Goldy

One of the issues debated at last night’s 37th LD Dems meeting was a resolution supporting Mayor Mike McGinn’s decision to suspend the city’s ban on all-day parking lots near Link Light Rail stations. Only it wasn’t really debated, per se… more like passed unanimously without much discussion, let alone dissent

I was kinda surprised, as one of the purposes of the ban is to prevent the neighborhoods surrounding the stations from becoming destinations for park and riders. The purpose of light rail, after all, is more to get people out of their cars than it is to save folks a few bucks on downtown parking, and paving the surrounding properties over with parking lots does little to serve the local community.

But while I agree with the intentions of the ban, there’s something to be said for being flexible, and with many development projects on hold due to the bad economy, and local businesses struggling to make ends meet, a temporary lift of the ban only makes sense. As Martin Duke aptly explains at Seattle Transit Blog:

The reason to oppose park and rides is that they cost a lot of public money ($40k a space in some cases) for not a lot of riders, and because they take up valuable space that could be used for more vibrant development.  In some cases, people who park might otherwise have walked, taken the bus, or biked to the station.

Here we have private lots that aren’t costing a dime of tax money, and are in fact generating parking tax revenue; an abundance of empty gravel pits around all Rainier Valley stations, so that there’s no shortage of TOD locations; and of course, a small parking fee to limit users to those who have really bad bus transfers, live too far to walk, and are strongly disinclined to bike.  It’s a perfect situation.

In fact, anything that gets more people using light rail short term will be good for light rail long term. Just as long as we don’t turn the Rainier Valley into a permanent desert of park and ride lots.

I soldiered my way through the 37th LD Dems monthly meeting last night, a grueling three-plus hour affair that helps to explain why it’s so difficult to bring young blood into these sort of organizations. It’s not that the topics of discussion weren’t for the most part interesting or worthy, and it’s not like I didn’t learn anything from the debate, it’s just that the proceedings would have been much more enjoyable had they been conducted in half the time, and under the influence of caffeine and/or beer.

Sitting next to me near the back of the room was a brand spanking new Precinct Committee Officer who, while one of the youngest people in the room, I’m guessing was still past the age beyond which Jerry Rubin warned us never to trust. Well into the third hour of proceedings I asked him if he had ever actually attended an LD meeting before agreeing to become a PCO, and he said no, that he had only just been recruited last month at the LD Christmas party.

“There was drinking,” he said, attempting to explain his predicament, “it was fun.” I imagined him one of the wayward boys in Pinocchio, transforming into a donkey after a raucous day on Pleasure Island. Later that evening, after he and the other new PCOs were officially appointed by acclamation, I congratulated him by leaning in and muttering “sucker.”

Of course I jest, in that I really do appreciate the hard and necessary work the party regulars perform, and I know plenty of PCOs who find their duties rewarding, gratifying and even enjoyable. I mean, what better way to get to know your neighbors than to knock on their doors and actually talk with them?

And when it comes to incessant rambling about politics, I rank with the worst of them: for all my whining about the length of last night’s meeting, I found myself standing in the rain outside the hall past midnight, continuing the discussions with a couple of my fellow LD members.

But then, I’m self-aware enough to know that when it comes to my fascination with politics, I’m weird, and that if we want to connect with voters, we really don’t want a party populated solely by weirdos like me. Imagine your average, civic-minded twenty-or-thirty-something showing up at an LD meeting, only to stumble out bleary eyed three and half hours later. Now imagine your average, civic-minded twenty-or-thirty-something coming back a second time. Hard to imagine, huh?

And yet, that’s exactly what we need to do if we want to maintain and expand the vitality and diversity of our party.

House minority floor leader Doug Ericksen (R-42, Ferndale) says that if Seattle can’t make up its mind on how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, Eastern Washington would be happy to take our money:

“As someone who actually understands that the Eastside means the east side of the state, not the east side of the lake, I get a little bit irritated with the amount of money we spend waiting for Seattle to make a decision on transportation projects,” Ericksen said. “We’d be happy to take that $3 billion and spread it to the rest of Washington.”

Notice how he doesn’t say “We’d be happy to take that $3 billion and use it to balance the state budget.” No, he’d just be happy to take money from an economically vital Seattle project and spread it around the red counties, whether it’s needed there or not.

Huh. I guess that’s what Republicans mean when they describe themselves as fiscal conservatives.

When I set out to write bluntly about my own health care coverage woes in the individual market, it’s not like I didn’t anticipate the predictable, knee-jerk response from my hateful trolls: “Get a job!”

