Gov. Bill Richardson uses GOP-style talking points to attack another Democrat:

“Democrats, whenever we have a solution, we want to tax,” Richardson said. “I’m different. I’m a tax cutter.”

Curious. I know Democrats are sometime pegged as the tax-and-spend party, but I find it odd that a Democrat, running for president, would so willingly adopt the language of the opposition. Why Richardson would be proud of cutting taxes in a state that recieves more federal taxes than it sends to Washington D.C., strikes me as odd. If any primary voter was really concerned about cutting taxes, they’d probably be on the other team.

Over a month ago, I said this about the race among Democrats to take on Reichert in the 8th CD:

Unlike Goldy, I’m not committed to supporting a single candidate. At least not yet.

Today, I announce that I will be supporting Darcy Burner for Congress.

Democrats need an energetic new voice in Washington. We need a voice from Seattle’s Eastside that will advocate for fiscal restraint and personal responsibility. We need someone who understands not only the high-tech businesses of Bellevue and Redmond, but also the VFW halls of Auburn and Buckley. Darcy Burner meets or exceeds all of these requirements.

While some folks question whether Darcy is the candidate who will lead Democrats to victory, I don’t. Darcy fell just 8,000 votes short of victory in 2006. In New Hampshire, Paul Hodes lost to Rep. Charlie Bass by 20 points in 2004. Two years later, Hodes won, 52-45. The truth is, Darcy is much closer to victory in ’08 than many candidates who are giving it second try.

Darcy Burner isn’t the anointed candidate; if there are challengers, she’ll have to beat them. If Dwight Pelz does what Paul Berendt did in 2004 by finding a celebrity candidate to run in the 8th, Darcy will have to beat that candidate, too. No one is owed a seat in Congress, or even a party’s nomination.

Darcy has learned much from her first campaign, and I see no reason why she can’t get another 10,000 votes somewhere in the 8th District.

Candidate Bruce Harrell stopped by Drinking Liberally last night. He’s the second of Michael Grossman’s clients to visit our Tuesday night lift-cup sessions. Other consultant’s candidates are no shows thus far.

Big props to Grossman for reaching out to a 3rd tier political gathering. The local bloggers and activists who meet up at the Montlake Ale House have been visited by all sorts of folks- congressmen, county council folks, state reps- but the city has been mostly absent. Boo! Tim Ceis was a highlight, but Mayor Nickels has to visit us soon.

Bruce Harrell seems like a very civic-minded guy. He’s really concerned with fixing the schools. (This is a tough one, because City Hall has very little sway over the district) He sees the nine on the council as go-along, get-along types who don’t take a stand. Then again, all challengers say this. I’m curious to find out what he wants the city to look like in 40 years, not just 4 years. But he is willing to listen. I almost turned him from being anti-districts to pro-districts. (In Seattle, the council is elected at-large, which is dumb) Next time I’ll seal the deal.

One big piece of advice to anyone running for city council:

Don’t let Stefan endorse you. Don’t email him campaign updates. Hope he doesn’t write about your campaign in any way favorable. Make no mistake, Stefan is the “Kiss of Death”. Just ask Robert Rosencrantz and Casey Corr, who both got hammered (Rosencrantz twice!) in city races. I’m amazed that Seattle’s preeminent wingnut blogger doesn’t understand how radioactive he is. Republican Jim Nobles, the first “out” Republican to run for city office since the 1980’s, is too smart to embrace Stefan and his mean–spirited, petulant, race-baiting politics.

Words to the wise, candidates.

David Brewster has plenty of new ideas of what to do with Seattle Center, the city’s rundown civic space. Skip Berger, who once suggested a biodiesel factory be built on the current site of the Olympic Sculpture Park, has got to be pissed:

The three alternatives all take out the Fun Forest, including the drab building housing bumper cars and video games. And they all dramatically remodel Center House, a former armory, by putting in a large glass roof and blowing out the east and west walls for lots more transparency, better restaurants, and improved theaters. The committee had some serious debates about demolishing Center House and putting its uses in a new facility closer to the perimeter of the campus (as FROG urges) but decided to keep the old building in place as “the center of the Center.”

