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And this is news, why?

Dog owners in Everett don’t need to bring dog-waste bags when they visit the local park. Taxpayers are providing the bags for them.

As Everett officials have been cutting millions from the budget, the city spent $8,430 last year on plastic bags for pet waste. The Herald of Everett reports the city bought 120 cases of pet waste bags, which volunteers use to stock 36 stations at city parks and trails.

Um, anybody at the AP or the Seattle Times ever visit a public park? Seattle parks provide poop bag dispensers, as do King County parks. In fact, you’ll find them at parks, trails and popular dog-walking routes in municipalities of all sizes throughout the nation. So judging from the lede, I can only assume that the editors at the Times and the AP found this particular dropping of non-news newsworthy, I suppose as an illustration of wasteful government spending… which, of course, is a complete and utter load of crap.

Poop bag dispensers are a basic public service that helps keep our sidewalks and parks clean. Honestly, would you rather spend a few cents a piece of taxpayer money to encourage and enable your fellow citizens to fulfill their civic duty, or would you rather, you know, step in it? I know there are some who insist that government should be limited to arresting criminals, building roads and deporting brown people, but that’s a libertarian dystopia that would quickly have all of us routinely scraping dog shit from the soles of our shoes.

So thanks AP/Seattle Times for pointing out the little things government does to improve our quality of life.

UPDATE:
Alternative Theory: perhaps the Times objects to unfair competition from publicly funded poop bags, because picking up shit is the most natural and beneficial use of the plastic bags their paper comes wrapped in? Kinda like the same way they would oppose the free distribution of rubber bands?

UPDATE, UPDATE:
Alternative Theory #2:  Frank Blethen hates dogs.

Polls should always be taken with a grain of salt, but it’s hard not to be optimistic about Proposition 19 after a PPP poll has it ahead by a wide margin, 52% to 36%. This is after Survey USA had it ahead 50% to 40%.

Of course, there are still special interests and other political dinosaurs who will fight this initiative, but so far their efforts have been less than inspiring. And I’m not sure why anyone thought it was a good idea to start a No on Prop 19 Facebook page, as it’s already overrun with a fascinating mix of legalization supporters debunking the silly arguments and jokesters pretending to be clueless prohibitionists.

All that said, the voting in November won’t be done on the internet, so it’s best not to be too confident just yet.

UDPATE: Nate Silver coins a new phrase, the “Broadus Effect”, to describe a discrepancy he’s seeing with minority voters between automated polls and live operator polls on Prop 19.

According to a report on stadium food safety from ESPN.com, one-third of the food vendors at Seattle’s Qwest Field have cited by health department officials for critical violations, specifically, for having inadequate hand washing facilities. Yuck.

That ranks Qwest Field a middling 19th in food safety out of 32 NFL stadiums (tied with Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field), but dead last in the NFC West.

FYI, only 16% of Safeco Field vendors have been cited for critical violations, either for inadequate hand washing facilities or (double yuck) not using the hand washing facilities they have.

Yum.

Of course, everybody knows that we Democrats are a bunch of terrorist-loving, soft-on-crime pansies, which I suppose explains why in the U.S. Senate race, law enforcement organizations are endorsing Democrat Patty Murray.

Huh?

Perhaps the 4,500 members of the Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs (WACOPS) understand that being tough on crime takes more than just saying that you are tough on crime; perhaps WACOPS members appreciate the millions of dollars of federal money Sen. Murray has brought the state for training and equipment, fighting meth and preventing gang violence (you know, the kinda much needed funds Dino Rossi derides as “earmarks”)? Perhaps Sen. Murray’s hard work giving their members the funding they need helps explain why WACOPS joins the Law Enforcement Administrators of Washington, the Washington State Patrol Troopers Association, the Washington State Council of Fire Fighters and other first responders in endorsing Democrat Sen. Murray over pro-law-and-order-except-when-it-comes-to-paying-for-it Republican Rossi?

As for Rossi, I can’t seem to find his first responder endorsements on his web site. Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t have any?

Yes, I’m back in Seattle, but I’m also in meetings all morning, so I won’t have much time for posting. In the meanwhile, I highly recommend Danny Westneat’s must-read column in the Seattle Times: ‘Self-made’ myth divides us.

