topic turned into a… blander topic.)

Ted Van Dyk talks about the caucus. (Light rail is not mentioned, but “blacks” are. As is Hubert Humphrey.)

It’s like they have the pulse of the city. Seriously, I haven’t been this tuned-in since Steve Scher dropped an f-bomb tirade on the rain barrel lady for talking through his bumper music. It’s like the Weekly, but before they got rid of everybody.

And what’s up with Crosscut having a blog? ‘splain that one to me. Department of Redundancy Department.

Check out these two stories, and connect the dots.

Seattle Times:

An intriguing new analysis by a University of Washington economics professor argues that home prices have, perhaps inadvertently, been driven up $200,000 by good intentions.

Between 1989 and 2006, the median inflation-adjusted price of a Seattle house rose from $221,000 to $447,800. Fully $200,000 of that increase was the result of land-use regulations, says Theo Eicher[…]

This is a popular talking point for some conservative or liberatarian think tanks, and it is often employed when attacking a certain landmark 1990 bill:

A key regulation is the state’s Growth Management Act, enacted in 1990 in response to widespread public concern that sprawl could destroy the area’s unique character. To preserve it, the act promoted restrictions on where housing can be built. The result is artificial density that has driven up home prices by limiting supply, Eicher says.

I want to sidestep the politics here and take you to Erica C. Barnett’s recent column in The Stranger:

Growth management—which calls for concentrating growth in areas that are well served by transit, encouraging people to live close to where they work, and discouraging or banning new sprawl that promotes driving and harms the environment—isn’t working.

[…]

Growth management needs teeth to work. That means smaller growth-management boundaries, real limits or even a ban on growth outside those boundaries, affordable housing incentives in cities and inner-ring suburbs, sensible policies to encourage trip reduction, and land-use decisions that encourage tall, dense developments in cities and already dense suburban areas.

First, a few thoughts about that UW study:

The nearly 200k they reference includes lots of things you’d hate to see eliminated from your neighborhood. Without money for sidewalks, parks, or schools, our neighborhoods would suffer. Without a design review, folks would go nuts at the idea of another condo building and no means to influence its design, adn that’s something we value. Growth is supposed to pay for growth, even if it bumps up the sticker price on one of those crappy Quadrant homes.

Erica does get a lot of things right. Cities should build more within their own boundaries, so that the ‘burbs look a bit more like the good neighborhoods of Seattle. Anti-density NIMBYs here in town shouldn’t get to hog the housing agenda. Also, transit isn’t a panacea for sprawl. Then again, nothing is.

The people buying houses in and moving to places in Snohomish and Pierce counties are doing so because that’s where they can afford to buy a house. (I’m guessing that King County is omitted because even the shitty parts of it are getting pricey.) It’s supply and demand; not enough of the former and too much of the latter. Adam Smith is biting us in the ass.

We have constricted our housing supply. I don’t think constricting it further would have the effect Erica is looking for. People have proven to us that they will drive for hours (with the price of gas not a limiting factor until it nears 10 bucks a gallon) just to get a three bedroom ranch-style for less than 250k. Some folks will want to live in the city in a townhouse or condo, and some will want the picket fence. Can’t help that.

[As an aside: I’ve noticed that some NIMBY-types from Seattle lash out at sprawl in the ‘burbs while at the very same time complaining about condos in our neighborhoods. As a person who’d like to live in the city and NOT drive miles to my job, I find it odd that Seattle’s urban closed mindedness could be just another cause of sprawl.]

Apparently, we’re almost to 1,000 signatures over at www.letterto710kiro.com

Pour it on, people. Pour. It. On.

Maybe we can get to 1,090 signatures. Who knows?

If you don’t know what this is all about, read this. I’ll see you there.

**************************

Wonks, hacks, friends, superstars:

As many of you know, our dear friend and political wunderkind McKenna Hartman is currently suffering a set back in the form of a law suit and injunction against working, egregiously placed by her to-remain-unnamed former employer.

