HorsesAss.Org

Kudos to Sam Machkovech at the Slog for making the inevitable comparison between the Sonics situation and the plot of the movie “Major League,” where the widowed owner of the Cleveland Indians wanted to move the team to Miami. In order to do this, she filled the roster with a bunch of washed-up no-names so that the attendance would fall to levels that allowed her to move the team.

If nothing else, the speculation that Clay Bennett is secretly trying to lose for the same reason might be the most intriguing thing about the Sonics right now (they’re now 0-7, the worst record in the NBA). I think we’ll know the fix is in if Jim McIlvaine ends up back in a Sonics uniform sometime this year.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out the strategy of the anti-rail/pro-roads camp. Of course, they wanted most of the proposals in the RTID package — and more — but they knew they’d get most of it without Prop 1… eventually. So while cockeyed optimists like Josh and Erica appear buoyant at the prospect of a transit-only measure appearing on the ballot sometime this decade, “Plan B” is moving quickly apace. And yes, there always was a Plan B, as outlined in an editorial Sunday in the Seattle Times:

• Highway 520 has to be redone before it falls into the lake. While redoing it, it must be expanded to accommodate traffic to job centers in Bellevue and Redmond. Pay for it in part with tolls.
• Replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, either with a new structure or a sensible surface option.
• Perhaps extend light rail to Northgate. The density is already there, but this may have to wait until the first light-rail line opens.
• In Snohomish County, do key interchanges to Interstate 5, expand Highway 9 and improve Highway 2. Pick only the must-dos.
• Pierce County: Do Highway 167. Make that the priority.
• Bring on congestion pricing to change motorist behavior at peak times. In other words, get the most out of roadways we already have.

Huh. Sounds pretty much like the bulk of the major projects from RTID, with the Viaduct thrown in for good measure. As for light rail, perhaps we should extend it to Northgate… you know, if we can get beyond the fiscal reality that Sound Transit lacks sufficient taxing authority to even bond the half-billion dollar a mile project from revenues in the Seattle sub-area alone.

If I were to make a proposal like this, I’d just be talking out of my ass, but the Times editorial board has always been an official organ of the Eastside political establishment, so I’m guessing it was pretty well vetted before publication. And the very next day, surprise….

Now that Puget Sound-area voters have killed the ambitious roads and transit plan outlined in Proposition 1, the state will take back responsibility for replacing the state Route 520 Bridge, Gov. Chris Gregoire said Monday.

“I’ve already asked the Department of Transportation and the Office of (Financial Management) to come up with a new financing plan,” Gregoire said. “We will split off from the Regional Transportation Improvement District, because the 520 Bridge can no longer wait. It needs to be replaced.”

Gregoire said she wants to keep her commitment to begin construction on the 520 replacement by 2012.

If you think the timing is just some lucky coincidence, I’ve got a floating bridge to sell you.

The Kemper Freemanites’ opposition to rail wasn’t just ideological, it was politically pragmatic, for with light rail extension effectively killed for the foreseeable future, that frees up additional tax and toll revenues for other items on their asphalt wish list. They might not get everything they want — the Cross-Base Freeway and the mythical I-605 will likely never see the light of the day — but they’ll get most of what they want, including “hot lanes” and congestion pricing for those who can afford it. Meanwhile, we’ll buy a few buses, append the “Rapid Transit” suffix, and tell the common folk they’re getting a good deal for their money. Sweet.

But then, what do I know? I’m just some dumb blogger, not a savvy political strategist like those polar bear clad geniuses at the Sierra Club and their fellow travelers at The Stranger.

Here’s your noon sandbox, kids.

Sweet jeezy:

King County would take over the Vashon Island foot ferry and try out passenger ferries on up to five other routes on Puget Sound and Lake Washington, with property owners financing the service through a tax levy slightly higher than indicated earlier, County Executive Ron Sims proposed Thursday.

In a letter to the County Council, which also serves as the board of the recently created King County Ferry District, Sims called for a 10-year property tax of 5.5 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation.

What will they do with these taxes?

Conduct two-year tests of five other ferry routes, beginning with one route in 2009 and adding another each of the next four years. The routes have not been selected, but possibilities include Lake Washington runs to central Seattle from Kenmore, Kirkland and Renton and Puget Sound trips to downtown from Shilshole and Des Moines.

Is this the first step of the “greenest package you have ever seen” transportation plan Ron Sims had in mind? What’s the carbon footprint on one of those suckers? Those diesel engines don’t run gypsy tears or lollipops, that’s for sure! (Or biodiesel for that matter).

Really, what the fuck are we doing even considering putting ferries into Lake Washington when King County’s South Park Bridge is deteriorating before our eyes?

