Goldy

The Seattle Times editorial board (many of whom’s members don’t actually live in Seattle) weighs in on Proposition 1, which would create a Seattle Park District to manage and fund the city’s parks and recreation facilities.

SEATTLE loves its parks, and should have access to beautiful, safe and well-maintained urban green spaces.

Yes we do!

But in the name of good parks, the Seattle City Council is asking voters to give them a blank check, with increased power and weaker oversight.

We just don’t want to pay for them!

Citizens should reject Proposition 1, the Seattle Park District measure. This is not merely a replacement for the existing parks levy, which citizens have generously passed every six years. (Currently, property owners pay about 20 cents per thousand dollars of assessed value per year — or about $88 on a home valued at $440,000.)

It isn’t? Then I suppose in the very next sentence you are going to effectively describe exactly what Proposition 1 is:

As pro-parks community activist Gail Chiarello so effectively describes Proposition 1: “It’s pretending to be a Bambi, when it’s really a Godzilla.”

Um, what? I’m pretty sure that’s a non sequitur.

With the support of Mayor Ed Murray, Proposition 1 proposes a new, permanent taxing authority controlled by the City Council. Collections in 2016 would start at a total of 33 cents per $1,000 of a home’s assessed value (about $145 on a home worth $440,000), but the council could more than double that amount to 75 cents per $1,000, or $330 per year — without ever having to check with voters.

That’s not entirely true. Once the initial levy rate is set, the parks district would be subject to the same absurd one percent annual cap on regular levy revenue growth that Tim Eyman’s Initiative 747 imposes on all taxing districts. It is unclear to me whether the Parks District would be born with banked levy capacity up to the maximum revenue that could have been raised under the 75 cent per $1,000 statutory cap at the time of the initial levy, but even if so, that banked capacity would not grow with property valuations. In fact, since property values generally appreciate at a rate much faster than 1 percent a year, the actual maximum parks district levy rate per mille will inevitably decrease over time without a voter-approved lid lift.

Either the editors are too stupid to understand that, or they are engaging in dishonest scaremongering, pure and simple.

Under state law, this district cannot be dissolved by a public vote. Neither would citizens be able to file initiatives against decisions they disagree with.

Which is true. But citizens already can’t file initiatives against parks decisions now! The mayor proposes and the council amends and adopts parks appropriations through the annual budget process. City appropriations are not subject to initiative or referendum. How the parks department subsequently goes about spending its appropriations is a purely administrative function. Administrative actions are also not subject to initiative or referendum.

Again, either the editors don’t understand the law, or they’re hoping you don’t.

Though a 15-member citizens’ committee would ostensibly provide oversight, the real control is with the City Council. The parks district essentially creates a shadow city government, run by the same Seattle City Council with the same borders as the City of Seattle, but with vast new authority to levy up to about $89 million in new annual taxes on the same Seattle taxpayers.

How is it a “shadow city government” if it is composed entirely of the actual city government? Its meetings and records are open to the public. Its members are directly elected by voters. What is shadowy about that.

In fact, if you read the interlocal agreement that is part of the formation of the Parks District, nothing at all changes about the way decisions are actually made. The city will continue to own the parks. The mayor will continue to propose parks budgets. The council will continue to amend and approve parks budgets (before passing it on to itself in the guise of the Parks District for a pro forma vote). And the city’s parks department will continue to operate the parks on behalf of the district. Other than adding a citizens oversight committee, the only thing that substantively changes is the taxing authority. Nothing else.

There are not enough safeguards to stop the council from diverting general funds to other causes, such as sports arenas.

No safeguards except, you know, the ballot, the same safeguard that already stops the council from diverting funds to unpopular causes. These are elected officials. They answer to voters. That’s the safeguard: democracy.

(Also, “sports arenas?” Really? Now they’re just making shit up. In editorial board interviews and other forums, Parks District opponents have gone as far as to raise the specter that a Parks District could build an airstrip at Cal Anderson Park! That’s how stupid these sort of paranoid fantasies are.)

Proponents promise yearly department audits, but only after the measure becomes law.

Because you can’t audit something that doesn’t exist. Duh-uh.

Why wait? The city should conduct a robust, independent performance and financial audit before even attempting to ask voters to trust them and sign a blank check.

