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Puget Sound Energy has agreed to be acquired by a consortium of Australian and Canadian investment funds for $30 a share, a 25-percent premium over Thursday’s closing stock price of $23.95. PSE is Washington state’s largest private utility, serving over 1 million electric and 718,000 natural gas customers throughout the region.

After years of record trade deficits, isn’t it comforting to know that at least one segment of US exports is still going strong?

What will this mean for customers? Well, the deal still needs to be approved by shareholders as well as regulators at both WUTC and FERC. And of course, rate hikes will remain subject to regulation. But by taking the company private and delisting its stock, the new owners won’t need to provide the same sort of detailed financial reporting the SEC requires of public corporations.

Filling in late nights at 710-KIRO during last year’s extended, post-windstorm blackouts, I fielded dozens of angry calls from PSE customers complaining that the infrastructure had not been adequately maintained, and that the company was slow to bring in outside crews to get ex-urban neighborhoods back on the grid quickly. Will the new, privately held PSE really invest in improving service? Or will they just suck profits out of their captive customers? While I had my own complaints about Seattle City Light’s performance, I’m personally much more comfortable relying on a public utility for such a vital service, than a foreign-owned, private monopoly… especially in our increasingly volatile and expensive energy market.

Oh, man… it’s not so easy doing this morning news headline thing, when some of the most tempting news stories aren’t really news after all.

Take for example, Dino Rossi’s “long-expected” campaign kickoff. The Seattle P-I headline trumpets “Rossi back on the campaign trail.” But was he ever off it? Um… no. As the Seattle Times points out, “the overarching theme of Rossi’s hourlong speech was retreaded from his 2004 campaign”… you know the same retreaded speech he’s been giving throughout the state for the past year or so.

So not exactly news, unless, of course, you’re Postman: “I have to admit to thinking the chances were 50-50.” Uh-huh.

Know what else isn’t news? Rossi’s campaign theme, which includes (SURPRISE!) cutting taxes!

“[Gov. Gregoire] has since raised taxes on gas, many families who have lost loved ones, and in other sectors.”

Sure, you betcha… voters are gonna be awfully damn pissed off about those gas and estate taxes that they, um, you know… overwhelmingly approved at the polls.

Yeah, it’s not gonna be so easy for Rossi in 2008 because this time around I’m guessing reporters are actually going to ask him actual questions about where he actually stands on actual issues. Like SCHIP. The US House just passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program a second time, though not by a large enough margin to override a second promised presidential veto. In an email to supporters today, Gov. Chris Gregoire makes no bones about where she stands on extending health care to over 4 million children, and defending WA’s gains against President Bush’s “draconian measures.”

Let me be crystal clear about one thing regarding these threats from George W. Bush and the Republicans: I won’t back down.

Earlier this month, I joined with a group of fellow governors to fight back against this irresponsible Bush policy in the federal courts. And I will continue to work closely with the members of our delegation in Washington, DC to make sure we deliver for the children of our state.

As your governor, I have fought for and expanded health care access to an additional 84,000 children – and here in Washington we are on track to provide access to health care for every single child in Washington by 2010.

This fight over children’s health care represents a fundamental difference in values that will define the choice in the upcoming election. George W. Bush and the Republicans’ priorities put them squarely outside the mainstream in our state.

We’re doing right by Washington’s children, and as governor I won’t back down.

I guess this is what Rossi means when he talks about Gregoire being “the governor for the government, not the governor for the people,” because you know… children aren’t people. (Unless they’re fetuses.)

When a governor speaks this boldly and this bluntly, that’s news, whereas the fact that the moon is big and fishing is catching on as a college sport, is not. Also not in the news today is NBA commissioner David Stern criticizing Seattle as heartless for not throwing half a billion dollars at the Sonics’ Oklahoma City owners, nor Bush leading us inexorably toward war with Iran. Whereas very, very rich people spending enormous sums of money on luxury travel, well, that always deserves a front page story. Who knew?

