Posted Mon, Apr 23, 2:08 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Scigliano, and thank you Crosscut, for the best most comprehensive piece of transit reporting I have yet seen published anywhere in this notoriously anti-transit region. Nevertheless – as someone who during the past half century covered public transport here, in New York City and in the New ...

Posted Thu, Apr 19, 11:18 a.m.

Think ivy and holly are problematical? Wait until kudzu gets here: grows 120 feet a year, will take an unoccupied house in a single summer, is spread by bird feces, thrives in wet climates and cannot be exterminated. The ultimate botanical Alien, it has conquered the United States south of ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 7:51 p.m.

BlueLight: The Internet is neither the reliable information source (too many) people assume it to be, nor is it as widely available as the Nurds would have us believe. Indeed in the United States, Internet access is so prohibitively expensive as to hardly warrant the label "democratic" – a truth, ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 2:27 p.m.

I recently exchanged unpleasantries with a typically elitist, arrogant, Ayn-Rand-minded professional Nurd who made no secret of his glee at the plight of U.S. print journalists. Nor did he hide his smug contempt for print journalism in general. Indeed he damned print as irrelevant and denounced its writers, photographers and ...

Posted Wed, Mar 14, 5:09 p.m.

As Reporter Hall correctly notes, the transit agencies in the Puget Sound area "often shun opportunities to work with providers outside their own modes and niches, however obvious those opportunities might be." But that's merely the tip of the metaphorical iceberg – only about one-tenth the story. The other nine-tenths ...

Posted Thu, Feb 2, 2:26 p.m.

Good work, Mr. Bryan; beyond that, what Ms. Lightfoot said, with one addition. As she notes, "the bucket of need...keeps grossly expanding"; what she omits is it will continue to do so until capitalism is recognized as manifest evil and rejected accordingly.

Posted Fri, Jan 20, 9:13 a.m.

Provocative piece, Mr. Berger; well done. And you surely win the award for the best most timeless pun ever published in Crosscut: "The lessons from Rome are legion." Boudicca -- speaking literally --might have said those same words in 61 CE; likewise -- albeit somewhat more metaphorically -- Robert the ...

Posted Fri, Jan 13, 10:25 a.m.

Finally, public admission the savage reduction of health care by which we elderly, disabled and chronically impoverished people are deliberately victimized is in fact genocide -- capitalism's (non-deathcamp) method of exterminating those of us who are no longer exploitable for profit.

Posted Mon, Jan 9, 4:09 p.m.

Belated kudos to Crosscut for publishing this portrait of the Third World nation we've become, kudos also for publishing the commentary by those de facto Nazis who declare themselves such by their responses to disabled people.

Posted Tue, Jan 3, 10:22 a.m.

Mr. Williams can rationalize the DemocRats' betrayal of the 99 Percent however he choses, but the financial facts remain unchanged: based on who gets the big bucks from Wall Street and Big Business generally, D-Rats and GOPorkers are each wholly owned subsidiaries of the One Percent. To expect such harlots ...

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 5:27 p.m.

Thank you Mr. Chasan and Crosscut for this report. It would be interesting -- and perhaps very informative -- to know if the weaponry of Europe's Solutrean culture (Google), which is eerily similar to that of Clovis, followed a comparable pattern of development. Sidestepping the contentious issue of whether these ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 10:13 a.m.

Blankets for trees, which can always be sold for profit. Genocide by neglect and abandonment for humans who are no longer profitable. There's no irony there, Ms. Lightfoot; it's merely capitalism in action. And it's not just in Seattle or the Pacific Northwest, the always-xenophobic realm – the land in ...

Posted Thu, Nov 17, 12:33 p.m.

Like every other media notable who has commented on the Penn State sex atrocities, Rev. Robinson deftly avoids its most damning element -- that the depredations of the accused Penn State pedophile and the associated Penn State pedophilia protective cult are all examples of the class warfare that has become ...

Posted Mon, Nov 14, 10:43 a.m.

Best most informative piece by Mr. Van Dyk I've seen in Crosscut to date, also the most unflinchingly accurate summary-indictment of Hoover I've seen anywhere. Thank you Crosscut; thank you Mr. Van Dyk. Alas, as jmrolls and Richard Borkowski each note, the secret-police functions of the FBI did not die ...

Posted Mon, Nov 7, 1:11 p.m.

Though neighborhood conflict between vegetable gardeners and status-seekers is an old story, this is the first time I have seen it mentioned in print. Once again, Crosscut appears to provide genuinely cutting-edge journalism. The clash, as indeed – g implies, is between those who regard their dwelling and neighborhood as ...

Posted Thu, Nov 3, 1:18 p.m.

At last Rev. Robinson reveals his true (and truly reactionary) politics: “Even the nearly 50 percent of Americans who now pay no federal income taxes will have to pay something, and they should.” (In other words, tax the poor – those of us who are already too impoverished to afford ...

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 11:34 a.m.

The war against pedestrians so vividly revealed by Mr. MacDonald's superb reporting – for which kudos to both the writer and Crosscut – is in fact an old story to those of us afoot here in what is undoubtedly the nation's most savagely autocentric region. But this is the first ...

Posted Tue, Oct 18, 2:29 p.m.

If the debacle foreseen by Mr. Morrill takes place, it will be entirely the fault of President Obama and the Democrats, specifically their abandonment of New Deal principles and their refusal to articulate the grievances of the real Working Class – that is, 99 percent of the U.S. population. Again ...

Posted Wed, Oct 12, 9:08 a.m.

Kudos to Crosscut and Harris Meyer for reporting on a pivotal issue Ruling Class Media is often too cowardly (or too controlled by closet theocrats) to adequately cover. Now as a long-time (voting) member of Group Health, I wonder what reproductive and end-of-life rights might have been surrendered by its ...

Posted Tue, Sep 20, 9:09 p.m.

Powermom, my indictment of Christianity would indeed be unfair had the so-called “mainstream” Christians denounced the Dominionists and the other avowedly theocratic and/or blatantly Jesufascist cults that characterize Christianity in the United States. But that has not happened. Nor is it likely to happen in the foreseeable future. Meanwhile the ...