The office of the Washington State Auditor conducts annual financial and accountability audits of the city—including the Parks Department—the results of which are all available online. There are no outstanding negative findings regarding parks operations. As for a performance audit, it couldn’t hurt; but neither have the state’s performance audits proven to help all that much either.

Citizens deserve to know how funds have been used so far, and how the city might invest limited parks revenue more wisely.

See, this is really the heart of the disagreement here. The editors believe that parks revenue should be limited, whereas Mayor Murray and the council disagree. All their talk about accountability is bullshit. What they are really arguing for is more austerity.

• According to The Trust for Public Land, Seattle Parks and Recreation is ranked second in the nation for the number of employees per 10,000 residents among the nation’s 100 most populous cities. City spending on parks ranks fourth in the nation. Yet, it faces a daunting maintenance crisis that has left some buildings dilapidated, pools unusable, bathrooms dank and even allowed a broken pump at Green Lake to leak raw sewage.

Shorter Seattle Times: It’s all the fault of those greedy, lazy parks employees!

To be clear, the Parks Department has eliminated 142 positions since 2008, about 10 percent of its workforce. Further, Seattle Parks & Recreations is almost unique in the nation in that it encompasses community centers as well as parks, thus skewing our employee per resident and revenue per resident numbers upwards. Indeed, if you read the TPL report in its proper context (instead of cherry-picking data and deliberately presenting it out of context like the editors do), what you see is Seattle’s parks rankings slipping year over year compared to similar-size cities, do to our lack of investment.

So let’s be honest. One of the reasons the Seattle Times consistently opposes raising taxes (again, taxes many of its non-Seattle-resident editors will never pay) is because they view every funding crisis as an opportunity to punish unionized public employees. Not enough money to meet our paramount duty to amply fund public schools? Fire teachers, cut their pay, and break their unions! Sales tax revenue shortfall threatening 600,000 hours of Metro bus service? Fire bus drivers, cut their pay, and break their unions! Initiative 747’s ridiculous 1 percent cap on annual regular levy growth strangling the city’s ability to pay for parks and other public services? Fire workers, cut their pay, and break their unions!

• Despite campaign rhetoric calling on voters to invest in fixing parks, Proposition 1 would dedicate only about 58 percent, or $28 million, of revenue in the district’s first year toward chipping away at the city’s $270 million maintenance backlog. Eight percent, or $3 million, would pay for maintaining facilities. More than a quarter of the budget is slated for new programs and expansion.

That’s 58 percent toward addressing the maintenance backlog and 8 percent toward avoiding adding to it. Yes, a big chunk of the remainder goes to “expanding” programs… but only within the context of several years of program cuts. For example, we’re talking about restoring community center hours and routine park maintenance and service that had been cut during budgetary lean years. Over anything longer than a one-year time frame, that’s not an expansion.

As for new programs, the proposed budget would develop and maintain parks at 14 sites the city had previously acquired, but never had the funds to develop. Also a new program: performance monitoring! The editors oppose spending additional money on the exact sort of accountability they insist must be delivered before spending additional money! Imagine that.

Seattle needs to care for current assets before amassing more. It also ought to expand partnerships with nonprofits and private groups willing and ready to help sustain recreation programs.

Or, hell, why not just privatize?

Preserving parks is critical to quality of life and public health.

But paying for it is not.

The mayor and council members are understandably eager to create dedicated parks funding and free up room in limited levy capacity for other worthy programs, such as universal preschool. But they have failed to make a case for a Seattle Park District that gives elected officials so much additional, unfettered power to tax and spend.

Again, bullshit. The power isn’t unfettered and there’s zero loss of accountability. What the editors are really opposed to is “free[ing] up room in limited levy capacity for other worthy programs, such as universal preschool.” They want to drown city government in a bathtub.

By rejecting Proposition 1, voters send a strong message to city leadership: We love parks, but return with a levy or alternate measure that prioritizes park needs, holds officials more accountable and preserves citizen participation.

Actually, it would send the opposite and most obvious message: that we don’t love our parks. And they know that. But the anti-tax/anti-government/anti-Seattle editors just couldn’t give a shit.

Let’s be 100 percent clear: For all the over-the-top vilification, the proposed Seattle Municipal Parks District is little more than an accounting maneuver. For a hundred years, this latent taxing authority has been left untapped because a prosperous Seattle didn’t need it. But I-747’s ridiculous 1 percent cap (less than inflation let alone population-plus!) has left the city unable to grow revenues commensurate with its needs.