If the cream rises to the top, then the Seattle City Council is the political equivalent of a nonfat, decaf cappuccino: there ain’t nothin’ on top but foam. In fact, the choices this cycle are so unsatisfying that if some of the candidates were running unopposed I’d still have a tough time making a decision. Still, there’s one race where the choice seems clear.

On the one hand we have council wallflower/campaign warmonger David Della, who City Hall observers assure me, really is the incumbent. My handful of brief conversations with Della don’t quite give me a fair basis for concluding, as the The Stranger has, that he “simply isn’t intellectually fit to be on the council”… but then, they don’t give me much to refute the assertion either. I’m no fan of the Sierra Club right now, but accusing the environmental community of being a bunch of racists…? I’ve known mildly autistic people with better political instincts. Really.

Then on the other hand, we have Tim Burgess, a man who has spent the better part of a decade writing fundraising letters for anti-gay, anti-woman, right-wing hate groups… letters that equated homosexuality with pedophilia and emergency contraception with abortion, and that accused the National Education Association of seeking to turn our public schools into gay propaganda and recruitment camps. Really. Sure, he says his positions have evolved… since 2005… but I can’t help but think he thinks we’re all stupid. No doubt he’d bring a great deal more competency to the council than Della — a great, great, great, great deal more competency, I imagine — but competency in the service of an agenda I do not trust, I can do without.

That’s why I’m unreservedly casting my ballot for Heidi Wills.

Wills was a promising young councilmember on the fast track to bigger and better things, when our mind-fuckingly puritanical media crucified her on a demi-scandal of no great significance, before Della and his political hatchet-man swooped in with their mean-spirited and misleading “Rate-Hike Heidi” campaign. It’s amazing what one can accomplish with a little alliteration.

So for all you assholes complaining about your choices this cycle, but who bought into that crap four years ago (or, who like the Seattle Times, just seem to hate the notion of young women in politics,) I’ve got a simple seven-word, bumper sticker response: “Don’t blame me, I voted for Heidi.”

Generally, I don’t recommend throwing away a vote under any circumstances, but perhaps if enough people write-in Heidi or the person of their choice, it might send a message that Seattle voters have a hunger for candidates who are both qualified and clearly represent their values. Perhaps then, four years from now, we might get a field of challengers we can vote for without sticking our fingers down our throats afterwards.

(Or, if you can’t do that, vote for Della. He’ll be the easier one to beat in four years.)

I’m sure more will be written later about Dino Rossi’s announcement, but at Effin Unsound, I thought this was a good opportunity to put together a compilation of his idea man’s greatest hits.

COMPLETELY UNRELATED UPDATE: The Birds Eye View Contests are back…

Apple releases Leopard, or OS X 10.5, tomorrow, and already there are reviews galore. David Pogue in The New York Times does a good rundown of features (and undoubtedly will soon issue a weighty tome on the operating system) and Steven Levy has a chaotic video review (not embeddable, sorry) on the Newsweek site which proves he should probably stick with print.

These early reviews are mostly promotional, of course. Reviewers aren’t supplied the software (which is usually pre-release, remember) far enough ahead to provide time for a thorough treatment, a practice aimed partly at preventing them from finding a real bug or gotcha. For a real hoot, go back and look at the early reviews of Windows Vista, compared with the universal disdain today.

Whereas you’ll be able to buy the system tomorrow, I’m told at various outlets that you will not be able to purchase Macs with pre-installed Leopard tomorrow. Instead, there will be a three-week (or so) waiting period while Apple sells off remaining computers with the old system. Of course, this is pre-sale information. Apple has a knack, courtesy of the Barnumesque genius of Steve Jobs, for popping the unexpected on a product rollout.

What may happen is this: A new line of re-upped notebooks, Leopard-optimized, at prices slightly higher than their existing, non-Leopard counterparts. You decide on price. That accelerates both ends. Gotta-have types who want the new system will pay the premium, but people who figure hey, I can install it myself, will go for the suddenly “bargain-priced” units.

