Search Results for: drinking liberally

My trolls tell me that President Obama’s upcoming rally in Seattle is an act of desperation, and that nobody is more unpopular around here these days than the president, except, perhaps, Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Maybe. But I’m just not feeling the gloom and doom right now, especially with the latest SurveyUSA tracking poll showing Obama’s approval rating jumping 12 points in Washington state last month, rising from 40% to a comfortable 52%. That’s Obama best showing since January, and represents a 24-point swing in the margin, from 16 points under to 8 points over.

Add to that the new CNN/Time poll that has Sen. Patty Murray up 51-43% over Dino Rossi, plus the Elway Poll that showed Washington Dems holding a 46-37% advantage in the generic congressional, not to mention the sudden tightening in WA-08, and you gotta wonder if the tide is shifting, at least in this corner of the country.

Or, perhaps, there’s something to Elway’s effort to distinguish between automated polls like Rasmussen and SurveyUSA, and live interviewer polls like his. As Darryl suggested the other night at Drinking Liberally, what if the enthusiasm gap we’ve all been hearing about is largely manifested in who is or is not willing to give up ten minutes to interact with an automated poll? I know I’ve hung up on a couple robo-polls this year, but find it harder to do so with a real live person. Interesting hypothesis.

I know there have been some polls that show Democratic seats at risk in WA-03 and WA-02 (and allegedly even WA-09), and we’ll certainly give back some of our recent legislative gains, but apart from that, there really isn’t very much hard evidence to suggest that Washington Dems should brace themselves for a red tsunami of the likes that swept them from office in 1994. At least, there’s not much evidence from this momentary vantage point some three weeks out.

It’s no secret I didn’t want Dino Rossi to jump into the race against U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, not because I think he stands much of a chance of winning — he doesn’t — but because of all the other intangibles his candidacy brings with it.

With Rossi in the race, the national Dems will now spend money here that would be better spent defending more vulnerable seats elsewhere, while state Democratic money and focus will be distracted from a host of down-ticket races, not the least of which being the open seat in WA-03, and to a lesser extent WA-02, where Rep. Rick Larsen appears to have finally drawn a reasonably viable challenger. Furthermore, win or lose, this pretty much eliminates Rossi from the 2012 gubernatorial contest where he could have proven a substantial roadblock to Rob McKenna’s naked political ambitions, and a potentially weaker opponent to nearly-inevitable Democratic nominee Jay Inslee.

All in all, I’d always thought of a Rossi candidacy as a net plus for his party, if not for him personally.

But, that doesn’t mean a Rossi candidacy doesn’t present some serious risks to state Republicans — and opportunities to Democrats — especially given his late entry into the race, and the unique political climate in which his party currently finds itself. When life gives you Dino, make Dino-ade… that’s what I always say.

Or, perhaps, make tea.

I’ve never been one to take our state teabaggers too seriously as anything more than a symbolic gesture, and had Rossi jumped into the race back in March, I still wouldn’t have considered them much of a political factor. But Rossi’s last minute candidacy, and the invasion of out-of-state establishment money and consultants he brings with him, is nothing if not a big “fuck you” to Clint Didier and the entire Tea Party crowd.

Oh, the NRSC and the WSRP still want you to show up at rallies and angrily wave your misspelled signs, as long as it’s their chosen candidates you’re rallying for, instead of one of those crazy, constitutionally illiterate hicks that so excites your base. (And no, behind closed doors, mainstream Republicans don’t show you guys much more respect than I do.) You might think you want Didier, or perhaps Sean Salazar, to be the nominee, but the GOP elite… they know better. That’s why they’re force-feeding you Dino Rossi.

And how well Rossi goes down with the Tea Party, especially after the GOP machine brutalizes their preferred candidate, remains to be seen. (That recent hit piece on Didier in the Seattle Times? You don’t suspect that the story was pushed by Republican operatives in an effort to clear the way for Rossi? Welcome to the big leagues.) I don’t know how much sugar Didier supporters put in their tea, but it could take an awful lot for them to willingly swallow Rossi after a bitter primary battle.

Who knows? Perhaps the tea baggers are merely the deluded paper tigers I’ve made them out to be, and they’ll just roll over in front of the Rossi Express. Or, perhaps they’ll prove to be a more potent grassroots force, and fight for the nomination tooth and nail, turning out voters not just in the Senate primary, but in congressional and legislative primaries as well? Perhaps Rossi’s candidacy just made it that much more difficult for establishment GOPer Jaime Herrera to make it to November in WA-03? Perhaps the crazier Republican will triumph in a handful of legislative primaries, Ellen Craswell style, making GOP pickups that much more difficult in the general?