A parks district would provide a stable and adequate alternative revenue source while freeing up taxing capacity for other crucial services like universal pre-school. And it would leave the parks department just as accountable as it is now, if not more so.

What the Seattle Times is arguing for is what its editors always argue for: a slow and steady decline and erosion of the public sector. Tell them to go fuck themselves: Vote “yes.”

The International Franchise Association and its members are shocked, shocked to find that lawyering is going on in here:

The City of Seattle’s decision to hire expensive outside legal counsel to try to defend its discriminatory actions against small businesses in the recently adopted minimum wage ordinance should outrage every taxpaying resident and business, according to Jan Simon, President and CEO of the Washington Lodging Association (WLA).

Last week the City announced it had hired Susman Godfrey, a Texas law firm with offices in Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City and Seattle, and Erwin Chemerinsky, dean at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, to assist in its defense of the ordinance.

“As a Seattle taxpayer I am flabbergasted and disappointed that the Mayor and City Council believe it is appropriate to hire an outside law firm charging a reported $1,100 an hour to defend the blatantly discriminatory sections of the ill-conceived ordinance,” said Simon.

Even worse, adds Simon in the press release, is that some of the money used to pay the city’s legal expenses will come from taxes on the very businesses who have filed this lawsuit! Which is, of course, hilarious.

Well it is true that the IFA lawsuit is laughably frivolous, that still wouldn’t excuse lazy lawyering on the part of the City Attorney’s office. Government agencies hire outside attorneys all the time, particularly to deal with highly specialized areas of the law. So it’s good to know that City Attorney Pete Holmes isn’t too stoned to know that he better seek outside expertise on this one, especially since he’s facing off against evil genius former US Solicitor General Paul Clement.

As for the IFA’s mock outrage, what’s next? Suing the Pike Place Market for refusing to rent to franchises? They can decry Seattle’s $15 minimum wage ordinance as “discriminatory” all they want—and maybe it is—but this sort of discrimination is neither illegal nor immoral. The only thing more laughable than its frivolous lawsuit is the IFA’s efforts to spin this into some sort of a civil rights issue.

Lauding him for his pragmatism, the Seattle Times editorial board has endorsed Republican Drew Stokesbary for the open state House seat in the 31st Legislative District. Which I suppose is to be expected, because Stokesbary is a Republican, whereas his main Democratic opponent is a local teachers union president. And if there’s anything the Blethenites hate more than a teacher or a unionist, it’s a teachers unionist.

But what the editors ignore, is that in addition to being a tax averse Republican, Stokesbary is also a bigot, a racist, a sycophant, and a lifelong asshole with absolutely no respect for our state’s voter-approved campaign finance and disclosure laws. This is a guy renowned for heckling professional golfer Curtis Strange, and for telling his immigrant classmates to go back where they came from. This is the kinda guy who complains about a teacher forcing him to read a book by a black author.

In other words, Stokesbary is an asshole.

And it’s not like he’s an especially qualified asshole, either. The Municipal League rated Stokesbary merely “adequate,” while his two opponents received a rating of “good.” And yet the editors claim that such adequate assholery is “crucial if deals are to be struck and gridlock avoided.” Oh please.

The truth is, the editors are infatuated with Stokesbary because he, like them, bizarrely believes the Washington Education Association to be “the most corrupt union in the state.”

Shorter Seattle Times: “We hate teachers unions.”

Hooray for today’s first legal recreational pot sale in Washington State! But it’s not like there aren’t already four medical marijuana “co-ops” on the same two-block stretch of Rainier Avenue South, or like medical marijuana “prescriptions” aren’t already a joke. And even when its sale was illicit, it’s not like normal people hadn’t been smoking pot, like, forever.

So for those who decry marijuana legalization as some sort of unraveling of civilization… chill out. It’s our societal attitude toward marijuana that is changing, not our actual behavior. And arguably, a society tends to be more civilized when its attitudes and behaviors are more closely aligned.

Boston-based Boloco is one of a handful of fast food chains that makes a point of paying its workers above the minimum wage. How and why does it do it?

“We were talking about building a culture in which we want our team members to take care of our customers,” Mr. Pepper said. “But we asked, ‘What’s in it for them?’ Honestly, very little.”

