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Speaking of investigative reporting, Michael Hood’s got the first of a two part series up on BlatherWatch, exposing former KVI host Peter Wiessbach’s exploitive janitorial business.

It’s an insight into how sleazy operators like Weissbach use illegals. Business always claims American workers won’t do such lowly work, but this demonstrates that some employers give preference to the undocumented.

SBM systematically hired and exploited workers who, because of legal status complied in fear of losing their jobs or being detained and deported.

Janitors who questioned or complained about these practices were summarily fired- as were such managers- after first being frozen out of the management loop.

An ex-manager describes workers with so little English he needed take another worker away from his work to translate the manager’s instructions. When he asked HR asked why he couldn’t get anyone who speaks English, he was told: “[We] don’t hire those kind of people. [We] only hire illegals who mainly speak very little- if any- English.”

Just to be clear, not all conservative talk hosts are exploitive, hypocritical scumbags. They may be 99% wrong 99% of the time, but personally, I’ve never met a KVI host I didn’t like. Then again, I’ve never met Wiessbach.

One of the silliest aspects of the Tea-Bagging-Town Maul spectacles last August was the widespread proclamation by conservatives that they are carrying on the movement of Saul Alinsky. While it was (and still is) laughable that people fighting on behalf on privilege and concentration of power could in any way lay claim to Alinsky’s legacy, it’s instructive to note just how delusional conservatives have allowed themselves to become.

For example, the anti-ACORN agit-prop activist James O’Keefe, arrested this week with three others in New Orleans for allegedly trying to bug the office of Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-Louisiana, was a main proponent of this nonsense.

Here’s O’Keefe being quoted by Politico in September of 2009:

James O’Keefe, the activist and filmmaker who posed as a pimp for an expose of several ACORN offices in the Northeast, told the New York Post earlier this week] that he, too, had been inspired by “Rules for Radicals,” which includes such tactical lessons as “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” and “Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.”

O’Keefe told the paper he was trying to expose the “absurdities of the enemy by employing their own rules and language.”

“If you can make impossible demands on your enemy, you can destroy them,” he said.

Yeah, ridicule is indeed a potent weapon, as O’Keefe and his little band of modern-day Plumbers are about to find out.

O’Keefe has his actual roots, not in community organizing, but in the wingnut welfare system that sponsors far right “alternative” college newspapers, and it appears a couple of his fellow travelers do as well. Check out TPMMuckraker for more on that.

O’Keefe had his moment of glory, and became a hero to conservatives, because his clearly deceptive and unethical assault on ACORN was pushed into the broader media environment by Fox Noise. But this is not knew, and conservatives rarely pay much of a price for their egregious statements and actions, and in fact one can argue it only endears them to their supporters.

The problem for the rest of society is the conservative agit-prop artists become steadily more outrageous and egregious. Because the legacy media has become accustomed to right wing demagoguery, it seems to barely register when someone on the right jokes about kidnapping and torturing the Speaker of the House. Ha. Ha, whatever. Nobody would really go kill a doctor Nancy Pelosi, don’t be silly.

As progressives have known for a long time, the mind-set of many conservatives is basically akin to that of criminals who justify their wrong actions through excuse-making and an unjustified sense of victimhood. In this parallel universe, fostered, nurtured and encouraged by the broad array of stink tanks, news outlets and operatives now known as the Noise Machine, wrong actions against perceived enemies are justified because the very existence of the country is at stake. Never mind the law, never mind the truth, never mind what a democracy actually can be.

The conservative tribe demands that the enemy (that would be us) be attacked, and meanwhile our tribe is in the nurse’s office because we glued our balls to our legs again, to steal a recent quip about health care reform from Jon Stewart.

And now this is all manifesting itself in outright criminality, and of course that’s not new either. From the Palmer Raids to the McCarthy and Nixon eras, the song remains the same. Remember how much hard time Oliver North did? Yeah.