Posted Mon, Sep 19, 7:25 p.m.

When Americans contrast "religion" to "spirituality" what many of us are in reality doing is contrasting the infinitely vicious tyranny of church with the implicit spiritual democracy of churchlessness. The damning problem with church the Reverends Robinson and Daniels steadfastly refuse to acknowledge is not that "other people might call ...

Posted Tue, Sep 6, 2:14 p.m.

In the 40 years I've lived in this region I've watched its war against public transport escalate so relentlessly I doubt Seattle or any of the other Puget Sound cities will ever achieve even minimally adequate service. The first obstacle was xenophobia -- any sort of transit beyond herky-jerky buses ...

Posted Thu, Aug 25, 10:01 a.m.

Kudos to Mr. Scigliano and Crosscut for what seems to be the most informative, least hysterical nuclear-hazard report I've seen anywhere. The easy readability of this work is especially notable. (I say "seems" not to cast doubt on Mr. Scigliano's reporting but because, as a 1963-1965 alumnus of The Oak ...

Posted Wed, Aug 24, 10:10 a.m.

Just as the pending cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid escalate capitalism's war against those of us who are elderly, disabled and impoverished, so do the looming Bureau of Indian Affairs cutbacks signal a new war against First Nations peoples. The death-dealing impacts of these cutbacks are well known ...

Posted Wed, Aug 17, 4:08 p.m.

Hearty applause and a clenched-fist salute for the exemplary manner in which the people of Bellingham resisted and eventually defeated a powerful clique of capitalist predators who intended to inflict irreparable damage on a truly priceless part of the local environment. Yes, I know the so-called Hundred Acre Wood very ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 1:06 p.m.

Mr. Williams is surely correct when he declares "we can no longer debate on the margins" and poignantly adds "only leadership that educates and, yes, challenges, will bring change." But his subsequent question – "where is that leadership when even a Democratic House speaker heralds as 'spectacular' an all-cuts budget ...

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 2:13 p.m.

Given the truly Machiavellian sophistication Obama displayed during his 2008 presidential campaign, not for a second will I believe he is “out of his league.” Instead – as proven by the sources of his 2008 campaign money – I suspect he is doing exactly what the Ruling Class hired him ...

Posted Mon, Aug 1, 2:14 p.m.

This newest development in the coal-port saga – environmental destruction facilitated by “confusion and disagreement” over the terms of a permit issued by Whatcom County 14 years ago – is a classic example of coal-operator tyranny. It is the sort of tactic well known in Appalachia, where coal is not ...

Posted Wed, Jul 27, 10:01 a.m.

In rebuttal to orino's assertion public transport does not reduce carbon emissions: that's wrong, period. With buses, it's simple math: one bus, depending of course on its size, can take 40 or more automobiles off the streets. Hence the formula is X1 (pre-change carbon emissions) minus Y (the emissions produced ...

Posted Mon, Jul 25, 11:14 a.m.

Excellent reporting by Mr. Scigliano – the most informed transit coverage I've seen around here in years – all the more so for its vivid illustration of how the (always treacherous) politicians of both parties have cunningly built a transit-killing bias into the state's taxation policies. My one editorial criticism ...

Posted Fri, Jul 22, 2:16 p.m.

Three points: (1)-For Ms. Poole and apropos single-payer: when Bill Clinton was president and Hillary Clinton was writing the 1993-94 health-care reform proposal, her main single-payer model was reportedly the Group Health Cooperative. Cheryl Scott, then Group Health's chief executive officer, was often said to be the most influential person ...

Posted Thu, Jul 21, 6:52 p.m.

In the civilized world, health care is a human right, available to all regardless of socioeconomic status.In the United States, it is a privilege based entirely on wealth.

Posted Thu, Jul 21, 8:59 a.m.

Ms. Poole describes perfectly the predatory function of the capitalist "health-insurance" scam -- the for-profit death-panels from which (thanks to Barack the Betrayer and the ReplicRats) -- there is no longer any rational hope of escape. What we have instead, cleverly disguised as "health care," is a system of socioeconomic ...

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 2:35 p.m.

I emphatically agree with under the clouds we need to fund transit "in a more equitable way than sales taxes." As far as I know, no other state in the union makes mass transit so utterly dependent on local sales-tax revenues. Alas – as we learn every time the issue ...

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 1:38 p.m.

If you're going to quote me, bjan, wipe away sufficient mouth-froth you can see well enough to quote me correctly: "the worst public transport in the United States – at least 40 years behind any demographically comparable part of the nation." Anyone knowledgeable in transit issues – and I covered ...

Posted Fri, Jul 15, 10:50 a.m.

Why is it – and I speak from four decades of local journalistic experience – so many bureaucracies in Washington state become so tyrannical? When I moved here in 1970, my model for bureaucratic absolutism was the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, deservedly notorious from coast to coast ...

Posted Wed, Jul 13, 7:30 p.m.

The source of the coal doesn't matter. Wherever it is mined, the burning of coal literally kills people: it releases some of the most toxic, environmentally-destructive pollutants known to science. The citizens of Bellingham (and indeed everyone on the Spokane-Vancouver-Tacoma-Seattle-Everett-Mount Vernon route the once-per-hour coal trains would follow) have a ...

Posted Wed, Jul 13, 2:20 p.m.

Sweeping generalization indeed: more like a malicious fable. I don't know anybody on the (real) Left who fits dbreneman's original description. When we mobilize against abuses of power, what we "really detest" are the abusers. No matter whether they are Republican or Democrat, tycoon or politician, banker or bureaucrat, our ...

Posted Wed, Jul 13, 10:08 a.m.

Mr. Carlson's acknowledgement of Barack the Betrayer as not just a closet Republican but an all-time master of the Big Lie -- "the president's rhetoric remains as lofty, eloquent and progressive as it did when he was a candidate three years ago" -- suggests the perfect solution to the 2012 ...

