HorsesAss.Org

Where will Oregon eventually come down when it comes to the CRC project to build a new bridge on I-5 between Vancouver and Portland? Not clear. From The Columbian:

A high-level meeting of elected officials did little Monday to reach consensus on how many lanes should be built on a new replacement Interstate 5 bridge.

The Portland City Council and the Metro Council, in a rare joint work session, spent close to two hours in a wide-ranging discussion of the lane issue, bridge tolls and projected effects on greenhouse gas emissions and urban development.

The meeting, however, only underscored the division between Washington and Oregon on a bridge-freeway-transit project that could cost $3.5 billion or more.

An interesting comment from one official:

Metro Council President David Bragdon said officials agree on a number of issues, including the need to replace the bridge and to extend light rail into Vancouver. On the day a light-rail line opens connecting Portland and Vancouver, it would have the highest ridership of any route in the Portland-Vancouver area, he said.

If politics is the art of the possible, hopefully a grand compromise can be worked out between the two states and the two cities. There are hysterical types on both sides of the river, on one side proclaiming a new bridge will inevitably lead to greater sprawl and on the other side proclaiming the end of freedom due to communist choo-choo trains. It’s all so silly, and unsupported by fact.

The bridge project (bridge influence area in planner-speak) is focused on a short stretch of I-5, the main commercial artery on the West Coast. The sub-standard interchanges and bridge present a real safety and efficiency hazard, and it’s long past time a new bridge is planned and constructed.

The detail that concerns me the most is how tolls are presented to the public. If the proceeds are used to pay for construction and maintenance, the public will accept them. If tolls are used to “manage demand,” far fewer people will be happy and there is the risk of an intense public backlash in Clark County. Since the public will have to be asked to approve taxes to run light rail on this side of the river, that’s a big risk to take.

That may not be how some transportation experts see it, as new technology and the hope of influencing congestion through pricing is a somewhat attractive proposition, but it will be seen as punitive and an example of government being out to get the little people. And frankly, since any toll would be new, as passage across the bridge has been free for decades now, there would be a de facto limiting effect anyway. The quick jaunt across the river to purchase merchandise from big box retailers will have to be weighed against the cost of the tolls.

Complicated toll pricing schemes will just muddy the political waters. I sure hope they don’t do it that way.

Bellingham Herald reporter-blogger Sam Taylor, regarding a new cat blog put up by someone in the Olympia press corps:

Meanwhile, has anyone else checked on the journalists there lately? They seem lonely.

Um, meeee—ow?

With the economy in the drink and state coffers running dry, Gov. Gregoire has proposed adding 10 new state-run liquor stores, while allowing the sale of alcohol related items like cork screws and ice, in an effort to pump up revenues.  (Existing law currently prohibits State Stores from selling ice?  That’s just plain silly.)  At the same time, kinda-sorta Democratic Sen. Tim Sheldon will propose shuttering the State Store system entirely, and privatizing the sale of liquor, because… you know… there’s no time better than a $6 billion revenue shortfall to hand off $322 million in revenues to the private sector.

I’ve often heard my fellow Washingtonians complain about their inability to buy a bottle of Makers Mark at 3AM at the local 7-Eleven, but coming from Pennsylvania, with an even stricter state store system—grocery stores can’t sell beer or wine either—I don’t find it much of an  inconvenience.  After all, it’s not like the stuff goes bad, so you can always stock up… and if you really need a bottle of rotgut at 3AM, perhaps it’s best that it’s not so freely available anyway?

But what really galls me in nearly every debate about the state store system, are the knee-jerk arguments from the invisible hand crowd about unfair state competition:

The proposals, particularly increases in nonliquor sales at state-run stores, have drawn fire from grocers as an anti-competitive encroachment on private business.

[… ] Jan Gee, president of the Washington Food Industry, said the independent grocers belonging to her organization would be hurt by increases in the number of state-run liquor stores. … “We want them out of competition with us,” Gee said. “We want them out of beer and wine, and we don’t want them to even be considering an expansion into what they call bar products.”

Yeah… sure… the state sells a limited selection of beer and wine from drab storefronts staffed by well-paid, union workers with good benefits.  How could independent grocers possibly compete with that?

I mean really… if a private business can’t out-compete the state in the sale of ice and corkscrews, perhaps it shouldn’t be in business in the first the place?  They’re gonna have to come up with a better argument than that.

The appropriateness of a state monopoly on the sale of liquor, well, that’s an entirely different debate, but given alcohol’s quantifiable impact on public health and safety, there are plenty of strong arguments in favor of the status quo, however inconvenient it might be to late-night boozers or “antiquated” it may appear to Sen. Sheldon.  In fact, if we really want to increase revenues and cut government expenses, I’d not only keep the state store system and its liquor monopoly intact, but expand it to include a state monopoly on the legal sale of marijuana.

