Posted Mon, Dec 6, 7:31 p.m.

Pedestrians would be a lot safer wearing fluorescent vests than carrying view-obfuscating umbrellas which they will probably lose within two days, or which will get blown inside out with the winds we now have in Seattle.

Posted Sun, Dec 5, 3:46 p.m.

No, Anitra, you're not the only one to read the comments first. I figured I could probably read the comments and get a good sense of the article. I've learned that to be true with Mr. Van Dyk's articles, and it's much more tolerable.

Posted Thu, Dec 2, 12:12 p.m.

Regional solutions are definitely needed, and the 10-Year Plan addresses those. Seattle is a key player in the Plan implementation of more housing. McGinn has actually appeared at meetings of the Committee to End Homelessness and talked with people outside his City Hall office about homelessness; that is more than ...

Posted Wed, Dec 1, 10:38 p.m.

Jordan, I recently complimented you at a 46th District meeting on your articles. As I said, I hope you keep writing. But I also hope you do some reading before you make comments about something that needs some background information other than that probably given you by officials of the ...

Posted Wed, Dec 1, 10:15 p.m.

Who appoints or hires these nasty, venal, and stupid government/public sector managers? Do they simply walk into government buildings one day and install themselves in offices and start doing what they want? I think they're appointed or hired by people we elect. But I'm probably wrong, because otherwise Crossrip and ...

Posted Tue, Nov 30, 9:04 p.m.

Interesting that some conservatives complain that "government" doesn't listen to the voters, meaning that Democratic legislators and a Democratic governor don't listen to the voters. Yet the voters are the ones who voted them in. Other conservatives complain that our government doesn't do as well as other governments do, one ...

Posted Mon, Nov 29, 11:45 a.m.

Interesting. The minute anything referring to political correctness (in this case, the "P.C." in Jamesa's post) inserts itself into a comment, I know immediately that I can't take that comment seriously. It makes reading a lot more expeditious.

Posted Mon, Nov 29, 11:40 a.m.

If you are old, you might consider exercise in some other fashion which doesn't present the possibility of falling and breaking an age-fragile bone.

Posted Fri, Nov 26, 3:56 p.m.

Another voucher comparison: Section 8 vouchers instead of the feds building low-income housing. Except for very limited voucher allotments for existing federal housing, vouchers require that poor people go out into the marketplace to find housing. You can guess how well that's worked out. Without governmental funding of higher education, ...

Posted Thu, Nov 25, 11:22 a.m.

Health care is not a free-market, consumer-choice issue like buying a TV set. You don't absolutely need a TV set, or any particular brand, or any particular size. At some point in your life, you'll need health care, and at that point if you don't have reliable, affordable access to ...

Posted Wed, Nov 24, 1:29 p.m.

star80: You've gone a bit too far comparing teaching with law. The potential damage that could be caused by mishandling a divorce or someone's will is far more than experiencing one inept teacher in a student's 12-year school career. As far as special ed students in mainstreamed classrooms, that began ...

Posted Tue, Nov 23, 8:02 p.m.

Atlas Shrugged should be banned as crappy writing.

Posted Mon, Nov 22, 9:26 p.m.

As someone above points out, only "non-critical" rulemaking will be suspended. The Office of Financial Management is ordered to develop guidelines for what's critical and non-critical. Gregoire certainly isn't in line with Club for Growth. She's as liberal a governor as we could hope to get in this state. She's ...

Posted Mon, Nov 22, 9:13 p.m.

Bluelight, Indian tribes are provided federally-funded care through the Indian Health Care Act and have been since 1976. Considering we took their land and threw them onto reservations, I think that's only fair.

Posted Sun, Nov 21, 4:22 p.m.

Abcs: Drastic action by whom? The Governor has been forced by the Constitution to make across-the-board cuts and those who don't understand that (and they appear to be in the majority) are yelling at her. She and the Legislature (or at least the returning legislators and the brighter of the ...

Posted Sun, Nov 14, 10:03 p.m.

"-- Rents and property values have fallen throughout the city in comparison to 2007, which is before light rail was operational." Crossrip, since 2007, we've gone into something called a recession.

Posted Sat, Nov 13, 11:05 p.m.

Um, Joolian? The viaduct is not a City street. It's a state road. SDOT does not have control over it. Many people, including me, have complained bitterly about what's planned but that has nothing--nothing--to do with what we're talking about here. Go talk to the State Legislature and the Governor ...

Posted Sun, Nov 7, 8 p.m.

