HorsesAss.Org

This stuff bugs the hell out of me:

With rising condo towers and disappearing green space in Seattle, City Council members say the city needs more parks. A levy aimed at building new parks expires this year, and several on the council say the public would support renewing it.

But there’s one member of the public who does not support it — the mayor. Every voter-approved city levy since 2001 has originated with him. The City Council approved putting those levies on the ballot, but Mayor Greg Nickels proposed the property-tax increases, organized supporters and raised the money to fund the campaigns.
[…]

“We believe that this data indicates there is in fact pretty strong public support,” said Conlin. After eight years, the expiring $198 million parks levy has not met all of the city’s needs for community centers and parks, said Tom Rasmussen, chairman of the parks committee. Neighborhoods such as Belltown still need a park, he said.

Council members are now putting together a 20-member advisory committee to come up with a list of parks projects the public wants funded.

It makes me crazy that my neighborhood, neglected and ignored Belltown, is being used to justify millions in taxes that will ultimately benefit lots of other neighborhoods. Such was the case during the last parks levy. The project list shows just a single project in Belltown. Of course, Belltown has been promised a community center for years. What assurance do I have that another levy will get around to building it?

And what about my basketball court?

Meanwhile, for similar dollars per household, Sound Transit wants to build light rail north, east, and south. When surveyed, most folks around here find transportation to be a more pressing concern. While I’m concerned about not having a basketball court, the region’s economy doesn’t rest on my hook shot. (We should all be glad that it doesn’t.)

This is a city that does important small things (plastic bags) and important big things (fighting climate change). Raising everyone’s property taxes NOW, in the same year Sound Transit could very well go to the ballot with a transit-only package funded by a sales tax, isn’t a great idea. See the update below.

If renewing the parks levy is so important, why don’t they already have a project list compiled? Here’s my plan: Find ten really important, we-can’t-live-without-them projects, and go to the voters with that list. In fact, combine it with funds dedicated for the remodel of the Seattle Center. (That might be the least appealing public space in the city, and could use some new resources.)

A while back, a prospective city council candidate went down to City Hall to find out what the council’s priorities were. They gave him a binder full of hundreds of “priorities.” Of course, if you have a hundred “priorities,” you don’t have any.

City Council candidates, when they stand for election, like to talk about making transportation a priority. This year, they can really do it.

UPDATE

I get email clarifying the tax issue:

Just to clarify, the Council is not looking to raise anyone’s taxes –
any levy that the city council is considering will cost the same or less
to taxpayers (when combined with the Mayor’s Pike Place Market levy) as
they’re paying now for the current Pro-Parks levy.

This week’s podcast featured a panel of highly regarded as well as disreputable northwest bloggers…taking a few potshots at David Postman along the way.

Joining Goldy were Will, Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly, John Wyble, and mcjoan.

Topics of discussion include Will’s wonderful bus tour, Gov. Christine Gregoire as a retail politician, a follow-up on the BIAW controversy, an update on the Washington legislative races, the Dalai Lama and the lure of commerce, and The Responsible Plan (with a brief journey into the thought processes of Cokie Roberts).

[audio:http://www.podcastingliberally.com/podcasts/podcasting_liberally_apr_8_2008.mp3]

The show is 49:42, and is available here as a 47.7 MB MP3.

[Recorded live at the Montlake Alehouse in Seattle during Tuesday’s meeting of Drinking Liberally. Special thanks to creators Gavin and Richard for hosting the site.]

Apparently, the BIAW has its own radio show-like-thingy or something, and… well… it doesn’t sound like they’re too fond of Seattle P-I columnist Joel Connelly:

[audio:https://horsesass.org/wp-content/uploads/2008-4-8-biaw-calls-connelly-a-reptile-long.mp3]

Well, Tom McCabe didn’t specifically call Joel a Nazi, but rather a “self-avowed extreme environmentalist.” And since they equate environmentalism with Nazism, I can only assume that they believe that Joel is also a self-avowed Nazi. Meanwhile, foul-mouthed spokeswoman Erin Shannon chimes in with some constructive criticism of her own:

“His blood does run cold because he’s a little reptile. He’s a snake.”

But that’s nothing compared to what they have say about me. Stay tuned for more, coming up soon…

The Republican version of the Dems’ “Red to Blue” program is called ROMP, which stands for “Regain Our Majority Program.” But whereas Red to Blue funnels resources to Democratic challengers running in Republican held districts, the NRCC is pursuing an entirely different tactic with ROMP, prompting Daily Kos contributing editor brownsox to astutely observe:

Notice that this ROMP program, ostensibly focused on regaining the Republican majority, seems disproportionately tilted towards protecting incumbent Republican Reps. In fact, out of these 10 districts where the elephants hope to ROMP, exactly one is currently held by a Democrat, John Yarmuth of Kentucky’s 3rd District.

