In yesterday’s Open Thread, I noted that it looked like Jeanne Kohl-Welles was going to run for the King County Council seat that Larry Phillips has decided not to run for. Later in the day, she made it official.

State Senator Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, announced today that she is entering the race to succeed King County Councilmember Larry Phillips who informed the public that he is not running for re-election for King County Council District 4.

She seems to have most of the important endorsements lined up, and as such is probably the frontrunner. (or maybe the causation runs the other way).

Kohl-Welles has been endorsed by King County Councilmember Larry Phillips, who currently represents the 4th Council District, as well as Councilmembers Rod Dembowski, Joe McDermott, and Dave Upthegrove. She also has been endorsed by her 36th Leg. District seatmates, Reps. Reuven Carlyle and Gael Tarleton, as well as all of the Democratic state Senators from King County.

I can’t imagine voting for anyone else, but I still would like a primary. Maybe a neighborhood activist or something like that. I suppose the people most likely to run in one of those races are being sucked up into city council races what with all of them up this year. Or maybe not, since district 7, that has quite a bit of overlap with that County Council seat the only one that isn’t an open seat without a challenger to the incumbent. But maybe someone will move over from one of the other districts or at large now that the County seat is up for grabs.

In any event, and while I don’t want to get too far ahead of things, presuming that she gets elected in November, it would mean an appointment to her seat. The most obvious choice is Reuven Carlyle: He clearly (although inexplicably to me) wants the job, and having won a primary and several general elections in the district, he would probably have the best case. He seems pretty conservative compared to the district, but that hasn’t hurt him yet.

Is there anyone you’d like to see either run against her or to fill her seat if she moves on?

– I can’t even imagine what you’d do for an oil train explosion in the Downtown train tunnel.

– I don’t know Oregon enough to know about if running a primary against Schrader would be worth while, but in general I’m pro-primary elections.

– Liberals Aren’t Hypocrites for Opposing Indiana’s Religious Freedom Law

– It’ll be tough to lose Jeanne Kohl-Welles from the legislature if she runs for Phillips’ seat, but I can’t blame her for not wanting to deal with that garbage when King County can actually get shit done.

– He’s well enough to rot in our prisons.

– For the press, reporting on policy and actual legislating is homework. Reporting on the horse race and invented campaign narratives are a session of Nintendo or a pint of ice cream.

– I know you can’t judge a group solely on its worst members, but holy shit, some of the worst members of the Minute Men.

– Forgot to mention this in a previous open thread so it’s a bit old, but the NPI fundraising gala is looking pretty impressive.

– I will have to play around with Seattle In Progress a bit.

– Sullivan To Readers: You Are All Mindless, Soulless Subhumans

– Oh Sally Clark and Larry Phillipszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

– No, the religious right is not dead. They were just resting.

– Oh hey, Seattle has some brand-new *historic landmarks.

[Read more…]

I think I covered the important stuff about the Expedia move yesterday. But one other thing that’s maybe less relevant is are we still going to call the foot bridge the Amgen Bridge? I feel like we should. It’s shaped like a double helix and it was built by Amgen. So I’m going to keep calling it that.

But I’m the guy who still calls the Bus Tunnel the Bus Tunnel even though I don’t want it to have buses in it any more.

Hey, remember how Rodney Tom (among a bunch of other Republicans) said that Seattle’s minimum wage and sick leave/safe leave laws were going to destroy the jobs in Seattle and send them to the suburbs. Well, maybe in the future, who can really tell? But when people cite this or that example: a store closing, a firm going out of business, or other things that happen to businesses everywhere, well, tell them Expedia thought it would be better to come to Seattle.

The campus, which is on Smith Cove in the Interbay neighborhood, measures 750,000 square feet. Expedia, which employs around 3,000 people in the region and nearly 15,000 worldwide, reportedly is looking for a new 700,000-square-foot headquarters. Real estate brokers said the company wanted a Seattle address and is looking to buy a facility. Amgen (Nasdaq: AMGN) is winding down operations in the Puget Sound region, and could sell the Seattle campus.

Earlier this year, Expedia CFO Mark Okerstrom said the company was considering relocating its corporate headquarters. He said the company was “not constraining ourselves to the downtown Bellevue area in terms of our search.”

Of course, there are plenty of reasons that a company moves to Seattle, and obviously just having a $15 minimum wage wasn’t why. But it also wasn’t a hindrance here. And to be clear: I hope the Bellevue finds a good replacement for Expedia. Losing that will be a hit. But there is a bit of schadenfreude seeing these things happening and thinking of the people saying these sorts of laws would destroy jobs in Seattle.