If it's such a good thing that the Legislature under 1053 has to come to the people in order to seek revenue and determine how it's used, why do we vote for legislators? Because that's actually what they're voted in to do: be our representatives in making law and determining ...

Posted Sun, Nov 7, 7:47 p.m.

Have you gone to food banks and talked to families there, Gary? Do you get your medical care at Harborview, where you wait for hours (and the City of Seattle doesn't pay for that)? Have you lived in a car? Are you happy with what you acknowledge to be the ...

Posted Sat, Nov 6, midnight

Merlinrain, I've been noticing lately that public transportation (buses) and bikes don't really go well together. They both want to use the righthand lane and buses have to slow way down for bikes, and bikes have nowhere to go when buses are in front of them. Not a good match. ...

Posted Fri, Nov 5, 6:34 p.m.

GaryP: How old are you? Where do you work? Where do you live? Do you need to take kids to school/childcare as you go to and from work? Those are fairly relevant questions to answer before you crow about using your bicycle to get to work. The phrase "world-class city" ...

Posted Wed, Nov 3, 9:02 p.m.

Valdez is right. If you want to win, you control the message. The Dems have not done that for a long time, and we will continue losing as long as we think it's more important to sound rational and principled and complex than it is to stay on message and ...

Posted Sat, Oct 30, 11 p.m.

Quinn, most of us know it as The Good Soldier Schweik. The diacritical marks don't improve the literature, nor does their lack prevent us from its appreciation. If you're going to insist upon such proper stuff, then calling Europe the "Old World" isn't too cool. DBreneman, protests of religious displays ...

Posted Fri, Oct 29, 8:43 p.m.

Mr. Kammerer, linking to an article that you must subscribe to in order to read it isn't very cool.

Posted Thu, Oct 28, 5:39 p.m.

Andy, we need not change texts which were written millenia ago. Most religions are interpretive, not literalist, and you, of course, as an atheist, can simply ignore both the religions and the texts. People cause harm to other people, not texts. You could do a lot of good talking to ...

Posted Sat, Oct 23, 5:46 p.m.

Andy: I don't believe the Torah is the word of God. Human beings wrote it, just as I assume they wrote the New Testament. I'm not defending what's in there. The point is--and I'm amazed you don't get it--is that these are sacred texts. Don't like them, don't believe them, ...

Posted Sat, Oct 23, 12:08 p.m.

Crosscut publishes many pieces that are not even-handed in their assessments of the Democrats and the Republicans. But this isn't political analysis; it's a story about an event. Mr. Royer makes it clear in the article that he's a Democrat and worked for Obama's election. Surely no one could claim ...

Posted Thu, Oct 21, 11:24 p.m.

Andy: The Five Books of Moses (the Torah, which contains Leviticus) is a Jewish scriptural book, more than a thousand years predating Christianity. Christians use their particular translation of it, but that does not give them or anyone else to make deletions from it. Your suggestion that they do so ...

Posted Fri, Oct 15, 10:23 p.m.

One minor correction of what Stuka said: property owners who are investors don't actually pay property tax; they pass the tax on to their renters in the form of higher rent. (Renters can tell, because they're told "The rent's going up because my property tax went up.") So those who ...

Posted Fri, Oct 15, 7:10 p.m.

California's major problem is the the situation that would obtain in Washington if I-1053 passes: the requirement for a two-thirds vote of the legislature to vote new revenue. Washington is one of only 7 states in the nation that don't have an income tax on all levels of income. An ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 8:29 p.m.

Gary, poor people generally don't drive into Seattle to shop. They drive into Seattle to work, because they live far out of Seattle and they often work off hours (for instance, hotel workers), so taking buses aren't practical, nor are bikes. Those are the people who will be hurt by ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 12:51 p.m.

Re parking prices: The reason that parking is difficult to find is not that prices are too low. The reason is (why is this so difficult to figure out?): there are more people in Seattle now. Duh. So raising parking prices will have only one definite outcome: only those who ...

Posted Fri, Oct 8, 11:52 p.m.

Just when I start to sympathize (even more than I do already) with people who don't want an all-car society, one of those people says something like this: "With that being said it is important that the infrastructural choices we make promote denser living spaces so that we can accommodate ...

Posted Fri, Oct 1, 7:21 p.m.

Washington's taxation system is a mess. We all agree to that. I think we'd all agree also that high-income people (lik eMs. Runstad and her husband) have better access to tax attorneys than low-income people. I know some high-income people. They do not pay the same percentage of their income ...