Some of the national commentary about O’Keefe has centered on what his “motivations” were, which I suppose has some bearing but also acts to disguise the foul nature of being caught in such a situation. I mean, they were pretending to be telephone repairmen in the office of a Senator who sits on the Homeland Security committee? One of them apparently had a listening device in a car nearby? Is there some kind of explanation possible that would justify that, other than being lunatics?

Some national commenters have predicted that O’Keefe’s future is in jeopardy, but that seems unlikely. If history is any guide, O’Keefe could very well wind up in charge of a giant right wing agit-prop machine to wield against his perceived enemies, just like the man who gave him so much air time in the first place, Roger Ailes of Fox Noise. (For those not clicking the preceding link, Ailes got his first big national political job in the 1968 campaign of Richard M. Nixon. The song remains the same.)

Given O’Keefe’s problems choosing between right actions and wrong actions, for anyone in the legacy media to ever, ever, ever again lend O’Keefe credibility is to deny what is plain and obvious to everyone outside the conservative pathology bubble: much of the right-wing in this country is utterly and completely unhinged. Normal people want to be able to afford doctor’s visits and pay for groceries, they don’t think about bugging Senate offices, and normal people consider law breaking to be wrong.

And they don’t believe a damn word coming out of Fox Noise.

Of course, I’m not plotting to blow up the Supreme Court, despite the intentionally provocative headline, and anybody who would believe for moment that such constitutes an actual threat is a complete and utter idiot. But I wonder if the Republican majority on the Court who just voted to gut our campaign finance laws by throwing out a century of precedent, respect my right to free speech as much as they respect that of corporations?

No doubt there are some of you out there who believe this headline crosses a line for which I should be subject to criminal penalties. After all, to maintain a safe and civil society the First Amendment cannot possibly be absolute; you can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater, and all that. And yet I’m guessing that that those of you who would relish the thought of armed federal agents kicking down my door in the middle of night in response to a mere rhetorical device, are the same folks who are cheering the Court’s 5-4 decision to protect corporate America’s unfettered First Amendment right to corrupt our government through unlimited political spending.

No, I’m not plotting to blow up the Supreme Court, nor do I support or encourage such a radical revisionist agenda, because unlike the Court’s Republican majority, I actually respect the institution. But I fear for a nation whose highest court consistently grants money more free speech rights than speech itself.

The New York Times announced today that it intends to charge readers for frequent access to its website, starting in early 2011.

Starting in early 2011, visitors to NYTimes.com will get a certain number of articles free every month before being asked to pay a flat fee for unlimited access. Subscribers to the newspaper’s print edition will receive full access to the site without extra charge.

What exactly the NY Times considers “frequent,” and how much they will charge, not even the paper’s executives seem to know, but the move to squeeze subscription fees from online readers doesn’t come as much of a surprise.

Will it work? That is, will revenue from online subscribers substantially exceed the online advertising revenue lost due to the inevitable drop in page views? I dunno. The NY Times fills a kinda unique position in our media landscape as our nation’s undisputed paper of record. So, maybe.

But the big question for me is, successful or not, will this prove to be a viable business model that, say, the Seattle Times might follow in an effort to turn around its own declining financial prospects?

I don’t think so.

The Seattle Times simply does not play as vital and unique a role in our local community as their New York counterpart does nationally. While the NY Times consists almost entirely of original content from some of the best and most highly respected reporters and columnists in the nation, the Seattle Times relies heavily on the Associated Press and other newswires and syndication services to fill its pages. For example, two of the four articles on the front page of today’s dead-tree edition are newswire reprints, including an above-the-fold lead story culled from the pages of… the New York Times.

Why would I pay twice for the same story? Indeed, why would I pay at all for a newswire story I can read elsewhere for free?

Well, I might, because part of my schtick is critiquing the Seattle Times, but as an unrepentant news junkie, I’m the exception that proves the rule. Unless the news industry universally adopts the NY Times model, I just don’t see how dailies like the Seattle Times can demand a high enough flat-rate subscription fee to offset the inevitable loss of readership that would come from hiding their content behind a firewall.