Maybe if Bellevue wants better jobs, they can do the types of things Seattle has done. Or they could do it because it’s the right thing for people working there.

– I don’t mean to alarm you, but today is known as Spy Wednesday

– In a previous open thread, I mentioned that Cathy McMorris Rodgers put a call out to her Facebook followers that they tell her about Obamacare, and most had nice things to say. Well, apparently that’s the haters hating.

– Welcome to the City Council race, James Keblas

– This is the tragic irony of the culture wars: The casualties tend to be the very people Jesus went out of his way to serve: the poor, the sick, the marginalized, the outcasts, the people ostracized and deemed “sinners” by the religious elite. And when the world sees Christians hurting rather than helping such people, in the name of political gain, our testimony is profoundly diminished

– The men behind of these efforts — one based in Arkansas, one in Florida — claim to be forming armed squads of militiamen to fly into ISIS hotspots in Iraq and Syria and combat the enemy on the ground. Neither, however, appear to be anything more than a fundraising operation built around pure fantasies.

– A Baseball Story

– I Made a Joke About Guns and a Man Threatened to Assault Me

– The stuff happening in Indiana to push back against their bullshit anti-gay law is much more inspiring than people from lefty places tisk tisking.

– Take your stupid fucking studded tires off

– History really should be something we work toward knowing rather than some fantasy.

Reading this post by lefty Hoosier Melissa McEwan who has been working against the reprehensible you can discriminate against gay people for Jesus law in Indiana, I can’t help think of how different the attitude was here when there are problems. We can work here, but let’s just write off a whole state?

It strikes me as, ahem, interesting that some of the Seattle people I saw on Twitter yesterday with the #BoycottIndiana hashtag weren’t saying boycott Seattle when it came out that we had the worst of the largest 50 metro ares’ gender pay disparity. When that happened, we got to work. We organized. We pressured city and county government to work toward fixing that shit. We had commissions that you can debate how much they did, but it isn’t nothing. We had conversations, and many women shared their stories. But with Indiana, it’s just jump right to why don’t you move and to boycott.

And don’t get me wrong, there are times when a boycott of a state can be effective. The one that came to mind to me was a boycott of South Carolina probably helped get them to stop flying the Confederate flag. But the difference is that local people in South Carolina took the lead. If local Hoosier orgs start telling me they don’t want me to spend money on or in Indiana, I’ll take a serious look. But whatever happens has to come first and foremost from Indiana.

– McMorris-Rogers wanting horror stories about Obamacare would have been a better political story if there were more actual horror stories about the ACA.

– Take Your Burning Rage from Yesterday’s Traffic Mess and Fire It Toward Olympia

– You’d like to believe Brockington’s story was going to be different. You’d like to believe that the recognition bestowed upon him from his school as homecoming king, an affirmation of his identity, meant they cared. You’d like to believe this would only bolster Brockington’s sense of self and provide the resolve needed to face the cruel aftermath of the public eye. We need to believe those things so we never have to actually lend our support.

– Some Christians opposed slavery. Some supported it. A lot were neutral. If you want to take credit for the ones who opposed it, you should also consider why the rest also made slavery possible for so long.

– If you’re going to call your article A modest proposal to restore local control of $40 million from No Child Left Behind waiver (Seattle Times link) the only proper body of the article should include eating children from under-performing schools.

– Despite all its faults, I still dig the Bell Street Park. (PS, even if you don’t care about Bell Street Park specifically, go say hi to Erica)

– Oh man, how come my place of work doesn’t have a bike shop?

– If Birth Control Induces Abortions, Then So Does Voting for Ted Cruz

– I for one am so so very sad that spending a shit ton of money opposing a minimum wage increase means you can’t be elected in one of the most lefty cities in the country.

– The things that go into making clothing for Americans makes me want to go around naked all day.

– Here is the appropriate reaction to #BlackBrunch visiting your brunch location: Listen. Then, continue your brunch, or whatever.

– Shell’s Battle for Seattle

– Take this SDOT survey

– These old photos of Black Seattle are pretty amazing.

– Bill Bryant seems neat.

– Weird

– Cisgender Women Aren’t the Only People Who Seek Abortions, and Activists’ Language Should Reflect That

– Mostly good answers from Inslee’s AMA, but weak sauce on Shell.

– Fiscal impact disclosures seem like a no brainer. No wonder Tim Eyman is opposed.

– James O’Keefe continues to James O’Keefe things up.

– Glad to see Cascade will still do advocacy.

– Well, Governor Inslee’s bracket didn’t last long.

