by Carl Ballard — ,
– The new South Park connection to the Duwamish Trail looks pretty great. I can’t wait to try it out.
– Ed Murray, true to form, takes partial credit for Jean Godden’s work
– Patricia Arquette, Criticism and Progressives
– For most of its run Parks and Rec was my favorite show. I kind of fell off last season, but maybe I should go watch the last season.
by Goldy — ,
by Darryl — ,
Mental Floss: Why does asparagus make your pee smell?.
Global Divestment Day: 2015.
Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: The GOP civil war brewing between House and Senate Republicans.
Pap and David Pakman: The progressive solution to the student loan crisis.
Eight people who have accomplished more than you at every age.
America’s Racist Mayor:
Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses—Chuck Schumer edition.
Richard Fowler: Republican lawmaker wants to own women’s uteri.
To prison for poverty.
Sam Seder and Cliff Schecter: The wheels are falling off the Republican clown car.
Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.
Pap and Howard Nations: GOP mad scientists create a disaster.
Climate change elevator pitch: Ken Calderia.
2016 Clown Parade:
Mental Floss: Misconceptions from the internet.
David Pakman: Republicans about to go Benghazi on net neutrality.
Young Turks: Mother Jones catches Bill O’Reilly lying about Falkland Island War coverage:
Sam Seder: Watch this anti-net neutrality ad accidentally backfire on their message.
White House: West Wing Week.
Thom: Does the GOP want to starve poor people?
War Without End, Amen:
Obama’s lunar new year message.
Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship.
Young Turks: Judging Rush Limbaugh’s statements about Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Lawrence O’Donnell: Was TX judge blocking executive order even legal?
David Pakman: Conservative convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza calls Obama ‘ghetto’.
Mental Floss: 80 facts about the 1980s.
Thom with more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
by Carl Ballard — ,
– The Falsest of False Equivalencies
– The bill to abolish the death penalty in Washington and replace it with live without parole xdied in committee
– Yes, Seattle has a parking problem. There’s way too much of it.
– We should keep voting on class sizes until we change our mind.
– If President Obama said he loved this country any more, we’d tell him he was smothering us.
by Goldy — ,
The serious people keep using that word. But I do not think it means what they think it means.
Enter Sen. Mark Miloscia, R-Federal Way, a former Democrat, with what he calls a “grand compromise.”
Miloscia dropped a bill Tuesday, SB 6029, that would scrap local authority to raise the minimum wage — meaning it would nix Seattle’s $15 per hour minimum wage approved last year. Instead, Miloscia’s proposal would index the wage to both urban inflation and personal income growth.
So, um, how exactly is this a “compromise,” grand or otherwise? God I hate it when politicians speak to us like they think we’re morons.
Miloscia and his crowd have already lost the minimum wage debate. Seattle has passed a $15 minimum wage, and polls consistently show that voters overwhelmingly support Democratic efforts to raise the state minimum wage to $12 an hour. In fact, polls show that voters are willing to go much higher—and public support spikes again when we add in paid sick leave! So Miloscia’s proposal that we give all these gains away in exchange for just tweaking the index by which the state minimum wage is already annually adjusted, well, from our perspective, that sounds a lot more like a capitulation than a compromise.
But in the spirit of Miloscia’s creative interpretation of the word, I’d like to respond with a counter offer: How about, if the legislature refuses to raise the state minimum wage to $12 in 2015, we “compromise” by going to the ballot with a measure that raises it to $16 in 2016? Because what Miloscia, his fellow Republicans, and WA’s business establishment need to start wrapping their minds around is that $12 is the compromise. We could get much more than that at polls. So don’t say we didn’t warn you.
by Carl Ballard — ,
In a victory for common decency, the Benton County florists who wouldn’t sell to a gay couple for their wedding were in violation of the state’s Consumer Protection Act [h/t]. Here’s the text of the AG’s office press release.
A Benton County Superior Court ruling today held that a Richland florist violated Washington’s Consumer Protection Act by refusing to serve a same-sex couple seeking to buy wedding flowers in 2013.
“The law is clear: If you choose to provide a service to couples of the opposite sex, you must provide the same service to same-sex couples,” Attorney General Bob Ferguson said. “Washingtonians have enacted laws recognizing equality for same-sex couples, and I will continue to vigorously uphold these laws. I appreciate the judge’s decision and am very proud of my team’s hard work to stop this unlawful discrimination.”
