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Although tech blogs from both the civil liberties left and the free market right  have supposedly debunked Monday’s hot Wall Street Journal article about Google reversing its long standing pro-Net Neutrality position, other irksome (and locally relevant) revelations in the article remain standing: Two major Seattle tech-culture companies, Microsoft and Amazon, also longtime advocates of Net Neutrality, are getting squishy on the issue. 

Net Neutrality is the James Madison-y idea that all content is created equal. Practically speaking, it means this: Internet companies like AT&T cannot give preferential treatment to content companies, or any website for that matter. Walmart.com cannot get better treatment than Hel-Mart.com, for example.

The concept has been contested by transmission companies like AT&T who want the option of offering better delivery for companies willing to pay more. They argue that big content companies should get better service (and pay more) because they use more bandwidth. But that’d be like Seattle Public Utilities giving a wealthy family living in North Seattle faster and hotter water than someone living in South Seattle just because the fancy family used more water and paid more. 

While the tech blogs went after the Journal article, defending Google’s honor by pointing out that Google was only promoting a long standing concept called edge-caching— which apparently doesn’t jeopardize net neutrality  — the accusations that Seattle’s own Microsoft and Amazon are reversing themselves on Net Neutrality remains in question.   

 

In the two years since Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other Internet companies lined up in favor of network neutrality, the landscape has changed. The Internet companies have formed partnerships with phone and cable companies, making them more dependent on one another.

Microsoft, which appealed to Congress to save network neutrality just two years ago, has changed its position completely. “Network neutrality is a policy avenue the company is no longer pursuing,” Microsoft said in a statement. The Redmond, Wash., software giant now favors legislation to allow network operators to offer different tiers of service to content companies.

Microsoft has a deal to provide software for AT&T’s Internet television service. A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment whether this arrangement affected the company’s position on network neutrality.

Amazon’s popular digital-reading device, called the Kindle, offers a dedicated, faster download service, an arrangement Amazon has with Sprint. That has prompted questions in the blogosphere about whether the service violates network neutrality.

“Amazon continues to support adoption of net neutrality rules to protect the longstanding, fundamental openness of the Internet,” Amazon said in a statement. It declined to elaborate on its Kindle arrangement.

Amazon had withdrawn from the coalition of companies supporting net neutrality, but it recently was listed once again on the group’s Web site. It declined to comment on whether carriers should be allowed to prioritize traffic.

Microsoft kinda sorta denied that they’re backing away from Net Neutrality in this follow-up article, but they don’t address the specifics of the WSJ’s accusations. 

Sidenote: The WSJ article also indicates that Obama—who was a loud advocate of Net Neutrality during the campaign—may also be reversing course.

I’ll be on KUOW’s The Conversation today at around 1:30PM, talking about the most underreported news stories of the year.

My contribution?  Well, it’s an underreported aspect of a heavily reported story: the long term structural revenue deficit at the heart of our state’s current $5 billion-plus budget shortfall.

Good economies mask the problem while bad economies, like our current one, merely exacerbate it.  But no matter how you futz the numbers, long term tax revenues simply cannot keep pace with economic growth or growth in demand for public services.  That’s a fact.

So what we’re getting by default is an ever shrinking government by the only metric that really matters, and we’re getting it without any public debate.

What Dan said…

Once again here’s my surefire plan for saving daily papers: scare away the old folks once and for all. Those readers are killing you. Go tab, charge a lot more for home delivery, offer papers for free in boxes downtown, put “fuck” in a headline on the front page above the fold (if you haven’t gone tab), identify with the cities you’re freakin’ named for (and the not the freakin’ suburb your publisher lives in), and stop swimming with one anvil tucked under your left arm (“family newspaper”) and another tucked under your right (“objectivity”). Papers are for adults, not children, and mincing around about profanity turns off adult readers; people prefer openly biased media because letting your bias hang out there is, at least, honest; and, once again, catering to old timers and making sure there’s nothing in your paper that can’t be read to a six year-old at bedtime turns off adult readers.