In fact, this was exactly the response I was looking for, as nothing demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-reform crowd more than their refusal to recognize how our employment-based health insurance system distorts the market and stifles innovation.

For example, just take a look at some of my own varied career choices.

I graduated college in 1985 with a B.A. in History and a passion for musical theater, only to stumble into a proto-Dot.Com career years before the buzzword became vogue. Hired by Philadelphia-based Information Companies of America for the position of “20th Century Renaissance Man” (yes, that was the title I put on my cover letter), my original duties ranged from writing movie reviews to developing and maintaining online versions of health industry publications such as The Medical Letter, and the always entertaining Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

During my three-plus years at ICOA and its sister company, US Fax, I quickly rose to the somewhat inflated title of Vice President of Product Development, in which role I wrote the functional specs for a consumer-oriented online service that was never developed, and the world’s first store-and-forward fax mail and broadcast system that was, but which was never fully brought to market. It was an exciting, creative job that paid well and provided generous health benefits. In fact it paid so well compared to my frugal, post-college lifestyle, that I soon had enough savings to leave Philadelphia and the world of full-time employment to pursue my dream of writing Broadway musicals.

Moving to New York with my songwriting partner (he music, me words), I spent the next few years writing, rewriting and workshopping what eventually became The Don Juan and the Non Don Juan, a chamber musical that with the distance of years I can honestly say was only slightly worse than its title. The show opened in December of 1991 at the respected Vineyard Theater in Manhatten, only to close for good three weeks later. That’s right, I am the co-author of an Off-Broadway musical flop, and I’ve got the bad review in the New York Times to prove it. Not to mention the bad review in the New York Post, the New York Daily News, and so on.

Oh well. That’s show biz.

During my time in New York, and with the help of my songwriting partner, who was also a software engineer, I expanded my technical skills, taking on odd consulting and programming contracts to supplement my dwindling savings. Together we also developed the world’s first rhyming dictionary software, initially for my own use, but eventually with the goal of finding an interested publisher. After following my new wife to her native Seattle in 1992, she and I decided to publish the software ourselves, and in April of 1993 the newly redesigned A Zillion Kajillion Rhymes hit the shelves to generally positive acclaim. And yes, I have the good review in the New York Times to prove it.

That’s what you call irony.

I don’t necessarily recommend starting a business on credit cards, but that’s what we did, and over the next few years we went on to develop and publish upgraded versions for Mac, Windows and eventually Palm OS, a companion cliche and catchphrase thesaurus, and our best-selling, if most short-lived product, a space-simulator shoot-em-up game for Macintosh, whimsically titled Eat My Photons! At its peak, Eccentric Software had one employee in addition to ourselves, and several hundred thousand dollars a year in sales within the U.S. and abroad. We hired a local designer to create our packaging and sales literature, contracted with Trojan Lithograph in Kent to print, duplicate, assemble, warehouse and ship our product to resellers, and did tens of thousands of dollars of business annually with Auburn based Zones Inc., which for years served a dual role as both our biggest customer and our biggest vendor. (You didn’t think the ads in those software catalogs were free, did you?)

As a mom and pop startup we pumped our fair share of business into the local economy, but while we never operated at a loss, we also never made enough money to pay ourselves a decent wage, let alone pay off our capital investment. By 1997, after Zones unexpectedly stiffed us over a holiday promotion gone bad, we had accumulated a six-figure personal debt.

Oh well. That’s capitalism.

Still, it’s hard to consider either venture a total loss. Sure, I guess my musical flopped Off-Broadway, but how many aspiring writers even get that far? Few artists ever achieve commercial or critical success, and those who do usually do so only after years of struggle. Without so many writers, performers and directors willing to try and fail, there would be no Broadway, no Hollywood, no multi-billion dollar entertainment industry at all.

Likewise, few start-up businesses survive beyond a handful of years, yet even in “failing” contribute greatly to the economy, often while preparing their founders and employees for future success. My then-wife, a former magazine editor, took the skills and experience gained from our business and turned them into a more lucrative job at a young Real Networks, whose stock options (and health benefits) helped us pay off our debt, while granting me the luxury of enjoying the first few years of my daughter’s life as a stay at home dad.

And while our rhyming dictionary software never made us rich, it was more than a little gratifying to know that so many successful songwriters were using it to make their lyrics better. Indeed, for a number of years straight, there wasn’t a single Tony, Oscar, Grammy or CMA presentation that didn’t include at least one nominee who I knew for a fact to be a customer.

