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George Carlin, comedian, actor and hero of First Amendment advocates (and English language enthusiasts) everywhere, died yesterday at age 71.

Last week I wrote about my cat’s apparent near death experience at the hands jaws of the coyotes rumored to be inhabiting Seward Park.

Well, it’s no longer a rumor. Friday afternoon my daughter and I were walking our dog along the trails atop the park, taunting Feisty that the scent she was furiously sniffing was of the coyotes that had invaded her territory, when what should cross the path about 50 feet ahead of us, but a coyote. It stopped in the middle of the path, looked at us for a moment then scurried off into the woods.

I never doubted that there really were coyotes in the park, but I sure didn’t expect to see one, and right on cue, just a few minutes into our hike. It was about 50 pounds or so, maybe a little bigger than our dog, and damn beautiful.

I get mail from County Councilman Larry Phillips.

William-

Lately it seems that every place I go I am asked the same question: “Larry, you are running for King County Executive, aren’t you?” Whether it’s a small business owner, a Democratic precinct committee officer, a County employee, a teacher, or a doctor in a public health clinic, they all want to know if I will run for the County’s top post.

Today, they get their answer: I am announcing the formation of an exploratory committee to consider a run for King County Executive. This committee will provide me with an organized structure to not just talk with citizens, but to hear what they have to say about how King County can best serve their needs.

Running for County Executive is a big undertaking and one I do not take lightly. I have a deep respect for the incumbent, as he’s done many good things in King County, and I realize that it’s hard to move on. But 13 years in office – with an unprecedented fourth term on the horizon – is a long time. The times are changing, the problems are changing, and too often they are left unattended and without effective Executive leadership.

There are County concerns that have turned to problems and then to crises. Transportation, light rail, computer systems, animal control and now the budget. Police coverage, basic public health, jail services – you name it, it needs focused attention.

So to all of those who have asked me to run, I say, let’s see how broad a team we can build in the coming months. And once the will is there and we’re an established force to contend with, we’ll take the next steps.

Within weeks, we will launch “GoForItLarry.com” – a web site for your thoughts about why we need change and what you are willing to do about it. Go on the record, send a contribution, enlist your friends and address books, and help make the change we need.

With the new “Top Two” elections system, the opportunity presents itself even more – there’s plenty of room for two from the same party to run.

Now it’s up to the people who want new, effective leadership in the Office of King County Executive, the people who have asked me to run, and many, many more. And with your help, I will be adding to that already growing list everywhere I go.

If you have any questions, please contact Abbot Taylor at (206) 218-3108 or at GoForItLarry@mac.com. I hope to hear from you soon, and thanks for all you do.

Larry Phillips

It’s pretty clear that Ron Sims is bored in his current job.

He rarely shows up at Sound Transit board meetings, and when he does it’s to fight the expansion of light rail. When an independent consultant found animals at King County’s Animal Shelter wallowing in their own shit and piss, Sims lashed out. (When pressed by the County Council, he reversed himself.) After declaring that “the era of deficits is over”, King County faces a significant budget deficit this year. Sims isn’t entirely to blame, but for him to be proved wrong so soon is disappointing.

Ron Sims should have to defend his record during the course of a campaign. For that reason, I hope Phillips runs.

The Seattle Times editorial board today urges the state Utilities and Transportation Commission to “Block PSE sale,” arguing that the highly leveraged proposed buyout of Puget Sound Energy would be “hazardous to ratepayers.” And, well, I don’t disagree.

Why do this transaction? For shareholders, the answer is easy: They get $30 a share, in cash, immediately, for a stock that traded recently in the lower $20s, with the profit taxable at the 15 percent capital-gains rate.

For Puget’s CEO, Stephen Reynolds, who has options on 300,000 shares priced at $22.51, the attraction is obvious. He also gets a payment of $4.4 million from the acquirers, with the tax paid by them.

[…] And then there are the people who rely on Puget for their electricity and gas. As a result of this deal, they get a utility burdened with $1.4 billion in extra parent-company debt, a mortgage that buys the ratepayers nothing of value to them. And it is not a mortgage really, but a medium-term debt that will have to be refinanced a few years hence at an interest rate no one can now determine.

Last week I kinda-sorta debated uber-conservative Grover Norquist on the limits of governments, and it’s issues like this that really test the ideological purity of self-proclaimed free marketeers like Norquist and his ilk. No doubt, this is a deal that is good for shareholders. And no doubt the unchallenged doctrine of the invisible hand would argue that the market always makes the most efficient allocation of resources. But it’s hard to see what if any benefit would accrue to ratepayers by having foreign investors mortgage PSE’s assets to facilitate a leveraged buyout?