And do all this now.

I’d add to that: think of your reporters as writers.  And as such, allow your writers to express their personalities in their writing.  Readers want to trust your reporters, but it’s much easier to develop that sort of personal relationship with a real person than it is with a faceless, disembodied byline.

Do the folks in the Seattle school district responsible for closing schools due to snow actually live in Seattle, because down in my SE Seattle neighborhood we’ve seen barely a flake, and the roads are clear and dry.  Same holds true for a friend in the Mt. Baker neighborhood, who left an angry rant on my voicemail this morning: no snow, clear roads, and clamoring kids without childcare arrangements.

The kid in me still reflexively cheers at the mere prospect of a snow day, but the adult in me understands what an incredible burden it is on single- and two-working-parent families… the vast majority of households with school age children here in the 21st Century.  By closing the schools out of fear it might, just might snow a little later today, the Seattle, Mercer Island, Bellevue and other school districts have not only disrupted our children’s education, they’ve created an unnecessary hassle for thousands of parents, in some cases costing them a day’s wages, or even their job.

It’s pretty damn ridiculous.

The weather’s not going to get any better between now and the end of the week, so if this is all it takes to twitch their itchy school closure finger, they might as well just cancel Thursday and Friday now, and let us all start the Winter break a few days early.  At least that way we could plan ahead.

The chair of the Oregon GOP says he is surprised at the accusations against one of the accused Woodburn bank bombers. Two law enforcement officers were killed and another gravely wounded in last Friday’s explosive attack. From The Oregonian:

And the arrests of two members of the Turnidge family — which decades ago helped start the Salem Academy Christian schools — have left those who know the family incredulous.

“I would be very surprised if Bruce Turnidge was involved in that,” said Vance Day, the Oregon GOP chairman and a Salem attorney who has known brothers Bruce and Pat Turnidge for several years. “I know him to be strong, very pro-American. He doesn’t believe in violence of that sort whatsoever.”

Marion County prosecutors arraigned the son Tuesday on six counts of aggravated murder, which, if Turnidge is convicted, could carry the death penalty. He also faces two counts of attempted aggravated murder, manufacture of a destructive device, possession of a destructive device, first- and second-degree assault and conspiracy to commit all of the crimes with one or more unidentified persons.

To be clear, the persons accused by authorities in the case are Joshua Turnidge and his father Bruce Turnidge.

People are presumed innocent in this country until proven guilty. Still, with law enforcement yet to offer a possible motive, it’s one hell of a strange and disturbing case.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We start at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Some of us will show up early for a bite to eat.

Not in Seattle? Check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

Idaho state Rep. Stephen Hartgen (R-Twin Falls) is considering drafting legislation that would make anonymous blogging illegal, a bill that would be just as unlikely to achieve its stated goal as it would be to pass constitutional muster…

“Anonymity takes away the responsibility to say things in a civil and accurate manner. It provides a cover for the ugliness we see in the debate today. It’s hard to read political blogs any more because they are so inflammatory.”

What a fucking douchebag.

See, I’ve never blogged anonymously, and I have absolutely no problem sticking my name on a post, no matter how uncivil, ugly or inflammatory.  So suck on that, Rep. Hartgen, you fascist, freedom-hating sack of shit.

Now, I know that there are those in the political and media establishment who would prefer that credibility be limited to those writing under a prestigious masthead and in the familiar, suffocatingly polite manner of the traditional family newspaper.  But here in the new media we earn our credibility through the content of our words, not the number of letters in them or the byline above them.  That’s why I am free to address Hartgen’s idiocy with the foul-mouthed blue streak it deserves, and without damaging my own credibility… because I’ve earned that right over four-plus years of providing accurate news reporting and thoughtful analysis, however salty my language.

But even if I had never attached my real name to my screen name—even if “Goldy’s” true identity had remained a mystery until this very day—my credibility would still not be diminished, because my nom de plume is as much a valid signature on my body of work as my actual, legally binding chicken scrawl.  On the flip side, the bulk of the anonymous trolls in my own comment threads have no credibility at all, because they simply haven’t earned it, and when you write anonymously you start from nothing.

