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ooopppeeennn ttthhhrrreeeaaaddd 9-18

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– There are plenty of issues where local control doesn’t make sense, but rent control isn’t one of them, so get on board, the parts of the City Council that aren’t.

– Great job, Ballard Preservation Society

I had the good sense to miss the GOP Presidential debate the other night, but here are some links vaguely related to the GOP Presidential candidates:

– Debunking Five Absurd Comments About Planned Parenthood From the GOP Debate

– The Club For Growth doesn’t like Donald Trump, but I don’t like either of them.

– Maybe not such humble beginnings

– No, Jeb Bush, Your Brother Did Not Keep Us Safe

– Being afraid of the Downfall of Western Civilization means being afraid of equal rights and diplomacy. It’s resulted in an atmosphere that last night culminated in half the candidates refusing to even talk to foreign leaders– their entire approach to foreign policy is to sit on their porch with a shotgun and scream “get off my lawn!” It’s created a fractured party where many of them are more persuaded than ever that “allowing” people to have equal rights will topple our government.

openthreadseptember162015

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– Back to school, Seattle.

– I’m not a big comic books person, but seriously, DC, get your shit together.

– Ahead of public hearing, a couple ways to make the 520 Bridge plans better

– “A future in which eating out no longer involves waiters?” That’s not dining. That’s eating.

– I had heard of many of these 7 amazing places in Seattle you’ve probably never heard of but will have to check a few out (h/t to Central Cinema’s Facebook page).

Open Thread 09/14/00000002015

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– Get your shit together, SPD.

– And second, we have this category of “our Christian values” that appears to be, on closer inspection, devoid of content and substance. It’s an ornate treasure chest with nothing inside.

– So let’s look at how our congresswoman and her fellow members of Congress got here today. Both houses of Congress overwhelmingly passed the Corker-Cardin bill, a.k.a. the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015, (Cathy McMorris Rodgers voted yes) which the president signed into law, that required Congress to come up with a veto-proof majority in order to scuttle the agreement with Iran. So basically they tied their own hands. It wasn’t easy, but they did it.

– It’s Pope Francis Who Should Apologize on Abortion

– The plutocrats and the social conservatives will probably be fine together.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Kimmel asks people “Do you think President Obama is a Muslim?

Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze is imploding.

Obama: Why I went to Alaska.

Color-blind people see color for the first time.

Thom: Col. Wilkerson: “Dick Cheney is an idiot,” and he “should be in jail for war crimes!”

Greenman: We are the asteriod.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about social media.

2016 Clowns On Parade:

Thom: The Good, the Bad and the Very, Very Ludicropatheticly Ugly!.

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News asks if #BlackLivesMatter is a hate group.

Congressional Hits and Misses: Hank Johnson edition.

Thom: Thomas Edison was right about solar energy.

Mental Floss: Unusual political parties:

Rare sea creature found off the coast of Papua New Guinea.

Mark Fiore: Obama drills.

Kim Davis, the Thrice Divorced, Four-times Married, Known Adulterer Refuses to Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses:

David Pakman: States with the strictest gun laws have lowest rates of gun-related deaths.

Thom: How China messes with American labor.

White House: West Wing Week.

Farron Cousins: Even Bush-appointed judges agree that voter ID laws are racist.

David Pakman: Democratic Party adopts $15/hr minimum wage to national platform.

Greenman: One day at the wind farm.

Obama views glacier melting from climate change.

Sam Seder: Conservatives know the real reason Obama renamed Denali

Richard Fowler: ObamaCare is working, and the proof is insane.

Thom: The Good, The Bad and The Very, Very Rakehelly Ugly!

David Pakman: Mike Huckabee: Planned Parenthood is like ISIS…

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Open Thread 9-4-2015

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– I’m taking Monday off for Labor Day. Do you guys want an Open Thread on Tuesday-Thursday or to wait until Wednesday?

– I support the Seattle teachers.

– If you peruse conservative media, it becomes clear that they’re more bent out of shape about Obama letting Alaska name its own mountain than they are about this woman’s supposed martyrdom.