To be clear, I think King County is right to invest in passenger only ferries to Vashon Island, because, well, it’s a fucking island. Kirkland, from what I remember, is not an island, and that Kirklanders manage to get around pretty well without boat service. Even the West Seattle Water Taxi, a sort of quasi-novelty item propagated by West Seattle-based county councilmen from the past and present, seems like something worth keeping.

I find it funny that Sims, who attacked the South Link light rail line for not being “worth the money”, is proposing a new transit system that will have an astronomical per-rider subsidy. Besides, people like to criticize light rail for being “two hundred year old technology,” but what about ferries? Isn’t that, like, four fucking thousand years old?

To recap: Vashon Island ferry, yes. Water Taxi, sure, why not. Ferry from Kirkland to UW? No way.

Seahawks beat the 49ers edition.

* The wingnut welfare squad sure are upset that their publishers cheated them to the New York Times best seller list.

* The scene in The Godfather II where Michael beats up Kate after she tells him she had an abortion is apparently inspirational to crazy people.

* Hillary Clinton is a terrible debater who simultaneously shows too much and not enough emotion. And who was a good debater in real time.

* Those of us who say torture doesn’t work? Alan Dershowitz has the answer for us.

* You need 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate, except when you only need 50.

* I for one don’t miss the old old days of blogs.

* Bush is still our president. Sigh.

Locally:

* Lets not run back to reinstate the I-747 limits quite yet.

* Is there anything about Doc Hastings that isn’t bullshit?

* I think it’s been discussed on this blog once or twice before, but the political class sure knows the meaning of the Prop. 1 failure.

This is an open thread.

Apple Insider has the scoop, with fingers crossed as always: Macworld’s big bust-out will be the long-awaited, much-speculated (including here), disk driveless ultra-lite notebook. Drat, and I was planning to upgrade from my PowerBook next week!

There’s so much pent-up demand for this baby, and combined with the Leopard upgrade it promises to give so much pop to Apple sales, that some boosters have put a target of $350 for the stock price (currently around $155 on profit-taking and general jitters after passing $190). Even conservative analysts are talking $225. So if you’re looking for a safe haven from the weak dollar, the shaky financial market and the DJ index, here’s your chance. You might want to wait till the profit-taking ride ends to jump in. If recent history is an indicator, the stock will roll back up as fast as it unraveled.

Of course it could all be smoke signals aimed at backstopping shares and pimping Macworld…but that would freeze current Apple sales during the crucial holiday period.

I hate to get into the business of reporting the future — because sometimes the future proves me wrong — but the big headline nobody seems to be reporting today is that Simple Majority seems likely to pass. Darryl first pointed this out Saturday night, when it was still trailing by about 11,000 votes statewide, and by the end of the day yesterday the gap had narrowed to 2,620. EHJR 4204 is a constitutional amendment that would eliminate the 60-percent supermajority requirement for passing local school levies.

I’d previously argued that low turnout and the lack of partisan contests meant there was no discernible message coming out of Tuesday’s generally disappointing results, but the repositories of conventional wisdom argued otherwise, seeing the defeat of 4204 and Prop 1, combined with a win for Tim Eyman’s ridiculous I-960, as clear signs of an imminent tax revolt. It is in this climate of fear that Dems promise to reinstate one-percent limit on property tax revenue growth after Eyman’s unsustainable I-747 was tossed out by the Supremes. Hmm. Maybe they should have waited a few days before falling on their swords?

What little evidence there was of voter rebellion is steadily dissipating as late absentees continue to be tallied here in Western Washington… you know, where most of the state’s people actually live. Simple Majority seems on its way to passing, while I-960’s once convincing election night performance is heading toward squeaker territory. And while the controversial Roads & Transit measure was soundly defeated, Medic One, the only countywide property tax levy on the King County ballot, is passing with an astounding 83-percent of the vote. So I-960 barely passes in a low turnout election. Yeah, that’s some tax revolt.

The truth is, taxes pay for things that voters want, things like schools, Medic One, and cleaning up after windstorms. They also sometimes pay for things that voters don’t want. And unless they intend to finally do something about our state’s bizarrely regressive tax structure, I think Dems would be better off giving voters what they want, rather than pandering to a Republican minority whose sole goal is to cripple government

I forgot to post this…

This is an open thread

UPDATE: Apparently response from developers has been so thunderous that Google is now offering to pay them to write programs. Yeah, that’ll work…

I’m playing catchup on this, but my take on Google’s new phone platform, Android, is a lot less breathless than what you might have read elsewhere last week. Promising to turn cell phones into pocket PCs, whatever that means, Android was front-page news here in Silicon Valley, and even in The New York Times, which also effused editorially. I consider Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer closer to the mark, though, in calling it a mere press release and “a bunch of words.” That’s what I love about Steve, he never speaks in code. Ballmer of course took the opportunity to boast about Windows Mobile’s staggering success on 150 different handsets from 100-plus operators. Silly me, I can’t name a single one.

