HorsesAss.Org

Obviously, I’ve known intuitively after the Oregon ruling that the entire West Coast has marriage equality. But still, it’s really great seeing the map.

The linked post says there’s a lot to do, and of course that’s right. Also, marriage equality isn’t the end all be all of gay rights or of modern civil rights struggles. But as of this week, you can drive from Canada to Mexico in marriage equality states. While the Northeast, Midwest, and Arizona feel like islands of equality, the entire West Coast feels more substantive, even if it’s fewer states than the Northeast.

Pediatric neurosurgeon and accused stalker Monica Wehby easily beat second place Jason Conger 50 percent to 37 percent yesterday in Oregon’s Republican US Senate primary, after voters ran out of time to make an informed decision.

A police report detailing allegations that Wehby repeatedly stalked her ex-boyfriend at his home, entered without his invitation, and harassed his employees, did not emerge until Friday, May 16, the last day in which Oregon voters could be reasonably assured of putting their ballot in the mail and having it arrive by the state’s Tuesday, May 18 received-by deadline.

Wehby will go on to be trounced by Democratic incumbent Senator Jeff Merkley in the November general election.

Every election season our state’s editorial boards chime in with demands to switch Washington’s postmarked-by Election Day ballot deadline to Oregon’s more restrictive received-by deadline. The argument is that forcing voters to return their ballots sooner would result in faster election results. But as I’ve repeatedly explained, it won’t. Our elections departments can’t keep up with the volume of ballots that already arrive during the final couple days of the election. All switching the deadline would do is disenfranchise thousands of additional Washington voters.

But the Wehby incident illustrates another disadvantage to Oregon’s received-by deadline: it effectively shortens the election season by three or four days, leaving many voters unable to respond to late-breaking news like Wehby’s stalking scandal. In Washington, you can drop your ballot off at your neighborhood post office as late as Tuesday afternoon and be reasonably assured that your vote will eventually be counted, but in Oregon you damn well better put your ballot in the mail by Friday, Saturday at the absolute latest. Sure, first class mail sometimes arrives next day when mailed within the same urban center, but sometimes it doesn’t. So you’d be crazy to post your ballot on a Monday.

In practice, Tuesday’s proximity to the weekend essentially moves Oregon’s vote-by-mail Election Day to the previous Friday.

There are many advantages to a vote-by-mail election, not the least of which being the vastly reduced opportunities for voter suppression. But there is no reason to exacerbate the system’s weaknesses in pursuit of maybe reporting election results a tiny bit faster.

– Everyone seems to like Mayor Murray’s choice for police chief.

– Maybe guns in bars might not be such a good idea

– Hey bicyclists, be careful.

– Please jot this down and re-read it the next time you knee-jerkingly and douchily deny you are privileged. Thanks.

– Here are some names of parties that people used this year (Spokesman-Review link).

– Congrats Oregon and Pennsylvania on human dignity.

– I haven’t been watching Cosmos (I’ll probably catch it when it comes out on DVD because I am 1000 years old) but it’s always fun to watch creationists lose their shit.

I am not a reporter and HA is not a news site. Just thought I’d take a moment to make that clear.

It’s been a couple months now since I left The Stranger and yet I’m still getting phone calls, text messages, and emails asking me to show up at some press event or another, or badgering me about why I haven’t shown some important issue enough love, and the answer of course is, because it’s not my job. Absent a steady (if meager) paycheck, I’ve been forced to take on some regular contract work that leaves me free to pursue my journalistic passions without conflict or compromise, but which doesn’t leave me much time to do it.

So to be clear, I have not returned to HA as a full time blogger. I will continue to post to HA on a regular basis—mostly political commentary and media criticism—but I simply cannot afford to write for free full time. And since there’s only so much time in the day, my first obligation when divvying up my work schedule has to be to the people who are paying me money.

It sucks, but that’s the way capitalism works, folks.

The five-plus years I spent as a full-time independent blogger were the most gratifying work years of my life (my three-plus years writing at The Stranger a bit less so), and if there are patrons out there willing to subsidize my folly, I would gladly recommit myself to the project. But for the moment, I can’t. And so to all my friends in the broader progressive community who have come to rely on me to cover your issues and events, well, tough nuts. I’ve got bills to pay and deadlines to meet. Welcome to the new HA.

