Search Results for: vote seattle weekly

Today is primary election day in Washington. So whatever you do, get that ballot in the mail or stuffed into a ballot box at a drop-off location. Normally, I would then suggest that you hightail it to the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally for an evening of returns-watching and discussion over a drink.

This week we will not hold our weekly meeting. Washington state is still the epicenter of coronavirus in the United States, with 166 confirmed cases and 22 deaths. For times like these, it becomes prosocial to be antisocial (really, a-social).

Normally, we meet every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle starting around 8pm. With any luck we’ll be getting together again soon.

Kudos, Seattle Times: I didn’t think Civil Disagreements could get sillier. So, it’s a bit surprising that ostensible liberal Joni Balter and ostensible guy who can grow a mustache Ryan Blethen are the new faces of the thing (I guess, maybe Lynn and Bruce are on vacation). Anyhoo, here’s their first, (I guess) one. It’s super current.

Ryan, I was happy to see the Seattle City Council decided to replace the old ticky tacky Fun Forest with the new Dale Chihuly glass art pavillion [sic] at Seattle Center. I know you feel much [sic] differently. Let me make my case.

I know the vote happened on Monday, and this is a weekly feature. So, yes, this is the first time they can talk about the vote that happened. But wouldn’t people who believe they influence the debate want to talk about something before it happened? We’ve known it’s going to happen for quite some time. In fairness, I just wrote about the NLRB’s Boeing decision, so timeliness isn’t everything, but on the other hand fuck Joni Balther and Pedostach (PS, new sitcom: Balter and Pedostach, Cop show, maybe, should be a good pitch meeting). And, yes, now that you mention it, I do have questionable facial hair.

To me, Seattle Center is neither a greensward-like Central Park, nor a place completely frozen in time. The Fun Forest was truly enjoyable while it lasted. But as an attraction, the fun and the forest were slipping; rent became a problem. The whole center needs an upgrade. In the old days, the Center was an eclectic collection of venues and it remains so today. Chihuly glass adds to the ballet, opera, theater, EMP, the fountain and everything else.

Look, it was fun, it was enjoyable, it was great for children. But it’s no glass whatever. Anyway, here’s my favorite paragraph:

I really like Chihuly and am not bothered by the fact that he shows and — gasp, sells — his stuff in Vegas, Venice and many other places. He is a one-of-a-kind talent who has trained many disciples.

Gasp. Straw men feel so offended that he sells his art in Venice! And he’s super unique, but has many, many, many people who he’s trained to be just like him.

Anyway, then Ryan Blethen says Joni is right, but he’ll be sad. Civil Disagreements, folks.

In their weekly update, the Washington State Labor Council makes a lengthy and earnest plea to have the worker privacy bill considered this session. Readers may recall the proposal was killed after Gov. Chris Gregoire and Legislative leaders referred an internal labor email to the state patrol, which quickly concluded nothing criminal had happened.

The labor council is asking for someone to take responsibility for all of this. From the WSLC web site:

When a powerful legislative leader unilaterally quashes a bill, that leader is expected to explain his or her actions. Part of being a leader is having the courage of your convictions to defend your actions.

You might kill a bill because you personally oppose it. Then it’s your responsibility to stand up and explain why you blocked a vote. If there are consequences, accept them.

You might also kill a bill for political reasons, thinking you are doing your “members” a favor by helping them avoid taking a tough vote that involves powerful constituencies who disagree. Then it’s your responsibility to stand up and explain why you, as the leader, chose sides. Why did you side with those who wanted to block a vote, over those who wanted to allow a vote?

In the case of the Worker Privacy Act, we’re still waiting for somebody to stand up, accept responsibility and explain his or her actions.

Meanwhile, Josh over at Publicola suggests that there is some amount of unhappiness in the House caucus, partially over this issue. I can’t honestly assess the happiness of the House, living down here in my Clark County hermitage, but there seem to be some legitimate criticisms. To be fair to leadership, the risk of a wingnut-type circle jerk in reverse is something that must be guarded against.

It’s not necessary nor desirable that every progressive bill come to the floor. I don’t know jack about the details of legislative procedure, but common sense tells everyone that out of hundreds or thousands of bills only a few will make it.

And that’s why people organize to advocate for legislation. Business does it, labor does it, and left-handed fans of Rosemary chicken do it. And that’s fine, that’s the way the system works.