Posted Sat, Sep 11, 12:17 a.m.

If indeed there's money allocated federally (since we certainly don't have it in the states) for repairing and/or building instrastructure, I hope most of those new jobs will be truly middle-class jobs. Unfortunately, some Seattle developers in the last few years have hired contractors to provide them with low-wage workers, ...

Posted Wed, Sep 8, 10:23 p.m.

Are you aware, Mr. Godfried, that Obama pushed this idea in a speech several days ago? You don't mention that.

Posted Thu, Sep 2, 8:24 p.m.

Not to say that I haven't read enough about this to make up my own mind, but even if I hadn't, the fact that the Jewish mayor of New York thinks this controversy is ridiculous would be fairly convincing. In this world today, the Christians howling about this Muslim community ...

Posted Mon, Aug 30, 9:02 p.m.

That's not what I questioned, Dbrememan. wondered why, at this point, anyone would be naive enough to be shocked when they're criticized by fundamentalists. The world is not a free society, and fundamentalists are not impotent. If you can think of some way to effect that, let us know. Until ...

Posted Sat, Aug 28, 8:44 p.m.

Just one question. Why--at this point in our culture wars, after Theo vanGogh's murder, after many fatwas being issued and after a certain novelist had to hide out for years--why would anyone be naive enough to not understand that doing this would get them in trouble with Islamic fundamentalists?

Posted Thu, Aug 26, 4:53 p.m.

Oh good heavens, bicyclists are getting a bit paranoid. "Hostility, exophobic, bigoted, institutionalized"? Buses are great. We need more of them (however, apparently we're going to get less of them, according to Metro.) But this city was not designed for bikes. It can't be immediately transformed in a bike-safe city. ...

Posted Mon, Aug 23, 10:46 p.m.

And if I could do a little proofing to that post above, I would, but I can't.

Posted Mon, Aug 23, 10:44 p.m.

It's interesting as a member of a theologically liberal congregation--Reform Jewish, but I assume that non-Christians are welcome here also, since we're talking about religion--that liberal churches are being characterized as being essentially religiously weak. Several commenters have given me the impression that they feel that "mainline" Christian churches (non-Mars-Hill, ...

Posted Sun, Aug 8, 10:34 p.m.

Zoos cannot be naturalistic settings since they don't have many square miles of habitat which some animals have in the wild. Thus they can only fake it so visitors feel better, or they can just consider themselves to be museum conservators and keep the animals in cages. The latter means ...

Posted Tue, Jul 27, 5:11 p.m.

I'd invite anyone to try being homeless in Seattle--and I mean truly homeless, without a place to go during the day--and figure out where to urinate and defecate. Humans need to do both. If they don't have private places to do so, the streets will be the place. We need ...

Posted Tue, Jul 27, 2:41 p.m.

Excellent article. LIHI's McDermott Place in my neighborhood has been a really positive addition, for both formerly homeless neighbors and those of us who are housed. LIHI rocks!

Posted Tue, Jul 20, 10:34 p.m.

So, Spaldro, you think that someone making $15,000 a year should pay the same percentage of tax as someone making $200,000 a year or more? The person trying to survive on $15,000 will have $450 less income, which would probably mean two months' less food. The person making $200,000 a ...

Posted Thu, Jul 15, 11:57 p.m.

Good god, tear the damned thing down and wait five years. The world will be so horrible by then, this won't seem quite so important.

Posted Mon, Jul 5, 9:28 p.m.

It is really depressing to be reminded that Republicans (or tea partiers, who can tell the difference now) think that the supposed diminishment of our moral character is due to a lack of prayer in public schools.

Posted Tue, Jun 29, 9:53 p.m.

I wish the phrase "street disorder" would not be used when talking about areas that are experiencing assaults and murders. That phrase was tied to the late, unlamented panhandling ordinance which, of course, would not have prevented violent crimes of the sort increasingly happening in Belltown over the past few ...

Posted Tue, Jun 22, 12:02 a.m.

abcs: Much of what you said about the Mayor's visit to North Helpline--and about North Helpline and the food bank--is not true. I was there at the time of his visit; I live in the neighborhood and am familiar with those facilities. I'm not sure why you can't criticize the ...

Posted Thu, Jun 17, 11:03 p.m.

Very well-reasoned article. Please run again for Council.

Posted Sat, Jun 12, 6:04 p.m.

