Posted Fri, Dec 31, 6:51 a.m.

No. The bus drivers serve as replacements for the steel rails and automatic power and train signaling systems that guide the trains. The buses are small autonomous paqckets using diesel engines to substitute for the overhead wire and and electricity generating systems that power the trains. For a system of ...

Posted Tue, Dec 28, 2:34 p.m.

Is we bubble-late? Back in the mid-80s I was looking for a different home in Seattle, and spent many hours over several months with the multiples. (A realtor will give you last week's multiples if they trust you not to abuse the privilege.) One thing I did was to chart ...

Posted Mon, Dec 27, 10:12 a.m.

So, the Tea Partiers are now ordinary citizens, more concerned about the deficit than partisan politics. I wonder how that will square with their demands that the government keep its hands off their Medicare. And will they now support 'Obamacare', because it will reduce the deficit by $70 billion over ...

Posted Tue, Dec 21, 6:21 a.m.

The Corps of Engineers has never understood conservancy. To understand this subject you must be familiar with the Little Miami Valley Conservancy District, which has protected Dayton OH and surrounds from flooding for 90 years. You may also track this down by finding Arthur Morgan, the engineer in charge, who ...

Posted Sat, Dec 18, 8:12 a.m.

On my recent visits to Seattle I've been much struck by how GaryP and his friends have elevated the price of all meals by paying through the nose for Asian fast food. Even the hospital cafeteria no longer serves turkey noodle casserole for $1.25- now it's some fancy entree for ...

Posted Thu, Dec 9, 6:35 a.m.

There seems to be some confusion by Lincoln and other anti-train commenters. The reason WSDOT is investing in passenger rail is to reduce the cost of their primary mission- meeting our transportation needs, now and in the future. So, Lincoln, if you think WSDOT is wrong about all of this, ...

Posted Tue, Dec 7, 6:59 a.m.

There is some irony in seeing this discussion among people who don't really understand how, or why, our system of universal free schooling is supposed to work- and no less in the fact that this 'debate' has been going on since Hector was a pup, or at least, since I ...

Posted Thu, Dec 2, 2:45 p.m.

Well, if you had to judge from this comment thread, the outlook for us learning would be pretty glum. The rest of the world, though, doesn't seem to be having much problem grasping the basic outlines of the problem- maybe because they don't know any better, and very lazily are ...

Posted Thu, Dec 2, 7:40 a.m.

What nobody here seems to understand is that in a big earthquake the viaduct is going to pancake and kill or injure anyone on it at that time. The viaduct will eventually be shut down and removed. Given that elementary level of comprehension, what is the cost/benefit of building an ...

Posted Sat, Nov 27, 3:34 p.m.

Exactly where is this bipartisanship supposed to come from? The Republicans are essentially ruling the country with the support of about a third of the people. What makes you think they will give up that without a fight? The Democrats, with the support of about 2/3 of the country, are ...

Posted Fri, Nov 26, 1:39 p.m.

If you have even a normally questioning intellect, the whole article dissolves into a mass of unproven assertions, wrong conclusions, and old chestnuts, some of which, predictably, are rotten. For example, the article starts with the assertion that the main interest of the state is the education of students. In ...

Posted Sat, Nov 20, 11:45 a.m.

I think to some extent we're talking about protecting commercial-industrial land from the aggression of an out-of-control housing market. If the housing market can support high prices with real value, as, for example, the housing market on Manhattan does, maybe industry should move- we are, after all, not talking about ...

Posted Sun, Nov 14, 2:46 p.m.

Crossrip's 'reasoning' is the same as pointing out that they sold fewer new cars in 1930 than they did in 1927, and concluding that the experiment of the private automobile had been tried, and failed.

Posted Sat, Nov 13, 3:12 p.m.

The legacy of the south end, as a place to live inexpensively, stemmed from lending company redlining and poor or nonexistent city services, all exacerbated by real estate agent 'blockbusting' which at one time had devastated the Seward Park and Madrona neighborhoods as well as the more traditional central district. ...

Posted Fri, Nov 12, 3:28 p.m.

Deb, I do not know why you would be so bothered by the idea that we must honor existing contracts, but, if we view them so unfavorably, not offer them to employees of the future. In fact, the only way I can see to restore some sanity to this discussion ...

Posted Fri, Nov 12, 6:51 a.m.

That is so totally unfair, Debo. Most people don't have have an identity. Especially people like 'Cameron', who posts with a sort of rage-treated boilerplate diction. And this whole pension thing is a lot of bull. Of course the funds are paying poorly this year- it's a recession. That doesn't ...

Posted Tue, Nov 2, 9:59 a.m.

So, the cheese company should pasteurize their milk, make their attenuated cheese from that milk, and then Coca-Cola could buy them? Not exactly the happy ending I had in mind. And hasn't this cheese-making family shown pretty well that they're not in it for the money? Do they look like ...

Posted Mon, Nov 1, 8:58 a.m.

Actually, the UW helps administer one of our larger co-ops, the ASUW. There is no 'economics of co-ops' or 'business of co-ops'. A co-op is a form of joint-stock ownership. It may be capitalized by customers who wish to have a specialized supplier- the original reason for the formation of ...

Posted Tue, Oct 26, 5:20 a.m.

A city could actually incentivize the electric car by marking and providing free short term parking for ultra-mini electrics you can buy off the shelf today. Because the distances in a city are so short, there'd be no problem with range, and a high speed would be unnecessary. The parking ...

Posted Mon, Oct 25, 12:48 p.m.