But it’s also worth recognizing that most regular people have no advocate sending flowers to the floor, and it’s incumbent on everyone in the much-maligned “system” to take into account these folks. Easier said than done, of course, but killing bills that have wide-spread popular support without a vote is not very democratic. Especially when you call the cops.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever voted by mail before, and so like a lot of inveterate poll voters it was hard for me to approach this election day any differently than previous ones.  But it is different, and if I don’t get my ballot postmarked today, my vote just won’t count.  And considering the subject of today’s special election, if my vote doesn’t count today, it just may not in the future either.

This is an election for Elections Director, and if you need any evidence of how stupid it is to elect a position that requires very specific technical expertise, just look at some of the names on the ballot:  gadfly, a liar, a right-wing gun nut looking for a six-figure salary….

And then there’s our friend David Irons Jr., the Republican front-runner, a raging bullshitter with a documented history of financial mismanagement and abusive behavior.  But even more pertinent to this election, he’s also a man with a documented history of violating our state’s election laws:

From: Mark Banks
Date: January 25, 2009 1:12:43 pm PST
To: letters@redmond-reporter.com, letters@sammamish-reporter.com, letters@seattleweekly.com, letters@woodinville.com, letters@bellevue.com, letters@duvall.com, letters@covington.com, letters@seattletimes.com
Subject: Special Election of King County Elections Director

Dear Editor,

I am extremely disturbed to see that David Irons, Jr. is running for the important position of King County Elections Director.  David Irons is a thief who I personally caught red handed steeling campaign signs in Sammamish in 2002, when he was running for King County Commissioner.  I was driving by when I saw him dressed in his Sunday best climbing over the road barrier to pick up his opponent’s signs and throwing them in the ditch.  I had heard stories of him steeling signs and loading up his van with them in a previous election, but this was the first time I saw it for myself.  I stopped and talked with him and demanded that he climb down the gully to retrieve the signs from the blackberry bushes, which he finally did.   Do we honestly want a man who would stoop so low to achieve personal political gain in a day and age when election fraud is rampant?

Mark Banks
Redmond WA

You want your elections managed by an unethical, partisan hothead?  Vote for Irons.  But if you want a dispassionate, experienced professional in the office of Elections Director, vote for Sherril Huff.

And by all means, get your ballot in the mail today.

There will be some gnashing of teeth by the Washington State Republicans to this July 3rd press release from Governor Gregoire:

Governor Chris Gregoire today designated the Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) as a voter registration assistance agency and directed the agency to appoint a voter registration assistance officer, efficiently help citizens register to vote and work with the Secretary of State’s office to ensure compliance with established voter registration procedures.

“It is one of the primary duties of government to make available to all citizens the opportunity to register to vote and, if needed, provide registration assistance,” said Governor Gregoire. “Our social service agency serves a diverse group of people every day and therefore is an ideal place to help more Washingtonians register to vote.”

Governor Gregoire also encouraged all state agencies to provide on their web sites a link to the Secretary of State’s voter registration page and to consider other ways in which they might support and promote voter registration.
[…]

This is the way government ought to work. It should take concrete steps to maximize opportunities for all eligible citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote. It is curious, then, that over the last decade the Republican Party has increasingly become the party of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. (Luke Esser looks prescient with his 20-year-old disenfranchisement satire.)

We saw the Republican vote suppression in action days before the 2005 election when Lori Sotelo (apparently inspired by a Karl Rove briefing, filed an error-prone series of voter challenges. Subsequently, the Washington State laws were changed to prevent such abuse.

Under the worst of circumstances, the Republican-sponsored disenfranchisement becomes operational through a Republican-controlled government…. In 2000, we saw a massive, and error prone disenfranchisement operation undertaken in Florida, under the supervision of Secretary of State Katherine Harris—an operation that almost certainly swung the presidential election by inappropriately purging thousands of African Americans from the voter rolls. A US Commission on Civil Rights report summarized it this way:

…poorly designed efforts to eliminate fraud, as well as sloppy and irresponsible implementation of those efforts, disenfranchise legitimate voters and can be a violation of the VRA. Florida’s overzealous efforts to purge voters from the rolls, conducted under the guise of an anti-fraud campaign, resulted in the inexcusable and patently unjust removal of disproportionate numbers of African American voters from Florida’s voter registration rolls for the November 2000 election.
[…]

African American voters were placed on purge lists more often and more erroneously than Hispanic or white voters. For instance, in the state’s largest county, Miami-Dade, more than 65 percent of the names on the purge list were African Americans, who represented only 20.4 percent of the population. Hispanics were 57.4 percent of the population, but only 16.6 percent of the purge list; whites were 77.6 percent of the population but 17.6 percent of those purged.
Florida easily could have, and should have, done much more to protect the voting rights of African Americans and other Floridians.

