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Burner tip-top, Reichert flip-flop in WA-08

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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.

I told you so

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Just two years after a bitter and contentious school closure process that in addition to breaking communities’ hearts, also led to the resignation of the superintendent and an overhaul of the school board, the Seattle Times tells us that “Demand exceeds space in some North End Seattle schools.”

Of course it does. North End schools, their programs and facilities enriched through the generosity of their more affluent PTSAs, have always been a magnet for families from across the district. And throughout the closure process it had always been abundantly clear how little wiggle room the district had left itself should its dire prediction of precipitously declining enrollment not prove true.

But North End schools aren’t the only ones unable to keep up with demand, and if there’s a personal “I told you so” moment in the Times piece it comes about three quarters of the way through, and hits quite a bit closer to home:

In the South End, declining enrollment has forced several schools to close. But Beacon Hill Elementary, where a dual-language immersion program begins this fall, has a waiting list — 48 students — for the first time in years. Graham Hill and Kimball elementary schools also had waiting lists in the fall.

That’s right, Graham Hill, my daughter’s school—that piece of shit, racist hell hole that couldn’t educate its students, and was losing kids faster than the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints… or so the district insultingly insisted—has a goddamn waiting list this fall! If I still sound bitter about the way the district grossly manipulated the numbers to justify closing Graham Hill, it is because I am.

Yes, we ultimately managed to save our school, but the Kafkaesque experience ended up ripping the heart and soul out of a tight-knit community, leading many of the school’s most active parents to step back into the shadows, or leave the school entirely. My own daughter now attends school on Mercer Island, where her mother moved, partially out of disgust and despair over the way the closure process played out. It is a good school, with tutors and enrichment programs the Graham Hill PTSA could never dream of providing its students… but we still miss our friends and neighbors and teachers, and I can’t imagine we’ll ever recapture that sense of belonging that came from seven years attending our neighborhood school.

Had we not fought so aggressively to save our school, or had we not fought so effectively, our students would have been scattered between five other schools within our cluster—that’s how little excess capacity (outside of the alternative program at the African American Academy) the district’s original closure plan left the South End. Had we acquiesced, and quietly sacrificed our neighborhood school for the good of the district, as so many editorial boards and columnists solemnly advised, Graham Hill would now be shuttered, leaving South End schools just as crunched for space as those in the North End.

No doubt there were a handful of schools—under-enrolled, failing programs in crumbling buildings—that warranted closure. But I remain convinced that the district’s determination to close 12 schools at once, whatever the consequences and whatever the facts, had always been motivated more by politics than by careful analysis or common sense. That only two years later the district is now facing a crisis of over-enrollment, pretty much bears that out.

Death Sentence

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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.

End of an era

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AP reporter Dave Ammons retired yesterday after 37 years at the Olympia bureau, and since his colleagues in the Capitol press corps are all paying tribute to him, I thought I’d post a little tribute of my own.

Ammons hasn’t always been a popular reporter amongst my fellow progressive activists, largely due to the lavish attention he’s heaped on Tim Eyman over the years, but even if Ammons played a significant role in making Eyman’s public career, I’ve always held a special fondness for him because, well… he made mine too.

It was Rich Roesler at the Spokesman-Review who first broke the story of my initiative to proclaim Tim Eyman a horse’s ass, but it was Ammons’ relentless coverage that drove the story to statewide and even national headlines for months, long after my fifteen minutes of fame should have expired. It was also Ammon’s AP Olympia bureau that, in the weeks following the 2004 gubernatorial election, anointed me “the liberal blogger” when they needed a partisan counterpoint to the sudden (u)SP juggernaut.

Political reporting can be godawful boring, but Ammons had an eye for characters like me and Tim who could catch the public’s attention, and he was matter-of-fact about the role he and his colleagues play in promoting the agendas of the people they cover. One day, a few weeks into the unexpected chaos of the I-831 campaign, my phone rings and the voice at the other end jovially announces, “Hi, it’s Dave Ammons… your personal publicist.” Of course, promoting me and my joke initiative was never the motive behind Ammons’ attentiveness, but unlike some of his more stuffy colleagues, Ammons never seemed shy about the symbiotic relationship between political reporters and their subjects.