Uh, I hate to point this out, but the automobile hasn't 'evolved' much at all in the past 60 years. Some modest advances in longevity and suspension, coupled with major improvements in wrist tvs, and hey presto! the illusion that all is new and revolutionary. In reality, they get about ...

Posted Mon, Oct 25, 8 a.m.

If you think about this for, say, a minute or two, it becomes obvious that modeling electric car fueling on the existing gasoline car fueling is totally insane. And, by extension, this whole thing about establishing 'electric fueling stations' is just another of our mindless boondoggles. Just as we molded ...

Posted Thu, Oct 21, 2:54 p.m.

Forty years ago almost all of the public land around Lake Union had been encroached upon. This includes street ends, public waterways, land the city owns (or other government) and the odd situation at Fairview where the road runs over the lake and there were formerly fuel unloading docks for ...

Posted Thu, Oct 21, 10:57 a.m.

The subject could use more nuance, and I would begin with the thought that for many of us, a nice loop to walk is one that begins and ends at our homes, or perhaps takes as long as a mid-day lunch break. A variation would be the ability to start ...

Posted Thu, Oct 21, 9:10 a.m.

Or, in other words, nobody has a clue about what to do here, so everyone brings the same song we've heard them sing before. Special mention to Wells and jmrolls for their on-message renditions of 'Go Mike' and 'Save the viaduct'- god forbid we might read something new first thing ...

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 7:16 a.m.

Wow, in what demented looney-tunes world is rednecklogger "taking my logic further"? Rednecklogger has assigned the wrong direction in which I would go "further". It makes a difference.

Posted Thu, Oct 14, 6:37 a.m.

I can't say I earned much from the Indians about tsunamis here, but the way Knute spins the telling of the tale was fascinating. What he's saying makes about as much sense as telling the Boeing Company they could learn a lot about building airplanes from the Indians- and many ...

Posted Wed, Oct 13, 4:42 p.m.

Seeing as how we're still waiting for the 'next' tsunami, it would be simple to learn what Indian wisdom would teach us about preparing for it- just ask them! Knute's argument would be a lot stronger if he had found a little more than "When you hear strange sounds and ...

Posted Wed, Oct 13, 6:31 a.m.

You almost gotta luv it. This is a state that built airplanes to sell to the government, using aluminum smelted with electricity from government dams, or commercial airplanes to fly in government airways and land at government fields. We grow wheat with government water for irrigation and ship it in ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 2:41 p.m.

This is Obama's greatest failing. He simply has not realized that agencies staffed by Bush hacks are not going to change course on their own. And this has been repeatedly breaking out with the Justice Department, the EPA, and other agencies taking positions that are the opposite of the progressivism ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 2:13 p.m.

What difference does it make whether you wear a lab coat or a Carhartt jacket to work? Oh, just about $30k per annum, to the worker. And that's when we compare the lowest paid worker in the lab to the highest paid worker in the warehouse. As for the value ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 9:35 a.m.

Wow! That was a real trip in the wayback machine. When I moved to Seattle in 1970, Seattle was doing everything Kent wants to be a "business-friendly city". You couldn't build a residential highrise in the Regrade- that vast expanse was zoned for 2-story manufacturing. Lake Union, then, was tagged ...

Posted Sat, Oct 9, 7:09 a.m.

You might think a man with all those impressive (albeit aged) titles would think a little about the context before passing judgment. Raising parking fees is known to reduce congestion, a known problem in Seattle, and to raise revenue, another known problem. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Is ...

Posted Thu, Oct 7, 9:11 a.m.

Crosscut might consider accompanying every broadcast from the Washington Policy Center with a rebuttal. I've never seen anything come out of the WPC that could be considered to be objective.

Posted Thu, Oct 7, 8:42 a.m.

Oddly, yesterday, when this article was published, was also a day when serving members of our military were awarded citizenship they had earned by that service. This was one of the biggest issues leading to the end of the Roman Republic. Rome had grown so large that the original tribes ...

Posted Wed, Oct 6, 7:35 a.m.

Well, there are two ways to look at this. You can imagine how great it would be to have Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower bundled in centrist tranches, or you can recognize it for the fever-dreamed delirium it has been since John Quincy Adams mistakenly served a term as President. ...

Posted Fri, Oct 1, 7:23 a.m.

Buses will always have high labor costs, and there's a reason for that. The driver is in charge of a half-million dollar piece of equipment, with the potential of millions in liability if they make a mistake, and, additionally, is the public face of the transit agency. If you won't ...

Posted Fri, Oct 1, 6:55 a.m.

If the city wants to support the waterfront neighborhood with walkable development, as Bertolet claims to favor, it will put a streetcar from King Street to Pier 91. In fact, they would have to, because the neighborhood is about thirty times as long as it is wide. The idea that ...

Posted Thu, Sep 30, 2:50 p.m.

Well, if by "glorious radical history" you mean Dave Beck's teamsters, the ILWU, or Group Health, these were very real radical movements that exerted a stabilizing force on society. The Communists and Socialists, on the other hand, were millenarian movements that depended on the increasing impoverishment of the working class ...

Posted Tue, Sep 28, 4:33 p.m.

The elephant in the room here- and I'm surprised that such accomplished journalists and long-term residents as Knute and Ted Van Dyk haven't noticed this- is the 50-year freeway and road-building binge to convert farmlands into suburbia. Yes, amazing as it may seem, land developers actually lobbied in Olympia (with ...

Posted Mon, Sep 27, 3:59 p.m.

If I ever wanted to explain the character Polonius in modern terms, this would be the article to do it with.

Posted Mon, Sep 27, 7:17 a.m.