The Green Window scheme, option 3, gains eight acres of new open space by lidding the stadium and also creates a more open feeling in the area around Broad Street and the Space Needle. The East-West Axis plan, option 4, opens up the areas around Key Arena, creating long promenades and vistas from the lower Queen Anne area all the way across the campus to Fifth Avenue North, where the new Gates Foundation complex will be built. August Wilson Way, a new walkway to the south of the theater lineup (Rep, Intiman, Ballet, Opera) would also articulate this promenade and might even have a slow streetcar along that stretch, linking South Lake Union to the waterfront trolley.

There’s so much for a anti-density guy to hate!

More amenities means more growth. We’ll see condos filled with people who weren’t born in Seattle. People will stop driving their Subarus and ride the streetcar. Without the Fun Forest, how will we keep property values down?

Maybe a biodiesel factory…

Ivan Weiss, chair of the 34th District Democrats (and my biggest fan) takes aim at “fair elections” advocates who are working with extremist right wing think tanks.

Rep. Peter DeFazio is out. He won’t challenge GOP Sen. Gordon Smith (OR), who is getting some serious love from Crosscut.

This Sunday, riding the bus will be free. Why? It’s Earth Day. (Or as George W. Bush calls it, “Sunday”) Dan Savage isn’t a fan of the free bus plan:

Earth to Ron Sims: Riding the bus sucks. Earth day, non-earth days (?), free, $1.25—the fucking bus sucks. There’s nothing celebratory about being stuck on a fucking bus.

People don’t ride public transit to be altruistic, do-gooders. They ride public transit to get from Point A to Point B. To compete with cars, Ron, public transit has to be faster, easier, and more reliable than driving. There’s a tiny number of smug, stupid assholes out there that will get on a bus because they get to say, “Hey, look at me! I’m saving the planet!” to themselves. And most of those assholes are already on the bus, content to sit in a pool of urine left on their seat by some bum that got on and off the bus in the downtown “ride free/rolling homeless shelter zone.”

Within the hour, bars and clubs all over the city will be killing the music for five minutes, exactly at midnight. They’re protesting new legislation that will regulate their business.

I live downtown. I don’t mind the nightclub patrons as much as I used to. It used to be hard to get to sleep on the weekends, but I’ve adjusted to it. More often than not I’m out there with the kids, enjoying an adult beverage or three.

So why are the nightclub owners and the Mayor’s office battling? The clubs are worried they’ll get stuck with the kind of responsibilities the cops currently have. The city is trying to standardize the way we regulate clubs in the neighborhoods. But the two sides aren’t working together.

I’m sick of club owners who seem to have little regard for the neighborhoods in which they do business. I’m sick of the broke-dick city government which is making a problem worse.

Check out this post by Erica at the Slog:

What happens when you have a hearing on nightlife in a neighborhood without any bars?

You get a hearing where all anybody wants to talk about is potholes, P-Patches, and traffic signals, as I learned tonight at the Bitter Lake Community Center, where council member Sally Clark presided (solo) over a “meeting” of her neighborhoods committee.

It gets worse. Apparently, the geezers of Bitter Lake weren’t psyched about nightclub policy.

Erica concludes:

Maybe next time they could hold a hearing on Social Security at the Venom nightclub.

Seattle’s favorite neo-conservative writes:

The dense ones, however, believe they are on the winning side of history. Time for a “mission accomplished” lap, perhaps, along with the developers and big business interests that willingly greenwash their corporate goals to co-opt labor, enviros, and progressives into supporting urban development policies that roll over the little guy.

