Search Results for: ’

Socialists like Kshama Sawant like to argue that market capitalism isn’t working for the rest of us. But I’m beginning to wonder if it is actually working at all:

The American Trucking Associations has estimated that there was a shortage of 30,000 qualified drivers earlier this year, a number on track to rise to 200,000 over the next decade. Trucking companies are turning down business for want of workers.

Yet the idea that there is a huge shortage of truck drivers flies in the face of a jobless rate of more than 6 percent, not to mention Economics 101. The most basic of economic theories would suggest that when supply isn’t enough to meet demand, it’s because the price — in this case, truckers’ wages — is too low. Raise wages, and an ample supply of workers should follow.

But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an unacceptable affront. In this environment, it may be easier to say “There is a shortage of skilled workers” than “We aren’t paying our workers enough,” even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing.

Adjusted for inflation, truckers are now earning 6 percent less, on average, than they did a decade ago. And yet trucking executives would rather leave business on the table than raise pay to attract more truckers. “It takes a peculiar form of logic to cut pay steadily and then be shocked that fewer people want to do the job,” observes the New York Times’ Neil Irwin.

So much for supply and demand.

And its not just the trucking industry. As the housing market recovers, the construction industry is facing a looming worker shortage, even against the backdrop of persistent six-plus percent unemployment. Here in Washington State, produce is left rotting in the fields for want of enough farmworkers at harvest time. Pay them and they will come, Econ 101 teaches. But in industry after industry, the masters of capital simply refuse.

Whether through collusion, or habit, or sheer ill will, a labor market that effectively suspends the rule of supply and demand isn’t really a market at all. And if there is no functional labor market, then capitalism really isn’t working for the rest of us. Really. In fact, it is fair to question whether market capitalism is working at all. For surely there must be more to the promise of capitalism than the mere accumulation of capital.

Minimum wage opponents like to argue that wage floors distort the natural efficiencies of the market. But you can’t distort something that doesn’t exist.

I certainly agree with the Seattle Times editorial board in lauding the work of Public Health – Seattle & King County director David Fleming, who is stepping down today after seven years on the job. Under Fleming’s leadership, Public Health has been one of the most proactive and effective agencies in the region.

But what I do take issue with is the editors’ envisioned role for Fleming’s successor.

There is much work to be done.

The department faces an estimated $15 million budget hole this fall caused by federal budget constraints. The next director will have to balance fewer resources with the demands of a fast-growing, diverse population.

Fleming’s successor should pick up where he left off by advocating for policies and funding in areas where data show the highest need and investment can have the highest impact:

That’s right: the editors want Fleming’s successor to “pick up where he left off,” but with “fewer resources,” despite the increased costs of serving our “fast-growing” population. It’s no secret that his department’s budget squeeze contributed to Fleming’s decision to step-down—the Seattle Times reported as much. And yet in the same breath in which they acknowledge the important work that Public Health does, the editors simply state as fact that the new director will have to serve a growing population with shrinking resources.

More sound public policy advice from the something-for-nothing crowd.

But it doesn’t have to be like this. Whatever the loss of federal funds, the city and county could backfill this money with local revenue—assuming I-747’s stupid fucking 101 percent limit wasn’t gradually drowning local government in a bathtub. About 45 percent of the county’s general fund revenue comes from the property tax, yet as I have previously explained, thanks to the 101 percent limit on growth in regular levy revenue, the property tax can’t even keep pace with inflation, let alone population-plus-inflation (not to mention economic growth, with is the most accurate measure of growth in demand for public services). To further complicate matters, another 14 percent of county general fund revenue comes from the sales tax, a tax base (the sale of goods) that has been steadily shrinking as a portion of the overall economy for more than 60 years.

What we have here should be familiar to anybody who is willing to honestly discuss Washington’s state and local tax system: a structural revenue deficit.

The editors’ advice—always—is that government must recognize this new fiscal reality and reduce the size and cost of its operations to match its reduced revenues. But it can’t work. For even if you believe that this new fiscal reality is more appropriate than the significantly higher relative revenue levels state and local governments enjoyed just a decade and a half ago, our ability to fund government services will continue to fall. That is the nature of a structural deficit.