Interesting how we term anything deemed "evil" as black. Also interesting how we claim that technology has failed. We've failed to use that technology properly. In this particular case, BP chose to use the cheapest method of originally capping their wells, and also chose to ignore the signs of trouble ...

Posted Mon, Jun 7, 10:37 p.m.

Herb, then I assume that if a family member who does not have medical insurance or financial resources needs a kidney transplant, you will pay for it rather than have that family member received tax-funded Medicaid. The average cost of a kidney transplant--one of the least costly transplants--nationally is about ...

Posted Sun, Jun 6, 10:07 a.m.

"Melting ice caps, changing rainfall patterns, mega-storms and failing crops are already happening, but that is only the beginning if we start hitting climate tipping points. We must kick our fossil fuel addiction. This is our part of the solution." Solution? We do recognize that the planet is already irremediably ...

Posted Sat, Jun 5, 6:23 p.m.

1sense, could you explain this sentence a little better: "Is the infiltration by those who have agendas that do not follow property rights agendas this deep that the governmental bodies do not realize they are being manipulated? Or, worse, do they want this manipulation?" Are you accusing governmental bodies of ...

Posted Sat, Jun 5, 10:06 a.m.

Herb, if one of your family members ever needs a service provided by a food bank, housing provider, community clinic, or any other of the safety-net items you don't think should receive government funding, will you step up and pay for that service for your family member? I assume you ...

Posted Mon, May 31, 10:10 p.m.

It isn't necessarily telling when people do not want to go out for coffee with people with whom they disagree, or with whom they don't want a closer relationship than a simple comment. Anyone who writes either for a living or as an avocation will attract some critical comments; that's ...

Posted Mon, May 31, 8:58 p.m.

It's entirely possible there is no technology that can respond to something like this. Although it's not a popular concept in America, not everything can be fixed. BP and Halliburton and others did not prepare for this disaster not because they didn't think it was possible but because they didn't ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 10:15 p.m.

The North American continent is huge and the European settlers encroachment on tribal territories was gradual, so the hundreds of individual tribes didn't immediately realize the danger. Tribes did have territorial concepts but only so far as other tribes coming onto their land to hunt, etc. Since many tribes didn't ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 5:56 p.m.

This didn't fit in anybody's playbook because it was not a spill (or a leak). But even though this article differentiates between a spill and a gushing of oil, it continues the convention of calling this a spill. That deceives people into being shocked that the volume is greater than ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 11:17 a.m.

Thanks for the correction, Benjamin. That was an embarassing error. See, people who post anonymously can actually be embarassed when they screw up, even regarding details about which hardly anyone cares. We're not simply idiots looking for cheap therapy (although that would be welcome). Nor are we all motivated by ...

Posted Thu, May 27, 10:11 p.m.

During all of recorded history, there has never been any lack of silly and nonfactual commentary by people using their real names. Nor has there been any lack of interesting and worthwhile commentary by people using a pseudonym. The fact that my first name is not "Sarah" doesn't mean that ...

Posted Wed, May 26, 11:25 p.m.

I don't want to use my real name because I don't want to be "marketed" or chased by weird people, which has happened to friends who've used their real names. But I use the same pseudonym everywhere I post and some people know who I am (which is fine since ...

Posted Mon, May 24, 7:48 p.m.

Berger's an excellent journalist. Harris is a very good writer and a movement leader/advocate. He's got an encyclopedic knowledge of the systemic causes of homelessness and he's pretty disgusted, as anyone with such knowledge would be, with how there's no real attempt at systemic change. That disgust shows itself in ...

Posted Fri, May 21, 8:19 p.m.

This is not a SPILL. It's a gushing well. Calling it a spill in headlines and articles(as everyone seems to be doing) casts it in a much more benign light. This is an uncapped well that taps into one of the huge oil deposits within the earth. It's not the ...

Posted Tue, May 11, 9:45 p.m.

We can't stop the degradation of nature. There are some things that have started--that we have contributed toward if not entirely caused--that cannot be stopped. The polar ice caps are melting at a rate that shocks even pessimists. We have only the choice of how we behave. The planet will ...

Posted Sat, May 8, 7:52 p.m.

A belief in God or one supreme being, whatever you term that being, does not demand a belief in a life (of any sort) after death. Most Jews do not believe in an afterlife (nor do we believe in an actual hell or heaven), and generally we don't have cremations. ...

Posted Fri, Apr 30, 9:10 p.m.

Why would low picket fences limit access? They don't prevent dogs from jumping over them, let alone prevent humans from stepping over them. And what does "enhancement of the role of passing vehicles" mean? Vehicles have a role?

