HorsesAss.Org

I’m all for a vigorous public debate, so I certainly don’t mind letting restaurateurs air their views on a $15 minimum wage. But when Tom Douglas makes the alarming claim that Seattle could lose a quarter of its restaurants should a $15 minimum wage pass, I just think it is fair to point out that there’s no historical data to support it.

While our proposed 60 percent hike in the minimum wage is certainly steeper than most, it’s not the steepest. Thanks to 1988’s Initiative 518, Washington restaurants endured an even more imposing 85 percent increase in labor costs, and survived with no evidence of mass layoffs or mass business closures. Indeed, over the following decade, growth in restaurant employment actually outpaced total growth in employment statewide.

I’m not saying that a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t hurt some businesses. I’m just saying that there is no historical evidence to support the dire warnings of mass business closures.

There. I said it. By any reasonable reading of the municipal code, Lyft, Sidecar, and uberX drivers are operating illegally in the City of Seattle. They are are unlawful. They are illegal. They are against the law. And this basic statement of fact is absolutely crucial to understanding that, rather than crushing innovation in the service of protecting the status quo, what the city council is really in the process of doing is legalizing an industry that has thus far operated in brazen violation of the law.

Whooh. I can’t tell you what a relief it is to get that off my chest.*

There is likely no issue on which I more broadly pissed off Stranger readers, than my coverage of the proposed taxi and “ride-share” regulations. Capitol Hill hipsters apparently love booking rides on their smartphones almost as much as they love to hate on traditional taxis, and so the coverage they wanted and expected was one that would unflinchingly embrace this disruptive new technology, while telling the decrepit old regulated taxi industry to go fuck itself. And I totally agree, based on my own anecdotal experience, that these new “transportation network companies” or “TNCs” (as they are referred to in the proposed ordinance) generally provide a far superior user experience than Yellow Cab and its cohorts.

But having plunged into this issue with no predispositions, and having ultimately wrapped my mind around an exceedingly complex policy debate, that is not the coverage I could provide. More nuanced critics accused me of being “anti-urbanist;” the less nuanced attempted to dismiss me as being in the pocket of the taxi industry (as if there’s any money in that). But the truth is that the taxi industry provides essential transportation services to a customer base that the TNCs cannot or will not serve. And the truth is—and this at the heart of the issue the council is addressing—the TNCs are operating illegally.

“No matter how sexy these services are,” council member Bruce Harrell proclaimed before voting to cap the number of TNC drivers, “they are unlawful in the City of Seattle.” And Harrell, an attorney, did not choose his words carelessly. It is a criminal offense in the City of Seattle to pick up paying passengers without a for-hire license, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. The Seattle City Attorney’s Office determined last year that TNCs “are subject to for-hire vehicle licensing and regulation requirements.” While the city has yet to enforce these regulations on TNC drivers, it might not take more than a handful of prosecutions to chill the industry.

So whatever limitations the council might impose on the TNCs in the ordinance it is expected to pass next week, above all what the council is doing is legalizing an industry that has heretofore operated without licensing, without inspection, without training, without guarantees of adequate insurance, and in blatant violation of the rule of law. So it’s not like the TNCs aren’t getting anything in return.

The TNCs angrily denounce proposed caps, accusing the council of limiting competition in order to protect the taxi industry. And they are right. That has always been part of the challenge facing the council: how to legitimize the popular TNC services without undermining the still indispensable taxi industry. Not everybody has a smartphone and a credit card. A recent study found that taxis, which accept cash and scrip, serve a disproportionately older and poorer customer base, as well as our crucial tourism industry. Taxis operate accessible vehicles, and provide discounted fares through Hopelink and other social service contracts. They also provide a livelihood to their traditionally immigrant drivers and owners.

However superior uberX might be at getting you home after a night of heavy drinking, it is in the public interest to maintain a healthy taxi industry as well.

How do we sustain the taxi industry in the face of all this new competition? Seattle disastrously experimented with taxi deregulation in the 1980s, removing all caps and price controls only to see prices rise, service deteriorate, and incomes fall in the face of a Malthusian collapse—so there is understandably little support on the council to repeat that experiment in the interest of accommodating the TNCs. And “if we are regulating one half of the market,” argues council member Nick Licata, “we can’t ignore the open-source half” without creating an unlevel playing field.