Newspapers are kinda like information department stores, presenting a broad variety of content on a range of subjects and issues in one easy to consume package. But the hierarchy of the Internet is flat, and the barriers to entry relatively nonexistent in terms of capital and infrastructure investments, leaving publications like the Seattle Times vulnerable to specialized competitors.

In the old media technology, where folding a bunch of pages together into one convenient bundle was the most efficient means of distributing news and opinion, the Seattle Times merely needed to do everything well to fend off new competitors. But in the new media technology, being merely good is not good enough.

If The Stranger provides better coverage of the music and arts scene, and the neighborhood blogs provide better coverage of the neighborhoods, and Publicola provides more thorough coverage of Olympia, and HA provides more entertaining and relevant political commentary and analysis… what exactly is the economic incentive for consumers interested in those subjects to subscribe to the Seattle Times as a whole? Indeed, ironically, it is specialized news and opinion sites that have the more compelling argument for placing their content behind subscription firewalls, a model that has worked well for the Puget Sound Business Journal and other online trade publications.

I don’t mean to dis the valuable original reporting that the Seattle Times does produce, but I’m not sure there’s enough of it to make a flat-fee, all-you-can eat subscription a compelling product. I don’t subscribe to cable TV for the very same reason. Sure, there are networks I might purchase on an a la carte basis, were I given the option, but I’m not going to pay $60/month for 500 channels of stuff I’ll never watch. Especially not now, with so much equally compelling content available over the Internet.

No doubt Frank Blethen and his bean counters are encouraged by the NY Times pioneering effort, but they shouldn’t be. The Seattle Times simply is no NY Times, and I don’t see how the business model of one easily translates to the other.

I’m not sure what the solution is for the Seattle Times and other dailies. Hell, I’m not even sure there is one.

Scott Horton reveals that the reported suicides of three Guantanamo detainees in June 2006 weren’t suicides at all:

This is the official story, adopted by NCIS and Guantánamo command and reiterated by the Justice Department in formal pleadings, by the Defense Department in briefings and press releases, and by the State Department. Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached.

All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred.

This is a giant story by any measure, but not a single major American newspaper has yet to print their own report on it. We often argue about media bias being liberal or conservative, but the bias in our traditional media is that they’re too chickenshit to take on powerful institutions.

UPDATE: It looks like it was covered on Countdown on MSNBC, but there’s still nothing on the MSNBC front page about this.

Back in the 2009 City Attorney’s race, in a response to a question about pursuing low-level marijuana cases, Tom Carr replied:

You’re apparently reading from the Stranger. You’re talking about relatively small numbers. We do between a hundred and 200 cases a year. Whether we prosecute depends on the report that’s in front of us; whether or not it’s a case. Most of our marijuana cases are cases that come in when we’ve got another crime, so someone gets in a bar fight and they have marijuana in their pocket. That’s pretty much all we do.

So now that Pete Holmes has taken over Carr’s office and announced that he’s no longer prosecuting people for marijuana possession, what’s he finding out?

As PubliCola reported (via Twitter) from our Town Hall event with City Attorney Pete Holmes last night, Holmes’ new criminal division director Craig Sims is in the process of reviewing all outstanding marijuana prosecutions pursued by former City Attorney Tom Carr.

…

Interestingly, although Carr insisted repeatedly that he was only prosecuting cases with associated crimes (e.g., resisting arrest with pot in your pocket), Mulady says most of the cases Sims has reviewed so far are “stand-alone marijuana cases”—the sort of cases the city attorney and police were explicitly instructed not to pursue after the passage of Initiative 75, which made marijuana possession the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority.

No kidding! So an overzealous law enforcement official with a penchant for nanny crusades was lying about what his office was doing? Who could’ve seen that coming?

The only local editorialist that The Columbian prints, other than members of their editorial board, is one Ann Donnelly, a former county GOP chair. Today she really stepped in poo by making the usual conservative mistake of projection, applying her own limited experiences to the Democratic Party.

