– President Obama was in town over the weekend.

– I wonder if the public transportation data for Thurston County would look the same for the rest of the state.

– Obamacare remains a great deal for Boehner and his contemporaries, and while eliminating the law altogether might save Boehner a small amount of money if he re-entered FEHBP, it would be a huge liability for a much greater number of 64 year olds without Boehner’s wealth and job security.

– I don’t know why the grade-school hero fantasies of conservatives are allowed to et the terms of all of our political debates. But that’s how we do things.

– Like so many aspects of American life, holidays have become 2-tiered

– And speaking of, I don’t know about the rest of the bloggers here, but I don’t think I’ll post anything on Thursday or Friday.

I-502 got more than 54% of the vote in Pierce County. So naturally, you’d think that politicians in the county would be, if not eager, at least willing to zone marijuana businesses. You’d probably not think they would support banning any business until the Federal government decides to legalize marijuana. Maybe somewhere like Franklin County where it lost more than 61% of the vote. But not a Puget Sound county where a majority of voters supported legalization at the ballot, surely.

Well, a majority of the Pierce County Council voted to not allow any marijuana businesses. Fortunately, it was vetoed by the exec (Tacoma News Tribune link; hat tip to Sensible Washington on Facebook).

Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy has vetoed the County Council’s ordinance that prohibits licensed marijuana businesses from operating until the U.S. Congress removes marijuana from the list of federally controlled substances.

McCarthy said the county’s ordinance conflicts with state law. She said the county must comply with state law, which permits the licensing of marijuana businesses.

[…]

An override requires five of seven council votes.

[…]*

The council adopted the ordinance Nov. 5 by a vote of 4-3.

So yay. It probably won’t be overridden.

Still, it seems strange to me that people are so hesitant to support marijuana legalization where it’s popular. I mean I get that drugs-are-bad is the default position that a lot of people have. And the Federal government is a big scary thing people can point to. But I-502 was passed with popular support and the sky hasn’t fallen. It’s time for people to stop fighting it.

[Read more…]

– The Seattle Weekly has an interesting piece on Rosellini’s FBI file.

– Obama is better than George W. Bush. Still it’s still too many deaths in wars.

– Oh, and hey, a deal with Iran for 6 months.

– But the GOP has no plan if ObamaCare works. They have no plan for the sick, the healthy, or their own political future. What that should do is twofold; It should tell you clearly that we’re going to win and it should terrify you. The Republicans are in the midst of madness and with it comes a blindness that will destroy them. Let’s hope they don’t take the rest of us with them.

– Are you being persecuted?

– I’m glad KEXP is going to be DJing the New Year’s Eve at the Space Needle but this article seems to think that Pearl Jam and The Ramones are what’s hot in the streets. What?

Contained in this snarky piece about Murray’s transition is some serious talk about the $15 minimum wage.

I asked Murray about the $15 minimum wage, an issue he ended up campaigning on and which has a lot of traction in the city, with Kshama Sawant’s win and the win in SeaTac. On the trail he didn’t give a real timeline for how to get there, but today he said, “We’ll begin our process immediately… We’re having our discussions in the transition team already.” He wants to “bring people to the table” (a politician? Who knew?!), and says “if we end up in a labor-business war, it won’t happen.” He also wants to be “especially sensitive to our small neighborhood businesses—like the Pike/Pine corridor,” he laughed.

I’m going to take that as a positive sign that stuff can get done quickly, and not that it means that the Chamber of Commerce or other bidness groups get a veto. He did run on it, and presumably in 4 years will want it as an accomplishment not as a place where a challenger can stake out a position to his left. And, you know, it’s the right thing to do and popular. And he’ll have at least one City Council member pushing him pretty hard on it.

I go to the House and Senate GOP caucus websites fairly often to look for pieces to make fun of. It’s where I found Baumgartner’s piece the other day. But somehow I’d missed that they went with an offensive picture for another featured story. They had a press release about how they’re opposed to human trafficking. It’s an important issue, but they fubbed the execution.

Basically, despite the fact that most victims of human trafficking are women of color, they chose to illustrate it with a stock image of a white lady being grabbed by black hands (Spokesman-Review link).

This morning, the Senate Republican Caucus web site was down, and the photo was removed, although a spokesman for Committee Chairman Mike Padden said that was probably a coincidence. The hearing was more than a week ago, Eric Campbell said, and the site was rotating features to get more current things up.

