– There will be fewer water shut offs as the Seattle City Council passes the No Child Without Water legislation
– Diaz is out.
– Notes On the Senate Transportation Budget
– Strangely, the only place I could find the news that Clayton Corzatte had died was a Gulf Coast newspaper. I did hear it on KUOW, but I didn’t see it on their webpage.
– I’m sure I wasn’t the only person from Seattle who read Monday’s XKCD and was sad that there’s a gap between San Francisco and Vancouver.
Had Labor Participation Held Constant, Unemployment Would Be 11.1 Percent
http://reason.com/24-7/2013/04.....onstant-un
Apparently a quarter of a million young adults dropped out of the labor force.
Last month.
McGinn
Diaz was McGinn’s one act of leadership.
McGinn has shown that he could be a city manager .. handling a budget, melting the snow, etc.
I have written more, with a tribute to McGinn’s acquiescence to Paul Allen, at THE-Ave.US.
So … Burgess, Murry or Steinbrueck?
@1 Labor participation is soaring among workers aged 65-75. Welcome to the brave new world of Republican Whack-O-Nomics!
Who better to pander to the Democrat lowest common denominator than the Clinton family’s lowest common denominator?
Chelsea Clinton opens door to run
http://www.politico.com/story/.....html?hp=r1
I guess it makes sense that if you aren’t credible as a journalist, then trying to be a Democrat politician is the next laudible goal.
@ 3
Labor participation is soaring among workers aged 65-75.
A predictable consequence of people in their 50s and 60s preferring second homes and third automobilies to creation of a nest egg.
OTOH it makes for lots and lots of killer deals on third automobiles on Craigslist.
The map in the link had a caveat that counted mostly grade separated. If that was the case, why did they count Cleveland’s Red Line and not Central LINK. LINK has some at grade running, but several stretches of grade Separation. Other cities with rail transit on the continent, includes Calgary, Edmonton, Salt Lake City, Portland(although MAX is not as grade separated as LINK), Denver, Phoenix, and St
Louis.
Great article in a railway trade magazine on the streetcar revival. Just as a couple US companies get involved, the foreign companies are moving in. I do not mind, need the competition to keep prices down. 4 companies building them are in Blue states.
http://www.railwayage.com/inde.....channel=61
Japan’s courts continue to rule the election of last year for the lower house of the parliament invalid due to malapportionment, although they can’t do much about it. The major parties here would love the parallel system Japan uses, it maintains majority party control of the House, while allowing some minor parties in.
http://www.fairvote.org/japan-.....WQ5_TDn9O4
By the way, the center-right Liberal Democratic Party was returned in that election after a three year absence.
Joke du jour:
An arbitrator has denied the organization’s effort to obtain the domain name organizingforaction.net, registered by a quick-moving computer technician in Castle Rock, Colo., on Jan. 18, when the news broke that Obama’s former advisors were launching the group.
Derek Bovard proceeded to configure the site so all the hits were directed to the website for the National Rifle Assn. It was one of three domain names for Organizing for Action that the group failed to register before it launched.
http://www.latimes.com/news/po.....9952.story
@5 I thought you guys were against taxes for public services such as schools, parks, libraries, etc., because people should be free to spend their money as they choose?
After a mud slide derailed a passenger train, the BNSF railroad (which owns the tracks) has finally said they will make improvements to the right-of-way in the areas between Everett and Shoreline which are most vulnerable to mudslides. The TV news report was, as usual, pretty sketchy on the details. Does anybody here know more?
FORTUNE — Country singer Brad Paisley set Twitter ablaze Monday with the release of “Accidental Racist,” a tune that starts with a vignette about wearing a confederate flag t-shirt in a Starbucks (“When I put on that t-shirt, the only thing I meant to say is I’m a Skynyrd fan”) and ends with LL Cool J awkwardly rapping about the Civil War and slavery (“RIP Robert E. Lee, but I’ve gotta thank Abraham Lincoln for freeing me, know what I mean.”) It is earnest, ham-fisted, and ripe for social media parody.
