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As expected, Mayor Ed Murray announced today a Seattle-only tax package that would buy back 90 percent of bus service reductions financially strapped King County Metro has proposed for in-city routes. The $60 vehicle license fee and tenth of a cent sales tax increase would raise approximately $45 million a year—$42 million to restore and preserve Seattle bus routes, and $3 million towards a “Regional Partnership Fund” intended to attract matching funds from surrounding cities to spend toward preserving intercity commuter routes.

This is of course the same tax package rejected by county voters in Proposition 1 last, relying on the same “transportation benefit district” authority the state grants cities and counties. (I’ve dubbed it Proposition 1.1.) The only real differences between the two measures are that Prop 1 would have spent 40 percent of revenue on roads, whereas Prop 1.1 is dedicated entirely toward transit—and of course that Prop 1.1 will be voted on only in Seattle, where voters overwhelmingly favored Prop 1 by a better than two to one margin.

Murray was prodded into pushing forth his own proposal by a competing initiative to buy back Seattle bus service via a $30 million a year property tax increase. “We are thrilled that Seattle voters will have a chance to vote to preserve their bus service this fall,” initiative sponsor Ben Schiendelman of Friends of Transit replied via email. “With several progressive revenue sources available, we hope the council will take a serious look at all funding options before putting transit on the ballot.”

Schiendelman says that his organization has suspended signature gathering. Mission accomplished.

As for me, I’m agnostic as to the revenue source, as none of the options are great. “It is not ideal,” admitted Seattle City Council member Tom Rasmussen at this morning’s press conference. “We sought a motor vehicle excise tax from the state. They failed us.”

They certainly did.

Murray and others repeatedly stressed that this was just a temporary solution until the legislature grants Metro a viable regional funding option. But I’m not so sure. Given the thrashing Prop 1 took by county voters, I don’t know that a more progressive MVET would have passed either. And I’m not hopeful that we’ll get MVET authority out of Olympia until the Democrats retake control of the state senate, an iffy prospect this November. “This is really up to voters,” offered state Senator Jamie Pedersen (D-Seattle). Good luck with that.

But the good news is that there appears to be strong support within Seattle from both the electorate and our elected leaders to tax ourselves to maintain crucial bus service. So while the suburbs may suffer, Seattle will attempt to at least take care of its own.

TANGENTIAL ASIDE: What is up with Seattle Times headline writers today? “County, city take variety of routes on bus rescue“…? No, they’ve taken the exact same route: cities buying back bus service hours. Not as bad as the Obamacare headline, but do the headline writers bother reading their own paper?

Oh no! “Insurers propose up to 26% increase in health-plan rates,” the headline on the front page of the Seattle Times website warns. Goddamn Obamacare ruining everything! Except, read the actual article and…

The proposed rate changes range from a decrease of 6.8 percent — from Molina Healthcare of Washington — to an increase of 26 percent from Time Insurance, a national company with relatively few Washington policyholders.

Most rate-change requests, particularly from larger insurers, were in the middle ground, with most asking for increases from about 2 to about 11 percent.

To anyone who has had individual insurance, premium increases are not surprising: Records show that, on average, insurers have proposed rate increases for individual plans from about 9 percent to more than 18 percent every year from 2007 to 2013.

So that one 26 percent rate hike proposal was an outlier—almost double the next highest request—that affects few Washingtonians, while the average rate hike request is actually lower than that during the previous six years! Yay for Obamacare! But you wouldn’t know that from the incredibly biased and misleading heading.

I mean, they could’ve written their headline to read “Insurers propose up to 6.8% cut in health-plan rates,” and been just as accurate. But they didn’t.

This is actually a really important election year story. Republicans have been looking to the rate hike requests as an election year opportunity to spin Obamacare into a disaster for consumers. But if the rate hike requests are actually coming in lower than in previous years, then that is at least preliminary evidence that the exchanges are pulling in enough healthy Americans to balance the costs.