I find this to be a novel and fascinating method of Regaining Their Majority; by not targeting Democratic-held seats. I wish them the best of luck with this; I’m sure it’s going to work out just splendidly. Keep avoiding the Dem-held seats, and they oughta have that ol’ majority back in no time flat.

And yes, Dave Reichert is a charter member of ROMP 2008, yet another indication of just how vulnerable his colleagues understand him to be.

If you like DJ Noname, the recently s-canned midday radio dj who used to be at The End, you should check this out:

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Peter Goldmark is running for Commissioner of Public Lands.

He’s a rancher, a farmer, a geneticist, and through much of his life has served the public. He served as agriculture commissioner under Gov. Mike Lowry, and on the Okanagon school board. He was a regent at Washington State University, and founded a group that helps farmers and environmentalists to work together.. He invented a species of wheat used by his neighboring farmers, and raises (what I’m told) some damn tasty grass fed beef. But to really get to know the guy, you have to know the back story:

Goldmark’s father, John, was a popular farmer and state senator in the 1950s who championed public power only to be viciously slandered as a Communist tool by a former Spokesman-Review political editor and a former legislator who had both sided with private power companies. In this fearful time of the Red Scare, John Goldmark was turned out of office and saw his life ruined.

He sued for libel in 1963 and won a huge victory against his accusers. But the stigma and whispers of “communist” played out tragically in 1985 when, on Christmas Eve, a drifter who hung around right-wing fringe groups, murdered Charles Goldmark, his wife and two children — thinking he was John Goldmark.

The savage attacks on his parents (Peter Goldmark was 17 at the time of the libel trial) and the later murder of his brother’s family may have shaped Peter Goldmark and his views of public service and politics.

If anyone has earned the chance to retire to the front porch and stay out of the public eye, it’s Peter Goldmark.

But I don’t think that wouldn’t sit right with him. That’s why he’s running for Lands Commissioner this year:

[W]e agree that we need new and better management of our state’s public forests, our shorelines, our aquatic reserves and our mineral resources. [We] agree that without sustainable management of these natural resources, we risk losing what is so special about our state. We can and must do better—it is time for a change.

I’ve spent most of my life raising wheat and cattle in the high country of Okanogan County. I have served as Director of Agriculture for the state, bred new wheat varieties and been named conservation farmer of Washington State. I will be the first Lands Commissioner to be a conservation award winning and committed manager of our lands.

I offer a new direction and positive leadership.

As usual, I’m not exactly sure what Danny Westneat is getting at. (That’s just kinda his style: tossing out apparently contrarian tidbits, and then leaving it to readers to impose their own agenda.) Danny interviews Ravenna’s renowned “oceanic garbologist” Curt Ebbesmeyer, who points out that those plastic grocery bags the mayor wants to slap a 20-cent fee on are just “one little battle out of a million.”

“If the mayor really wants to get on the stick, he should go after plastic bottles. Or plastic wrapping of food products. Or how about a tax or a ban on petroleum-based plastic, period?”

For his part, Danny performed his own field… um… beach research, confirming Ebbesmeyer’s remark:

I did my own garbology “dig” at low tide in Seattle’s Myrtle Edwards Park. In half an hour poking along 300 yards of shoreline, I found a demoralizing 173 pieces of trash.

Take out the wood (paintbrush), the metal (beer cans, foil wrappers) and the miscellaneous (earplugs, nicotine patches, ropes, a corncob, an orange traffic cone), and I was left with 137 pieces of plastic.

Top item, by far: Plastic bottles. Followed by plastic bottle caps. Then plastic lids and plastic cups. Plus a slew of plastic food packaging.

Number of plastic grocery or drugstore bags? One.

Sure, we get it Danny… one city discouraging the wasteful use of disposable bags won’t make much of an impact on such a huge problem (the way one individual conserving energy won’t slow global warming). But I know something that would make a difference, and quick: we could all, you know, stop littering!

When I was a kid in the early seventies the most visible element of the nascent environmental movement was a nationwide anti-littering campaign. It was drummed into us at school, it was relentlessly reinforced in PSAs on TV and on billboards. I even saw a state trooper pull over a car for dumping a handful of trash out the window on the Atlantic City Expressway.

