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No doubt the anti-rail folks were disappointed to read the report issued today summarizing the independent performance audit of Sound Transit… though that won’t stop them (or bumper sticker writers like Rick Anderson) from attempting to turn an overwhelmingly positive audit into a PR disaster.

Writing at the Daily Weekly (does anybody actually read the Weekly’s blogs if real bloggers like me don’t link to them?) Anderson characterizes the report as “stinging,” before cutting and pasting a list of bullet points under the headline “New Audit: ST Wasted $5 Mil“. By comparison, Mike Lindblom of the Times (bless their hearts) instantly cuts through the crap:

Though significant, that’s a fraction of the project’s overall budget of $2.4 billion, and Sound Transit maintains the losses are actually lower.

Sound Transit may have “wasted” as much as 0.2% of its budget… not exactly the “Big Dig” scenario critics keep warning about. To put that $5 million in perspective, one of the auditor’s primary recommendations is, surprise, annual performance audits — at a YOE cost of nearly $50 million over 50 years! ($500,000 per audit, 2.5% inflation.) And for some reason, Anderson fails to include in his bullet points the approximately $6.5 million the audit says Sound Transit saved during preliminary ST2 design through its “value engineering studies.” Huh.

Whatever. Here is the audit’s actual conclusion, as summarized at the top of the report:

Sound Transit has faced, and continues to face, challenges in delivering capital construction contracts for the Link Light Rail Project. Through the course of initially planning, designing, and building the system, the agency experienced delays and cost overruns.

Before 2002, the agency experienced a lack of expertise, no established practices or procedures relating to ROW acquisition, environmental, or construction management, and limited management oversight. Gaps in best practice tools and procedures created variability in early project delivery success and resulted in project cost and schedule impacts. The agency essentially started as an inefficient and ineffective organization. As a result, the initial light rail project communicated to voters in 1996 ultimately was modified. Its original length, Central Link, 19.7 miles (19 stations) at $1.7 billon (1995 dollars) with an expected completion date of 2006 became the following:

Segment (Expected Completion)	Miles	Stations	Cost
Initial Segment and Airport Link (2009)	15.6	13	$2.6 billion (Y.O.E.)
University Link (2016)	3.2	2	$1.7 billion (Y.O.E.)

However, in the last five years, Sound Transit has responded to its challenges through improvements in construction planning and management processes and implementation of “best practices.” Indications of diligent review of proposed change orders by Sound Transit Project Controls were also identified. From its inception in 1996, the agency has gradually developed management techniques and construction project controls and procedures.

Sound Transit has improved its structure to manage projects and has standardized guidelines on cost estimating, change and cost management, project management, and risk assessments. Sound Transit has also developed procedures for addressing emerging lessons learned.

Although Sound Transit has made great strides in improving its project delivery practices, opportunities exist that will contribute towards its present culture of continuous improvement.

That’s the unedited summary of the auditor’s conclusion, and it is far from the stinging rebuke Anderson makes it out to be. Of course the report highlights things Sound Transit could do better. That’s the purpose of a performance audit: to help an agency improve its performance. But rather than merely focusing on the agency’s shortcomings, the report actually documents a remarkable turnaround, in which Sound Transit overcame its early management woes to grow into a mature and well-run organization that is largely delivering projects on budget and on time. That’s also the conclusion of state Treasurer Mike Murphy, who in enthusiastically endorsing Proposition 1 yesterday, praised Sound Transit’s cost and revenue projections as conservative, while criticizing opponents’ numbers as “bogus.”

Opponents keep reaching back a decade or more to when Sound Transit, then a start-up agency, initially over-promised the Central Link light rail, but they intentionally ignore the progress that’s been made since then. Still, voters are largely getting the same 19 miles of rail first promised (though with fewer stations, and over a longer construction period,) and without raising any additional taxes. Opponents would like this election to be about Sound Transit’s management problems in the late 1990’s, but Murphy — whose condemnation of the Seattle Monorail’s financing package played a huge role in killing the project — succinctly sums up the real issue facing voters:

“Do you want something to happen or not? If you do, vote yes,” he said. “If you don’t, vote no.”

Indeed, if there is a lesson to be learned from this performance audit, and the parallel histories of both Sound Transit and the Seattle Monorail Project, it is the inherent danger of starting large transportation agencies from scratch… which ironically, is exactly what we’ll eventually be forced to do should voters reject Proposition 1. The pro-rail critics of the roads and transit package have this pie-eyed idea that we can just come back next year or the year after that with a transit-only package, but they ignore two basic realities: a) polls show that neither roads nor transit would pass on their own, and b) there’s no guarantee Sound Transit will even be allowed to bring a package before voters.

