HorsesAss.Org

This is a pretty amazing story about one of the major coal exporters, from Sightline.

Cloud Peak Energy, one of the major coal producers in the Powder River Basin, is doing its very best to sound upbeat about coal exports. In an investor conference call this past July, the company declared that, even though falling international coal prices had eaten into their earnings, their exports were “still profitable overall.”

But a close look at Cloud Peak’s second quarter financial statements suggests a far stranger story: the company’s export division actually made most of its profits from derivatives trading rather than coal. Stripping away the financial-speak, the implications are striking: Cloud Peak’s export arm made at least 10 times more money betting against coal than it did selling coal.

Obviously some of that is reasonable and companies hedge their bets with these sort of financial instruments all the time. And this is one company. But given that they made $2.6 Million betting against coal and $200,000 on coal, it’s one more reason to not build more coal infrastructure as we look toward the future.

My questions are bold, Richard Conlin’s are as submitted.

1) Now that I-502 has passed, what should the purchase of marijuana look like within city limits? Will medical marijuana collective garden storefronts in Seattle have to abide by the 1000-foot rule established by I-502?

Because I-502 and the medical marijuana initiative have some conflicting provisions, we have been working to get legislation that will reconcile them. Senator Kohl-Welles is taking the lead on that, and we believe that the legislature will act early next year. In the meantime, it looks like Seattle will have a couple of dozen storefront licenses under I-502, and those are likely to be the major sources for marijuana. Collective garden storefronts are likely going to have to follow the 1000-foot rule, as the state seems to be emphasizing that in response to the federal government’s request for strict enforcement, but we won’t know until the legislature takes action on the reconciliation legislation.

2) With Metro’s ability to fund itself at the whim of the legislature, what should the city’s role be in public transportation? How should the City Council both make sure we get our fair share, and that the system serves the entire region well?

Thanks to great leadership from Dow Constantine and our hard work building relationships with King County and the suburban cities, we were successful in getting a very good agreement for a fair share of Metro service out of the last negotiations. Our critical goal was to replace the old 40-40-20 rule, which dedicated most new dollars to suburban service, with a more flexible rule based primarily on productivity of routes. I don’t think we need to fear not getting our fair share from Metro at this point, if we can get Metro funding legislation from the legislature. Our major challenge is getting a transportation package from the legislature, and we need to keep the urban-suburban coalition together and find a way to forge a compromise package with the more rational Republicans. A challenge, but it can be done, and our partnership with King County is strong.

The City should continue to push for more investments in public transportation, and the core strategy (in addition to partnership with Metro) should be to prepare possible routes for inclusion in the Sound Transit 3 package, which I am trying to get on the ballot in 2016. Our priorities should be serving Ballard and West Seattle from downtown more effectively and connecting the UDistrict with Ballard. On a regional level, we should be able to complete the light rail spine from Tacoma to Everett, and start filling in light rail routes on the East Side and in South County.

In the short term, our most immediate priority for Seattle is to get a light rail station in the Lynnwood Link DEIS at 130th Street, a decision that the Sound Transit Board will make in October or November. On the City land use side, we should focus on developing a transit oriented development plan for the East Link station at Rainier and I-90.

3) What should the waterfront look like after the Viaduct comes down? Will there be a streetcar or other transit?

The waterfront should be open, accessible, and lively. We must keep the salience of pedestrians at the heart of our planning, and emphasize that this means all pedestrians, which requires using universal design principles to guide decisions. I am disturbed by the width of the proposed roadway, and support looking for ways to reduce it, such as by eliminating one of the two planned access lanes for ferry traffic. Managing a traffic lane to provide additional access at peak times is a better alternative than constructing a second ferry access lane that will be a barrier for pedestrians and not needed at most times.

We must also ensure that the waterfront is activated and safe at all levels. I would like to see a variety of active recreation areas as well as diverse businesses and a design that employs CPTED principles to make this area attractive and accessible for all.

We will have transit along the waterfront, but at this point a bus system appears to be more cost effective than a streetcar. However, no final decision has been made, and will likely not be made for a year or two. A lot depends on whether a streetcar line is developed on First Avenue.

4) What should happen in the next 4 years to make sure that police reform both satisfies the Feds, and works for Seattle citizens?