I haven’t read the whole ruling but it’s here (.pdf)
It’s important that we as a state not just passively don’t discriminate but that we’re actively a place where you can’t discriminate. While the law was quite clear, it’s still good for the couple and good for the state that it was upheld.
by Goldy — ,
Seattle City Council Member Sally Clark announced today that she will not seek reelection:
“After almost 10 years of service to the people of the greatest city in the country, and with tremendous and valued colleagues, it’s time for me to start a new chapter. I will not run for re-election to Seattle City Council this fall.”
The sudden availability of an open at-large seat is sure to create a bit of a commotion. Hmm. Tempting.
UPDATE: Did Mayor Ed Murray just engineer a council coup? Council member Nick Licata didn’t want to run against a colleague, and so he had waited for months for Clark to make up her mind about whether she would run again. Reportedly, Clark eventually told him she would, So Licata announced his retirement. Then today, Clark suddenly announces that she would not seek reelection, and a couple hours later Murray’s legal counsel, M. Lorena González, sends out a prepared press release announcing that she will be seeking Clark’s seat. The timing sure does make it look coordinated.
I don’t know anything about González, perhaps she’s great, and it’s about time Seattle elected its first Hispanic. And nothing against Ed. But I’m not so comfortable about the idea of the mayor attempting to pack the council with allies (and that goes for your continued efforts to recruit a candidate to challenge Kshama, Ed).
by Goldy — ,
Matthew 5:31-32
“It has been said, ‘Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, makes her the victim of adultery, and anyone who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
Discuss.
by Darryl — ,
Mental Floss: Misconceptions from television.
Sam Seder: New PA Gov. suspends death penalty.
John Green: Understanding Boko Haram:
Thom with The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.
The Fog of War:
Jon: FAUX News wants a Muslim King for President.
Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Ann Telnaes: Alabama resists civil rights again.
Young Turks: Senator Inhofe caught using fake photos of Russian invasion to push for military aid.
Climate Change and Denial:
Obama: “Can I live?” The Buzzfeed video.
Young Turks: A woman without an identity.
West House: West Wing Week.
Perpetual War:
Mental Floss: 23 weird awards.
Joe Biden misses his butt buddy?!?
David Pakman: NYC Mayor Calls for $15/hr minimum wage.
Matt Binder: The Crusades were in self-defense?: The bizarre Wingnut historical revisionism.
Jon is Leaving:
Elizabeth Warren preempts GOP on Dodd-Frank rollbacks for large banks.
Young Turks: FAUX News caught reading RNC memo word for word.
Pap with Howard Nations: The IRS is soft on dark money.
Thom: Don’t be fooled…the Koch brothers are NOT social liberals.
Maddow: Dearth of inspectors raises pipeline risks:
Mental Floss: Why is the heart associated with love?
President’s Day: February’s sexiest holiday.
The 2016 Clown Parade:
Thom: Even more Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Maddow: Elvis leaves the Mississippi GOP.
Ann Telnaes: A flock of media sheep:
Kimmel: The collective wisdom of Pat Robertson.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
by Carl Ballard — ,
I don’t want to pick on the Spokesman-Review since this is a pretty wide spread phenomenon. Still, their Spin Control blog has a piece about bills that are getting a hearing that are “first world problems.” I’m not sure they’re either first world issues in general or, for that matter, problems.
For example: How many tasting rooms should Washington wineries have? Current law says two, a proposal before a Senate committee last week said that should be four, to better extol the goodness of the state’s fruit of the vine. Why four, asked Sen. Steve Conway, D-Tacoma. Well, Oregon wineries get three, he was told.
Expanding the number of tasting rooms seems like something they could do in a country in Sub-Saharan Africa, for instance. I’m not much of a wine drinker, but I just Googled “African wine” and the first hit was a pretty interesting Wikipedia article on South African wines. Seems like a long history, and something ripe for tasting rooms.
I’m also not sure how having 2 or expanding it to 4 is a problem. It seems like we’re having success with the tasting rooms we have and want to expand. Is it a problem because, 4 is still pretty small for the state? I honestly don’t know!
Or a bill recognizing the fourth Saturday in July the National Day of the Cowboy, which another Senate committee took up. The hearing revealed – maybe you knew; I sure didn’t – that cowboy is gender neutral and refers to both male and female cow-persons. Both deserve recognition because of their legendary integrity, said supporters, who brought honorary headgear for Government Operations Committee Chairwoman Pam Roach, R-Auburn.