This is the irony that the sniveling, cowardly Hartgen misses entirely:  anonymous discourse is often the most honest of all, because it is judged entirely on the quality of the content rather than the presumed reputation of the name on the label.  (Here’s a thought experiment:  put Mr. Cynical’s byline on Ted van Dyk’s columns, and see how eager the oh-so-respectable editors at Crosscut would be to publish his rambling, incoherent posts?)

But perhaps the worst thing one could say about Hartgen’s proposal is not that it is merely assinine, unconstitutional, unnecessary or even mind-numbingly stupid, but that it is downright unAmerican—an unpatriotic insult to the proud pseudonymous tradition of Publius, Anonymous, Mrs. Silence Dogood and other founding fathers.

If these great pamphleteers were alive today, they’d be bloggers all, and I’ve no doubt they’d join me, anonymously or not, in asking Rep. Hartgen the question that should be posed to all those who threaten the essential freedoms ensconced in our First Amendment:  why do you hate America?

I’m not really sure why I still bother to read him, considering nobody else of influence seems to bother to read him much these days, but I couldn’t help but be amused by our friend Stefan’s conspiracy theories about “Blagojevich-style quids pro quo in the elections director race.”  Stefan obsesses on efforts by state and county Dems to consolidate support around a single candidate, ultimately current elections director Sherril Huff, and not surprisingly determines the process was criminally corrupt:

The “read between the lines” understanding among people who are familiar with the discussions is that Osgood and Hansen were promised jobs to get out of the race and Baker was promised help with a bid for Seattle City Council.

Oh no… unnamed sources “familiar with the discussion” (but not actually present), “read between the lines” to conclude that Osgood and Hansen were promised pay to not play!  Quick, call the FBI!

Still, I have sources too, first hand at that, and I’m even willing to name some of them.  KC Dem Chair Suzie Sheary, one of the participants at the meeting in question, simply laughed off Stefan’s speculation as “a hoot,” while Jason Osgood, who Stefan essentially accuses of taking a bribe, sarcastically sighed “And here I am thinking people are starting to take me at my word…”

“No machinations. I woke up, read that Huff was running, called her to confirm, congratulated her, told her she was the right person for the job, and bowed out. I heard about the Tuesday meeting after the fact. I haven’t spoken to anyone who participated.”

Say what you want about Jason, but he’s nothing if not a true a believer.  With his accumulated name ID coming off his recent run for Secretary of State, and his unquestioned devotion to election reform, he would not have dropped out of the race if he wasn’t convinced that Huff was both qualified and, in a better position to win.

Jason’s take on the process?  “Play to win and know when you’re beat.”

Of course for Stefan, Jason and Suzie’s denials only prove his suspicions:

Naturally, folks who were at the meeting claimed that “They weren’t pressured into bowing out and weren’t offered anything for doing so”. What would one expect them to say even (especially) if there were pressure and inducements to bow out? But why would these folks go to a meeting to discuss this at Democratic Party HQ in the first place?

Yup, that’s the sort of journalistic rigor and “when did you stop beating your wife” kinda logic we’ve come to expect from WA’s preeminent righty blogger, relying on speculation from unnamed secondhand sources to charge conspiracy, while tautologically proffering the alleged participants’ firsthand denials as incriminating evidence.  But, then, you know… anything related to King County Elections brings out the very worst in Stefan, so I guess we should cut him some slack.

So what really happened at last Tuesday’s meeting?  Dwight and Suzie kicked the GOP’s ass, that’s what, consolidating support around a single, viable candidate, while the Republican faithful will largely split between armed and dangerous Pam Roach and David Irons and his dangerous hands.