(They also found other ways that African American voters were disproportionately disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.)

On the face of it, the Republican problem seems to be paranoia, with the biggest cheerleader of paranoia being Karl Rove. Don’t you believe it. If there is anything that Republican strategists learned from the 2000 election is that disenfranchising voters works for Republicans! Karl Rove almost certainly knows he is feeding the Republican masses a load of horseshit.

Republican voter fraud “paranoia” is really theatre in two acts, designed to disenfranchise subpopulations that vote Democratic.

The first act shakes the confidence of ordinary voters in the election system—that is, it spreads paranoia through unfounded fears of widespread (presumably Democratic) election fraud.

We certainly saw this fear-mongering played out in Washington State in 2004. During the election contest trial, Republican lawyers opened with a bold statement about how they would prove election fraud. The trial proceeded without any evidence of election fraud being offered. Judge Bridges Oral Decision stated:

There is no evidence that anybody associated with any of the candidates in the governor’s race had anything to do with causing the errors. There is no evidence that has been produced in this Court to suggest that the errors resulted from partisan bias. During the 2004 general election, the various polling sites across the State were populated by inspectors, judges, Accuvote judges, observers, attorneys and the media. No testimony has been placed before the Court to suggest fraud or intentional misconduct. Election officials attempted to perform their responsibilities in a fair and impartial manner. There is no evidence before the Court to question ballot security as to those ballots actually counted.

The second act in the G.O.P. theatre is to make registration and/or voting more difficult for “certain voters.” That would be the poor, people of color, and people living in urban environments. You know, various schemes to cancel registrations, laws to require photo IDs at the polls, that sort of thing. These gimmicks particularly hit poor people of color—people that some Republicans believe shouldn’t even have a right to vote.

That is why Gregoire’s memo will cause some political consternation and constipation among state Republicans. We all know who uses DSHS: the same people Republicans build gated communities to keep out.

The good news is, Geov Parrish now has more time on his hands to devote to blogging. The bad news is, that’s because he just gave notice to the Seattle Weekly that he will no longer write for the paper.

In a letter sent out to friends and associates, Parrish explains his decision:

This morning I informed Seattle Weekly’s new Managing Editor, Mike Seely, that effective immediately I will no longer write for Seattle Weekly. I like and respect Mike, and wish him great success in his new job. I regret having made his immediate challenges that much more difficult. However, in recent discussions with him and with corporate owner Village Voice Media’s Executive Associate Editor, Andy Van De Voorde, particularly in the wake of the recent departures of Editor-in-Chief Skip Berger, Managing Editor Chuck Taylor, and Political Editor George Howland, it became clear that my journalistic priorities were not compatible with VVM’s current and future plans for Seattle Weekly. For this and other reasons, I feel it most appropriate to move on immediately.

Hmm. Parrish, Berger, Howland, Taylor and several other key employees have all left the Weekly in the wake of the New Times/VVM “merger.” That’s pretty much the purge we all expected. It’s going to be a dramatically different publication.

Howland has reportedly landed a job with Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata’s office, and Berger tells me he’s looking forward to exploring new opportunities. As for Parrish, well, he needs a job:

So here’s where the “help” portion of this note comes in: I now need a job. I have a Master’s Degree in Political Science and East Asian Studies, and nearly 30 years of experience in both media (primarily print, radio, and online, both in providing content and on the business side) and in progressive political organizing. I have been based in Seattle for the last 16 of these years, and would like to stay here. With the loss of Seattle Weekly, my remaining paid media work is national in scope, but I am comfortable tackling global or local issues, or both. I am most interested in either further media work (national or local, and either print, radio, online, or some combination thereof, doing administrative, editing, and/or content work), progressive political work, or reentering the nonprofit world. Further details regarding my experience, skills, and/or priorities are available for the asking.

I hope Geov doesn’t mind me reprinting his private want ad, but that’s the only help I have to offer. In fact, if you have two jobs, I could use a little income too.