There are many in the Legislature and the pro-roads camp who are just itching for Proposition 1 to fail, so that they have an excuse to finally pass “governance reform,” implementing a multi-county, multi-modal transportation agency intended to dilute the influence of pro-rail Seattle voters, and essentially dismantle Sound Transit as an independent agency. Such a “reform,” whatever its merits, would be so disruptive, and introduce so many delays into any effort to pass and implement a project even remotely based on ST2, that Sound Transit would surely lose the bulk of the management and engineering infrastructure it has so painfully constructed over the past five years, and the expertise that goes with it. We would, in essence, be starting from scratch, ignoring yet another one of the audit’s primary conclusions:

Strong management and mature agency skills are not created overnight. It took five years from start-up to the time Sound Transit had its policies, its systems and its management practices fully in place. The Puget Sound region should be careful to preserve and nurture this knowledge base and not to assume that every new program needs a new agency to manage it.

No doubt Proposition 1 is filled with compromises, and I welcome a debate on its costs vs. benefits. But the measure’s opponents reveal themselves to be fundamentally lazy and dishonest in their persistent efforts to slander Sound Transit itself as corrupt and incompetent.

Given the timing, I had grave doubts that this performance audit would be fair and impartial, but I see nothing in this report to suggest that Sound Transit’s management is not dedicated to constantly improving its internal processes, that its ridership, revenue and cost projections should be held suspect, or that the agency itself is not positioned to deliver ST2 largely as promised. Large capital projects are inherently risky, and in that context the report concludes:

The use of the aforementioned “best practices” in conjunction with input from technical and subject matter experts and FTA oversight demonstrate that Sound Transit’s construction planning and management systems are maturing. This should be understood in the context of the complex and high risk contracts that Sound Transit is delivering, where challenges and risks will always be present. Focus, innovation, and due diligence will always be required to avoid surprises on such projects.

A “stinging performance audit”… my ass.

Thursday morning, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, New York Senator Chuck Schumer, and New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney are holding a hearing to discuss our country’s incarceration crisis.

The United States has experienced a sharp increase in its prison population in the past thirty years. From the 1920s to the mid-1970s, the incarceration rate in the United States remained steady at approximately 110 prisoners per 100,000 people. Today, the incarceration rate is 737 inmates per 100,000 residents, comprising 2.1 million persons in federal, state, and local prisons. The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population but now has 25 percent of its prisoners. There are approximately 5 million Americans under the supervision of the correctional system, including parole, probation, and other community supervision sanctions.

With such a significant number of the population behind bars, expenditures associated with the prison system have skyrocketed. According to the Urban Institute, “the social and economic costs to the nation are enormous.” With 2.25 million people incarcerated in approximately five thousand prisons and jails, the combined expenditures of local governments, state governments, and the federal government for law enforcement and corrections personnel totals over $200 billion.

The JEC will examine why the United States has such a disproportionate share of the world’s prison population, as well as ways to address this issue that responsibly balance public safety and the high social and economic costs of imprisonment.

One of the witnesses will be Dr. Glenn Loury, an Economics and Social Sciences Professor from Brown University, who recently wrote about the forces behind this trend.

[Nod to David Borden at the Speakeasy]

Got nothing planned for tomorrow? How about a free ride to Bellingham for the inaugural journey of The Washington Bus, a new brand of political activism that exercises both body and mind, and, um, features an actual bus.

The Bus leaves 9am sharp Saturday morning from Seattle’s Triangle Park, at the corner of Beacon Ave. S. and S. Stevens St. Fueled by a unique blend of youth-activism and bio-diesel, the Bus will cruise to Bellingham, where it will join dozens of local volunteers to walk neighborhoods and knock on doors for Whatcom County Council candidate Ken Mann. Mann is a true progressive who needs your help to spread his message that it is time to get serious about preserving Whatcom County’s rural heritage and keeping its towns and cities vibrant.

The Washington Bus is inspired by the Oregon Bus Project, a groundbreaking statewide group that engages young people in politics by connecting them as volunteers to progressive campaigns. It’s an amazingly successful model that is changing the face of politics in Oregon… or at the very least, making that face a helluva lot younger.

So if you want to do your part to help progressive candidates win throughout the state, it’s time to get off your ass and get on the bus.

I thought I was being clever when I titled yesterday’s post “The Daily Hague,” but it turned out to be prophetic. For the second day in a row, both dailies cover the unraveling campaign of the King County Council’s most famous barfly, thus sticking me with a repetitive headline. That’ll teach me.

