To the well-dressed but drunk-as-a-skunk Clinton supporter at the Montlake Ale House on Tuesday night:

Probably not a good idea to drunkenly berate people for not supporting you candidate. When you ask someone what they think is important in the election, and they answer “change,” it’s best not to treat that answer as an attack on your candidate. It implies that you know your candidate isn’t for “change,” which is bad because this is a change election. (At least, that’s what the dozens of talking heads have been saying.)

Personally, I’m mostly happy with either one. While I lean towards Obama, I’m no super fan, and I’m certainly not going to get hammered and yell at strangers at the bar for not supporting him.

I don’t think this extended contest is hurting the party, but it seems to be doing a number on the combatants.

In Seattle, we’re home to the Discovery Institute, a conservative think thank dedicated to the task of changing the definition of science. They’re hyping the new Ben Stein anti-Darwin film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”. The film is getting awful reviews.

While I oppose the sneaky introduction of creationism into the classroom, I have not seen an energetic and accessible response by the science community.

Until now.

Ken Miller basically rips Intelligent Design apart in a 2 hour long exposé of the claims of intelligent design and the tactics that creationists employ to get it shoehorned into the American school system.

Miller is funny, urbane, and respectful. He’s the author of science textbooks, and testifies in front of school boards across the country. At every one of these engagements, he always manages to eat the lunch of the Discovery Institute guys. The video is nearly two hours long, so allow it time to load. It’s worth it.
[Read more…]

Lee:

I’m totally fine with building fences along the Aurora Bridge, but can we cut out the nonsense that it’s going to save the lives of the suicidal? Fencing off the Aurora Bridge will not save those lives for the same reason that fencing off the Mexican border will not stop illegal immigration.

Normally, Lee is a wellspring of wisdom, but he could not be more wrong. Suicide barriers and border fences serve altogether different functions, and the forces at play in each case have little in common.

When individuals decide to cross the United States’ southern border, they’re reacting to economic conditions. They know that in America they can earn in a day what they can earn in a month in their home countries. There are plenty of low wage jobs in America that will not be filled by Americas. (Or, more accurately, there are plenty of jobs Americans won’t do because the jobs pay so little.) Lee’s right about the U.S./Mexico fence: it’s poorly thought-out, and flies in the face of economic realities. That said…

Suicide isn’t a fungible thing. Ryan Thurston, founder of Seattle Friends, says that suicide is “a very impulsive act.” His group is advocating the installation of a suicide prevention barrier.

More from Thurston’s group:

Why build a suicide barrier — won’t they just go somewhere else?

No. This is a common misconception:

* Two suicide bridges in Washington D.C., the Taft and the Duke Ellington, are located a block away from each other. When officials erected a barrier on one bridge, suicides on the other bridge did not increase.
* Dr. Richard Seiden, a psychology professor at UC Berkeley, studied 515 individuals who were prevented from jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. Ninety four percent of them went on to live normal and productive lives — a mere six percent attempted suicide again.
* The Memorial Bridge in Augusta, Maine was the sight of 14 suicides before officials erected a safety fence there. After installing the fence, suicides at the bridge fell to zero — and the suicide rate in the entire state did not increase.

We can reduce the number of suicides by installing a fence on the Aurora Bridge. We should, and not only for the benefit of the individuals who will be dissuaded from taking their own lives:

The neighborhood beneath the bridge used to be docks and warehouses, and the suicides went largely unnoticed. But during the technology boom of the past two decades, it morphed into a trendy area full of office buildings, shops and restaurants, and the bodies began to fall where people could see them.

“They end up in our parking lot,” said Katie Scharer, one of Edwards’ co-workers at Cutter & Buck, a sportswear company based in the Adobe complex. “Nobody’s ever totally used to it.”

Grief counselors regularly go to Cutter & Buck, paying a visit as recently as a month ago.

I can’t imagine how awful it must be to work in that area, knowing that at any time someone could fall to their death. If a fence can successfully prevent people from killing themselves, then it’s worth building.

UPDATE [Lee]: I’ve responded in the comments and will leave it at that as I’ll be signed off for the rest of the day, but I want to make it clear that I actually do support the fence for the fact that the jumpers are a huge concern for the businesses and residences below.

Remember all those funny acronyms from last fall’s mainstream media coverage of the Roads and Transit campaign? YOE, for year of expenditure was a favorite of many of Seattle’s newspaper writers and columnists. They were fixated (examples here, here, and here) on slapping the Roads and Transit plan with as high a price tag as they could by including inflation into the total price tag of the plan, not just the price tag in current year dollars. By doing so, they held the Roads and Transit plan to a standard never before seen for a tax measure or capital construction program in our region.

