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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Richard Fowler: A Big Mac would go up by $0.17 more with a $15 minimum wage.

Young Turks: Texas voter suppression law struck down.

Scenes from the Republican War on Women:

Mark Fiore: Trophy hunting and you

Thom: The Good, the Bad and the Very, Very Echinately Ugly!

Pap: Peddling fear brings in millions for Republicans.

Young Turks: Big win for animal rights activists.

Congressional Hits and Misses of the week.

The 2016 Clown Show:

Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins: TX Attorney General turns himself in.

Barely Productions: Uber meets Tinder.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about illegal drugs (and marijuana).

Lawrence O’Donnell: Reagan lies about Medicare.

White House: West Wing Week.

NRA CEO proves that being shot doesn’t hurt.

Jon:

Young Turks: Do Democrats handle the economy better than Republicans? (Spoiler alert: yes).

Obama: Voting Rights Act 50th Anniversary.

The debate question every candidate should be asked.

Mental Floss: 25 historic heists.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Civil Liberties Roundup

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The anti-choice movement in America has a long history of violence, radical extremism, and hypocrisy. Over the years, GOP politicians and the media have nurtured this dysfunction, giving it support above and beyond the small group of religious extremists for whom this cause has been central to their political outlook for decades. At its core, however, the anti-choice movement is a thinly-veiled attempt to shame and punish women for their moral choices by trying to dictate their medical decisions. It’s the closest thing American Christianity has to the notion of Sharia Law, and it remains an embarrassment to this nation that we continue to take it seriously.

So when the recent videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood engaging in illegal activity surfaced, I didn’t even pay attention. The history of the anti-choice movement very clearly pointed to the likelihood that these videos were selectively edited and dishonestly presented. But after about a week, I decided that just because someone was bullshitting me the last 200 times, maybe they’re on to something in the 201st. So I took a deep dive into the controversy.

Nope, still full of shit. And maybe even more ridiculous than they’ve ever been.

The videos purport to show Planned Parenthood employees engaging in the sale of discarded fetuses for profit. This sounds like a horrible thing and one that could lead to perverse incentives on the part of an abortion provider. But it’s total nonsense. Instead, Planned Parenthood is simply taking advantage of a law (passed by many anti-choice Republicans!) that allows women to donate an aborted fetus for scientific research and allows abortion providers to charge for the costs of preserving and delivering the cells without making a profit.

Even beyond the basic level of idiocy involved here, the tax dollars that the anti-choice extremists want to strip from Planned Parenthood don’t even go to abortions in the first place (that’s actually illegal). They go towards a wide variety of women’s health care and contraception efforts, many of which make a huge difference in reducing the number of abortions that occur. So if your goal is to eliminate abortion, it would be difficult to conjure up a more counterproductive way to do it than what these lunatics are demanding in the name of eliminating abortion.

News from the last two weeks…
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The Trump Debate Open Thread

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Hey…tonight is the first episode of the Trump-man show. So have at it in the thread below.

I wonder if FAUX News picked 6 Aug on purpose? Today is the anniversary of the day that President Bush was vacationing in Texas and was given a Presidential Daily Briefing that was titled, “Bin Laden determined to strike in the United States.” This memo came on the heels of numerous other warnings in the national security apparatus (as determined by the 9/11 Commission). Maybe they can discuss this along with any discussion of national security tonight….

Seattle Times Editorial Board Comes Out Against Changing Any Law Ever

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By all means, the Seattle Times editorial board should feel free to argue that “rent control is not the answer for Seattle.” I look forward to a robust and informed debate on the issue. But they don’t. Rather, the editors insist that council members and candidates simply “should stop talking about rent control.”

I dunno, seems odd for an op-ed page to advocate for less opinion and editorials. But whatever. For the thing I really find silly in this op-ed is the second clause of their headline: “Rent control is not the answer for Seattle, and is illegal.”