So in 2002, when the minimum wage was $5.15 an hour, Boloco raised its minimum pay to $8. It also began subsidizing commuting costs, providing English classes to immigrant employees and contributing up to 4 percent of an employee’s pay toward a 401(k).

“If we really wanted our people to care about our culture and care about our customers, we had to show that we cared about them,” Mr. Pepper said. “If we’re talking about building a business that’s successful, but our employees can’t go home and pay their bills, to me that success is a farce.”

When the company raised its minimum pay to $8, “that was an immediate hit to the P.& L.,” Mr. Pepper acknowledged, referring to the company’s profit and loss statement.

He said his privately held company, unlike some fast-food chains, did not sense an urgency to achieve a 20 percent profit margin per restaurant.

Zeynep Ton, a professor at the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, said many companies did not pay their employees well because they had a short-term focus on maximizing profits.

During much of the minimum wage debate, proponents (including myself) have emphasized that a higher wage can actually be good for business—increasing productivity and reducing costly turnover, while stimulating the broader consumer economy. And all that is true. But if $15 ultimately decreases profit margins for the businesses required to pay it, so what?

It is important to remember that our current obsession with maximizing shareholder wealth is a late 20th century invention, first popularized by economist Milton Friedman in a 1970 article in the New York Times. It was never a part of classical economics. You won’t explicitly find it in Adam Smith. Through the early part of the 19th century, corporations were chartered to provide a public good. The modern joint stock corporation was never intended as a departure from this tradition, but merely as a means of more efficiently pooling capital, while limiting the liability of shareholders to the sum of their investment. Indeed, read the 1881 mission statement on the founding of the Wharton School, and it sounds downright utopian:

1. Object.  To provide for young men special means of training and of correct instruction in the knowledge and in the arts of modern Finance and Economy, both public and private, in order that, being well informed and free from delusions upon these important subjects, they may either serve the community skillfully as well as faithfully in offices of trust, or, remaining in private life, may prudently manage their own affairs and aid in maintaining sound financial morality: in short, to establish means for imparting a liberal education in all matters concerning Finance and Economy.

That executives might choose to run their corporations with a primary goal of maximizing shareholder wealth is up to them. But contrary to Friedman’s assertion, they are under no legal or moral obligation to do so.

I was sorting through some of the crap in my archives over the weekend, when I stumbled on this:

“If you have the 1 percent saying, ‘Tax the 99 percent,’ and the 99 percent saying, ‘Tax the 1 percent,’ you have a standstill.”
— former WA State Senator Joseph Zarelli (R-Ridgefield), 12/2/2011

That’s right: 99 to 1, and we’re at “a standstill.” Utterly fucking ridiculous.

Under threat of a referendum and/or initiative from so-called “ride-share” giants Uber and Lyft, the Seattle City Council is expected to repeal its recently passed taxi ordinance today, to be replaced by the alleged “compromise” negotiated by the mayor’s office. But the entire premise behind this urgency—that if the council doesn’t act today, the companies will file their referendum—is entirely false.

Tomorrow, King County Superior Court Judge Monica Benton will rule on a taxi industry lawsuit that argues that the Uber/Lyft referendum is outside the scope of the local initiative process because it addresses administrative issues, not legislative ones. Scope challenges can get a little fuzzy, but it’s a pretty strong argument backed up by a ton of precedent. I won’t hazard a guess on how Judge Benton will rule, but there’s a reasonable chance the plaintiffs will prevail.

So given the timing, the council should table today’s proposed action, and wait one day for the court to rule.

If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, then there is no Uber/Lyft referendum or initiative, and the council has plenty of time to readdress the issue in a more deliberative manner. If the court rules against the plaintiffs, then the council still has plenty of time to put an alternative measure on the ballot that gives voter a choice between two competing proposals.

Today’s so-called deadline is total bullshit.

The council spent a year holding hearings and commissioning studies and carefully deliberating the issues in order to come up the ordinance it passed. One would hope it has the balls to wait  just one more day before just rolling over and playing dead.

UPDATE: Yup, they repealed the ordinance: “I think the likelihood of the judge saying that something should not go to the voters is low,” said council member Sally Clark, who is not a lawyer. We’ll see.

1 Kings 11:1-3
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the LORD had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.

Discuss.