It's easy to see why tunnel opponents are trying to blow this detail up as large as possible, when we remember what they're trying to make us forget. The draft statement has been available for months, with McGinn pretending he would sign it so the City Council wouldn't go directly ...

Posted Sat, Sep 25, 3:41 p.m.

There's somethng a little surreal about this conversation. We are, after all, talking about Mike McGinn, who just a week or two ago announced he didn't want to honor the city's contract with MOHAI. Seems he's a little choosy in applying the sanctity of contracts and believes in them only ...

Posted Sat, Sep 25, 7:47 a.m.

It seems plain that McGinn acted in bad faith when promising as a candidate he wouldn't oppose the DBT, and continues to act in bad faith. Slow down, and read his statements carefully. You'll find the truth literally is not in the man. McGinn practices a form of subtlety in ...

Posted Wed, Sep 22, 4:12 p.m.

I am already tired of the narrative that "The bland array of background buildings and an uneventful streetscape has kept most of us who live here from using it..." You can't even see the bland array of background buildings because of the viaduct, and it's only recently that BNSF has ...

Posted Mon, Sep 20, 7:38 a.m.

Well, the first real mismanagement I saw reported in the paper in my life was a meeting of the Bellevue School Board- and it was reported deadpan, as though it were perfectly natural for Mr. Gilleland to insist on costlier oil furnaces for new schools because he sold the oil. ...

Posted Sun, Sep 19, 8:43 a.m.

Well, my personal view is that the forests should be managed as a sustainable industry, not as a cash cow. Some of the forests should take a deliberately long view of producing high-grade lumber or serving other functions, such as shading salmon streams. I just learned recently that there is ...

Posted Sat, Sep 18, 3:24 p.m.

Well, actually, it was Teddy Roosevelt who was "in favor of more government to manage our 'sick' economy, ruined by those dastardly private market capitalist robber barons of late and today?" Sustainable harvest is the name of the game out here in Mason County. I personally like it, because the ...

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 9:08 a.m.

I could respond with some 'insider baseball' about how Indian tidelands, fishing rights, and timber were stolen in Mason County and then we could all accuse each other of not knowing much. Whoopee. What I will say is that when the government 'built homes' for the Indians, it undoubtedly did ...

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 8:26 a.m.

When I look back on the best ten days of my life, a full half of them involve being someplace you can only get to by hiking. It would seem logical to me to run buses to trailheads in season, as buses formerly, and perhaps today, ran to ski areas. ...

Posted Thu, Sep 16, 1:58 p.m.

So, let's see now, Mark posts a piece about sustainability, and BlueLight comments that Indians are getting a free ride. According to BlueLight, the Indians and anyone who defends them are racists. Yup, that's some mighty high-powered thinking you got going there, BlueLight. As for the $500 billion, you need ...

Posted Wed, Sep 15, 3:13 p.m.

Most of the people in the US will not have to "purchase health insurance or face a fine" because they already have health insurance. I imagine the Indians already have a health service- possibly named Indian Health Service- that may meet the requirements of the act. But mainly I'm not ...

Posted Wed, Sep 15, 7:07 a.m.

People like BlueLight have had, literally, generations in which to learn the real story of the Indians and white men in America. There's not much point in going over it one more time, slowly, and hoping BlueLight gets a clue. Instead, I marvel at a person who (anonymously) takes pleasure ...

Posted Tue, Sep 14, 9:30 a.m.

Maybe the stupidest thing about this article is the idea I would even care about the stylistic opinions of somebody who openly claims to love the viaduct. I mean, really. But if we, for amusement purposes only, read on, we are told that using 9 acres of property on the ...

Posted Tue, Sep 14, 8:54 a.m.

Those of us who are boomers have treasure chests of memories of how bad things were. They are very similar to our nightmares of how things are today. That is the failure of the boomer cohort. The question now is whether we can learn from our mistakes. Of course, it ...

Posted Sat, Sep 11, 9:07 a.m.

It's not like we've never done something like this before. Auerback says of the New Deal- [Roosevelt’s] government hired about 60 per cent of the unemployed in public works and conservation projects that planted a billion trees, saved the whooping crane, modernized rural America, and built such diverse projects as ...

Posted Fri, Sep 10, 7:56 a.m.

The big one in this market-basket is "move closer to work". That's a problem that gets a lot easier to solve if you use long-term planning. With the changes that are coming a lot of people will simply need to return to school and learn a new job. Whether that's ...

Posted Thu, Sep 9, 9:07 a.m.

A major part of this problem is that, at this point, fixing the infrastructure means making repairs, or even 'improvements', to a lot of stuff we shouldn't own at all. It is, in the most literal sense, building for the past. Even worse, we have no idea of how to ...

Posted Tue, Sep 7, 3:09 p.m.

Now I've heard everything. The military standards for government accounting are the pinnacle of excellence? Would those be the same standards used in Iraq? Tell it to the Marines.

Posted Sun, Sep 5, 9:17 a.m.

Quinn, before McGinn became mayor, we were enjoying the part of "Seattle Process" where many groups of people, most of them volunteers, work together to create something of value to society. In South Lake Union this was working really well. The non-profit Center for Wood Boats was working with the ...

Posted Fri, Sep 3, 8:33 a.m.

McGinn really has that 'reptilian brain' we've heard about. Any other mayor would say to themselves, "Hey, this is such an obvious location for such a great set of parks, with tons of volunteers to make it happen, so all I have to do is not mess with it, and ...

Posted Wed, Sep 1, 8:15 a.m.

Seebee seems to confuse a 50-50 chance of guessing gender with an ability to understand the present or predict the future. Here's a newsflash, Seebee- we're already poor. A full half of our population owns 1% of the national property. And the Boomer retirement wave is coming. And the future ...