– There Is No Ferguson Effect

– Finally a place where cars and bikes can gang up on other people. I don’t mind waiting at drawbridges that much, but I don’t bike past a bridge for my commute (generally).

Happy Anniversary, Brownie!

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Ten years ago today I received the following email from an HA reader:

I think I’ve told you that I’m into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago. He or the WH lied on the WH presser announcing him to FEMA. IAHA was never connected to the Olympic Comm, only the half Arab registry then and the governing body to the state and local Arabian horse clubs. He ruined IAHA financially so badly that we had to change the name and combine it with the Purebred registry.

I am telling you this after watching the fucking shipwreck in the Gulf. His incompetence is KILLING people.

After a little bit of sleuthing I turned the tip above into this scathing post that quickly went viral, transforming FEMA’s inadequate response to the tragedy in New Orleans into a national conversation about cronyism. Within days, FEMA director Mike Brown was out of a job. A month later, while testifying before congress, Brown would blame HorsesAss.org by name for his agency’s failures:

The path this story took—from a single reader’s small piece of specialized knowledge, to a local blogger, to a national blog, to the national media—may not be the first example of the transformative power of blogging. But it’s certainly one of the clearest. And I’ll always be proud to have played my little role.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Mark Fiore: Smokey the Climate Scientist.

Mental Floss: Does ginger ale really help with stomach aches?

The 2016 Clown Show:

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about cancer.

Young Turks: Terrorist attempts to bomb abortion clinic.

Gunzzzz:

Mental Floss: 31 amazing facts about household items.

Bill Maher with some New Rules.

White House: West Wing Week.

New Orleans, Ten Years after Katrina:

Sam Seder: FAUX News, “It’s hard out there for white people”.

Congressional hits and misses: Best of Ted Cruz.

Eric Schwartz: Fuck You:

Nuclear Football:

Slate: What is sex like in space?

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Downtown Seattle: where you “deserve” to be beaten and robbed

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Three tourists from Rhode Island were beaten, burned and robbed outside the 3rd Avenue transit tunnel entrance on Monday night. Why am I not surprised?

The 3rd and Pike area is so terrible that it has it’s own Twitter feed. On most days the tunnel entrance and sidewalk outside are full of drug dealers and thugs who fuck with people coming in and out of the tunnel. I stopped using that tunnel entrance and now use the one across the street next to Macy’s because of this reason. The King County Sheriff department seems to be less interested in providing security and more interested in getting themselves fired. The city and SPD have tried with the 9 1/2 block strategy to reform the area, and it has had some success, apparently not as much as could have been hoped for.

My favorite part (if you want to call it that) of the incident is this:

Police arrived at the scene, but the group of suspects had fled. However, officers did arrest one man at the scene after he interfered with medics’ efforts to treat the victims, and told the victims they “deserved’ to be beaten and robbed. Police are investigating whether the man was also involved in the robbery.

If you have anything to share regarding the crime, you can contact the SPD Robbery Unit at (206) 684-5535.

Open Thread Aug. 28

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– Huzzah. It’s raining. Remember, people forget to drive in the rain every summer in Western Washington, and I’m sure this year will be worse than normal.

– A homeless woman was beaten to death so can we all just get on board with encampments now?

– The Seattle Times Editorial Board Can Go Phở Itself

– I think Donald Trump could check out the HA Bible Study if he wants to find a new favorite verse.

– The real place voting and civic engagement matters is in local politics. And how would anyone know to care about those? TV news doesn’t cover it – they’re busy chasing fires and car crashes. Even if someone happens to read a newspaper, they have a fraction of the local reporters or coverage they once did. Most schools certainly don’t teach civic engagement or explain why it might be fun or interesting, let alone effective. Unless you and your friends happen to be affected by an issue, local politics won’t be on your radar. Ever.

– My worst nightmare would be being Tim Eyman.