Really? We should stop talking about rent control because it is illegal? You know what else until recently used to be illegal? Marijuana. Same-sex marriage. Charter schools. Private liquor stores. That’s the whole point of talking about rent control—it’s a conversation about changing the law! 

Look, I can’t really say whether I support or oppose rent control, because I haven’t actually seen a specific proposal. Would I prefer to avoid price controls? Sure. They’re messy. But might a cap of some multiple of inflation prove useful as a temporary complement to a comprehensive affordable housing program aimed at dramatically increasing supply? Maybe. I welcome that debate. And so should all serious parties.

After all, if rent control is such an awful idea then the editors have nothing to fear, right?

 

It Was a Good Primary Night for Goldy

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The most elite members of Seattle's political press corps hard at work covering primary night.

The most elite members of Seattle’s political press corps hard at work covering primary night.

So I’m mostly out of the the electoral politics coverage business (praise the lord), but I couldn’t let yesterday’s primary results pass without a few quick and triumphal comments. Don’t know how one could spin it any other way, but it was a really big night for Kshama Sawant and the people and issues she represents. And it had to be a disappointment for her establishment opponents.

August primaries are typically low turnout affairs, with older more conservative voters disproportionately represented in the electorate. And yet Sawant still managed to capture 49.9 percent of the vote in a four-way race, and likely a few more points than that once the late ballots are tallied. That bodes awfully damn well for her with the much larger, younger, more left-leaning November electorate.

To be honest, these results were so far at the far high-end of my expectations that I broke into celebratory expletives when the ballots dropped. Of course, there’s still a lot of work that remains to be done; it’s still likely to be the most expensive city council race in Seattle history (by far), and that money buys you something. But Sawant and her campaign have once again demonstrated the effectiveness of grassroots organizing in local elections as well as the power of bluntly lefty message.

(And yes, I take more than a little pleasure watching the Trotskyists beat back an assault from the chamber-funded political establishment.)

As for the rest of the races, everybody I voted for or donated money to appears to have gotten through to the general election. And they weren’t all sure things to make the top two.

In the 4th district, kajillion-term incumbent Jean Godden looks to be coming in third behind Rob Johnson and Michael Maddux. It’s a shame she couldn’t retire more gracefully, but that was as much her choice as the voters’. And for the at-large position 8, tenants rights activist Jonathan Grant beat the better funded and better known John Roderick for the right to challenge council president Tim Burgess in the general. Building on what I wrote yesterday, Grant’s win along with Sawant’s robust results suggest that the affordable housing debate is resonating strongly with average voters.

Also, lifelong elections professional Julie Wise kicked ass against two politicians in the race for King County Director of Elections. So I’ve got no complaints from last night’s results. It was a happy primary election night for me.

Turnout, Turnout, Turnout!

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Despite all the reports of low turnout, it looks to me like it’s going to be pretty normal for an odd-year primary—north of 30 percent, at least here in Seattle. But to be honest, I’m not sure what to make of the turnout disparity in the Seattle City Council races, where District 3 (let’s be honest, Sawant vs Banks) is proving an outlier with 20 percent turnout by the end of Monday compared to about 16 percent turnout citywide.

Publicola thinks it bodes well for Sawant, and I’d love to agree. But I really can’t say. It could be an indication that Sawant’s base—younger more lefty voters—are turning out earlier and in greater numbers than usual. Or it could be that it’s the older, wealthier, and more reliably voting Sawant-haters who are turning out in force.

Either way, there’s every reason to suspect the late ballots to trend young and lefty, so if these aren’t Sawant voters swelling the early ballot returns, expect a hard swing in her favor as the tally trickles in over the next week. Sawant closed a 7.5 point election night gap during the 2013 general, so the final primary results could look very different than tonight’s 8:15 drop.

