The Occupy movement took over Red Square at the University of Washington today. Here are a few images from the event:
Open Thread 10/12
– it’s wrong-headed to think that voting down a fee will somehow make driving affordable.
– Maybe now we can raise taxes on the richest members of society.
– The freeloaders who don’t pay federal income taxes.
– This sort of vigilante justice will probably become more common in the Internet age, so let’s at least try to get the right people.
Drinking Liberally — Seattle
It’s Tuesday…which means its time for our weekly Occupy the Montlake Alehouse event. Please join us for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally.
We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. at 8:00 pm. Some of us will be there earlier for dinner.
Hell…some folks will begin the occupation at 5:00 pm to watch the Republican primary debate!
Can’t make it? Drinking liberally is all over the place! There are also meetings tonight in the Tri-Cities, Bellingham, and Vancouver, WA. Tomorrow night, Drinking Liberally Bremerton meets at 5:00pm. Next Monday, there are meetings in Olympia, Woodinville, Shelton, and Yakima.
With 227 chapters of Living Liberally, chances are good there is one near you.
Rep. Report Card
The Sierra Club has released their report card for Washington state’s congressional representatives:
- Jay Inslee (D-01), A+
- Rick Larsen (D-02), A
- Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-03), F
- Doc Hastings (R-04), F
- Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-05), F
- Norm Dicks (D-06), A+
- Jim McDermott (D-07), A+
- Dave Reichert (R-08), C
- Adam Smith (D-09), A+
Notice a pattern?
The best of the Republicans, Reichert, who was once taped confessing to pro-environmental votes as a way take environmentalists “out of the game”, only gets away with a C—and that’s based on his voting record.
The bottom line: Republicans are really, really bad for the environment.
Majority-minority?
Last Thursday, Pramila Jayapal and George Cheung of United for Fair Representation wrote an op-ed column in the Seattle Times. Though it ended up on the doorsteps of a couple hundred thousand readers, their opinion piece was actually addressed to an audience of four — the members of the Washington State Redistricting Commission.
Jayapal and Cheung are challenging the Commissioners to create a “majority-minority” Congressional District at their next public meeting, tomorrow morning in Olympia. They’ll probably get their wish … which, sad to say, might eventually work against their interests.
Before explaining what I mean, we need some background information. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 contains several provisions that bar racial discrimination in redistricting plans. Sixteen states are required to go through “preclearance” of their plans, automatic submission to their plans to the feds; Washington is not one of those states. In practice, application of the VRA has resulted in district lines that collect members of a racial group into one district, thereby greatly increasing the probability that that CD will be represented by a member of that group. One might call it “reverse gerrymandering”, concentrating a group instead of diluting their influence by drawing districts that put small pockets of the group into several districts dominated by other ethnicities. In creating such Congressional Districts, you can end up with some really ludicrous maps. For instance, look at Illinois’s 4th District, in which the two convoluted sections of Chicago’s Latino communities are connected by the median strip of I-294.
Another majority-minority district is the 12th District of North Carolina, which crawls along I-85 picking up African-American communities while skipping past other towns. It even looks a little bit like the original 1812 gerrymander.
Those two CDs, and others around the country, achieved the goal of fostering diversity in the House of Representatives. Luis Gutiérrez represents IL-04 in Washington and the Congressman from NC-12 is African-American Mel Watt. But I doubt that the same could easily happen if our Redistricting Commission takes the advice of Jayapal and Cheung, because any such district would be majority-minorities. Unlike the largely Mexican-American IL-04 or the mostly black NC-12, a Washington district would be Eritrean and Pakistani, Thai and Guatemalan, Indian and American Indian, Vietnamese and African-American, Iraqi and Filipino … on and on and on. No race, no language group, no national origin would predominate. Some of those groups are antagonistic to others — would a Bengali vote for a Pakistani? a Honduran for a Salvadoran? an Iraqi for an Iranian? With such splintering, in a multi-candidate electoral race, it just might turn out that someone from the largest single demographic group in the CD (non-Hispanic whites) would win.