Posted Tue, Apr 27, 10:55 p.m.

I don't understand whether Van Dyk is saying that progressive voters won't support this, or middle-to-low-income voters won't support this, or that Washington voters are as a whole "progressive" and they won't support this. Certainly the first is not true; the second probably is, and Washington State as a whole ...

Posted Fri, Apr 23, 11:14 p.m.

"One can study religion and the religions of the world without promoting one or any." That's a popular thing to say but it's never been proven. The ability to teach about belief systems without promoting any one belief or several belief systems depends entirely on the attitudes of the teachers, ...

Posted Sat, Apr 17, 11:24 p.m.

Oy vey, you're right, Quinn. Goose pastrami. There's even salmon pastrami which would not be too good. For anyone making gefilte fish next year, do not even consider using a combination of salmon and halibut. Even the cat wouldn't eat it.

Posted Sun, Apr 11, 6:46 p.m.

This isn't a matter of people feeling superior, or inferior, or just as guilty, or any other personal feeling. It's a matter of disgust at crimes that have been going on for decades and the coverup of those crimes -- all involving the same institutional representatives. Disgust is a reasonable ...

Posted Sat, Apr 10, 5:32 p.m.

Robinson's attempted comparison of what the Church has done and what Tiger Woods or John Edwards has done is cruelly absurd. As far as we know, Tiger Woods didn't rape children, nor did John Edwards. They are jerks. The priests are child rapists. Would it be considered "judgmentalism" to condemn ...

Posted Fri, Apr 9, 6:21 p.m.

It isn't a matter of throwing stones, or grace and mercy. It's a criminal matter; it's a matter of child abuse and child rape and covering up those criminal acts. The difference between someone raping children and NOT raping children doesn't come down to the grace of God, nor is ...

Posted Sun, Apr 4, 6:24 p.m.

Only Ted Van Dyk could say "In 1912, you recall" and mean it literally for himself.

Posted Thu, Apr 1, 7:18 p.m.

No, I'm not, nor is anyone. But telling people to pay more for something isn't right either.

Posted Thu, Apr 1, 7:15 p.m.

It doesn't leave 80 million people without computers, and what Quinn said was "and like many people I don't own a computer."

Posted Thu, Apr 1, 3:25 p.m.

Probably many people do buy at locally-owned places on principle. Many more can't afford to do so. As long as that's the equation, the independents will go out of business. That's the reality of economics, not morality. It's kind of like telling low-income people to spend their money on two ...

Posted Thu, Apr 1, 10:56 a.m.

Not being Quinn, I'll be glad to hear classical music of ANY genre/period when it is presented to me without idiotic commercials. Also not being Quinn, I recognize that radio/TV/blogs must be paid for by someone. I'll be happy to donate and listen to KING in lieu of not donating ...

Posted Wed, Mar 31, 9:25 p.m.

She may be scrubbed and shiny and mischeviously smiling, but she's flogging her book and telling people what they already know. What she doesn't seem to know is that there are very few independent booksellers left in Seattle (at which we'd pay $8 more for said flogged book) and that's ...

Posted Tue, Mar 30, 11:24 p.m.

The only reason---the ONLY reason--that Johnson decided not to run again in '64 was the Vietnam protests. The only reason Nixon was forced to get out was the protests. And the only reason those protests had such impact was that there was a draft in place, and upper-middle-class white boys ...

Posted Sat, Mar 6, 11:39 a.m.

Mr. Robinson, you are not a psychiatrist. Please don't conflate your theological training and pastoral experience (which likely did not include spending time with those with Dr. Bishop's degree of pathology) with at least 8 years of medical training and residency and then years of practice. Your article would be ...

Posted Thu, Mar 4, 2:05 p.m.

Yes, Sandy, I'm familiar with the world of real estate and construction costs. But if you are claiming to be an organization devoted to social justice and want to be accorded the respect for the actual PRACTICE of social justice (and yes, I know that there is a shelter in ...

Posted Wed, Mar 3, 9:49 p.m.

Compassion and spiritual depth is spending $36 million dollars for land and a building?

Posted Wed, Mar 3, 7:17 p.m.

Wells, you don't seem to understand that (as McGinn himself said), the Seattle Mayor has no power to stop the tunnel. He didn't "put the brakes on" it. He also can't start the seawall now, or at any time, without the Council's partnership, unless he's going to raise the money ...