[…]

We should note that this is a “stock photo”, one that has been used other places to illustrate sex trafficking or child pornography, primarily on web sites with ties to religious organizations. In some versions of the image, the hands over the mouth don’t seem to be quite as dark as in the above image.

It’s tough to figure out why the GOP has a problem attracting minority voters. And to be clear, I don’t think whoever put it up was acting out of malice: They probably just googled human trafficking, that came up, and they called it good. But they didn’t have any black folks in the office who’d see it before it came up to say, “google that a little harder.”

Goldy deflects some of the flack coming at Kshama Sawant for suggesting the Boeing workers take over production, and start producing things that aren’t used for war. The piece is fine as far as it goes, but I think he misses the biggest problem with this kind of dismissive commentary: it doesn’t give us any idea of what a takeover might look like.

Now I have certainly no idea what a worker takeover at Boeing by its workers might look like. The best guess off the top of my head is something like Mondragon. Or maybe she has something completely else in mind; Mondragon isn’t a panacea. And in any event how the state, or others, might move from Boeing making unreasonable demands to whatever she’s pushing wasn’t discussed. It was a short speech at a rally, and there’s only so much nuance you can give. So there are more questions than answers.

But, gosh, the best people to get those answers are reporters. Rather than writing dismissive pieces, they could ask her for details. I mean they could eventually get to dismissive if that’s their position, but it would be nice to know what she’s actually proposing and how she expects to get from point A to point B before dismissing it.

Now to be clear, I don’t think I agree with her (again, to the point that I understand what she’s proposing). The best thing is probably for Boeing to realize that they need the Puget Sound workforce. But if that doesn’t happen, and Boeing continues the slow decline of their Western Washington workforce, there will be people in the region with manufacturing skills, and no job. It might make more sense for them to start something collective rather than hope that some other big company will come to the rescue, and if this discussion makes them realize that there are other options, well, I’d rather not have pundits — especially ostensibly lefty ones — shutting that discussion down.

– Two Ed Murray things. I love this story of him helping a fallen cyclist (Seattle Times link). Also, here’s the transition webpage if you’re interested.

– It’s not as if the GOP aren’t marketing BS to the public on a daily basis. But I always hold out hope that people running for office won’t be so obvious about it. Color me naive.

– Does anyone care about the WA Dem Chair race? I tried to write about it, but nothing really came together. I could give it another try if y’all care.

– It was the 150th anniversary of The Gettysburg Address this week, and the biggest deal about it is that Obama was asked to read one of the versions of it. Also, how does it compare to President Whitmore’s speech from Independence Day? I’m glad you asked.

– WARONCARZ

– I would hate to be a former Zimmerman juror today. I’d also hate to be Sean Hannity, but that’s true every day.

Unlike most Seattle Democrats, Reuven Carlyle is willing to push an agenda pretty hard. Unfortunately, often times (privatizing public education and the Boeing giveaway for example) he pushes a terrible agenda. At other times, like defending King County against the state trying to vacuum up all of the money, he’s better. So, while most Seattle Dems inspire apathy and a wish that they would use their safe seats for something better than acting as placeholders, Carlyle actually has bold proposals. This is one that I like.

But Carlyle believes lawmakers and the public deserve to know how much a company like Boeing pays in state taxes, especially if that company comes to the Legislature asking for special consideration in the tax code.

Washington is certainly not alone in guarding corporate tax information. Oregon and Idaho do the same. But in Wisconsin, anyone can fill out a form and request a company’s—even an individual’s—net tax information.

Sounds good to me (although I’m not sure about individuals, or really how that would work in our sales tax heavy state). But it seems reasonable to know how much business are paying. And I was somewhat taken aback by the fact that we don’t know.

Last night The Occupy Committee to End Homelessness in King County Coalition held a camp in at Westlake Park to bring attention to Seattle’s homeless problem (and our lack of will to implement any solutions). It’s a brave thing when last night was freezing or near it. But I suppose for many of them, it’s not much of a choice.

I walked through it last night, and it was a few dozen people in sleeping bags. Then I walked home past people sleeping in doorways.

Anyway, they’ll follow it up with a march to Seattle City Hall where the Committee to End Homelessness in King County are meeting. The coalition is demanding, among other things, that we as a community divest from banks that have been active in foreclosures and that we build more affordable housing.

– The $15 SeaTac minimum wage initiative looks like it has the votes. Congrats to everyone who made that happen.

– Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds in critical condition after stabbing

– People are submitting so many applications for state licenses to sell marijuana.