As for the other races, the contest I think could be a bellwether of the mood of the electorate is the battle between John Roderick and Jonathan Grant for the right to challenge City Council President Tim Burgess. In a normal year, the affable, well-spoken, and well-funded Roderick should come in an easy second. But Grant has clearly positioned himself as the champion of beleaguered Seattle renters. If the under-funded Grant manages to edge out Roderick for the second slot on the November ballot, that’ll be a clear sign that affordable housing is resonating as the dominant issue with voters citywide.

All that said, other than determining the composition of the November ballot, I’m going to try to resist reading too much into the primary results (and I’m certainly going to be cautious about predicting anything from tonight’s lone 8:15 pm ballot drop). November will be a very different (and much larger) electorate than August.

Oh… and if you haven’t already, vote, goddammit!

Drinking Liberally — Seattle

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DLBottleToday is election day. Don’t be an asshole…VOTE! Mail or drop off your ballot in a ballot box and then join us for an election party at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally this evening.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by even earlier for dinner.


Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings this week. The Long Beach, Tri-Cities and West Seattle chapters also meet tonight. The Lakewood chapter meets on Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets.

There are 189 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are good there’s a chapter meeting near you.

Open Thread: Carl’s Vacation

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I’m on vacation for the rest of this week, and am back the middle of next week. I won’t be taking my computer, so I’ll have no idea what’s going on (as opposed to usual when I have no idea what’s going on for other reasons) so I’ll probably be out until the 17th. I will have my phone with me, so I may post the occasional open thread, but not with any sort of Monday-Wednesday-Friday regularity, but they’ll probably be even shorter than this short note. I’ve mentioned this to some of the other posters, so there will still probably be some stuff here.

Anyway, see you in a few weeks.

Kshama Sawant: Rent Control Is Like a Minimum Wage for Tenants

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Kshama SawantLast week Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant* and I got into a conversation about rent control via email, and she provided such a clear and straightforward explanation of her position, that I asked if I could just repost it here to HA. Instead, she got back to me with the following slightly expanded, better formatted, and presumably copy edited version of her initial off-the-cuff response.

Critics have attempted to dismiss Sawant’s affordable housing advocacy as narrow, divisive, and unrealistic—at best a distraction from the real work at hand. But as you will read from the thoughtful response below, that is a gross mischaracterization. Sawant calls for a “comprehensive” approach. She supports using bonding capacity to build publicly owned housing. She supports most of the HALA recommendations, but would go further by including a “robust linkage fee.” Still, I specifically asked about rent control, and that is the focus of her response.

To me, the most compelling policy and political argument Sawant makes is the way she compares rent control to the minimum wage: they are both minimum standards necessary to protect against the natural imbalance of of power between landlord and tenant, or employer and employee. Rent control is not about repealing the market; it’s about reining in its excesses. And according to Sawant, the alleged construction-destroying impacts of rent control are just as unsubstantiated as the alleged job-killing impacts of the minimum wage.

Makes sense. But you can read for yourself:

Which Way for Affordable Housing in Seattle?

Seattle is booming with job growth and a major influx of working people. Yes, we need increased housing supply. Yes, we need zoning changes to build more housing, and to enable a denser and more walkable and accessible city. But why is there such a severe shortage of affordable housing in Seattle? And what is the solution to the problem?

Is It Just about Supply and Demand?
We are told that we need only rely on the so-called “free market.” We are told it is simply about supply and demand. Let developers build, let the supply of market-rate units increase. And at some point, magically, prices will come down and create housing affordability.

Not one of the proponents of this trickle-down theory can give a plausible idea, or even so much as a rough estimate, of how many units would have to be built for that point of affordability to be reached. We are asked to go on faith.

Amanda Burden, the director of New York City’s Department of Planning, a couple of years ago acknowledged that she had truly believed that NYC could build its way out of an affordable housing shortage. She said the city “built tremendous amount of housing” with that hope, “and the price of housing didn’t go down at all.”

Why Are We Losing Existing Affordable Units?
Supply and demand do explain why Seattle rents are going up. How much your rent increases, however, is determined by the relative balance of forces between tenants and the real estate lobby. Much the same way that wages and benefits in the workplace are a reflection of how much power workers have, including whether or not they have a union, to allow them to negotiate better working conditions.