Look, if there’s one thing we can agree about the first-world, it’s that we are the exclusive domain of people who recognize agricultural workers. Also, it seems like not a problem. It seems like kind of a neat thing to celebrate. Were they not getting celebrated before? I still don’t see a problem.
The House State Government Committee took up an issue that annoys a sizable chunk of us two days a year, the switch between Standard and Daylight Savings time. There’s a bill to keep the state on Standard time year-round, and a resolution aimed at keeping us on Savings Time.
Rep. Elizabeth Scott, R-Monroe, offered perhaps the quintessential First World Problems defense of her Standard Time bill, albeit with a smile: “It’s still a hassle to change all the clocks. . . It’s a hassle for pet owners whose pets wake them up an hour early. I hear that milk cows are particularly annoyed.”
This is the closest in that it mostly involves actual first world stuff, is stuff, kinda. And technically identifies a problem: I was kind of surprised, but if you look at the map of countries that use daylight savings, it’s primarily Europe and North America. But there are plenty of Middle Eastern, African, and South American countries that use it.
Also, I don’t think it’s a problem. We get somewhat more sun, but it doesn’t work for everyone, depending on your job and your temperament. Also, in the age before all your clocks automatically changed, it was slightly annoying to have to remember, I hear. It seems like on balance, it does more good than bad. Maybe we should only spring forward, and every year, we’ll move an hour ahead of everyone else.
In conclusion, they have clocks in Uruguay and Namibia.
by Darryl — ,
Former Congressman reminisces on the start of email in Congress.
The 2016 Clown Parade:
The Ash Carter conformation hearing highlight reel.
White House: West Wing Week.
The Flordo-Texico War of 2015:
Mental Floss: More life hacks.
Sam Seder: You’ll never believe what Mitt Romney said to Obama.
Young Turks: FAUX News has a wargasm over King Abdullah in flight suit.
Vsauce: Did the past really happen?
Vaccine Trufers:
Greenman: Eric Rignot on Ice Sheet Retreat.
Thom: More Good, Bad, and Very, Very Ugly.
Ann Telnaes: Sotomayor and Kagan backtrack on allowing cameras at the Supreme Court.
The week in Congressional hits and misses:
Net Neutrality:
Sen. Reid: Republicans are more afraid of Dreamers than ISIS (with a cameo by Sen. Murray).
Thom: Why do we need black history month.
Greenman: Elevator pitch for climate change.
Young Turks: Obama at Prayer Breakfast warns of religion twisted to justify war.
Liberal Viewer: Did someone threaten Henry Kissinger?
Sam Seder: Crazy Republican suggests getting rid of Citizen United would destroy the Bill of Rights.
Mental Floss: Misconceptions about crime.
Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.
The ISIS Propaganda Department….
Pelosi: Republicans are “baying at the moon” with their 56th ObamaCare repeal vote.
Greenman: Ken Caldeira on what climate models have told us.
Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.
by Goldy — ,
Oh God how I hate this meme:
Gov. Jay Inslee needs a win. After two years in Olympia, legislative victories on his proposals are sparse, and it’s not looking good this year either.
Instead, Inslee has been primarily a speechmaker-in-chief, and mostly about carbon reduction. In Associated Press style, he’d be Gov. Inslee, D-Climate Change, not D-Wash.
… Heading into his third year in office, Inslee needs a win. Voters in 2016 will want to know: Is Inslee an ideologue or a pragmatic executive?
Really? Jay Inslee is the ideologue here? Why? Because he accepts the overwhelming science of climate change? Because he believes it’s the responsibility of government to try to, you know, not destroy the fucking planet?
The problem with the sort of pragmatic, bipartisan, false-equivalentarianism the Seattle Times espouses is that in the current political environment, there is nothing pragmatic about it. True bipartisanship is only possible either when both sides are already in basic agreement (like when the allegedly “ideological” Inslee called a special session to ram the Boeing tax-break package down our throats), or when both sides are willing to compromise. But in the current political environment, the state senate Republican majority has absolutely zero will or incentive to give a nanometer.