Of all stories we tell ourselves, the one about how we’re a merit-based nation of lone wolves has got to be the most enduring. The most intoxicating. And the most baloney.

Nowhere is the myth as confused with reality as in rock-ribbed Eastern Washington. The place depends utterly on the government and communal resources for its existence, from the New Deal irrigation system still being paid for by taxpayers elsewhere, to farming subsidies and crop price supports. Yet in their own minds, they are mavericks living off the land.

“We don’t need the government to come in and try to prop things up,” a Lincoln County grain buyer told me as the economy was collapsing in the fall of 2008. As if the local economy weren’t already propped up.

It’s not often I recommend something in the Times for anything but ridicule, but Westneat nails it. Really… read the whole thing.

Last week’s contest was won by Ludicrus Maximus. It was the office in Albuquerque, NM where a man went on a shooting spree and then killed himself.

Here’s this week’s photo. As always, it’s related to something in the news from the past week. Good luck!

I stepped outside last night for the first time in days, to grab a cab to the Daily Kos party at House of Blues. It was hot. I stepped outside again this morning to grab a cab to the airport. It was still hot.

Fortunately, next year’s Netroots Nation promises to be much more comfortable, and much more interesting in terms of the local setting. Near the end of his funny, passionate and energizing keynote address last night, Sen. Al Franken had the honor of announcing that NN 2011 will be held in his home town of Minneapolis. Not your typical tourist destination, but then neither was Pittsburgh, and we all had a lot of fun there. Plus, there are several nonstop flights a day between SEA and MSP, and that always makes for a much less annoying trip. (Well, except on US Airways; they can pretty much fuck up anything.)

So if I’m still blogging this time next year, I’m planning on being there.

As for this year’s NN, I’d say it was worth the trip, even if it wasn’t necessarily the most fun I’ve had at one of these confabs. (I don’t gamble, I done patronize hookers or strippers, and I can’t afford the extravagant shows, so Vegas isn’t really my kinda place.) Gatherings like this are all about making and reinforcing relationships, and the close connections I have to other bloggers nationwide, both national and local, make me a better and more influential blogger. It’s the community aspect of the Netroots movement that has always been its not-so-secret weapon, and nothing builds community like meeting face to face.

And while there certainly wasn’t the same energy and buzz as there was in the heady summer of 2008, I can safely report that the alleged death of progressive enthusiasm has been greatly exaggerated. When the final attendance numbers are tallied, NN 2010 may turn out to be the best attended NN ever. Indeed, there were considerably more first-time attendees at NN, than total attendees at the shadow “Right Online” conference down the street. Doesn’t exactly fit with the media narrative, but then, the facts often don’t.

As for me, I’m coming back to Seattle fired up for perhaps one last burst of personal advocacy on an issue that most Americans tend to ignore, but which threatens to undermine the ability of our nation to maintain a functioning democracy. But much more on that later.

Ephesians 5:22-24
Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

Discuss.

Live TV : Ustream

Enjoy a live stream of tonight’s Netroots Nation closing program, including the keynote address from Sen. Al Franken.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is speaking at the moment at Netroots Nation, and got a surprisingly warm welcome. The crowd’s favorite line thus far:

“I know at sometimes I get on your nerves. And I can tell you, that you get on mine.”

And thats the way Democracy is supposed to work.

Coming up, Seattle’s own Joan McCarter (Daily Kos’s McJoan) will be moderating questions from the audience.

With all but the toughest census work done, we’ll soon start the process of redistricting. And I’d like to make a small suggestion when we start to redistrict here in Washington: For goodness sake, name the districts, don’t number them.

Watching the British elections recently, I was struck at how you can get a sense of where the constituencies are just based on names like Wimbledon, Exeter, or Belfast East. Names get right to the point and are clearer than numbers. In fact, when the newspapers do use the number of state or federal districts here, they are so unhelpful that they often times have to add a location anyway. (Occasionally with misleading results. When reading about my old district, I sometimes hear that Ruth Kagi represents Shoreline, Darlene Fairley represents Lake Forest Park, and Maralyn Chase represents Edmonds despite the fact that they represent the same district.)