Perhaps… you know… if the Tea Party is really more than a handful of angry Tenthers with a penchant for drawing Hitler mustaches.

And that’s the risk for Republicans in Rossi’s Dino-come-lately candidacy, in a year in which they were counting on Tea Party enthusiasm to get out the vote. Rossi could energize tea baggers… to come out and vote for non-establishment candidates in the August primary. Or, Rossi could totally alienate and/or demoralize his party’s tea bagger base, thus undercutting chances of a Big Red Wave™, at least here in Washington state.

Yeah sure, Rossi makes life at least a little more difficult for the DSCC, and in the unlikely event of a wave election sweeping through this Washington, he gives Republicans a better chance of winning than they might otherwise have. You know, the 50 State Strategy and all that. But by so explicitly dissing the Tea Party faction and their Palin-endorsed candidate, Rossi also creates down-ticket complications that don’t so clearly work out in the GOP’s favor.

So no, tonight at Drinking Liberally, on the eve of Rossi’s announcement, I won’t be crying in my beer. Instead, I’ll be enjoying a tall, refreshing glass of ice-cold Dino-ade in anticipation of making the most out of the opportunities Rossi’s candidacy presents me.

Curious to meet Democratic congressional challenger Suzan DelBene? Well, she’ll be at the Newport Hills chapter of Drinking Liberally tonight at the Mustard Seed, 7:00 PM, 5608 119th Ave. SE.

As for the incumbent Dave Reichert, I don’t believe he’s invincible, and I don’t believe we’re on the verge of a big red wave. An anti-incumbent wave, maybe. But not overtly anti-Democratic, at least not around these parts. And I honestly don’t believe Reichert’s no vote on HCR will help him in November.

The other day I offered a free beer to the first Seattle elected official to enthusiastically come out in support of pitching a proposal to participate in Google’s experimental fiber network. Well, Mayor Mike McGinn was the first to answer the call.

Seattle will actively seek to partner with Google in creation of a fiber network here. The city itself has many assets to bring to the partnership, including an extensive existing fiber network of over 500 miles connecting every school, college and major government building in the city. In Seattle, 88% of residents have home computers, 84% have Internet access and 74% already have Internet access faster than dial-up. Seattle is a high tech city, with many technology firms both large and small, and a culture of entrepreneurism and innovation.

Fiber-to-the-premise networks will serve as an engine for business and economic development. Seattle would be an excellent place to construct such a network because we already have a high tech industry and population.

I don’t know how much of a chance we’ll have at winning a spot in the project, but at the very least it will help focus the city’s collective mind on what we need to do to provide our residents and businesses with first-rate, high-speed broadband infrastructure… something many of our neighborhoods sadly lack.

Living only a couple blocks from a major Qwest switch, I reliably enjoy better than 5Mbps downstream via DSL, but that makes me one of the fortunate ones, and while new WiMax service from Clear is (spottily) filling the gap in some neighborhoods, there are many Seattle households that are lucky to sustain 1.5Mbps, regardless of the provider.

But 1Gbps… hell, I’d happily settle for the 20Mbps my sister in suburban Philadelphia is getting from Verizon’s FIOS service.

If Seattle wants to remain a high-tech leader, we need to build the ultra-high-speed broadband infrastructure necessary to nurture and sustain our lead. And if Mayor McGinn wants to drop by Drinking Liberally sometime to discuss his broadband plans, the beer’s on me.

Cherisse Luxa has passed away. I didn’t know Cherisse, but others did. Condolences to her family.

Andrew at NPI:

This morning, Washington’s netroots community lost one of its most wonderful and spirited activists when Cherisse Luxa, the founder of Burien Drinking Liberally, succumbed to stomach cancer. Cherisse was sixty two. She resided in the 34th LD, known for its strong and vibrant Democratic Party organization.

Cafecito at Daily Kos:

If you have ever attended Drinking Liberally, you almost certainly know of Cherisse’s incredible energy and her unstoppable drive to make our community a better place. From her decades as a King County Sheriff’s Deputy to her impressive track record as an activist an advocate, Cherisse made a huge difference, both for Burien and for the broader community.

Cherisse, like many of us, got religion with Howard Dean’s run.