What an unbelievable load of shit. Labor, enviros, and progressives all want more growth inside urban boundaries for different reasons. Union guys who swing hammers get construction work. Enviromentalists like the fact that denser urban development is energy effecient and allows people to walk to work. Progressives like it because, well… it’s cool. And we don’t want to move to Auburn.

Truth is, Skip’s no-growth heros (Brian Derdowski being one of them) were never for zero-growth. They just believed growth should pay for itself. And, growth should be funneled away from undeveloped areas and into cities. You know, like Seattle. So Skip’s anti-growth beliefs are really just a part of the problem.

After all, if a young couple can’t buy a townhome in Seattle, they’ll buy a house in Sammamish.

We know that these green-backed policies are making the city more unaffordable. They are helping to drive the poor out of town. They are displacing long-standing communities. They are changing the scale of a once-egalitarian city that featured few poor people, few rich people, and a lot of folks in between. This old middle class Seattle is now seen as unsophisticated, not worthy of protection, backward even.

The middle class folks who bought houses in the 50’s have sold them in their old age. Houses that went for 20 grand back in the old days are now 900k investments that have paid off. The middle class of Seattle’s yesteryear has cashed out.

Skip is against growth inside the city. He’s also against growth outside the city, as he’s favored growth management far and above the current law. Where does he want growth? Fucking North Dakota.

Not. Gonna. Happen.

This article is a few days old, but it’s still relevant:

State leaders are beginning the Highway 520 bridge rebuild with an uncertain and speculative finance plan that would fall short of the project’s estimated $4.4 billion cost even if all their gambles pay off.

These are the same officials who pulled the plug on Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels’ plan to build replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a $4.6 billion tunnel because it lacked a solid finance plan.

Though the groundwork for the new 520 bridge is already underway, it will likely be years before the state secures the money to complete the project.

If I remember correctly, the knock against Greg Nickels and his proposed tunnel was that the plan lacked a finance plan that stood up to scrutiny. The tunnel plan included dollars from this fall’s RTID vote, and also federal funds not yet available until 2009 and beyond. It looks like hypocrites in Olympia are slamming Nickels for doing exactly what they’re doing now.

Transportation leaders in the House and Senate are banking on $1.1 billion from a regional transit and roads tax package that even supporters fear may be rejected by voters in November.

They’re also counting on nearly a $1 billion from a pooled account established to cover cost overruns for 520 and also the Alaskan Way Viaduct — but under current projections, the 520 project would require all of that and more.

And unlike the House plan, the Senate also assumes $200 million in federal transit money that could trickle in over the next 16 years.

All while the final design remains a topic of vigorous debate.

And good luck with that design stuff. The major players in the 520 game (the UW, the city, the state, nearby neighborhoods, Sound Transit, and lots more) aren’t on the same page.

While I got nothing (zilch!) this year, Goldy received a David Neiwert Award:

David Goldstein (Best Muckraking, 2005), is the recipient of a new Neiwert Award tradition – the LEAP Award for alumni. The LEAP Award recognizes bloggers who successfully make the leap from blogging to traditional media. In 2006, David’s dreams of becoming a radio host became reality when 710 KIRO gave him a regular weekend show after just one appearance as a guest host. These days, he hosts the David Goldstein Show weekends at the station from 7 to 10 in the evening. At the end of the year, he was asked to fill in for fellow weekday KIRO host Dave Ross over the holidays. When he wasn’t bringing liberal political talk back to 710 KIRO, Goldy was fundraising for netroots candidates or posting regularly at HorsesAss. His impact has been immeasurable and we’re sure he’ll have a very busy 2007.

You can read the whole list here.

How the awards committee can overlook this work of genius, I’ll never know.

I’m just coming off of a week long break from blogging, and what a great time to be back. A few thoughts:

Mayor Greg Nickels is going after slum lords. I’m estatic. I went to high school across the street from a guy who is infamous for his criminal behavior.