The P-I seems to be playing catch-up this week, a day behind on Hague’s financial disclosure mess, while the Times reports on efforts by a special prosecutor to readmit Hague’s blood-alcohol tests. Hague had signed a document verifying she’d been warned of the implications of taking the breath-alyzer test, but…

Judge Peter Nault “signed an order suppressing the blood-alcohol readings on the grounds that the implied-consent warnings were confusing,” Moberly wrote.

Um… of course Hague was confused by the implied-consent warnings. She was drunk.

Meanwhile, details of Hague’s PDC enforcement hearing emerged in an HA comment thread of all places, pretty much busting the victim meme being put forth by Hague and her drinking buddies. Jay had stopped by the PDC meeting to listen in to the ongoing debate on whether blogs deserve a media exemption (of course they do… the only real difference between me and Frank Blethen is that I’ve never shot a dog.) You can read Jay’s summary here.

But Jay stuck around for the enforcement hearings, and in HA’s comment thread he provides a telling report about the discussion involving Jane Hague’s recent settlement:

I stayed for the enforcement item on the agenda and saw the Hague discussion. A representative from the Jane Hague’s campaign read a statement on her behalf. PDC Commissioner Nolan talked about “the public being harmed by a public official who is in a position of great responsibility whose campaign finances are in a shambles.” While Nolan acknowledged that these violations and the penalty were agreed to by Hague and PDC staff, Nolan asked staff to consider larger penalties for similar violations in the future. While other candidates with business before the PDC at least called in , Nolan chided Hague for “not being present on her behalf.”

Commissioner Schellberg asked any candidates that are hearing this take the time to read the reports and be responsible for their campaign’s finances. Commissioner Seabrook finds it amazing that Ms. Hague was not aware of what was going on with late filings, missing information, and embezzlement. He complimented the staff in sorting all of this out.

Hague didn’t even bother to phone in? Hell, to his credit, even Tim Eyman shows up for his own PDC enforcement hearings. (I think he may even have a reserved parking spot.)

Through her spokesman Brett Bader, Hague keeps claiming she’s a victim, blaming her campaign finance and disclosure mess on a multiyear embezzlement by her treasurer. But the embezzlement, the late filings, the missing information and the $50,000 contribution that wasn’t, are all symptoms of Hague’s inability (or unwillingness) to be responsible for her own campaign finances.

As I’ve said before, this is all part of a pattern. Whether it’s enough of a pattern to dissuade voters from rehiring Hague, regardless of her challenger, remains to be seen.

If you said 50 cents a day (and a buck-fifty on Sunday), you’d be wrong.

At least, that’s according to “Slim” Jim MacIsaac, who’s goofball numbers are getting front page treatment at the P-I.

This is from an email received earlier today:

Using the same methodology reported in the PI to arrive at the $160B cost figure for the joint ballot measure, the Seattle PI costs a reader $60,000.

Here’s how it works: 50-cents per day for 6 days a week, plus $1.50 for Sundays. That’s $4.50 a week, multiplied by 52 weeks a year for $234 per year. But wait – those are 2006 numbers. Using MacIsaac’s terms, you go back to what you’ve been paying since 1996 and go forward to what you’ll pay through to 2057. Using ST’s/MacIsacc’s/PI’s annual inflationary factor of 5.2%, you deflate back to 1996, inflate up to 2057, add it all together and you get $60,075.37 – the true cost of the PI to the reader. I like Joel Connelly, but he doesn’t seem like much of a bargain at that price, now does he? Curiously, the PI does not use these figures to encourage purchasing their product.

But wait again – this is the “true cost” of the PI for one reader, not all readers combined. So, to find the “true cost” of the PI to the community you have to multiply the per reader cost by their circulation figure (since a growth inflator of 5.2% was already in the per reader figure, you don’t have to apply it again to the circulation figure). Keeping in mind that my degree is in Political Science, not Mathematics, the number I get is $7,943,946,401.21, or $8 billion.

I too love Joel’s column, but at 60k, that’s one expensive paper.

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Please join me in tipping a birthday mug to “N in Seattle,” who turned 57 years old young old today, and to the memory of the late Walt Crowley who was a friend to liberals and taverns everywhere.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here.

Your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

First, a moment of silence for local historian Walt Crowley and Essential Bakery founder Jeff Fairhall. I knew them both — principled progressives who died much too young this past week.