In a column promoting the upcoming February Republican precinct caucuses, Donnelly first makes an egregious error of fact by stating both parties will hold them this year.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, in school libraries and other public venues around Clark County, both political parties will hold caucuses open to all registered voters, who with a smidgen of research can determine their voting precincts and assigned meeting places.

Speaking of research, a cursory Google by Donnelly would have revealed that Democrats have decided to eschew the lightly attended precinct caucuses in favor of starting the process in March with legislative district caucuses. That’s some pretty bad journalamism, and some pretty lazy and inept punditry.

But that’s just mechanical stuff. The real outrage comes later in Donnelly’s column, where she makes a baseless jump equating the actions of Ron Paul supporters in 2008 with the actions of Obama supporters the same year.

Meanwhile, at the 2008 Democratic caucuses, I’m told that raucous Obama supporters caused similar havoc for Hillary Clinton supporters, thus eventually enabling a far-left national movement led by a largely unknown candidate with an enticing slogan to defeat a more centrist, experienced candidate. It will be interesting to see if Clark County Democrats achieve a mid-course correction in their caucuses this year.

As you may imagine, that’s just complete bullshit, and a picture-perfect example of conservative projection. Some crazy Ron Paul people hassled her in 2008, so they are the same as Obama people. Geebus.

I was at the Democratic county convention here in 2008, as well as my local precinct caucuses, and Donnelly is flat out uninformed or lying. There were no disruptions on the Democratic side, no havoc and nothing out of the ordinary other than massive numbers of ordinary citizens doing ordinary caucus things. You know, cheering when a chance arises (for all candidates,) being bored, wondering about lunch, buying trinkets, etc.

So while it’s not a surprise that a conservative would tell “projection-lies” about Democrats, the real concern is that The Columbian thinks it’s okay to print such lies, and that it’s okay to give a former GOP chair a weekly local column while offering no alternative local viewpoint.

Frankly, it’s kind of hard to believe that in a county of over 400,000 people they can’t find anyone on the Democratic side to write 700 words of bullshit per week, which is what Donnelly does. Hell, I used to write 700 words of bullshit per hour, before I entered my recent fallow-sanguine period.

We’ve got a big Congressional race down here in WA-03, and until the Democratic Party and other interested allies decide to make The Columbian an issue, we’re fighting with at least one hand tied behind our backs.

There are local folks responding to this crap, and The Columbian will likely print letters and one-time responses, but if The Columbian is going to operate as a small-time Fox Noise outlet, the race in WA-03 is going to be that much tougher. Portland media doesn’t cover us much, and Seattle media just doesn’t reach people here, despite the Internet Tubes. Lots of folks commute to and from Portland, and it leads to a fairly low-information voting populace overall.

A thought I want to get out there is this: just because a bunch of mouth-breathing, Fox-Noise watching morons harass The Columbian on a daily basis does not make The Columbian a liberal outlet. It just means the right yells louder, and has a sympathetic local publisher.

Columbian reporters are not the enemy, of course, because they aren’t writing editorials and columns. But if we want to hold this seat The Columbian and its bizarre editorial arrangements are a huge challenge, frankly nearly as important as which candidate emerges as the nominee.

I’m wondering if now might not be the perfect time for the state Legislature to attempt to repeal Washington’s Defense Of Marriage Act, since political buggery appears to be all the rage in Olympia these days:

A bill co-sponsored by Senate transportation chair Mary Margaret Haugen (D-10) and North Seattle Sen. Ken Jacobsen (D-46) would severely restrict Seattle’s say in major state construction projects like reconstruction of the SR-520 bridge and the deep-bore tunnel along the waterfront.

Essentially, the bill would exempt the state department of transportation from the requirement to get local government permits to build state highway projects—a clear swipe at Seattle, which has two major state highway projects—the waterfront tunnel and replacement of the 520 bridge over Lake Washington—in the pipeline.