Naming the districts would be easy enough to do here. Instead of discussing the 32nd District that has no inherent meaning, why not a name like North King County and Edmonds? Jim McDermott would represent Seattle and Vashon, not the number 7.

I understand that the boundaries of the districts will matter more over the next decade than their names, but naming the districts just makes more sense than the current system.

I checked in to the Rio hotel in Las Vegas at around 3:30 PM Wednesday, and I’m proud to say that I haven’t walked outside since. 112 degrees? You gotta be kidding. And since the only thing outside the hotel is more hotels, I don’t really see the point.

Anyway, the big problem with these blogger confabs from a blogger’s perspective is that they leave so little time for actual blogging, which is why my posting has been so light these last few days. That said, I’ve got a lot of great posts in my head that will hopefully work their way out through my fingers over the coming weeks, and have started plotting a couple of new schemes to further our socialist takeover of America. Well worth the trip.

But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been some disappointments. Carla (from Blue Oregon) and I had high hopes for our Pub Quiz team, “The Dirty Fucking Liberal Bloggers,” especially after recruiting the Seattle P-I’s encyclopedic Joel Connelly as a ringer. But unfortunately, Joel let us down with his total lack of pop culture knowledge, leading to our team’s worst performance ever in our long and glorious two-year career. Maybe next year we’ll try recruiting a journalist from a print publication.

Check out Jane Hamsher on MSNBC today, finally pointing out the elephant in the room on our immigration drug war problem in Arizona:

As Cienna reported yesterday on Slog, $98 million dollars has now been pledged toward the $131 million cost of replacing the South Park Bridge:

King County ($30 million), Washington state ($20 million), city of Seattle ($15 million), State Transportation Improvement Board ($10 million), Port of Seattle ($5 million), Senator Murray’s Federal DOT-HUD funding bill ($3 million), and PSRC ($15 million).

On the one hand, it’s terrific news to see the region finally getting its shit together on replacing such an absolutely essential, if unglamorous piece of local infrastructure. On the other hand, our political leaders should be absolutely ashamed that it took the bridge’s closure to finally get them to act. How many small, local businesses in the district surrounding the bridge are going to fail during the couple year closure? Or does it not really matter when it’s the wrong type of businesses closing?

Put perhaps more importantly, from a pure public policy perspective, what an incredibly fucked up way of funding local infrastructure!

$20 million here, $15 million there, $3 million in loose change from under the cushions on the couch… really? That’s how we fund road construction around here? I mean, since when did the Port of Seattle become a road-building agency? And yet the Big Bore tunnel, let alone the South Park Bridge wouldn’t be possible without hundreds of millions of dollars from the port. The port, for chrisakes. How fucked up is that? And honestly, how dishonest?

It’s all taxpayer dollars after all; the county and the port, for example, share district boundaries and tax exactly the same people. So why do we have to go through this incredibly stupid charade of raising money from seven — count ’em — seven different taxpayer funded governmental entities?

Why? Because our region has become paralyzed by the politics of something for nothing.

There was a time when the county and city had the taxing authority to maintain their own roads without resorting to begging or special levies or, well, laundering taxpayer dollars through the Port of Seattle. But no more. Not since Tim Eyman’s I-747 vindictively capped property tax revenue growth at an absolutely ridiculous one percent annual growth, a limit our cowardly governor and legislature ridiculously reimposed after it was thrown out by the courts.

One percent! Not enough to keep up with inflation, let alone our region’s growth. Are we really that stupid and irresponsible? (Are we, Seattle Times editorial board? Are we?)

I’ve got no problem with state and federal contributions to local projects — it’s always worked that way — but here’s a novel idea: how about giving the city and county sufficient taxing authority to take on the primary responsibility of maintaining city and count roads, instead of relying on such an incredibly convoluted and stupid-ass funding goulash? Wouldn’t that be more efficient? And since the money is all coming from the same people, wouldn’t it be dramatically more honest and transparent?

Or are we really better off sacrificing the South Park business district for the sake of hiding from taxpayers what basic services really cost?