Posted Tue, Aug 31, 8:29 a.m.

Especially as a former houseboat owner, I sympathize with the islanders. It's no fun when you think the city can simply take your home, and it's no fun when a guy from the east buys the adjacent property and discovers he can rackrent you to cross 20 feet of dock ...

Posted Mon, Aug 30, 4:27 p.m.

This article seems to be slanted towards blaming the Indians for a service disruption with the ferry that is really the result of poor planning by the county commissioners. Who thought this could go on forever? Of course, it could, if everyone agreed that the costs of running the ferry ...

Posted Sun, Aug 29, 10:20 a.m.

A question in my mind is why I would even want to save a city that thinks a highway on the waterfront makes good sense. Let's be clear here. There is no big tax savings if the tunnel isn't built. The repair of the seawall and the surface streets, and ...

Posted Fri, Aug 27, 10:39 a.m.

So, let's see now, while a mob, composed largely of people who plan to leave in five years, screams "Stop the Tunnel! Stop the Tunnel!", another group of savants will set out on a holy quest for the Fountain of Prosperity. Yeah, that'll work. It's not actually that hard to ...

Posted Wed, Aug 25, 7:22 a.m.

How any cops could you fund for $600k? Four, maybe five- not that many for a day that has three shifts. A good transit plan, on the other hand, is part of a healthy diet for growing cities. It's not too hard to understand, though, that the Port of Seattle ...

Posted Sat, Aug 21, 8:51 a.m.

I would like to apologize to Mr. Downs for the level of discussion around rail transit in the Seattle area. The simple facts are that this area was first developed by water transport and became a world leader in aircraft manufacture. In a basic sense, many people here simply have ...

Posted Wed, Aug 18, 2:26 p.m.

By coincidence, I have a 30+ year up-close-and-personal relationship with Nickerson. Naturally, I found it quite offensive to see such an obvious lie about 400 people working at a die-casting facility in that neighborhood. Except for trucks, Nickerson is one of the least essential streets in the city. And the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 18, 2:13 p.m.

I would have to say that with this post Ted has reached the ranks of the "truly Broderesque". Whether you consider that an insult or a compliment is left up to the reader.

Posted Thu, Aug 12, 7:09 a.m.

Yeah, you're full of baloney. In the Seattle setting, the Big Dig would be like putting four miles of I-5 in a tunnel downtown, without interrupting the use of the highway during construction, and, in addition, building a tunnel under Elliot Bay to a new highway to the airport, and ...

Posted Thu, Aug 5, 9:42 a.m.

I don't see what's so "promising" about Roger's "strange coalition". The tunnel opponents may believe their own blarney, but none of the rest of us aren't required to do so. And this piece would certainly rank high on the old Blarney-O-Meter. Certainly there's "a lot to debate" about how Roger ...

Posted Thu, Aug 5, 8:14 a.m.

FYI, Matt Yglesias did a post yesterday looking at figures for regions and cities, and concluding that Texas was no wonder-child.

Posted Sat, Jul 31, 10:46 a.m.

After reading sjenner's questions, I have to think it's a darn shame we're trapped on this parallel world where nobody has ever done anything like this before. Because I read in books about this other Earth, where people have dug tunnels and built roads and bridges in all sorts of ...

Posted Thu, Jul 29, 10:33 a.m.

McGinn says there's a chance of cost overruns. I say there's a chance McGinn will hire his friends for $100,000 a year and pass out $40,000 consulting fees when he wants to hear an opinion that echoes his own. Oops, been there, done that. Call me crazy, but I'm going ...

Posted Thu, Jul 29, 10 a.m.

Knute is very perceptive- he's seen McGinn's plans for transit and surface options that have never been presented to the public. And there's a reason these plans have never been rolled out (I mean, aside from the fact that they don't exist)- kill the tunnel and the next thing you ...

Posted Wed, Jul 28, 12:38 p.m.

It has, indeed, been interesting to witness. Our very own demagogue, spouting lies that are slavishly echoed by his followers and a headline hungry local media, none of whom can be bothered to look up the actual facts of the matter- or perhaps find the facts inconvenient for their party ...

Posted Sun, Jul 25, 10:44 a.m.

Let's get real. Right now, today, oyster growers are reporting that growth is down in their oysterbeds, probably related to a change in the pH of the seawater that is inhibiting shell formation. Corals, worldwide, are in a massive extinction event. And this is happening at 390 ppm of CO2, ...

Posted Fri, Jul 23, 8:22 a.m.

Y'know, I kinda missed the part where the social service agencies objected to having a war because it creates needs among homeless vets, but takes all the money. In fact, I can't remember ever seeing social service groups protest other spending on this basis. But, in fairness to these groups, ...

Posted Thu, Jul 22, 9:32 a.m.

It's important to remember that McGinn and the Stranger are demagogues who need each other. Throw in the mix the fact that neither of them are trustworthy and you have the possibility of a number of things that simply are not so. Jordan has risen to the bait here, but ...

Posted Wed, Jul 21, 3:33 p.m.

@ SteveShay- do you even understand any of the projects you cited? The "surface option" puts a new highway on the waterfront, just as the highway in Greenwich Village would have been. Building the tunnel is the option that makes it possible to build a park on the waterfront instead ...

Posted Mon, Jul 19, 7:52 a.m.

You'll notice that the people calling for a vote are very carefully not telling us what their proposal is. This may be because the basic alternatives are simply to put all the traffic on surface streets, making the waterfront into a six-lane highway, or to rebuild the elevated highway, putting ...