Posted Thu, Jul 7, 2:37 p.m.

As I learned during my own years covering education issues, there are three primary obstacles to transforming the postmodern intellectual wasteland of U.S. public schools back into a realm approaching academic fruitfulness. These are (1)-the colleges of education (notorious for offering the easiest majors on campus); (2)-teacher certification requirements (by ...

Posted Tue, Jun 28, 10:24 a.m.

Republican Rob McKenna's true allegiance is proven by how, as attorney general, he transformed the AG's division of consumer protection: he took what used to be the most effective state consumer protection agency in the nation and turned it into an anti-consumer defender of ripoff capitalism. As I learned firsthand, ...

Posted Fri, Jun 17, 12:51 p.m.

Interesting as this controversy may be to sociologists or journalists, it is just another example of the ultimate American Big Lie: the ongoing illusion of democratic process by which the Ruling Class deceives the gullible – that is, most of us – into believing we have some control over the ...

Posted Fri, May 27, 12:31 p.m.

Or, we "might more convincingly say" it's all just proof the politicians are wholly owned subsidiaries of Wall Street and Big Business. Thus the ultimate difference between Left and Right: we observe the same evidence -- even share the same grievances -- but how we interpret these matters is wholly ...

Posted Thu, May 26, 5:56 p.m.

RicSm wants to know: "Which of these have anything to do with terminal diagnosis or marijuana used medicinally - Taxes, protecting union employees, (R) v (D), the War on Drugs, Gregoire's deep bore legacy..." The answer is that every one of these outrages -- the suppression of medicinal marijuana and ...

Posted Thu, May 26, 2:54 p.m.

Barack the Betrayer and Christine the Cruel; the roll-call of DemocRats in Washington D.C who killed forever any rational hope of public option/single-payer health care and signed the death warrant of organized labor by permanently obstructing Employee Free Choice; the DemocRats in Olympia who destroyed workers' comp and sandbagged employees' ...

Posted Wed, May 18, 8:53 a.m.

Two points: (1)-The slide-show is being censored, with images 2 and 4 suppressed. (Not even with a dozen attempts could I access either one, which means that somewhere on the Internet, someone has maliciously pulled the plug on these photographs.) (2)-Seattle's obvious preference for unwelcoming public space -- especially for ...

Posted Fri, May 13, 8:25 a.m.

Off-road vehicles are merely cars by another name. The associated obstructionism is thus part of the same (woefully under-reported) story as suburban Pierce County's bigoted belief mass transit is welfare and the suburbanites' resultant war against transit-riders and mass transit: in Ferry County as in Pierce, it's the infinite selfishness, ...

Posted Thu, Apr 21, 2:55 p.m.

CORRECTION: a tired-eyed, arthritic-fingered typing error added an extra zero to the number of persons killed annually by lack of health care in the United States, a mistake in the above comment I just now discovered and have corrected accordingly. My blunder, my apology.

Posted Tue, Apr 19, 10:43 a.m.

Thank you, Mr. Marshall, for a brutally accurate portrait of the devastating reality of longterm unemployment. I know you speak the truth because I have been there myself, though now at age 71 I am (bitterly) resigned to the fact I will never work again. Hence I have learned to ...

Posted Tue, Apr 12, 10:34 a.m.

The fact Gregoire's now out of the closet as (another) Republican formerly disguised as a Democrat is no surprise to me or indeed to any of us who recognize that we live in a de facto one-party nation. DemocRat or GOPorker, the politicians represent only the capitalist aristocrats -- the ...

Posted Tue, Apr 12, 9:42 a.m.

What dominates the Olympians whether DemocRat or GOPorker is not just "resistance" to the arts; it is pure nyekulturniy -- a Russian pejorative, an insult not readily translatable into English, that denotes not just the total absence of culture, but a cultural vacuum so absolute it becomes culture's antithesis. Thus ...

Posted Mon, Apr 11, 4:40 p.m.

I deeply appreciate Mr. Van Dyk's commemoration of 12 April 1945, the date President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died at the health spa in Warm Springs, Georgia. FDR was by far our nation's greatest president, and his demise – announced to my mother and me by the motorman of a Roanoke, ...

Posted Wed, Apr 6, 9:38 a.m.

Mr. Berger, your reporting on archaeological issues is quite simply the best I've read anywhere, not just in newspapers (beginning of course with The New York Times and its superb coverage of all the sciences), but in the professional journals as well. Thank you; this alone would suffice to make ...

Posted Tue, Mar 29, 10:07 a.m.

ericgoetz has the beginning of a great idea: toll single-occupancy vehicles whenever they use the Interstate highways -- then use the money to build adequate public transport: not just trolleys and trains, but trains that run on electricity and take advantage of the fact we (thanks to Bonneville and the ...

Posted Mon, Mar 28, 8:40 a.m.

An excellent essay -- perhaps Mr. Van Dyk's best yet for Crosscut -- pointing out the bitter truth first revealed by the aftermath of the 2008 presidential election: that in the United States of the 21st Century, hope is imbecility not rationality (and certainly not "audacity") -- unless of course ...

Posted Thu, Mar 24, 3:39 p.m.

Mr. Lilly's work here is maybe the best reporting I've seen anywhere on the administrative policies that perpetuate the national education crisis. Indeed Mr. Lilly focuses on the core issue of that crisis: whether school children are taught as "individuals" or depersonalized into nothing more than "average test scores" What ...

Posted Fri, Mar 18, 7:34 p.m.

Crossrip is seemingly unaware the "government managers" against whom he rages so furiously are merely following the orders of the politicians who -- though elected by "we the people" -- are in fact wholly owned by the capitalist plutocracy. Therefore (particularly here in Washington state and regardless of whether the ...

Posted Fri, Mar 18, 12:30 p.m.

Sorry I missed Crossrip yesterday. Belatedly, here are four points in response: (1)--At least half the reason local transit costs are so high is the malicious rejection (via the Forward Thrust elections c. 1968 and 1970 and via the legislature's defeat of Sen. Ted Haley's regional transit bill a decade ...

