HorsesAss.Org

Former Mercer Island mayor Aubrey Davis is no crank, and when it comes to regional transportation issues he sure as hell knows what he’s talking about. I once had the opportunity to watch him moderate a candidate forum on transportation, and there didn’t seem to be a single detail he didn’t have at his fingertips.

So when Davis, also a former chairman of the Washington State Transportation Commission, critiques Dino Rossi’s transportation “plan” as he does in today’s Seattle Times, his is a voice of wisdom and experience that deserves a good listen.

“To stay on track,” Aubrey argues, “we must pursue transportation projects that are affordable, doable and forward-thinking. Dino Rossi’s proposal is none of the above.” And to prove his point he focuses on “two serious flaws” in the Rossi plan: an eight-lane 520 bridge, and the lack of transit options for the East King County.

I spent several years chairing a regional 520 executive committee that produced a very strong east-west consensus on the six-lane alternative with later capability for additional high capacity transit. […] Engineering studies show that dumping eight lanes of traffic from 520 onto an already congested I-5 and I-405 would virtually shut down both freeways and create gridlock across the region. I-5 and I-405 would become the most expensive parking lots on Earth. Connecting an eight-lane 520 to I-5 and I-405 would be like trying to connect a fire hydrant to a garden hose, and the ones getting wet would be us, the taxpayers.

It has been estimated that billions of dollars in new lanes on I-5 and I-405 would be needed to make this fire hydrant-to-garden hose connection that Rossi proposes even remotely possible. These costs are not accounted for in Rossi’s plan and funding is not available.

And oh yeah… Rossi’s claim he can build an eight-lane bridge for less than the planned six-lane alternative…? Davis says it’s a crock of shit. (Though not exactly in those words.)

The second serious flaw is Rossi’s proposal to “hijack” Sound Transit money currently reserved for Eastside transit, and spend it on state highways instead. Davis says this proposal is not only illegal, but ill-conceived.

By taking money dedicated to East King County light rail and express buses and spending it on highway lanes, Rossi is in effect telling this generation of Eastside residents that light rail and superior bus service aren’t in our future, ever. With our region approaching $4 a gallon gas, we need more transit options, not fewer.

Anyone who has even just peeked across the lake at the massive construction cranes dominating the city of Bellevue’s skyline knows that Bellevue is a city growing toward a 2050 land-use and community vision, not a 1950s automobile-dominated past. With more downtown workers and residents, Bellevue and its surrounding Eastside cities need more transit service, not less. Rossi’s transportation proposal would give East King County 50 more years of the same crowded highways and limited choices for getting to work, school and home.

I know the conventional wisdom was that by pitching a transportation plan—any plan—Rossi would push Gov. Gregoire back on her heels on one of the highest profile issues concerning regional voters today. But I’m pretty confident voters know that they can’t commute to work on promises and pixie dust, and with near universal condemnation and/or ridicule coming from the local media, they now understand that’s exactly what the Rossi “plan” offers.

The Republican National Committee is demanding that MSNBC and CNN refuse to run a new ad from the Democratic National Committee attacking John McCain, calling the ad “maliciously false” and “misleading”… you know, because it is basically a clip of McCain talking in his own words. What a bunch of weiners.

TPM‘s Josh Marshall dissects the dispute in his typically thorough TPM style:

Housing market…? Worst year-to-year monthly decline ever.

There is already a ton of supply. With foreclosures increasing at incredibly high rates supply will obviously increase. At the same time, US consumers are faced with record levels of household debt and payments on that debt, a tanking job market and declining income. In other words, supply and demand of the housing market is seriously out of whack which will lead to declining home prices for the foreseeable future.

Let’s see, a housing market collapse wiping out equity for millions of homeowners, $4.00/gallon gasoline, skyrocketing food prices and falling incomes. Are you feeling better off than you did eight years ago?

I sure hope John McCain continues to campaign on more tax cuts, more deregulation and more war.