If the Seattle Times really cared about maintaining public health, rather than simply urging the new director to magically do more with less (year after year in perpetuity!), the editors would take the lead in urging the repeal of the 101 percent limit, and replacing it with something more rational. The original purpose of the limit back when it was first imposed at 106 percent (or inflation, whichever was higher), was to prevent shocking annual increases in property taxes. But it was not meant to limit property taxes over the long run—that is the role of the statutory cap that limits the total amount of state and local regular levies to $10 per $1,000 of accessed value.

Tim Eyman’s arbitrary 101 percent limit is a perversion of this policy.

If Washington were a high-tax state this push for lower taxes might be understandable. But we’re not. As a percentage of personal income, Washington’s state and local taxes are now some of the lowest in the nation. And dropping. In this context, there is simply no rational argument for maintaining a 101 percent limit on local property tax revenue growth that is gradually starving local governments of the ability to meet their citizens’ most basic needs.

Everybody knows that Washington’s tax structure is immensely unfair. It is the most regressive in the nation. And by far. But it is also unsustainable. And we could really use some editorial leadership to help move us toward a solution before it is too late.

– If restaurant owners in Seattle are upset about our new minimum wage, they have the example of one Minnesota job creator.

– I had no idea who Brian Dunning was before this, but yikes.

– Put simply, there are two sets of rules: one for liberals and Democrats, the other for conservatives and Republicans. The former are supposed to be fair-minded and rule-abiding, as befits a tradition that harkens back to the likes of Jefferson, Madison, Montesquieu and Locke. The latter are expected to be Nixonian streetfighters—whatever they do is “just politics,” and “everybody does it,” so there’s “nothing to see here.”

– There is no Obama Doctrine, and that’s probably a good thing.

– I am excited about Romeo and Juliet at SAM Sculpture Park, but we as a society need to stop calling it “the greatest love story ever told.” You know what’s a greater love story? Literally any story that doesn’t end with a 13 year old girl killing herself.*

– I’m not much of a drinker or in particular a beer drinker, but even I noticed this at Mariners games.

[Read more…]

Thom: The Good, The Bad, and The Very, Very Ugly.

Jon: Virginia is for lovers…of money.

Obama: Statement on actions in Iraq.

Ann Telnaes: Israel’s Mission Accomplished.

The U.S. Tortured People:

• Ann Telnaes: “We tortured some folks”.
• Michael Brooks: Obama points out the, “We tortured some folks”.

Thom: The “sovereign citizen” movement threat.

Gil Fulbright: Fancy Farm Speech:

Farron Cousins: Diagnosing Ann Coulter’s mental illness.

Mental Floss: 33 amazing toy facts.

Thom: The Siberian crater mystery solved…and it isn’t good news.

Crazy Congress Critters:

• Ezra Klein: G.O.P. led U.S. Congress is less popular than head lice.
• Young Turks: Rand Paul flees Dreamers.
• Alex Wagner: Rand Paul drops his burger and flees
• Sam Seder: Rand Paul runs away…
• Ed: Rand Paul’s dine and dash.
• Steve Kornacki: Rand Paul employs Reagan fact-denying, lying tactics.
• David Pakman: Rand Paul flees in terror from Hispanic immigrant
• Sharpton: DREAMers confront Tea-Party racist Steve King as hypocrite Rand Paul flees
• Jon nails Aqua Buddah on his foreign aid flip flop
• Ezra Klein: The G.O.P. BIG immigration problem
• Mark Fiore: Camp Do Nuttin’.
• David Pakman: Most Americans disapprove of the G.O.P. lawsuit.
• Matt Binder: G.O.P. report finds no wrongdoing by Administration in Benghazi!?!?!
• Steve Kornacki: Obama administration cleared of deliberate wrongdoing in the Benghazi attack
• David Pakman: Benghazi fizzle…no administration wrongdoing.
• Young Turks: Odd…House Intelligence Committee report clears the Administration, but FAUX News is silent.
• Liberal Viewer: Will Republicans impeach Obama for not deporting enough undocumented immigrants?
• Sam Seder: The GOP attack on child refugees
• Late Night Laughs: Congressional recess edition

Sharpton: The G.O.P. wishes Obama a happy birthday:
http://youtu.be/zV54BbXP5eg

White House: West Wing Week.

Farrons Cousins: Rick Scott’s environmental flip-flop flap.

Late Night Laughs: Obama’s Birthday Edition.

Thom: When the ocean’s carbon cycle goes out of balance.