Posted Thu, Mar 17, 10:34 a.m.

I recognize Mr. Berger's deep knowledge of local history and for that reason usually appreciate his writing even if (as happens only rarely) I disagree with its conclusions. But to equate Seattle with Portland and Vancouver ("It's what Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver are all about") is not only gravely dishonest ...

Posted Sat, Mar 12, 11:49 a.m.

Gary, I wish I did live in a world that included more "light," but the teaching of a half century in journalism is that one must always confront the darkness. For example -- apropos "improved methods of communication" -- the computers we use are utterly dependent on petroleum derivatives. Once ...

Posted Sat, Mar 12, 5:24 a.m.

GaryP, the reason for my pessimism – actually the unflinching realism characteristic of old age – is the fact our species is approaching a deadly crisis that has no precedent in human history or experience. The elements of this crisis, which include a looming double apocalypse, are threefold: (1)-The Ponzi ...

Posted Fri, Mar 11, 8:30 p.m.

NickBob is correct in his assumption I use the 1968 Forward Thrust defeat as the anchor for the 43-year period I cite. But – here responding to GaryP, I was not counting the Monorail fiasco, only the five defeats of genuinely regional systems or (as in the case of Forward ...

Posted Fri, Mar 11, 11:01 a.m.

Once again the City's sensible pro-bicycle and pro-public-transport policies make me fiercely proud to be both a native New Yorker and a lifelong advocate for mass transit. Never mind it was the gentrification imposed by the limousine-riding capitalist-pig aristocrats (yeah, Sen. Schumer included) that drove me to permanent exile here ...

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 9:29 a.m.

Excellent work, Mr. Weglin: both the struggle and the writing -- the former evidence of rare determination, the latter indicative of major talent. Best wishes for ever more success and fulfillment.

Posted Mon, Mar 7, 1:04 p.m.

As the South discovered after it had been raped by the Yankee timber barons following the Civil War, the perfect solution for stabilizing clearcut-ravaged slopes is kudzu, which grows 120 feet per year and will take a vacant house in a single summer. Indeed the importation of kudzu to Washington ...

Posted Tue, Feb 15, 12:56 p.m.

Unfortunately for all of us here below the salt, Obama -- Barack the Betrayer on my blog "Outside Agitator's Notebook" (lorenbliss.typepad.com) -- is indeed another Reaganoid: a closet Republican who won election by waving the false flag of "hope" and brandishing the Big Lie of "change we can believe in." ...

Posted Sun, Feb 13, 2:24 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Carlson, for the biggest Big Lie I've ever seen in Crosscut: "But the old man had it right. Better days were ahead." Better days for whom? Surely not for working Americans -- we who haven't had a real raise since 1973; we who are now abandoned as ...

Posted Sat, Feb 12, 1:25 p.m.

"Urbanist creed"? Please don't make me laugh. Were "we the people" not already disenfranchised – and now facing methodical reduction to an inescapably wretched neo-serfdom – the points raised by Mr. Valdez would be relevant. Particularly since the Klanish coterie of local xenophobes and bigots – mostly in Seattle and ...

Posted Wed, Feb 9, 3:42 p.m.

CORRECTION: my last graf should read: Such is the increasingly undeniable agenda behind the new social-Darwinist paradigm of governance...

Posted Wed, Feb 9, 3:39 p.m.

Washington state's knowingly vicious reduction of home-health-care workers' paychecks is of a kind with yesterday's 55-45 vote in Tacoma and Pierce County to radically downsize an already inadequate local mass transit system. Both are part of Moron Nation's carefully orchestrated, maliciously escalating war against lower-income people. Not only is this ...

Posted Thu, Feb 3, 1:14 p.m.

My admittedly cynical guess is that Mr. MacDonald is trying to re-invent himself as a Seattleite by joining Seattle's internationally notorious cult of anti-rail fanatics. Nevertheless since Mr. MacDonald and I are both from Back East, we each know that -- upscale European imports not withstanding – U.S. buses are ...

Posted Wed, Feb 2, 11:40 a.m.

CORRECTION: my second paragraph above should read: Indeed -- precisely as proven by the implicitly genocidal savagery of the staggering cutbacks in education, transportation, medical, police, fire and safety-net funds -- the society in which we now live is already one of "greed, injustice and no compassion."

Posted Wed, Feb 2, 11:36 a.m.

Anotherview asks (above) if we want to live in a society of "greed, injustice and no compassion," perhaps not recognizing that such a realm is the ultimate expression of capitalism, the core principle of which is the elevation of infinite greed to maximum virtue. Indeed -- precisely as the implicitly ...

Posted Fri, Jan 28, 11:40 a.m.

"The colony of artists at 619 might not survive the construction of the tunnel, but it appears now the building will." In other words, capitalism has won another victory against culture: Seattle's last outpost of bohemia will be destroyed; the bohemians themselves evicted, reduced to refugees and scattered; the already ...

Posted Wed, Jan 26, 1:52 p.m.

Not to worry, folks; it's only capitalism in action: infinite greed as maximum virtue, limitless selfishness as ultimate good. Abetted, of course, by government at every level that now unabashedly serves only the narrowest of capitalist purposes: absolute power and unlimited profit for the Ruling Class, total subjugation and (deliberately) ...

Posted Tue, Jan 18, 2:15 a.m.

With all due respect, FilmCriticOne, I never challenged the reality of the Southern Ultimatums. Having been a Civil Rights activist whose political resume includes the Knox County Jail and malicious slander on Page One of The Knoxville Journal -- the very daily which until the moment of my arrest I ...

Posted Mon, Jan 17, 6:04 p.m.

Apropos FilmCriticOne's statements about Civil War misconceptions, perhaps the biggest misconception of all is that the war was intended to end slavery. In truth the slavery issue was never more than propaganda, a fact proven by the date of the Emancipation Proclamation, 1 January 1863, and underscored by the North's ...