Seattle has an effective police force that does a good job in protecting public safety. The vast majority of officers are competent and professional. However, there are members of the force who have engaged in practices that have infringed upon individual rights, exercised inappropriate uses of force, and caused severe consequences for members of the public. This is a failure of leadership. While I respect the managers of SPD as individuals, they have not been able to create a system that properly trains, supervises, and assists individuals in the force to carry out their responsibilities without creating these kinds of problems. I see this as a systems failure, that may have been compounded by individuals, but that can only solved by a combination of leadership, effective training, clear lines of supervision, and swift and effective corrective action when necessary.

We must have a strong, effective, and experienced Police Chief who will be able to take charge of the Department and work effectively with all members of the Department as well as City leadership and members of the public. This leader should have extensive management practice in a Department of comparable size and complexity and be ready to implement tools to bring together the strong record of effective policing that is typical of SPD performance with remedies that will create a system of accountability and oversight that will be fair, transparent, and effective in preventing further problems in the future.

We are moving towards resolving the issues in the DOJ report through adopting new procedures for training and operations that will guide police officers in the future. With implementation of these procedures by the right kind of leadership and organizational structure, we can restore the confidence of the public in the force, effectively protect public safety, and satisfy the DOJ.

5) A recent study found Seattle is the worst of the 50 largest US metro areas in terms of pay equality for women. Why do you think that’s the case, and what is the city’s role in closing that gap?

We have been analyzing the data in detail, and now have very good information about the City’s own work force. It turns out that in the City there is very little pay inequality within job classifications; the primary source of difference lies in the predominance of men in jobs that are higher paying (in fact there are slightly more job titles in which women are paid more than men than ones where men are paid more than women). We can solve this in two ways:

First, by reevaluating the pay scales to ensure that we are in fact appropriately valuing work that is predominantly done by women. For example, we should ask why truck drivers are paid a higher wage than child care workers. This pattern consistently undervalues work traditionally done by women, and reevaluating job descriptions will reduce much of the disparity.

Second, we should redouble our efforts to ensure that women are more fairly represented in positions that are high paying, such as management and technology jobs. We can do this partly by consciously seeking out women for these positions, but we must also support ways to increase the supply of women in these job categories by working with the educational system to attract women to scientific and technical careers, and by looking at ways to structure jobs to provide the kind of flexibility that women are more likely to seek than men (such as flexible schedules and other arrangements that make it easier to have and raise children).

We suspect that the pattern in the private sector is similar to that in the City, and as a City we should work with the private sector to make similar changes, and consider regulatory approaches where those are appropriate.

Please join us for an evening of politics under the influence at tonight’s meeting of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Our normal starting time is 8:00pm, but some people stop by earlier to eat before the political melee begins.

Can’t make it tonight? Check out another one of the other Washington state DLs over the next week. The Tri-Cities chapter meets tonight and every Tuesday night. The Bellingham and Burien chapters meet on Wednesday, and the Woodinville chapter meets on Thursday.

With 208 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– No matter what, the GOP will complain about welfare.

– Half of Seattle residents don’t drive alone to work. So, you know, let’s cut Metro or whatever.

– A Rising Tide Lifts Mostly Yachts

– If you invite NRA spokespeople on your air, you are responsible for the bullshit they spew.

– Keep in mind that in both cases, the prisoners were railroaded for political reasons which these governments now find politically difficult to reverse. Very exceptional indeed.

– “Oh hey, there are a lot of open seats in the back of the bus. Why don’t I just stop here in the first third and stand here blocking the aisle.” ~ The guy in front of me, apparently.

– Private hospitals offer better service to people who can afford it therefore something something Obama!

Today the Seattle Mayor’s office and King County Executive released their budgets. I haven’t had much of a chance to delve into them yet, but so far they look nice. According to Anna Minard, in Seattle:

The proposed budget is $4.4 billion, of which $1 billion is in the general fund. The mayor turned to the council and recalled the bloodbath of cuts they’ve all had to oversee the last few years, and seems to be relishing in the fact that he finally gets to have a fun budget. His proposed budget funds more cops, senior centers, homeless services, domestic violence services, gender pay equity, an empowerment institute for refugee women, a ton of traffic and pedestrian safety improvements around schools, more neighborhood matching funds, universal preschool planning, road maintenance, kittens, free pot for everyone, and a new bike for you! And you! And YOU! (Just checking to see if you’re still reading.)

I don’t smoke, so I’ll pass on the free pot, but I could use a new bike and a kitty as long as it’s already in the budget. All of the non-joke things seem like good ideas.