But Ballmer knows mere press releases when he sees ’em, as any veteran of Microsoft FUD knows. My favorite example will always be the hugely trumpeted mid-1990s Microsoft At Work (MAW!) initiative to put Windows on all office machines — copiers, fax machines, printers. That one was front-page news, too. Unless I missed something, though, I never saw a “File/Edit/Format” etc. interface on a fax machine.

The fact is, these industry-wide initiatives get lots of feel-good ink and very little traction. Standards, as a friend likes to joke, are useful mainly for giving everyone something to unite against. If they were really crucial, digital camera makers would have figured out the best interface for setting and unsetting automatic flash, for example. Remote controls would all have the “Enter” button in the same place. And cell phone makers might even agree on where to put the SEND button.

As it stands, phone makers have little incentive to adopt a Google platform because 1) it gives any of their really good ideas (albeit rare) to their competition, 2) they lose the ability to differentiate features (often tied to handset UIs) from competitors, and 3) the bulk of any monetization of the platform (in this case, advertising) is sure to go into the already deep pockets of Google.

The other reason this thing won’t go anywhere, though, is the curiously unchallenged role of Google CEO Eric Schmidt. It so happens that Schmidt sits on the board of Apple Inc. and is a BFF of Steve Jobs. So if Android is a mobile platform and the iPhone is a mobile platform, isn’t that what you call your classic conflict of interest? Apparently Schmidt is skating this with one of his engaging winks and some vague blather about the ecosystem of mobile technology nurturing many forms, but in reality what it says to me (absent a shareholder revolt) is that, yeah, the whole enchilada is meaningless. Apple can keep doing its closed iPhone thing (although my bet is that after its AT&T commitment runs out, we’ll see iPhones on other carriers as well) with no fear from Google’s putatively open-platform let’s-all-hold-hands-and-sing “press release” … while Ballmer pouts about someone else getting lots of attention for a hollow gesture. Android is just a straw dog to freeze potential competition to the iPhone till Apple can license it to other vendors or build a monopoly so fast and strong it doesn’t matter what the phone makers do. Whether conflict of interest or backroom collusion, the whole thing deserves regulatory inspection.

Till then, the annoyingly named Android — and by the way, why didn’t anyone ask what the name means, other than the company that Google bought…and shouldn’t it have been called Handroid instead? — is something everyone can smile and nod about. Isn’t that nice, we’ll all be able to IM one another and post photos to Flickr when the next earthquake hits. Remind me to check back in a couple of years. About then, hopefully, Google will be announcing an open platform for digital camera software.

Tonight on “The David Goldstein Show”, 7PM to 10PM on News/Talk 710-KIRO:

7PM: Is the Democratic majority torture?
Newly confirmed US Attorney General Michael Mukasey couldn’t tell us whether water-boarding is torture, but for many of us progressives, the lack of resolve of the Democratic majority in Congress is. In what I hope will become a regular feature on the show, Daily Kos frontpage editor Kagro X joins me for the hour to discuss the Muskasey confirmation and other issues of national import.

8PM: Election recap rewind
Former state Democratic Party chair Paul Berendt and former state Republican Party chair Chris Vance join me by phone for an on-air reunion and a recap of Tuesday’s election. A Republican resurgence? A tax revolt brewing? A bad night for Dems? Or was it just a really, really, really low turnout election? Tune in and find out what the ex-chairs have to say.

9PM: Where does Sound Transit go from here?
Last night Josh and Erica seemed almost buoyant about the prospect for a transit only ballot measure in 2008 or 2009, but this morning the Seattle Times comes out with mostly roads “Plan B” I’ve always predicted. Sound Transit Director of Policy, Planning & Public Affairs, Ric Ilgenfritz joins me for the hour to talk about the failure of Prop 1, and what if any future there is for Sound Transit and light rail expansion.

Tune in tonight (or listen to the live stream) and give me a call: 1-877-710-KIRO (5476).

I filled up the van in Palo Alto and paid $3.81 a gallon, a new personal record. I felt so proud, doing my bit to get American kids killed in Iraq and start a nuclear war with Iran. In reality, of course, I support $10-a-gallon gasoline, so long as the obscene profits go to light rail and renewable energy instead of the oily companies and Bush’s fatcat pals.

It’s intriguing, comparing the psychology at the pump today with the Arab oil embargo back when. The issue then wasn’t price but supply. Americans were outraged when they could not actually mosey on down to the gas station and fill ‘er up any time they felt like it. They kicked Carter out of office for it. So as long as there’s plenty of gas, it seems, folks are not going to get unruly, no matter what it costs. But here’s a safe bet: If a Dem gets elected President, we’ll be back to gas rationing before you can say Homeland Security. And it’ll all be the Democrats’ fault.