In Iraq, dying prematurely happens hundreds of times daily. But the killing of up to 25 Iraqi civilians by private Blackwater contractors set off a firestorm last week in both Baghdad and Washington. It also, not incidentally, showed just how irrelevant the Iraqi government is. Prime Minister Maliki immediately condemned the killings, yanked Blackwater’s operating license, and ordered its personnel to leave the country — a move which was summarily ignored by the U.S., as without private contractors our heavily privatized military effort would grind to a halt. (And besides, U.S. contractors are immune to Iraqi law.) But Iraqis were so enraged by the murders that U.S. personnel were confined to the Green Zone for four days anyway.

Less covered, but more significant, was the withdrawal last week of Moktada al-Sadr’s parliamentary allies from Maliki’s ruling coalition — not only splitting the Shiites, but leaving Maliki with less than half of parliament in his camp. Who’s left? The Kurds and the Shiite exile parties (SCIRI and Dawa) with little constituency in Iraq itself. If Iraq had a, you know, functioning government that followed the law, this would end Maliki’s rule; if you want to get all technical and stuff, without a ruling majority, his leadership (sic) is now illegal. But this won’t happen, for two reasons: first, Parliament rarely has a quorum, and second, the opposition can’t agree on anything anyway. Iraq’s “government” is a joke.

Also on that theme, the target date for Iraqi control of security forces was quietly pushed back again last week, from November 2007 to July 2008. It’s the second delay this year, and security forces are under Iraqi control in only seven of the 18 provinces. (Generally, the least violent ones.) Most Iraqis, as well as Gen. James Jones’ recent commission, have been calling for Iraqis to assume full control immediately.

More bad news in the “Iraqi Life Is Cheap” Dept.: Word last week that northern Iraq’s cholera epidemic, which has now struck some 5,000 people, has spread to both Baghdad and Basra, with first cases confirmed in both cities. Cholera is a disease that happens only when there’s no safe drinking water and the public health infrastructure has broken down completely — conditions more than met throughout Occupied Iraq.

In the “But Life Is Cheaper In D.C.” Dept., Congress continued showing its priorities last week, spending ample time debating the appropriateness of a newspaper ad while Republicans blocked measures to address the war itself. In the Senate, the Reid-Feingold bill to cut off funding in June 2008 failed 28-70 (Patty Murray voted yes, Maria Cantwell, no). The Senate also rejected Sen. Jim Webb’s bill to give troops equal time at home, 56-44, short of the 60 votes needed to break the Republican filibuster. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that even drawing down to 55,000 troops in Iraq (a proposal on nobody’s table), George Bush’s perpetual war would cost $25 billion a year, or up to two trillion dollars overall. Those numbers actually seem low. And the ever-busy Rep. Henry Waxman has a new target in his oversight investigations: State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, who Waxman accuses of cover-ups in investigations of waste and fraud in private contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The organization representing Foreign Service diplomats has joined in, calling on Krongard to resign.

In the latest confirmation of just how bad the internal refugee crisis has become in Iraq, a Red Crescent report last week says that not only have two million people (one in 12 Iraqis) fled their homes in Iraq, but a staggering one million of those were in Baghdad alone. What does that mean? Ethnic cleansing. Baghdad was one of the most ethnically diverse provinces in Iraq; all those people have been leaving because death squads would no longer allow neighborhoods to be mixed. Sunnis have all but been driven out of Baghdad, part of the de facto partitioning of Iraq that has already happened, much of it while the escalation surge was supposed to be putting an end to the problem.

In the latest US attempt at provoking Iran, last week the US arrested an Iranian trade diplomat in northern Iraq and accused him of smuggling IEDs into the country. The Kurdish government, which was hosting the man, protested strongly, but to no avail. And in the week’s most surreal bit of Iran-bashing — I know this didn’t happen in Iraq, but it’s too good to pass up — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, set to be in New York this week for the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, was refused permission by the U.S. to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center. (In the wake of 9-11, there was an outpouring of support from both the Iranian public and its government — a measure of how things have changed in six years.) Why? Well, the request angered U.S. diplomats, who accused the Iranian leader of — gasp — “wanting to use Ground Zero as a photo-op.”

Well, if that’s the criteria…

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

7PM: Has WA “utterly failed” to do the right thing on reproductive rights?
That’s the strong assertion of state Rep. Brendan Williams (D-Olympia) after joining a rally outside Ralph’s Thriftway, where supporters of the pharmacy’s refusal to stock “Plan B” birth control verbal attacked female protesters, calling them “whores,” and asking a pregnant protester why she didn’t “scrape that baby out of her uterus.” Rep. Williams joins us for the hour.

8PM: Is it time to do what “believe is right” on same sex marriage?
San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, a Republican, and former Chief of Police, held an emotional press conference this week in which he reversed his opposition to same sex marriage, tearfully explaining that his daughter and several staffers are gay, and that he “couldn’t look any of them in the face and tell them their relationship, their very lives, were any less meaningful than the marriage I share with my wife, Rana.” Is it time for America, even Republicans, to finally do what we “believe is right” on same sex marriage?