Responsible

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Rand Paul came to town recently. He said some nonsense about guns:

It was a terrible morning to glorify guns. At the exact same time that everyone on the internet was horrified by the latest in a seemingly unending string of mass shootings, Paul’s adulation of the 2nd amendment felt awkward and dripping with an unpleasant machismo. ( “If you doubt me on the 2nd Amendment, come into my house unannounced,” Paul warned as the room applauded the thought of Paul shooting another person to death.) Before Paul took the stage, local politician Elizabeth Scott was proudly introduced as a member of the NRA. Meanwhile, on Twitter, people were scrolling past auto-play videos filmed by a man as he murdered two innocent people in cold blood. For a candidate who repeatedly claims to be uniquely in touch with reality, Paul is surprisingly out-of-step with an America that overwhelmingly favors commonsense gun safety laws.

When I talk about gun control with my pro gun friends, I’ll almost always hear someone talk about responsible gun ownership. But this sort of braggadocio is alarmingly common. Oh, give me the chance to kill the fuck out of someone who comes to my house unannounced. That’s not a death penalty offense, but I’m so excited about it I’m going to share this fantasy that to a decent person would be one of the worst days of their life with several hundred supporters.

It’s something decent people aren’t fantasizing about. It isn’t something the sort of people who feel responsible would say. And if people wanted hold him responsible, they could boo instead of applaud.

Now sure, I realize that one candidate from one party who isn’t doing very well in the polls isn’t indicative of the whole of gun owners. But this sort of thing rarely, if ever, gets called out from the people who tell me they’re the responsible sort. Hell, a dickbag can wrap bacon around his gun, get what type of gun it is wrong, and nobody who claims to be all about responsible gun ownership is like “Um, noppers buddy. That’s not how ya’ do it.”

So you know, step the fuck up. Or people like me — that rare breed who do actually want to take your gun away — are going to keep being the ones to call it out.

Open Thread, August 24

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– Maybe we shouldn’t reward Chuck Schumer for being so wrong on Iran by making him the next Democratic leader.

– Seriously, birthright citizenship is the best, and anyone opposing it is the worst. QED.

– The seawall project is over budget.

– The Breitbart people should be ashamed of themselves. Part something in an infinity series.

– And the fact that millions of “pro-life” American Christians have just shown us, yet again, that they prefer this monstrous fantasy to reality — that they cannot tolerate daily life a world that doesn’t include cannibalism and Satanic baby-killers killing babies for Satan.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Mark Fiore: The toxic mining law.

Mental Floss: Why do people and animals tilt heads when confused?

Stop Being a Baby When It Comes To Access To Reproductive Health Care :

Julian Bond:

Red State Update: Black Lives Matter and Hillary and Bernie and Mike Huckabee.

Jimmy Carter talks about his cancer.

Congressional Hits and Misses: Steny Hoyer edition.

Young Turks: Will the world end in September?

The Intimate Explainer: Sweet Nothings about the Iran deal.

AT&T Helps NSA Spy on Americans:

Thom: The Good, the Bad – and the Very, Very Matronymicly Ugly!

The Iraq war hawks are back…for Iran.

Maddow: July 2015 was the hottest month ever recorded on planet earth.

Mental Floss: 21 failed inventions.

Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins: The U.S. burns while Congress fiddles.

The 2016 G.O.P. Circus Show:

Fans want Jon Stewart to moderate a presidential debate.

Richard Fowler: Nutbag Rep. Steve King things you can marry your lawn mower.

Thom: Here are the different rules for Democrats and Republicans.

White House: West Wing Week

Pap and Farron Cousins: Florida’s criminal Governor still stealing trom tax payers.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about space.

Citizen Zimmerman:

Who funds the anti-immigrant hatred?

College Humor: 31 words that sound like slurs…but aren’t.

A baby seal responds to Shell Oil Drilling in the Arctic.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Splendid

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When the legislative session finally ended, Senator Schoesler — the Majority Leader — decided to write about how excellent the session turned out. In light of the legislature being in contempt for how badly they fucked up on education (paraphrasing the recent McCleary ruling), I thought it would be fun (?) to revisit. Enjoy…

This year’s Legislature did not impose a general tax increase. We did end a couple of small tax breaks, which some members of the Democratic majority in the House are calling a major victory, and we raised gas taxes for road construction with our transportation package. But that’s not quite the same thing as imposing $1.5 billion in new and increased taxes to finance the growth of government, remake the state economy to suit liberal urban activists, and set the state up for an income tax in the future.