Sam Seder: Reality check on Obama’s immigration authority.

Pap: It is time for Democrats to fight back.

Donald Trump is a Fucking Moron:

• Ana Kasparian: Donald Trump’s ebola comments.
• Stephen reacts to The Donald’s comment on ebola-stricken doctors.

Steve Kornacki: Is Gov. Sam Brownback (R-KS) in big trouble.

Young Turks: Meghan McCain destroys Glenn Beck.

Pap: The Republican Party has betrayed Lincoln.

Jimmy Dore: Worst piece of journalism.

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

I’m not sure what they’re suing about if even the International Franchise Association acknowledges that franchises are different from “local small businesses”:

“Who in their right mind wants to become a franchisee in Seattle now? They are immediately placed at a competitive disadvantage to local small businesses,” said Matt Haller, a spokesman for the International Franchise Association, based in Washington, D.C.

As I understand the English language, to assert that franchisees are at “a competitive disadvantage to local small businesses” inherently implies that franchisees are not local small businesses. Which of course runs counter to the IFA’s entire legal argument. Haller didn’t say “other” local small businesses, because franchisees are clearly different. If it was a slip, it was a Freudian one.

Regardless, this motion for a preliminary injunction is just grandstanding. A) Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law doesn’t go into effect until April. The lower court will almost certainly decide the underlying suit before then, so there’s no chance for “irreparable harm.” And B), to grant an injunction the court would have to determine that the IFA has a decent chance of prevailing on its hilarious claims, and that just doesn’t seem likely given the past 80 years of legal precedent.

In responding to a recent National Labor Relations Board recommendation that franchisors and franchisees be designated as “joint-employers,” the IFA responded by claiming that this would “threaten the sanctity of hundreds of thousands of contracts between franchisees and franchisors.” It is a similar legal argument to what the IFA has been making against Seattle’s $15 minimum wage ordinance.

Indeed, the IFA is banking on nothing less than returning to the pre-New Deal legal framework of the Lochner era, in which the right of parties to enter into private contracts trumps the right of government to regulate business. Under this framework, not only would Seattle’s minimum wage be unconstitutional, but all minimum wages would. As well as most other federal, state, and local business regulations.

I wouldn’t put anything beyond the schemes of the right-of-right Roberts court, but until that happens, it’s hard to imagine a US District court judge viewing the IFA’s radical claims as being credible enough to warrant an injunction.

If the Seattle Times editorial board is going to put so little time and effort into writing this editorial, then I’m not going to bother to put much time and effort into fisking it.

SEATTLE Proposition 1 appears headed for passage. No surprise, since the campaign to form a Seattle Park District was heavy on the “everyone loves parks” rhetoric and light on the governance details about the creation of an entirely new taxing authority.

As opposed to the No campaign, which was heavy on the lies and light on the… wait… what’s so wrong about a Park District campaign being heavy on the “everyone loves parks”…?

Taxpayers must remain vigilant.

Against dishonest editorials.

This new taxing authority is permanent. Voters will no longer be asked every few years whether they approve of how their money is being spent on parks through levy renewal measures.

Like they had been since Seattle was founded back in 2000.

Prop. 1 hands oversight of the district and about $48 million in its first year — twice the amount of the expiring parks levy — to the Seattle City Council, which will serve as the Park District’s board.

Oh no! We’ll be handing oversight of the parks over to the same people who already have oversight of the parks!

If City Council members want to raise property taxes from the initial rate of 33 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value to 75 cents per $1,000 for parks, they may do so without asking voters. The current levy rate is about 20 cents per $1,000.

It’s called representative democracy. Look it up in the Constitution.

An agreement preserves at least in annual general-fund dollars for parks, but the city’s obligation can be reduced or diverted in an emergency.

For the life of me, I can’t parse this sentence.

Voters should demand that the mayor and council keep their $89 million general-fund promise to parks.

I’m guessing this sentence was supposed to be set up by the previous incomprehensible one?

The transparency, specific asks and expiration dates contained in previous park levies are why 59 percent of voters passed the last parks levy in 2008 and 55 percent supported a similar levy in 2000.

That’s three one-sentence paragraphs in a row.

Wednesday’s ballot count showed about 53 percent in favor of the Park District.

And another one! Jesus, I know print loves short paragraphs, but try stringing a couple coherent thoughts together for a change.