PSE is after all a monopoly throughout most of its coverage area, leaving consumers no alternative supplier of electricity or natural gas. Given a deregulated market (the conservative ideal), it would be equally foolish to expect investors to build competing power lines in response to rising rates as it would to believe that competing power grids could somehow constitute an efficient allocation of resources.

One can reasonably argue with specific regulations and the specific decisions of government regulators, but there are simply some products and services for which a regulated monopoly—or God forbid, a government agency—provides the most efficient and beneficial economy of scale. To inflexibly argue otherwise—that regulation is always harmful and that the public sector is always less efficient than the private—is to argue that PSE should not only be free to sell out to whomever it pleases under whatever conditions most benefit shareholders, but that it should also be free to raise utility rates as high as consumer demand will bear… which in a natural monopoly for a crucial commodity can be pretty damn high.

Imagine electricity rates quadrupling the way gasoline has done, with no end in sight, and imagine what havoc that would wreck on our local economy. That would be an unregulated free market at work.

I expect there are arguments to be made against recommendations that the UTC block PSE’s sale, but I’m wondering if anybody can cogently argue against giving UTC the power to do so?

Washington Post political blog The Fix has bumped WA-08 up a couple notches to list it as the 17th most likely US House seat to flip parties this November:

17. Washington’s 8th (R): Every Republican strategist we talk to insists on the one hand that Rep. Dave Reichert is the only GOPer who could possibly hold this Seattle-area seat but on the other acknowledges that Reichert’s time may be up. Barack Obama at the top of the national ticket is bad news for Reichert, as the Democrats’ presidential candidate will roll up the vote in metropolitan Seattle. Darcy Burner, who took 49 percent of the vote in 2006 against Reichert, is, by all accounts, an improved candidate. The political environment is everything in this district. If Obama wins big in the 8th, he is likely to carry Burner along with him. (Previous ranking: 19)

Yeah, but then what do you expect from an amen blogger like Chris Cillizza?

The Seattle Times editorial board just loves the King County Sheriff’s Office’s crackdown on underage drinking, which resulted in 143 arrests or citations over the first weekend of its annual “Party Patrol.”

Every year, parents are nabbed in the act of willfully ignoring the party they know is being thrown in their absence. A few genuine idiots get caught trying to be the cool mom and dad who host an event and provide alcohol to minors.

Yeah, well, it was certainly a different era, but my mom and dad hosted a couple high school parties at our house where they provided the beer, and they certainly didn’t do it to be “cool.” I suppose you can argue with their judgment, but they were pragmatic enough to know that the kids where going to drink regardless of the party’s location, and they’d rather it happen under their close supervision.

Ironically, the local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving was started by the angry mother of a classmate of mine, after my parents called her to pick up her daughter, who was in no condition to drive home. It wasn’t the first or last time I saw this girl get drunk, but it was the only time I saw anyone prevent her from getting behind the wheel of a car.

Illegal, underage drinking only became more normalized in college, where the university actually threw a kegger for us during freshman orientation, and the RA’s made a point of explaining which local bars served undergraduates and which did not. Attitudes started shifting near the end of my senior year (1985) after a study revealing a serious binge-drinking problem on college campuses (duh-uh) was reinforced by a string of alcohol related campus tragedies.

Ominous headlines led to crackdowns by both local university and law enforcement officials… but that only drove the parties off campus. In one memorable example of the media hysteria of the time, a group of Rutgers students held a clandestine end-of-semester kegger outdoors in a wooded area near campus, where the metal keg was subsequently struck by lightning, killing one student and injuring several others. Newspaper headlines the next day trumpeted “another tragic alcohol related death” at a local campus.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an advocate of underage boozing—especially of the binge variety—but having been a teenager myself I seem to recall that kids will be kids, and I find it hard to believe that arresting a few teens or their parents is going to have much of a long term impact on the problem. I hate to get all libertarian on you (that’s Lee’s job) but it strikes me that law enforcement provides exactly the wrong approach to what is at its core a public health issue, and thus I’d much rather the Sheriff’s office focus their resources on apprehending and punishing drunk drivers, rather than waste their time on efforts that may draw flattering headlines, but really do little to address the larger societal problem.

We, as a nation, have an unhealthy attitude toward alcohol and other drugs, that leads to the sort of binge consumption that truly puts our youth at risk. And I don’t think an annual police crackdown, or a couple of rah-rah editorials, does much to promote a thoughtful discussion on the issue.