I spend an awful lot of time entertaining and informing my loyal readers, and I don’t ask much in return: a little beer money, the occasional fawning e-mail… and of course, your blind obedience in voting the following categories in the Seattle Weekly’s “Best of Seattle” poll:

3. Best local talk radio host: David Goldstein
8. Best local website: Pacific Northwest Portal
9. Best local blog: HorsesAss.org
11. Best activist/hell raiser: David Goldstein
14. Best scandal: Dino Rossi’s meritless election contest
15. Best local cause: ending homelessness
16. Best reform we need: a state income tax
42. Best fish market: Tim Eyman

The deadline is today, at 5 PM, so if you haven’t already done so… cast your ballot now.

Yeah, I know I’ve already asked you once before, and this shameless act of self-promotion is incredibly childish and petty… but then, I never claimed not to be childish and petty. The folks at (un)Sound Politics asked their readers to vote a slate, and frankly I just don’t want to give them the satisfaction of winning. Do you?

Of course you’re always free to vote your conscience, but could you really live with yourself if that lying sack of shit (u)SP won best blog?

The Seattle Times reports today that the Rossi camp is complaining about a number of rejected provisional ballots that were found to have had their envelopes opened. Interesting. But I actually chuckled at the article’s lead:

Republicans yesterday found what they say is a new reason to question King County’s handling of ballots cast in the November election.

Come on… we all know the Republicans have only one reason to question King County Elections… it’s good politics.

This is a particularly stupid issue, and shows how desperately they are grasping at rhetorical straws. Generally, provisional ballots are left sealed in their security envelopes unless they are verified. But KC Elections spokeswoman Bobbie Egan explained that the envelopes in question were opened under standard procedure, to determine whether voters had used ballots appropriate to their home precincts. Most provisional ballots don’t have to be opened, because the outside envelope includes enough notation to indicate the type of ballot.

“Procedures were followed,” Egan said. “We’re not hiding anything. This is no smoking gun. This is something that both parties had full knowledge of during the 15-day window after Election Day.”

She said the process “was highly scrutinized by party observers during this time, and it is absolutely ridiculous that they waited to politicize this process five months after the election. There were no requests by the dozens of party observers to change procedures during the time these ballots were handled.”

Sheryl Moss, certification-and-training-program manager for the secretary of state, said neither state nor federal law prohibits opening provisional-ballot envelopes before voters’ eligibility is determined.

Provisional ballots have less secrecy than other ballots, Moss said, because election workers are required to verify that the voter’s votes are counted only for candidates or issues he or she is eligible to vote on.

Of course, GOPolitburo Chair Chris Vance isn’t mollified:

“There’s no good possible explanation for it,” Vance said.

Um… there is a good explanation for it, and both Egan and Moss gave it. The envelopes were opened according to procedure and law, under the scrutiny of observers from both parties. For Vance to imply that there is something shady about this, is to imply fraud… and that is exactly what that shameless, lying bastard is implying.

Well… prove it.

But then, while Republicans have quite skillfully hurled allegations, actually proving things isn’t exactly their strong suit. No wonder Dino Rossi’s attorneys filed a brief yesterday in Chelan County, in which they make the absurd contention that when it comes to their suspect list of alleged felons, the burden should fall on the Democrats to prove that they are not illegal voters… an argument so outrageous, you’d think Stefan was leading their legal team. (And why not… he’s a self-proclaimed expert at everything else.)

In any case, such a contention is wholly unsupported by RCW 29.A.08.810, which clearly states:

Registration of a person as a voter is presumptive evidence of his or her right to vote at any primary or election, general or special.

And Judge Bridges further enunciated this basic principle — that the burden of proof falls on the challengers — when he stated:

Our Supreme Court has observed that election officers are presumed to have complied with the duties required of them in an honest and careful manner. That was the Quigley case. And also in Quigley the Court noted that the returns of any election official are entitled to the presumption of regularity….

Perhaps his attorneys and party officials misled Rossi into believing he actually stood a chance of prevailing in court, but whatever his personal motivation, his surrogates have clearly been more focused on the public relations battle than the legal one.

Anybody who has ever worked on the giving or receiving end of a well-planned PR campaign can see that the steady stream of GOP allegations and photo ops are part of an ambitious strategy to consistently hit a weekly news cycle. Sometimes they are fortunate to have real news fill the gap — like the 94 uncounted absentee ballots — but most of the media flaps have been entirely manufactured. Slade Gorton making an ass out of himself demanding a criminal investigation… accusations that Cheryl Scott can’t be trusted because she’s (gasp) contributed to Democrats in a heavily Democratic state… mock outrage over provisional ballot envelopes Republican observers quietly watched being opened five months ago… these have all been neatly penciled in on a media calendar pinned to the cubicle wall of some Rossi PR consultant.