I’d been meaning to comment on Danny Westneat’s recent column suggesting real estate development impact fees as an alternative to the current round of proposed tax increases, and I want to start by thanking Danny for at least attempting to think creatively on the issue. Really. I’m a big fan of using one’s media presence in the service of public brainstorming.

That said, while I’ve got nothing against them in theory, I don’t think impact fees can or should be a big part of the solution here in Seattle.

For example, take Danny’s inspiration: being crowded onto a sweaty No. 8 bus. “By state law impact fees can’t be used directly for transit,” Danny writes. So then, um, what’s the point? Seattle’s transportation benefit district—the same authority Mayor Ed Murray has proposed using to raise vehicle license fees and sales tax in order to buy back Metro bus service cuts—also has the authority to levy impact fees on commercial (nonresidential) development. But that’s not going to add any service hours to Danny’s No. 8 bus.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t use this authority to help fund roads and stuff, just that it does nothing to solve our immediate crisis.

Second, the notion of charging residential impact fees (Danny says that Bellevue charges $2,600 per house and $1,300 per apartment unit) would run headlong into Seattle’s efforts to address our city’s growing affordable housing crisis, both by making new housing more expensive, and potentially more scarce. Furthermore, anything that holds back new construction ends up adversely impacting property tax revenue, as new construction is exempt from I-747’s absurd 1 percent cap on regular levy revenue growth, and thus the engine of revenue growth in general.

Third, the logic of impact fees just doesn’t hold in a dense urban center like Seattle the way it does in a sprawling suburb, where new developments on virgin residential land often require the construction of new roads, new sewers, new fire stations, new schools, and so forth. Most residential development here in Seattle consists of in-filling in areas where all of these basic services already exist, so it just doesn’t carry with it the same sort of additional public infrastructure costs as a new suburban subdivision.

But finally—and this is my biggest complaint with Danny’s solution—impact fees do nothing to address the heart of the problem: our refusal to tax the people who can best afford to pay higher taxes. You know, the wealthy!

Implicit in Danny’s column is the acknowledgment that Seattle’s public services and infrastructure are underfunded. He’s not arguing with the need to expand bus service, maintain our parks, or fund universal preschool. He just seems to think that the latest round of proposed taxes are too much for the average taxpayer to bear. That’s debatable, but if you presume that it’s true, simply shoving the burden onto the backs of newcomers isn’t much of a solution. Instead, we should be looking for ways to ask our under-taxed wealthy to pick up more of the cost of maintaining the city in which they prosper. Not just out of fairness, but out the very pragmatic logic that they are the people with the most extra money to spare.

I look forward to Danny joining me in attempting to brainstorm a solution to that vexing problem.

Tuesday is election night, with primaries in Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania. There is bound to be some surprises and, with the Idaho gubernatorial GOP primary alone, much entertainment. So please join us tonight for an evening of electoral politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. The starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks show up before that for dinner and the early election returns.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state chapter of Drinking Liberally over the next week. The Tri-Cities and Shelton chapters also meet this Tuesday. The Lakewood and South Seattle chapters meet this Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Woodinville and Spokane chapters meet.

With 209 chapters of Living Liberally, including nineteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Seattle City Council members Nick Licata and Kshama Sawant announced today a plan that would avert scheduled bus service cuts within Seattle through increases in the commercial parking tax and the employer head tax. You know, just like I had suggested.

“I have asked our policy staff to research exactly how much revenue could be raised through these means, and to begin drafting legislation to introduce to the City Council,” said Licata in a prepared statement.

Unlike Mayor Ed Murray’s proposed vehicle license fee and sales tax package, or the competing property tax proposal, hikes in the commercial parking tax and the employer head tax could be passed councilmanically without having to be put to voters. The council could pass these tax increases now, in time to avert the first round of Metro cuts that are scheduled for September. The other packages couldn’t go to voters before November, well after the first round of cuts are implemented.

Also unlike the other proposed taxes and fees, the commercial parking tax and the employer head tax aren’t particularly regressive. So that’s a big plus in their favor.

While only Licata and Sawant have put their names on this proposal, a birdie tells me that at least one or two other council members have expressed interest. So there is a real shot at preventing in-city bus cuts entirely instead of just preventing them from getting any worse.

Last fall I walked into the McDonald’s on Madison Street in Seattle to order myself a metaphor. The point was to demonstrate how incredibly cheap fast food is by historical standards, and how little impact a $15 an hour minimum wage would really have on fast food prices.