I’d go further and say this might be the time to bring out the long-rumored Apple “flash” Mac (in whatever configuration) — the diskless (that’s right, no CD or DVD) cross of the iPod with a full-keyboard Mac. But it may be too early for that, and in any case such an announcement would be a blow-off-the-doors coup that deserves showcase treatment rather than a Leopard-rollout afterthought.

It ain’t much fun being a Republican these days, which explains Republican KCPAO candidate Dan Satterberg’s attempt to shroud himself in non-partisanship. But in an electoral system where political money seems to gain more First Amendment protections than political speech, the money speaks loud and clear.

A quick peek at the latest PDC filings shows Satterberg the happy recipient of $10,742 of in-kind contributions from the Washington State Republican Party, and $23,400 from the King County Republican Central Committee — most of it in the last two weeks. If Satterberg isn’t a loyal Republican, he’s certainly fooled the GOP.

Satterberg also received (and then gave back) contributions totaling $770 from KCRCC vice-chair Lori Sotelo (she of bogus voter registration challenge fame,) whose short list of contributions this cycle consists entirely of fellow elephants: the WSRP, the KCRCC, Jane Hague, and nominally non-partisan but obviously-Republican Mercer Island city council candidates Steve Litzow and Mike Cero.

In fleeing his party identification, Satterberg has repeatedly said that he would push to make the Prosecutor’s office officially non-partisan, but that would be as big a lie as his current campaign. There are plenty of “non-partisan” races in the region, and in almost every case, we know exactly who the Democratic and Republican candidates are… indeed, the only races Republicans seem to be able to win these days are the “non-partisan” ones. That’s why in addition to giving to Satterberg, the WSRP has also given identical $10,742 contributions to Republicans Bill Bryant and Bob Edwards in their supposedly non-partisan Seattle Port Commission races, while Sotelo recently gave Bryant a $1000 last minute contribution.

State and local party organizations are not in the habit of giving money to non-partisans or independents or whatever it is Satterberg fancies himself these days. The Republican Party is investing tens of thousands of dollars in Dan Satterberg because they expect his election to pay off dividends down the road. And if elected, it will.

Looking around at photos and video from the SoCal wildfires, I don’t see too many black faces. In fact, I don’t recall having seen a single black face. Which makes me wonder if all the comparisons of the fires with Katrina, from the headcounts to the Bush Administration’s (supposed) response, are missing a singular point.

Not to minimize the plight of the wildfire evacuees, it needs to be pointed out that they are (appear to be, till statistical analysis is done) mostly white (undoubtedly Latino will tally as well), mostly politically conservative (with at least a tinge of religiosity), and mostly well to do (especially contrasted with Katrina victims) if not rich by general American standards. There’s some grim irony, too, in the “we take care of our own” pledges emerging from wildfire coverage. The caretakers and the caretakees look a lot alike.

Where are the stories of widespread looting? Where are the paramilitary and outside police forces called in to maintain law and order? How many bands of wildfire refugees have been blocked from crossing bridges into neighboring jurisdictions, or turned away by bayonetted soldiers from returning to the site of their homes? Where are the bulldozers, scraping down houses that might be rebuilt?

And the pets. Any pet owner (I’m one) was sickened by the wrenching site of animals wandering around lost after being forcibly abandoned by their owners. Remember the video of the little white dog jumping up to the closed doors of the evacuation bus? Cut to San Diego, where entire “pet evacuation centers” have sprung up.

You had people dying in the Superdome, while Qualcomm Stadium abounds with stories of Starbucks’ lattes and human kindness. You had repeated suggestions that Katrina victims would simply have to relocate elsewhere, that New Orleans could — even should — never be rebuilt in its former image.

In a way, it’s too bad that the SoCal inferno didn’t happen a couple of years before Katrina. Then the “lessons learned” mantra (which, of course, has yet to be proven sincere) would have a truer test, and more meaningful execution. As it stands, the still unwhole citizens of New Orleans must be viewing the collective response to their supposed brethren halfway across the continent with a mixture of envy and disgust.