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/20.....al-racist/
Two sites I visited pulled the audio due to copyright claim.
I’ll just envision Rush Limbaugh in my left earphone and Cornel West in the right one.
Among older workers (age 60+), I don’t know any of whom are working in order to buy a bigger house or a third car. Most are continuing to work simply because the eight years of the Bush administration was hell on retirement savings and 401(k) plans, which are mostly populated by mutual funds. They are already down-sizing their homes, selling off personal possessions they no longer need or have room for, etc.
Younger workers are another thing entirely. Nobody drops out of the labor force of their own volition – what are they going to do, live in their parent’s basement for a few years? Any drop-off among young adults is usually explained by difficulty in getting that “first job”, which forces young adults into going back to school for graduate degree programs – hoping to graduate in a full-throttle economic recovery. Others simply drop off the un-employment rolls because they can’t find a job and their benefits expire.
Of course, the economy is doing much, much better than during the last Republican administration. Republicans tried to run on the economy in 2012 and dropped that issue like a hot potato when the recovery moved forward – despite all the Republican efforts to kill it.
11) BNDF has been saying they will be doing something for months.
http://www.king5.com/news/citi.....18342.html
One potential cause of the slides could be unauthorized drainage pipes that the property owners above the tracks. Another could be building it where they did, but it was a private company using private capital. Great Northern did not get much Federal funds.
It’s questionable how much “real” recovery there is. Bernanke is betting on ZIRP and monetary stimulus to spur a housing recovery, and thereby lead the economy to higher employment, but the housing market faces strong headwinds from high unemployment and high student loan debt among the young, which translates into that demographic group not buying houses. With low incomes, few marriages, and debt barriers to qualifying for mortgages among the primary family-formation age cohort, it’s hard to foresee housing taking off.
Oops, I meant BNSF.
@5 Or physicians helping the Beechcraft Bonanza earn its nickname “the fork-tailed doctor killer”?
This little kid was just playing policeman!
http://news.nationalpost.com/2.....fs-deputy/
Awwww.. How darling… An armed society is a both a polite and safe society.
When I mentioned Salt Lake City in the list of cities that were left out because of the map’ s criteria, I forgot to include that SLC is going to open another line this weekend, this time to the airport.
http://www.rideuta.com/mc/?pag.....irportTRAX
What does this Republican know that our trolls don’t?
Hear, hear… Our two moron trolls just had a stroke.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04.....verse.html
@ 14
One potential cause of the slides could be unauthorized drainage pipes that the property owners above the tracks. Another could be building it where they did, but it was a private company using private capital.
Actually, it was building in an area that could easily be predicted to be a site in which slides occur that caused all the damage on the Coupeville bluff a couple of weeks ago.
Dragovich explained that it was a deep-seated landslide, which basically means it originated from deep in the earth. The report states that the failure plane is likely below sea level, but the depth is currently unknown.
The reports states that the landslide area was a smaller portion of a much larger landslide complex. The entire landslide complex is 1.5 miles long and may date back as much as 11,000 years.
DNR geologist Michael Polenz identified the prehistoric landslide in 2005; it was published as part of a geologic map in 2009. “Landslide activity” demolished a beachfront residence from 1996 to 1997, approximately 800 feet north of this week’s landslide.
http://www.whidbeynewstimes.co.....52971.html
Houses built on bluffs periodically will slide down them or cause slides in their vicinity, although those slides will occur without the building as well.
Similarly, putting a railroad track at the base of a bluff predictably will result in slides affecting those tracks.
This isn’t rocket science.
Let private money clean up the mess.
20) Good Point, about the mayor of Lancaster. Plus for the Antelope Valley, a solar spill would just be a bright day.