Posted Mon, Mar 1, 11:29 a.m.

I don't see how creating an overbroad, unnecessary public ordinance as a shrine for peoples' fear of The Other is the reasonable business of our City Council. I recently stood at an ATM downtown and while my cash request was in process, someone approached me and asked for money. I ...

Posted Sun, Feb 28, 11:14 p.m.

Apparently Mssr. Dreadnought's Jesus is quite violent.

Posted Thu, Feb 25, 10:42 p.m.

And Fly, you are lucky to be able to live, walk, and recreate (hopefully not literally anymore) in your neighborhood, and also you are lucky to not have to work 40+ hours outside your neighborhood supporting your family. Those whose civic engagement ends at the curb are often those who ...

Posted Thu, Feb 25, 8:56 p.m.

Jesus apparently is whoever anyone wants him to be, and anything except what he actually was: a traveling miracle-worker Jew. His teacher was likely Hillel, the originator of the original golden rule: "What is hateful to you, do not unto your neighbor". Jews of that era were neither hippies nor ...

Posted Thu, Jan 28, 4:51 p.m.

Mr. V, you said nothing about the Chiefs' body language in your article. You simply indicated they didn't applaud, and didn't indicate they never applaud. You have a habit of expecting your readers to read your mind, as well as expecting them to read your long, tendentious articles filled with ...

Posted Sun, Jan 24, 5:11 p.m.

"If you read closely, you saw that I predicted unions would be short-term winners---because they are more comfortable and experienced with political activity of all kinds than corporations are." You have got to be kidding, Ted. Where were you during the Republican administrations since 1980?

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 11:01 p.m.

An income tax would be litigated for two years at least -- it would have no impact in the next few years. Tax reform is necessary but reform won't help right now. While reform is being planned, we need more revenue, immediately and for the next several years. Cuts won't ...

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 9:53 p.m.

"Here in Seattle we are distant..."? Mr. Van Dyk, are you serious? Have you noticed that we actually have TV, blogs (one of which you write for), and a growing number of poor people here? And we actually have people without health insurance in this very city. Perhaps not you, ...

Posted Mon, Jan 18, 5:39 p.m.

I'm remind Mr. Robinson and others that one of Dr. King's closest advisors was Abraham Joshua Heschell. He marched with Dr. King; he went to jail with Dr. King. He was Jewish. Many of the freedom riders who risked their lives down South were Jewish. Many of the lawyers who ...

Posted Tue, Dec 29, 4:53 p.m.

This discussion of "good news" v. "bad news" has been going on for some years. It's useless because most people are already convinced that what they believe is the truth, and defensiveness set in long ago. But the actual truth is that the units created are not NET units. A ...

Posted Wed, Dec 16, 7:11 p.m.

"Merry Christmas, dammit!"? That's a good illustration of the problem. If Christmas (which is a Christian religious holiday, no matter how many atheists have trees) is such a merry, good-will-to-everyone, why are people irritated or even angry that some people don't wish them Merry Christmas? The non-religiousity of Christmas is ...

Posted Wed, Dec 16, 6:59 p.m.

I cannot stand the commercials. Period. No amount of diversification of musical eras or composers will make up for that difficulty. I don't understand why KING can't solicit and obtain the same foundation/rich person funding base that contributes to KCTS, etc.

Posted Mon, Dec 14, 9:49 p.m.

I'll say this civilly, or try to. It's ironic that the parents who are complaining about the school assignments their teenagers are given (including the Ann of the article) were probably educated themselves at neighborhood schools. It's also likely that if their parents moved to a new area, their employer(s) ...

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 10:57 p.m.

I don't think anyone's in any quandry about what kind of stories--either paid or unpaid--will appear in Crosscut. When I see a link to something by or about Michelle Malkin, that is a small clue, as is Mr. Brewster's maundering about the lack of moderate candidates elected. As though we ...

Posted Wed, Nov 18, 10:57 p.m.

It's sad that anything thinks that someone would need THIS primer.

Posted Wed, Nov 18, 3:20 p.m.

I applaud your hopefulness, Afreeman, if not your naivte. For an example of the antithesis -- or the failure -- of your last point, consider the health insurance reform process. (And I say health insurance because actual health CARE reform has not really been considered.) I must have missed the ...

Posted Wed, Nov 18, 9:56 a.m.

Terms mutate over time. Conservative and liberal are still meaningful in today's definitions. Pragmatism is also related to what milieu is current; it isn't a term that can mean (i.e., project a picture) of something static through the ages. It simply means (now) that we do what we think we ...