Having a little bit of insight into the sausage factory that is journalism, I have always considered Ammons’ coverage to be fair, even when not particularly balanced, for while the progressive community may rightly complain that our efforts and issues routinely received short shrift compared to Eyman and his follies, it was not Ammons’ bias that was to blame, but rather our failure to give him a good enough story. And in the end, telling a good story is what every genre of writing—even journalism—is really all about.

Best of luck on your new endeavors Dave. And thanks.

Goldy’s Adventures in Muniland

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I crashed the Municipal League’s 2008 Civic Awards last night at the Olympic Sculpture Park, where my friend and colleague David Postman was being honored for “Governmental News Reporting of the Year.” Knowing that Postman’s bosses at the Seattle Times had forbade him from accepting the award in person so as not to compromise his impartiality—and unencumbered by these (or any) ethical burdens of my own—I realized that there must be an unused name tag at the registration table with at least half my name on it… and sure enough I managed to sign in as Postman, no questions asked.

His “Honoree” name tag firmly pinned to my lapel and a surfeit of free drink tickets in hand, I strolled into the PACCAR Pavilion determined to do Postman proud by mingling with our city’s power elite on his behalf. As it turned out, I would need the drink tickets.

Indeed, it wasn’t at all what I had expected. To be honest, I think I had the Muni League mixed up with the Urban League, and to my great disappointment this was the league with all the white people. That meant better booze, but boring food, and even boringer conversation. And Republicans. A handful of actual, real life Republicans. In Seattle of all places. Who’d a thunk?

Diving right into the role of seasoned journalist, I headed straight to the bar, where I could swear I saw Pete von Reichbauer palming the contents of the tip jar. (Life is tough for Republicans these days; they never know where their next campaign contribution might come from.) An awkward social situation to say the least, but take it from this big-city native: the first rule to remember when confronting the desperate wretches at the fringe of society is to avoid making eye contact at all costs! I knocked back my syrah, grabbed a refill, and headed off into the crowd.

I soon learned that while a lot of folk supposedly read Postman, very few apparently know what he looks like, for I was roundly greeted with congratulations and hearty handshakes throughout the hall. Fully expecting to be unmasked at any moment I played the role for all it was worth, regaling guests with invented tales of political intrigue and the madcap antics of my Postman’s colleagues in the Capitol press corp, but whether it was the context or the booze or the dulling effects of wealth and power, my subtle satire seemed lost on the crowd. The more bizarre the anecdotes the more credulous the audience; if anyone questioned my true identity they certainly didn’t let on.

But when I was introduced to my Postman’s fellow honoree John Stanton, I figured the jig was up. Stanton looked straight at me. He looked down at my name tag. He looked back up at me, and I could see the dawning recognition on his face that mine just didn’t quite match the name on my lapel. Improvising, I quickly explained that during Passover, I like to “Jew things up” a little. Stanton seemed momentarily stunned, then nodding knowingly, he pulled a hip flask from his pocket, and we both enjoyed a long, hard swig of single malt before heading up to the dais to accept our awards.

At this point there were several people within arms length who know me quite well, and who must have wondered what mischief I was up to, so I figured somebody would stop me before I reached the podium, but Seattle’s polite society was apparently too polite (or too drunk) to intervene. So there I found myself, standing before a room filled with mayors and millionaires and sundry politerati… accepting an award as David Postman… an uncomfortable moment considering I hadn’t prepared a speech.

Still, caught up in the excitement—and fortified by three or four glasses of wine and a generous dose of Stanton’s best whiskey—I managed to muddle through, graciously thanking my hosts for the honor, and warning the crowd to keep their hands on their wallets should von Reichbauer come near (to which more than a few attendees nodded strenuously in agreement), before launching into an angry and passionate tirade against the endless cycle of newsroom cutbacks that threatens to destroy our Postman’s once proud industry.

In short, I Postman was a hit. The crowd erupted in deafening applause as he I kissed presenter Christine Chen square on the lips, waved my his commemorative plaque in the air along with the $50 Ivars gift card that came with it, and quickly headed back to the bar. When who should jump in my way but a puffing, red-faced and very, very angry Jim Vesely.

“How dare you…?!” the Times editorial page editor sprayed in my face, and I must admit I felt an immediate twinge of shame. I’ve had my fun over the years gently ribbing the Times, but in masquerading as their star reporter before a roomful of our city’s rich and powerful, I knew that this time I had gone too far. So I braced myself for whatever righteous fury I deservingly had coming my way.