With a mortgage to pay, groceries to by, and the need for the occasional glass of wine…things are looking pretty dire for McKenna. So….what can you do? Come to an awesome party, show your support, cough up some dough and maybe even buy a night on the town with McKenna.

That’s right. We won’t just be passing around a bucket..we’ll be auctioning off a week of fun with McKenna….7 nights of McKenna. Ooh! Will you be the highest bidder on taking McKenna to her favorite happy hour? Are you dying to escort McKenna to El Gaucho? All possible for the right price!

Please join us:
7 nights of McKenna: A Fundraiser for a Fundraiser
*Kicks off at 6 PM, auction begins just after 7pm.*
Karma Belltown
2318 Second Ave.
Wed, Feb 13th

* If you can’t give, please come anyway and show your support. It’s a party!

* If you can’t come, but can give, let us know! Gifts of support, including taking her out for a meal, or making her dinner are great!

* This is about supporting McKenna, not bashing the unnamed former employer…at least not too much.

* If the injunction gets lifted and McKenna doesn’t need the dough…all proceeds will go to Kiva (http://kiva.org). You know, women owned businesses got to stick together!

See you there!

Sarah Schacht and Cynara Lilly, aka “The Friends”

**************************

Calling all Sammamish-area Republicans: Did your ex-state senator and current gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi participate in your fantastically run caucuses last weekend? Did he even bother? (Since Goldy mentions that no caucus actually took place, maybe it doesn’t matter, but it’s worth asking.)

So I ask you, did you caucus with Dino Rossi?

On a slightly different note: I ran my precinct’s caucus on Saturday, and I thought I did a not-so-great job… That is, until I started reading all about the totally craptastic job you GOP guys did on Saturday. From one ill-prepared party activist to another, I salute you.

The thought popped in to my head as I walked home from a post-caucus meal Pike Place Market with my friend and fellow blogger Carl Ballard…

We heard about the folks who were so depressed over Bush’s victory in ’04, that they threatened to move to Canada. Liberal folks. It got me thinking…

Where will the Republicans go? Will they run away to Brazil or Argentina, like the Nazis did? I can’t think of a country that does for disaffected Republicans what Canada does for depressed Democrats.

Is there a right-wind junta that will shelter them? A fascist father-figure to idolize, much as William F. Buckley idolized Spanish dictator Francisco Franco? Have they no place to call their own when Barack Obama (or HRC) put their hand on the Bible January 20th, 2009?

I’m stumped.

“Sweet baby jeebus, kill me now.”

I think I said those words at about 2:05pm. That is, I said them for the first time at 2:05pm. I said it a lot today, as I recall.

Unlike any of the other blog posts you’ve read about today’s caucus, none of them have my perspective. Sure, they participated in their neighborhood caucus…

But did they run their neighborhood caucus?

No.

I learned a few things:

1.) I really, really, should have gone to the caucus training.

2.) The Labor Temple is stuffy as hell.

3.) “We’ll have plenty of room” is not a phrase I’ll ever use again.

The main hall at the Labor Temple, where everyone congregated before splitting up into small precinct groups, is big. But it is not big enough for all the Democrats who showed up. Not by a long shot.

When my precinct gathered in our assigned meeting area, I found myself sitting at a folding table facing a sixty people. These people had already been kept waiting for some time in another cramped room, so they were getting cranky. What’s more, the script I was given by my legislative district was tough to weed through. Fuck, us Democrats make this shit complicated, and that caucus math? Fuhgitaboutit.

But the folks ended up being really nice people. They were my neighbors, after all! Belltown is home to rich older folks and really poor people who live in public housing. Not many in between. But we’re all Democrats, and we’re all sick to death of the fuckwit in the White House, so together we meet.

People really do care about politics, and Democrats really do love our country. Sticking it out with an ill-prepared dorkwad like myself in a stuffy room for an hour is proof enough.

(My favorite goof-up of the afternoon: I searched for five minutes for the piece of paper that would tell me how many delegates we were going to award, only to find that it’s printed on the outside of the fucking manila envelope they gave me. Ouch.)