Yesterday Dino Rossi released his transportation fantasy and said it would cost $15.5 billion in 2007 dollars. Keep in mind, that’s in last year’s dollars.

I have done a little bit of “back of the envelope” math (you know the kind that Rossi’s Republican, anti-light rail pals did when they fed the media their scary cost numbers on Prop 1) and the results I get are staggering. Rossi’s $15.5 billion plan, when you account for 4 percent annual inflation over a 30 year construction schedule, suddenly balloons to $50 billion dollars. And this doesn’t even include the interest on the bonds that would be needed to finance all of Rossi’s made up project cost estimates. So we would have to add all of the interest payments to the $50 billion number to get the true cost, well at least according to our friends in the “traditional media.”

You can do the math yourself with this handy little inflation calculator.

UPDATE [Lee]: This part from a post by Martin at the Seattle Transit Blog made me laugh:

So I looked to Dino Rossi’s Transportation Plan with hope and anticipation. I shouldn’t have. This document was first sent to me by a Gregoire operative; when your own campaign literature is being gleefully distributed by the other side, that’s a bad sign.

Howard Schultz, Starbucks CEO and former Sonics owner, plans to sue to reacquire the team:

Nearly two years after selling Seattle’s NBA franchise to Oklahoma City investors, the Starbucks mogul has hired a lawyer and is preparing to file a lawsuit against Sonics chairman Clay Bennett to rescind the July 2006 sale.

His lawyer, Richard Yarmuth:

“It’s not money damage. It’s to have the team returned. The theory of the suit is that when the team was sold, the Basketball Club of Seattle, our team here, relied on promises made by Clay Bennett and his ownership that they desired to keep the team in Seattle and intended to make a good-faith effort to accomplish that.”

Schultz got painted as the bad guy when hew sought big bucks for a new arena, and when rebuffed sold the team to a group from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

A lawsuit by Schultz, when combined with the City of Seattle’s lawsuit, could very well force the NBA to rethink their strategy. He was an energetic owner, but an inexperienced one. Maybe he can make common cause with the fans he once jilted, and save the team.

Not everybody is on board with the whole “Seeds of Compassion” thing:

Several hundred protesters chanted and sang, marching from the University of Washington’s Red Square to Hec Edmundson Pavilion today in the biggest demonstration here yet against the Dalai Lama’s five-day Seattle tour.

A plane also flew overhead trailing a banner that read: “Dalai: ur smiles charm, ur actions harm.”

Protesting the Dalai Lama? Really?

Once outside Hec Ed, the protesters showed violent images from Tibet on a large-screen TV, chanted through bullhorns and sang songs in Mandarin, including one that protesters translated as “My Chinese heart,” saying that their hearts still belong to China even though they are far from home.

I’m sure my great grandfather Wilhelm Kamp’s heart still belonged his home country of Germany (and his hometown of Leverkusen). But events have a way of clarifying one’s national allegiances.

Protester Shufu Xe, a systems analyst at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said the Dalai Lama’s message has been distorted by the Western media.

“I like some of his ideas about nonviolence. But I think he is behind some of the violence in Tibet,” Xe said. “I don’t like that he’s using the Olympics to promote his political agenda.”

Xe, like many of the protesters, was born in China. He moved to the U.S. seven years ago.

I don’t mean to get all “nativist,” but if they protested the Chinese government in China, they’d never be heard from again. Remember the “Tank Man”?

I think it’s cool that people can live in America and say their “heart” is somewhere else AND use their rights in this country to air their grievances. It’s weird, but uniquely American.

Remember this from just before last year’s November election?

I wonder what all the centrist, but-transit-without-roads-just-isn’t-realistic Seattle editorial writers, bloggers and erstwhile environmentalists who say the roads and transit proposal is the “best we’re ever going to get” are going to say when Prop. 1 fails, as a recent King 5 poll indicates it will? Will they band together and fight for a new light rail package that doesn’t include sprawl-inducing highway expansion—or, as their defeatist endorsements of Prop. 1 indicate, will they just give up?

It’s funny how at the last Sound Transit board meeting, it was one of the “sell-out” environmental groups that dropped off a petition demanding that rail be on the ballot this fall. The Sierra Club has yet to “marry” itself publicly to a “transit only” ballot measure this fall. I’m certain many of their members are a “go,” but… When environmental groups have to spend time convincing other environmental groups of the need for a ballot measure this fall, the entire effort is in jeopardy.

