It’s Freaky Friday for the Seattle dailies, a day in which every single front page story in the dead-tree editions of both the Times and P-I feature staff bylines. (Score one for localism!) It’s kinda like living in a real big city like New York or Washington DC, except without the transit, the excitement and, um, you know… the real big city.
That said, sports leads todays news with the top story in both papers featuring the Sonic’s season opener… or maybe it was open season on the Sonics. Same difference. The P-I reports that it was a bad night for scalpers as the team recorded a 106-99 loss to Phoenix in what could be its last home opener in Seattle — but wait… the Times reports a local group headed by venture capitalist Dennis Daugs is offering to buy the team and keep it at Key Arena:
Daugs characterized his new group’s interest in buying the team as driven more by civic pride and love of basketball than a desire for financial gain.
“It can be a great investment, it can be a poor investment or something in between, but it is the most fun a lot of people I know have ever had,” said Daugs, who grew up in Burien and used to take the bus to Sonics games at Seattle Center as a kid. His group wants to maintain that tradition.
“Civic pride”…? “Love of basketball”…? “Fun” and “tradition”…? What is this guy, some sort of commie? There’s absolutely no way that NBA commissioner David Stern would fall for a bunch of new-age hooey that runs 180 degrees counter to the true spirit of basketball: extorting sports palaces out of local taxpayers. If the Sonics could make a go of it at Key Arena, the league’s whole carefully constructed house of trading cards might collapse in on itself, forcing owners to finally address their own greed and mismanagement. Goodbye Seattle, hello Oklahoma City.
And speaking of greed and mismanagement, WaMu makes local and national headlines today, with the lovable local mortgage giant being accused by New York state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of pushing appraisers to inflate home values. Really? I think just about anybody who has refinanced a home in the past few years would respond, “duh-uh.” How else to explain the magical ability of most homes to appraise just high enough to meet loan approval standards? And with home values continuing to appreciate at double-digit annual rates, where’s the harm? Oh.
One house that sure appreciated last night was Benaroya Hall, where former President Bill Clinton appeared live and Nobel Laureate Al Gore spoke via satellite at the US Conference of Mayors climate summit. Of course whenever policy makers or scientists meet to discuss the threat of climate change, the event always attracts those global warming denier wackos:
The mayors were met at Benaroya Hall by a small gathering of demonstrators urging people to vote against the regional road and transit tax increase on the ballot, arguing it could exacerbate climate change by increasing traffic. The demonstrators included small children dressed in polar-bear outfits, a reference to polar bears threatened by the loss of ice to warming in the Arctic.
Oops. I mean global warming believer wackos. Because the best way to save polar bears is to kill any reasonable political chance the region has of expanding light rail sometime during the next decade or so, because the plan, you know…isn’t perfect. What a bunch of maroons.
I stopped by the “rally” and it was kinda pathetic. I heard the Sierra Club’s bear (all of about 19) ask the pro-prop 1 side’s bear why they supported roads and transit. the prop 1 bear said, because its 50 miles of light rail, can get 330,000 people off the road–why do you oppose it? The Sierra Club cub, said, “because light rail causes global warming”.
So Now the Sierra club isn’t really just against roads but mass transit too. I’m concerned about my carbon foot print–and I’d like a choice of how I get to work and around the region that doesn’t involve 10 bus transferes or my personal vehicle as the only ones.(all of which are internal combustion engines).
Stunned, I hung around a while longer. Minneapolis’ mayor happend by on his way to Nickles’ Mayors Conference and Clinton speech and asked why the Sierra clubbers where opposing light rail. I asked him and he said, ” beats me, I can’t understand why they are opposed.”
Waiting won’t solve the problem–If saving the polar bears is that damn urgent–and I think it is, how is waiting helping. I’m more worried about the Sierra Clubs Carbon Ass-Print as they sit around on theirs and do actually nothing about the actual problem.
How else to explain the magical ability of most homes to appraise just high enough to meet loan approval standards?