SurveyUSA released the first poll of the season in the 8th CD race between Darcy Burner and Rep. Dave Reichert.

The poll surveyed 679 likely voters on June 16th and 17th, and showed Reichert leading Burner 51% to 45%.

As usual, I try to assess these poll results by a simple Monte Carlo analysis. I simulated a million fictitious elections between Burner and Reichert, using the observed percentages and the number of people polled.

Reichert won 948,339 of the elections and Burner won 48,199 times. In other words, the poll results suggest that, for an election held right now, Burner would have a 4.8% probability of winning the election and Reichert would win with a 95.2% probability.

Here is the distribution of outcomes (percentage of votes) from the million simulated elections (Reichert victories are those to the left of the red “tie” line, Burner victories are those to the right):

At risk of coming off as just another amen blogger, the poll results don’t strike me as particularly bad for Burner. Yeah…she is -6% down, but Reichert, as the incumbent, starts out with the advantage. The poll’s cross-tabs look reasonably positive for Burner. Among other things, of those who said they could change their mind, 50% were Reichert supporters and 39% were Burner supporters. Also, Reichert holds 35% of the pro-choice vote. It’s hard to imagine that the Burner campaign won’t make in-roads into that group.

This poll comes on the heels of massive mailings of campaign flyers franked informational pieces from the Reichert campaign congressional office. The Burner campaign, to my knowledge, has not made any media purchases.

Furthermore, Reichert has recently gotten a lot of well-deserved publicity for eco-friendly votes. I say “well deserved” because, clearly, Reichert’s handlers have developed a brilliant strategy that has rendered the local media stupifyingly blind to Reichert’s strategy of full participation in Republican obstructionism in Congress during procedural votes, only to switch his vote when the results are certain passage. Daniel Kirkdorffer has meticulously documented this rather cynical strategy. It is hard to say whether Reichert’s people will be able to maintain their spell over the media through November.

(Cross-posted at Hominid Views.)

Glenn Greenwald has the details on how House Democrats surrendered to the Bush Administration today, also reminding us why the Democratic-led Congress has a higher approval rating among Republicans than Democrats.

From the Roll Call votes, Adam Smith, Norm Dicks, and Brian Baird all voted to give the President greater powers, as Ryan Singel at Wired explains (emphasis mine):

Under the proposal, the intelligence community will be able to issue broad orders to U.S. ISPs, phone companies and online communications services like Hotmail and Skype to turn over all communications that are reasonably believed to involve a non-American who is outside the country. The spy agencies will not have to name their targets or get prior court approval for the surveillance.

Under the longstanding rules of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the government was free to engage in dragnet wiretapping outside the United States, but in order to tap communications inside the country, the government needed court approval and individualized warrants if an American’s communications would be caught.

Additionally, the bill grants amnesty to the nation’s telecoms that are being sued for allegedly breaking federal wiretapping laws by turning over billions of Americans’ call records to government data-mining programs and giving the government access to internet and phone infrastructure inside the country. The bill strips the right of a federal district court to decide whether the companies violated federal laws prohibiting wiretapping without a court order.

Obama’s response so far has been pretty pathetic, especially when compared to one of his opponents this November.

Of course, we could just spend all of our transportation dollars building and expanding roads, as Dino Rossi and Tim Eyman would have us do, or we could actually give commuters more options… you know, before steadily rising gasoline prices takes our only option away.

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted

Also, Jonathan Gardner longs for the days of slavery

Not a problem:

Putting commuter trains on the Interstate 90 bridge will require protecting the structure against damage from stray electrical current and may require innovative ways to attach the rails to avoid damaging the span, a panel of experts told state lawmakers Wednesday.

A Sound Transit project manager said the trains would likely have to slow for a few seconds while crossing joints between the floating bridge and its approaches. And who would pay for what part of the project is still being worked out.

“This is very new to us, the idea of putting light rail on a floating bridge,” said state project manager Theresa Greco.

I think the idea of transit in general is new to our state’s Department of Highways Transportation. These guys see that center span as theirs, and they look at any project that doesn’t rely on cars or buses as suspect.

During the meeting, Rep. Judy Clibborn compared installing light rail on I-90 with The Big Dig. Really? Putting rails on a floating bridge is the same as the most ambitious public works project in American history? Making “Big Dig” comparisons is a sort of “Godwin’s Law” of transportation arguments: every project you oppose is the same as the “Big Dig.”

How can something be a “Big Dig” when we’re not even digging?