So thanks, Seattle Times editors, for attempting to spin relatively good news on one of the first post-Obamacare rate hike requests into an anti-Obamacare national headline.

UPDATE: So how do other headline writers interpret the news? “A Washington State Health Insurer Plans to Cut Rates in 2015,” declares the Wall Street Journal, taking the opposite (and arguably sexier) spin. Pretty embarrassing for the Seattle Times.

UPDATE, UPDATE: As Richard points out in the comment thread, the editors updated the article at 10:35 am, changing the headline to the far more neutral: “Most state health insurers seek rate boost: Proposals compared.” Score another victory for Seattle Times Voluntary Ombudsman David Goldstein!

Tuesdays are made for politics. So please join us this evening for some 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 earlier for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle? Check out another Washington state chapter of Drinking Liberally over the next week. The Tri-Cities, Vancouver, WA, and Redmond chapters also meet on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. For Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets. And next Monday, the Aberdeen, Yakima and Olympia chapters meet.

With 215 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.

For legislative bodies, I’m of the opinion that individual legislators really ought to subsume their constituents’ needs to the need of the whole. So yeah, state legislators should advocate for the areas they represent, but they should do what’s best for the state when the two are in conflict. After all, they’re state legislators. And yes, I realize in practice it doesn’t work that way for most politicians. So I’m glad that Ed Murray has for the bulk of his career in government had a regional/statewide view of problem solving.

Still, now that he’s no longer a legislator, he should probably knock it off. I mean, finding regional solutions are great if they benefit Seattle. But if they don’t benefit Seattle, there’s really no point in him doing them.

So now that there’s a plan to save transit in Seattle, I hope that he can find more times when Seattle needs to, or it’s just Seattle’s best option to, go it alone. Sure it would have been in Seattle’s best interest to be better connected to the suburbs. And it would be better for the planet if the rest of King County used buses more. But the rest of the county’s rejection of buses means it’s in Seattle’s best interest not to tether ourselves to the rest of the county on transit.

Seattle is big enough and different enough politically from the rest of the state and the county that sometimes the best thing is to go it alone. I realize that might offend the mayor’s sensibilities. But he wanted to be Mayor and not Senate Minority Leader, so his job isn’t to form the best coalitions, it’s to lead one city.

By all accounts Mayor Ed Murray is expected to ask the city council to send to the ballot a measure to buy back in-city Metro bus service cuts via a $60 car tab fee and tenth of a cent hike in the sales tax. Sound familiar? That’s the exact same tax that was rejected by King County voters last month in the form of Proposition 1, because it’s the exact same taxing authority also granted to the city via a transportation benefit district.

Call it Proposition 1.1.

I suppose this funding option is as good as any other, especially considering that Prop 1 passed here in Seattle. Even better, it’s Ed’s idea rather than Ben’s, so that means Prop 1.1 will enjoy Ed’s enthusiastic support. Which is fine. I don’t really care who gets the credit for things as long as good things get done. And buying back Metro bus service cuts is a good thing.

That said, I just can’t help but feeling a little wistful over the fact that just couple years ago Seattle voters rejected a similar car tab measure targeted toward expanding transit service—precious taxing authority we’ll now be using merely to preserve transit service. That’s not much of a step forward. Also, it is of course a shame that suburban and exurban Metro riders will be totally dicked over by these cuts.  But what are we to do? Suffer in sympathy?

Feisty and I just went for a walk, and I took the opportunity to stream Philadelphia sports radio station 97.5 The Fanatic on my phone. Because I’m a diehard Philadelphia Eagles fan, and I was interested in hearing Philly sports talk’s take on the Eagle’s draft. But all any of the callers wanted to talk about was The ESPN Kiss: Missouri linebacker Michael Sam’s emotional embrace of his boyfriend after getting the news that the St. Louis Rams had made him the first out player drafted by an NFL team.