As Sandeep Kaushik would say, the “juice” is totally behind the Democrats right now. It’s going to take a whole lot of swift boating to tear down either one of our candidates, so they better start running those “he’s a Muslim” ads and those “she’s a bitch” TV spots right away, since clearly they can’t win this one on the issues.

If I was a Republican, I would be pissing my Dockers right about now.

Clinton:

Obama:

McCain:

This is an open thread, beyotches.

Hillary

PRO:

First woman president.
Battle-hardened.
Has the best people.
Bill back in the WH.

CON

Wrong about the war.
Bill back in the WH.
Won’t help much down ticket.
Her people kinda suck, too.

FAVORITE unPC JAB

“Iron my shirt” -Moron with sign.

Barack

PRO

First black president (not counting Morgan Freeman).
Brings new voters into the party.
Right about the war.
Will help down ticket.

CON

Health care plan sucks.
Totally loves nuclear power.
Propensity to cave to GOP.
Has never won a seriously contested election.

FAVORITE unPC JAB

“Is he black enough?” -Stupid news commentator.

The Seattle Community Council Federation is sounding the alarm. The threat?

Apartments and condos, apparently:

Over the holidays, the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) quietly issued a Declaration of Non Significance (DNS) on what it bills to the public and Council as a “Multi-Family Update.”

“Multi-Family” means apartment buildings or condos. “Multi-Family” doesn’t not mean single family housing, which makes up three quarters of the residential zoning in the city.

Adrienne Quinn, the City’s Housing Director, perhaps unwittingly, misrepresented the code changes to City Council when she described them as “some proposed changes to the multi-family code, really more clean-up”

Actually this “cleanup” is a total rewrite of all of the development standards for all the multi-family zones, a complete change in the comprehensive plan.

One person’s “clean up” is another’s “earth-shattering bureaucratic change”, so I’ll let this one slide for the moment.

Most important, it destroys the consensus reached after a long process in 1988 and 1989, when the city rewrote the code to deal with ugly, excessively dense conditions created by the city’s 1980’s attempt at an “experimental code.” The 1989 process took over a year and had an enormous amount of citizen input. Now the planning staff proposes to bring back the very problems that caused the 1989 rewrite—and even worse—to break all the promises made to communities who agreed to take Urban Villages.

Holy fucking shit, Batman! A consensus reached in 1989? What was that, like, two decades ago? (I was in second grade, for fuck’s sake!) We have to have the same fucking rules as 1989… after all, it’s not like anything has changed, right? Gas is still eighty cents a gallon? A hundred and eighty thousand bucks will buy you a house in any neighborhood in the city, right? Of course!

What kills me about these NIMBY types is that they fear ALL change. EVERYTHING new is suspect. Condos are evil, apartments are bad, mass transit will bring “undesirables” to the neighborhood, so on and so forth.

I’ve seen these folks in action. They’re the folks who fought the monorail because they didn’t want “those kind of people” (Blacks? Hispanics? Dan Savage?) taking the train to Ballard. Another group is lobbying hard against replacing the 520 bridge because there might be more “traffic” in their neighborhood (even though the neighborhood in question is far, far away from the bridge). In Magnolia, neighbors protested the building of- can you guess? A methadone clinic? A homeless shelter? Neither. The protest was over- get this- cottage housing. Wow.

What’s more, the SCCF have their meetings in a Homeland Security facility. Their meeting site is the NOAA site near Montlake. If you want to get in, you have to call somebody or be on the pre-approved list. It’s almost like they don’t want young kids like me showing up…

It’s a good thing that people in this city are committed to their neighborhoods. I just wish that the neighborhood folks realized that they live in a city. I’d love to one day be able to buy myself a reasonable flat in one of these neighborhood. But if we jihad against this zoning changes, I’ll be left with Mill Creek, Algona, or worse, Bothell. As someone who’d like to stay in the city, the reactionary “Lesser Seattle” folks are making that harder and harder.