Voters, take a look at your neighborhood parks. Are those dirty bathrooms and leaky pipes getting fixed? Or is the money going to public-private ventures such as the Woodland Park Zoo, the Seattle Aquarium or the planned waterfront park?

The fear-mongering didn’t work before the election, so I don’t see how it’s going to work after. But at least they’re done with the one-sentence paragraph thing.

The council gets to decide.

Spoke too soon.

“Woodland Park Zoo has paid lobbyists. How do you as a citizen or a community organization compete against that?” warns Don Harper, a parks advocate who opposed Proposition 1 and supports a levy.

Don Harper also warned that Prop 1 would build an airstrip atop Cal Anderson Park. Because he’s a lying liar.

A citizens committee is supposed to provide nonbinding recommendations to the district. It must act independently and serve as a vocal counterbalance to the council.

A council composed predominantly of members the Seattle Times endorsed.

The only other tool left for citizens to voice their displeasure is City Council elections. Beginning in 2015, most members will be elected by district instead of at-large. Incumbents will be vulnerable to challengers.

Um, the Park District doesn’t even begin to start collecting taxes until 2016, but the editors threaten to hold council members accountable for their misuse of funds in 2015. Because they’re from the future!

Remember that if the Park District fails to live up to its many promises.

That closing sentence might have been stronger if it didn’t read like it was left unfinished. But in their defense, after such a bitter campaign, I can understand it if they just ran out of.

Via Charles, ThinkProgress has the story of a Florida man who will escape prosecution for fatally shooting an unarmed man in the back, under the state’s dangerously stupid “Stand Your Ground” law:

In early July, 20-year-old Colt Thriemer shot dead a one-time friend in a Wal-Mart parking lot, saying he feared for his life. Witnesses gathered for a truck meet that night say victim Thomas James Brown, 21, was walking away toward his car when Thriemer fired ten shots. Some say Brown had threatened to kill Thriemer over the course of several weeks. The story as told by prosecutors in a detailed legal memo suggests drug transactions, addiction, and monetary debts all played a role in the scenario leading up to Brown’s death.

But these facts will never play out in a trial, because prosecutors have decided not to charge Thriemer citing Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.

“The Stand Your Ground statute makes no exception from the immunity because Brown may have been walking away from Thriemer at the time the deadly force was used,” the memo from the State Attorney’s office states. “The Stand Your Ground law does not require Thriemer to wait until Brown in fact retrieved a gun before he fired. Under the current state of the law and the facts of this case, Thriemer was legally allowed to use deadly force based on a reasonable belief that his life was in danger and that he was about to become the victim of an armed robbery.”

Okay. So let’s play this legal standard out to its logical conclusion. If, under Stand Your Ground, a reasonable belief that your life is in danger gives you the right to shoot an unarmed man—say, me—in the back, then my reasonable belief that you believe that I present a mortal danger to you, should give me the right to stand my ground and preemptively shoot you first. Note that your belief that I present a danger doesn’t even have to be reasonable—I just need to reasonably believe that you believe it reasonable, to give me a reason to shoot first under Stand Your Ground!

Of course, if you were to believe that I might act upon a belief that you believed that I posed a mortal threat to you, then that might be all the reason you need to shoot me before I preemptively shoot you. And so on.

In this scenario, the very belief that the other party might stand their ground becomes a reasonable defense under Stand Your Ground. And if you don’t believe that the “I believed he believed I was going to shoot him” defense won’t inevitably be tested in court, then you don’t know Florida.

Let’s be honest: most editorial boards mostly endorse incumbents, and the same is as true of the pot-addled Stranger as it is of the Blethen-addled Seattle Times. Hell, even I mostly endorsed incumbents in my caveat-asterisked endorsement post. So if you’re going to measure the influence of an editorial board, it is best to do it in open (or otherwise competitive) races, as well as those in which the editors stuck their neck out to endorse the challenger.

So by this metric, how many elections did the editors at our state’s paper of record sway? Not many:

Prop. 1, Seattle’s Park District measure

The same city government that neglected parks for years now wants voters to approve a new tax that gives them twice as much money and the power to raise rates without voter approval. Voters should reject Proposition 1, a measure to create the new Seattle Park District. Vote against the formation of a metropolitan park district.

With about 60 percent of ballots counted, Prop 1 appears to have won. Seattle Times: 0, Voters: 1.