Specifically, the state transportation department would no longer be “required to obtain local government master use permits, conditional use permits, special use permits, or other similar local zoning permits for staging areas related to the construction of state highways.”

Additionally, under the bill, any street use permits obtained by the state for major state road projects (i.e., the tunnel) would be “presumed approved as submitted” and could only be appealed in superior court, not to a local hearing examiner “or through any other local appeal process.”

So, let me get this straight. Under this proposed legislation, and last year’s measure funding the deep bore tunnel, the state could build whatever it wants, wherever it wants, whenever it wants, without any input or say from local governments, and then (here’s the punchline…) stick local taxpayers with any cost overruns.

Or, I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we just give Rep. Doug Eriksen the billions of dollars the state has reserved for replacing the 520 bridge and the Viaduct, so that he can spread the money around throughout the rest of Washington like he says he wants to do, while at the same time we eliminate the state gas and MVET taxes altogether, and hand off such authority to cities and counties to levy these taxes locally, if they so choose, to pay for the local transit and transportation projects they want?

That way, the rest of the state won’t have to worry about Seattle stealing its money, while we in the Seattle area can address our own infrastructure needs without worrying about the rest of the state repeatedly fucking us up the ass.

I’m just sayin’.

One of the issues debated at last night’s 37th LD Dems meeting was a resolution supporting Mayor Mike McGinn’s decision to suspend the city’s ban on all-day parking lots near Link Light Rail stations. Only it wasn’t really debated, per se… more like passed unanimously without much discussion, let alone dissent

I was kinda surprised, as one of the purposes of the ban is to prevent the neighborhoods surrounding the stations from becoming destinations for park and riders. The purpose of light rail, after all, is more to get people out of their cars than it is to save folks a few bucks on downtown parking, and paving the surrounding properties over with parking lots does little to serve the local community.

But while I agree with the intentions of the ban, there’s something to be said for being flexible, and with many development projects on hold due to the bad economy, and local businesses struggling to make ends meet, a temporary lift of the ban only makes sense. As Martin Duke aptly explains at Seattle Transit Blog:

The reason to oppose park and rides is that they cost a lot of public money ($40k a space in some cases) for not a lot of riders, and because they take up valuable space that could be used for more vibrant development.  In some cases, people who park might otherwise have walked, taken the bus, or biked to the station.

Here we have private lots that aren’t costing a dime of tax money, and are in fact generating parking tax revenue; an abundance of empty gravel pits around all Rainier Valley stations, so that there’s no shortage of TOD locations; and of course, a small parking fee to limit users to those who have really bad bus transfers, live too far to walk, and are strongly disinclined to bike.  It’s a perfect situation.

In fact, anything that gets more people using light rail short term will be good for light rail long term. Just as long as we don’t turn the Rainier Valley into a permanent desert of park and ride lots.

This is shaping up to be a pretty historic week for drug law reformers in Washington state. On Wednesday, the State House will be holding a hearing on not just a marijuana decriminalization bill, but also a full legalization bill that uses the state liquor stores for regulated sales of marijuana to those over 21. To coincide with that bill, a group called Sensible Washington has filed a ballot initiative to remove all criminal penalties for adult marijuana possession, manufacturing, and sales. If that collects enough signatures, it will be on the ballot this November. If it passes, it would essentially put the onus on the legislature to come up with a system of regulating sales.

In a previous post, I laid out my arguments for why the legislature should be working to pass a bill that legalizes and regulates marijuana. A number of the reasons for doing so are economic ones. Arguing against that rationale – sort of – is Bill Virgin in the Tacoma News-Tribune:

[Read more…]

House minority floor leader Doug Ericksen (R-42, Ferndale) says that if Seattle can’t make up its mind on how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Eastern Washington would be happy to take our money:

“As someone who actually understands that the Eastside means the east side of the state, not the east side of the lake, I get a little bit irritated with the amount of money we spend waiting for Seattle to make a decision on transportation projects,” Ericksen said. “We’d be happy to take that $3 billion and spread it to the rest of Washington.”