Posted Tue, Nov 17, 8:48 p.m.

I go pretty far back -- I was referring to the 50s/60s re civil rights, and then jumped many decades forward. I would settle things by imploring (because demanding doesn't work) people to cease the useless harping upon "common ground" and look at situations from an ethical point of view. ...

Posted Tue, Nov 17, 4:41 p.m.

Yes, Obama wants to find common ground. But sometimes there is no common ground (for instance, common ground between the reformers and the Republicans on health insurance). Obama is a centrist, not a liberal, and in fact has been criticized as much by liberals since his election as by rightwingers ...

Posted Mon, Nov 16, 11:14 p.m.

"Independent" usually seems to be a term used by Republicans who don't want to call themselves Republicans. I've never heard anyone on the left call themselves an independent because they're usually honest enough to say they're lefties or Dems or whatever. Republicans also like to exhort others to think "independently", ...

Posted Mon, Nov 16, 7:03 p.m.

Mr. Van Dyk, many of us are "living survivors" of Kennedy's assassination. That simply means we were alive then. What really throws me in all that you say is this: "After a few moments, not knowing what else to do, we resumed our session as if nothing had happened. I ...

Posted Mon, Nov 16, 6:54 p.m.

Rossi an "independent"? Is that why he identified himself as GOP instead of Republican? Duplicity = independent? "...secular, educated, affluent, solutions-hungry suburban moderates..." Ah, the whiny longing of the Ancient Brewster for a champion for that crew. Let's see what acronym that makes: SEASHSM. No more unpronounceable than anything else ...

Posted Sun, Nov 15, 8:26 p.m.

When you have to label something "Humor", it's generally not humor. Case in point.

Posted Thu, Nov 12, 9:24 p.m.

Webster's definition of park (noun): 1) an area of public land; specif., an area in or near a city, usually laid out with walks, drives, playgrounds, etc., for public recreation 2) an open square in a city, with benches, trees, etc. 3) a large area known for its natural scenery ...

Posted Sat, Oct 31, 10:16 a.m.

Reading the "related stories" column at the righthand of Judy's article, my eye hit on "managed campground" and I remembered that there were government-managed campgrounds in California during the 30s, housing the many people escaping the dustbowl who found that the hope of great jobs in California was a fiction. ...

Posted Fri, Oct 30, 4:36 p.m.

Everyone in this state who has had anything to do with Boeing, ever, is pointing fingers at everyone else, or actually at themselves. But Boeing is not listening and they don't need to listen. They did give an explanation, but that was simply courtesy. They were outta here when they ...

Posted Fri, Oct 30, 11:52 a.m.

Mudbaby, please don't let SHA's questionable (at best) policies deter you from voting for the renewal of the Housing Levy. SHA's emphasis is not on building or maintaining low-income housing and it cannot be considered as an example of the use of the Levy money. The Housing Levy is absolutely ...

Posted Thu, Oct 29, 12:35 p.m.

The 8,000+ figure quoted is not the number of those found outside in Seattle. It's those found outside, in shelters, and in transitional housing in the King County areas counted (not all areas are counted) on January 25. I'm afraid that Mayor Nickels was not that good an advocate for ...

Posted Wed, Oct 28, 7:56 p.m.

Mallahan is not/has not been a CEO. He was a manager. There's a big difference. A CEO's experience would be helpful to a mayor; a manager (including a VP in a company with many VPs) always has someone above him. If he's not suited by personality or intelligence to be ...

Posted Sat, Oct 24, 10:56 p.m.

I did get down to your point #2, number 6, and I agree with you that longer posts are needed to completely cover a subject. I also agree that posters should be forced by the news medium to sign in with a consistent pseudonym. My request to Ted Van Dyk ...

Posted Fri, Oct 23, 10:24 p.m.

Ted, this is basically a blog. Commenters on blogs don't usually use their complete real names. That's the nature of on-line journalism. I know that's hard to get used to, considering you and I are basically of the same generation during which we submitted formal written letters to the editor. ...

Posted Fri, Oct 16, 1:40 p.m.

That's not apparent. It's labeled as a "2009 Election" piece, and Robinson is termed "our writer" in the intro. It should either be tagged "Opinion" or it should be made clear that Robinson's (or any other writer's) opinion is not that of Crosscut.

Posted Wed, Oct 14, 11:36 p.m.

Why is this puff piece in Crosscut? The fact that it was written by a longtime Seattle religious icon doesn't make it journalism. Or interesting.