Political horsetrading is neither illegal nor unethical; candidates are pressured all the time to bow out of races with promises of future support and/or threats of political retaliation.  And if that’s what was necessary to clear the field for Huff, then the Democratic leadership deserves kudos for their efforts to bring a semblance of sanity to this stupid and irresponsible no-primary, low-turnout special election.

So to raise the specter of Blagojevich-style corruption under these circumstances, based on secondhand conjecture, is not only silly, it ultimately serves to minimize real corruption, like that of the real Blagojevich.  Someday, Stefan might dig up an actual scandal, but given his boy-cries-wolf track record, how would we know?

More questions than answers about the alleged perpetrator of the bank bombing last Friday in Woodburn, Oregon, that killed two law enforcement officers and seriously injured a third.

A 32-year-old Salem man whose family has deep roots in the area was arraigned this morning on aggravated murder for the deaths of two police officers in Friday’s bank bombing in Woodburn.

A probable-cause statement released to reporters this morning details much of what happened at the West Coast Bank branch in Woodburn last Friday, and says that the OSP bomb technician killed in the blast believed that the bomb was a hoax device before the explosion.

Joshua Abraham Turnidge was arrested late Sunday afternoon at an undisclosed northeast Salem address in connection with the bomb that detonated inside West Coast Bank along Oregon 214.

All sorts of questions remain, like did he act alone? Is his family somehow notable beyond having lived in the Salem area a very long time? Why are authorities not even discussing a possible motive?

Obviously, authorities deserve leeway to conduct their investigation. Hopefully at some point the public will get a better idea what the heck was up with this terrible attack.

UPDATE 2:33 PM: Joshua Turnidge’s father, Bruce Turnidge, has also been arrested, according to the Associated Press. (Tip of the hat to our Cesspool friend Mr. Cynical.)

Over at the P-I’s Strange Bedfellows blog, Joel Connelly reports that King County Executive Ron Sims is being vetted by the FBI, an indication that he’s up for an appointment in the Obama administration, an intriguing prospect that would produce an audible sigh of relief from political friends and foes alike, across the political spectrum.

For our county’s swarm of executive wannabes, tired of waiting their turn to measure the drapes, yet too timid to challenge a popular incumbent, a Sims appointment would be a dream come true, setting the stage for an old fashioned political free for all this coming November.

Likewise, I’m sure I’m not the only Sims supporter who kinda sorta dreads the prospect of a run for a fourth term.  Executives are different from legislators, in that they tend to accumulate blame and enemies, eventually wearing out their welcome with voters and constituency groups.  Third terms are difficult enough to win, while four-term mayors, governors and the like are nearly unprecedented outside the safety of a political machine… the kinda machine we definitely don’t have here in WA state.

I’d hate to see Sims end his career losing to a lesser challenger, simply because voters tired of him, and thus I would welcome a high profile DC appointment both as a reward for Ron’s years of principled leadership and public service, and… well… as an easy out from a potentially heart breaking political defeat.

But… I’m guessing a lot of qualified folks are being vetted by the FBI these days, so for now it’s all speculation.

TPM reports that the Al Franken camp is now genuinely optimistic about their prospects for coming out ahead in the Minnesota senate recount, once all challenged and erroneously rejected absentee ballots are tabulated.  Sound familiar?

The fact is, Democrats tend to gain votes in recounts, regardless of the jurisdiction or the party running the elections office, because the Democratic Party tends to overly represent the extremes of society—the youngest, the oldest, the poorest, the wealthiest, the least and the best educated—and four of those six groups tend to have more trouble casting ballots than the average voter.

There are Republicans who argue that voting should be difficult, and if you can’t follow instructions and fully fill in an oval or connect a line, your vote shouldn’t count, but that’s not the way the law is written in most of the nation.  Both Washington and Minnesota are “voter intent” states, and when conducting a hand recount it is the obligation of the canvassing board to determine the voter’s intent, when possible, even if the optical scanner can’t.  So if more voters intended to cast their ballots for Franken, then he should ultimately be declared the winner.

So knowing what I know about recounts, I think Franken has good reason to be optimistic.