Senator Sharon Brown has a brand-new idea for power generation. Nuclear something something!

In an era when carbon emissions are becoming a major concern and clean energy is a popular cause, Washington is poised to become a center for the development of one of the greenest technologies around. Clean, safe, abundant, all it needs is a bit of encouragement from the state and a willingness to understand that today’s nuclear power is like nothing before.

First off, I’m glad to see some Republican is acknowledging that carbon emissions are a problem. We may disagree on many things, but at least we can agree that humans are causing global warming. Oh? What? She voted with all but one of her GOP colleagues that we aren’t sure if humans cause global warming.

Also, unless you have some uranium lying around, you’re going to have to mine it. And that isn’t exactly a zero emissions proposition.

Yes, nuclear power. We’ve come a long way since the days of tie-dyed T-shirts and no-nukes concerts and the reactor technology of the 1960s and ‘70s. The new generation of reactor design is safer, simpler and potentially cheaper than anything we have seen to date. Export potential is enormous, to a Third World now electrifying with coal. Washington is uniquely suited to become a center for the development, design and export of this small modular nuclear-reactor technology, and we have a small window of opportunity to establish leadership and make this industry our own.

Export potential? I feel like that’s something to explore a bit. But no. Instead we have more discussion of the fashion sense of the 1960’s than of how that would happen.

Anyway, you could get me on board with one minor amendment. I propose we store the waste in her district. Since it’s so clean or whatever, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind. Or maybe just ask the Feds to deal with it and everything will be fine.

I have sponsored a series of bills in the Legislature this year that demonstrate our interest in this most promising industry. Senate Bill 5113 would require the state Department of Commerce to coordinate and advance the siting and manufacturing of small modular reactors. SB 5093 would establish a nuclear-education program in our high schools. SB 5091 would declare nuclear power a form of alternative energy that qualifies under the state‘s voluntary Green Power program. For those concerned about storage of spent nuclear fuel, we have passed a memorial asking the federal government to develop a nuclear-waste repository, once and for all. These measures all cleared the Senate — some with broad bipartisan support.

Oh cool. The Federal Government through Democratic and Republican governments, for decades and decades hasn’t been able to come up with a good solution. But now we’re asking them to develop a repository and so that’s that solved. PS, can the repository be in Richland?

Small modular nuclear reactors are quite a bit different from the big-reactor designs of the ‘70s. Instead of using a single built-in-place reactor core, they utilize a series of interchangeable and replaceable small reactors. A dozen together might be half the size of one of the big reactors of old. These small reactors use a more modern design with fewer moving parts, reducing risk of failure. And when one reactor goes offline for regular maintenance or repair, other modular reactors at the same facility can take its place and keep up the flow of power.

OK, great. We haven’t exactly solved the waste issue yet.

There are many exciting technologies being proposed. Planning is under way for a first-of-its-kind modular reactor in Idaho that will begin serving the Utah power market within a decade — most likely at the Idaho National Laboratory, with support from Washington’s Energy Northwest. Technology isn’t the holdup — federal and state permitting procedures must be developed, and there is ramp-up time involved in developing facilities capable of producing the required components.

Look, we’ve literally asked the Federal government to do something about nuclear waste, so now we have to hurry.

Now imagine if those manufacturing facilities were located here. Imagine if the next reactor were located at Hanford – Washington’s own nuclear industrial site, adjacent to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the talent base in the Tri-Cities. It could power Hanford’s new glassification plant, where legacy high-level defense waste will be converted to solid-glass form – and that by itself could spare us the need to consume 45,000 gallons of diesel fuel every day.

Hanford: Where nuclear waste was never a problem.

On a national level the states of Oregon, Idaho and Utah are becoming players. Nowhere in that conversation is our state, yet we have the intellectual capital and the resources. It is easy to see the possibilities. Successful companies plan for how to get from point A to point B — Washington should do the same for energy. Nuclear power is poised for a resurgence for economic and environmental reasons, and the question is whether we will seize the opportunity or let it slip away for lack of vision. It is better to lead, instead of looking back 10 years from now saying “woulda, coulda, shoulda.”

Couldawouldashoulda had all that nuclear waste of our very own.

– I say let bikes and motorcycles run reds all the time.

– The first step of Seattle’s minimum wage hike is going into effect.

– Six things to know about Shell’s plan to base its Arctic fleet at the Port of Seattle

– In the real world moms carry their newborns around with them. It’s as natural as it gets. And it was charming.

– You guys, stop what you’re doing. They found Cervantes’ tomb! This is not a drill.

– Am I the only person here excited about Overthinking It’s Eurovision coverage? I am? Cool.