“How dare you disobey a direct order?!” Vesely angrily continued. And then it struck me: Vesely thought that I was Postman too!

Well, I tried to defend my Postman’s honor as best he I could, asking why it was that ethics prevented me him from attending the ceremony while Vesely was free to swill Muni booze with impunity… but logic only made Vesely madder. Things deteriorated from there, our confrontation quickly descending into ad hominem attacks (Vesely has a mouth on him that would shock a truck driver), and I fear it would have eventually come to fisticuffs had not Sue Rahr stepped in and pulled the two of us apart.

Needless to say, things were said that can’t be unsaid, and if I really were Postman I’d add that Muni award to my resume and start mailing it out. I hear The Stranger is hiring now that Josh Feit is leaving, and since I kinda blame myself a little for Postman’s unfortunate predicament, I’d be happy to put in a good word.

The festivities over, guests started heading toward the exits, carefully avoiding the food table where von Reichbauer was stuffing his pockets full of bagel chips and salmon dip, a scene eerily reminiscent of Dan Ackroyd at the Christmas party in Trading Places, except without the Santa suit or the laughs. I grabbed myself a final drink and said my goodbyes, my heart nearly as full as my bladder.

No doubt it is a great honor to have one’s work recognized by a prestigious organization like the Muni League, but not nearly as great an honor as being David Postman himself… if only for a single, solitary evening.

Dear Borg-like Washington Policy Center

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Michael Ennis at the right-wing millionaire funded Washington Policy Center takes exception to my post about his group’s attempts in Clark County to scuttle light rail.

No one can escape the fact that light rail across a new Columbia River Bridge would add over $1 billion dollars to the project costs. This means adding light rail would increase costs by 40%, but only serve between 2.4% to 9.8% of all bridge crossings by 2030. That presents a significant gap between public costs and public benefits.

There is a better way: maintaining the current transit configuration (rubber-tire buses) across a new bridge would carry just as many transit riders as light rail or BRT, yet cost a billion dollars less.

But of course, DeVore doesn’t address these facts and only engages in an Ad Hominem attack. The people of Clark County deserve to know both sides of an issue when public dollars are used.

Facts are funny things, actually. I mean, Ennis was at this forum on Apr. 10, agitating in our community, when a director of the Columbia River Crossing project put forth a different figure than one billion dollars:

Crossing officials likely will seek up to $750 million in Federal Transit Administration’s grants to pay for construction costs of bringing light rail over the Columbia River and into downtown Vancouver.

Doug Ficco, co-director of the Columbia River Crossing project, said the $750 million figure comes from federal officials and roughly matches how much crossing officials estimate light rail would cost.

But what’s a quarter billion dollar difference when it helps you make your right-wing millionaire funded point? All that Coors (or whatever) money has to be used for something I suppose. Follow me past the jump and we’ll talk about the issues.

[Read more…]

Reuters: “Penis theft panic hits capital”

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Really… how could I ignore this story?

KINSHASA (Reuters) – Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men’s penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

Reports of so-called penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

Rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo’s sprawling capital of some 8 million inhabitants. They quickly dominated radio call-in shows, with listeners advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis wearing gold rings.

Apparently, Dori Monson is syndicated on Radio Kinshasa. Who knew?

What I absolutely love about wire stories like this is that no matter how absurd they get, the journalist still apparently feels obligated to write in that familiarly stodgy newswire style, even when they include quotes like this…

“When you try to tell the victims that their penises are still there, they tell you that it’s become tiny or that they’ve become impotent. To that I tell them, ‘How do you know if you haven’t gone home and tried it’,”

Or this…

“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Yeah… right. I’m guessing these penis thefts are particularly common in the locker rooms at unheated swimming pools.

Anyway, I couldn’t possibly touch on this subject without closing with the classic King Missile video. But be forewarned: it’s uncensored, uncut and probably not suitable for the office or young children.