Posted Sun, Jul 18, 7:27 a.m.

As a matter of fact, the Jenson boatyard where the Slo-Mos were built has been preserved, in spite of a vigorous effort by the University to take over the property and 'digest' it into their west campus. The building is of undoubted historical significance. The B-17, the B-29, the B-57 ...

Posted Sat, Jul 17, 9:36 a.m.

Wow, could you draw a more pathetic picture of a loser city than Seattle "patching up" the old viaduct by pouring a few million tons more of cement? Yes, that would be exactly the kind of "can do" spirit that would make high-tech industry leaders say "Seattle- that's where we ...

Posted Fri, Jul 16, 7:22 a.m.

As I said, Seattle- the Lindsay Lohan of cities. Seattleites seem to have no idea that the rest of the state might get that $1.5 billion. As befits a "Queen" city, Seattle says "It's all about ME!" Get a clue, dahling- with your drunken leer and your willingness to build ...

Posted Fri, Jul 16, 6:15 a.m.

This idea that "if we don't fear the outcome we should welcome a vote" is total baloney. So, what, all of a sudden every settled process of government is to be subject to a vote if a minority screams loud enough? That doesn't make any sense at all. In reality ...

Posted Thu, Jul 15, 10:02 a.m.

There are plenty of reasons to resist having a vote on this project, and tunnel supporters are under no obligation to enable the nattering nabobs of negativity. If tunnel opponents want a vote, let them seek a vote.

Posted Thu, Jul 15, 9:57 a.m.

The $1.96 billion figure for the tunnel includes a reserve that covers a 26% overrun.

Posted Thu, Jul 15, 7:47 a.m.

Watching Seattle today is like watching the Lindsay Lohan of cities. And, you know, hey, as long as they spell the name right! So I would suggest some modest improvements to the voting idea. First, why not make this a national reality-tv show and let national audiences vote selected electeds ...

Posted Thu, Jul 15, 7:18 a.m.

Yes, it is very conscientious for Seattleites to worry about an overrun of a billion on a 50-year project, when we're spending $500 billion per year on the military. Kinda like patching the roof as the house is washed away by the flood.

Posted Wed, Jul 14, 2:44 p.m.

Yes, I found it interesting trying to think of somewhere in the world where Knute's plan had been tried. Dictatorships are something like that, because the dictator loses everything when he is overthrown, unless he manages to escape to a Swiss bank account and chalet. Pullman's planned city for his ...

Posted Wed, Jul 14, 7:41 a.m.

As Richard notes, no honest person would run for office under Knute's rule. What Knute is really proposing here is the end of representative government, and rule by large corporations and the military. Because, as we all know, the military never have cost overruns.

Posted Mon, Jul 12, 9:35 a.m.

A good tab for this piece would be "Kids Say the Darndest Things". I used to talk like this myself, when I was six. What fascinates me about all of this is the socio-pathology displayed. Any other city, offered the chance to transform the existing central waterfront, would be gung ...

Posted Sun, Jul 11, 11:16 a.m.

The situation described by Garret Hardin is not, in fact, a situation created by social stability. It is a situation created when the pre-existing social stability, in which herds did not increase, is upset by change, in which herds increase exponentially with no natural limits. And this fact is pretty ...

Posted Fri, Jul 2, 8:31 a.m.

Sheesh! The locals can manage their lives? Well, excuse me for having lived through the time when they did- and it was a disaster. Poor but honest structures were steadily replaced by poorer dishonest structures, but, thank heavens, most of the garbage from the 50s and 70s has fallen under ...

Posted Fri, Jul 2, 6:27 a.m.

This isn't exactly rocket science. In fact, the solutions are "too simple". 1) End the 'War on Drugs'. Just put the dealers out of business by making them compete with doctors and prescriptions. I know, totally amazing that American medicine can actually be cheaper than something, but it could be. ...

Posted Thu, Jul 1, 6:16 a.m.

BlueLight, the "cure for that" is to give the country back to the Indians. That "ongoing sense of entitlement" is simply the Indian desire to see the contracts made when they "sold" their land fulfilled.

Posted Tue, Jun 29, 8:08 a.m.

How does someone write a one-page article in which tolling traffic is a "fortress mentality" but- lo and behold- not tolling traffic is also a "fortress mentality" because it would lead to gridlock. This all reminds me of a joke we told in elementary school about why fire engines are ...

Posted Thu, Jun 17, 8:01 a.m.

O, I think any reader would sit up and blink twice if they ever saw the word "abstinency". I know I would.

Posted Thu, Jun 17, 7:11 a.m.

Well, let's see now- with a high-income tax we can fund education and institutions, which everyone seems to agree are basic to continued prosperity. With no income tax, we can attract a lot of futurist flim-flam men. Yeah, that's a tough choice.

Posted Thu, Jun 17, 6:58 a.m.

If Seattle didn't have such a high proportion of noise to signal, we wouldn't be deafened.

Posted Wed, Jun 9, 10:39 a.m.

No money in primary care? I saw primary care docs recently, and they charged over $10/minute, and that's assuming they spent twice as many minutes charting as the actual time they spent with me. California has done "tort reform" for medical malpractice, and it turns out it doesn't make any ...

Posted Mon, Jun 7, 6:58 a.m.

Ah, but, to hear the doctors tell it, the only reason they treat you at all is because of the financial gun at their head- their student loans, the costs of their practice, etc etc. Why, otherwise, they would be- well, not treating you for free, but out on the ...

Posted Sat, Jun 5, 10:50 a.m.