This is not to suggest that racial identity would be the reason for any citizen to vote for a particular candidate. I’m merely saying that the situation wouldn’t be nearly as cut-and-dried as it would be in a locale with a large concentration of a single racial/ethnic group.
There’s another issue as well. Republicans love majority-minority Congressional Districts. Racial minorities are generally Democrats, and concentrating a racial group into, say, a 75-25 Democratic district may make it possible to generate a bunch of 53-47 Republican CDs around it. That’s probably not the case in Illinois, where the excluded middle of IL-04 is largely a black community, but it certainly applies to North Carolina. And it could happen in Washington as well.
In their op-ed, Jayapal and Cheung summarize the first round of Redistricting Commission maps (emphasis added):
Republican commissioners Slade Gorton and Tom Huff and Democratic commissioner Tim Ceis made strong and positive statements that reflected their appreciation for people’s participation in the process and their belief that there was a real need for this change. Huff’s map exactly matched our unity map. No maps had all of our asks reflected but many had some and we will continue to push for as much representation as possible for people of color.
While Tom Huff may have given United for Fair Representation what they want, he found a lot of ways to screw Democrats. His map, IMHO, is even more Republican-friendly than Skeletor’s Gorton’s. For instance, he separates uber-Democratic San Juan County from the Whatcom County-based CD, replacing those voters with large chunks of rural Republicans in eastern King, Snohomish, and Skagit. I see that district as lean-R. Huff drew four strong-R districts on his map, and another that could swing that way when Norm Dicks decides to hang ’em up. Also, he has the Seattle-based CD wrapping around the northern border of Lake Washington, far enough to include most of Kirkland. His map certainly doesn’t come close to representing the state’s overall makeup.
Tomorrow, we’ll get to see each Commissioner’s second iteration. It will be interesting to see who has moved his boundaries the most, as well as who has hardened his position. I still have confidence that the Commission will agree on a final map by the end of the year. And I think it’ll have a majority-minorities Congressional District. But I don’t have much confidence that the m-m district will be represented by a minority group Congress(wo)man. If Tom Huff or Slade Gorton gets his way, it will be slightly more difficult to elect enough Democrats to retake control of the House from the crazies who run it these days. And a Democratic Congress would do far, far more for Jayapal and Cheung (and the rest of us) than building the Congressional District they seek.
Glossary of Terms for Occupy Seattle
At Occupy Seattle (and I assume at the other Occupy locations) the decision making is decided in a group manner, mostly with consensus. It’s chaotic and while there are good things and bad things about it, this post is just my attempt to collect some terms for quick reference. At this point it’s pretty inadequate, but I’ll update it with other people’s suggestions and corrections.
- Facilitator – In the general assembly and in the work groups, the person who leads the group. Since they are striving to remain leaderless, the facilitator tries to remain neutral and to give everyone a voice.
- General Assembly – The way the entire group makes decisions. Everyone has a say in them. So people can speak for a determined amount of time people make proposals and vote on them and then there are announcements. General Assembly is at 6:30 PM in Seattle.
- Mic Check/People’s Mic – Since there isn’t a proper microphone (permitting issues, I think), the crowd will repeat back whatever was said. So it’ll be mostly short phrases and then everyone will repeat it. It’s still often tough to hear if you’re not in the front, but more people can hear it than otherwise would. People often begin saying “Mic Check” to keep focus.
- Work Groups – The smaller groups where specific issues are dealt with. Most work groups at Occupy Seattle start at 4:00. You can tell members of the various work groups by the colored tape on their arms. At Occupy Seattle some of the work groups are the:
- Tactical Work Group
- Internet Communications Work Group
- Media Work Group
- Peace & Safety Work Group
- Facilitation & Process Work Group
If you have more, please email me, Carl.Ballard01@gmail.com or add a comment. This thread is going to be pretty heavily moderated.