I had a bad day on the internet yesterday as I spent some time arguing that Jeremiah Wright won’t be a problem for Obama, while at the same time, Wright was busy becoming a problem for Obama. I don’t have even a fraction of the time today to fully explain how incredibly stupid this man is, so I’ll just point you to Eli Sanders, who does a good job of it.

The biggest problem isn’t the paranoia, the praise of renowned crazyperson and bigot Louis Farrakhan, or even his unwillingness to accept that he has said numerous things that are clearly known to be untrue. The biggest problem is that he keeps insisting that Barack Obama secretly agrees with him, but can’t say so publicly because he’s a politician. At this point, Obama has no choice. He has to do what he said he couldn’t do in his Philadelphia speech, and disown this man and his nutty ideas.

I’ve devoted a lot of my time and energy in blogging to understanding the realities of urban America and to what continues to hold black communities in this country back. I often find myself defending the black community from those who insist that the failures are all within. They’re not. There’s a lot of institutional racism, primarily within our justice system, which perpetuates a systemic inequality. But I find it both sadly ironic and terribly disheartening whenever a man who claims to have the interests of his community at heart can do so much damage to the effort he claims to be a part of. And that’s precisely what Wright is doing.

UPDATE: Obama addresses it:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama denounced his former pastor in his strongest language to date on Tuesday, saying he was outraged by Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s assertions about the U.S. government and race.

“His comments were not only divisive … but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate,” Obama told reporters.

“Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this,” Obama said.

Thanks to Hannah for posting this in comments.

The animal rights group PETA is offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the person who’s been shooting blow darts through the heads of pigeons (which, not surprisingly, doesn’t appear to effect the pigeons’ behavior at all).

What’s next… placing a bounty on the head of Tom Lehrer?

Timothy Garon is the man I wrote about on Saturday who was denied a liver transplant by the University of Washington Medical Center because he’s a medical marijuana patient, and as a result, will likely die in the very near future. His case will be profiled at 5pm today on KIRO TV. Also, Dominic posts some contact numbers for the hospital and more information on the case over at Slog.

UPDATE: Here’s KIRO TV’s report:

With gasoline prices projected to climb as high as $10.00 a gallon over the next two to three years, the last thing we should do is give voters another chance to approve an expanded light rail system, because that would be imprudent.  Irresponsible.  A “bad idea.”

Thank God we have the visionaries on the Seattle Times editorial board to protect us from ourselves.

More head-up-its-ass shameless propaganda from the Bush administration:

As boating season approaches — Opening Day is Saturday in Seattle — the Bush administration wants to enlist the country’s 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could be used in a terror attack.

[…] Today, officials will announce the plan, which asks states to develop and enforce safety standards for recreational boaters and asks them to look for and report suspicious behavior on the water — much like a neighborhood-watch program.

If Sikhs ever start driving water taxis, Homeland Security will be inundated with tips from vigilant boaters.

“There is no intelligence right now that there’s a credible risk” of this type of attack, says Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen. “But the vulnerability is there.”

And there is no credible intelligence right now that terrorists are packing explosives up the ass of unicorns in an attempt to exploit vulnerabilities in America’s magical creature infrastructure, but… well… you never can be too careful.

Or, just maybe, if the Bush administration really wants to better protect our safety, they might want to ask boaters to look out for a real and present danger: the beer-swilling, drunken skippers responsible for about a third of our nation’s 700 boating fatalities annually, along with thousands of serious injuries and tens of millions of dollars in property damage. I’m just sayin’.

I generally like the job that Chris Mulick does, and I love the fact that smaller papers like the Tri-City Herald still maintain an Olympia bureau, but I just gotta call him out for a recent blog post in which he succumbs to the classic journalistic sin of equivalency. Mulick writes:

One of the more amusing aspects to covering campaigns in an election year is digesting all the yelling and screaming political parties intend for public consumption.

A favorite tactic is the missive from one party telling the other party’s candidate what they should do, as if they were playing a high stakes game of Simon Says.