You could have maybe been on the path to sustain education if not for that. Anyway, I’m sure that knowing that the state officially fucked up education, we can look back on the education part of the post and see how the top GOP person thought about that issue.

Victory number two? We fully funded basic education, passing the best K-12 budget we have seen in the last 30 years. We increased spending by $1.3 billion and we made significant progress in satisfying the state Supreme Court mandate that we do right by our schools.

Um, not so much.

Now, I know the fuckuping on education has come with Democratic governors and with legislatures from both parties. But honestly, this is some pretty awful bragging given how horrible the courts have found it.

Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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Roll Call: Congressional Hits and Misses…Best of Ted Poe.

Young Turks: FAUX News has zero journalistic integrity.

Coke-backed study says drinking soda isn’t bad for you.

“Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran”:

King Crockduck: Helping Hovind to understand the speed of light.

White House: West Wing Week.

Young Turks: Ted Nugent talks about getting naked and masturbating to Megyn Kelly:

Veterans for Peace want to end all wars.

Thom: Why is Shell dumping ALEC?

Mental Floss: 22 bizarre conspiracy theories.

The 2016 Clown Parade

Red State Update: Bernie Sanders v Black Lives Matter, Trump v Fox.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about things that kill you.

Young Turks: FAUX News reacts to announcement that Jimmy Carter has cancer.

David Pakman: It is getting difficult to ignore that ObamaCare is really working.

How to be water self-sufficient.

Thom: The Good, The Bad, And the Very Very Iscarioticly Ugly!

Democratic Plan for College Students:

Liberal Viewer: FAUX News says California is breaking bad.

NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake explains how the government violates our privacy.

Happy Birthday Social Security:

Young Turks: John Kerry raises US flag at Cuban embassy (and some Wingding heads explode).

David Pakman: EPA is responsible for Colorado’s yellow river.

Mental Floss: Why are there silent letters in English words?

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Kshama Sawant: Rent Control Is Like a Minimum Wage for Tenants

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Kshama SawantLast week Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant* and I got into a conversation about rent control via email, and she provided such a clear and straightforward explanation of her position, that I asked if I could just repost it here to HA. Instead, she got back to me with the following slightly expanded, better formatted, and presumably copy edited version of her initial off-the-cuff response.

Critics have attempted to dismiss Sawant’s affordable housing advocacy as narrow, divisive, and unrealistic—at best a distraction from the real work at hand. But as you will read from the thoughtful response below, that is a gross mischaracterization. Sawant calls for a “comprehensive” approach. She supports using bonding capacity to build publicly owned housing. She supports most of the HALA recommendations, but would go further by including a “robust linkage fee.” Still, I specifically asked about rent control, and that is the focus of her response.

To me, the most compelling policy and political argument Sawant makes is the way she compares rent control to the minimum wage: they are both minimum standards necessary to protect against the natural imbalance of of power between landlord and tenant, or employer and employee. Rent control is not about repealing the market; it’s about reining in its excesses. And according to Sawant, the alleged construction-destroying impacts of rent control are just as unsubstantiated as the alleged job-killing impacts of the minimum wage.

Makes sense. But you can read for yourself:

Which Way for Affordable Housing in Seattle?

Seattle is booming with job growth and a major influx of working people. Yes, we need increased housing supply. Yes, we need zoning changes to build more housing, and to enable a denser and more walkable and accessible city. But why is there such a severe shortage of affordable housing in Seattle? And what is the solution to the problem?

Is It Just about Supply and Demand?
We are told that we need only rely on the so-called “free market.” We are told it is simply about supply and demand. Let developers build, let the supply of market-rate units increase. And at some point, magically, prices will come down and create housing affordability.

Not one of the proponents of this trickle-down theory can give a plausible idea, or even so much as a rough estimate, of how many units would have to be built for that point of affordability to be reached. We are asked to go on faith.

Amanda Burden, the director of New York City’s Department of Planning, a couple of years ago acknowledged that she had truly believed that NYC could build its way out of an affordable housing shortage. She said the city “built tremendous amount of housing” with that hope, “and the price of housing didn’t go down at all.”