I have no doubt that early on, blinded by an irrational fear and hatred of “the other,” some GOP operatives actually believed that if they looked hard enough, they would surely find conclusive evidence of a stolen election. But that hope has long since faded for all but the most faithful rank and file. What started as specific charges of Democratic corruption and disenfranchised military voters has gradually morphed into the vague and inchoate message that the election was a “total mess.”

The Republican propaganda machine attempts to paint this Jackson Pollock like image of an election gone awry, by splattering allegations here, or revealing them in dribs and drabs there. But to have a complete and accurate picture of this election, it must be remembered that no matter how many errors are discovered, on however many different occasions — and no matter how torturously long and twisted is the public narrative revealing these errors — they all occurred during the same 15-day period, under the intense scrutiny of the media, and observers from both parties.

It may fuel the Republican PR campaign to focus on when the errors were discovered or revealed to the public. But the only questions that really matter are: How many errors occurred? Did they change the outcome of the election? How did they happen? And how can we prevent them in the future?

Everything else is bullshit.

I thought I’d provide a link to George Howland’s column in the current Seattle Weekly: “The Republicans Blow It“.

While I personally hold a slightly less cynical view of this election, I thought Howland hit the nail on the head in comparing the strategies that ultimately shaped Christine Gregoire’s victory in the hand recount:

This turnaround wasn’t happenstance. The Democrats played a brilliant endgame, aggressively hunting for votes that had been incorrectly disqualified, while the GOP focused on trying to ferret out fraud that wasn’t evident.

As it so happens, these competing strategies were clearly represented in the blog wars over this election. I embraced the “count every vote” mantra early on, not only because I genuinely believed it the right thing to do, but out of confidence that if we counted every ballot cast by a legally registered voter, Gregoire would surely come out ahead. Meanwhile, our friends over at (un)Sound Politics callously dismissed voters with poorly marked ballots or illegible signatures as unworthy of the franchise… and have instead focused their prodigious efforts on unsound allegations of fraud, corruption and gross incompetence. As Howland points out, these two very different approaches stem from longstanding philosophical differences.

For decades, Democratic electioneering philosophy has been turnout

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After giving the first whack to RNC hatchetgal Collin Levey, the Seattle Times today officially joined the scrum over disappointing test scores at charter schools. [The debunking politics of charter schools]

The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress report add nothing to the debate on charter schools.

Yeah… especially if you don’t report it.

In case you get all your “news” from the Seattle Times, (and thus have no idea what we’re talking about,) the NY Times broke a story earlier this weekly (quickly picked up by the Seattle P-I and Tacoma News Tribune) that Education Department statistics show fourth graders at charter schools lag half a year behind similar students at traditional public schools.

Of course, keeping your readers ignorant makes it so much easier to refute the study in an editorial. For example, the Seattle Times attempts to discount the results as being an unfair comparison:

Charter schools are concentrated in urban, often poor, areas. Many students were unsuccessful in the public schools. After years of being academically behind, they are now playing catch-up. Yet, the study compares their achievement with their public-school counterparts. It is an unfair, premature comparison.

But the study was careful to compare rotten apples to rotten apples. As the NY Times noted, “in almost every racial, economic and geographic category, fourth graders attending charter schools are outperformed by their peers in traditional public schools.”

On average, charter school students are performing worse than students at the schools they transfered out of. But to defend their long standing support of charter schools, the Seattle times flips the analysis on its head:

Pronouncements regarding their academic performance are more telling about the schools the children came from than about the charter schools they’re in.

Oh please…!

Still, much of the Seattle Times editorial is measured, even reasonable. Of course there may be extenuating circumstances that influenced the test results, and of course it is too early in the charter school experiment to judge it one way or the other.

But proponents of charter schools have loudly touted them as a superior, free market alternative — offering nothing but anecdotes to back up their claims — so I must disagree with the Seattle Times editorial board. National test results showing charter school students lagging behind does add something very important to the national and local debate: a dose of reality.

Washington voters have wisely chosen a cautious approach to charter schools, and I expect they’ll do so again this November by rejecting R-55.