Most of the callers were pretty damn mad. Or disgusted. Or both. Which I guess is a sad commentary on how much anti-gay prejudice remains in mainstream America.

But here’s the thing: host Mike Missanelli forcefully defended the kiss, repeatedly calling out his callers on their bigotry. “If Michael Sam chooses to kiss is boyfriend on national television, what rights does that take away from anyone else?” Missanelli rhetorically asked his audience. “Zero,” he answered. Indeed, Missanelli didn’t just defend Sam’s public display of gay affection, he ridiculed his callers for their outrage, repeatedly comparing it to the outrage people used to express at seeing a black man kiss a white woman.

This is sports talk. In Philadelphia. A disproportionately white, middle-aged, blue collared, Catholic (Italian & Irish) audience. And the hosts are calling their listeners bigots for objecting to a televised gay kiss.

The next generation of sports fans are going to be influenced by these talkers. And that’s progress.

It’s not often that I find myself passionately on the same side of a controversial issue with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and the Seattle Times editorial board. Then again, there really shouldn’t be anything controversial about net neutrality.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has suffered a barrage of criticism since he proposed allowing Internet service providers (ISPs) to cut deals with content providers to pay more for faster service.

Wheeler’s pay-for-prioritization proposal means the end of net neutrality, the idea that all Internet content is treated equally — free of toll booths or fast lanes.

Imagine if, let’s say, HA suddenly started loading a quarter as fast as the Seattle Times—or perhaps not at all—because I couldn’t afford to pay Comcast and Qwest the “prioritization fees” necessary to get my content to their customers  via their fast lanes? No wait. I don’t have to imagine. I’ve already been through something like that in a prior venture.

When I first started up my software company in the early 1990s, large software retailers like Egghead, Computer City, and CompUSA all bought direct. We got crappy terms, and it was often a hassle (Computer City had us ship directly to individual stores, sometimes ordering as few as two copies per store), but at least we had access to the market.

But it was right around that time that an explosion of consumer titles and a wave of consolidation started changing everything for small independent publishers. One by one the major retailers stopped buying direct, instead insisting on buying through one of two or three distributors. But we were too small to get into distribution. The two largest distributors demanded annual six-figure “market development funds”—essentially a retail channel entrance fee. A second tier distributor took us on before quickly going bankrupt, stiffing us on tens of thousands of dollars in accounts receivable.

But wait. It gets worse.

Once we lost access to brick and mortar retail, the mail order catalogs, which had previously accounted for more than 70 percent of our sales, started jacking up the “co-op advertising fees” to independents like us who had no other options. An eighth of a page ad that cost us a few hundred bucks a month in 1993 could run as much as $8,000 a month by 1996. It wasn’t that there wasn’t a market for our rhyming dictionary software, it’s that we could no longer afford to access to it. So products like ours disappeared from the market until the App Store model democratized the software industry more than a decade later.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but it’s close enough. When I first started blogging a decade ago, I had every disadvantage but one: equal and unfettered access to readers. And so I was free to compete in the marketplace of ideas, winning what readership I could based on the quality of my content rather than the whims (or extortion) of some gatekeeper. This relatively low barrier to entry is one of the things that has made the Internet so transformative. But take away net neutrality and you will ultimately create a sort of broadband apartheid—a separate and unequal Internet forever in the grasp of those who levy the tolls, and those few who can afford to pay them.

Save the Internet!

– The funny looking building that I write too many posts about is turning 10 this week.

– Congrats Daddy Constantine.

– For all the chatter about the law’s unpopularity, the fact remains that Obamacare is not only more popular than the Republican repeal fantasy, it’s also more popular than Republicans.

– Glad to see crisis pregnancy centers having trouble with their deceptive advertising.

– When did appeals to realism become a trump card in pop culture criticism? And when did we agree that a certain kind of Internet commenter is the final arbiter of what is real and what is not? (has a blurred out, but maybe still NSFW picture)

Last week’s contest was won by Theophrastus. It was Bonn, Germany.