I spotted this at the Washington State Democrats annual Holiday Party last night: 

 

The BIAW (Building Industry Association of Washington) was one of GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi’s biggest supporters (over $6 million) this election season.

So, wearing an anti-BIAW pin at the Democrats’ Holiday shindig oughta be no big deal, right? Ha. 

This was a shoe thrown over the lectern aimed directly at Democratic State House Speaker, Frank Chopp (D-43, Wallingford).

Democratic Rep. Brendan Williams (D-22, Olympia) was wearing the defiant pin and said he’s not running again because Chopp has neutered the Democratic agenda in Olympia by cozying up with the BIAW.

Rep. Williams has been the main victim of  Chopp’s alliance with the BIAW: Two years running, Williams’s homeowner bill of rights has been killed at the last minute by Chopp. The BIAW was upset that homeowners would have the basic right to sue for faulty construction.

Chopp also killed my favorite progressive bill last session: A Senate bill that added climate change impacts into growth management standards so that development projects had to be environmentally responsible. The BIAW didn’t like that one either.

Rep. Williams wasn’t the only Democrat dissing Chopp. I was talking to a Democratic state Senator about the 2012 governor’s race. We were handicapping state Senator Lisa Brown’s (D-3, Spokane) chances vs. U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee’s chances, in what’s likely to be a bruising primary between the two anticipated candidates. And could either one beat GOP media darling, AG Rob McKenna?

“McKenna will be the Republican nominee, right?” I asked.

The Democratic Senator quipped: “Who knows? The GOP could run Chopp.”

Shoes? We’re throwing shoes now? Seriously? Shoes? Really? Fucking shoes?

By the way, this whole footwear chucking incident gives George W. Bush the chance to show off one of his best attributes:

He’s spry.

Did you see him dodge that shit? Bush is the fuckin’ mack-daddy of dodging shit. If you can’t hit a guy from 10 feet out with your Adidas trainers, you need to pack it the fuck in.

I have to say, this incident proves there has been at least some progress in Iraq. If somebody had tried that shit when Saddam was in power, that reporter would be dog food right now. I’m talking some serious flys walking across eyeballs shit. Fucking six feet under.

So, that’s an improvement.

Tonight’s King County Democrats elections director candidate forum has been canceled due to the weather.  That’s a shame, but I myself don’t particularly want to be on freezing roads with native Northwest drivers unaccustomed to driving on ice.

I believe we’ll try to reschedule for after the freeze, and likely, after the holidays.

The Seattle P-I editorial board doesn’t want to cut off talk of a tunnel option to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct:

We fear that eliminating any talk of a tunnel will lead to a political confrontation in Olympia that will favor another elevated monstrosity. Potentially, that would even reinvigorate the possibilities for House Speaker Frank Chopp’s overwrought, multistory highway-park-stores- and-offices mega structure, which the planners rightly intend to eliminate from further consideration.

[…]

Major surface and transit improvements must be in place when the current viaduct comes down, no matter what permanent plan is pursued. And, even with impressive recent enhancements for Interstate 5, the surface option is the cheapest. So, we hope Gov. Chris Gregoire, King County Executive Ron Sims and Mayor Greg Nickels will agree on the surface solution as their basic strategy.

We also believe, however, that the three leaders should reopen the idea of a compromise embracing the surface option with some sort of a commitment to studying a tunnel. The compromise wouldn’t have to be exactly the “hybrid” proposal favored by business groups. But it should include at least some traffic speed and volume metrics that would provoke a tunnel study if the surface streets and enhanced transit capacity prove less effective than supporters expect. After all, we think a surface-and-transit solution will work quite well for traffic, the environment and the economy, but we don’t know for sure.

I’m not sure how building the surface/transit alternative eliminates the possibility of a future deep bore tunnel, should technology improvements make it affordable and traffic demand it.  But I see no harm in building in a committment to explore the possibility at some point in the future.  After all, talk is cheap; it’s actual action for which our region has trouble coughing up the cash.