A small step, to be sure, but the City Council voted 8-1 in favor of asking the state to let Seattle and other cities have rent control. I guess the next step would be some legislator from the city introducing it in the next session. Who would do that? Also, with a GOP state senate, I’m not sure what path that would take.

Still, this may be a thing to push Seattle (and non-Seattle, rent is high in a lot of places) elected officials further to the left. It’s a concrete thing if people support something in the legislature.

Also, remember when Judy Nicastro pushed for this sort of thing in the mind 90’s and all the political insider types just assumed nothing could ever happen? Fun times.

You know those targets left outside the League of Women Voters offices? It’s all an elaborate ruse, claims professional gun-nut Alan Gottlieb!

“Experienced gun owners have questioned whether or not this was actually the work of anyone even slightly familiar with firearms,” Gottlieb said, intimating the incident may have been a publicity stunt. “Rather, it seems more likely to be a stunt perpetrated by proponents of 594 seeking attention. It’s the kind of juvenile prank that only anti-gun elitists would find credible.

Right. It’s exactly the kinda juvenile stunt we’ve come to expect from the League of Women Voters! That, and delicious home-baked strudel.

Gottlieb, a convicted felon, has made a fortune from his Bellevue-based gun “advocacy” groups. So it’ll be kinda sweet to see I-594 passed in his own backyard.

With the Seattle City Council finally scheduled to vote on proposed taxi and TNC (Lyft, Sidecar, uberX) regulations today at 2 pm (really, this time), I thought it appropriate to post some comments from an actual taxi owner. Taxi owners have without a doubt been the most reviled stakeholders throughout this entire debate, cast by TNC boosters (and some for-hire drivers) as a cabal of greedy medallion-hoarders, sucking the lifeblood from immigrant drivers while assuring crappy service.

Responding to my coverage in The Stranger, one of these allegedly greedy drivers (who wishes to remain unnamed to protect his music career) emailed me with his personal story:

Just want to thank y’all for your coverage on the taxi v tnc issue. Honestly it’s where I’m getting most of my information.

Nowadays I’m temporarily making a living with music & have rented out my cab, watching in panic as my future job (can’t survive on music in the long term) and planned retirement crumble away to dust, and it’s even worse for the guy leasing my cab right now, who can’t make the payments or support his refugee family. Let’s just say it’s very personal for us.

Last time I was in Seattle I was shocked to see hipster oligarch David Mienert opining on the topic in some article, not sure if it was with y’all or the Weekly, but clearly there must be a shortage of expert opinions if someone is turning to him. If you ever need an inside perspective just holler, I’ve been in this business for a tedious eighteen years, drove for Broadway, Greytop, Orange & finally Yellow before buying my own taxi.

And if you think this cab owner’s story is an outlier, think again. “There is this myth out there that a few people own all the taxi cabs,” Green Cab general manager Chris Van Dyk tells me, “but the vast majority of taxi cabs are individually owned.” Van Dyk, a longtime industry insider, says that there is only one owner in the city who owns more than 50 cabs, and only about 25 who own more than five. At Yellow Cab—the largest taxi association in the city—Van Dyk estimates that there are about 370 owners of Yellow’s 559 cabs.

Of course, there are many more drivers than owners. The costs of owning and operating a cab are so high that they require 24/7 operation to provide a return on investment, so every owner leases out his cab for at least one 12-hour shift a day. In addition to purchasing a medallion (which went for as much as $140,000 just two years ago) and a $30,000 car, the musician/cab-owner above estimates his recurring costs to be:

• $600/month commercial taxi  insurance
• $550/quarter for Labor & Industries insurance ($225 per driver)
• $170/week to be a part of a taxi association
• $1000/year in licensing & inspection fees to the city, county and state

Plus, you know, gas, maintenance and depreciation. Van Dyk says that 24/7 operation puts about 100,000 miles a year on the typical taxi, meaning the vehicle is totally depreciated after just three years. That comes to $10,000 a year in recurring depreciation costs. And that doesn’t begin to count the steadily depreciating value of taxi medallions, which are reportedly now selling for half what hey did just a couple years ago, if you can find a buyer at all.

Lyft, Sidecar, and uberX currently bear none of these costs but for some indeterminate cost for insurance coverage. The drivers do bear the cost for gas, maintenance, and depreciation, though the part-timers may not fully appreciate the total tally.

“Imagine for a moment how much we could lower the taxi leases and lower the customer fares if we had less fixed costs,” our musician/cab-owner writes. “Alternately,  imagine how much  the fares would rise in UberX if these same business costs were applied to them?”