In the absence of substantial tenant protections, rents tend to not only increase in a high-demand market, but to skyrocket. Why? Because developers and landlords can get away with it.

This opportunity to jack up rents means that tenants residing in market-available affordable units experience massive rent increases, which implies economic eviction. After the tenants are driven out, the previously affordable units are renovated, sometimes even minimally, and then rented for twice or three times the original rents.

What Policies Would Make Housing Affordable?
To actually create new affordable housing, we need a comprehensive policy program. I support most of the recommendations of the HALA committee, although they don’t go far enough. We need a robust linkage fee on big developers to generate a billion dollars to build affordable housing. We must also leverage the City’s bonding capacity to build thousands of units of City-owned affordable housing.

But it will take years to build the thousands of affordable housing units that Seattle desperately needs. In the meanwhile, policies that stabilize rent increases are essential in order to prevent price gouging. The citywide wave of economic evictions and displacement will not be stemmed without rent regulation.

Why Rent Control and What Does it Mean?
Price gouging is not inevitable. It happens in the absence of any real protections for tenants in the form of regulation on rent increases, just like worker exploitation happens in the absence of a minimum wage. That’s where rent control comes in.

By rent control, we mean linking rent increases to inflation. Landlords could still make profits and finance maintenance, but the massive rent hikes and economic evictions that we are seeing in Seattle would be prohibited.

Contrary to the myth that rent control slows construction and hurts housing supply, the two largest building booms in New York City history occurred in periods of strict rent control, first in the 1920s and again from 1947-1965. Demonizing rent control is inconsistent with what the numbers tell us.

But Republicans Control Olympia, So We can’t Win Rent Control Anyway, So Why Even Discuss It?
Rent controls are most needed in areas with runaway prices, which is typically localized metropolitan regions such as cities or counties. So the real estate lobby has always fought rent control by pouring money into the campaigns of conservative state-level politicians running from rural districts, where constituents are not demanding rent stabilization. Nothing unique about Washington State there.

And the only way metropolitan areas have won rent control despite all the real estate lobby money is by building a mass movement in their cities and counties and pushing back against the state. This is exactly what I have proposed as a political strategy here in Seattle. As a first step, Councilmember Licata and I have introduced a resolution to demand that Olympia repeal the ban on all rent regulations. I urge you to sign the petition in support of this resolution.

Rent Control is One of Many Tenant Protections Seattle Needs
We need rent control, but in the meantime we also need to urgently enact other laws to protect tenants. Developer loopholes need to be closed so relocation assistance can be expanded to tenants experiencing economic evictions. Tenants need more than 60-day notice in case of large rent increases (greater than 10 or 20%). Tenants with expiring leases need just-cause eviction protections.

Additionally, late fees and move-in costs for renters need to be capped. Penalties for deposit theft need to be increased. And we need a law that will require interest accrued on deposits to be returned to tenants.

To make all this possible, the City must fully fund the enforcement of tenant rights in the same way that we are setting out to enforce labor laws with the new Office of Labor Standards.

I would view the full spectrum of tenant protections (including regulating rents) with a lens similar to workplace rights. Laws such as minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination, occupational safety, and the right to unionize haven’t killed jobs or prevented companies from making profits.

These laws protect workers and provide for a better quality of life for working people. Even the proponents of the free market theory are themselves beneficiaries of the gains of labor struggles. The gains from successful housing affordability policies will be no different. The victory on the $15 minimum wage shows what workers can win when they organize and fight back. We need to build a similarly powerful organized movement for housing justice. Let us begin.

* Duh-uh, I’m a Kshama Sawant supporter. Only an idiot would need this disclaimer, but, well, you know….

What Color Should I Paint My House?

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My house (circa 1935).

My house (circa 1935).