Cherisse touched thousands of lives and was a role model for many of us. We will sorely miss her.

Dear Mikes,

Yeah, sure, I was kinda hard on the two of you during the primary (particularly Mike), but it’s the general election that counts, so no hard feelings, right? After all, I ultimately voted for both of you, and wrote about it (Mike and Mike), and really, what more can you ask from a blogger?

So… um… I assume I can expect the two of you to maintain that secret, city hall slush fund Mayor Nickels established a few years ago to help fund my smear campaigns while shielding him from scrutiny? $2000 cash, slipped to me once a month at Drinking Liberally, and we’ll be cool.

Best of luck running the city. I look forward to destroying your enemies.

Goldy

AP reporter Gene Johnson has an article on the conflict brewing over Washington’s medical marijuana law:

Unlike some states, Washington requires patients to grow marijuana themselves or designate a caregiver to grow it for them. For many, that’s unrealistic: They’re too sick to grow cannabis themselves and don’t have the thousands of dollars it can cost for a caregiver to set up a proper growing operation.

So they’ve devised their own schemes, claiming to meet the letter of the law in establishing collective grows or storefront dispensaries – methods that are making police and prosecutors increasingly uncomfortable.

If one wants to take a conspiratorial stance about what happened in 2008, he or she could easily conclude that the police (through a willing legislature) intentionally fought for an overly restrictive law that was too difficult for patients to comply with in order to keep arresting authorized patients and those trying to establish ways to provide them with marijuana. In fact, I’ve heard a number of activists and patients claim this both during and after the process.

I’m not sure what the real motivations were, but the outcome is clearly a failure. When I got a chance to ask Governor Gregoire a question at Drinking Liberally last fall, I asked what she’d do if authorized patients and caregivers continued to get arrested. She said that if it happened, she’d work with the local police chiefs to address it. It doesn’t appear that she had any interest in keeping that promise, and I’d be surprised if she even remembers saying it. Police and prosecutors across the state continue to haul authorized patients and providers into court, and outside of the very progressive King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg and a few other county prosecutors, the emphasis remains on finding ways to prosecute people rather than finding ways to respect the spirit of the 1998 voter initiative that initially legalized medical marijuana use in this state.

One problem right now with the law remains the fact that patients either have to grow for themselves (which for most people who have cancer or multiple sclerosis – or are confined to a wheelchair – is a challenge) or find a provider. An even bigger problem is that, according to the law, the provider cannot be someone who already provides for other patients. Because it’s much easier for someone who is already a provider to take on another patient than for a completely new person to learn how, the law is often violated. This is what happened in Spokane, as Johnson explains:

Washington’s law says that a caregiver can only provide marijuana to one patient at any one time. In Spokane this year, medical marijuana activists focused on that language in setting up a for-profit dispensary called Change.

Lawyer Frank Cikutovich said the business met legal requirements: A lone patient would enter the store, sign a document designating the shop as his or her caregiver, and buy marijuana. The agreement expired when the patient left and the next customer came in.

The business, raided on Sept. 10, rendered the “one patient, one caregiver” rule meaningless, Spokane police spokeswoman Jennifer DeRuwe said. She said there was peripheral crime associated with the dispensary, including robberies at grow sites and street sales from people who had purchased pot there.

“They’re dispensing to hundreds and thousands of people,” DeRuwe said. “The police department’s stand is, we want to get some guidance on this. We know it’s going to be up to the court system to provide us with that.”

Sadly, it should have been the legislature that provided that guidance. In last year’s attempts at revising the law, it could have been clarified to allow for patient co-ops or even dispensaries. DeRuwe’s concern about “peripheral crime” is nothing short of an absurdity, but it was one that appears to have influenced the debate in the legislature and led to the shortfalls we have today. Robberies at grow sites don’t happen because dispensaries exist. They happen because marijuana is illegal for recreational use. If DeRuwe was really concerned about the problem of grow site robberies – instead of just using it as a red herring for political cover – she’d be demanding that we establish regulations for the production and sale of marijuana for all adults who want to use it, not just the ones for whom a doctor has certified a medical need.

The failure of this state’s supposedly progressive majority to address what should have been a rather easy problem is a good warning to progressives about what could happen at the national level. Instead of using these majorities to enact real progressive legislation, the leaders in Olympia, from Frank Chopp to Governor Gregoire, have continuously pandered to special interests (in this case, the police unions) and dared the voters to kick them out for it. And they’ve generally been successful because outside of a few outliers like Toby Nixon and Dan Satterberg, most of the Republicans in this state are still too batshit to be taken seriously.