Notice how he doesn’t say “We’d be happy to take that $3 billion and use it to balance the state budget.” No, he’d just be happy to take money from an economically vital Seattle project and spread it around the red counties, whether it’s needed there or not.

Huh. I guess that’s what Republicans mean when they describe themselves as fiscal conservatives.

What’s heartbreaking about this Eli Sanders post concerning WA-03 is not that he wrote it, because everyone is entitled to his opinion. What’s heartbreaking is how utterly clueless he appears to be about democracy in general and SW Washington in particular.

Dwight Pelz, chair of the Washington State Democrats, won’t take sides yet. “We have several strong democratic candidates running right now,” he said. “We want to see who can get out there and get the most support before we let a good Democrat know we would like them to pull out of the race.”

He should figure it out as quickly as possible. Time’s a-wasting and Democrats need—way before the summer primary—to rally behind a single candidate if they want to hold on to this seat.

Luckily for those of us who actually live in WA-03, neither Pelz nor Sanders can actually stop people from running for office. Look, I get that everyone plays the “who can win” game, but in the end, if someone wants to throw their hat in the ring, you can’t stop them.

There are five Democrats running in WA-03. They are state Rep. Deb Wallace of Vancouver, Denny Heck, former Legislator and founder of TVW, state Sen. Craig Pridemore of Vancouver, political activist Maria Rodriguez-Salazar of Vancouver and political activist Cheryl Crist of Olympia.

Wallace has a solid, pro-business record and is well liked in Vancouver. I hold her in high regard. She’s a great example of the “big-tent” party, because she may have a different viewpoint but she doesn’t punch the hippies in the face just to score cheap points. Frankly I feel kind of bad about her not being my first choice, but Pridemore is a long-time friend and has his own proud record. Democrats would be lucky to choose between Wallace and Pridemore.

Heck has a lengthy resume, including stints as a Legislator in the late 1970’s and the early-to-mid 1980’s and as an aid to Gov. Booth Gardner in the early 1990’s. He also founded TVW and has business experience. I’ve never seen the guy in Clark County, and I’ve lived here since 1993. Maybe he comes to visit family at Christmas or something. He did grow up here.

Heck lost a race for Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1988 as an odds-on-favorite with WEA backing, so that tells you something. Then he quit and moved on to jobs he didn’t have to get elected at, and he hasn’t been back until…now.

Here’s a fun quote Heck had from today’s Columbian:

“I’m the only practicing capitalist in this race. Nobody has to teach me that 70 percent of jobs are created by small businesses. I’ve done that.”

Practicing capitalist? What does that even mean?

I’ve always maintained that capitalism is the one true religion in this country, so maybe Heck is onto something. It sure seems like the Democratic establishment in this state is looking to impose their religion on those of us down here. Good luck with that, BTW. We always just love having Puget Sound folks decide our fate.

Heck is supported in Clark County by a bunch of old guard Democrats, and that’s just a fact. These people are not progressive and never were. It’s a motley assortment of BIAW-Scoop Jackson types, to put it simply. Plus they are all really, really old, not that there’s anything wrong with that. It beats the alternative. Here’s how long it’s been since Heck ran for office.

However, it sounds like most of us would like Heck personally if we ever saw him, plus his wife once taught Craig Pridemore when he was in middle school. That’s kind of charming, actually.

Heck also has some small personal fortune and has pledged an initial $100,000 to his campaign. Must be nice. Just what we need, another corporate Democrat. Maybe we can reform the bankruptcy laws and turn forest destruction into a good thing. Oh wait, I was thinking of Brian Baird, not Denny Heck, my bad.

Pridemore, my pick, has been a Clark County commissioner and has a proven track record as both a progressive and a winner. He got an earned income tax credit bill passed a few years back, although it wound up not getting funded due to legislative wrangling. Pridemore first scored a political victory in 1998 by beating Republican county commissioner Mel Gordon here in Clark County, and then beat entrenched incumbent state senator Don Carlson to win his state senate seat.