With less wind & cooler temps, things are settling down: The wildfires in Los Angeles & San Bernardino Counties have come under control. Farther south in San Diego, things look better, but it’s still a battle. Preliminary damage estimate: over $1 billion.

But in Northern Iraq, things are heating up: the Turkish military yesterday attacked Iraq border regions. The British newspaper The Independent profiles both anti-Kurdish nationalism sweeping Turkey in anticipation of war and the Kurdish fighters the Turks are after.
And the P-I today is carrying an AP story on Iraqi Kurds getting ready to fight Turkey when it invades. Meanwhile, the U.S. is telling its puppet Iraqi government (over which it has little remaining influence) to tell the Kurdish provincial government (over which the Iraqis have zero influence) to curb the Turkish Kurdish rebels in mountainous rural areas (over which the provincial Iraqi Kurds have no influence). That’ll fix it.

The big local story is a business story: Microsoft had plowed plowed $240 million into buying 1.6 percent of the social networking site Facebook, beating out Google & Yahoo in negotiations. Most stories on the transaction spent a few quality seconds with a calculator and announced that this prices Facebook’s overall value at a preposterous $15 billion; scroll down for Paul’s perceptive HA comments on why it just ain’t so.

Elsewhere in the dailies, in the same year that 70% of Seattle voters rejected a waterfront tunnel as too expensive, the P-I’s front page today is floating (so to speak) the idea of an SR 520 tunnel (of indeterminate cost) under Montlake Cut, and/or Portage Bay, and/or even all of Lake Washington. Their upshot: heck, a little studying never hurt anyone, right? Especially when it mollifies wealthy Montlake and Laurelhurst residents and enviros concerned about the Arboretum. Then why are voters already being asked to approve money for SR 520 construction in the current Prop One “Roads & Transit” vote? Who’s paying for these probably-to-be-ignored studies, why weren’t these options considered earlier in the process, and how much are these nods to community process belatedly costing taxpayers now?

A moose bit my sister once.

Meanwhile, a day after profiling Richard Pope on its front page, the Seattle Times returns the favor for troubled incumbent Jane Hague.

And Boston crushed Colorado in the first game of the World Series, 13-1. And the Red Sox Nation rejoices.

I’m testing my new ability to embed video with one of my favorite ever Daily Show clips. It’s Steve Carrell riding the “Straight Talk Express” with Senator John McCain in 1999. I think the bit at the 3:12 mark is priceless.

Seattle Times’ Brier Dudley: “Zillow is emerging as the latest big threat to newspapers, which are watching a series of Internet companies go after their dominant share of advertising and undercutting them with free services.”

As someone who worked 38 years for newspapers, it’s tough to watch a hallowed industry melt to a puddle. If papers saw themselves as a service rather than a product, they might have a chance in the online game. Brier makes several good points about the changing marketplace, not all of them consistent: He goes from a header warning “Watch out, newspapers!” to a concluding sentence: “It’s hard to compete with free…but the site also has a long, long way to go before it has papers’ reach and market penetration.” (I guess Brier didn’t need a disclosure statement there!)

And that’s just the problem. If newspapers simply take the money while letting “free” services compete on price (or non-price), they’ll lose mindshare and brand value when, inevitably, critical mass shifts. Craigslist would not exist (in its current popularity) if papers had simply started giving away classifieds. But they couldn’t leave the revenues on the table.

(Another debate is whether, particularly in a down market, the Internet is changing the business of real-estate. I know three people who sold their homes via Craigslist and were much happier doing so — starting with, no seller’s commission. Dudley rightly notes the “channel conflict” Zillow faces as well in doing brokerage deals: Whose interests is Zillow defending, buyers or sellers?)

Dudley ID’s the progression here: Craigslist, Google, Yahoo, Zillow. I’d add Facebook to the list as well. But the real threat to newspapers began with the World Wide Web. The Web is the newspaper. Everything else is just a tweak in the machine.