BNSF probably will, eventually, they just finished double tracking the last major single track portion on their line between Chicago and Los Angeles. As for why they built it below a bluff, it was a good low grade route. Who let them build it there? That was an era where Government stayed out of business.
Interesting experiment the NYMTA is trying out. A battery electric conversion of a used bus. Adds to the diversity of the MTA’ s fleet.
http://new.mta.info/news/mta-n.....test-drive
@ 20
What does this Republican know that our trolls don’t?
He knows that the government hands large amounts of other peoples’ money to municipalities that do what the government wants.
And SolarCity’s ownership, not surprisingly, is in bed with Team Obama. And under investigation by the Feds:
Like the other scandals, SolarCity’s founder is Elon Musk; the high-profile billionaire has a history of giving lots of money to the Obama campaign. Musk is a big donor to Obama, having given $35,800 to the Obama Victory Fund and another $30,400 to the Democratic National Committee. The relationship has paid huge dividends for the billionaire.
But unlike the other scandals, he has been able to parlay his relationship with the president to creating not one but three Solyndra-type companies.
The National Legal and Policy Center discovered that SolarCity spent $535,000 in 2009 and 2010 to lobby Congress and the Department of Energy on climate legislation, the Recovery Act, “green workforce training and development,” and provisions in various legislation “relevant to solar development.” SolarCity has sought to extend a program, due to expire at the end of 2012, that delivers to manufacturers an upfront cash grant in lieu of a 30 percent Investment Tax Credit (called the Section 1603 grant program). So far, according to DOE reports, SolarCity has received more than $66 million from that program.
SolarCity also received a $344 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. Most suspiciously, much of the company’s revenue is generated from a partnership with military housing developers with a goal of installing solar panels on 120,000 rooftops of military housing units across the country
http://www.freerepublic.com/fo.....3994/posts
YLB, I know you’ll get on your knees for anything remotely related to The One, but I’d slip on a rubber before taking the load on this one – the taste will be a little off.
@25. Get help. You seem to be fighting that you are gay. Really, Get help.
@25 Wow, our politicians are bought and owned by corporations, and government policies line the pockets of the rich; America is almost as corrupt as Russia; this is news??
@ 20
I’ll bet that two years ago you were very similarly cheer-leading Solyndra and wondering what Arnold knew that other Republicans didn’t, right, YLB?
@ 27
It’s news to YLB. NYT spits it out and he takes it at face value. He’s got his precious and rather creepy database but no ability to read with any skepticism if it’s something liberalisch.
Poor Bob… Not only is the world changing under his clay feet..
Republicans are changing too!
Solyndra! Fast n’ Furious! Solyndra! Fast n’ Furious! !!Benghazi!!
As if Republicans never subsidized fossil fuel ideas that never panned out.
This one’s for Puddyidiot:
Your beloved Glenn Beck is “forcing” you!
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2.....ity-video/
Once again Glenn Beck is right?
What an idiot Bob is… SolarCity is not the same as Lancaster, CA..
The place with the Republican mayor..
Never heard of it until right wingers started dragging it in here fueled by Faux News and their mancrush Darryl Issa.
@ 30
You don’t get it, do you, YLB?
SolarCity exists because they took large amounts of federal dollars as upfront credits, installed solar, and are renting the installed systems in exchange for payments from the homeowners. All that is fine if it continues. But it won’t. It can’t. Those subsidies were a big part of ARRA and were meant to jump-start a dead economy. That stimulus won’t be repeated, YLB. Where’s the source of new free cash to SolarCity?
Look at the experiences of Germany and Spain. Germany had to slash its solar subsidies because it wasn’t sustainable.
The biggest difference between Solyndra and SolarCity is that SolarCity made it through the IPO, and when it implodes it will take down some investor capital and not just government money.
Things that can’t go on forever, don’t.
Do a little reading on this one. Spare me the runup in the stock price since the IPO. It won’t last. They’re losing money at a faster-than-expected pace.