Nowadays I witness trash spewing out of car windows or falling out of the hands of defiant teens on a regular basis. Recently I confronted a kid on a neighborhood playground for dropping their empty candy wrapper on the ground, and they just looked at me with one of those expressions of disdain reserved for, well, adults, before indifferently turning around and walking away. If that had been me thirty-some years ago, told to pick up my trash, I would have been mortified.

No doubt the social taboo against public littering was always strongest amongst affluent suburbanites, but it appears to be waning across the board these days, and I don’t see much of a concerted effort to reinforce it. So let’s start drumming it into our kids again, confronting offenders with reproach, and instructing the police to hand out littering tickets on our streets and our sidewalks. And let’s get that crying Indian back on TV again, for chrisakes.

Join us at the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of politics under the influence. We meet at 8:00 pm at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E—some of us show up a little early to enjoy the cuisine.

Tonight’s theme song is inspired by rumors of a Condi VP running-mate for McCain (please, oh please?): Winlar’s Condoleezza.

If you find yourself in the Tri-Cities area this evening, check out McCranium for the local Drinking Liberally. Otherwise, check out the Drinking Liberally web site for dates and times of a chapter near you.

In my earlier post on the backdrop for Dave Reichert’s trip to Colombia, I neglected to cite one of the best sources for information on that part of the world, The Center for International Policy’s Plan Colombia and Beyond blog. There they have a couple of recent posts that provide even more background on the free trade agreement that the Bush Administration wants to see passed, as well as the ever-present anti-drug arrangements we have with that country.

Some recent posts:

A summation of how both Obama and Clinton have found some political landmines when it comes to Colombia and free trade in general.

A story about what happened when 6 FARC representatives (including the recently assassinated Raul Reyes) travelled to Europe to discuss peace in 2000.

A closer look at Colombia’s still very poor human rights record.

And finally, this one was particularly fascinating to me. They point to a website which shows on a map of Colombia which military and police installations are qualified for U.S. assistance. If you click through to that website, you can then click on each of the Google Maps pushpins to see where your taxpayer dollars go – largely in the effort to keep cocaine from coming into the United States. An effort which is not working, and will never work.

The politics surrounding poor people is always interesting. When it’s in someones interest to fight for them, they do. When they aren’t, they won’t. I won’t leave myself out of that. I do it, sometimes. But, I find it curious that The Times is protesting the “twenty cents for a plastic bag” because it’s bad for poor people. Via ECB:

Nickels says we need to recycle kitchen waste and stop using plastic and paper bags to help the environment. The rub is, citizens are not rewarded. A rate increase pinches an already strapped lower and middle class.[…]

Leadership should find a way to make the numbers work better. Seattle is becoming a very expensive place to live.

Poor folks are poor, not stupid. To think they can’t handle a rule change is nuts.

The Seattle Times as “crusader for the poor”… that’s funny!

I was pretty much exhausted by the end of yesterday, but here’s a little bit more…

The folks on the campaign bus are interesting people. I asked the person across the ailse from me what they did.

“I’m with the Washington Education Association.”

I asked, “Cool, what do you do with them.”

“I’m the president.”

Oh.

Other folks on the bus included union folks. Electrical workers, government employees, teachers, and firefighters. The guy I talked to for about 20 minutes about Seattle firefighters and Seattle police?? Turns out he’s the head of the WSCFF. There were a few of Gregoire’s governor staff, all of them told me over and over again that they were on vacation.

This isn’t any different from other campaigns. Dino Rossi has his cadre, his bunch of folks who follow him around.

Two of my favorite guys on the bus are these guys. I missed their names, but the fella on the right is a local leader of the association of black veterans. The Gregoire campaign has lots and lots of veterans supporting it. Even the First Gentleman, Mike Gregoire. He’s a Vietnam vet. The fellas in the picture below kept referring to me at “the main blogger man.” I tried to tell them I wasn’t, but they didn’t listen.

Here it goes down, down into my belly…

I’m deep in code monkey mode today, so I don’t expect to do much writing unless something really strikes my fancy… though that doesn’t mean my co-bloggers won’t fill in the gap.  Just thought you should know.

Dave Reichert (AKA Congressman 401) traveled to Colombia this weekend with US Trade Representative Susan Schwab and 8 other lawmakers. The reason for the trip is that the folks who tell Congressman Reichert how to vote are eager to pass a Free Trade Agreement with our strongest South American ally.