For instance, the state Republican Party issued a press release last week titled “Gregoire Should Denounce Her Presidential Favorite’s Elitist Rhetoric.”

A week earlier the Democratic Party issued a press release titled “Rossi Should Reject and Denounce the BIAW.”

Yeah, no doubt, the two parties routinely do this sort of thing, and it can sometimes get quite silly, but Mulick chose a dubious example to illustrate his point. On the one hand, the state GOP demanded that Gov. Gregoire denounce Sen. Barack Obama for saying that small town voters are “bitter.” On the other, the state Dems demanded that Dino Rossi denounce the BIAW for repeatedly insisting that environmentalists are “Nazis.”

Sure, both parties sent out press releases, but there’s no equivalency between Obama’s statements and the violent, extremist hate-talk of the BIAW… and to imply such is simply irresponsible.

My dog barks ferociously at passersby, with a kinda cartoonish “let me at ’em, let me at ’em” demeanor, as she presses menacingly against a flimsy fence she could easily leap over if she had anywhere near as much bite as bark. No doubt folks walking by my house find it annoying. I find it annoying. But she’s a dog, and defending one’s territory is what they do.

What I don’t get are people, like the guy outside my house right now, who stop in their tracks and angrily scream back at the dog to shut up… which of course, only enrages her further. Stupid fucking humans.

Two must read posts out recently for folks closely following the race between Darcy Burner and Dave Reichert for WA-08, that certainly should inform coverage in our local media.  (I’m not saying they will inform coverage, just that they should.)

The first comes from James at Swing State Project, who analyzes the “cash-on-hand competitiveness” of challengers in the top 75 non-open House races, and finds that Burner ranks fourth, with a 132% rating.  Burner’s cash-on-hand lead has been somewhat reported in the local press, but they haven’t let on how extraordinary her advantage really is.  Incumbents rarely trail challengers, and almost never by such a wide margin.  Yet another reason why WA-08 is widely considered a toss-up in 2008.

Our local press should also carefully study the latest post over at On the Road to 2008, where Daniel does a typically thorough job of fisking the oft repeated “Reichert is a moderate” myth:

As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, there is a pattern to Reichert’s voting record that is not being reported where he opposes legislation from being considered or coming to a vote, seeks to amend and change it, tries to table or kill it, before flipping his vote and voting for it on final passage.

In the 110th Congress alone he has done this 25 times, 17 times casting a final passage vote that seemingly “broke” from party ranks.

It is hard to ignore the facts as Daniel presents them—arranged and cited in a nice neat table—but so far, that is exactly what our local media has done.  Reichert may not be the most conservative member of Congress, but he’s no “conscience driven independent,” his much touted splits with his party almost always coming after the battle is lost, and even then only just for show.

But don’t take my word for it, read the whole thing and analyze the data for yourself.

Gene Johnson at the AP reports on another problem with the state of Washington’s medical marijuana laws:

Timothy Garon’s face and arms are hauntingly skeletal, but the fluid building up in his abdomen makes the 56-year-old musician look eight months pregnant. His liver, ravaged by hepatitis C, is failing. Without a new one, his doctors tell him, he will be dead in days. But Garon’s been refused a spot on the transplant list, largely because he has used marijuana, even though it was legally approved for medical reasons.

Garon was authorized by a doctor to use medical marijuana to counteract nausea and abdominal pain and to stimulate his appetite, but that was irrelevant to the transplant committee at the University of Washington Medical Center. Officials at the hospital weren’t specific about his case, but one surgeon quoted in the article hinted that transplants can be denied for medical marijuana patients on the belief that they will not be able to stop using it after the transplant (for medical reasons, many doctors tell transplant patients that they must abstain from using medical marijuana as their bodies accept the new organ). This is a common misunderstanding about medical marijuana patients and it shows that even medical professionals will often see them as addicts rather than people who find medical benefit from the drug’s effects. It’s another reminder that even here in liberal Washington State, we still have a long way to go before those who find that medical marijuana is beneficial have the kinds of protections they need.