That is the delicate balance the council is attempting to strike: a regulatory structure that allows the TNCs to legally enter the market while giving the taxi industry the breathing space necessary to adapt to a new reality. Apps like TaxiMagic and particularly Flywheel are already close to providing the same slick user experience TNC customers have come to expect; Yellow Cab, by far the city’s largest taxi association, is in the process of upgrading its dispatch system with plans to release its own competitive app later this year. There’s no question that the innovative TNCs are forcing the the taxi industry to improve its service. There’s also no question that the council will need to revisit taxi and TNC regulations in the years to come.

Maybe the proposed TNC cap is too low. Maybe it is too high. Maybe, ultimately, caps will prove unnecessary at all. But the goal is to transition into a market where both the TNCs and the taxis can peacefully and profitably coexist. And the first step is legalizing the TNCs currently unlawful operations.

[Read more…]

As you know, the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally has been searching for a new home for the past couple of months. In the process we have visited eight Seattle pubs looking for a place that works well for our group.

Last week, the group picked two finalists (Roanoke Park Place Tavern and Traveler Montlake), and we will revisit each one over the next two week.

This evening (Tuesday) we will make our second visit to the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. We meet at 8:00 pm, but some folks show up even earlier than that for dinner.

Can’t make it tonight? Check out another Washington state meeting of DL over the next week. The Tri-Cities, Vancouver, WA, and Redmond chapters also meet on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday the Bremerton chapter meets. The Centralia chapter meets on Friday. 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.

It didn’t take long after my departure from The Stranger for my former colleagues to start going McGinn all over Kshama Sawant in a half-hearted attempt to, I dunno, look all serious and independent at her expense? Or something.

Coincidence? Feel free to speculate all you want.

The post could use a thorough fisking, but suffice it to say that Dom’s thesis is silly. Refusing to answer a question is not the same thing as saying “no.” Besides, to imply that Sawant’s steadfast support for $15 now somehow equates to a refusal to compromise would be like saying that I oppose Obamacare because I passionately support a single-payer system. What we want in life and what we ultimately accept are often two different things. How we get there is the game that’s currently afoot, and by refusing to compromise early, Sawant is playing the game a helluva lot better than Democrats did on health care reform.

But I must say that I am generally amused by the larger air of consternation from political and media know-it-alls over both Sawant’s posturing and her relentless execution of the 15Now.org campaign. Oh, the powers that be should be concerned, but not for the reasons they imagine. For the conventional perception of Sawant as an accidental council member is obstructing their view of what is arguably the most ambitious grassroots organizing effort Seattle has seen in the ten years I’ve been covering local politics—and a very real threat to the Democratic Party’s virtual monopoly on city government.

For the record, 15Now.org serves three distinct (though related) purposes:

The first and most obvious purpose is to prepare to fight a ballot measure campaign. Whether this is the $15 minimum wage now initiative—with no exemptions or phase-ins—that the organization threatens, or a campaign to defend a Sawant-blessed council-passed compromise ordinance from a business-backed effort to repeal via referendum, makes no difference. Sawant and her Socialist Alternative comrades believe that something is likely to go to the ballot in November, and so they are building a campaign organization to support or oppose it. That’s just plain smart.

The second purpose served by 15Now.org—the one that so many establishment types and their surrogates appear to resent the most—is strategic. Do you think Sawant really wants to go to the ballot? Of course not. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting,” wrote Sun Tzu in The Art of War, and that is Sawant’s goal during these minimum wage negotiations. To this end, 15Now.org serves as the threat of force necessary to make diplomacy possible. Either produce a compromise ordinance that Sawant can accept, or face the hundreds of volunteers she is organizing throughout the city in a public battle over the already popular $15 minimum wage. Does the business community really want to take that risk?

Which brings us to the final purpose of 15Now.org, and the one that eye-rolling establishment types appear to miss entirely, despite the fact that it is occurring right under their noses: Sawant is using the $15 minimum wage issue as an opportunity to build the equivalent of a political party capable of pushing her socialist agenda far beyond the minimum wage issue itself.

Want to know why folks always show up at Sawant events? Because her volunteers are relentlessly contacting the growing list of fellow travelers they are assembling. Before every event I get an email. And a text message or three. And a bunch of tweets. And a robocall. And most impressively, a live person calling me to ask me to show my support. Seattle has rarely seen such an effective GOTV campaign for a local issue, and never outside of an election campaign cycle.