Vice President Joe Biden is starting to rattle some cages over the 2010 midterms. The Obama Administration and our Democratic Congress have a number of difficult tasks where the interests of the general public are pitted against more powerful interests – from health care to the environment to the regulation of our financial sector. I’m finding myself conflicted between the belief that many of the Republicans we still have in Congress are simply not in the fight for the general public at all and need to be defeated, and the worry that a growing Democratic majority will start acting like the complacent, useless one we have here in the other Washington and simply shy away from those difficult tasks.

Author and food activist Jill Richardson will be in Seattle tonight to speak about and sign her new book Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It. Sponsored by Drinking Liberally, Northwest Progressive Institute and Sustainable Seattle, the event will be held 8:00 – 10:00 PM at Fx McRory’s, 406 Occidental Ave. S. in Pioneer Square.

Hope to see you all there.

State Sen. Ed Murray will be stopping by Drinking Liberally tonight (8PM onwards at the Montlake Ale House), and I suppose one of the topics of conversation will likely be this:

“While I am deeply concerned for the future of our city and Michael and I are honored to have been approached by so many people and organizations we admire and respect, I am also a realist: write-in campaigns are extremely difficult, and time is short.  Also, the recognition yesterday that Referendum 71 will appear on the fall ballot galvanized my decision.

I considered a write in campaign because I was concerned that one candidate wanted to reopen a fight with the state when we need to work together. The other candidate who seeks to become our civic leader has failed to engage in civic activities including on the most basic level, voting, something Americans in the south have died for in our lifetime .

I considered running because I believe Seattle is greater than the selfish conversation in the Mayor’s race. Missing are issues and leadership on social justice. Issues of poverty and civil rights.  This campaign to date has been about one bridge and one neighborhood. Issues such as our schools, neighborhoods and diversity are missing from this debate .

I urge the candidates to broaden their messages and address the critical issues facing our city and look forward to working with one of them as our next mayor. “

Ah well. A Murray write-in campaign would have at the very least made the mayoral race a helluva lot more interesting. Now I guess I’ll have to either do the pragmatic thing and get behind one candidate or the other… or, you know, maybe just drop out for a while.

While Josh muses on the more obvious narrative of Republican Susan Hutchison’s visit to the 43rd LD Dems’ annual picnic, you know, the strategery of her showing up, I think there’s a more interesting story to be drawn from Saturday’s event, and one that comments more broadly on the cultural divide that currently separates our nation’s two major parties:  the relatively cordial manner in which Hutchison was received.

As far as I’ve heard, nobody shouted Hutchison down, accusing her of being a Nazi or a communist (or oddly, both). Nobody vandalized her car, or attempted to intimidate her by showing off their firearms. And nobody angrily yelled at her to stay away from their children.

Hutchison was accompanied by a couple of burly, t-shirted aides, but she certainly didn’t need any bodyguards, if that’s what she was thinking.  No, this gathering of very partisan Dems greeted her politely, quietly milled about as she gave her stump speech, and then chatted her up for about an hour.

And that’s not the exception that proves the rule. Ask any of the number of Republicans and even the few righty trolls who have accepted our open invitation to show up at Drinking Liberally, and they’ll attest to their friendly reception. (I mean, it’s so easy beating your guys’ rhetorical ass, why would we ever feel the need to threaten to beat your physical one?)

What we see in comparing Hutchison’s uneventful visit to a Democratic picnic versus the hostile and intentionally intimidating Republican crowds who have recently taken to storming town hall meetings, is not just a contrast in style, but a contrast in political culture. Democrats in general, and as a whole, really are more democratic, while the anti-government reactionaries who now seem to comprise the base of the Republican Party have long since forgotten the true meaning of the word they use as a party label.

It may have been savvy of Hutchison to show up at a Democratic picnic, though I doubt she earned herself any votes, but it certainly wasn’t gutsy. I can’t help but feel the opposite would be true if Dow Constantine were to make a similar surprise foray onto partisan Republican turf.

As I learned this week at Netroots Nation, some leaders lead through mere words, while some lead by example. For Drinking Liberally’s Justin Krebs, it’s definitely the latter.