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The primary reason for the housing debacle has been the deterioration of the loan standards themselves, especially at the sub prime level. A lot of people received loans they never should have received. Now those standards have been tightened up, too late.
There have been documented efforts over the past two decades by fringe far right groups to take over the Sierra Club agenda. These efforts have largely been focused on getting the Sierra Club to endorse anti-immigrant measures under the guise of environmentalism. The fact that our local chapter is now aligned with the likes of Kemper Freeman on local tranportation issues, it makes you wonder if right wingers have infiltrated our local Sierra Club.
Regarding Proposition 1:
“The perfect is the enemy of the good”.
Here in Washington State, the tendency is to vote down any transportation plan because (a) it doesn’t solve all the problems; (b) it isn’t comprehensive, including roads, transit, and environmental issues; (c) it is too comprehensive, including at least some details we think could be better if handled seperately; (d) will cost money which might benefit others a smidgeon more than it benefits ourselves.
I hate to say it, but where I grew up in the “backward” state of Tennessee, there was a much better concept of compromising and going forward on community issues “for the public good”. Maybe the residents here should be a bit less smug in believing that their public-policy “process” is superior to that of other areas of the country.
When I first moved out here in 1979, I was struck by how easy it would be to improve traffic by putting a light-rail or monorail line down the median of I-5. But that was rejected on the ballots before I arrived as being “too expensive”. Now the lack of any such system has forced businesses to locate further and further from the Seattle core, well east of Lake Washington, north of Everett, and the Auburn Valley has turned from being an incredibly productive farmland into one huge distributorship facility – all to avoid the traffic problems in the central Seattle core. This, of course, geometrically increases our transportation problems, as we now need to expand mass transit to areas several times the distance which would have sufficed twenty years ago.
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care whether Prop. 1 is or is not too expensive, is or is not environmentally friendly, is or is not cost-efficient. I’m at the point where I will vote for it because ANY PLAN is superior to the usual Washington result, which is to send the planners back to the drawing board for another ten years to present a new plan to address even bigger problems, only to have it voted down again then, also.
When I was a kid I remember being a little confused that the Seattle Pilots would just up and move and become the Milwaukie Brewers (whom I still resent for it) I just assumed all the players were Seattlites like me.
I would love to see local ownership – hell, I’d like to see community ownership (see Green Bay packers), but community anything is a non-starter in an age where greedy corporatism pays so well.
so barring that, I’d like to see the Sonics held to their lease agreement and 17,000 empty seats at the Seattle Center Coliseum for every game.
To rhp6033 @4 —
Amen, brother.
I’m on record as desiring a “Robert Moses for the 21st century”, who would select a transportation project that works and just fucking build it. Unlike the original model of RM, this one would favor mass transit.
Screw the self-evidently dysfunctional Washington/Puget Sound “process”, which translates to never accomplish anything.
“It’s Freaky Friday for the Seattle dailies, a day in which every single front page story in the dead-tree editions of both the Times and P-I feature staff bylines.”
Newspapers give reporters money OR bylines, so this probably means they ran out of cash and the reporters are now working for fame and glory while living on food stamps. I did that myself, years ago, before becoming a lawyer.
Except I didn’t get food stamps, either.
“If the Sonics could make a go of it at Key Arena, the league’s whole carefully constructed house of trading cards might collapse in on itself, forcing owners to finally address their own greed and mismanagement. Goodbye Seattle, hello Oklahoma City.”
Yeah, Goldy, but the NBA will never be the same after stamping out New Age Basketball, just as China will never be the same after Tiananmen.
From now on, everyone knows the guy in the white shirt stopped the tanks, and everyone knows the $500 million arenas are a hollow lie.
I’m on record as desiring a “Robert Moses for the 21st century”, who would select a transportation project that works and just fucking build it. Unlike the original model of RM, this one would favor mass transit.
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Amen. And just as soon as we can find leadership that can find a project that actually works I’m sure we’ll all be singing hymns.