Open Thread 10/10
– The Occupy Seattle Calendar of events (H/T Howie on Facebook)
– I don’t know if this says much about the Republicans as it does about the difficulty of comparing polls against each other. Candidates will have a higher name recognition right after a person on the other end of the phone mentions them.
– I’ve never seen an episode of Glee in my life, so I didn’t understand about 90% of the words in this Lindy West recap, but it was quite funny.
Bird’s Eye View Contest
Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Aberdeen, Scotland.
This week’s picture is related to a TV show or a movie. It’s a tough one, so I may have to provide a clue. Or maybe not, you guys often surprise the hell out of me. Good luck!
HA Bible Study
Job 9:23
When a good person dies a sudden death, God sits back and laughs.
Discuss.
Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!
Pap: No-tax, no-regulation Tea Partiers are killing America.
Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.
Young Turks: Turning your dead relatives into bullets.
Obama: The American Jobs Act.
The Republican Primary Asylum:
- Red State Update: Are Herman Cain, Ron Paul, an Rick Perry jackiebaggers?
- Newsy: Cain faces heat over statement that black voters are brainwashed.
- Lawrence O’Donnell: Cain moves to the back of the bus.
- O’Donnell: 999 brainwash.
- Stephen: The rise of Herman Cain.
- Young Turks: Koch brothers are funding Herman Cain.
- Romney’s foreign policies sound just like Bush’s.
- Jon: Out with the Christie, in with the Romney.
- Romney’s policies run up against reality.
- Newsy: Whoda thunk? Christie isn’t running.
- Thom: A scorned love affair with Chris Christie
- Actual Audio: Chris Christie at the Reagan Library.
- Stephen on a post-Chris Christie G.O.P. field
- Sam Seder: It’s cool to be racist in the GOP primary.
- Jon on Rick’s family ranch.
- Newsy: Media writes Bachmann’s campaign obit.
Thom: Eric Cantor…no jobs bill, no safety net, no regulations…no! no! no!.
Young Turks: Did Senator Reid screw Senate Dems?
White House: West Wing Week.
Pap: The GOP’s cult mentality.
Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber on the American Jobs Act.
Stephen: Obamacare and the Supremes.
Fleeced Palinistas:
- Newsy: Sarah’s out.
- Jon: Take the money and don’t run (via Political Wire):
- Ann Telnaes: Who to thank for former Gov. Sarah Palin.
- Stephen: A tragic end
- Young Turks: Down goes Palin!
Young Turks: FAUX News—we hire hot women for ratings.
Taxes on the wealthy: Reagan and Obama (via ThinkProgress).
Pap: Chris Christie’s Koch addiction.
Thom: Proof the Heritage Foundation flip flopped on ObamaCare:
GOP supporters take honors as Worst Person in the World.
Young Turks: Meghan McCain vs. Red State.
The Demise of al Qaeda Operative Anwar al-Awlaki:
- Newsy: Media misses the mark on Paul’s impeachment statement.
- Mark Fiore: Drone attack.
Newsy: DNA clears Texas killer after 25 years in prison.
Thom with some Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Hartmann: The Romney Rule vs. Buffet Rule.
Glenn Beck is back in the saddle as Worst Person in the World.
Occupied:
- Occupy your city
- Olbermann: First collective statement of Occupy Wall Street
- Sam Seder: Occupy Wall Street doesn’t need demands!.
- Newsy: Unions join the occupation.
- Sam Seder: Occupy Wall Street more popular than Congress & Tea Party…What next?
- Thom: American Exceptionalism versus Occupy Wall Street
- Olbermann: Portland police with infant.
- Susie Occupies LA.
- Young Turks: Republicans are “uncomfortable” with Occupy Wall Street.
- Republicans are on the side of Wall Street.
- Jon: Occupy Wall Street and the Tea party.
- Sam Seder: Occupy Wall Street will outlast Erin Burnett’s show.
- Hartmann: From Occupy Wall Street to Occupy America!
- Young Turks: Cenk talks with Occupy LA occupants.
The Tea Party’s not-so-funny comedian.
Young Turks: Scott Brown gets a bit sexist.