Mike Lux of OpenLeft and many other progressive organizations will be at Drinking Liberally tonight, chatting it up with the locals, and plugging his new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be. From the inside flap:

The next time you hear a conservative accusing progressives (a.k.a. liberals) of being unpatriotic and anti-American, tell them this: “Progressives invented the American ideal and inspired the American Revolution. Conservatives, then known as Tories, opposed it. Since then, every major advancement in American freedom, democracy, social justice, and economic opportunity has been fostered, fought for, and won by progressives against conservative resistance. Now who’s anti-American?”

That’s my kinda rhetoric.

Join us at the Montlake Alehouse, 8PM onwards.

UPDATE:
You can listen to Mike on the third hour of today’s Dave Ross Show:

[audio:http://icestream.bonnint.net/seattle/kiro/2009/07/p_Dave_Ross_Show_20090721_11am.mp3]

I grew up about a half-mile from Cynwyd Station, and as kids, my friends and I found the train to center city Philadelphia much more convenient than relying on our parents to cart us around to movie theaters, sporting good stores, and other attractions. But it wasn’t just those of us with youthful vigor who frequently hoofed our way to the rail stop, for every morning as I prepared to walk to school, I’d see a stream of business suit clad men lugging their briefcases down the street in the other direction, some of whom routinely walked to the station from more than a mile away.

These weren’t granola crunching tree-hugging hippies. These were doctors, lawyers, businessmen and other professionals who, weather and circumstances permitting, left their cars at home in the driveway most days, not because it was the right thing to do, or the less expensive thing to do, but because it was the obvious and natural thing to do. Why battle traffic on the Schuylkill Expressway each morning when the train was a 10 minute walk away?

The commuter suburb of my youth grew up around the station, not by accident, but by design. Built in 1886, this short spur of the Pennsylvania Railroad was as much a real estate development project as it was a transit line, and that rail-centric ethos survived at least a century, before SEPTA budget woes resulted in drastically reduced schedules. The point is, people didn’t take the train because they had to, but because they wanted to, and with parking always limited at the station, many were happy to walk a mile or more for the convenience.

So when I continue to read news reports about complaints over the lack of free parking around most stations on Seattle’s soon to be opened Link Light Rail, I can’t help but shrug my shoulders. Build it, and they will walk. And if the folks who live there now aren’t willing to hoof it, over time these neighborhoods will attract new residents who will.

Which gets me thinking about my own relationship to the Seattle light rail system I’ve so passionately advocated, and how far I’m willing to walk to use it. I’ve half-jokingly complained for years about the elimination of the Graham Street station from the final plan, which would have been a mere 10-15 minute walk from house, quite possibly close enough to bump up my property value. I’ve also wistfully talked about moving into Columbia City to be walking distance both to its business district and its light rail station. But I’d never actually measured the distances myself.

As it turns out, the little map app on my iPhone says that Othello station is about a mile away, only a quarter mile further by foot than the corner of MLK Jr. & Graham, so my dog and I decided to walk it today for ourselves. At a comfortably brisk pace we clocked 18-minutes there, and 20-minutes back (climbing the hill from Rainier Ave. on the way home), and we could probably have made it a little faster but for the need to obsessively mark the path with urine, and briefly stop to pick thistle from our paws.

So, will I walk to light rail?

Well, at least for the moment, I don’t commute, so it’s kinda a moot point in the context of this discussion, but if I were a commuter, and the rail line took me reasonably close to my workplace, yeah, I’d be willing to walk a mile in each direction, weather and circumstances permitting. If it was really hot or really cold or raining very hard, I don’t know that I’d be up for that hike, and if my afterwork plans took me inconveniently off-route, I’d probably take my car. But some days—perhaps most days—I find it a reasonable distance to walk.

Of course, if my circumstances were different, a daily walk to and from the train station would be more of a no-brainer. Before our divorce, we were a one-car family, and the opportunity to save the expense of buying and insuring a second car (let alone fueling and parking it) would make a walk+rail commute all the more attractive. But as a single father, going carless in Seattle isn’t as much of an option, and thus the cost savings of commuting by rail aren’t nearly as great.

As for my recreational use of light rail, the 2-hour parking restriction presents much less of a problem, as it’s only enforced 7AM to 6PM, Mondays through Friday, leaving the spots open nights and weekends for casual hide & riders like me. Meeting folks for drinks or dinner downtown? You can freely park your car near the station starting at 4PM, and make it downtown in plenty of time for happy hour. As a moderate drinker (even when Drinking Liberally), I’d likely choose that option over hiking it home late at night.