It is ironic that some of the same people arguing that a $15 minimum wage would crush struggling small businesses, have absolutely no empathy for the hundreds of small business people in the taxi industry—most of them current or former drivers, and many of them immigrants—who have sunk their life savings into purchasing a medallion and a cab, only to have their livelihoods ripped out from under them by the illegal operations of the TNCs.

It is that uneven playing field that the council is expected to at least partially address this afternoon.

– Mark Kleiman has won the contract to be the main consultant for the implementation of I-502. Like most drug law reformers, I’ve had strong disagreements with him, but I think he can be a good fit for this role. And this is yet another foot forward in legitimizing what the voters have demanded, a legal and regulated market for marijuana that parallels alcohol in many ways.

– Representative Chris Hurst (D-Crazytown) has decided that I-502 needs some fixing. Amazingly, we agree on one aspect, his desire to have the 1000ft rule reduced to 500ft. And we agree over why (because it will likely push more marijuana retail outlets into the suburbs). We just disagree over why that’s a problem. But for all else, I have little regard for what Hurst thinks, since he’s the reason we had to pass this thing as a voter initiative in the first place. If he wanted to provide input on this initiative, he had his chance last winter when it first went to the legislature. He didn’t, so maybe next time, instead of being a whiny asshole after the fact, he’ll do his job in the first place.

– The Seattle Times editorial board is absolutely right to criticize Washington’s Congressional delegation for failing to be more vocal in support of I-502. The voters of this state overwhelmingly passed this initiative, yet neither Senator (nor even Jim McDermott!) has spoken out to see that it be implemented without federal interference.

– Some community members in Rainier Valley are upset at the large number of dispensaries that have set up shop there recently. There’s an easy solution to this – just wait. Dispensaries currently use a very creative interpretation of the 10-member rule (when you’re there obtaining medicine, you become a member, and when you leave you stop being a member). For the time being, law enforcement (particularly in Seattle) has little interest in challenging them. However, once I-502 is implemented and there are state-licensed retail outlets, I’m betting that the hammer will come down on the folks who try to stick with the “collective garden with a storefront” model. Especially if they’re not conforming with the 1000ft rule in I-502, which requires all retail outlets to be 1000ft from a school, park, and other places where children congregate.

– A Seattle entrepreneur is planning to turn a vacant Pacific County sawmill into a marijuana production facility. I think it can be somewhat overstated how much the marijuana industry alone can help the economy, but it’s still great to see it might allow for the re-purposing of old facilities and bringing new jobs to this state’s small towns.

Nina Shapiro in the Seattle Weekly writes about Norm Stamper’s regrets about I-502:

“I now question whether Washington state’s initiative needed to be as restrictive as it is,” Stamper says.

One of the restrictions he’s referring to is the initiative’s dui provision, which establishes a so-called “per-se” standard that would result in a conviction for anyone found to have 5 nanograms of active THC (a compound found in marijuana). This provision was the subject of fierce controversy during the campaign, with some activists arguing that pot affects people differently, so it doesn’t make sense to set one standard for impairment. Medical marijuana activists also insisted that the provision would essentially render them unable to drive because of all the THC in their bloodstream from regular use.

One of my biggest concerns about the DUI provision wasn’t even so much the language itself, but the fact that it could serve as a foothold towards a “bi-partisan consensus” that our existing DUI laws aren’t sufficient and that stoned driving is some new and unique challenge that we have to deal with. It isn’t. But with the ONDCP sounding the alarm about it, it’s easier for them to point to drug law reform activists who’ve exaggerated the danger in order to open the door to even worse provisions. Seeing that Stamper (and Rep. Goodman) both recognize the need to fix the DUI provisions is a good sign that we might not slide down that slippery slope.

Shapiro makes another important point about the DUI provisions in I-502:

But here’s the thing: Colorodo’s successful legalization measure, Amendment 64, didn’t have any dui provision at all. It also allows limited home-grows (six plants, to be exact). And yet, Stamper points out, that amendment passed by a “very, very healthy” margin, with 55 percent of voters giving it the thumbs up–almost the exact same as Washington’s more restrictive initiative.

I’ve been very critical of New Approach Washington over this point, but I still have a ton of respect for the work they did to get this passed. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know that including the DUI provision was a mistake, but it was an understandable one. Only a fool expects perfection in any voter initiative. And now other states can learn from our experience and win the next battle.