Posted Sat, Oct 10, 10:54 p.m.

Re comment by Carlson: If Vance could "pen" (why not say "write"?) such an essay on how to achieve structural change, why didn't he? Or maybe he doesn't want to give it away for free, since he's a paid consultant.

Posted Thu, Oct 8, 11:02 p.m.

Enzo: You may be editing at PhD/postdoc level, but even in that lofty sphere, it's a good idea to look at your stuff before you hit the "submit" button. The word is most commonly spelled "judgment" and I think you meant "for" instead of "fot". It's hard to tell whether ...

Posted Sat, Oct 3, 10:10 p.m.

Speaking as a consumer, Bryan Lowe's suggestions don't help me. When I'm on-line, which isn't often, I very seldom listen to music, and I don't have HD radio (nor do I know what it is). Most people who listen to classical music aren't in their 20s, and they aren't necessarily ...

Posted Thu, Sep 17, 2:59 p.m.

People who are homeless don't go only to soup kitchens. They go to work; they go to doctor appointments; homeless children go to school. They don't want to be parked in Elliott Bay any more than we do. And the houseboats in Elliott Bay are owned by upper-middle-class people now, ...

Posted Wed, Sep 16, 11:15 p.m.

One of the most important things wherever a camp is located, be it a car camp or a tent camp, is proximity to bus lines. Besides appointments that homeless people occasionally have, many of them--sometimes the majority of Tent City 3 or 4's population at a given time, and also ...

Posted Mon, Sep 14, 10:47 p.m.

OK, what are you all going to do, besides agree that Judy's article was great (it was) and that this situation is sad (it is)? Are you going to become advocates for families who are almost homeless, who are outright homeless? Are you going to talk with and write your ...

Posted Mon, Sep 7, 6:41 p.m.

There are sociologically-appropriate times to do things and then there are times NOT to do things. This is not the time to spring a strike about meeting time or class size, frankly, just about anything else. I'm a longtime labor supporter so that isn't said lightly. What most people know ...

Posted Sun, Sep 6, 1:19 a.m.

Tell me how I could hold a belief about climate change with uncertainty. Tell me how I could hold a belief about the need for health care reform with uncertainty. If I am indeed certain, definitely certain, about my beliefs on those issues and those beliefs are buttressed by facts, ...

Posted Sat, Sep 5, 5:33 p.m.

I'm sorry, but there are somethings that aren't appropriate for compromise, and that doesn't mean that we who don't compromise on them are being infantile. About climate change, I can't say, "Well, maybe they have a point, let's talk about it for some time and come to a consensus on ...

Posted Mon, Aug 17, 8:55 p.m.

The Rev. Craig Rennebohm, longtime Seattle mental health chaplain and friend of those in need, visited several European countries several years ago. He says they asked him, "Why do you allow homelessness to exist in your country?" He didn't have a good answer because there is none. We need more ...

Posted Fri, May 29, 11:29 p.m.

It's difficult to take Brewster seriously when he comments that the SLUT is an example of his contention that Nickels "can really get things done." What on earth is meant by the comment that the deep-bore tunnel was laughed at for being tainted by its origins at the Discovery Institute? ...

Posted Wed, Apr 22, 10:25 a.m.

"Women" is a constituency? Is "men" a constituency? Good heavens, Brewster. If Drago said that (and I doubt it), she's farther behind the times than we thought. If you put it that way, you should stop writing.

Posted Sun, Mar 22, 3:52 p.m.

So, Lady, who would you choose to harm when you "starve the beast?" Children and adults who will have no health care? Families who will have no housing> Mentally ill people who will have no care? Possibly you might have some family members or friends who might be harmed. But ...

Posted Sat, Mar 7, 12:20 a.m.

Anything that does not enable people to simply continue living -- i.e., food, emergency shelter, housing, human services, medical care -- should be sent to the bottom of the list. Period.

Posted Sat, Nov 22, 9:28 p.m.

Pretty funny that Harrybari complains about typos and yet his post contains many: "sam" for "same", "checked" for "checker", "well grounded" for "well-grounded". If he wants to pick nits, he should not ignore his own.

Posted Sat, Apr 5, 11:04 p.m.

What a shame: Housing wins, basketball stadium doesn't: Chopp's abiding interest in finding money for low-income housing? His beloved priority of housing for the homeless? You think there's something wrong with those priorities? Look, people, we counted more than 2,600 people on the street in the middle of the night, ...