Pap: The GOP’s plan to raise taxes on the middle class.
Thom with another episode of The Good, the Bad, and the Very, Very Ugly.
Liberal Viewer: What does our jails say about us?
Rep. Wasserman Schultz talks about Eric Cantor’s comments on the American Jobs Act .
Hank and Hitler:
- Newsy: Hank Williams, Jr. pulled from MNF.
- Young Turks: Hank Williams, Jr. Obama Hitler comments.
- Sam Seder: Making sense of Hank’s statement.
- Ed and Pap: Fox’s new celebrity has-been.
- Hank apologizes
- Red State Update: Hank Jr. & Hitler, N-wordhead & Perry
- Young Turks: Hank Williams, Jr.’s fake apology.
Obama hosts the 1985 Chicago Bears.
Young Turks: Koch Brother’s benzene emissions.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
Overheard on the 358
I love the Metro, but there are a few routes that are trouble. The 358, that goes up Aurora Ave N. and through some of the worst parts of Downtown is one of those routes. So don’t think of the following exchange as typical, or anything:
Homeless person #1: “I’m getting off at the next stop, do you have a light I could borrow?”
Homeless person #2: “Sure here.”
Homeless person #1: “Oh a Bic. They’re pretty good. Last a long time.”
Homeless person #2: “Yeah. Well no. Not if you smoke crack anyway.”
Vision of the future
Obama on Tuesday (via The Washington Post):
“Folks go around saying ‘Obamacare.’ That’s right — I care,” the president said at a fundraising luncheon in Dallas on Tuesday. He added of Republicans: “That’s their main agenda? That’s your plank? Is making sure 30 million people don’t have health insurance?”
Indeed. But Obama just scratches the surface. The Republican agenda includes elimination of Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare, the insurance and security components of social security, public education, student loan and financial aid programs, abortion, environmental protections, food protections, safety standards, and, of course, unions.
Oh yeah…and the middle class.
Taken altogether, the Republican “utopia” seems like something out of a Mad Max movie.
Open Thread 10/7
And sorry if it’s rather Occupy heavy, that’s mostly what I’ve been reading.
– It will be interesting to see how the leaders of more established liberal institutions interact with the Occupy people.
– While of course, I don’t like the city arresting protesters, I’m glad they’re still working to figure out a way to let them stay (I’m not saying the Occupy people should or shouldn’t take the city up on this, only that I’m glad it’s being offered, and that there is a dialogue).
And here’s some non Occupy stuff:
– Scott Brown really could have probably won this rhetorically. Instead he just decided to be an asshole.
Coherent Demands
One of the things I hear again and again from critics of the Occupy movement is that they lack a set of coherent demands. That they don’t have all the solutions yet. But here’s the thing: we’re not at solutions yet, we’re still identifying the problem. The coherent demand is stop. Stop the marginalization of working and poor people. Stop the outsized corporate power. Stop the cozy relationships that allow a few people to profit at the expense of the rest of us. Stop. The status quo isn’t working.
There’s time for figuring out the solutions, and the people here will probably fracture when that time comes. But right now we’re still identifying the problems. So right now there’s a place for the moderates and socialists, for the Ron Paul supporters and for the union folks. They all know things are shit. They all know this can’t hold.
Candidate Answers: Dian Ferguson
1) Crime is down in the city, but we’ve seen some horrible incidents with the police in recent years. How do we ensure public safety and not have those sorts of things happen in the future?
I applaud and empathize with the police and other first responders, and know from firsthand experience just how tough these jobs are. However, like any other public employees, law enforcement workers need to be accountable to the public. Given the recent spate of widely publicized incidents, and the deep mistrust of the Seattle Police Department in some communities, the current accountability system is clearly not working. We need to work proactively to restore trust in our police, especially among immigrant, refugee and communities of color. At the same time, SPD also has a responsibility to openly and honestly review their training and examine an internal culture that is clearly not serving the city as well as it can.