@6 Well, I agree with you on the dysfunctional process that prioritized projects according to where the votes are, instead of where the transportation needs are.
But I don’t agree with you that ignoring critical road projects is the answer.
Nor can I agree with throwing $1,350 per household per year at light rail, especially when regressive taxes instead of user fees were chosen to finance it.
I have already voted, and I voted “no” on Prop. 1. The fact proponents use the “only chance” crutch argument shows just how weak a leg they have to stand on. This proposal can’t walk on its own merits.
@12 Re: $1,350 … $27 billion / 20 years / 1 million households = $1,350. Period. This math couldn’t be simpler. Even a fucking rabbit can make this calculation.
Goldy’s huffy indignation last Sunday night notwithstanding, I dare anyone to show how you can raise the $27 billion of real dollars (not phony-baloney talking-points 2006 dollars) that Prop. 1 will spend on light rail from 1 million households in 20 years at a rate of $150 a year. That $150 figure is as phony as a $3 bill.
Okay, call it 1.5 million households to factor in growth and stretch it out over 30 years. You’ve still gotta get $600 per household per year.
If voters saw through the lies and understood the real costs, Prop. 1 wouldn’t have a chance.
Wow, from today’s Washington Post:
“Industries Paid for Top Regulators’ Travel
Two Heads of Product Safety Agency Accepted Trips From Manufacturer Groups
By Elizabeth Williamson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 2, 2007; Page A01
The chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and her predecessor have taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children’s furniture industries and others they regulate, according to internal records obtained by The Washington Post. Some of the trips were sponsored by lobbying groups and lawyers representing the makers of products linked to consumer hazards.”
Are there any ethical boundaries the Bushites won’t cross? The conflict of interest engaged in here is so brazen that I can’t believe these “regulators” give the slightest shit about what their job actually is and who they are supposed to serve.
If the Wabbit votes NO on RoadsAndTransit, will Mike O’Brien Kill the Wabbit?
Prop. 1 will spend on light rail from 1 million households in 20 years at a rate of $150 a year. That $150 figure is as phony as a $3 bill.
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The answer is that you can’t, though the math is more involved. The $150 is for the sales tax burden for an average yearly expenditure of $25,000 per household that is privy to sales tax (I have no idea if this is reasonable). On top of this is the MVET portion, which will contribute $80 per $10,000 worth of each auto. For a household with two autos this is another $160.
Since bonds are being issued that won’t be retired for years after 2028 the yearly taxes will last much longer than 20 years.
If you have an idea how much your household spends a year privy to sales tax and have an estimate of your cars’ values
(see http://www.leg.wa.gov/pub/bill.....7-S.PL.pdf)
you will have a good idea what you will be paying per year.
For now.
These assessments could change if conditions change. For example, if there are project overruns (and this is not listed as an area of financial risk by RTID even though it is clearly the most likely over a 20 year span!).
Speaking of freaks, Big Bill the Baptist was two blocks away at the Dub Book Store last night. Seduced weeping women into kneepad oral exams. Sorry, mistake. Seduced weeping women into buying his book. Put some ice on it.
Days ago, apropos Holocaust (Global Warming) Denial, the excellent Piper suggested that secular fundamentalist Warming fanatics remind him of shrieking Paul Ehrlich from a bygone era. So when Newsweek ran its recent Denier expose’, guess who went to the top of the subsequent letters section: Paul Ehrlich, shrieking about Global Warming.
And speaking of shrieking freaks, Hillary is very very angry at Tim Russert. For doing his job. Finally.
Save it James.. it’s time to move on and get transportation taken care of. Prop 1 is not perfect, but who cares? We’ll never have a perfect bill despite what the idiots at the Sierra Club say.
It’s in the long term best interest to get Prop 1 passed, put a stake in the ground and move on. We need to take care of the roads and light rail. We can take care of other details as time progresses, but we need to get started.
YES on PROP 1
Prop 1 will fail not because it’s “not perfect”, but because it’s a monstrous disaster, an extremely vague ‘plan’…an unbelievable mess.