9PM: Remembering Walt Crowley
Michael Hood eulogizes populist pundit Walt Crowley over on BlatherWatch, and he joins us by phone to remember his close friend.

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

The Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally meets tonight (and every Tuesday), 8PM at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E.

Not in Seattle? Liberals will also be drinking tonight in the Tri-Cities. A full listing of Washington’s thirteen Drinking Liberally chapters is available here. And a heads up… the Southeast Seattle chapter meets tomorrow night (and the third Wednesday of every month,) 8PM at the Columbia City Alehouse. Come join me and my neighbors for a pint of Manny’s a few miles closer to its source.

Hey, unfortunately, it’s not This Week in Bullshit, but here’s your weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.

Well, speaking of Bullshit, Gen. David “Ass-Kissing Little Chickenshit” Petraeus spread it thick over Congress last week, touting “success” in Iraq (as did the Ass-Kissee-in-Chief in a nationally televised address) and dominating American media headlines. That’s too bad, because far more important stories were unfolding in Iraq itself, and they tended to directly and badly undermine Gen. AKLC Petraeus’s assertions.

The same day that Pres. Bush made his speech to that remaining fraction of the nation that cares what he thinks about Iraq, the tribal leader Bush had embraced only ten days previous in Anbar Province as an example of heroic leadership, uniting various Sunni tribes to try to rid the province of the widely despised Al-Qaeda and its foreign fighters, was assassinated. Thing is, the Americans are just as despised as Al-Qaeda, and so when Bush embraced the thuggish Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha as his kinda guy — Time Magazine described Abu Risha last week as having “a rather unsavory reputation as one of the shadiest figures in the Sunni community,” with a personal militia, a history of drug running, and a tribe notorious for highway banditry — he essentially signed Abu Risha’s death warrant. He was assassinated the day of Bush’s speech, somewhat undermining the claim that all Anbar is now happy and pro-American. While the White House blamed the murder on Al Qaeda in Iraq (of course), more likely it was a local hit, confirming the first rule of Middle East politics: the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend.

BBC/ABC/NHK polling last week showed just how unpopular the Americans are after the “success” of the escalation surge in Anbar. The results were grim enough in Iraq as a whole: 70 percent of Iraqis think security is worse in escalation surge areas now compared to before it began (and another 11 percent thought it unchanged, meaning over 80 percent of Iraqis believe the whole exercise has been a waste). A whopping 60 percent now think attacks on US troops are justified; 47 percent want the US to leave now, up from 35 percent before the escalation surge; and 35 percent believe American withdrawal would make further civil war more likely, compared to 46 percent who think it’d be less likely. Pretty damning stuff.

But in Anbar Province it was worse:

In a survey conducted Aug. 17-24 for ABC News, the BBC and NHK, the Japanese broadcaster, among a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqis, 72 percent in Anbar expressed no confidence whatsoever in United States forces. Seventy-six percent said the United States should withdraw now — up from 49 percent when we polled there in March, and far above the national average.

Withdrawal timetable aside, every Anbar respondent in our survey opposed the presence of American forces in Iraq — 69 percent “strongly” so. Every Anbar respondent called attacks on coalition forces “acceptable,” far more than anywhere else in the country. All called the United States-led invasion wrong, including 68 percent who called it “absolutely wrong.”

Every. Anbar. Respondent. So much for winning hearts and minds.

Another poll released last week was even starker. The British polling agency ORB, in surveying Iraqi families to find how many families had members who’ve died in the occupation and war, estimated that one in two families have lost at least one member, and that overall a staggering 1.2 million or more Iraqi civilians have killed so far. That number is roughly in line with the widely ridiculed 655,000 number published in an epidemiological study in Lancet last summer, and confirms not only that the civilian death toll has been far higher than official estimates, but that the violence has worsened sharply in the last year.

The escalation surge wasn’t popular in Baghdad, either: on Wednesday, residents of one of the few remaining areas where a Sunni and a Shiite neighborhood adjoin each other took to the streets to protest the U.S. military’s erection of a wall to segregate them from each other. The walls being built to “protect” residents from each other have been fiercely criticized by many residents themselves, who argue that they promote ethnic segregation, are as likely to keep attackers in as out, and separate family from family.