I will push for and support an end to any and all law enforcement training programs that have contributed to the unacceptable rash of SPD incidents involving abuse of power. The Office for Professional Accountability has not been an effective tool for review of police actions; it needs a mix of civilian and law enforcement representation and subpoena power to better review SPD actions. And SPD must undertake a thorough review of its training policies and procedures to ensure that, in the course of a difficult job that often requires split-second decisions, officers have instilled in them cultural awareness and the tools needed to maintain public safety, de-escalate confrontations, and treat civilians with courtesy and respect.
I also support a greater re-emphasis on community policing, and programs that enable officers to build relationships with neighborhood watch groups, residents, and business owners and employees.
2) Now that the Viaduct is coming down, what should the waterfront look like?
Now that construction of the downtown tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way viaduct is underway, over the next several months city council will face the next phase of the debate: how best to use the newly available waterfront acreage that removal of the viaduct will create. I believe that the final plan must meet several critical objectives:
It must meet critical infrastructure needs. We need to not only replace the aging seawall, but anticipate the climate change-induced rising water levels of coming decades.
It must make the waterfront accessible to the general public. Plans should emphasize public access over private development. The downtown waterfront must be usable by all residents, workers, and tourists, not just those who can afford to pay a price.
It must be affordable. Given Seattle’s budget constraints, and the possible additional costs of tunnel construction itself, this is not the time for the city to once again opt for an expensive mega-project. One preliminary plan costs nearly a billion dollars. This is simply not realistic or wise. Seattle can not afford a blank check for waterfront development.
It must preserve waterfront jobs. The waterfront plan will almost certainly create tourism-related jobs, but it should not do so at the expense of the existing, well-paying jobs of Seattle’s working waterfront.
It must be accountable. The plan has specific budgetary and completion benchmarks. Council must not only approve the plan, but continue to exercise oversight to ensure that both the tunnel and the waterfront reconstruction come in on time and in budget.
It must ensure that public safety is an integral part of the overall landscape design. The present Freeway Park design has made it an instrument of criminal activities and neighborhood concern. The waterfront landscape design elements must avoid repeating similar design problems.
Once such a criteria is agreed upon than the city can move forward with incorporating fun elements like a venue for waterfront concerts, arts and cultural sites that showcase the indigenous historical contributions of first nation people and those of ethnic origins, immigrant and refugee groups who now call Seattle home.
This is a rare opportunity to remake one of the most visible parts of Seattle. We need to do it right. On council, I will work hard to ensure that any plan meets these goals and delivers a downtown waterfront worthy of a world class city.
3) As the great recession drags on, the city budget is still hurt. What do we need to cut, what do we need to keep, and do we need to raise more money via taxation?
The Seattle City Council recently voted unanimously to place a $60 vehicle license fee increase on the November ballot. I urge voters to reject this proposal as being the wrong plan, at the wrong time, to achieve the wrong goals.
It’s the wrong plan. The proposed car tab increase is an extremely regressive flat tax that will disproportionately hurt the poor and unemployed.
It’s the wrong time. We are in a struggling economy. King County Council has already voted to impose an additional $20 car tab hike that will also affect all city car owners; the city council already imposed its original $20 car tab assessment months ago; and the city council has also put a doubling of the Families and Education Levy on the November ballot.
It’s the wrong goals. The $204 million to be raised by the car tab hike during the next ten years will be divided primarily among transit projects (49 percent); road repair and maintenance (29 percent); and bicycle and pedestrian projects (22 percent). All three of these areas are misjudged. The car tab hike is being widely promoted as a “transit measure,” but that’s misleading. Instead of buses or light rail, much of the money is dedicated to two streetcar projects, given the overwhelming demand for more bus – not streetcar – service; this is an unconscionable misuse of scarce transportation taxing authority.
It’s time to balance our support for these transportation modes with other transportation needs. Both the bicycle/pedestrian funding and the streetcar lines are nice “wish list” projects that pale in importance next to the over one billion dollars in backlogged road and bridge repairs. The part of this ten year tax allocated to repairs and maintenance is less than one-seventeenth of what would be needed even to address today’s backlog. The maintenance backlog is a serious public safety issue that affects cars, buses, bicycles, and every other type of vehicle that uses our streets and bridges.