Seriously, it’s 60 degrees at about 1:00am, according to the Seattle Times.

I blame this guy.

Headline at the Times’ website:

Scientists baffled by swarm of quakes off Oregon coast

Duh! It’s Godzilla.

To everyone who donated during my fund raiser, thank you. I really appreciate it. I was meaning to post this a week or so ago, but I’ve been so busy.

To everyone who bought me a beer, or pizza, or Indian food, or very nicely bugged people for dough on my behalf- thank you. It means so much.

If you you were meaning to donate but never got around to it, click here. To the folks who donated, again, thank you.

I get email:

Subject: RACIST ACTIVITY ON UW CAMPUS 4/15/08

Greetings to All,

I am emailing you all to alert you of an event that will take place on the UW-Seattle campus next Tuesday, April 15, 2008 from 10am-2pm. The event is called “Find an Illegal Immigrant Tag” and will be held on the HUB lawn. The UW College Republicans will be tabling from 10:00am to 2:00pm and the game itself will be held at 12:20. According to a message from the CR president, the event is intended to send a a “clear statement that we need to get serious and crack down on illegal immigration and secure our borders.”

I am inviting you all to attend this event and TAKE A STAND AGAINST anti-immigrant messaging on campus [and everywhere]. We all agree that the immigration system is broken and is in need of reform. However, fair and just immigration reform does not entail the scapegoating of immigrants and/or hateful actions–both of which thwart efforts to create open discussions on real solutions to immigration. Instead of engaging in divisive politics/ conversations, we should be uniting to promote justice, acceptance, and opportunity.

Oh, College Republicans! When will they ever learn?

I’m sitting in the Ruth Fisher room at Union Station, which houses Sound Transit. If I’ve learned anything from observing local government, it’s that nothing attracts cranks and looneybirds like these two words:

“Public Comment”

I won’t name names, but Sound Transit has it’s own nuts.

That’s the message being sent by all of the citizens who signed petitions with Transportations Choices Coalition and Fuse Washington.

These petitions are being submitted during today’s Sound Transit Board meeting at 1:00pm.

This stuff bugs the hell out of me:

With rising condo towers and disappearing green space in Seattle, City Council members say the city needs more parks. A levy aimed at building new parks expires this year, and several on the council say the public would support renewing it.

But there’s one member of the public who does not support it — the mayor. Every voter-approved city levy since 2001 has originated with him. The City Council approved putting those levies on the ballot, but Mayor Greg Nickels proposed the property-tax increases, organized supporters and raised the money to fund the campaigns.
[…]

“We believe that this data indicates there is in fact pretty strong public support,” said Conlin. After eight years, the expiring $198 million parks levy has not met all of the city’s needs for community centers and parks, said Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the parks committee. Neighborhoods such as Belltown still need a park, he said.

Council members are now putting together a 20-member advisory committee to come up with a list of parks projects the public wants funded.

It makes me crazy that my neighborhood, neglected and ignored Belltown, is being used to justify millions in taxes that will ultimately benefit lots of other neighborhoods. Such was the case during the last parks levy. The project list shows just a single project in Belltown. Of course, Belltown has been promised a community center for years. What assurance do I have that another levy will get around to building it?

And what about my basketball court?

Meanwhile, for similar dollars per household, Sound Transit wants to build light rail north, east, and south. When surveyed, most folks around here find transportation to be a more pressing concern. While I’m concerned about not having a basketball court, the region’s economy doesn’t rest on my hook shot. (We should all be glad that it doesn’t.)

This is a city that does important small things (plastic bags) and important big things (fighting climate change). Raising everyone’s property taxes NOW, in the same year Sound Transit could very well go to the ballot with a transit-only package funded by a sales tax, isn’t a great idea. See the update below.

If renewing the parks levy is so important, why don’t they already have a project list compiled? Here’s my plan: Find ten really important, we-can’t-live-without-them projects, and go to the voters with that list. In fact, combine it with funds dedicated for the remodel of the Seattle Center. (That might be the least appealing public space in the city, and could use some new resources.)

A while back, a prospective city council candidate went down to City Hall to find out what the council’s priorities were. They gave him a binder full of hundreds of “priorities.” Of course, if you have a hundred “priorities,” you don’t have any.

City Council candidates, when they stand for election, like to talk about making transportation a priority. This year, they can really do it.

UPDATE

I get email clarifying the tax issue:

Just to clarify, the Council is not looking to raise anyone’s taxes –
any levy that the city council is considering will cost the same or less
to taxpayers (when combined with the Mayor’s Pike Place Market levy) as
they’re paying now for the current Pro-Parks levy.