Posted Mon, Jan 17, 12:23 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Berger; this is as informative and thought-provoking a piece of historical analysis as I've seen anywhere. It explains a great deal about how the region's uniquely perplexing sociological and political paradoxes came into being, for example the phenomenon of locally born self-proclaimed "progressives" whose xenophobic hatred of ...

Posted Tue, Jan 11, 11:46 a.m.

As a New Yorker long ago permanently dispossessed by gentrification, I am painfully aware that one of the less-obvious agendas of what Robert Reich labels "supercapitalism" -- "tyrannocapitalism" in my own lexicon -- is the methodical destruction of bohemia. Properly recognized as the sole source of new humanitarian or environmentalist ...

Posted Wed, Dec 15, 3:26 p.m.

Mr. Lilly's effort to redefine class warfare in terms of education (and to thus implicitly blame its victims) is a classic example of how Ruling Class Media serves the oppressor by confusing or obscuring the issues -- in this case the nature of capitalism and its paradigm of governance. Economic ...

Posted Sun, Nov 28, 11:35 a.m.

Mud Baby (with my apology for responding so belatedly): What has no precedent is NOT the economic model, which you correctly associate with Franco and implicitly with Pinochet. The economic model actually dates to Mussolini, specifically his declarations that fascism is in fact "corporatism" -- i.e. (and in today's terms), ...

Posted Tue, Nov 23, 1:37 p.m.

Huxley, Faulkner and Clemens banned for their language; Hemingway and Graves banned for their views of women; Nin banned for her sexuality; Orwell banned for his iconoclasm; Mor banned for her Gaean consciousness; Marx, Engels, Trotsky and Lenin banned as enemies of capitalism; the bans themselves now dishonestly disguised as ...

Posted Thu, Nov 18, 9:06 p.m.

PeteB -- it is your assumptions that provide the hilarity here. I'm 70 years old, crippled and physically disabled by conditions that include a failing heart. But unlike you I'm not a coward who flings vitriol from a sanctuary of anonymity. And having worked since I was 10 -- then ...

Posted Thu, Nov 18, 3:41 p.m.

Gregoire's moratorium on regulations is of a kind with Obama's serial betrayals – the stealth-murders of Bill of Rights restoration, real health-care reform, Employee Free Choice, repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell – and of course the knife Washington state Democrats' stabbed in the back of organized labor to kill ...

Posted Wed, Oct 6, 11:51 a.m.

Mr. Friedman lost me the moment he wrote "corporate tax reductions...stimulate jobs” -- a claim amongst the most pernicious Big Lies of capitalist despotism. History proves such tax reductions do NOT create jobs. The reduced taxes merely bloat the obscene blood-wealth the Ruling Class amasses by its exploitation and ruin ...

Posted Mon, Oct 4, 8:47 a.m.

These Debtors Prison cases are more proof of the innate savagery of capitalism. Sooner or later -- and everyone knows it -- a jailed debtor will be gang-raped in the showers, his psyche destroyed forever and, if the rapists are AIDS-infected (as many repeat offenders are), what remains of his ...

Posted Thu, Sep 30, 2:38 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Morrill, for your eloquent and informed defense of the desperate need for resurrecting our long-suppressed radical instincts – “reconnecting with the left's historic worker and lower middle class base” – not just in Seattle (where in my lifetime radicalism has always been more illusory than real) but ...

Posted Tue, Aug 31, 10:12 a.m.

Opposing adequate transit on the basis of per-mile costs is like opposing electricity on the basis of transmission costs. Note that electricity is regarded as a vital public utility everywhere on the planet, but that transit – though considered vital everywhere else – is still debated in the United States ...

Posted Fri, Aug 27, 10:31 a.m.

Touting buses as "great" implies denial of terminal climate change, blindness to the finite nature of fossil fuel supplies and rejection of the historical truth of class struggle – specifically our methodical oppression and enslavement by the Big Oil/Big Automotive baronies and the governmental policies so mandated. Having had the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 25, 9:06 a.m.

Seattle's hostility to bicycles and bicyclists is of a kind with its hostility to adequate mass transit -- xenophobic, bigoted, institutionalized, cloaked in euphemisms and (above all else), grotesque proof the so-called Emerald City's claim to environmental enlightenment is among the most breathtaking hypocrisies in municipal history.

Posted Thu, Aug 19, 1:27 a.m.

Mr. Van Dyk's vision of 2020 is interesting reading, though mostly from clinical or semiotic perspectives: at best he demonstrates the deluded assumptions characteristic of Moron Nation, at worst he shows us some of the deceptions by which we are oppressed. In either case his work is a glaring example ...

Posted Fri, Aug 13, 10:39 a.m.

Curiously, the others who commented here all seem to ignore the real issue -- that Obama has again proven himself to be Barack the Betrayer. Thus they seem to sidestep the fact Mr. Chassen's disclosures are yet more proof of the imbecility of our "hope," yet more evidence "change we ...

Posted Sat, Jun 12, 8:18 p.m.

FlyintheOintment: your lack of reference makes it impossible for readers to ascertain the identity of your target, which I rather doubt is an accident. Hence for the record let me state I have been in Hawaii only once in my life, this when a Korea-bound troopship, the U.S.S. Mann, put ...

Posted Fri, Jun 11, 10:52 p.m.

Afreeman...I was not being in the least bit sarcastic in my commendation of Rev. Robinson for his effort, but I likewise saw no reason to withhold my own perspective on the theological source of our troubles. I suppose if I were to reduce my argument to a single sentence it ...

Posted Fri, Jun 11, 1:55 p.m.

I would love to participate in an open-ended, face-to-face discussion amongst truly thoughtful people about the points raised by Rev. Robinson because I believe he attempts to address the very issues that will determine whether our present-day failures as a species become the terminal species failure toward which we are ...

Posted Thu, Jun 10, 10:27 a.m.

Major kudos to Crosscut for publishing Mr. Felleman's piece, a report The Seattle BP Times would no doubt have gone well out if its way to suppress. (BP = not just British Petroleum but its synonyms Biased Presentation and Blethen Published.) As to the extent of Big Oil's local omnipotence ...