Legislative District No. 1, Representative Position No. 2

Edward Barton, Republican
Edward Barton, first-time candidate for office, displays the intellect and moderation to be a strong lawmaker from the 1st Legislative District, which straddles the King-Snohomish line. He is the better option for voters over the incumbent, state Rep. Luis Moscoso, D-Mountlake Terrace.

Incumbent Democratic Rep. Luis Moscoso is leading Barton 44 percent to 43 percent, but fellow Democrat Dave Griffin has another 14 percent of the vote, so Moscoso looks good for November. Seattle Times: 0, Voters: 2.

Legislative District No. 21, Representative Position No. 1

Scott Whelpley, Democrat
Scott Whelpley is a former Navy aviator who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq and was awarded a Bronze Star. The Mukilteo Democrat who holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Washington would be learning on the job. But he holds the clear potential for independence from powerful interest groups and his Democratic caucus.

Whelpley has come in third behind Republican Allen McPheeters and Democrat Strom Peterson, so he won’t even make it past the top-two primary and into November. Seattle Times: 0; Voters: 3.

Legislative District No. 31, State Senator

Cathy Dahlquist, Republican
State Sen. Pam Roach, R-Auburn, the longtime lawmaker best known for her fiery temper, faces a sharp and seasoned opponent this year from within her own party. State Rep. Cathy Dahlquist is the easy choice for the 31st District Senate seat.

Can’t really blame the editors for endorsing challenger Cathy Dahlquist over crazy, crazy Pam Roach, yet as of last night, Roach holds a slight 0.9 percent lead. If I were charitable, I’d call this a tie. But I’m not charitable. Seattle Times: 0; Voters: 4.

Legislative District No.31, Representative Position No. 1

Drew Stokesbary, Republican
For the open state House seat in the 31st District, Republican Drew Stokesbary of Auburn is the candidate most likely to be a voice for fiscal responsibility. The incumbent, Cathy Dahlquist, is vacating the seat to run for state Senate.

Stokesbary is a total douchebag. But he is winning over 51 percent of the vote for this open seat. Score one for Team Blethen. Seattle Times: 1; Voters: 4.

Legislative District No. 32, State Senator

Chris Eggen, Democrat
Shoreline Deputy Mayor Chris Eggen, a Democrat, is the better choice over the incumbent, state Sen. Maralyn Chase, D-Shoreline, who is seeking a second term. Challenger Eggen is rated “very good” by The Municipal League of King County, compared to Chase’s “good” rating. Eggen knows what is ahead, especially with education.

Democratic incumbent Senator Marilyn Chase has over 51 percent of the vote, and if last night’s results hold up, third-place Eggen won’t even make it out of the primary and into November. Seattle Times: 1; Voters 5.

Legislative District No. 37, State Senator

Pramila Jayapal, Democrat
In a crowded contest for Seattle’s 37th Legislative District state Senate seat, Pramila Jayapal stands out for the breadth and depth of her civic involvement. The Democrat is a passionate and effective social-justice activist, armed with an MBA and experience in the private financial sector. That said, her election would test her ability to balance a progressive streak with pragmatism and the ability to reach across the aisle to find compromise.

Not sure how to score this one. It was technically an open seat, sure. But Jayapal was a shoo-in. Nearly everybody endorsed her. Hard to divine any influence out of this race. So I’m arbitrarily awarding a point to each side. Seattle Times: 2; Voters: 6.

Legislative District No. 37, Representative Position No. 1

Daniel Bretzke, Republican
The 37th Legislative District’s Position 1 needs a legislator willing to compromise and represent the best interests of a diverse district where many schools are struggling and persistent achievement gaps threaten to leave students behind. That means turning out the incumbent, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos, in favor of the promising political newcomer, Daniel Bretzke of Seattle.

Bretzke barely got 9 percent of the vote, pathetic even for a Seattle Republican. Seattle Times: 2; Voters 7.

So there you have it: another spectacularly unimpressive demonstration of influence meddling on the part of the Seattle Times editorial board!

 

Omigod, really, Seattle Times editorial board…?

The zoo receives many tens of millions of dollars from public coffers but resolutely refuses to explain how it spends the money. Tax dollars disappear into a void with no transparency or accountability. …

The zoo would be a beneficiary of Proposition 1’s Park District, which only compounds the taxpayer-provided free lunch, and builds the wall of secrecy higher.