According to this press release from King County, that budget includes:

• A $500,000 Catalyst Fund to lead the transformation of the regional health and human service system from reactive crisis response to proactive preventive strategies and services. These one-time funds are intended to kick start the best new ideas and advances, attract other investments and revenue sources, and lead to better outcomes, particularly in the treatment of those with mental health and addiction issues.
• A two-year Regional Veterans Initiative to embark upon the first-ever comprehensive mapping of the labyrinth of federal, state and local services for veterans. Programs and community agencies would be connected to a King County Veteran Services Network so that vets seeking services can immediately be directed to the right program, and all agencies can use the same assessment and screening tools. The project is funded with $388,000 from the voter-approved Veterans and Human Services Levy.
• Support for the community-wide campaign to enroll 180,000 uninsured adults who will become newly eligible for free or low-cost health coverage on October 1 under the Affordable Care Act – connecting them to effective preventive care early, rather than expensive treatment later.

Among other solid spending. Of course there’s a long way to go between this and City/County Council approval. But as the great recession ends, it’s nice to see proposed budgets that aren’t all pain.

– I wish I had a word for when there are attacks on people for things that aren’t problematic. So Obama is called a Muslim or Hillary Clinton is called a lesbian. Well, they’re not, but it shouldn’t be problematic if they were.

– Where did your back to school gear come from?

– We’re number one! In taxing the poor.

– Warren Buffett still supports Obamacare despite what you might have heard from dumbasses.

– Their antipathy to democracy always creeps out, even in their conspiracy theories (how many times have we heard the far-right refrain, “This is a republic, not a democracy!”), but more importantly in their actions and their political strategies, embodied most recently in the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and the ongoing efforts at voter suppression by conservative Republicans.

– Congrats on 5 years, OTI Podcast

– So jump off that building, you’re the goddamn Batman.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Mesa, AZ.

This week’s is related to something in the news from September, good luck!

Leviticus 11:5
And the rock badger, because it chews the cud but does not part the hoof, is unclean to you.

Discuss.

White House: West Wing Week.

ONN: The Week in Review.

Sam Seder: The “gay AIDS ring” video that Pat Robertson doesn’t want you to see.

Thom with more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.

Maddow: Why Jeb Bush is not as moderate as he thinks:

Kimmel: This Week in Unnecessary Censorship.

Stephen: FAUX host predicts Syria will bring the apocalypse.

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

Republican’s Engage in Extortion and Sabotage over ObamaCare:

• Chris Cillizza & Stan Collender : Budget showdown.
• Sam Seder: The ongoing Republican House implosion
• Sharpton and Friends: Republicans are involved in a civil war…America suffers as a result.
• Shutdown and default: The politics of the right:
• Ann Telnaes: Boehner hears crazy voices.
• Sharpton: “Defund ObamaCare or we’ll shut down America.”
• Young Turks: Ted Cruz concedes Republicans cannot defund ObamaCare.
• Alex Wagner: How 40 GOP congresscritters have the Republican Party by the throat
• Chris Cillizza & Scott Clement: Debt debate.
• Young Turks: Lunatic Republicans vote to defund ObamaCare.
• Sam Seder: Republicans, obsessed with defunding ObamaCare, head toward government shutdown.
• Alex Wagner: The 42nd INSANE attempt to defund ObamaCare
• Maddow: GOP turns on itself over debt ceiling and ObamaCare.

Young Turks: House GOP vote to cut food stamps by $40 billion.

Pap and friends: The de-evolution of the G.O.P. (a.k.a. The Party of Crazy).

Sam Seder: Obama extends labor protections for over 2 million people.

Obama on the economy.

O’Donnell: Republi-CARE, the GOP’s deluded alternative to ObamaCare.

Liberal Viewer: Bashar al-Assad Does “That’s What She Said”.

Thom: Democracy is in our genes.

Shoot….Not AGAIN!

• Mark Fiore: Concealed Carry Control.
• Jon on guns and inabilities.
• Sam Seder and Pap: Are we becoming numb to mass shootings?
• Young Turks: Idiots blame video games for shootings..
• Chris Cillizza: Why gun control laws won’t change.
• Ann Telnaes: America’s perpetual cycle of violence.
• Young Turks: How many mass shootings in the U.S.?
• Stephen: Jihawg ammo!
• Thom: Something evil in our society

Mental Floss: Unfinished Films.

Ann Telnaes: Mayor Gray vetoes living wage legislation.

Sam Seder: What if there was no food stamp program?

Jon: Employers cheating ObamaCare and screwing over workers.

Maddow: Lessons for Republicans in why cheating doesn’t pay.