Our current state store system grew out of the end of prohibition on alcohol.  I’d say it’s past time to end the failed prohibition on pot as well… and then tax hell out of it.

This time it’s H-P:

Hewlett-Packard Co. is in the process of laying off at least 150 Vancouver workers, and possibly more than 200, as it scraps its local Edgeline printer team and shrinks other engineering groups.

—snip—-

HP “is shifting prototype testing, as well as some work on research designs, engineering specifications and drawings, abroad, including to Singapore,” according to U.S. Department of Labor documents. This inkjet lab move will affect at least 52 Vancouver employees, a labor official said.

—snip—

Employees of HP are taking the news as a blow, especially following reports by the Reuters news agency that Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Mark Hurd received compensation of $42.5 million in 2008.

While the news is not unexpected, as it’s well known H-P has been in the process of destroying the company trying to sell the Vancouver campus, the timing is especially horrible for Vancouver. Tax revenue and house sales will continue to suffer.

As for CEO compensation, I find it hard to believe Congress will actually do anything about it. Now shut up and enjoy your jelly of the month.

Click for Part 2

If there was one success that South American anti-drug efforts had in the past two decades, it was to dismantle some of the larger drug trafficking networks that were operating there. Since the death of Pablo Escobar in 1993, there have been no comparable figures in Colombian society in terms of wealth, influence, and criminality. But the drug trafficking organizations that supplied American drug users didn’t disappear. They moved to Mexico, demonstrating one fundamental rule about the drug war – as long as demand exists, you can never end the trade, you can only hope to relocate it.

Before the 1980s, Mexican drug gangs were little more than nuisances in Mexican society. They’d profit from smuggling marijuana into the United States, and could sometimes subvert institutions through corruption or violence. But today, Mexican drug gangs control much of northern Mexico and, according to Stratfor, an organization of current and retired intelligence officials, they now pose a significant threat to the federal government in Mexico City.

[Read more…]

It’s getting cold out there.

From The Columbian:

Businesses that were drawing down loans to fund these projects have been told by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. that their credit is frozen. These borrowers are being encouraged to seek other financing within the next 90 days. They make up an unknown portion of the 1,000 borrowers whose $400 million worth of loans were seized from the Bank of Clark County on Jan. 16.

“The (FDIC) is going to leave me with unfinished homes that cannot be refinanced, rented or sold,” said a local home builder, who asked The Columbian not to publish his name because he did not want public comments to affect his negotiations with the FDIC.

That TARP thing sure is working well. If it works any better you won’t be able to charge a hamburger.

Unrelated but obvious: anonymous bloggers are a threat to Western Civilization. Anonymous developers get to call newspapers and have their complaints published. Seems equal to me.

From The New York Times:

Inspections of the plant in Blakely, Ga., by the state agriculture department found areas of rust that could flake into food, gaps in warehouse doors large enough for rodents to get through, unmarked spray bottles and containers, and numerous violations of other practices designed to prevent food contamination. The plant, owned by Peanut Corporation of America of Lynchburg, Va., has been shut down.

A typical entry from an inspection report, dated Aug. 23, 2007, noted: “The food-contact surfaces of re-work kettle in the butter room department were not properly cleaned and sanitized.” Additional entries noted: “The food-contact surfaces of the bulk oil roast transfer belt in the mezzazine [sic] room were not properly cleaned and sanitized. The food-contact surfaces of pan without wheels in the blanching department were not properly cleaned and sanitized.”

A code violation in the same report observed “clean peanut butter buckets stored uncovered,” while another cited a “wiping cloth” to “cover crack on surge bin.” Tests on samples gathered on the day of that inspection were negative for salmonella.

Props to Marler Blog.

How much does a tax cut stimulate people who lost their job?

It’s already been a lousy year for workers less than a month into 2009 and there’s no relief in sight. Tens of thousands of fresh layoffs were announced Monday and more companies are expected to cut payrolls in the months ahead.

Lots of lucky duckies at places like Sprint, GM, Caterpillar and Pfizer.

Seriously, I want these Republican Congress-critters who represent some of these districts to go home and tell their constituents they simply must increase the percentage of tax cuts in the stimulus bill, even as job losses mount. They might run into some actual “real” Americans going “WTF are you talking about, I just lost my job and my house!”

Everyone knew the GOP wouldn’t be satisfied with 40% of the package, even though they are in the minority. Enough of this bipartisan artifice, it’s not anything people outside Washington, D.C. care about very much, if at all.

We need to do what we need to do, and if Republicans don’t like it, they can bring it up at the next election.

Yup, HA had a little hiccup there, so I’ve had to rewind slightly to figure out what went wrong.  On the bright side, you know I’m working.