Sound Transit pitches revised plan to board

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At a board meeting this afternoon that could decide whether to move ahead with a ballot measure this fall, Sound Transit staff will propose a revised plan that could deliver as much as 23 miles of extended light rail between now and 2020, while funding expanded bus and Sounder service, improving station access and investing in environmental review, preliminary engineering, and early right of way purchase to prepare for further expansion to Tacoma, Lynnwood, Redmond and beyond. The scope of the initial expansion depends on whether the board adopts a .04% sales tax increase (18 miles) or .05% increase (23 miles):

  • North from the University of Washington to the Roosevelt and Northgate areas
  • East from downtown Seattle across Interstate 90 to Mercer Island, downtown Bellevue, the Overlake Hospital area (0.4%) and Redmond’s Overlake Transit Center (0.5%)
  • South from Sea-Tac Airport to South 200th Street (0.4%) and Highline Community College (0.5%)
  • Link connector service serving Seattle’s International District, First Hill and Capitol Hill at John Street (0.4%) and Aloha Street (0.5%)

Proposed Sound Transit Map

This is a plan that gives commuters more options, and takes cars off the road, which will be absolutely necessary if our transportation system is to accommodate the 30% increase in population our region expects by 2030. Read the whole thing.

No word yet on how this new proposal is being received by board members.

Note to the Local Media: Drug War Stories Have Two Sides

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Yesterday, Slog’s Dominic Holden challenged local reporters to ask tough questions about yesterday’s pot busts in South King County. For comparison, he showed how the proposal by Seattle city officials here to implement a $.20 fee for plastic bags got opinions from both sides of the debate over that proposal’s efficacy, but drug busts never do.

The result? Nothing. Both the Seattle Times’ Mike Carter and the Seattle PI’s Paul Shukovsky fail to provide both sides of this story. And yet they wonder why they’re going out of business.

Well, that’s one way to assure affordable housing

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For a city that vows to wipe out homelessness by 2015, and whose anti-density old timers pine for the semi-urban, working-class neighborhoods of yore, it is instructive to look at how the rest of the nation is achieving the laudable goal of assuring an abundant stock of affordable housing. From the AP:

Sales of new homes plunged in March to the lowest level in 16 1/2 years as housing slumped further at the start of the spring sales season.

The median price of a new home in March, compared with a year ago, fell by the largest amount in nearly four decades.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that sales of new homes dropped by 8.5 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 526,000 units, the slowest sales pace since October 1991.

The median price of a home sold in March dropped by 13.3 percent compared with March 2007, the biggest year-over-year price decline since a 14.6 percent plunge in July 1970.

And from Reuters:

Falling U.S. home prices and a lack of available credit may result in foreclosures on 6.5 million loans by the end of 2012, according to a Credit Suisse research report on Tuesday.

The foreclosures could put 12.7 percent of all residential borrowers out of their homes…

The new forecast includes 2.7 million subprime loans whose risky characteristics sparked the worst housing market since the Great Depression. Subprime foreclosures, on top of the 676,000 already in or through the process, will hit 1.39 million in the next two years alone, an upward revision from the 730,000 predicted by Credit Suisse in October.

Falling home prices have made an increasing number of U.S. homeowners more vulnerable to default, they said. Nearly a third of subprime borrowers owed more than their home was worth at the end of last year, and that figure will double to 63 percent in 2009, they said.

[…] Credit Suisse expects home prices will fall by 10 percent in 2008 and 5 percent in 2009, before rebounding.

That’s about a 25% drop from peak prices (a projection many analysts consider very conservative), which puts a lot more than just subprime borrowers at risk. While Credit Suisse projects an astounding 50 percent or more of subprime loans could ultimately end up in foreclosure, Alt-A and prime mortgages represent a much larger pool of borrowers, and as many as 4 million of these are also at risk, including many young couples who had the poor judgment to come of age and start families during a real estate bubble.

Yup, that’s one way to address our shortage of affordable housing, but I’m not sure that knocking the bottom out of our local market is a palatable solution, or that dumping millions of families out of their homes and onto the streets is a constructive step toward ending homelessness. Nor do I think we should embrace the BIAW’s dream of make WA state a zero regulation zone, were they can freely perfect their innovative new black-mold-and-kindling building technology.

It is a complicated issue, and any attempt by one side or the other to claim that they have the solution should be met with skepticism. As our region has grown, and congestion has grown with it, the days when homebuyers could reasonably trade commute time for square footage has come to an end.

If we want to maintain the natural splendor that makes our region so attractive, while accommodating the hundreds of thousands of new jobs and residents that continue to prop up our housing market above the rest of the nation, then both consumers and builders are going to have to change their expectations. And judging by the dozens of condo towers continuing to sprout throughout the downtown, and the thousands of townhouses and apartments being built along Sound Transit’s light rail route, it looks like expectations are starting to do exactly that.

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