Sure, call us failures if you want, but it’s people like us, eager to innovate and willing to take risks who have always been the engine of our economy, and from whom the occasional spectacular success arises. Do we really want to make their struggle even harder? Do we really want to sneer at would-be entrepreneurs, that if they want access to health care they should go get a job?

Or to phrase the question as clearly as possible: why was my salaried position at a venture-backed startup worthy of equal access to affordable health coverage, while my 24-hour workdays at my own startup was not? What is the economic or moral justification in that?

Impoverished by my years as a progressive blogger and activist, I may very well have to give in to my trolls’ admonishment to get a real job—one which hopefully comes with generous benefits—but to suggest that salaried employment should be a prerequisite for access to affordable health care is to ignore the profound complexity and diversity of our economy, while totally dissing the entrepreneurial spirit on which it is supposedly based.

Thus, as an answer to my own health insurance woes, “Get a job!” isn’t just an insult to me, it is an insult to America. And, by stifling innovation, mobility and entrepreneurialism, it is a surefire recipe for economic stagnation and decline.

Today is the first day of the new legislative session, and I can’t tell you how much I dread writing about it.

Deuteronomy 23:1
No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the LORD.

Discuss.

For the third time in as many weeks, the Seattle Times editorial board is advocating that Congress drop their efforts at health care reform for the foreseeable future.

Given the shrinkage of the economy since 2007, this is not the time to promise every American a new benefit. And that is what these bills want to do. By their attempt at generosity, they would raise the cost of creating a job, especially by small employers.

Spoken like somebody with decent health care coverage.

I, on the other hand, am not so fortunate. For all but a few scattered years of my adult life I have purchased my own health insurance coverage via individual plans, and every year I have seen my costs rise, my benefits fall, and my security ebb away. As of now I spend over $200 a month for a $1,900 deductible and zero preventative care. It is a “catastrophic” coverage plan that, should I ever become seriously ill or injured, would supposedly limit my out of pocket expenses to about $10,000 a year… plus the cost of prescription drugs.

That said, for the tens of thousands of dollars I have paid into the system over the past couple decades, I have never had a claim paid, and when I do seek medical care I am always billed the full retail rate… as much as four or five times higher than the negotiated rate my insurance company would have paid had they covered the service. If I had the income, I could spend more each month for more generous coverage, but as an individual it would always cost me much more and cover much less than the type of plans one can buy through a group. And even this expensive option would be closed off to me should I first develop a chronic illness or injury, which under current law would forever prevent me from purchasing adequate coverage due to a preexisting condition.

And to top it all off, as an individual, with no group or corporation to fight for me, I am exactly the type of person for whom insurance companies are notorious for dropping coverage once a claim is made.

I have never, in my entire life, had a lapse of coverage. I, my parents or our employers have faithfully paid into our health insurance “system” on my behalf for every single one of my 46 years. And yet with each passing year the likelihood that I will be left permanently destitute by a serious illness increases. And this is the broken system the Seattle Times would leave in place, possibly for another generation should our current attempt at comprehensive reform collapse?

But then, I guess, if you already have adequate coverage, reform must seem less urgent.

Gov. Chris Gregoire doesn’t seem so thrilled with the prospect of privatizing liquor sales in Washington. First of all, while proponents are attempting to use our current budget crisis as an argument for privatization, Gregoire rightly points out that the auditor’s report doesn’t show the state raising an additional dime in the short term. And second of all…

“This idea that we go the way of auctioning off, like West Virginia, let’s be clear, you’ll get rid of all your mom and pops,” she said. “You’ll have what they have, which is Rite Aid sells all liquor, is that what you want in Washington state? We contract out now, we contract out to mom and pops in rural areas. What does the auction get you, once every 10 years, possibly a couple hundred million dollars, if you sell high? Now, West Virginia, not that I’m very proud of this, doesn’t sell as much liquor as we do. So you’d better sell more to make up if you’re going to auction off, I’m not sure that’s good policy. You look at our minor consumption sales – we’re well below any state that has it privatized, by like 10 percent. You need to understand it doesn’t help you this biennium at all. Number two, does it really get you any money in the long haul, and number three what are the social policy issues that are implicated here and is that the right direction?”

Washington, like most state store states, not only has lower per capita liquor consumption than the national average, it also has a lower incidence of alcohol related social and health problems. The only way that privatization can significantly increase state revenues is by significantly increasing sales, and with it, the related social costs. So the revenue argument strikes me as awfully cynical.