One of the things making the passage of the agreement complicated for the Bush Administration is what recently happened in the region. In March, the Colombian military attacked and killed a high-ranking FARC official in Ecuadorean territory along with 22 others. FARC is a left-wing Colombian rebel group that has financed its operations through drug trafficking and actively fights Alvaro Uribe’s government. However, by attacking them on Ecuadorean soil, the Colombians triggered a regional crisis, with both Venezuela and Ecuador sending troops to the border and the Uribe government receiving condemnations from nearly every country in the region. The Colombians were forced to apologize for their actions.

In the wake of this incident, however, President Bush made a speech where he emphasized that passing the free trade agreement was a matter of national security because it was important to send a message to the Colombians that we stand by them in their fight against terrorism. You read that right: following an action by the Colombians that was condemned by nearly every country from Chile to Mexico, the Bush Administration told us that it’s in our national security interests to reward the Colombians. You couldn’t even script a fictional scenario about how the Bush Administration’s foreign policy has been an epic failure better than how that episode actually played out.

But this being a free trade agreement being proposed, it doesn’t just have to do with rewarding the Colombians with more of our military might under the auspices of fighting “narco-terrorists.” It’s largely about eliminating tariffs on the goods that we exchange with them. And these agreements have become a major point of contention, especially within the race for the Democratic nomination. The Democratic candidates are finding it necessary to take strong stands against free trade agreements as the economy worsens. The latest casualty of this backlash against free trade is Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist Mark Penn, who met with the Colombians in support of the agreement, and is no longer working on the Clinton campaign, while his PR firm is no longer working with the Colombian government. It’s a fitting end for the man who made it impossible for many people on the left to support Clinton in the primaries and certainly helped give the nomination to Obama through his own arrogance.

As for Obama, he’s focused on what I also find to be a serious problem with this trade agreement:

Free trade has become an emotional election issue, especially for Democrats. Both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, contending for the Democratic nomination, oppose the legislation. On Wednesday, Sen. Obama reiterated his opposition, saying that Colombia wasn’t doing enough to stop the killing of Colombian trade unionists.

“The violence against unions in Colombia would make a mockery of the very labor protections that we have insisted be included in these types of agreements,” Mr. Obama said at a meeting of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO in Philadelphia.

…

“We have made a big effort, and the number has fallen to 26 last year from 205 in 2001,” Mr. Uribe said, speaking of assassinated union members and teachers. “So far this year, there have been 11 murders.”

Human Rights Watch disputes the number. Mr. Vivanco says 17 unionists have been killed so far this year.

Blaming the effects of free trade agreements for the loss of jobs throughout America is an oversimplification that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. The more serious problems with free trade agreements occur when we use them as a way to reward bad behavior, or as a way to promote our own failed policies. Both of these things are occurring in Colombia. There’s little difference between the actions of Colombian right-wing paramilitaries and the actions of left-wing rebels. Both groups have a history of using terrorist tactics and funding themselves through drug trafficking. But the left-wing rebels are the “narco-terrorists” who threaten our national security. Why? Because they’re on the same side as those who are demanding labor reforms and other restraints on the corporations that wish to do business there. This administration still equates dissent over their economic philosophy with the threat of terrorism. And because of this, Colombia finds itself increasingly more isolated for their willingess to be our close ally as the rest of South America grows more and more anti-American and anti-capitalist.

And underneath all of this is still Plan Colombia, the multi-billion dollar drug war initiative first unleashed by the Clinton Administration in 2000 and continued by the Bush Administration. The Colombian drug war has always been a ready excuse for the excesses of right-wing paramilitaries, but the complete failure to even make a dent in South American drug production is making it clear what drug policy experts understood all along – it was destined to be a major boondoggle. The Bush Administration may still be able to convince themselves that bombing FARC outposts in the jungles of northern Ecuador will somehow stop the billions of dollars of cocaine from coming into the United States, but people like that should be sitting in rooms with padded walls and not in charge of our military.

As for Congressman 401, his excursion to Colombia was probably a good way to take his mind off of the fact that Darcy Burner is getting a lot of very good press for her work on the Responsible Plan to get out of Iraq. We need a Responsible Plan for Colombia too, but it doesn’t involve rewarding the Colombian government with a free trade agreement at a time when they’re moving the region closer to conflict. It doesn’t involve using the drug war as an excuse for political persecution. And it certainly doesn’t involve the failed drug control strategies like aerial eradication that have done nothing to curb the flow of drugs into this country while devastating the lives of an increasing number of people.

You may not notice it — in fact, you shouldn’t notice it — but I’ve just upgrade HA’s installation of WordPress to version 2.5. If anything appears not be working properly, you’ll let me know.