Posted Tue, Jun 8, 8:15 p.m.

In response to Dbreneman: I covered public transport in one form or another from 1963 through 1986, and I have written about it -- sometimes in paid assignments, sometimes via unpaid commentaries (as here) -- ever since. My work c.1963-1983 included reportorial beat assignments on five newspapers, the associate editorship ...

Posted Tue, Jun 8, 3:42 p.m.

Somehow the slaying of the name board doesn't surprise me a bit. It is not a non sequitur to point out that Washington is already notorious as the most venomously anti-transit state in the U.S. (and quite possibly on the entire planet). Bellingham voted at the end of April to ...

Posted Tue, Jun 1, 1:48 p.m.

Thank you, Mr. Berger, for another thought-evoking read. My favorite London book is The Star Rover, long suppressed by Christian zealots in retaliation for its matter-of-fact discussion of reincarnation but nevertheless periodically available in limited editions, for which Google. In the wake of a fairly intense discussion in which I ...

Posted Tue, Jun 1, 12:24 p.m.

Were we not psychologically conditioned to reflexively deny the evils of capitalism, we would recognize the huge probability this entire "economic collapse" is engineered to do exactly what it is doing -- complete the destruction of the socioeconomic safety net, provide the Fat Cats with yet another huge windfall. The ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 12:56 p.m.

To "improve" U.S. journalism (political or otherwise), the first step would be re-teaching the nation's journalists to think: a skill that -- if it survived the K-12 curriculum of relentless conformist bullying via classroom, gym and playground -- surely died in the corporate-stenographer programs that are collegiate journalism schools. Assuming ...

Posted Thu, May 20, 3:44 p.m.

It seems Crosscut is evolving into a valuable Pacific Northwest history resource -- especially thanks to Mr. Berger's essays, but also because of other such work including Mr. Van Dyk's recent summary of taxation controversies. I hope the editors continue in this direction, as it gives Crosscut a unique relevance ...

Posted Thu, May 6, 1:26 a.m.

With even secular activists now saying Big Oil "has literally punched a hole into hell," the consequences of this disaster as measured in intensified public indifference may be infinitely worse than Mr. Berger foresees. Among my coterie (nearly all of us news junkies with mass media or public employment backgrounds ...

Posted Wed, May 5, 11:23 a.m.

Knute Berger describes with near perfection why in my own writing I increasingly refer to the United States as Moron Nation.

Posted Mon, Apr 26, 12:15 p.m.

Thanks to Mr. Van Dyk for the comprehensive summation of Washington state's unique taxation history. (I cannot but wonder to what extent this legacy is yet another example of class struggle in action -- a legal maze cunningly designed by the infinitely self-protective timber barons to ensure taxes disproportionately burden ...

Posted Fri, Apr 23, 12:32 a.m.

Actually, Disclaimer, we're 40 years behind everywhere else, and globally notorious not just for our wretched public transport, but for the breathtaking hypocrisy of claiming superior environmental consciousness even as the record proves Pugetopolans to be not just the most anti-transit voters in the United States but quite possibly on ...

Posted Thu, Apr 22, 9:14 p.m.

Thus Mr. Van Dyk reveals himself as yet another advocate for the Big Oil/Big Automotive cartel and -- via fossil-fueled, internal-combustion-engined buses -- preserving our ever-more-oppressive enslavement by those parasitic industries and the ecocidal aristocrats who own them. His is a demonstrably outrageous viewpoint anywhere in today's world, but here ...

Posted Fri, Apr 16, 5:01 p.m.

The extent to which Washington state governments are wholly owned subsidiaries of Big Oil and Big Automotive is clearly demonstrated by the abysmal lack of public transport here -- the most automobile-dependent metropolis in the United States, with the nation's worst, most backward urban mega-region mass transit -- all the ...

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 1:28 p.m.

CORRECTION (writing in haste and nearly late for a medical appointment): my second sentence/second graf should read: "Sadly, I doubt we will ever see his like again."

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 1:25 p.m.

Thank you, Feliks Banel and Crosscut, for this moving tribute to our nation's greatest president. Sadly, I doubt we will never see his like again. I was five years old when President Roosevelt died -- riding a Roanoke, Virginia trolley with my mother (my father's involvement with the War Effort ...

Posted Fri, Apr 9, 3 p.m.

Ms. Lightfoot's bravery in accurately linking the present-day climate of fear and anger with the forbidden history of U.S. oppressiveness is rare and commendable. Left and Right -- labor activist or teabagger -- "our lives as American citizens can change on a dime," precisely as Mr. Fiset discovered. Moreover it ...

Posted Tue, Apr 6, 2:43 p.m.

CORRECTION: The Roberts Court decision to which I referred above is Citizens United, more specifically,Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Nevertheless my (deeply embarrassing) reference-error does not invalidate my prediction: that the Roberts Court -- having already demonstrated a genuinely radical hostility to established precedent -- will likewise nullify health ...

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 4:29 a.m.

The climate of intensifying hatred the Republicans have methodically agitated into increasingly violent expression -- the death-threats against elected representatives and their families, the assaults on elderly and disabled people at political gatherings, the undercurrent of racial, ethnic and homophobic bigotry brought ever closer to lynch-mob boil – this is ...

Posted Wed, Mar 24, 12:41 p.m.

To those of us who understand the horrible magnitude of the Nazi-like malevolence the Republicans have evoked in recent years – the success of a scheme that began at least a decade before World War Two (when the GOP allied itself with Hitler, Mussolini and Franco to become the U.S. ...

Posted Mon, Mar 22, 4:59 p.m.

I stand corrected: I should have written "...hatemongering, hysterical demagoguery and deliberate obfuscation of facts are all too often the ultimate weapons..." My deepest apologies for the error.

Posted Mon, Mar 22, 11:34 a.m.