Those who would dismiss Pridemore because of Heck’s money don’t understand Pridemore’s tenacity nor the retail nature of politics down here. Nothing is a lock in politics, but you put your money on the solid horse, and Pridemore is as solid as they come.

What about a TV blitz by Heck’s money? That’s why nothing is a lock. Pridemore is an adept fundraiser, but I’d have to admit it will be a challenge to keep pace with a self-funder. Thus this post, regular folks who care need to know they can play a part in fighting against the corporate Democrats.

As for Rodriguez-Salazar, at the December meeting of the Clark County Democrats she first tripped and broke her shoe, and then announced that she is a Blue Dog. Oh well.

Crist has run before and you can google her. Heart in right place, no chance.

Larry Phillips legislative aide, Leah Zoppi, emailed me to thank me for my earlier post, but also to correct a factual error:

Thanks for your post about Larry’s decision to support Councilmember Drago as a caretaker for the 8th District seat.  However, I need to let you know it contains a factual inaccuracy.  The decision would not have reverted to Governor Gregoire.  That’s only the case for partisan positions, not non partisan positions as voters made the County Council.  There is NO tiebreaker currently in place for filling County Council vacancies.  Which means, if the Council remained deadlocked on the issue of filling this vacancies, the Council would have remained 4-4, with neither side having a majority and District 8 residents having no representative.  This would have impacted the Council conducting business like reorg and passing legislation, and it would have left the people in District 8 with no one to turn to for advocacy on their behalf.

My bad.

Even the most casual observer of Washington state politics is acutely aware of the Cascade Curtain, the physical and cultural barrier that separates East from West, right from left, and Republicans from Democrats. This pathological East/West divide is the cause of much of the dysfunction that plagues our state political system, yet if you ask an elected official how we might bridge this gap, don’t expect to elicit much more than tired platitudes or a roll of the eyes.

But I wonder if one of the ways to bring the two sides of the state closer together both politically and culturally is to close the physical distance between them… namely, by building high-speed rail from Seattle to Spokane.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Spain, where an ambitious new high-speed rail network is binding historically separate and distinctive regions together into a much more cohesive nation:

Spain opened its first Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed train route in 1992, between Madrid and Seville. The network has grown to nearly 2,000 kilometers and stretches from Malaga on the south coast to Barcelona, which is north and east.

Supporters say the AVE has begun to transform the country, binding remote and sometimes restive regions to Madrid and leading traditionally homebound Spaniards to move around for work or leisure.

“Spaniards have rediscovered the train,” said Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways in Paris. “The AVE has changed the way people live, the way they do business. Spaniards don’t move around a lot, but the AVE is even changing that.”

By slashing the time it takes to travel from one city to another, high-speed rail in Spain and elsewhere has increased tourism, altered housing patterns, and lured millions of travelers out of airplanes and cars. According to the International Union of Railways, a high-speed train can carry eight times as many passengers as an airplane over an equal distance, using the the same amount of energy, while emitting a quarter of the CO2 per person. It also creates economic opportunities outside the traditional urban cores that never before existed.

For example, previous studies have suggested that high-speed rail could connect downtown Seattle to Moses Lake in under an hour, with Spokane only another half hour away. That’s downtown Seattle to downtown Spokane in less time than one typically spends at the airport before departure. Such a rail line could instantly transform Moses Lake into a viable international airport, while creating the freedom to live and work anywhere near a station.

Live in Spokane and work in Seattle, or vice versa? That’s a shorter commute, time-wise, than between some parts of Long Island and Manhatten. And just think of the economic opportunity this would create in the half dozen or so counties through which a high-speed line would pass.

When we tie the people and economies of Washington state closer together, when prosperity in King County directly generates prosperity in Kittitas and Grant counties too, that’s when the politics of this state will become less divisive. And as has been proven in other parts of the world, high-speed rail can put us on the fast track toward achieving that goal.