This week’s a random location from the Google Maps views, good luck! (you may have noticed that the redesign allows for larger images in these posts from now on, thanks Goldy!)

And Happy Mother’s Day!

Jeremiah 20:14-18
Cursed be the day I was born! May the day my mother bore me not be blessed! Cursed be the man who brought my father the news, who made him very glad, saying, “A child is born to you—a son!” May that man be like the towns the LORD overthrew without pity. May he hear wailing in the morning, a battle cry at noon. For he did not kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave, her womb enlarged forever. Why did I ever come out of the womb to see trouble and sorrow and to end my days in shame?

Happy Mother’s Day! Discuss.

University of Missouri defensive end Michael Sam became the first openly gay player to be taken in the NFL draft, when the St. Louis Rams selected him in the seventh round, the 249th pick out of 256.

At 6-1, 261 pounds, Sam is considered undersized for his position and not a great fit for the Rams’ 4-3 defense, so he’d have to be considered a long shot to make the team. But still, his high-profile draft selection breaks an awfully important barrier for gay athletes weighing the career implications of coming out of the closet. So kudos to the Rams for using a draft pick to make this statement.

Ten years ago today I published my first blog post, and HA is celebrating with a long overdue facelift: Bigger, cleaner, mobile responsive, and easier on my aging eyes. (Oh no! Changes! Complain in the comment thread if you want—I’m still making tweaks, and I’m eager to consider your feedback before mostly ignoring it.)

As for HA’s bilious innards, well, that’s sure as hell not changing. Re-reading that introductory post, it’s kinda funny how I managed to get the original vision for HA so remarkably right, while at the same time being so totally clueless as to how blogging would come to dominate my life. At the start, I told myself that blogging would be a good exercise in forcing myself to write every day. Writing three, four, sometimes five posts a day was never in my plans.

Anyway, I don’t feel like getting sentimental, and I certainly don’t want to put too much thought into the next ten weeks of HA, let alone the the next ten years. For the moment, I’m back writing here part-time while making a living taking on contract and freelance work. Thank you to everybody in the HA community (except for some of the vilest trolls) for this amazingly weird and gratifying decade. I appreciate being appreciated. Though of course, I also appreciate money.

Jon: The NY State Senate’s great yogurt debate.

Mark Fiore: Creative Execution.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.

Richard Fowler: The tale of indicted GOP Rep. Michael Grimm.

Jon: Occupy Jail.

Monica Redux:

• Young Turks: She’s back!
• WaPo: Lewinsky’s top five targets in Vanity Fair.
• Ed: Lynn Cheney’s crazy conspiracy.
• Sharpton: Wingnuts go conspiratorial over Lewinsky story.
• Alex Wagner: The mythical power of The Clinton.
• Ann Telnaes: Cheney’s have a blue dress in their past, too.

Ed: Michele Bachmann launches mission to block National Women’s History Museum .

ONN: The Onion Week in Review.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News, “Huge Christian cross isn’t religous”.

FBI investigates Bundy supporters over death threats (via Crooks and Liars).

Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: What’s the difference between Tea Party and Establishment Republicans?

Stephen: Everywhere is guns.

Mental Floss: 60 Regional foods you shouldn’t eat anywhere else.

Emily’s abortion video.

White House: West Wing Week.

Thom: Gov ID nightmare.

Bill Maher: New Rule for Justice Thomas.

BENGHAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZIIIIIII!!!!!1!!11!1! Derangement Disorder:

• David Pakman: FAUX and Fiends link Benghazi to missing flight….
• Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Benghazi and the GOP conspiracy machine
• Sharpton: GOP’s Benghazi clown act.
• Alex Wagner: The GOP’s Benghazi-funding strategy
• Thom: The FAUX News hardon for Benghazi.
• When in doubt…BENGHAAAAAZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIII!1!I!!!1!!!