We need to focus on what matters, capital infrastructure maintenance should be the priority. On par with this for the general fund would be maintenance of the safety net for those most vulnerable. Regressive taxation is not the answer for addressing revenue shortfalls in the future. Seattle should take the leadership in working with legislative representatives from the 36th, 46th, 43rd, 37th, 34th and the 11th in working with legislative allies to urge a WA State income tax to replace all regressive taxes and to lower current sales tax rates.
4) With its budget shrunk at least until the end of the recession what should Seattle parks look like?
The biggest problem for the Parks & Recreation Department in recent years has been lack of accountability to local park users and neighbors, particularly in park controversies like the Gas Works Park concerts, the proposed Woodland Park Zoo parking garage, a redesign of Occidental Park, and many others. There were two common themes to those controversies: pressure from the city to use its parks to generate new income streams, and lack of responsiveness by both Parks Department leadership and city council to neighborhood concerns.
Those controversies have subsided after the departure of longtime Parks and Recreation head Ken Bounds and his patron, former mayor Greg Nickels. But the pressures to generate park income for the city, and the need for oversight by and accountability to the city council, remain. Parks Department leadership and members of the council’s Parks and Seattle Center need to balance the sometimes conflicting needs of the many constituencies of the parks – picnickers, sports fields users, special events patrons, dog lovers, etc. – with those of park neighbors and the general interests of the city.
The goal of keeping Seattle Parks free, safe, and accessible for all Seattle residents should be paramount. Safety is not limited to people and should be extended to keep fighting breeds of dogs out of Off-leash areas, and parks for the safety of other pets and people. User fees should be kept affordable and other income streams – whether park concessions, special events, or more creative attempts to raise desperately needed revenues for the city – should only be undertaken if the impact on that primary goal is minimal. Revenue shortfalls will continue as the recession continues. Parks are places where naming rights and advertisement for a fee could be better utilized to assist with park maintenance and expenses.
5) What is the Seattle’s role in education and public transportation given how important they are to the city, but that other agencies are tasked with them?
The City has made a huge investment in Seattle Public Schools by taxing citizens to invest in a variety of support services for students. Overall the city should and must do a better job of managing the Education Levy dollars so that the wrap around services being funded can assist the school district in raising academic achievement and graduation rates. Dropout rates are unacceptably high. African-American and Native American graduation rates have declined in the last decade. Our schools often haven’t been successful in educating some groups of students ESL students, lower income students and students from African –American, Native American and Latino cultural groups. We’re not being smart to ensure that we are leveraging city influence on the schools to establish some targeted goals and benchmarks to be measured against. The city can also do a much better job working in partnership with the school district to support administrative areas like Human Resource training, shared staff between the cities Park and Recreational staff who oversees the fields and the school district’s garden and janitorial staff who have some similar and shared responsibilities for the same properties. We need to facilitate ways to keep school district gyms and recreational areas open to the public in the early evenings and on weekends. North and South end schools can be paired to support one another much like the Sister City International relationships. In the end, the Families and Education Levy need to be supported but at the same time, we need to build into it some real specific benchmarks for accountability.
The primary role of city government in public transit is to oversee urban planning, zoning, and development in such a way that it both encourages transit use and makes transit itself more efficient. The city government needs to encourage and support a healthy mix of transportation modes; there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. As Seattle moves to greater density, it should both concentrate much of that increased density in areas with good transit service and work to ensure that transit can adapt adequately in areas where demand will increase due to new development.
There have been various proposals over the years to combine transit agencies in the region, particularly Metro and Sound Transit. Depending on the details, I would seriously consider such a proposal. The coordination and elimination of redundancy amongst different agencies is better, but there’s more to be done, and having one bureaucracy to fund rather than several would also result in cost savings and improved efficiency – savings that, hopefully, could be redirected into expanded service.
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