– A Shocking Number Of Non-Violent Americans Will Die In Prison (h/t)

– Seattle Transit Blog looks at what the service cuts to Metro might look like for Seattle and the East Side.

– I don’t even know with young Republicans.

– Who could have predicted?

– You don’t know how much time I tried to think of a war on Cranksgiving joke for here. Like 3 minutes at least. There isn’t one.

– Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell have a petition asking the House to take up ENDA.

– No, Mr. Feaver, Katrina isn’t shorthand for “bungled administration policy.” It’s an actual tragedy in which at least 1,800 people lost their lives. Thousands of others were left stranded without food or water in their flooded neighborhoods, on freeway viaducts, in hospitals and nursing homes, and in the televised hell-hole of the Superdome.

– Regional subtext to the Boeing special session: Left Coast (Cascadia) vs. Deep South Also, I’ve linked to several from the series, but I don’t think I’ve come out and said go read Emmett’s Cascadia Exists pieces, but you totally should if you’re interested in what makes the region unique.

– Sadly, pathetically, too many of us still see the mentally ill as crazy, nuts, losers, cursed by God, and so on. Few of us would joke about the bald head of a woman fighting cancer, but that same woman, mentally ill, wandering the streets and talking to herself – left on her own as many of the mentally ill are – would be mocked and laughed at endlessly. The woman would be the same woman, just suffering from different health ailments. The difference would be us: our knowledge and our attitudes.

– I realize you shouldn’t read too much into a press release, but it looks like good numbers for the Washington exchange.

-There is no nadir.

This is a sad development for Seattle radio:

Although I love my KIRO family, our listeners and my blog readers, I’ve decided to leave this job at the end of this year. In 2014, I’ll begin a new career that doesn’t involve being at work by 2AM. Those jobs do exist, right?

Radio is an industry where people often disappear from the dial. That leaves some listeners cheering the departure. “Finally, somebody there wised up.” Others feel like they’ve lost a friend. “I’ll never listen to that station again.” I hope you’ll cheer on the person who replaces me. I also want you to keep listening to KIRO Radio and keep checking MyNorthwest.com, as I will.

She doesn’t say what’s next, so hopefully she’ll still be around Seattle. Institutional, local knowledge and smart, well delivered news is a pretty rare commodity.

Darryl wrote about it when Kshama Sawant took the lead in the ballots. Now that lead is looking pretty insurmountable, it will be interesting to see how she governs. As 1/9th of one branch of one city’s government, this is hardly a socialist takeover.

Hopefully, she can be an effective voice for something other than market based solutions. Hopefully, she can figure out ways to work with the majority of the council to get things done and won’t be isolated. Most of those colleagues spent the last 4 years trying to isolate Mike McGinn for being too out there, so um, that doesn’t bode well. Still, she’s charming and some of her policies overlap the rest of the council, so maybe she can accomplish some things.

It’s so rare that someone in government is to my left, it’ll be interesting to see what it actually looks like.

Boeing’s threat to take their ball and go somewhere else, while hardly surprising, is incredibly short sighted.

On Thursday, Boeing made good on its threats and began looking elsewhere to develop its popular new 777X airplane. A spokesman for Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Boeing officials called him to begin talks that could bring the work — and thousands of jobs — to that state.

Boeing Co. spokesman Doug Alder declined to specify where the company is now looking, saying there is no short list and that there are many places both within Boeing’s current operations and outside that are being explored.

“Everything is back on the table,” he said.

I’m sorry Boeing doesn’t know this, but the best place to build planes anywhere in the world is the Puget Sound. The fact that Boeing has build that up for over a century means something. It means that the people who are going to make the best quality airplanes are living here. It means they have experience and know how, and the people with a passion for it have moved here. It means that they will help get the job done.

By threatening to go other places, they’re saying they’re willing to put out an inferior product. They’re signaling that when your safety and security is on the line, they’re at least considering going on the cheap. They’re saying that they know they can do better, but fuck it. That doesn’t sound like a long term strategy. You get what you pay for, and they’re clearly establishing that they don’t want to pay for quality when you’re in a tube in the air.

Also, there’s the fact that so much of their business model is to get free money from taxpayers. And I think it’s fair to say that taxpayers are more willing to pay for good jobs than the ones Boeing thinks it should give its employees. Between the largest bit of corporate welfare in US history that the Washington State Legislature just offered them and all the military contracting, Boeing lives off government largess. And it’s tough to imagine Patty Murray going to the mattresses on the tanker deal or the legislature caving so quickly to all of their demands if the jobs were not good ones.