Opponents of light rail have long criticized it as social engineering, and to some extent they’re right. Like the commuter lines of the old Pennsylvania Railroad, the South Seattle segment is proving as much a real estate development project as it is a transit line, as evidenced by the massive residential redevelopment going on along MLK Jr. Way. Mixed income houses, townhouses, apartments and condos are being built for folks who want the convenience and economy of living a reasonable walking distance to a light rail station, and as these developments expand further out from the stations, so will the notion of what a reasonable walking distance is.

If anything, these quarter-mile restricted parking zones are too small, and neighborhoods will likely clamor for their extension when hide & riders cluster along the border. And after a while, the notion of healthily walking a couple miles a day to and from work, rather than driving to and from the fitness club for your daily workout, will become as commonplace around here as it was in the commuter-rail suburb of my youth.

And the best thing is, if you don’t want to be part of this new, socially engineered, walk & ride culture, there will always be plenty of Seattle neighborhoods without it.

Seattle Times editorial columnist Bruce Ramsey stopped by Drinking Liberally last night, and I immediately groused about how a dearth of irritating editorials in recent weeks has reduced me to dumpster diving over at Crosscut. Ramsey explained that he’d just returned from vacation, and that my complaint would be remedied in the morning with an editorial he penned on trade.

He didn’t disappoint: “Anti-trade bill that would hurt Washington state trade jobs should be stopped.”

At the risk of destroying his credibility with his co-workers, I have to admit that Ramsey is my favorite Times editorial writer (though as I explained to him last night, “it’s a pretty low bar”), largely because I find his columns both readable and consistent. The latter quality I attribute to his passionate libertarianism, a passion clearly on display in today’s editorial:

The Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act makes private commerce subject to the moral imperialism of advocates who do not conduct trade and don’t care about it.

Under the bill, if a foreign trading partner’s government doesn’t have “adequate labor and environmental regulations” — the adequacy determined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government hasn’t “taken effective steps to combat and prevent private and public corruption” — the effectiveness defined by busybodies — the trade can be stopped.

If the foreign government doesn’t have “transparency” and “due process of law” to suit American tastes, the trade can be stopped.

Uh-huh. Passion… check. Consistency… check. Facts… not so much.

Putting aside his efforts to dismiss those of us who care about human rights and environmental protection as mere “busybodies” (you know, “busybodies” like the Pope), Ramsey’s passionate hyperbole substantially misrepresents a bill that doesn’t actually include the authority to “stop” anything. Rather, the stated purpose of the TRADE Act is to review existing trade agreements, draw up standards on which to base future agreements and renegotiations, and provide greater Congressional oversight of the process, its main provisions consisting of:

• Require a comprehensive review of existing trade agreements with an emphasis on economic results, enforcement and compliance and an analysis of non-tariff provisions in trade agreements.
• Spell out standards for labor and environmental protections, food and product safety, national security exceptions and remedies that must be included in new trade pacts.
• Set requirements regarding public services, farm policy, investment, government procurement and affordable medicines and compare them with components of current trade agreements.
• Require the president to submit renegotiation plans for current trade pacts prior to negotiating new agreements and prior to congressional consideration of pending agreements.
• Create a committee made up of the chairs and ranking members of each committee whose jurisdiction is affected by trade agreements to review the president’s plan for renegotiations.
• Restore congressional oversight of trade agreements.

All existing trade treaties remain in force, and this bill provides no authority to modify or “stop” them. As for future agreements, the language within the bill is far from anti-trade or heavy handed, for example, Section 4, Subsection D:

(D) provide that failures to meet the labor standards required by the trade agreement shall be subject to effective dispute resolution and enforcement mechanisms and penalties that are included in the core text of the trade agreement…

In truth, the “busybodies” Ramsey refers to are members of Congress, and even if they were to determine that a particular trading partner was, say, violating fundamental human rights (defined in the act as “the rights enumerated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights”), they still wouldn’t have the power to unilaterally “stop” the trade as Ramsey implies. Rather, under future treaties, our government’s recourse would be to pursue “effective dispute resolution.”

Hardly a draconian, anti-trade provision.

Ramsey is right that Washington is perhaps the most trade dependent state in the nation, which makes trade a sensitive subject for members of both parties. And if anybody doubts the extent to which “free traders” like Ramsey control the debate in this state, look no further than the fact that none of our state’s House delegation are among the 110 U.S. representatives who co-sponsored the TRADE Act… not even typically reliable progressives like Jim McDermott and Jay Inslee.