The zoo has three unhappy female elephants in cramped space. … How bad are things at the Woodland Park Zoo for elephants? What does cramped space really mean? One of the poor creatures has suffered from urine burns, scalded by her own waste water.

There are no good arguments against Prop 1 other than “we don’t want to pay higher taxes,” so instead the opposition has resorted to, well, anything.

It’s hard to believe that a campaign over parks funding for chrissakes, could turn into one of the most dishonest and fear-mongering campaigns ever. But don’t be fooled. Vote “Yes” on Prop 1. (And mail in your goddamn ballot!)

– Did your bus survive the first round of Metro cuts?

– Why does Ted Cruz hate the Special Olympics?

– In the last few months, Seattle’s chattering class has become enamored of the idea of “regressive taxation,” which they are now tossing off in argument as often as possible, regardless of whether or not it actually applies.

– Corporations are people. The type of people who don’t have to be held accountable for environmental or workers rights violations. Or for paying off death squads.

– What to do if you see a hit-and-run

If the No on Parks folks think it was just clever gamesmanship to spoof “911” in the caller ID of their recent robocall, they’re gonna have to make their case to the police. From SPD Blotter:

Dozens of confused Seattle residents have called Seattle police over the last 24 hours after receiving hangup calls, which appeared as if they came from 911.

In fact, these calls—which appear on caller IDs as “911-9111″—are the result of caller ID fraud, or “spoofing,” and are not coming from SPD’s 911 Communications Center.

The 911 Communications Center is researching the origin of the calls and is referring the case to detectives for investigation.

SPD blogger Jonah Spangenthal-Lee confirms that emergency operators saw a surge in volume yesterday as worried residents called 911 in response to these spoofed caller IDs. He was not familiar with the apparent connection to the No on Parks campaign. But now SPD is. According to an internal email sent out to volunteers yesterday, No on Parks committee co-chair Carol Fisher claimed “100,000 robo calls went out today.”

So, hey, thanks, Carol Fisher, Don Harper, Jon Hansen, Faye Garneau, Alyne Fortgang, Jim Coombes, and the rest of you anti-tax lying liars for creating a public safety hazard in the service of spreading your lies.

Earlier this week, we learned this (my emphasis):

House Republicans want to use their final week in Washington before the August recess to send a signal that they are ready to govern.

As the country’s attention turns to the fight for control of the House and Senate, Republicans want to show they are capable of handling two of the nation’s toughest issues: the thousands of children crossing the border, and the veterans in need of healthcare.

“This is a crisis situation. We need to show that we can respond in a crisis in a thoughtful way,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said of the effort to move a border bill.

Are the Republicans ready to govern?

By their own measure…apparently not:

House GOP leaders ditched their plans to vote on a border supplemental today after failing to secure the votes to pass it.

“We don’t think we have the votes,” said Kay Granger, R-Texas, one of the architects of the bill.

How can a party, whose fundamental philosophy is that the federal government is evil, ever be ready to govern?

They can’t…it simply doesn’t make sense.

KUOW’s Austin Jenkins has a good piece on the role of social media in amplifying the controversy over NRA lobbyist Brian Judy’s offensively Godwinian comments:

Todd Donovan, a political science professor at Western Washington University, said he technology as the key driver here — from the recording device planted in the audience to Twitter as a means of quickly disseminating the audio and transcript.

“Think even just 10 years ago,” Donovan said. “You couldn’t probably do this much in a one or two day news cycle, right?”

Yeah, well, true, no doubt. But don’t forget the role of an independent media—like Horsesass.org—in putting legs underneath a story like this, a role I’ve been filling in one capacity or another since 2004.

When the rest of our local media decided to sit on a sexual harassment scandal involving Washington’s longtime Lands Commissioner, I’m the one who broke the story and quickly forced it to the front page. When in the midst of a close race for King County Executive, media insiders laughed about how his own mother wouldn’t vote for Republican David Irons Jr., but refused to explain to voters the reasons why, I’m the one who forced the issue onto the airwaves, changing the complexion of the final three weeks of the election. And even as President George W. Bush was thanking FEMA director Mike Brown for doing “a heckuva job” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I was exposing the cronyism that had led to his disastrously unqualified appointment—an exposé that Brown himself blamed for his demise:

When I was forced off the pages of The Stranger in the heat of the minimum wage debate, there were business owners who cheered at the thought that they had finally shut me up. But I wasn’t about to give them that satisfaction. And so I returned to HA, if only part-time, gradually rebuilding its audience and influence so that I could use my shitty little foul-mouthed blog to once again make a difference the next time an opportunity to make a difference came my way.