But I also wonder if the recent interest in eliminating our state store system doesn’t have anything to do with recent legislative proposals to legalize marijuana and sell it through our state stores? We currently have all the infrastructure in place to buy, distribute and resell marijuana in a well-managed and well-controlled system. Dismantling this infrastructure would make it that much harder to implement legalization.

Hmm.

Larry Phillips legislative aide, Leah Zoppi, emailed me to thank me for my earlier post, but also to correct a factual error:

Thanks for your post about Larry’s decision to support Councilmember Drago as a caretaker for the 8th District seat.  However, I need to let you know it contains a factual inaccuracy.  The decision would not have reverted to Governor Gregoire.  That’s only the case for partisan positions, not non partisan positions as voters made the County Council.  There is NO tiebreaker currently in place for filling County Council vacancies.  Which means, if the Council remained deadlocked on the issue of filling this vacancies, the Council would have remained 4-4, with neither side having a majority and District 8 residents having no representative.  This would have impacted the Council conducting business like reorg and passing legislation, and it would have left the people in District 8 with no one to turn to for advocacy on their behalf.

My bad.

Even the most casual observer of Washington state politics is acutely aware of the Cascade Curtain, the physical and cultural barrier that separates East from West, right from left, and Republicans from Democrats. This pathological East/West divide is the cause of much of the dysfunction that plagues our state political system, yet if you ask an elected official how we might bridge this gap, don’t expect to elicit much more than tired platitudes or a roll of the eyes.

But I wonder if one of the ways to bring the two sides of the state closer together both politically and culturally is to close the physical distance between them… namely, by building high-speed rail from Seattle to Spokane.

That’s exactly what’s happening in Spain, where an ambitious new high-speed rail network is binding historically separate and distinctive regions together into a much more cohesive nation:

Spain opened its first Alta Velocidad Española, or AVE, high-speed train route in 1992, between Madrid and Seville. The network has grown to nearly 2,000 kilometers and stretches from Malaga on the south coast to Barcelona, which is north and east.

Supporters say the AVE has begun to transform the country, binding remote and sometimes restive regions to Madrid and leading traditionally homebound Spaniards to move around for work or leisure.

“Spaniards have rediscovered the train,” said Iñaki Barrón de Angoiti, director of high-speed rail at the International Union of Railways in Paris. “The AVE has changed the way people live, the way they do business. Spaniards don’t move around a lot, but the AVE is even changing that.”

By slashing the time it takes to travel from one city to another, high-speed rail in Spain and elsewhere has increased tourism, altered housing patterns, and lured millions of travelers out of airplanes and cars. According to the International Union of Railways, a high-speed train can carry eight times as many passengers as an airplane over an equal distance, using the the same amount of energy, while emitting a quarter of the CO2 per person. It also creates economic opportunities outside the traditional urban cores that never before existed.

For example, previous studies have suggested that high-speed rail could connect downtown Seattle to Moses Lake in under an hour, with Spokane only another half hour away. That’s downtown Seattle to downtown Spokane in less time than one typically spends at the airport before departure. Such a rail line could instantly transform Moses Lake into a viable international airport, while creating the freedom to live and work anywhere near a station.

Live in Spokane and work in Seattle, or vice versa? That’s a shorter commute, time-wise, than between some parts of Long Island and Manhatten. And just think of the economic opportunity this would create in the half dozen or so counties through which a high-speed line would pass.

When we tie the people and economies of Washington state closer together, when prosperity in King County directly generates prosperity in Kittitas and Grant counties too, that’s when the politics of this state will become less divisive. And as has been proven in other parts of the world, high-speed rail can put us on the fast track toward achieving that goal.

I know a lot of Democrats who are pretty pissed off at King County Councilman Larry Phillips for crossing the aisle and joining Republicans in appointing Jan Drago to fill Dow Constantine’s seat, but I’m not one of them. Yeah, I generally hail from the “Democrats are pussies” camp, routinely berating my own party for failing to play political hardball in the face of the nearly intractable, partisan discipline practiced by their Republican opponents, but well, sometimes reality is reality.

The refusal of the four Republicans on the council to honor the will of Eighth District Democrats by appointing state Sen. Joe McDermott to the seat, was breach of protocol and tradition that I hope comes back to bite them in the ass the next time the council is asked to fill a Republican vacancy, but this was political gambit from which they had little incentive to budge. Had McDermott gained the appointment, his incumbency would have made him such an overwhelming favorite in November that it likely would have dissuaded other serious contenders from waging a challenge. But with an open seat up for grabs, the race could attract several sitting elected officials, thus sowing disruption through the Democratic ranks, and spreading their financial resources ever thinner.