I’ve often remarked on the irony that the best daily newspaper journalist in Seattle doesn’t write for a Seattle newspaper. And that still might be true. But the NY Times’ Timothy Egan is beginning to lose my attention:

The election this fall will most certainly return to power the most despised Congress in the modern era, if not ever. The House, already a graveyard for common sense, will fall further under the control of politicians whose idea of legislating is to stage a hearing for Fox News. The Senate, padlocked by filibusters over everyday business, will be more of the same, with one party in nominal control.

Republicans suck, amirite? And yet congressional gerrymandering and an antiquated Constitution that gives tiny rural states like Wyoming the same representation in the Senate as giant California virtually guarantees another Benghazi-obsessed do-nothing Congress. Hopefully, Egan has some ideas on how to fix this tyranny of the minority.

The fastest-growing, most open-minded and least-partisan group of voters will have no say. That’s right: The independents, on this Independence Day, have never been more numerous. But they’ve never been more shut out of power.

Oh. Independents. That old trope. Sigh.

Earlier this year, Gallup found that 42 percent of Americans identified as independents, the highest it has measured since modern polling techniques started 25 years ago. That survey found that Republicans — destined to keep control of the House and possibly take the Senate — comprise only one in four Americans, their lowest share over that same quarter-century span. Democrats were at 31 percent.

Honestly, I’ve never understood the argument that we should hand political control to the people who can’t make up their minds. No doubt there are some Americans who self-identify as independent because they’re too good to sully themselves with party politics, or something, but adopting a political label that stands for nothing is not inherently a sign of intellectual conviction or rigor.

The breakdown is even more unrepresentative when you look at the millennial generation, which, by most definitions, is the largest ever, with about 80 million people. These are the baby boomers’ kids, who bring their life-as-a-buffet view to voting as well. They like choice — in music, food, lifestyle, religion and politics.

Half of all Americans under the age of 34 describe themselves as politically independent, according to a Pew Research Center survey earlier this year, a high-water mark. This generation is also near the highest levels — 29 percent — to say they are not affiliated with any religion.

I suppose one could view this as a sign of a long term trend, or as an indication that it takes longer for young people to make up their fucking minds. It’s a holiday, so I’m not willing to put in the work to research the data, but I’d guess that young people often tend to skew more independent than older voters.

And if you consider California, our most populous state and long a trendsetter for values and politics, the same picture emerges. There, the latest tally of registered voters shows that the fastest-growing segment is the category of “no party.” While the number of these independent voters in California grew by 50,000 people this year, the Republicans lost almost 37,000. Democrats were basically flat, with a loss of 3,000.

Okay. But if you consider California as a trendsetter for values and politics, one might also want to consider that after years of political gridlock and decline, California voters have turned things around by handing Democrats supermajority control of the legislature and the governor’s mansion. California is virtually a one-party state! And it’s working! Voters may be self-identifying as “independent” in greater numbers, but they are voting for Democrats.

The pattern, nearly everywhere but in the states of the old Confederacy, is the same: People are leaving the Republican Party, and to a lesser extent the Democrats, to jump in the nonpartisan lane. The independents are more likely to want something done about climate change, and immigration reform. They’re not afraid of gay marriage or contraception or sensible gun laws. They think government can be a force for good.

Um, then doesn’t this pattern say more about the declining brand of the Republican Party than it does about some ideological swing to “independence?” I mean, there’s a lot of cognitive dissonance in switching parties. The act of doing so acknowledges that one was wrong. It also reeks of disloyalty. Far easier to just proclaim oneself an independent, and then vote for the Democrat, than it is to officially switch parties entirely.

And none of those sentiments are represented by the current majority in the people’s House. The Senate, at least, has two independents, both of whom caucus with the Democrats. In the House? Zero. Remember that the next time Speaker John Boehner says that his members are doing the work of the American people. They’re doing Fox’s work, which is why they’ve had endless hearings on Benghazi, and voted more than 50 times to take away people’s health care, but won’t allow a vote on the minimum wage or immigration reform.

What is it that Egan doesn’t get about our two-party system?

If you thought that the last election — in which 1.2 million more votes were cast for a Democratic member of the House, but the Republicans kept control by a healthy margin — was unrepresentative, the coming contest will set a new standard for mismatch between the voters’ will and the people who represent them.

And how is this in any way a result of a lack of deference to independents? This is a result gerrymandering, pure and simple, that ghettoizes the Democratic vote into urban districts.