It won’t be a total Solyndra because there’s still a cash flow model for someone to buy when it tanks. But it will be bought at a steep discount.
Did Bob ever hear of “Range Fuels”? That happened on the Bushies’ watch.
http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/.....s-failure/
@ 35
So, YLB, you’ve gone from cheerleading @ 20 an Obama albatross to ‘Yeah? Well, Bush fucked up, too.’ @ 35 in just over two hours.
I believe my work here is done.
Have a nice day, y’all.
34 – No YOU don’t get it. The NY Times article was about a REPUBLICAN mayor of Lancaster, CA..
NOT SolarCity.. NOT BYD…
No I was poking fun at a head-up-his ass idiot – YOU!
@38 You’re wasting your time; you’re talking to a brick.
40 – I know.. It’s kind of funny to see him have a right wing eruption..
‘Yeah? Well, Bush fucked up, too.’
Of course he did, and he fucked up one hell of a lot worse than President Obama could could ever dream of fucking up. Asleep at the switch for 9/11. Invading the wrong country. The give-away to big pharma. Trillions down a hole. Hell, your guy lost $8 billion in cash sitting on a pallet in Iraq! How many Solydras does that pallet of cash represent, Bob? Crunch some numbers for us.
Such a record of fuck ups. Has any president ever fucked up more than Bush? No, Bob. Too bad it’s the only record you’ve got, well, other than your party’s recent attempts to rape women with transvaginal wands. Anyways, good luck with your pathetic hope that your whining about it will stop anybody from talking about your party’s dismal record of failure.
Speaking of Bush fails, do you recall how Bush and his Republican congress blew billions on the wingnut escape plan to Mars? What for? So Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld could escape to Mars if the Hague ever came calling for them? What a plan! Over a billion blown in 2005 alone on Mars, wasn’t it? Good thing for you that President Obama put a cork in that one.
The way you whine about something small-time like Solyndra, I bet your head fucking exploded with 9/11, Iraq, Pharma, Mars and all those other Republican failures that blew your money. Oh, wait, it was Republicans fucking up, blowing your precious fucking tax dollars. You’re obviously fine with Republicans fucking up, wasting your money, aren’t you? After all, you keep mindlessly voting for the fuckers.
Of course, Bush and Cheney’s Iraq War wasn’t a complete waste, even with all the dead and maimed. After all, Cheney’s Halliburton made $40 billion in profit. A Republican knows what’s really important. And no, it has absolutely nothing to do with the horrific waste of national treasure and blood under a blundering, incompetent Republican President.
It seems that Mitch McConnell had a campaign meeting he attended, where the subject was how to trash Ashley Judd (a potential opposing candidate). Someone recorded the meeting, and Mother Jones ended up with a copy which they released.
So how does McConnell react? Does he defend it as normal hard-ball politics? Does he point out that it was just kicking-the-ball-around, and no decisions were made or tactics implemented as a result of the meeting?
Nope. He calls in the Dept. of Justice and the F.B.I. to investigate and, hopefully intimidate or imprison all those involved in the release of the tapes. Because, after all, destroying someone’s reputation in a political campaign isn’t a crime, but proving it was done is a crime.
A few thoughts:
1. He’s taking a page from the Newt Gingrich strategy when a recording of his telephone conversation surfaced where he and the Republican leadership talked about how they were going to evade the ethics sanctions imposed on him. They went after the Democratic congressman to whom the recording was given.
2. McConnell said that everyone knew that “the left” was going to come after him. Reminds me a bit of when Hillary Clinton referred to a “vast right-wing conspiracy” aimed at her husband. The right wing bloggers and commentators went into hysterics over that comment at the time.