At every event 15Now.org volunteers are there with clipboards signing up even more volunteers and supporters. They’ve already organized eight neighborhood “action groups” scattered throughout the city, with a goal of organizing as many as 100 over the next few months. This is the equivalent of the established parties’ LD system—semi-autonomous neighborhood groups available for door-belling, phone-banking, fund-raising, and everything else that makes a party function. It’s a low bar, sure, but after just a few months it is safe to say that 15Now.org has already surpassed the Republican Party in terms of actively participating members within Seattle city limits.

To be clear, Sawant and her Socialist Alternative colleagues are not one-issue activists. They are using this one issue as a means of building a permanent organization capable of pushing forth their broader agenda on affordable housing, progressive taxation, and more. And their sights are not set simply on Seattle. Socialist Alternative chapters in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and elsewhere are using 15Now.org‘s efforts here as a model for expanding the campaign nationwide. The word “now” may be prominently emblazoned in the organization’s domain name, but their emphasis is clearly on the future.

It is an outrageously ambitious goal. But those who laugh at Sawant as naive and out-of-touch and easy pickings for a Democratic machine-backed challenger in 2015, are in for a shock. For outside of the quadrennial statewide coordinated campaign, there is no Democratic machine. Only labor can man the type of campaign organization 15Now.org is attempting to build, and if you think that labor is going shiv an incumbent Sawant in favor of some mushy Dem, think again. Sawant is useful to labor, even if they don’t fully trust her, because she drags the whole council to the left.

You don’t need to be an ideological ally nor a pollyanna about their prospects to be impressed by what 15Now.org is doing. But you do need to be an idiot to ignore it.

“Imagine having a job where you’re always on duty, and can never fully relax or you just may drown,” he wrote. “Having to fight through waves and currents of praise and criticism, but mostly hate. I can’t even count how many times I’ve been called a ‘dumb —–.'”

Never thought I’d have much in common with a professional athlete, but these sentiments expressed by Arizona Cardinals running back Rashard Mendenhall in explaining his retirement at only age 26, have really struck an empathetic cord with me. Personally, I feel like I’ve gotten a helluva lot more praise than criticism over years (and the criticism I’ve gotten was mostly stupid), but still, I know the feeling. And it’s exhausting.

Mendenhall says he’ll travel the world and write, the first part of which I can’t do, because unlike him, I didn’t earn $2.5 million last year. But I do find his optimism and sense of adventure in the face of such a dramatic life change to be a bit inspiring:

“As for the question of what will I do now, with an entire life in front of me?” he wrote. “I say to that, I will LIVE! I plan to live in a way that I never have before, and that is freely, able to fully be me, without the expectation of representing any league, club, shield or city.

“I do have a plan going forward, but I will admit that I do not know how things will totally shape out. That is the beauty of it! I look forward to chasing my desires and passions without restriction, and to sharing them with anyone who wants to come along with me! And I’ll start with writing!”

Ah to be 26 years old with millions in the bank and your whole life ahead of you. Best of luck, Rashard.

– I’m pretty excited about what’s happening on Pike/Pine

– Solid headline.

– Rasmussen says he thinks WSDOT has been “keeping things very close to the vest,” in part because of a lack of information from the tunnel contractor, Seattle Tunnel Partners. And he says it seems increasingly unlikely that the tunnel will open by its 2016 target date.

– I had never thought of bossy as a problem before.

So one benefit of suddenly finding myself with a lot free time on my hands is that I finally got around to upgrading HA to the latest version of WordPress in an attempt to address the performance issues that have been plaguing the site for quite some time. For the moment, those annoying “resource limit” 508 errors seem to have disappeared.

Still, HA  feels slow to me. I’ll continue to tweak things to try to wring out better performance without upping my monthly hosting bill. This was a big update. A lot of things changed under the hood, and I was forced to deactivate some old plugins. So if you find some things broken, let me know.

And if you find some things working better, let me know that too. For example, the comment editor now magically contains a long demanded spellchecker and a fullscreen option. Yay!

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Osaka, Japan.

This week’s contest is from Google Maps, good luck!

Leviticus 20:13
If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.

Discuss.

Jon: FAUX News’ obsession with food stamps.

Pap: The G.O.P. fear machine.

Things there are fewer of than Republican repeal votes:

Young Turks: Pat Robertson offers genetics advice to cousins that want to marry.

CPAC Lunacy:

• Young Turks: Even a gun couldn’t save this CPAC speech.
• Sharpton: CPAC Day 1, Teh Stupid Unleashed
• Sam Seder: CPAC 2014, Day 1.
• Chris Christie: From Snub to Star at CPAC.
• Young Turks debunk a BS Paul Ryan story at CPAC.
• Sam Seder: CPAC has panel on how to deny climate change

Pap: Koch Brothers are buying Congress.