For example, if both McDermott and state Rep. Zack Hudgins run for the council, that will leave both of their otherwise safe legislative seats open in November. But more importantly, it would tie up the surpluses in both of their campaign coffers from being transferred to more competitive districts. That’s just smart politics on the part of the Republican council members, if totally irresponsible when comes to actual governance.

Think I’m giving the goopers too much credit? Then explain to me why they briefly offered Hudgins the council appointment, but only if he agreed, like Drago, to serve only as a caretaker. When Hudgins surprised them by accepting these terms, they asked if Hudgins would run again for his vacated House seat in November, and when he said yes, they withdrew the offer.

Maximum disruption of Democratic legislative races, that’s what the Republicans were shooting for, and perhaps, that’s what they’ll get. So why aren’t I pissed at Phillips for caving to their demands, especially considering that the appointment would have fallen to Gov. Gregoire had the council post remained vacant for another 30 days? Because the cost of waiting another month was simply too high.

Had Phillips and the Democrats waited for Gregoire to appoint McDermott, as she surely would have, it would have meant two legislative seats changing hands in the middle of a crucial short session. First McDermott’s seat would have to be filled, and then Sen. Fred Jarrett’s, whose replacement would have almost surely waited until after Democrats had regained their council majority. Now, with Drago in place, McDermott can continue to prepare for the session, while Randy Gordon’s appointment is little more than a formality.

Combine that with the fact that the biggest knock against Drago is that she’s not McDermott, and it just didn’t make sense to drag out this four-four deadlock any longer… at least if your primary concern is governance. We needed to settle this before the start of the session, even if it meant caving to the Republicans’ irresponsible and petty demands. So in my opinion, Phillips probably did the right thing in breaking ranks.

That said, I hope we can count on him for demanding political payback, when payback is ultimately due.

UPDATE:
Apparently, the governor cannot break a deadlock over a nonpartisan seat. So I guess I was wrong. It’s been known to happen.

U.S. House Republican Whip Eric Cantor has sent out a memo naming the 37 Dems who voted for the House health care reform bill, but who he believes can be persuaded to vote against final passage. And our very own Rep. Adam Smith (WA-9) is listed amongst them.

According to Cantor, he only needs to turn 3 of the 37 to kill the bill.

While it remains to be seen what the final bill will look like, Rep. Smith’s constituents should be prepared to vigorously lobby their congressman until and unless he confirms his support. Cantor and his colleagues can bluster all they want, but it’s local voters who politicians listen to most.

Newly elected Bellevue Mayor Don Davidson on the future of light rail in his fair city:

“They haven’t figured out how to get across Lake Washington. It’s going to be quite a bit of time before we see light rail being laid here.”

Um… when are anti-rail, Kemper Freeman toadies like Davidson going to pull their collective head out of the sand (or whatever dark hole in which they keep it)?  Sound Transit has figured out how to get light rail across Lake Washington. It’s this fancy new technology they call a bridge. In fact, they plan to use the same center span of the I-90 floating bridge that was specifically designed to accommodate light rail in accordance with a memorandum signed by the city of Bellevue way back in 1976.

I understand that Davidson would prefer that East Link pass by the outskirts of Bellevue, or pass unseen through a half billion dollar tunnel (paid for by anyone but Bellevue taxpayers), or ideally, not be built at all. But statements like this one just makes him sound like an idiot.

Last night the Democratic Precinct Committee Officers of the 41st Legislative District overwhelmingly selected attorney and activist Randy Gordon as their first choice to fill state Sen. Fred Jarrett’s recently vacated office. The final tally:

Randy Gordon     54
Aaron Belenky     9
George Pieper     8

Legally, the King County Council can appoint any of the three nominees above as Jarrett’s replacement, but according to protocol and precedent, the council almost always selects the first choice of the PCOs, and unanimously. And with such a decisive victory last night, it’s hard to imagine the council breaking with tradition.

So my congratulations to soon-to-be-senator Gordon, who has certainly worked hard enough over the past few years to put him in this position, and who I am confident will well represent the progressive values of Democrats throughout the district, the region and the state. As I previously mentioned, I first met Gordon in 2005 when he was a classmate of mine at Camp Wellstone. Other graduates from my class include state Representatives Marko Liias (D-21) and Tina Orwall (D-33), and state Sen. Eric Oemig (D-45), not to mention Darcy Burner.

That’s quite a group of accomplished alumnae, and both Wellstone Action and Progressive Majority deserve your support for bringing this valuable candidate training program into Washington state.