This was one of those opportunities. And it felt damn good to play my role.

Maybe a traditional news outlet might have done as well had the audio come their way, or maybe they would have soft-balled it or failed to see its significance altogether. For as I have repeatedly preached to my friends in the broader progressive community, you just can’t rely on the Blethen-controled “objective” gatekeepers at the Seattle Times, or the sound-bite-constrained reporters of broadcast news, or the access-obsessed insiders at PubliCola, or even my well-meaning but distracted and overworked (and occasionally fired) ex-colleagues at The Stranger to get your message out, and get it out right. You need bloggers like me working at truly independent but fiercely progressive media outlets like HA.

And we need you to help us earn a living wage.

Twitter and Facebook are great tools for amplifying your message—hell, that’s how I draw most of my eyeballs these days, now that I’m no longer sucking at Dan Savage’s swollen Internet traffic teat. But social media is nothing without the content to drive it. And so rather than continuing to spend the bulk of your communications budgets on media outreach—whatever the technology—I remain convinced that local progressive organizations would realize much more bang for their messaging buck by coming together and funding an independent local progressive media outlet of their own.

If there’s anything that pisses me off more than lying in politics, it’s a political lie that is easily refuted by math. Take, for example, this whopper from a recent No on Park District campaign mailer:

“Your property taxes would increase by 20%!” Omigod, that’s awful! If my $4,448 property tax bill were to increase by 20 percent, it would cost me an additional $890! That’s outrageous!

But it’s also bullshit.

In fact, if Proposition 1 passes, my property tax bill would only increase by about 60 bucks. That’s because the current Parks Levy of $0.19 per $1,000 of assessed value would bump up to $0.33, a $0.14 increase. And $0.14 is only 1.36 percent of the total $10.29168 per $1,000 of assessed value property tax that most Seattle homeowners are paying in 2014.

That’s a 1.34 percent increase, not the absurd 20 percent that parks opponents preposterously claim.

And even if the mayor and the city council are evil bastards who are just totally fucking with us—as the parks opponents seem to imply—and they immediately levy the full $0.75 per $1,000 the RCW allows, your property taxes would still only increase by 5.4 percent. That’s not nothing, but it’s still far short of that bullshit 20 percent claim.

So how do these lying liars justify their lying lie?

Carol Fisher, vice chair for Our Parks Forever, said the group based its numbers on Seattle’s levy cap of $3.60 per $1,000 assessed value. The park district would, in essence, add a maximum of 75 cents to this cap, she explained, which is how the group calculated the 20 percent increase.

Except that’s not what their mailer says. “Your property taxes would increase by 20%!” the lying liars claim in big bold print. But it won’t. Because that’s just a big bold lie.

So if they’re lying about something as easily refuted as math, how can you trust any of the other assertions they make? (Hint: you can’t.)

It may sound wonky, but this is potentially big, big news:

McDonald’s Corp. says it has been notified by a labor regulator that it can be named as a “joint employer” for workers in its franchise-owned restaurants.

The decision by the National Labor Relations Board was being closely watched because it could potentially expose McDonald’s to liability for the working conditions in its franchisees’ stores.

This is, of course, the issue at the heart of the International Franchise Association’s hilarious lawsuit against Seattle’s new $15 minimum wage ordinance. The IFA alleges that Seattle’s minimum wage law (and other proposed laws like it) would illegally discriminate against franchisees. Franchisees are small businesses, the IFA argues, totally independent from the corporate brand, and thus should be treated just like any other small business.

But apparently, the NLRB disagrees.

Barring a dangerously radical Supreme Court ruling overturning a century of legal precedent, the IFA never had much chance of prevailing in court; the NLRB’s decision only makes it harder. But if it holds, the NLRB’s decision could have a much more far reaching impact. Labor organizers have long argued that franchisers like McDonald’s should be held accountable for the low wages and poor working conditions at their franchisees’ stores, because corporate HQ exerts so much operational control. An official designation of McDonald’s and other franchisers as “joint employers” could open the door to new legal and labor organizing strategies.