Thank you, Mr. Berger, for your superbly researched, exceptionally well-written reporting and analysis on a complex issue in which the deliberate obfuscation of facts is all too often the ultimate weapon of the anti-gunowner, anti-Second Amendment fanatics -- especially those whose hidden agendas include not only forcible disarmament but prohibiting ...

Posted Sun, Mar 14, 12:27 a.m.

Two points for taupe (with my regret for a response unavoidably delayed by computer problems): Apropos health care, the U.S. health care system probably is -- for the dwindling number who can afford its deliberately exclusionary prices -- the best in the world. But for those of us who cannot ...

Posted Wed, Mar 10, 5:30 p.m.

Mr. Van Dyk's generalization that health care reform supporters are "frustrated and mystified" is accurate – as far as it goes. But much stronger words -- for example “outraged” and “embittered” -- apply to those of us who supported Medicare expansion or some other single-payer alternative: we who set aside ...

Posted Mon, Mar 8, 10:03 p.m.

Thank you, PJS, for your eloquent presentation of some of the notions derived from capitalism -- that is, from the economic (and therefore also political, moral and theological) philosophy of infinite greed elevated to maximum virtue -- and thanks too for sharing some of the obfuscations and outright lies commonly ...

Posted Mon, Mar 8, 4:56 p.m.

Austin Jenkins not only condemns the notion of forcing the rich to pay even a tiny fraction of their fair share of state taxes. He ridicules – with breathtakingly misogynistic venomousness – the economic justice of taxing the rich, dismissing it as an aberration “hatched” by Sen. Lisa Brown. If ...

Posted Thu, Mar 4, 4:17 p.m.

While helping evaluate a specific part of Seattle's municipal website, I scanned the site in general and was very favorably impressed, both with its accessibility and -- speaking in this instance as a former editor-in-chief of Art Direction magazine – by its attractively utilitarian design. Moreover I find the city's ...

Posted Tue, Feb 16, 4:46 p.m.

I am always of two minds when the ignorance, terror and just plain vicious bigotry that define Moron Nation's attitude toward mental-health issues surfaces in some public forum. My sociological-journalist intellect revels in the triumph of disclosure – rather as when (during the 1960s when I was involved with the ...

Posted Mon, Feb 15, 5:57 p.m.

Excellent reporting and useful analysis -- actually the best I've seen on this topic -- save for one all-important point: the Democrats' biggest blunder in 1994 was not on taxation; it was their attempt to impose New York City-type forcible disarmament on the entire state. Despite methodical suppression of this ...

Posted Mon, Feb 8, 12:24 p.m.

Mr. Jackson makes a point worthy of serious contemplation. During my years in Manhattan, I always relished blizzards, and I realized in early adulthood this is because blizzards overwhelm, however briefly, the rigidly hierarchal, relentlessly exclusionary geometry of urban patriarchy. By transforming the City to a quiet realm of often-startling ...

Posted Fri, Feb 5, 2:24 p.m.

With all due respect to Mr. Lily -- whom I know from my own years in local journalism to be a skilled and careful reporter -- the principles of what is disingenuously labeled “journalistic objectivity” demand omission of the pivotal factor in the math-wars equation and in most other public ...

Posted Fri, Feb 5, 3:57 a.m.

Not "cynical," MadisonAve, but absolutely truthful (as given your screen name's implicit boast you too must surely know) -- and certainly "bleak" because, unless one is Ruling-Class rich, “bleak” is the ultimate nature of life in the United States. “Bleak” also is the legacy of dreadful understanding imparted by 30 ...

Posted Thu, Feb 4, 9:16 a.m.

As an official cripple -- victimized by one of Washington state's perpetually court-coddled habitual drunken drivers in 1978, the spinal injury so inflicted now deteriorated to the point I am barely able to walk -- I recognize Seattle's hostility toward handicapped motorists as a product of at least four subsets ...

Posted Tue, Jan 26, 4:57 p.m.

The absolute horror of this piece is (1) that it took me a moment to realize it was satire and (2) the fact that this -- corporations like feudal baronies (that is, with their own armies) -- is indeed the logical result of full corporate personhood. Welcome to Goon Squad ...

Posted Thu, Jan 7, 11:04 a.m.

The university's (entirely legitimate) concern someone might vandalize or destroy this Buddhist relic tells us all we need to know about the extent to which the infinitely vicious spirit of Christian theocracy has spread from the South (where it was carefully cultivated into maximum toxicity by the Ruling Class) and ...

Posted Sat, Dec 26, 1:53 p.m.

Though I was the founding photographer of The Seattle Sun (among the best alternative newspapers ever published, second only to the original Village Voice in quality) -- I was openly despised by Seattle’s natives, more hated in the Emerald City c. 1972-1976 than even during my Civil Rights Movement years ...

Posted Fri, Dec 18, 12:19 p.m.

You are a good reporter, Mr. Van Dyk, all the more so for having been in the news business almost as long as I have. But somehow you’ve missed the fact the most important element Senators Cantwell and Murray provide us is glaring evidence our so-called “democracy” is a fraud. ...

Posted Mon, Dec 14, 3:26 p.m.

CORRECTION: two errors -- one that makes me look senile, the other an obvious typo -- each resulted from my aging computer's (occasional but perplexing) failure to copy highlighted material from the Word format in which I write longer posts. The former error is in the third paragraph: Sputnik One ...

Posted Mon, Dec 14, 2:17 p.m.

The painful dilemma Ms. Bauer so eloquently describes -- impossible choices inflicted by Seattle's "inherently corrupt" public school system -- is nothing new. But after half a century of writing about education policy here and in four other states, I must disagree with Ms. Bauer’s notion our schools are “well-intentioned.” ...

Posted Tue, Dec 8, 1:41 p.m.

CORRECTION: the old Seattle magazine (196?-197?) also deserves credit for attempting to cover such stories, but it was destroyed by an advertising boycott after it began reporting accurately on the undercurrent of racism characteristic of the Seattle ruling class, this maybe (I wasn't here then) 1970 or 1971.

Posted Tue, Dec 8, 1:35 p.m.