But perhaps the biggest Iraq story of the week got almost no media play here: the oil deal cut by the Kurdish provincial government with Hunt Oil Co. of Dallas. Why is this a big deal? First, it means local governments are starting to ignore the Green Zone government entirely and cut their own deals, which is a death knell for the oil “revenue-sharing” law that is perhaps the U.S. government’s biggest benchmark for political “success” in Iraq. It also suggests that Big Oil is now betting on the failure of the U.S. mission in Iraq and the subsequent partitioning of the country. And the deal itself (along with one the Kurds recently cut for natural gas) makes that partitioning more likely, as the Kurds and Shiites have plenty of their own oil resources and need neither the Sunnis nor each other, let alone the phantom al-Maliki “government.”

The last element undercutting Gen. AKLC’s testimony last week was the Pentagon report it was supposed to accompany. That was quietly released just before the weekend, and showed that even with the administration’s extremely generous definition of “progress,” only half of Congress’s 18 benchmarks showed progress, exactly one more than in an interim report in July. That area was in allowing former Ba’athists into the government, and the “progress” there was only in a tenuous deal between a handful of politicians that has yet to be implemented — and that is similar to numerous such deals that have collapsed in the past. Meanwhile, a separate State Department report, also quietly released in a Friday Afternoon News Dump, revealed that — surprise! — religious freedom in Iraq is down sharply in the last year.

Somehow, this all is being spun as “success,” and Bush is now promising a “withdrawal” to celebrate it — next Spring, six months past schedule, back to pre-escalationsurge troop levels because the US military can’t sustain its current deployment without either extending tours (again) or starting a draft. Which is to say Bush is keeping in as many troops as he can as long as he possibly can, and then seeking credit for giving our poor men and women in uniform (the ones that survive his vanity project for a few more months, anyway) a long-overdue rest.

Or maybe he’ll just send them to Iran. That propaganda campaign also continued apace last week, with the US claiming that a fatal mortar attack on U.S. military headquarters was carried out with an Iranian rocket. Even if you accept the curious logic that the Iranian government is responsible for every Iranian-made weapon Iraq — after all, the U.S. has utterly flooded Iraq for the last four years with weapons now on the black market, and you don’t see Washington bombing itself — the evidence to support the claim that the rocket was Iranian-made turned out to be less than compelling. Here’s Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner: “Can I hold up a piece of fragment today that has a specific marking on it that traces this back to Iranian making? At this moment I can’t do that.” THEN SHUT THE HELL UP.

Yesterday Joel Connelly gave The Stranger a little heat for their coverage of the Seattle City Council race between incumbent David Della and challenger Tim Burgess. I didn’t really understand Joel’s First Amendment argument, but I suppose I kinda-sorta got his outrage at political purity, even if I disagree with it.

Should Burgess’ less than firmly pro-choice history, and past record of working for vehemently anti-choice groups disqualify him from serving on the city council? Joel says no. The Stranger apparently says yes. Well now WA’s leading advocate for reproductive rights comes in on the side of The Stranger, endorsing Della over Burgess.

“Typically we don’t make endorsements in Seattle City Council races because, in the past, all candidates were clearly pro-choice,” explained Karen Cooper, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Washington. “But questions and concerns arose over this specific race after we learned of Tim Burgess’s longtime association with Concerned Women for America, a virulently anti-choice, anti-woman organization,” Cooper added.

I talked with Cooper this afternoon, and she went even further than the press release, describing Concerned Women for America as “a hate group.”

The couple of times I’ve met Burgess I liked him. He seems like a reasonable, competent guy. But in the end we tend to vote for people who reflect our values, and when we don’t we’re bound to be disappointed.

Should Burgess’ years of working for Concerned Women for America absolutely disqualify him from office in this very blue city? I suppose not… at least not absolutely. But voters have a right to know the candidate’s entire biography, and our local media has a responsibility to report it. My guess is that if voters understood about Burgess what The Stranger and NARAL Pro-Choice WA understand about Burgess, he wouldn’t stand a chance in November. Perhaps that’s unfair to Burgess. But to keep that information from the public would be unfair to voters, and counter to the Democratic process.

There are pretty much two sides to the growth/density argument in Seattle. On one side is Knute Berger mentality, which says that “density will murder your children in their beds.” Then their’s my side, which says that growth isn’t a bad thing, and that it can be good for the city. I live near downtown. I like growth. When new buildings go up, it usually means more urban goodness. (“Grocery store! Indian food! Basketball court!”)

Of course, whenever a building goes up, that means some greedy developer stomped on a basketful of kittens made money off the whole thing. This is not always an evil thing.

I agree with Geov that the mayor is pouring it on a bit thick. His new plan isn’t going to save us. (But Al Gore can!) Perhaps the mayor’s enviromental record isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. But a rule change to allow for some cheaper housing to be built in what is already a heavily urbanized area can’t be that bad.