Only 12 percent of the general public is defined as “steadfast conservative,” in the latest breakdown of seven political niches done by Pew. But that rises to 19 percent for the “politically engaged.” Thus the Tea Party, though disliked by most Americans, can win elections in red states, and send people to Washington who will govern only for the narrow, passionate base that elected them.

Um, “politically engaged” means actively engaged in party politics. The teabaggers have won influence by seizing control of the Republican Party. Independents lack influence because they refuse to engage in party politics at all.

When you examine the beliefs of independents, particularly among millennials, they lean Democratic. That is, most policy issues pushed by the Democrats get majority support from the nonpartisans. Combining all the categories, Pew put the pro-Democratic cohort at 55 percent, the pro-Republican at 36 percent. But the two party brands are so soiled now by the current do-nothing Congress and their screaming advocates that voters prefer not to have anything to do with either of them.

So that means, what, only 9 percent of independents are truly “independent”—less than the 12 percent defined as “steadfast conservative.” Independents these days are disproportionately Democrats who refuse to self-indentify as such. So why should I care what they call themselves as long as they’re voting for my candidates?

The indies still vote. They went for Barack Obama, twice, but hate partisanship. They’ve soured on Obama for not fulfilling his great promise of forging a coalition that is neither red nor blue.

Way to feed into the Fox meme that this lack of a coalition is somehow Obama’s failure. He tried. Way too often and way too long. And at every turn the Republicans fucked him. Obama would have been a much more effective president had he been more partisan from the start instead being so goo-goo-eyed over that “team of rivals” fantasy.

What to do?

Good, Egan is going to propose some pragmatic solutions.

First, recognize the imbalance. Any democracy is broken when a plurality is not represented in the halls of power. The November contest for control of Congress can’t possibly be a “wave election,” as many politicos will claim, because a near-majority has no slate of candidates.

Okay. Whatever.

Second, get a slate of candidates. Some states now allow “no party” politicians a prominent place on the ballot, so long as they finish in the top ranks. In the age of crowdsourcing, raising the kind of money to fight, say, a Koch brothers-backed Republican is not all that difficult.

You’re fucking kidding me, right? Does Egan understand absolutely nothing about how American electoral politics works? I mean, forget the fact that American history is littered with dismal third party failures. The very nature of independents is that they are not members of a political party! So how the fuck are they going to put together a representative slate of candidates?

Third, don’t check out.

Too late.

The emerging majority is the most racially diverse, politically open-minded, social-media-engaged generation in history. They’re repulsed by the partisan hacks, and the lobbyist-industrial complex that controls them. You see their influence in everything but the governing institutions in Washington. It’s about time that voice is heard.

Whatever, Tim. Too bad you didn’t actually propose any actual reforms that would allow that voice to be heard. So let me help you out.

First of all, we need proportional representation. Imagine how different Congress might look if instead of electing representatives from highly gerrymandered districts, we instead elected them statewide, through a ranked choice voting system? For example, here in Washington, we’d rank our top ten choices, and the top ten vote getters would go to Congress. Betcha that would elect a House more representative of the people as a whole.

Second, we need to eliminate the Electoral College, and elect our president directly through the popular vote. Not only would that avoid another bullshit coup like the one that gave us President Bush, but it would also dramatically transform the nature of our presidential elections, forcing candidates to campaign in all fifty states, instead of just the swing ones.

Third, we need standard election laws and procedures nationwide, so as to prevent the fascistic Republican strategy of voter suppression.

And finally, we need real campaign finance and disclosure reform. If that means a constitutional amendment, so be it. (While we’re at it, we can address that whole corporate personhood bullshit.) If that means packing the bench, I’m up for that too.

Is the American political system broken? No shit, Sherlock! Anybody can see that. But where Egan goes wrong is that he sees the rise of “independents” as some sort of a solution, when in fact what it really is, is a symptom.

Independents are by definition less engaged in electoral politics. They’ve opted out. They don’t caucus. They don’t doorbell. They don’t participate in the hard grassroots work that characterizes the very best of American politics. So of course their voices aren’t heard. Have you ever been to an LD meeting, Tim? Have you ever sat through one of those godawful party platform debates? It’s boring, tedious, frustrating hard work. But imagine if the 36 percent of independents who lean Republican got themselves engaged in party politics, how quickly they’d overwhelm their Tea Party counterparts, restoring some sanity to the GOP?