Koch-funded Orifice Ads:

• Bashir: Republicans are running a stupid, sexual, anti-ObamaCare ad.
• Young Turks: Koch-funded creepy-ass anti-ObamaCare ads:
• Sharpton: Koch Brothers Behind Perverted ‘Uncle Sam’ AD

Red State Update: Podcast episode #44.

Thom: Here’s an ad for Rick Perry to use.

Thom corrects Steve Doocy for spreading lies.

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

As the GOP has voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act once again, this time tying it to the budget, Cathy McMorris Rodgers is taking a more active role in pushing it. I’ve really noticed that they aren’t pushing for anything. It’s been repeal, repeal, repeal, and now it’s defund and delay.

“To get the entire bill repealed, or defunded, is probably not realistic,” McMorris Rodgers said Thursday following a spirited town hall discussion in Spokane Wednesday night in which the Affordable Care Act took center stage. “But I do think there are provisions in the law that we can get delayed, or provisions in the law we can get defunded.”

[…]

“I think there’s growing recognition that … portions of the law are not ready,” McMorris Rodgers said, citing recent votes in the House in which Democrats joined Republicans to delay the mandates in the law requiring employers and individuals to sign up on subsidized health insurance exchanges.

They are complaining and obstructing. They are demanding delay and attempting to defund the law. What they aren’t doing is proposing any alternative. The House GOP plan is to go back to before the health care law passed.

If you remember back when George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security, the House and Senate Democrats were consistently opposed to his plan without offering any plan of their own. In that way, they made the status quo on Social Security their plan. They made Social Security the Democrats’ plan and privatizing it the Republican plan.

In the same way, the GOP plan for health care in America is how things were before Obamacare. The GOP plan is preexisting conditions and HMO’s. It’s tens of millions of Americans without health care coverage. It’s kicking kids off their parents’ plan. It’s shrinking of Medicaid and dissolving the other ways to make sure the poor can afford to be covered. It’s making it so that the power of the market doesn’t bring down costs in exchanges. It’s the out of control health care inflation that marked the period before the law passed. They ought to at least own up to that.

I’m glad to see that one of my favorite podcasters is going to end his hiatus soon. I’ll be glad it’s back. Still, struck me most when reading it was this:

At the annual Netroots Nation Conference that was held in San Jose I was backstage with Jasiri X and Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos. I jokingly mentioned I was digging the weather in the Bay Area (I visited our West Coast Bureau Chief in Oakland right before the conference) and considered moving, but then what about TWiB!? Markos said that he had office space available in Berkeley if we wanted it.

I think that speaks well of Markos first and foremost. That he’d be willing to say that to someone who is ostensibly the competition for lefty political attention is rather incredible. But I think it speaks to a larger sense of community that animates liberals. The idea that we’re all in this together.

Obviously, Markos isn’t just handing out office space to anyone who wants it. But the fact they are part of a community meant that he had extra and Elon James White needed it was easier to arrange. Whereas, if they were conservatives, it probably would have been competition and maximizing profit at the expense of each other.

The city of Tumwater becomes the latest Washington State municipality to have plastic bag ban. They’ll be doing it similar to what Seattle does with an outright ban on plastic bags and a 5 cent fee on paper ones. Plastic bags are awful, and since Thurston County won’t be able to recycle them anymore soon this may have been a necessity. It also could be larger than just Tumwater.

Once the ban takes effect in Tumwater next July, shoppers who don’t bring their own reusable bags will pay 5 cents per paper bag to offset stores’ costs. Plastic bags that are used for meat or produce, and thicker plastic shopping bags provided by some retailers, are exempt from the ban, as are newspaper bags, doggie bags and dry cleaning bags.

The Thurston County Commission could approve a bag ban as early as next week, and the City of Olympia is expected to follow.

I’d like to see the whole state get rid of plastic bags sooner or later. They’re bad for the environment and tough to get rid of. They’re unsightly: there’s a bag in the tree near my apartment that has been there since before the Seattle ban (I remember writing about it, but can’t find the link), and will probably be there for some time to come. For now, the localities will have to take up the lead. Hopefully with Thurston County as a precedent, other counties can take it up.

– The R is going to be back where it belongs (Seattle Times link).

– We’re going to get a government shutdown aren’t we?

– Bike Cages at Rainier Station sound pretty good, as someone who had his bike stolen from another station.

– I’m glad Seattle is doing pedestrian emphasis patrols but when I read about them, I’m always worried that it’ll just be tougher to jay walk in those areas.

– Money laundering is a harsh term, but I do hate how and how much the anti-522 people are raising their money.