WaPo: D.C. marijuana bill explained.

David Pakman: Ted Nugent tells some whoppers.

White House: West Wing Week.

O’Donnell: The titanic battle ahead in Texas.

Stephen “praises” Cathy McMorris Rodgers.

The IRS Non-scandal Reemerges:

• Sharpton: Democrats call for Darrell Issa’s ouster.
• Young Turks: Car thief Darrell Issa awkwardly cuts off Rep. Cummings mic.
• Sam Seder: Elijah Cummings calls out phoney IRS house hearings.
• Sharpton: Republican leaders are as ugly as their radio hosts.

Maddow: Chris Christie’s offensive tone.

Young Turks: Record number of Americans support gay rights.

ONN: Onion Week in Review.

Daily Show: FAUX Business commentator says stupid shit in interview.

Ed: Republicans are trying to divert funding from public to charter schools.

John Oliver’s new show…a promo.

Ukraine Punditry:

• David Pakman: No, Sarah Palin didn’t predict the Russia–Ukraine issue.
• Mark Fiore: Ukraine Bites.
• John Green: Ukraine explained:
• Ann Telnaes: Palin pontificates
• Sam Seder: Sarah Palin, “I can see your mom jeans from my back porch
• Chris Hayes: Republicans have “Putin Envy”.
• David Pakman: Paul Ryan’s bizarre “solution” to the Ukraine problem
• WaPo: Breaking Vlad.
• Sam Seder: “Putin invaded because Benghaaaaaaaaazi”, says Nutjobber Sen. Lindsy Graham (R-SC)

Jon: Republicans shafting veterans.

The Republican’s Operation Oxymoron.

WaPo: Lincoln exhibit tells story of presidential guard.

Pap: The G.O.P.s new voter suppression efforts.

Sam Seder: Maine Republican lawmaker, “if abortion is legal so, too, should be rape.

Mental Floss: 27 amazing facts about comics.

Stephen knocks Bill-O-the-Clown for knocking Hillary.

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

When I started writing my first blog, the people whose voices I liked the most, I didn’t even know their real names. Media Whores Online and Bartcop. What strange fake names. But they always wrote with a passion and humor that I loved reading. I mean, I remember reading Bartcop during the Clinton administration! There weren’t too many voices as strong and as fun back then.

While the late, great, MWO stopped a while ago, it was by choice. Today I learned that recently Bartcop has died [h/t].

If you’ve ever wondered why the lefty blogs are so much funnier than the conservative ones, well, there are a lot of reasons. But Bart blazed a pathway of mixing humor and dead seriousness that so many on the left over the years looked at and thought “shit, I can do that.” Too bad not many of us could as well as him.

And don’t get me wrong, the guy was hardly perfect. He always flirted with 9/11 conspiracy nuts, for example. But he was right more than he was wrong: From Bill Clinton’s impeachment to the Iraq war to trying to legalize marijuana, he got it right more than he got it wrong and at a time most media pontificators were as wrong as wrong could be. He got it right from Oklahoma when so many of us on the coasts couldn’t. He was funny more than he fell flat and decent more than not. 3197 issues and countless side pages and podcasts are a hell of a legacy, and even though he never rose to the same prominence as some other bloggers, he was an original, and he’ll be missed.

So, good news: the bus tunnel will have cell service in the near future. It will be nice to not have whatever you’re doing cut out when you pull past the International District station. And while you’re waiting, you can pull out your phone and fart around a bit.

The bad news: the bus tunnel will have cell service in the near future. I can’t tell you how many times it’s been a relief to have someone yelling into their phone have to turn it off. Formerly, a moment’s quiet. Now lost.

Last Friday, I and much of the Washington lefty establishment, noted that State Sen. Jan Angel at the behest of Rodney Tom killed funding for state homeless programs. Anyway, finally Senator Angel has decided to address the problem head on. By demanding that Governor Inslee study the issue to death.

Sen. Jan Angel today sent a letter to the governor requesting his leadership in establishing a task force to evaluate funding sources for local homeless housing and assistance.

Her decision to hold House Bill 2368, a measure that would extend a temporary surcharge tax to support homelessness, in the financial institutions, housing and insurance committee has caused a flurry of controversy and inaccurate accusations, despite her good intentions.

“I was half an inch away from being homeless myself, so this issue is extremely important to me, despite what others are so quick to assume,” said Angel, R-Port Orchard. “People need to understand all of the facts surrounding an issue before they point fingers.”