This hilarious study somehow reminded me of an old feminist joke my wife likes to tell:

A man is feeling ill and goes to his doctor. The doctor asks to see his wife. “Your husband is very, very sick,” the doctor tells her, “and he’s going to die, unless he has a clean house, hot dinners and sex every night.” The wife goes back to her husband and he asks her what the doctor said. “He says you’re very, very sick,” she tells him, “and you’re going to die.”

It’s been rumored for several weeks, so may be anticlimactic, but AP is reporting that Microsoft is putting $240 million into Facebook for a 1.6 percent stake. (Local papers have versions on Web sites as well.)

There was a time when this kind of thing would have been suicidal for a young tech company. Microsoft would come on board, throw its weight around, take over projects, look at the code…then develop its own competing software. So times have really changed. Now you can view it as Microsoft simply trying to get in on an action it has no hope of branding on its own, as well as a jamming in a wedge against Google. You could certainly view this deal as a turning point in the Evil Empire stigma of Microsoft.

“Culminating weeks of negotiations, the investment announced Wednesday values Palo Alto-based Facebook at $15 billion — a stunning figure for an online hangout started in a Harvard University dorm room less than four years ago.” Well, it does and it doesn’t. No sound economic valuation based on P/E or any other existing index (revs of $100M to $150M, give me a break) would put Facebook anywhere near that. This is all on the come, an act of faith that social networking technology won’t commoditize or be usurped by some new technology. But what both Microsoft and Facebook want to do in cases like this is pump the appearance of value, so why not go along with the hype?

Don’t believe the stenographic line that Microsoft “beat out” Google, however. Google would not have let Facebook slip if it really wanted it. Similarly, though, suggestions that Google let Facebook slip because it is developing its own social-networking site are probably off base. My view is that Google has little incentive to do a social-networking site, because that would cannibalize its own advertising market. Besides, with Blogger, YouTube, Google Pages and other powerful pieces, the Google sum is greater than any SN’s parts.

When Postman asked his readers “What should Rossi say?” when he officially announces his campaign for governor tomorrow, commenters found it awfully damn hard to take the task seriously. Democrats could barely hold back the snark, while Republicans were at a loss for words.

Personally, I’m not sure what Rossi can or should say at his campaign kickoff, but I’m pretty damn sure what he will say tomorrow… the same thing he said back in 2004, and the same thing he’s been saying over and over again on the non-campaign trail this past year or so:

Yup, it’s hard to argue with 210,000 new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in state history, and one of the best business climates in the nation… but that doesn’t mean Rossi won’t try. How? Well, just like in 2004, he could just try making shit up:

At pancake breakfasts and candidate forums across the state, Dino Rossi has invoked his nephew’s name as an emblem for what ails Washington.

Rossi blames Washington’s unfriendly business climate for driving his nephew, Kenny, and his business to Arizona. The gubernatorial candidate also has cautioned that the next Microsoft or Boeing founder could leave for Arizona, just as Kenny did.

What Rossi doesn’t say is that Kenny was a self-employed car detailer and that he left for personal reasons as much as business, according to his nephew.

Oops.

In politics, the truth doesn’t always hurt, but as Rossi is discovering, it doesn’t always much help, either.

Canadian Marc Emery is facing extradition to the United States for running a mail-order marijuana seed business. If extradited, he could spend the rest of his life in prison here, even though what he’s charged with is only a fine in Canada. The effort to extradite him has been led out of Seattle’s US Attorneys office previously run by John McKay. What’s making this case very interesting is that Emery isn’t a dummy, a slacker, or even a remotely threatening human being, and this fact is getting a lot of attention. He started his first business at his parents’ home at the age of 14 in London, Ontario and has long been a champion of entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency. He has used this case to highlight the incredible absurdity of the laws that are being used by the Bush Administration and the DEA to go after him, and sees himself as a martyr representing a country where 55% of the citizens support the legalization of marijuana, even as their current government slavishly obeys the Bush Administration on drug issues.

Last night on CBC, a documentary on Emery called “The Prince of Pot” was aired and it’s already available in its entirety on YouTube. You can see each of the 5 parts here (and you may want to be somewhat careful watching if you’re at work).