• Matt Binder: FAUX News blames Nigerian girls’ kidnapping on…BENGHAAAAAAZZZZZIIIIII!!!!1!!1!
• David Pakman: Right wing media cashes in on Benghazi
• Chris Hayes: Over dead bodies—The GOP runs on #Benghazi
• Young Turks: Republicans raise money off the dead
• Reid Report: The GOP’s McCarthyism & Political witch-hunts of today
• Sam Seder and Digby: The politics of Benghazi
• Steve Kornacki: GOP Benghazi feeding frenzy, Part I
• Steve Kornacki: GOP Benghazi feeding frenzy, Part II

Stephen: Tip and Wag.

Thom: ALEC is trying to take down the EPA.

David Pakman: GOP ObamaCare hearing goes horribly wrong…for the GOP.

Maddow: Massachusetts Tea-Party politician, Mark Fisher’s million dollar ransom.

Sharpton: The death of a GOP talking point:

Richard Fowler: A huge week for minimum wage.

Jon: 2016 will be a lame remix of Bush and Clinton.

White House: Inside the WH solar panels.

Stephen interviews a teabagging vampire.

Ann Telnaes: Climate Change cooking.

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

Lots of changes to the website going on tonight. Hopefully. So if you find HA temporarily in a state of disarray, don’t worry. Either I’ll fix it, or give up and return everything to the way it was.

Local transit advocates are righteously pissed at Mayor Ed Murray for his public and private opposition to an initiative that would raise $30 million a year in property taxes to buy back looming Metro bus service cuts within Seattle. And Murray—who has always bristled at the charge that he is in any way “anti-transit”—is righteously pissed right back. So as a public service, I thought I’d take a moment to explain the two sides to each other in the hope of encouraging a Murrayesque consensus.

First of all, Ed, you have to understand that when critics call you anti-transit what they really mean is that you are not sufficiently anti-car. Nobody really thinks you hate buses and trains (well, nobody whose opinion you should care about). They just think that you are way too conventional in terms of your transportation thinking. Not 1950s conventional. But 1990s conventional. And a lot has changed in Seattle since you first headed to Olympia. The shift toward transit, bike, and pedestrian oriented transportation planning that may have seemed radical a quarter century ago is the consensus in Seattle today. And many transportation advocates here rightly fear that your lack of buy-in will get in the way of their urbanist vision.

It’s a balance thing. You may be more pro-transit than the majority of legislators. But that’s not good enough for Seattle.

As for Murray’s critics, you have to understand that he really means this when he says this:

Regionalism must be an element of any transit plan: Any transit financing plan – either short-term or long-term – must reflect the reality that Seattle’s economy depends on people coming into the city from throughout the Puget Sound region.

Ed and I have been having this argument for years. This isn’t just talk. He passionately believes in taking a regional approach to transportation planning, and chafes at any suggestion to the contrary. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t vote for him. But of course, he’s absolutely right. I mean, there’s at least as much utility in saving bus routes serving commuters heading to and from Seattle as there is in saving routes that operate entirely within city borders.

So regionalism should be an element of any transit plan. But the same could be said of the minimum wage, paid sick leave, and universal preschool. All of these would be better implemented at the county or state level. But they’re not. So Seattle has chosen to go it alone. Because that’s the only practical political option we have.

Still, nothing seems to shake Murray’s core belief in the efficacy of regional transportation planning, or his skepticism of Seattle-only solutions, be it for funding light rail expansion or saving the bus service we already have. So if you want to win Murray’s support for a Seattle-only bus funding measure you are going to need to convince him that it is both absolutely urgent and absolutely short term—and that you absofuckinglutely pledge to support his efforts to achieve a permanent regional solution. (Personally, I’m in a fuck the rest of King County mood at the moment, but I understand that’s not constructive.)

Shorter Goldy: Ed, stop being so defensive about being labeled “anti-transit”—it’s meant as a relative term. And everybody else, you need to pledge to support Ed’s regional approach. Then maybe we can all quit the kvetching and save some bus routes.