I estimated that even if the entire cost of raising the minimum wage to $15 was passed on to consumers (and it wouldn’t be), menu prices would rise by only 20 percent, tops. Probably closer to 16 percent. Maybe as little as 10 percent.

And considering that, adjusted for inflation, the same 15 cents that bought you a McDonald’s hamburger back in 1948 buys you a $1.49 double cheeseburger today, it’s hard to argue that consumers can’t afford to pay a little bit more for their burgers.

Friday I walked into that exact same McDonald’s and paid $1.69 for the exact same double cheeseburger, a 13.5 percent price hike in less than six months. And yet for all the warnings from the industry that higher prices would drive away customers, it was business as usual at the Madison Street McDonald’s.

The fact is, restaurants and other businesses implement price hikes like these all the time, for various reasons, and nobody notices! In the worst case scenario for franchise owners under the proposed minimum wage ordinance, their labor costs would rise by no more than 18 percent a year over three years, before being indexed to inflation. But labor only accounts for a third of their costs. Pass all of that along to consumers (and again, they won’t), and you are looking at just a 6 percent annual price hike—less than half the rise in double cheeseburger prices just since December.

To put that in perspective—using the industry’s same minimum-wage-hikes-equals-higher-prices math in reverse—if all of the gains from a 13.5 percent price hike were passed on to employees in the form of higher wages, Madison Street McDonald’s workers would be making about $13.35 an hour today! Just from charging the equivalent of 20 cents more for a double cheeseburger! A price hike that customers apparently accepted with a shrug, if they noticed at all!

So let’s not pretend that fast food franchisees can’t afford to cover the cost of raising the minimum wage to $15 over three years, when they routinely pass on to consumers similar cost increases all the time.

– On Friday I had a breezy piece on the filing deadline. Joel Connelly has more info.

– Spitting, Stalking, Rape Threats: How Gun Extremists Target Women

– I’m excited about a possibility of a coal free state of Washington (Columbian link).

– You know the GOP are extreme on immigration when their leadership won’t even let the ENLIST Act come up for a vote.

– Rep. Matt Manweller’s plan to put a surcharge on one concert venue only to pay for medical bills seems maybe not as thought out as he would like.

– In Which I Cross All Limits To Acceptable Human Law

– Anyone enjoying museum week?

Last week’s contest was a tough one, it went unsolved as of Saturday morning. It was Rosario, Argentina.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere in the state of Hawaii, good luck!

Deuteronomy 28:53
And you shall eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your sons and daughters, whom the LORD your God has given you, in the siege and in the distress with which your enemies shall distress you.

Yummy. Discuss.

Got student dept? So do these politicians.

Greenman: Dark Snow Project, 2014:

Massive Right Wing March on Washington to Overtake the Government:

• David Pakman: “Patriotic” group march on D.C. to drive Obama from office.
• Young Turks: Operation American Spring!!!
• Maddow: Arrest Obama, Pt 1
• Maddow: Arrest Obama, Pt 2
• Sam Seder reports on “Operation American Spring” that calls for millions to overthrow Obama.

Thom: Why Mitch McConnell should be fired for VA Death Panels.

Liberal Viewer: Are most terrorists Muslim?

Ann Telnaes: Chris Christie is back to his charming self.

Stephen takes on #BringBackOurGirls.

Pap: Big Pharma’s deceitful practices.

The Totally Normal Idaho GOP Gubernatorial Primary Debate:

• HuffPo: Lessons from the Idaho GOP Primary debate
• Highlights from the great Idaho debate.

• Young Turks: Idaho GOP debate gets kkkraaaaaaazzzzzyyyyyy.
• Chris Hayes: The Cartoonish GOP debate
• More highlights from Idaho.

Stephen calls BS on Amazon’s newest patent.

Thom: The GOP is no different from Boka Haram.

Donald Sterling’s inner monologue.

Jon explains India’s election.

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Jon on Rush on Michelle on the kidnapped Nigerian girls (via TalkingPointsMemo).

Mental Floss: The surprising hobbies of many well known persons.

Sam Seder: The humiliating GOP Obamacare hearing.

Thom: Cliven Bundy is The Ugly American.

John Oliver’s How is this Still a Thing? Dressing up as other races.

BENGHAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZIIII!I!!11!!1!!!!!:

• Mark Fiore: Learn to speak BENGHAZI.
• Ed: Republicans engage in some more dishonesty….
• Sharpton: Why GOP’s Benghazi witch-hunt will never be Watergate.
• Ari Melber: The GOP fundraising stunt, Part I
• Ari Melber: The GOP fundraising stunt, Part II
• Alex Wagner: The big GOP recycle job, Part I
• Alex Wagner: The big GOP recycle job, Part II

White House: West Wing Week.

Stephen does Glen Greenwald.

Young Turks: White bred Republicans.

WaPo: The private life of Jacqueline Kennedy.

Morgan Ferretti: Brain damage and other awful things.

Dr. Karl Rove, M.D.:

• Young Turks: Karl Rove’s latest dirty trick
• Stephen is worried about Karl Rove’s brain AND ass.
• David Pakman: Hillary’s brain injury.
• Sam Seder: Disgusting Rove
• Jon: Donald Sterling and Karl Rove.
• Sharpton: KKKarl Rove gets schooled.

David Pakman: Right wing policies are literally killing women.

Eric Schwartz: STFU Ann Coulter:

Jon: The Media receive a miracle!

Thom: Why can’t we all be Sarah Palin?

Ann Telnaes: One man…lots of votes.

Young Turks: Free health clinics are closing…THANKS ObamaCare!!!

The FCC wishes happy 25th to the World Wide Web.

Sam Seder and Ari Berman: The Voter Fraud Myth.

Rubio Goes to School:

• Young Turks: Prof. Marco Rubio (R-Nutsville) on anthropogenic climate disruption..
• Sam Seder: Rubio thinks he knows more about climate change than climate scientists.
• Ari Melber: Marco Rubio, Rand Paul & the GOP’s “Flat Earth Society”
• Chris Hayes: Rubio and the GOP Climate Denialists
• Ed and Pap and Gov. Schweitzer: The dull brain of Marco Rubio.
• Joy-Ann Reid: Rubio on climate.
• David Pakman: Rubio is no climate scientist.

David Pakman: Even Mitt Romney says raise the minimum wage.

Jon rips Harry Reid for his Koch obsession and Adelson amnesia.

A Republican explains Godzilla:

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

It snuck up on me this year, but it looks like if you had to file for office, in Washington, your chance is up. Here’s the list for Congressional, legislative, and court races.

Not much jumped out at me, but I will say as a history/civics nerd, kudos to Mike The Mover for running on the National Union Party line. Not enough to make me vote for him if I lived in the district, but well done nonetheless.

With the last few days so nice, a lot of people have decided to take their bike to work (yay!). And some of those people are riding on the otherwise bus only 3rd Avenue Downtown (boo?). Most of the time, as someone who bikes and takes buses in bike and bus lanes, I love that they exist, and can mostly coexist. Going from Downtown to Ballard in either mode is enhanced by lanes that bikes and buses can both use. And normally when someone complains about those damn bikes in the car lanes, the proper response is to complain about how poorly they must be driving if they can’t get around and to remind them that the roads are for everybody.

But 3rd Ave, at least during rush hour, isn’t for everybody. It’s to get buses as quickly through downtown as possible given how shitty the rest of Downtown is for traffic. If you slow down a car that was already inching along, or that could go around, it’s not as big of a deal as slowing down a bus in a corridor where that isn’t the case.

And look, I realize that 2nd and 4th are one way, and on a hill, so it can be problematic to ride a bike from one to the other to get going the right direction. And I’m certainly not advocating ticketing bicyclists like they ticket cars. It’s one of the few situations where I’m not sure it’s better to have bikes.

Really, Ed? It’s not even worth talking about?

Murray said Thursday he let the group know that the city council is not prepared to rework a Memorandum of Understanding between the city, county and Hansen to build a Sodo arena for a hockey team ahead of an NBA franchise.

“They wanted to explore the possibility of opening the MOU so a hockey team would go first,” Murray said. “My read right now is that opening up the MOU is not something the council is interested in at this time.”

Why? Why on earth would we be unwilling to even consider reopening the MOU in the interest of bringing an NHL team to Seattle? I presume, because Murray just wants to kill the whole McGinn-branded SODO arena deal. You know, because.

Sorry, sports fans. If he can’t stamp his name on it, he’s not interested.