First of all—and let’s be completely frank about this—a goodly chunk of the Republican caucus is filled with science-denying Christianist/Teahadist whack-jobs. Seriously. These people are fucking crazy. Do you really believe that the high-school-student-marrying minimum-wage-worker-hating Rep. Matt Manweller (R-Ellensburg) is even remotely capable of compromise? Do we really want that to be the measure of a “pragmatic executive”: the ability to find common ground with a vile, anti-labor, sexual predator?
Second, the whole notion that Inslee’s performance in office should be judged by his ability to push his agenda through the Republican senate is nothing less than a setup for failure. The Republicans want Inslee to fail! That is the whole of their agenda! Legislative gridlock is a win-win for them because A) preventing the government from doing stuff is exactly what their constituents sent them to Olympia to do, and B) Senate Ways & Means Committee chair Andy Hill is running for governor against Inslee in 2016! So even if this iteration of the Republican Party was capable of compromise (and it’s not), why on earth would it want to hand Inslee a legislative victory?
Sound familiar? It took six long years for President Obama to accept the fact that the entire congressional Republican agenda was: make President Obama fail. What did compromise get Obama in the meanwhile? A half-measure of a health care reform package whose repeal has become the rallying cry of the Republican Party.
“Team of rivals,” my ass.
Inslee at least has been a quicker study. He knew he didn’t have a snowball’s chance of getting either a carbon tax or a capital gains tax past the Republicans this session. He’s not stupid. So he’s using the power he has—the power of the bully pulpit—to help move the political conversation from where it is to where he thinks it needs to be. That doesn’t make him an ideologue. It makes him a leader.
Sure, compromise is great if both sides are willing to do it. And true bipartisanship is a lofty goal. But to score Inslee “an ideologue” for failing to push his proposals through this senate is to place the scorecard squarely in the hands of Republicans. It is a bullshit meme I hope nobody takes seriously, especially not Inslee.
by Goldy — ,
My state representative, Eric Pettigrew (D-37), has been a vocal advocate for charter schools, arguing that traditional public schools are failing our children. Pettigrew is now also a prime sponsor of a bill in Olympia that would split the Seattle school district in two, arguing that distant administrators are failing our neighborhood public schools. And so given his obvious disdain for Seattle Public Schools, one would imagine that Pettigrew must have had a truly horrible experience sending his own children to school in the district:
Pettigrew said the district has gotten too remote to pay attention to all its schools. He sent his kids to Catholic school because he doesn’t trust the public ones in his area.
“When I looked at Seattle Public Schools, I wasn’t willing to take the risk,” Pettigrew told The Associated Press.
Oh. So Pettigrew doesn’t actually have any hands on experience at all as either a parent or a student in the Seattle Public Schools. Yet he just “wasn’t willing to take the risk” of sending his children to the same neighborhood school where I chose to send my daughter for seven years.* Which I suppose makes Pettigrew a much more loving and responsible parent than me. Either that, or it makes him a knee-jerk, fear-mongering elitist who thinks that his kids are too good for the schools where most of his constituents send their children.
Actually, here’s what I really think is going on here: Psychological projection. As an elected official, Rep. Pettigrew is understandably self-conscious of his decision to send his kids to private school—maybe even a little embarrassed. And so he is justifying his decision—at least to himself—by projecting a crisis upon a district whose schools he never even gave a chance.
* For the record, my daughter attends Mercer Island High School, where her mother now lives. Divorce is complicated. But we loved Graham Hill Elementary, and I’m pretty sure Eric’s kids would have been happy there too.
by Goldy — ,
The editorial board of Vancouver’s Columbian—a paper so knee-jerk anti-labor that it makes the Seattle Times look the Union Record—has once again come out opposing the minimum wage, regurgitating the same blow chunks of trickle-down pablum. Literally the exact same sentence in three different editorials. But it’s fascinating to see how their preface has evolved over the past 18 months.
In our view: Skills the Key to Better Pay
Proposals to hike minimum wage to $15 will eliminate jobs – and opportunities
Published: September 8, 2013… Realistically, the notion of a minimum wage is a job-killing philosophy. If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.
In Our View: Minimum Wage Experiment
Here’s hoping Seattle’s gutsy move pays off — but it’s tough to not be skeptical
Published: May 6, 2014… Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata, who sat on the mayor’s Income Inequality Advisory Committee, said: “This is an awesome victory for the 100,000 workers earning less than $15 an hour in Seattle. They will see their lives dramatically improved.” That is, if they still have a job. As The Columbian has written editorially in the past: “If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.”