A hearty "hear, hear; well done" both to the Crosscut editors and Ms. Lightfoot for this sort of reporting -- specifically its recognition of realities significantly ignored by other Seattle publications save perhaps the late (and much lamented) Seattle Sun (c. 1974-1981).

Posted Thu, Dec 3, 8:44 a.m.

Thank you, Mr. Taylor, for the accurate and thought-provoking analysis, far more intimately detailed than anything I might have put together but nevertheless confirming most of my impressions. However if you do a follow-up, I would suggest one more question: by the bylines I noted, The News Tribune appears to ...

Posted Fri, Nov 27, 1:59 p.m.

Exceptionally well said, Mr. Neem, and quite courageously too -- especially for a professor in an educational system that is infamous as a wholly owned subsidiary of Big Business. Nevertheless, the notion it will ever again be possible to "pressure the federal government...to enable workers to protect their economic freedom" ...

Posted Sat, Nov 14, 10:35 p.m.

Again in defense of Mr. Berger's usage, for the teabaggers to now complain about about being called teabaggers is rather like the Ku Klux Klan suddenly objecting to being called the Ku Klux Klan. The historical fact is that "teabaggers" is the label these protestors first afixed to themselves. Quoth ...

Posted Sat, Nov 14, 1:57 p.m.

It astounds me -- no actually it doesn't because here too I recognize the symptoms of class struggle -- how the ruling class of Moron Nation has perfected the use of red herrings to distract from or camouflage real issues: in this instance, Mr. Berger's cogent and thought-provoking analysis of ...

Posted Fri, Nov 13, 5:57 p.m.

It seems to me the most salient element of the Teabagger story has yet to be told. This is the story of how the Democratic and Republican parties are seemingly collaborating to ensure "change we can believe in" never goes beyond the abject powerlessness implicitly affirmed by the adoption of ...

Posted Fri, Nov 13, 2:59 p.m.

One aspect of Seattle that will never change: The Blethen Times -- the Killjoy so determined to suppress Raven and Coyote, it would wither the entire Evergreen State.

Posted Mon, Nov 9, 4:13 p.m.

Pierce County election results may tacitly reveal an ugly truth behind President Obama's ever-more-obvious reluctance to repeal the military's anti-homosexual policies -- yet another example of how "change we can believe in" is turning out to be a Big Lie. Pierce County voters defeated Referendum 71 by a 52-48 majority. ...

Posted Wed, Oct 28, 12:58 p.m.

Mr. Taylor, as a fellow scribe you probably already know this, but street sales -- sales from vending boxes and newsstands -- are generally the most indicative circulation numbers for urban dailies, though I don't know if ABC still lists those figures separately. Some other ways you might get accurate ...

Posted Fri, Oct 9, 2:57 a.m.

Mr. Wolfe’s assertion that Detroit "was once quite comparable to" Seattle due to company-town dependencies has vaguely bothered me all day, and now at 2:15 a.m. with my work finished, the reason suddenly comes into focus. What Mr. Wolfe is saying is rather like arguing that Tacoma is comparable to ...

Posted Fri, Oct 2, 3:48 p.m.

Apropos newcomers (in response to remarks by dbreneman and Mr. Lukoff): once a newcomer myself, I believe newcomers are readily divided into two categories: those of us who want to improve our new home (as for example with adequate transit); and those who merely want to recreate the place they ...

Posted Thu, Oct 1, 4:21 a.m.

Hello mhays -- my apology for lacking a more polite way to address you -- but with all due respect you seem a bit tense about matters of tense. I did NOT say Seattle IS "the most anti-transit city in North America"; I said it WAS that for many years ...

Posted Wed, Sep 30, 4:26 p.m.

Oops...over ran the space. My apology; that concluding graf reads as follows: Let us hope such bigotry is not rekindled (as it surely has been elsewhere) by the terror evoked by the looted economy. Let us hope the new diversity of Seattle’s population is an enduring barrier against hate -- ...

Posted Sun, Sep 20, 11 p.m.

For as long as I have lived in Pugetopolis -- 1970-1983, late 1986 onward -- Seattleites have always been vicious bullies, not just toward those of us from distant elsewheres (as I am), but even toward folks from local elsewheres. Note for example the slogan of a popular Seattle t-shirt ...

Posted Mon, Sep 14, 3:50 p.m.

While Mr. Vance's statistics are undoubtedly correct -- there is no question President Obamas's approval ratings are in decline -- Mr. Vance’s conclusions about the causative factors seem more the product of Republican wishful thinking than of careful analysis. Take for example Mr. Vance’s focus on the gender gap: only ...

Posted Wed, Aug 26, 1:50 p.m.

I applaud with infinite relish any bad publicity the Seattle Public Library inflicts on itself by its heavy-handed viciousness. Yes, I said "viciousness" -- as in threatening me with arrest, prosecution and jail for theft in 1973 after an SPL book was stolen from me and I was too impoverished ...

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 3:09 p.m.

Interesting. In NYC (my birthplace and home before Pugetopolis became my new address in 1970 and my permanent residence in 1986), you always see people reading on the subway and on commuter trains but almost never on buses. As for me, I've never been motion-sick in any transport mode including ...

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 1:01 p.m.

My thanks to the editor(s); too bad I made myself look somewhat less than adept by the bad self-editing that besmirches my lead, which should read as follows: Precisely as Mr. Berger has discovered, one of the blessings of adequate transit -- transit that runs on rails and is powered ...

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 11:41 a.m.

Precisely as Mr. Berger has discovered, has discovered, one of the blessings of adequate transit -- transit that runs on rails and is powered by electricity -- is that in its surface and elevated modes it profoundly enhances visual appreciation of your surroundings. But even subways with their fast passages ...

Posted Tue, Jul 21, 1:05 p.m.

While Mr. Brewster's analysis of why Pugetopolis has the worst urban public transport in North America is accurate as far as it goes, he omits the core element of xenophobia, the toxic undertow of "we-don'-wanna-be-like-New-York" hatefulness that has fueled the region's hostility to rail systems since the Forward Thrust debacles ...