Yeah, just because she withheld funds, how dare you ignore her personal story? Don’t you understand individual, unverified, claims are more important than the actual policy she pushes? Stop holding her to account for her actions, you meanies.

Angel said her main concerns about HB 2368 have to do with a lack of supporting data and reporting from the state Department of Commerce, strong discord among involved stakeholders, and the fact that the surcharge tax falls on the backs of one small and unpredictable sector.

That’s why she didn’t go through the normal committee process and instead killed it in a surprise legislative move. A move that caught even most of her GOP colleagues off guard. If she had wanted more reporting or more information, well, she’s the chair of the relevant committee. She could have made that happen without killing funding. For God’s Sake.

“This isn’t a matter of being for or against homeless people. This is about finding a sustainable solution that is agreed upon by all affected stakeholders – things that the measure did not do.

Look, it isn’t a matter of being against homeless people; It’s a matter of taking action against homeless people. And then waiting a week to find a way to deflect the actual reasons that you did it.

“That’s why I have called on the governor for his leadership. I am sure that he would agree that Washingtonians living in cars should be at the top of our priority list.

Jan Angel has called on the governor to lead, because we can be assured of one thing: Jan Angel will not lead on her own. No, what we need most of all in these troubled times is a commission or something. And, in the mean time, if people are hungry or cold we can just tell them, “there’s a taskforce in some office in Olympia leadershipping.”

“When you are put in a leadership position, you have to be willing to make the tough calls for the betterment of people. As co-chair of the committee, I decided to hold the measure because I know we can do better.”

But even after a week, I have no idea what better is. Leadership, as you know, is having no ideas and asking for someone else to rescue you from you own actions.

Angel said the current surcharge tax is at the mercy of virtually one industry that experiences severe peaks and dips depending on the economy. Instead of putting this kind of responsibility on the backs of one small sector, she is looking to the governor to help pull everyone together to evaluate more stable and permanent funding options that would truly meet the needs of the homeless.

Of course, the governor would have had more time to figure that out if she hadn’t killed the funding in a surprise last minute maneuver.

As the regulars know, HA has been intermittently slow and balky for quite some time. So now that I have some extra time on my hands, I am in the process of implementing some tweaks and upgrades in the hope of speeding things up and eliminating those pesky “508” errors.

So if you find the site down or weirdly dysfunctional over the next day or so, please be patient.

Kudos to Senator Pedersen for this bit of throwing the GOP nonsense back in their face.

Sen. Mike Baumgartner, R-Spokane, and Sen. Doug Ericksen, R-Ferndale, introduced amendments to the transportation bill that triggered alarms for Sen. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle. Ericksen’s amendment sought to pay the 520 bridge replacement costs with toll revenues. “I wanted to stop the gigantic sucking sound” of 520 overruns, Ericksen said. Baumgartner’s amendment would have made Seattle’s property owners responsible for cost overruns on the downtown tunnel project. Baumgartner was unavailable for comment after the Senate showdown.

[…]

Pedersen decided to introduce to file his own amendment to make the property owners of Medina, at the east end of the 520 bridge, liable for cost overruns on the 520 project. “My objective is to get rid of those two (Ericksen and Baumgartner) amendments,” said Pedersen midway through Tuesday night’s showdown.

Ericksen withdrew his amendment. Then the Senate passed Pedersen’s amendment to put Medina on the hook for 520 overruns by a voice vote — in which senators shout as groups or stand in groups to show their positions without a formal roll call. The vote on Pedersen’s amendment showed that some Republicans wanted to have Medina pay for 520 cost overruns, or at least wanted to punish Tom.

In the end, neither provision was in the final Senate Supplemental Transportation Budget. It’s nice that a Seattle Democrat is willing to throw an elbow. And look, something good actually came out of it. If Seattle Democrats are a bit more willing to throw a punch now and again, that probably bodes well for future projects.

Also, it’s nice that enough GOP members were willing to throw Tom under the bus. Or at least Medina, and that’s somewhat less nice. Either they don’t like Tom as much as many Democrats (but are still willing to make him Majority Leader!), or they really can’t tell the difference between Seattle and the suburbs with their hate. In some ways their irrational hatred of Seattle is an irrational hatred of the Puget Sound region. As much as Tom may go out of his to demonize Seattle, Medina — and the whole of the Eastside and for that matter all of King County — are just about as hated by the people who hate Seattle.