In Our View: Raise Skills, not Base Pay
Minimum-wage workers’ concerns valid, but hike to $12 could cost them jobs
Published: February 2, 2015… Yet there is a fine line between helping workers prosper and helping the businesses that employ them to prosper. The two ideas are not mutually exclusive, but they require some balance. As The Columbian has written editorially, “If forced, through legislation rather than market forces, to increase pay for unskilled workers, business owners are going to reduce their number of unskilled workers. They won’t reduce pay for their valuable employees; they won’t reduce profits; they won’t cut other expenses. No, they’ll eliminate the positions that are the most expendable.”
So in September, 2013 they categorically claim that the minimum wage is a “realistically… a job-killing philosophy,” in May, 2014 they allow a touch of doubt to seep in, warning it might improve workers’ lives “if they still have a job,” and now they’re willing to acknowledge that raising wages and helping businesses prosper “are not mutually exclusive.” The Columbian is still wrong to repeat their reality-denying zero sum game supply-side bullshit. But for them, this is progress!
It’ll be interesting to see where the editors are in another 18 months when Seattle and SeaTac are both prospering under their higher minimum wages, and Vancouver is still… well… Vancouver.
by Carl Ballard — ,
Sen. Sharon Brown has a press release about how she wants to modernize, ahem, what we call clean energy.* Some of it is fine (I think, but anyone with more knowledge of energy issues than me, please pipe in). Some of it is of the oh, let’s count the hydro power toward our clean energy requirements despite the initiative that people already voted on.
“By allowing some of the incremental electricity produced by efficiency improvements to hydro projects to qualify as an eligible renewable resource, we not only save consumers money, but we also help our employers free up the resources they need to hire more employees and give raises and better benefits to those already employed,” said Brown, R-Kennewick.
Efficiencies are awesome! But the good news is that there’s already an advantage to utilities to being efficient. It’s the market. The reason we have regulations like these are because we’re trying to accomplish things the market won’t do well. Also, is there ever a GOP program they can’t pretend is a jobs bill. We need to rely more on hydro than on energy sources with less downside because jobs. Also, didn’t we vote on this already?
Efficiency changes made to hydro projects allow more electricity to be produced from the same amount of water without any new diversions or impoundments. Currently, the I-937 law only recognizes hydro-efficiency improvements associated with projects owned by a qualified utility. Under Brown’s bill, this recognition would be extended to incremental electricity marketed by the federal Bonneville Power Administration.
Will of the people, and whatnot.
“As lawmakers heard from some of those who testified today, Washingtonians who have paid for these efficiency improvements to hydro projects should be able to see the benefits of those improvements,” said Brown. “Instead, Washington is sending its affordable hydropower to other states who consider it renewable, while our utilities are force to purchase costly power required to meet the state’s mandate.
Ignore the typos. This post can’t all just be me making fun of typos, and I’ve already done it once and will do it again. It’s just some intern, probably. Good for you for being here, and I hope you earn credits toward your middle school graduation.
Obviously, the thing to concentrate on here is that our standards for renewable should be rigorous. Our standards should be tough to hit because how we get our energy is valuable!
Also, not for nothing, but energy is incredibly cheap in Washington. For example, my apartment is pretty small, but I paid less than $15 for my December bill,** and that was with a fair amount of heat, what with it being December. A lot of that is, as Goldy has written, our socialist utility here in Seattle. So clearly socialism is a jobs program — QED — and I hope Senator Brown will lead a chorus of The Internationale. Unless she hates jobs.
“With so many families having to make the difficult choice between paying the light bill and putting food on the table, we have an obligation to look for ways to make energy more affordable. My bill would do just that by allowing our utilities to use clean, affordable incremental hydropower and pass any cost savings onto their customers.”
Right, so let’s take out the profit motive from things like utilities. Acknowledge that they make more sense as infrastructure and then everyone who uses the product will have more money. Brilliant! Oh, no, it’s just loosening regulation.
Anyway, one more typo to make fun of from a part of it that I’m basically fine with.
We really need to look at what we are going to use for baseload energy in the future. Wind power cannot replace wind power. Utilities have to balance every minute of our load with our resources and the power that our customers need.
Again, I’m not really one to make fun of typos, but this has been up for several days. And presumably it was a draft at some point. “Wind power cannot replace wind power” is like a riddle in a children’s book.
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