Ha ha, all the rightwing commenters here get to watch their Halliburton wet dreams turn into nightmares. And what a picture of manly manliness we see, when Mr. Tough-guy American faces the prospect of a morning without his banana! Or how about Mr. Self-sufficiency, who heats with wood- wood that ...

Posted Sat, May 29, 7:32 a.m.

Like so much of Ted's writing, his comments here seem to wander in a dazed manner in a field of platitudes. One thing seems clear (but may not actually be)- he's simply not buying the idea that we have a public self and a private self. How do you tell ...

Posted Thu, May 27, 12:18 p.m.

I think the practice of giving, or asking, 'real names' would lend an air of spurious authenticity to the web. In a sense, on the web it's impossible to be open or honest, no matter how much you may wish to do so. The web is an interface, or filter, ...

Posted Wed, May 26, 4:02 p.m.

Ah, yes, "jobs and people" come before salmon- and in the Gulf Coast, before shrimp, fisheries, and even, alas, people who work in the vacation industry there. But don't stop there- look at the old Soviet Union, always ready to sacrifice the environment for "jobs and people". Chernobyl, of course, ...

Posted Sat, May 22, 2:01 p.m.

This all got me to thinking about South Africa. For decades we awaited the bloodbath in South Africa. The white minority used increasingly violent means to keep power, and seemed to delight in mocking standards of decency or democracy. It seemed inevitable that at some point the overwhelming black majority ...

Posted Fri, May 21, 9:44 a.m.

Jason is kinda missing the point that, first, the AZ law is racial bias at its rawest (to leave no doubt of that, the AZ legislature also passed a law restricting ethnic studies to Anglo ethnicity), and secondly, that we have no vote in the AZ legislature. We don't officially ...

Posted Tue, May 18, 9:23 a.m.

Oh, I think we can do the short form here- if the five rightwingers on the Court think they can reach out and legislate from the bench, they'll do it.

Posted Sun, May 16, 11:12 a.m.

Y'know, if these are the best ideas anyone can come up with about this, the mainspring is broken. Seattle is the city between Vancouver and Portland. Skyscrapers tower, entire neighborhoods bulge with new housing, and mile-long freight trains roll constantly in and out of town with goods and grains. If ...

Posted Sun, May 16, 10:56 a.m.

By coincidence I had pasties yesterday and they are simple to make. Dice good beef and potatoes to about 5/8 inch cubes. Chop onions coarsely. Now, roll out flakey pastry dough to about the size of a pin pan. Pile beef, potatoes and onions on half, fold over and seal ...

Posted Wed, May 5, 9:43 a.m.

Ted is giving us a nice example of the past 50 years of Liberalism here. First, he sets up the straw man of Democrats demagoguing on the issue of Arizona. And I'm sure we can all agree that we shouldn't "favor all-out efforts to inflame Latinos by whatever means". That, ...

Posted Tue, May 4, 5:39 a.m.

I'm always skeptical when the people in power say they were "goaded into" doing something. In practical terms, that means they think they can get away with it. The powerless learn to shrug off those impulses to be "goaded into" doing something. That always turns out badly if you're not ...

Posted Fri, Apr 23, 8:53 a.m.

How "special" to see the usual chorus of nattering nabobs of negativity joining in a rousing round of "We Can't Do It!" Yes, I feel better already to realize the future of the nation may lie in the hands of Saudi oiligarchs, Asian carmakers, and Kemper Freeman. The only thing ...

Posted Thu, Apr 22, 9:34 a.m.

Well, I have to say, I read the entire article and did not find one concrete idea about saving Pioneer Square. If I was judging from this article, I would cut that budget to zero, and I have to give Gregoire credit for trying. It would seem that a very ...

Posted Tue, Apr 20, 3:48 p.m.

This is a crew of commenters with the collective memory of a fruit fly. Or do you simply not believe the surge in oil prices in 08 was related to the crash of the economy that followed?

Posted Tue, Apr 20, 5:57 a.m.

I'm having a lot of trouble with the Sound Transit idea they'll never run light rail over the 520. If they won't, let's find someone who will- that bridge is just too big an investment to let it sit around doing nothing for the next 50 years. Buses are not ...

Posted Mon, Apr 19, 3:18 p.m.

Well, having read the article without learning anything more than industry talking points, I don't know why I expected anything else from the comments. This article is a good example of why a PR guy really can't do an "article", especially on the subject they're paid to flack for. The ...

Posted Thu, Apr 15, 5:47 a.m.

This is not just a question of healing ourselves or the innocent children- it is also a question about the role of the Catholic Church in a civil society. "The Catholic Church has committed atrocities but the same is true for any human institution of its power and historical presence..." ...

Posted Wed, Apr 14, 9:58 a.m.

We can see from the denialists in this thread how hard we need to work to get the message across. It would be a scathing indictment of us as a people if we had to wait until the largest corporations see the dangers of global warming and tell us what ...

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 7:06 a.m.

dbreneman's last is just wrong. Putting rail on 520 would provide a direct link between Microsoft and the U of W that would not go downtown. Considering that these are basically the two biggest employers/economic powers in the state, I don't know why this isn't intuitively obvious. On a broader ...

Posted Sun, Apr 11, 8:40 a.m.

Robinson's column becomes even more outrageous when you read it again, very slowly, to see exactly what he's saying. Because at one time I belonged to the American Nursing Association, and the ANA thinks nurses should have adequate pay, decent working conditions, and the respect that enables them to deliver ...

Posted Sat, Apr 10, 1:47 p.m.

Why, of course, it could happen to any of us- we could become the "infallible" leader of a world-wide religion that for ten centuries led the persecution and massacres of the Jews, wrote the book on torturing to extract false confessions and conversions, and in my lifetime was responsible for ...