Normally you get tens of thousands of people in one building over a weekend, you figure on a lot of garbage. At the Greenfest here in San Francisco (coming to Seattle in April), you get a glimpse into the future of trash.

It’s called compost. Inside the concourse are big bins for throwaways marked liquids, recyclables and compostables. Last year’s Greenfest managed a 96 percent success rate in keeping garbage out of landfills. This year they’re aiming higher.

Here’s how: All food is natural, much of it is organic and/or vegan, and there’s no meat (or animal milk). So all uneaten food is compostable. So are plates, cups, bowls and so on, most of them paper or a similar fiber-based product. As for utensils, they’re potato or corn. You’re done eating, you don’t have to separate out the plastics from animal byproducts and the dishware. It all goes into the compost bin.

Much of this has to do with screening of vendors by Greenfest organizers. The festival was founded, and remains spearheaded, by Global Exchange, which has done more for Fair Trade than just about any organization extant. Greenfests are billed as “parties with a purpose” to promote environmental, social justice and community causes around the world.

So what’s to keep this year’s Greenfest from reaching 100 percent sustainability — no landfill junk at all? “Well, there’s these things,” said one of the trash-monitors, holding out an energy bar wrapper. They may look and feel like paper, but they have foil liners, sometimes with plastic sealers as well. Their ingredients may boast organic this and natural that, but their containers are anathema. Maybe by the time the festival makes it up to the Convention Center April 12-13, even those wrappers will be history.

Random sightems: More people are bringing their families to Greenfest, so this year an entire section was set aside for “Green Kids”… I didn’t see any on display but ran across a card for Portland’s Natural Burial Company showing off the “Ecopod,” a coffin made of recycled paper. Fine for you and me, but would this make sense for Republicans — I mean, with all the toxins in their system?… You’ve seen electric bikes, you’ve seen foldable bikes. Now there are electric foldable bikes, tipping the scales at 37 pounds. That sounds lighter than it is, but for their intended use you’re probably not going to be racking up e-f-ables. The speed and range are variable depending on cargo and your BMI… I didn’t go hear him, but the line for Deepak Chopra stretched across and down the street more than a city block…

My wife Cecile, who was on the program here and is involved in the Seattle event planning, came up with a new rallying cry for localism. Talking about how we Phinney Ridgers had helped defeat the Zoo garage and turn relentless garage booster David Della out of office, Cecile said our new motto (inspired by Jesus in “The Big Lebowski”) is “You Don’t Phuck with Phinney!” Despite the fact there’s no Phinney in ‘Phrisco, it got a big laugh.

I’ve just returned to the Seattle area after an extended spell on the East Coast, and missed all the election brouhaha back in Washington State. So now that I’ve returned, I’ll share a couple of thoughts about those elections….

Last week I spent a couple of days in Chapel Hill, NC and then flew into Reagan/National Airport near Washington, D.C. From there I jumped on the MetroRail (a.k.a. The Metro) and within 15 minutes of leaving the airport got off at Foggy Bottom and walked a few blocks to a friend’s apartment. That night we took The Metro to some other part of D.C. to eat dinner at a funky Japanese-Mexican fusion restaurant. The next day we grabbed the metro again an visited museums. In fact, I used The Metro repeatedly in the week I was in D.C—and always with a big ol’ smile on my face. This afternoon, I took The Metro back to Reagan/National for my trip home. I LOVE The Metro. I travel to D.C. once or twice a year for work, and I almost never have to take a cab (and rarely a bus) because of that wonderful MetroRail.

Man…I can’t wait until Seattle becomes a real city too. You know, one that includes a rail-based regional transit system.

So, it is really too bad about Prop. 1 (RTID). To the fools who voted against it, I just have to say, haul your ass out of Seattle once in awhile and visit a real city (like Chicago, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, D.C.). Folks in real cities consider a rail-based transit system absolutely essential.

Okay…off my soapbox.

The other thing I want to mention is this…it sure looks to me like Joint Resolution 4204, the school district tax levy Constitution Amendment thingie, is going to be approved.

This evening I went to the Washington State election results page and the vote spread has narrowed considerably.

Right now 4204 is down by 11,000 votes. But King County still has some 90,000 absentee ballots to count. If the absentee ballots break at roughly the same proportion as the tally so far, my back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that 4204 is going to win by about 8,000 votes. It looks to me like absentee ballots counted in Snohomish, Thurston, and Watcom counties—all largish counties that voted in favor of 4204—will easily offset most of the other counties. (Pierce is the only big county that went against 4204.) That means the King County absentees are really going to decide this election.

I predict that 4204 will be approved by a narrow margin and a mandatory recount will be required, which will ultimately uphold the original vote. And Gov. Christine Gregoire will have to declare a state of emergency as Republican heads all across the state spontaneously, and nearly simultaneously, explode.