So instead of just fantastically declaring that we need to elect more “independents”—a label that stands for absolutely nothing—it would have been much more useful had Egan any suggestions for how to get disaffected voters more engaged.

The Washington Council of Police & Sheriffs (WACOPS) has endorsed a “no” vote on Initiative 594, which would close Washington’s “gun show loophole” by requiring background checks on the private sale of all guns. I guess that’s not surprising. WACOPS is a very conservative organization. And while there are plenty in the law enforcement community who support I-594, there certainly isn’t unanimous support for tighter background checks.

More surprising is that WACOPS has endorsed a “yes” vote on Initiative 591, the far-right gun-nuttery initiative that would bar the state from enacting gun regulations stricter than those imposed under federal law. This is more than just opposing I-594 on the grounds that it might inconvenience WACOPS’ own members. I-591 would weaken Washington state’s gun laws, putting more guns on the street, and potentially into the hands of dangerous felons and the mentally ill who might not otherwise pass a background check.

A law enforcement union endorsing I-591 is kinda like a firefighter union endorsing greater access to arson. It borders on crazy.

It’s also not a particularly smart political move for a public employee union with important issues before pro-594 lawmakers. According to their winter 2014 newsletter, WACOPS’ top legislative priority “is to protect and strengthen the LEOFF Plan 2 pension system.” To do this they’re going to need to lobby pro-594 lawmakers like Governor Jay Inslee, Democratic House Speaker Frank Chopp, and the leaders of a potentially Democratic Senate.

As a union, WACOPS primary obligation is to collectively bargain on behalf of its members. It’s hard to see how antagonizing the lawmakers with whom it needs to negotiate could in any way serve this mission.

I called and emailed WACOPS asking for comment, and have yet to hear back. But if they asked me, I’d tell them a smarter move would’ve been to just stay out of this fight entirely.

For the first time since 2006, HA namesake and shameless initiative profiteer Tim Eyman won’t have an initiative on the Washington State ballot.

“We worked really hard, but our signature drive for the 2/3-For-Taxes Constitutional Amendment fell short this year,” Eyman emailed supporters this morning. “We’re just gonna have to work even harder next time,” added Eyman. Also, next time, he might want to actually spend some money on signature gathering, instead of blowing the bulk of the $191,000 he raised through May on personal compensation and fundraising letters. (I’m not implying that the I-1325 campaign was a total scam. But, no, wait. I guess I am.)

Yawn.

Truth is, I don’t write much about Timmy these days because he’s ceased to be relevant. Without the late Michael Dunmire or the crazy Kemper Freeman or the money-grubbing oil industry bankrolling his campaigns, Eyman has long been a paper tiger. He has no organization, no grassroots base of support, and no fundraising list sufficient to raise the money necessary to buy enough signatures to qualify for the ballot. And so this year he didn’t.

It was other people’s money that made Eyman relevant. Without it, he’s nothing. And even with it, he’s not all that.

Over the past 15 years, Eyman has filed dozens of initiatives, qualifying 14 for the ballot. Eight Eyman initiatives have been approved by voters, but of these, all but two were ultimately ruled unconstitutional. Yes, the provisions at the heart of the unconstitutional I-695 and I-747 were reinstated by the legislature, but that’s a testament more to the political cowardice of state lawmakers than to the influence of Eyman.

Indeed, Eyman has been particularly irrelevant in recent years, since being abandoned by his sugar daddies. This is actually the second petition season in a row in which Eyman has failed to qualify an initiative. Last November’s losing I-517 was an initiative to the legislature that was submitted back in 2012. So it’s been a long time since Eyman has run a successful signature drive.

Good riddance.

Yup, Port of Seattle Commissioner Bill Bryant is the next Rob McKenna. In that he’s apparently running for governor. As a “moderate” Republican. Whatever that means.

Also, in that he will inevitably lose.

The word from the folks who track such things is that no politician has eaten more chicken dinners at more Republican events statewide than Bryant, making him the only potential GOP candidate currently putting in the time and effort necessary to win the nomination. Good for him.

The logic behind a Bryant candidacy is obvious. No Republican can win the governor’s mansion without getting more than 40 percent of the vote here in populous King County, a bar few Republicans can hurdle. But Bryant has actually twice won elections countywide. And as a low-profile putatively non-partisan port commissioner, he has mostly avoided the stink of Republican Party politics. So far.