Posted Sat, Apr 10, 11:34 a.m.

Always ready to fight the last war, Ted has focused on the areas in which the US has been screwing up for the past 25 years, mainly in an effort to assure the supply of what we now know to be a poison- cheap oil. And how ironic is it ...

Posted Thu, Apr 8, 10:21 a.m.

Um, wouldn't it be, just stupid? to build a new bridge you couldn't add rail to? And really, the same is true of a design that doesn't give transit a direct non-stop access to the U of W. Are you kidding me? Who comes up with these ideas? Well, obviously, ...

Posted Wed, Apr 7, 12:37 p.m.

Well, you might as well do what you can in the city setting. The real problem is the 'War on Drugs' and you can hardly wait for that to end before you do something. The WOD is, first of all, a war on people of color, making huge numbers ineligible ...

Posted Fri, Apr 2, 1:35 p.m.

I kind of like the viaduct, in a way. When I visit Seattle, I get off the ferry, look at the viaduct, and say to myself, "Thank god I don't live here any more." Then I look around at the waterfront, blighted by the viaduct, and think, "nothing to see ...

Posted Sun, Mar 28, 10:20 a.m.

A lot of people seem to have forgotten that the Vietnam War was an extremely violent event, chewing up high school graduating classes and spitting out bodies, as 50,000 Americans and 2,000,000 Vietnamese died in a war in which we dropped more bombs than in all of WW II. At ...

Posted Fri, Mar 26, 9:42 a.m.

Everyone has to be young once, and I all too vividly recall being led astray by supposed left-wingers. This is how we learn. My regrets, however, are ameliorated by the fact that cheap oil swept the nation forward on a course of error for 30 years, and no radical politics ...

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 3:04 p.m.

Well, let's face it, the "red-faced pounding" comes from newspaper publishers and media moguls. Republicans are never red-faced and pounding, while Democrats always are. Democrats and progressives have known for years that the media is owned by millionaires. This issue has all the constitutional appeal of a fight against the ...

Posted Mon, Mar 22, 4:28 p.m.

Well, call me old-fashioned, but I am all for the idea of legislation originating in Congress and going to the President for a signature. I have seen more than enough of the "strong man" theory of the Presidency, an office often occupied by the venal or incompetent. And this becomes ...

Posted Sat, Mar 13, 3:32 p.m.

Yes, I thought about discussing the difference between mortality and morbidity. Briefly, mortality is a very crude metric, while morbidity involves the actual cost of care and loss of productivity (not to mention the pain and disability of the patient). But it would be very hard for us to accurately ...

Posted Fri, Mar 12, 3:02 p.m.

Ok, I'm on a really slow dial-up, so I'm not going to spend the rest of my life proving we don't have the best health care. To give just one example, we have today the life expectancy at birth of a Cuban or German, at 77 years, but less than ...

Posted Thu, Mar 11, 8:45 a.m.

This piece by Van Dyk, and much of the discussion, has a "let's get lost in the trees" feeling to it, because the Republicans, and some "centrist" Democrats, are wrong about health care. They are factually wrong. We do not have the best health care in the world, nor are ...

Posted Wed, Mar 10, 11:50 a.m.

Van Dyk's article is based on two fallacious premises. First, he rejects the concept of majority rule, and all but openly embraces the idea that the minority should rule, through the use of the filibuster. To Van Dyk, it's not a problem with Republicans opposing reform, but with Obama for ...

Posted Sun, Feb 28, 10:04 a.m.

Ha ha, praise from Ted Van Dyk and Doug Tooley- time to stock up on the Geritol, Kent. What Kent is doing here is a sort of random-walk theory of journalism. Grab some general truisms and complaints, season lightly with city-specific examples, and serve with a garnish of broken-windows theory. ...

Posted Tue, Feb 23, 2:55 p.m.

The ne plus ultra of horserace reporting. The Times reports everything, when they do report, as a horserace, and now the Times is in a grim race with the Grim Reaper. But not a word about the content. Should we care? To learn about almost anything, the Times would be ...

Posted Thu, Feb 18, 7:39 a.m.

The irony here would be that, as a lawyer, McGinn would know better than anyone just how unenforceable such a poorly written piece of law would be. Certainly, the Boeing Company never paid for anything in this town if they didn't want to.

Posted Wed, Feb 17, 1:04 p.m.

I think what Doug Tooley is trying to say is that he's against the tunnel- and that anyone who disagrees with him should be squashed like a bug. That may, however, be too literal a reading.

Posted Wed, Feb 17, 10:28 a.m.

With refreshing candor McGinn admits that Nickels left the city in pretty good shape- and then predicts that, under a McGinn administration, the traditional drivers of Seattle's economy (the port, the universities, and tech industries) might falter. And on the issue of urban finances in a global world, the best ...

Posted Tue, Feb 16, 11:07 a.m.

Well, Ted, you can relax about one thing- McGinn has no 'plan' to build more light rail. If that is to happen, it will happen the same way the Link was built- by large numbers of professionals balancing future needs and costs of transportation, and citizens who think light rail ...

Posted Sat, Feb 6, 1:34 p.m.

Seldom has a comment thread more aptly illustrated an author's point about the Seattle 'process' than this one. Why is it 'class warfare' to point out the obvious- that the Seattle Art Museum can shut down the Waterfront Streetcar on a whim, that the U of W rivals the Port ...

Posted Thu, Feb 4, 9:19 a.m.

For a number of years I brought my disabled wife to Seattle so we could continue to see the doctors we saw before we moved out of town. We found that if we made two appointments in the same building (to minimize our trips to town) it usually took about ...