Crosscut: It didn’t take 24 hours for Knute Berger to come out slamming growth in the Puget Sound area. I remember when my Pops was looking to buy a house in Seattle. It was the mid 90’s, before prices exploded during the “Go-Go Clinton Economic Boom.” No-Growth folks like Charlie Chong were trying their best to slam the door shut to new Seattle residents like me and my Pops. Today, it’s hard to find a townhouse in Seattle that is much cheaper than the average house price.

I have a new favorite beer.

What’s up with the enviros? They totally bailed on new parks in downtown Seattle. Yes, Nickels shares the blame, but enviros should have had his back on this.

A note to folks who visit Drinking Liberally at the Montlake Ale House: don’t ask the bar staff to turn down the music. It’s a bar, and we’re not the only customers. We have guests all the time; authors, bloggers, pols, but it’s still a bar. One other thing while I’m on the subject: if you’re VIP at DL, don’t demand our attention for more than five minutes, tops. Drink a beer and mix with the crowd.

Barack Obama blows it.

That ridiculous racetrack near Brememton is dead. You’re welcome.

This is heartbreaking.

Here’s the info:

Slog // P-I // Times // Crosscut

If I were Mayor/County Exec/Governor, I’d give one of these to anyone who requests one of these.

If you haven’t already, check out Crosscut, David Brewster’s new online news thingy. Read their excellent piece on the Seattle Times attempts to fuck over the P-I. Brewster has also enlisted Knute Berger for another go-around of his famous column, Mossback (Density, bad! People who don’t own cars, lazy!). Berger has a great piece about the Seattle School District’s racial insensitivity- against white people!

All in all, it reads just like the Seattle Weekly did circa the 1990s, before the whole thing started going to shit.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

I won’t be there, but I suspect Goldy and the usual suspects will be.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s eleven Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

David Sirota on the 60 Minutes interview:

Perhaps the most disturbing display of all, however, was 60 Minutes’ Katie Couric. She spent most of her interview with the Edwardses behaving like a prosecutor, cross-examining them about why they are going forward with the presidential campaign. And when I say “interrogate” I mean interrogate. This was no ordinary interview – this was a televised guilt trip. She stated as fact to John Edwards that he is supposedly “putting your work first, and your family second.” She also pulled the “some say” technique, claiming that an unnamed “some” say that in making this decision, Edwards is displaying “a case of insatiable ambition.”

I think the “some say” device is a dishonest interview tactic. It’s a dumb trick best used by FOX News. It allows an interviewer to ask a question even if that question has no relevance. It’s lazy, and I’m glad I haven’t seen it much in the local media. Rush Limbaugh’s bullshit musings do not deserve to be cloaked by Couric with the phrase, “some say.”

The decision to continue their campaign belongs to John and Elizabeth Edwards alone. Their decision not to surrender to cancer is admirable. As Elizabeth said, “we’re all going to die someday.” No amount of interview spin can hide that fact.

Here’s the money quote from a Seattle Times article on West Seattle and the Viaduct:

“People want to put the same thing up there because anything new is different, and people are concerned because it would be different,” said Mark Wainwright, president of the Admiral Neighborhood Association.

Is the Viaduct a roadway or a security blanket?

Leave it to working-class Delridge to provide some common sense:

Paul Fischburg, Delridge Neighborhood Association president, said he personally supports a surface road, as long as there’s an “enormous investment in transit.”

“If I could just wave a magic wand, it would be extending light rail in the southwest and northwest through downtown … that would be the best-case scenario,” he said. But “you know this city’s history on mass transit.”

Long term, I’d like to see a train that connects with the current Sound Transit train at SODO. Until then, there’s the E-3 Busway which can be configured to connect with the Spokane Street Viaduct.

Unfortunately, the light rail planning is concerned with Bellevue and Lynnwood at the moment. Seattle residents have no way to mandate additional transit projects through Sound Transit’s governence structure.

Maybe Ed Murray isn’t on the wrong track after all.