But Ramsey does a disservice to our state and to his readers when he reduces a 44-page bill into a 229-word, knee-jerk screed against trade restrictions of any kind:

The idea behind this bill is that commerce is bad and is making workers in America poor. Tell that to workers assembling aircraft, writing software, or moving containers on the docks.

Yeah, well, tell that to the tens of thousands of Washington workers who have seen their jobs shipped overseas to low-wage nations with lax environmental, workplace and product safety standards, and often no right to organize at all.

I appreciate that Ramsey’s objections to this bill are consistent with his steadfast libertarianism; in fact, I almost respect it. But rather than foster informed public debate on this issue, his intent appears to be to quash it, and I expect better than that from my favorite Seattle Times editorial board member.

About a month or so before the November election, Mass Transit Now communications director Alex Fryer stopped by Drinking Liberally to help push the Prop. 1 cause, and we got to talking about the state of the campaign and the media coverage of it.

Fryer, a ten-year veteran reporter for the Seattle Times before jumping ship in 2007 to work for Mayor Nickels, complained about the difficulty he was having pushing the campaign’s message to the local media.  He lamented the paucity of coverage of Prop. 1’s impact on Eastside communities, yet couldn’t find a single reporter who considered Eastside transportation issues to be their beat.

The Time’s spent years building up its Eastside bureau, Fryer recalled wistfully.  And today… nada.

Talk to communications professionals around the region, many of whom are ex-journalists themselves, and you’ll find Fryer’s frustrating experience far from isolated.  As our local media universe contracts, the opportunities for media relations contract with it, a particularly troubling trend for the political community, which has watched the size of our state political press corps shrink by as much as two-thirds over recent years.

Imagine you’re a Seattle area legislator or advocacy group attempting to garner a little hometown coverage for a particular bill that would benefit your constituency.  It wasn’t so long ago that Seattle’s print media alone had a half-dozen or more reporters and opinion writers based in Olympia during the session, plus a slew of political journalists back at home.  But today, if the Times’ Andrew Garber isn’t interested in your story, or he already has his dance card punched, you’re pretty much out of luck.

What’s the solution?  Well, I suppose communications staffers could just work harder—be more diligent, more creative, and more relentless—and I know that our state’s various progressive organizations could do a better job coordinating their message.  And, I suppose these organizations’ backers could sink more money into their communications efforts to help defray the added expense of going around the traditional media gatekeepers and straight to decision makers and the public at large.

Or, of course, the broader progressive community could come together to fund and support the creation of  independent progressive media… you know… like the kinda work we’re doing here at HA, Publicola and the JOA News Co-op.  An independent media that not only moves stories into the corporate press and helps to frame the coverage therein, but also, increasingly over time, reaches a larger and larger direct audience.  A truly independent media, that’s honest about its bias and fearless in its opinions, and never shy about biting the hands that feed it, if that’s what events dictate.

That’s what folks like Josh and I are attempting to do here with the JOA, but we can’t do it alone and we can’t do it for free.  A credible and sustainable independent media is going to have to pay real journalists to do real journalism, and until we can establish a large enough audience and revenue stream, it’s going to require a cash subsidy, pure and simple… a cash subsidy that should be coming from the backers of all those progressive organizations and candidates for whom our success would directly benefit.

Sure, that’s a pretty self-serving analysis, but if there’s a better idea out there of how to address this growing communications crisis, I’ve yet to hear it.  And as for those progressive organization communications directors concerned about protecting their own budgets and salaries from hungry vultures like me, well, I’m the least of your worries, for no amount of media relations is going to help you get your message out if there isn’t any media left to relate to.

There’s a familiar cliche about the Chinese character for “crisis” meaning “danger” plus “opportunity,” and while it’s apparently not quite true, it’s still an apt metaphor for our current communications crisis, which does indeed present a great danger to the progressive community while also presenting an opportunity to reshape the local media landscape in our favor.  But there’s another cliche that also comes to mind in describing our efforts thus far to muddle through in the face of our local media’s dramatic collapse: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”

Over the coming weeks I not only intend to expand on my thoughts about what we need to be doing differently to confront and exploit our changing media landscape, I also intend to start demonstrating this vision by example. But while it has been tremendously gratifying to hear from folks about how much they appreciate my work, at some point, some of this appreciation needs to translate into substantial financial support for me to have any hope of success.