Over at News Junkie, Sandeep’s hearing rumors of yet another round of layoffs at the Seattle Times, and when asked for comment, Times spokesperson Jill Mackie gave this non-denial denial:

“We have no announcements to make at this time regarding further layoffs,” Mackie wrote back. “Generally speaking, we try not to comment on rumors, and, out of respect to our employees, were we to have an announcement to make, we would certainly want to discuss it first with employees before commenting in the media.”

Huh.  I guess that makes Sandeep “media.”  Welcome back, Sandeep.

Meanwhile at Publicola, Josh talks to Seattle P-I managing editor David McCumber, who fears that Seattle could be on its way to being a no-newspaper town.

By any measure, Washington state Dems have done well under Dwight Pelz’s chairmanship.  Under his leadership WA Dems have won high-profile US Senate and gubernatorial races, taken back the Commissioner of Public Lands office in a closely contested race, and built near supermajorities in both house’s of the state legislature. Meanwhile, party coffers have been relatively flush, and voter registration rolls have swelled.

You can argue whether Pelz deserves much (or any) of the credit for his party’s success in recent years, but if you’re keeping score, you can’t argue that times have been pretty damn good for WA’s donkeys.

At the same time, the Washington State Republican Party has continued its decline under the chairmanship of Luke Esser.  Sure, they managed to hold on to WA-08 (in a district that has never elected a Democrat) and they picked up a couple seats this year in the otherwise lopsided legislature, but they’ve had some awfully big losses, including a spanking in a governor’s race that just a couple years ago was widely considered to be a gimme for ex-party-savior Dino Rossi.

So how’d the two party chairs do in their respective bids for another term?  Well, they both won, but…

Pelz won by 98-64 over former Snohomish County Democratic Chairman Mark Hintz. […] Esser was re-elected without opposition at a GOP meeting in Tukwila.

That’s right, Pelz is rewarded for his winning ways with a serious challenger, whereas Esser—Rob McKenna’s cabin boy—faces zero opposition in the wake of the losingest record in recent party history.

I think that tells you everything you need to know about the personality of the two parties… and perhaps, a bit about their relative success and failure.

Click for Part 1

Cocaine was first discovered in 1860 by Albert Niemann, a German chemist who identified it as the active chemical compound in the coca leaf. Before 1914, when cocaine was still legal in the United States, it was consumed primarily as an ingredient in tonics, ointments, wines, and other products. It was the original “Coca” in Coca-Cola. Vin Mariani, a well-known coca wine, had the face of Pope Leo XIII on its label. Leo and his successor, Pope Pius X, were both fans of the drink. During the temperance movement, however, cocaine was banned along with other drugs in the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914. Over the next few decades, its use dropped significantly in America as amphetamines started to become more popular.

In the late 1970s, however, the use of cocaine began to rise again. Instead of being an ingredient in various products, though, people were ingesting the drug straight up their noses as a powder, a method that had far more intense effects for the user. Just as alcohol prohibition led to the consumption of alcohol in more dangerous ways, the prohibition of coca eventually led to a trend of ingesting the drug in ways that were baffling to South Americans, where chewing on coca leaves or brewing them in tea has been commonplace for many generations.

[Read more…]

Sometime over the next day or so we’ll be introducing a new feature, with posts from Publicola (and eventually, other JOA blogs) occasionally appearing “cross-posted” to HA, and vice-versa.  Of course cross-posting is nothing new—I occasionally cross-post to Huffington Post—and on the surface, it won’t appear like much of an innovation to the casual reader.  But JOA’s new integrated cross-post works a little differently.

How is it different?  Well, when I cross-post to HuffPo, I create two separate posts, one here and one there, with two separate comment threads and two separate audiences.  But a JOA cross-post is a single post that merely appears in multiple places; edit the source on Publicola, and the changes instantly appear on HA.  And more importantly, a JOA cross-post has a single comment thread, allowing JOA sites to not only share content, but also, share community. So don’t be surprised is click on post at HA and find yourself in a comment thread on another blog.

This is admittedly a baby step toward a much larger vision, but a step nonetheless, and a demonstration of where I think this little experiment of ours needs to go.  Ultimately, the goal is to share revenue as well content, and integrated cross-posting could play an important role in efficiently distributing quality content to the widest audience possible while proportionately rewarding both content producers and traffic drivers for the value they create.

In a monetized environment, cross-posts, links and even block-quotes all have monetary value:  if I link to Publicola, I should get a piece of the revenues generated from the page views I create, while Josh should get a proportionate piece of the revenues generated from my page views that include his content.  How big a chunk each partner gets should be left to the market, but I’m pretty sure that it is only through the creation of a shared co-operative that a market for shared content can be created without giving up the largest chunk of the revenue stream to the entity who sets the rules and facilitates the transactions.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself.  Look for the new cross-post thingy.  And look for more new features coming soon.