Here’s what Erica C. Barnett thought about the mayor’s previous plan, mentioned by Geov:

Subsidizing middle-income housing makes sense, particularly for families. The larger the apartment, the larger the differential between “affordable” and market rate. For example, in one project being built in the University District under the current program, full-price one-bedrooms go for $1096, and apartments for those making 70 percent of median income go for $954—a $142 break. The break on two-bedrooms is much larger: $1,112 for a subsidized unit, versus $1,386 for an unsubsidized unit—a cut of $274.

I’m not disagreeing with Josh that the mayor’s plan doesn’t solve the problem of affordable housing for very low-income people. But it never has been aimed at low-income people (unlike other city programs, such as the housing levy), and Nickels isn’t making any pretense that it is. In fact, the mayor sent out a press release saying as much, stating that the program is aimed at “middle-income wage earners … priced out of the market with few places to turn.” The city should do more to fund low-income housing, but we have a middle-class housing crisis, too; my rent, for example, costs me almost half my monthly income, substantially more than the 30 percent that housing folks agree is “affordable.”

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels has spent a busy summer trying to line developers’ pockets, most notably with a proposal in June to expand property tax exemptions for builders for median income condos and (if any remain by 2008) apartments. But Hizzoner topped himself in the dog days late last month with a quiet proposal to gut permitting and environmental review requirements for new projects — a new pinnacle of cynicism not just because it’s another giveaway to developers that encourages the teardowns of what’s left of this city’s semi-affordable housing stock, but because of how he sold it.

From the mayor’s press release, entitled — I kid you not — “Mayor Nickels proposes ways to encourage smart growth: Changing SEPA thresholds to meet today’s climate change challenges:

Mayor Greg Nickels has submitted legislation to the City Council this week that will encourage environmentally friendly growth in Seattle neighborhoods, promote housing affordability and reform out-of-date land use regulations. “Every decision facing us today has a direct impact on climate change and our planet,” said Nickels…

The mayor’s proposal will change the threshold for SEPA review for downtown residential zones from 20 to 80 units, from four to six units in low-rise duplex/triplex projects; from 20 to 30 units in designated urban villages and urban centers. Thresholds will remain the same for industrial projects. Under the new thresholds, all parking will increase from 20 to 40 stalls.

Larger projects will be subject to the SEPA thresholds based on the size and location of a proposed project. The proposed changes will help to streamline permit review for new development, and reduce barriers that add delay, cost and risks to development of new housing and businesses.

SEPA, for those of you not up on your bureaucratese, is the State Environmental Policy Act, Washington’s equivalent to the federal Environmental Impact Statement. SEPA allows local municipalities to determine how large a project needs to be before its size triggers a SEPA review, and what Nickels is proposing is increasing that threshold by from 150 to 400 percent. If approved by City Council it would be a massive gift to developers.

It warms the cockles of one’s heart to think that Nickels is proposing such measures not because he’s in bed with their beneficiaries, but because he wants to save the planet. You see, according to Nickels, anything that makes more money in Seattle for developers by definition discourages sprawl, and therefore helps stop global warming in its tracks. Your new high-end condo could save a polar bear’s life.

But why stop there? Saving the planet is serious business; it won’t be accomplished simply with a tax break here and a gutted regulation there. Nickels needs to think bigger, and undoubtably he is. Look for these proposed measures soon:

* What’s this 20 to 40 stalls nonsense? Abolish parking. Cuts CO2 emissions (except for those clueless out-of-towners circling the block for hours…) and eliminates developers’ need to provide parking.

* Cut down all trees in the city. “More good, socially conscious projects get held up by some stupid old tree than any other single factor,” Nickels will say, before promising to minimize CO2 by replacing each tree with a new twig on a one-to-one basis.

* Abolish all height limits and setback requirements on new buildings. It’s the only conceivable way to save the Inuit way of life.

* Ban back yards.

* Bulldoze all environmentally sensitive areas. (Happily, the city has already gotten a head start on this one.) Lots of potential for new townhomes here.

* Have Seattle taxpayers pay for all construction costs. Expensive, sure, but so is building a levee to save downtown from rising sea levels.

* Rather than paying bothersome, expensive relocation fees to tenants whose homes are being destroyed, developers may simply pass the tenants along to the city, which will shoot them. (They didn’t want to live in Auburn anyway.)

These sure-fire environmental winners are a slam dunk to sail through city council. Just ask newly minted environmentalist Jean Godden, who, when asked for comment on the mayor’s planet-saving proposals, rolled on her back and asked to have her tummy rubbed.