– The hearing inspired by one shooting has been bumped because of another shooting.

– Vladimir Putin is a crusading columnist for the New York Times.

Dominic Holden links to this Jonathan Martin piece on Sally Clark not putting forward a resolution condemning the Russian anti-gay legislation. Holden hits most of the salient points, but I want to add a few things.

It’s mystifying to see Seattle City Council President Sally Clark’s Twitter account has blown up with criticism from gay activists, thanks to an off-hand comment from Mayor Mike McGinn. Mystifying, because Clark, the first openly gay council president, co-sponsored council resolutions in support of same-sex marriage in 2012 and donated to the campaign to affirm its legality. Her record on LGBT issues is rock-solid.

Well her record was pretty much the median Seattle City Council member on this issue, since they all have supported gay rights for, like, ever. Even Republican voting, “We value the sacredness of marriage between a woman and man” Tim Burgess is solid on LGBT rights issues compared to the rest of the state. So, sure, she’s been good on those issues up until now. Now is the problem.

Now is what activists are responding to. Gay rights activists have been on the defensive with the Russian law until Dan Savage and others in Clark’s home town started boycotting Russian products. You can debate how much of a difference that made, but between that, possible protests of the Olympics, and actual protests here and around the country, enough of a difference was made that it put Russian officials on their heels, and got the letter written.

Also, Clark has been one of the more conservative members of the council, generally. These things are relative within Seattle, of course, but it’s not that surprising that lefty activists more generally would go after her when she does the wrong thing. The good news is even though McGinn’s letter has been sent, there is still time for Seattle to do the right thing, and she can start taking the lead on it if she wants.

OK, a few more things from the piece:

Seattle City Council was once famous for far-afield resolutions over the decades — condemning the treatment of circus elephants, calling for removal of Eastern Washington dams, condemning Burma and apartheid — and got rafts of justified criticism for being distracted from its core work.

It got plenty of criticism, sure. I don’t think that criticism was justified for the most part. I mean the Burma and apartheid regimes they criticized fell. Obviously, there was a ton more than City Council resolutions that caused that, but Seattle should be proud that our City Council was on the right side of history, and did our part. The Snake River dams provide some good, but given the amount of money Seattle spends on salmon restoration, it’s lazy to pretend that expressing an opinion on them was a distraction “from its core work.” So that leaves cruelty to circus elephants. It was one of the quickest things the council did, but you’d never know that from all the criticism it got over the years. I’d guess if you add all of the criticism of how much time it wasted and compare it to how much time it took, the time it took would be less than the criticism. Also, maybe, don’t be cruel to circus animals is a good position to hold?

In any event he never gets around to saying why the criticism is justified, because it’s so obvious. I guess whenever he has a conversation about them at the WAC, or at the boardroom of the Seattle Times, everyone agrees, so no need to spell it out any further for the plebes.

Last thing I swear. He concludes:

Better yet, the council should stick to it’s core work, which currently includes writing a budget.

The City Council has a huge role to play in the budget process, of course. But they don’t, strictly speaking, write it. That’s part of the Mayor’s job, according to this timeline. I get what he’s saying, but they don’t actually write the budget. For an article saying it’s important to know what the job of the City Council is and isn’t that sort of seems like an own goal.

I think a lot of people who read these sort of things are mystified as to how it happens.

The owner of the construction business told police he believed Alexis was angry over the parking situation around the work site. Several workers reported Alexis staring at them prior to the shooting.

Seattle detectives ultimately arrested Alexis a month later. According to police, Alexis told detectives he had been “mocked” by construction workers and said they had “disrespected him.” Alexis also claimed he had an anger-fueled “blackout,” and could not remember firing his gun at the victims’ vehicle until an hour after the incident.

Alexis also told police he was present during “the tragic events of September 11, 2001″ and described “how those events had disturbed him.” According to police, detectives later spoke with Alexis’ father, who lived in New York at the time, who told police Alexis had anger management problems, and that Alexis had been an active participant in rescue attempts on Sept. 11, 2001.

Seattle detectives referred the case to the Seattle Municipal Court for charges. Court records indicate Alexis was not charged.

I certainly am not in a position to place blame for this, but clearly something let him fall through the cracks. And we can see where that ended up. Obviously, most cases like this won’t end up as mass shootings, but when things don’t get resolved, they escalate. And when they escalate with a gun around, there is more chance things will go badly. When someone shoots tires, that should be the best time to take their guns.

We should really as a city and as a state see if there’s anything we could have done differently.