I’m getting my house painted in a week or so, and I’ve yet to pick out colors because A) I’m a guy; and B) I’m one of those guys who is, um, differently color-vision-abled. So I thought I’d try crowd-sourcing the decision. What colors should I paint my 1912 craftsman (currently a pale yellowish base with brownish looking trim)?

Seriously. Here’s the Benjamin Moore online color selection tool.  I’m open to your suggestions.*

* (Though please don’t suggest some stupid color combination like the elementary school kids who would rip the wrappers off the crayons the minute they learned I was colorblind, and then tell me that the brown crayon was green—I’ll run my options by some actual women first just to make sure I’m not being fucked with.)

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Julianna Forlano: An Absurd Minute.

The 2016 Clown Convention:

Daily Show debunks the christian anti-discrimination myth.

VSauce: The Banach–Tarski Paradox:

Thom: The Good, The Bad and The Very, Very, Ancipitally Ugly!

The Obama–Stewart Conspiracy:

Obama lectures Congress as he signs 3 month highway funding bill.

David Pakman: Boy Scouts end ban on gay adults.

Things your racist uncle says on Facebook.

Fetal Attraction:

Mark Fiore: Plutonians of color.

Young Turks: Jewish fundamentalist attacks gay pride parade.

The hidden costs of U.S. wars.

Lion Killer:

Obama: Addressing AIDS/HIV in America.

Mental Floss: 25 things you didn’t know about dreams.

The NY Times Botched Clinton Email Story:

Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about religions.

David Pakman: In 2015, 204 mass shootings in 204 days.

Black and White and Red All Over:

How many countries have the U.S. invaded?

White House: West Wing Week.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Breaking News

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It was sometimes a source of tension between me and my editors at The Stranger, but as both a blogger and a “real” (i.e. paid) journalist, I’ve always tried to resist the urge to scoop—and I’ve always resented the occasional demand from other journalists that I somehow owe them a public hat tip for “breaking” a story that I could’ve broken first if I wasn’t so busy making sure I got my words and analysis (and, sure, facts) right.

This has nothing to do with journalistic ethics; I don’t even claim to know all the rules, let alone adhere to them faithfully. I’m just more interested in adding value than being first. That’s what bloggers do. Of course, I’d rather be first. But the only scoops I’m truly proud of are the ones I made by virtue of seeing a story where others did not.

Perhaps had the New York Times embraced the same sentiment, they might have averted an embarrassing shit show like this:

Second, in its rush to publish what it clearly viewed as a major scoop, the Times relied on questionable sourcing and went ahead without bothering to seek corroborating evidence that could have supported its allegation.

In our conversations with the Times reporters, it was clear that they had not personally reviewed the IG’s referral that they falsely described as both criminal and focused on Hillary Clinton. Instead, they relied on unnamed sources that characterized the referral as such. However, it is not at all clear that those sources had directly seen the referral, either. This should have represented too many “degrees of separation” for any newspaper to consider it reliable sourcing, least of all The New York Times.

To be clear, the New York Times libeled Hillary Clinton, and were she not a public figure the paper would be facing a multi-million dollar settlement as the price of their negligence. And it all resulted from their prideful pursuit of a scoop.

The irony is, in the Internet age, nobody really gives a shit who was first. The way I experienced it, the story first broke on Twitter. But everybody now knows who broke the news by breaking it wrong.

Open Thread 7-31

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– Looks like a great panel.

– I just want to point out that women, in general, particularly older women, can’t win on this one. If they don’t go out of their way to at least look presentable they’re called an “old crone” and if they do they’re derided for spending so much time and money to try to look presentable. And none of it prevents the world from being casually vocal about how revolting they look look either way.

– I doubt this will keep Tim Eyman’s bullshit off the ballot. Still, at a certain point, this nonsense is just going to have to stop. It’s tough to change the state constitution for a reason.

– So the fake Planned Parenthood videos are now causing state governments to harass abortion providers that don’t even participate in the tissue donation program.

– And so, I sacrifice thee in the name of the Second Amendment!

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