No matter. Guilt by association. Bryant is a Republican, and that’s all King County voters will need to know. And yes, that’s perfectly fair.

This is the party that would deny women access to birth control (let alone abortions) because it thinks all women are whores or something. This is the party that is dedicated to the destruction of organized labor. This is the party that has fought tirelessly to deny tens of millions of Americans access to affordable health insurance. This is the party that relies on anti-immigrant dog whistles to rile up its base. This is the party that has made voter suppression the heart of its electoral strategy. This is the party that has championed the causes of privatizing Social Security and ending Medicare. This is the party that has defended Wall Street from the types of regulatory reforms necessary to prevent another Great Recession. This is the party that refuses to acknowledge the science of climate change and evolution. This is the party that blocks all reasonable gun control legislation. This is the party whose political obstruction here in Washington State has left King County Metro on the verge of cutting 600,000 hours of bus service. And I could go on. And on. And on.

Just like Rob McKenna and Dino Rossi before him, Bryant will surely tell King County voters that he’s not that kind of a Republican. But if so, why run as a Republican at all? Obviously, because he self-identifies with the broad set of values embraced by the Republican Party.

And those are values that are clearly out of step with the values of King County voters, and a majority of voters statewide.

I’ve been dipping my toes into a Twitter spat between Inslee spokesperson Jaime Smith and some pseudonymous twit at the state senate “Majority Coalition Caucus” (you know, the Republicans). The MCC started it by tweeting out a link to the latest CNBC rankings, bemoaning Washington State’s low standing as 34th in “cost of doing business,” 38th in “cost of living,” and 24th for “workforce readiness.” Smith responded by berating the MCC’s “cherry-picking,” pointing out that overall, CNBC ranks Washington as the 7th best state in which to do business.

The MCC shot back that one of the reasons Washington ranks so high is because it has “no state income tax.” Which may or may not be true. CNBC’s methodology factors tax burden into “cost of doing business”—a category where Washington ranks poorly. Still, it raises an important point.

Some of the areas where CNBC says Washington scores lowest are in “infrastructure,” “workforce,” and “education”—all areas that could be improved given sufficient state revenue available to invest in them. So the very lack of an income tax that the MCC claims skews our ranking upward, is also arguably responsible for our lack of investment in the areas that skew our ranking downwards. Even the cost of doing business can be negatively impacted by lack of adequate revenue: increasing the time it takes for state and local governments to issue permits and licenses, conduct inspections, or adjudicate civil disputes through the courts.

Disinvesting in government comes at a cost, and much of that is borne by businesses.

So rather than cherry-picking data in order to make Washington State look bad to prospective businesses, the MCC might want to examine rankings like these within their proper context, and consider how the various factors actually interact with each other. You know, assuming the MCC is interested in offering constructive solutions instead of just out-of-context partisan attacks.

Because Paul Allen can: “Vulcan plans to replace Denny Playfield with two towers.”

I suppose Allen has the legal right to develop this property in whatever way current zoning allows. Or, he could gift the land to the people of Seattle for perpetual use as a public playfield. I mean, it’s not like we have many playfields and basketball courts in downtown Seattle. And it’s not like Allen needs more money.

The “Paul Allen Playfield.” Or the “S’chn T’gai Spock Playfield,” if you prefer. Just a suggestion, Paul.

It is such a weird disconnect:

This region must remain competitive, and be the place to do business. That means paying attention to all manner of infrastructure: education, transportation, communications, and public health and safety.

The Seattle Times editorial board urges the region to “pay attention” to public infrastructure, while continuing to be one of the loudest voices obstructing our ability to pay for it.

The ed board has repeatedly opposed measures to raise state revenue to fund education, while dedicating itself to abolishing an estate tax that helps fund schools. Most recently it has campaigned against King County Metro’s efforts to seek new revenue sources, dishonestly attacking the transit agency in a way that can only provide fodder to Republican legislators intent on starving it. And yet the editors have the gall to opine on the importance of maintaining public infrastructure?

Public infrastructure is built and maintained with public monies. If the editors truly believe infrastructure is so important to keeping our local businesses competitive, perhaps they should use their influence to urge local businesses to help pay for it?