3. McConnell also referred to it as being as bad as Watergate. Apparantly McConnell has a short memory. The bugging of the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel WAS bad. But the “Watergate Scandel”, as we have come to know it, included numerous illegal activities by the plumbers, plans to engage Democratic politicians in “honey traps”, having the I.R.S. target people on Nixon’s “enemies list” for audits, breaking into the psychologist offices of Daniel Ellsburg, etc., obstruction of justice (bribing witnesses, deleting portions of the White House recordings, etc.). Kissinger even said that the reason why Nixon didn’t come clean and avoid the obstruction of justice charge was he was trying to cover up for other plumber’s activities, much of which has yet to be revealed.
# 43 (continued): Of course, McConnell is ignoring the possibity that it was a member of his own staff who made the recording, and either he/she, or some other member of his re-election campaing, who leaked it to Mother Jones.
@43 “3. McConnell also referred to it as being as bad as Watergate.”
Let’s see…that’s like the GOPers were saying Benghazi was going to be “worse than Watergate”, and then that their little hire-whores-to-tell-lies-about-Menendez thing was going to be “worse than Watergate”…and before that they were saying Solyandra was going to be “worse than Watergate”. Hell, in the last few days at least a few of ’em were saying Obama’s comment about Kamala Harris was going to be “worse than Watergate”.
Let’s see…what have I left out?
# 45: It seems that the Republicans have a basic problem: their presidents have screwed up so badly, they spend generations trying to overcome the stima by trying to convince those with short attention spans that the Democrats are “just as bad”.
Problem is, the facts don’t bear them out. Nixon was impeached and threatened with removal (he resigned before they could do so) because he misused executive powers to try to subvert the democratic process. Republicans impeached and tried to remove Clinton for lying about getting a blowjob – not nearly an equivilency.
After four+ years of ignoring George W. Bush’s misdeads, they have tried to accuse President Obama because the economy isn’t recovering as fast as some of us would prefer, ignoring their own role in the disaster and their role in prolonging the economic disaster for political gain.
We could go on for a very long time on this subject….
For it to be “as bad as Watergate”, or even close, would require that Obama was somehow behind the bugging of McConnell’s office in the first place, if that is in fact what even happened. I don’t think so…
The American Public Transportation Association reported that 10.5 Billion trips were taken on buses and trains. That is the second highest total since 1957. At least 1-2 Billion of that is the NYC Subway. Ridership here was up 5%.
http://www.apta.com/mediacente.....rship.aspx
Evergreen @6,
I assumed because it said “a network” that it meant that there had to be more than one line for it to count.
As for the Tacoma Trestle, it was built by the Milwaukee Road, which no longer exists. The improvements made to Amtrak Cascades, over the last 20 years, was described in a TRAINS magazine article 2 years ago, as an incremental approach. The improvements that are underway, are a continuation, as it is still not one single project. The Point Defiance Bypass is just one of the biggest groups of projects within the corridor.
Carl, should have to have more than one line to be a network. I would not call Buffalo’ s one line system a network. The analogy used for the Northeast Corridor was a hallway, as other routes branched off(like the Keystone and Empire corridors, which branch off at Philadelphia and NYC). I also looked at it again, and they threw in the Springfield Monorail.
Just look at the latest debt values Steve.
From the previous president who’s administration allowed most or almost all of the 19 hijacking criminals to overstay their visas.
Agreed, Bush was an idiot
Corrected!
I was looking for a few details about MotivePower Wabtec, which builds commuter locomotives, and builds them in Boise. I was surprised it is a Union Shop,, although being in Idaho, they just get the benefits without having to join and pay dues. Doing a search about that, found this interesting piece. It is from a few years ago, but is from a state of Idaho website, mentioning the union jobs the contract provided. The contract Motive Power won from the MBTA in Boston.
http://commerce.idaho.gov/news.....tract.aspx
The model Boston bought might be the most powerful passenger locomotive in the country, with 4600hp, Sound Transit’ s new locomotives, from the same company, only produce 4000hp, but it is all they need to pull potential 8car Lakewood-Seattle trains, some East Coast operators have longer trains than that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPI_HSP46