Why Are We Losing Existing Affordable Units?
Supply and demand do explain why Seattle rents are going up. How much your rent increases, however, is determined by the relative balance of forces between tenants and the real estate lobby. Much the same way that wages and benefits in the workplace are a reflection of how much power workers have, including whether or not they have a union, to allow them to negotiate better working conditions.

In the absence of substantial tenant protections, rents tend to not only increase in a high-demand market, but to skyrocket. Why? Because developers and landlords can get away with it.

This opportunity to jack up rents means that tenants residing in market-available affordable units experience massive rent increases, which implies economic eviction. After the tenants are driven out, the previously affordable units are renovated, sometimes even minimally, and then rented for twice or three times the original rents.

What Policies Would Make Housing Affordable?
To actually create new affordable housing, we need a comprehensive policy program. I support most of the recommendations of the HALA committee, although they don’t go far enough. We need a robust linkage fee on big developers to generate a billion dollars to build affordable housing. We must also leverage the City’s bonding capacity to build thousands of units of City-owned affordable housing.

But it will take years to build the thousands of affordable housing units that Seattle desperately needs. In the meanwhile, policies that stabilize rent increases are essential in order to prevent price gouging. The citywide wave of economic evictions and displacement will not be stemmed without rent regulation.

Why Rent Control and What Does it Mean?
Price gouging is not inevitable. It happens in the absence of any real protections for tenants in the form of regulation on rent increases, just like worker exploitation happens in the absence of a minimum wage. That’s where rent control comes in.

By rent control, we mean linking rent increases to inflation. Landlords could still make profits and finance maintenance, but the massive rent hikes and economic evictions that we are seeing in Seattle would be prohibited.

Contrary to the myth that rent control slows construction and hurts housing supply, the two largest building booms in New York City history occurred in periods of strict rent control, first in the 1920s and again from 1947-1965. Demonizing rent control is inconsistent with what the numbers tell us.

But Republicans Control Olympia, So We can’t Win Rent Control Anyway, So Why Even Discuss It?
Rent controls are most needed in areas with runaway prices, which is typically localized metropolitan regions such as cities or counties. So the real estate lobby has always fought rent control by pouring money into the campaigns of conservative state-level politicians running from rural districts, where constituents are not demanding rent stabilization. Nothing unique about Washington State there.

And the only way metropolitan areas have won rent control despite all the real estate lobby money is by building a mass movement in their cities and counties and pushing back against the state. This is exactly what I have proposed as a political strategy here in Seattle. As a first step, Councilmember Licata and I have introduced a resolution to demand that Olympia repeal the ban on all rent regulations. I urge you to sign the petition in support of this resolution.

Rent Control is One of Many Tenant Protections Seattle Needs
We need rent control, but in the meantime we also need to urgently enact other laws to protect tenants. Developer loopholes need to be closed so relocation assistance can be expanded to tenants experiencing economic evictions. Tenants need more than 60-day notice in case of large rent increases (greater than 10 or 20%). Tenants with expiring leases need just-cause eviction protections.

Additionally, late fees and move-in costs for renters need to be capped. Penalties for deposit theft need to be increased. And we need a law that will require interest accrued on deposits to be returned to tenants.

To make all this possible, the City must fully fund the enforcement of tenant rights in the same way that we are setting out to enforce labor laws with the new Office of Labor Standards.

I would view the full spectrum of tenant protections (including regulating rents) with a lens similar to workplace rights. Laws such as minimum wage, paid sick leave, anti-discrimination, occupational safety, and the right to unionize haven’t killed jobs or prevented companies from making profits.

These laws protect workers and provide for a better quality of life for working people. Even the proponents of the free market theory are themselves beneficiaries of the gains of labor struggles. The gains from successful housing affordability policies will be no different. The victory on the $15 minimum wage shows what workers can win when they organize and fight back. We need to build a similarly powerful organized movement for housing justice. Let us begin.

* Duh-uh, I’m a Kshama Sawant supporter. Only an idiot would need this disclaimer, but, well, you know….

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