The fact that these ideas, like the mayor’s current proposals, would help to make the mayor’s rich buddies that much richer, is strictly a coincidence. And the fact that they will force still more poor, working, and middle class people out of the city is — well, look, do you want to save that polar bear or not?

(A weekly compilation of news you may or may not have seen or read regarding America’s most disastrous ridiculous war.)

President George Bush unwittingly embarrasses himself on the topic of Iraq most weeks, but this was a banner week. First, there was an unannounced Labor Day stop in the massive Marine base in Anbar Province known to Marines as Camp Cupcake, owing to its 13-mile perimeter, over 10,000 troops, and complete disconnect from the chaos that is the daily reality outside its well-guarded walls. While there, Bush hinted that he might reduce troop deployments by the end of the year — but on the same day, the AP was quoting unnamed administration officials as saying that his senior advisors have already told Bush that the escalation surge is going swell and not to let up now. (Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to testify before Congress on Tuesday — 9-11! Get it? — and his written report on the escalation surge is due by the end of the week.)

Then it was on to Austria Australia, where, before meeting with OPEC APEC ministers, Bush blithely told Austrian Australian Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile that “we’re kickin’ ass” in Iraq. (My pet theory: Austrian Australian is not Bush’s native language, and in the awkwardness of trying to translate his remarks, he confused the subject and object. What he meant to say was “Our asses are getting kicked.” A totally understandable gaffe. The alternative, that the most powerful man in the world is living in a particularly destructive fantasy world, would be unthinkable.)

Bush was also embarrassed by a New York Times excerpt last weekend from a generally fawning new biography of him, in which the Commander-in-Chief expressed bewilderment that his administration disbanded Saddam’s army in the early days of the occupation, saying, essentially: “That wasn’t my policy. I don’t know how that happened.” The move is now widely regarded as an enormous mistake that put thousands of young Iraqi men with guns out of work and bitter toward the Americans about it — the nucleus of what became the insurgency. Thing is, Bush knew exactly what the policy was, because he ordered it — and Paul Bremer, then the US Viceroy to Iraq, promptly sent the Times the letters, memos, and documentation to prove it. Oops. (One more notch for the “fantasy world” theory.)

Petraeus’ report is expected to praise the military effort, but condemn Iraqi politicians for a lack of progress in reconciliation, signing over all Iraqi oil to American oil companies, and other “benchmarks” dear to US hearts and/or wallets. So, in its first week back after a month-long recess, what did the Iraqi Parliament do to scramble to impress the Americans with their determination to move ahead? They met for exactly 90 minutes, with only 154 of 275 members present — barely a quorum — and read into the record 10 minor noncontroversial bills, none having anything to do with American benchmarks or reconciliation. Most of their time was spent blaming each other for the country’s worsening violence (they don’t seem to share Bush or Petraeus’ view of the “success” of the escalation surge) and complete lack of basic government services or security. It doesn’t look good. At some point American media needs to figure out that the Iraqi government is a fiction outside the Beltway and Green Zone, and barely relevant inside those places, either.

Speaking of barely relevant: Congressional Democrats, in the runup to the Petraeus report, announced that in their negotiations with Bush they were willing to settle for a “goal” rather than “timetable” for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. (I know: Democrats, Iraq, “negotiations with Bush,” and “willing to settle,” all in the same sentence. Shocking, but true.) And Ret. Marine Gen. James Jones, who headed a special panel looking into the effort to train Iraqi security forces, testified before Congress that his panel found the Iraqi army at least two years away from being able to operate independently, and that Iraqi police forces were so corrupt and so infiltrated by insurgent militia members that they should be disbanded. Gen. Jones concluded that “We should withdraw.” His testimony was essentially ignored by both the administration and national media.

The Brits, on the other hand, did withdraw: the last British soldiers pulled out of Basra this week, leaving Southern Iraq nominally under the control of the Iraqi Army, more realistically under the control of three mutually warring fundamentalist Shiite militias, and almost certainly about to receive American troops trying to push the chaos from one neighborhood, village, and province to another.

One more note, while folks concerned with Iraq await a report that was probably written in Cheney’s office a month ago: the ACLU filed suit this week to try to obtain Pentagon estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths. After denying for years that the U.S. government tracked Iraqi civilian deaths at all (what’s another dead Iraqi?), the Pentagon finally confirmed earlier this year that it does, in fact, produce intelligence estimates of civilian casualties — but has refused to make them public, just as it has refused to make public the secret formula by which it is calculating, in defiance of every known metric, that overall violence is down in the country due to the escalation surge. Perhaps this week they’ll let us in on the secret.

Or not.