Posted Sat, Jan 30, 9:39 a.m.

Now this is just spooky. It's like catnp was reading my mind and writing it down. Yeah, it just broke my heart to watch them tear down the old bakery to build what you see today. Which a lot of residents now probably think looks kinda old-fashioned.

Posted Mon, Jan 25, 11:13 a.m.

As always, thanks for your kind attention to the comment (and what's up with nobody commenting? Like what we're doing isn't costing us an arm and a leg?) Over the years that I have been entirely too close to health care, two big issues have stood out to me. First, ...

Posted Mon, Jan 25, 10:32 a.m.

Reading McGinn's piece in the Times, I found he was conflating the issue of seawall replacement with the issue of soil liquefaction behind the seawall. In reality, the soil liquefaction occurs because of the earthquake, not because of water seepage through the seawall- fixing the seawall will not prevent soil ...

Posted Fri, Jan 22, 5:13 p.m.

A lot of this talk proceeds about how bad a day the Democrats are having. But the people really having a bad day are the citizens. Tomorrow will be a day much like any other for the Democrats, as will the day after. The rest of us have to deal ...

Posted Fri, Jan 22, 4:47 p.m.

Why is this supposed to be a lesson to people seeking reform and legalization? Do you think we don't know this already? Or maybe we should be looking at the other lesson from this wolf in sheep's clothing. The estimable Mate would keep marijuana illegal, a conclusion reached by none ...

Posted Thu, Jan 21, 11:02 a.m.

Wow, now Ted has wandered right off into la-la land. Surveys have consistently shown that over 60% of Americans think a single-payer universal coverage plan should be adopted. When you see someone like Van Dyk, who has been "studying" politics for a long time, so totally uninformed about what's happening, ...

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 3:35 p.m.

To preserve the Market as a venue for the purchase of fresh food, the Market needs customers. Building 30-story towers over it would make it indispensable to a lot of people. That's probably not going to pass muster with the historical preservation people, but a streetcar on First would help ...

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 2:27 p.m.

Maybe if we were talking about lawyers it would make sense to fire the highest paid. But the idea that there are 200 people- and, quite a coincidence, the 200 top paid- who deserve to be fired is ludicrous. If McGinn can actually get away with this kind of stuff, ...

Posted Wed, Jan 20, 6:32 a.m.

Well, I guess if you swallowed the elephant, you won't strain at the gnat. During the campaign I formed the impression that McGinn was lying about the costs of the tunnel. I read very carefully, to make sure I wasn't getting the wrong impression from bad reporting. And sure enough, ...

Posted Tue, Jan 19, 10:22 a.m.

So, let's see now, we still have plenty of money to lock up marijuana smokers, and a trillion a year is none too much to spend making war on the world (and calling it peace). But when it comes to old age pensions or medical care, not so much- according ...

Posted Mon, Jan 18, 3:54 p.m.

Gee, that's a great idea, Tony. Why don't you and Pat Robertson debate the merits of your respective faiths on channel 243. But my dad, who was actually a sort of religious guy who 'rode circuit' for a while and then helped found a church, he taught me it was ...

Posted Tue, Dec 29, 4:38 p.m.

I was kind of mean to the early QFC there, so I should mention that one thing they did do was to build a smaller store and just sell groceries- no hamburger stand, no toy department, etc etc, and so the feel was different- you went there to buy food, ...

Posted Tue, Dec 29, 3:20 p.m.

I think to a certain frame of mind a supermarket has to be new or it's no good. The A&P; in Bellevue Square was actually the most totally awesome, with the big coffeegrinders dominating the scene. All of the ones mentioned in Bellevue have opened and eventually seemed outmoded, although ...

Posted Mon, Dec 28, 9:42 a.m.

I think the essential dishonesty here is Moon's refusal to admit that the AWV is part of a state highway. Cutting out two or three miles on the waterfront means you either have no state highway, or you have a state highway running through the waterfront. Moon may sincerely believe ...

Posted Sat, Dec 26, 4:40 p.m.

Get real. In rural counties, allowing "local government" to act without restraint harms most of the residents, who have little say or power in these rural oligarchies. In Mason County, for example, the state senator is also a county commissioner, a large landowner, and an employer at a brush-packing shed ...

Posted Fri, Dec 18, 5:59 a.m.

It seems obvious that NOAA is already out-of-control. Allowing them to establish a mini-fiefdom far from any adult supervision, on the Oregon coast, would allow all sorts of hanky-panky to go on. They would be entirely able to command the little town they were in, creating a colony of loyal ...

Posted Tue, Dec 15, 5:57 a.m.

My personal feeling, which I will not try to present as a fact, is that politicians and public figures in general are not impressed with the level of honesty McGinn has displayed to this point. Because there are so many factors here I suspect some local politicians will simply regard ...

Posted Thu, Dec 10, 1:19 p.m.

'Sfunny, but at the time I was living in Seattle and had no idea (until today) that the Concorde had come to town. At the time, my dad was one of the guys who put 22 years in working for Boeing in management and then got axed. I didn't think ...

Posted Wed, Nov 25, 11:26 a.m.

Maybe the most shocking thing about Brewster's piece is the renunciation of the two-party system, in favor of campaigns by self-described "moderates" based entirely on personality. He also seems to blame the Democrats for having become a majority as the Republicans have increasingly refused to take art in problem-solving. Considering ...

Posted Mon, Nov 23, 3:10 p.m.

A lot of these "expensive programs" are attempts to remedy the damage done when prosperity was easy because nobody paid the real costs of what they were doing. And they're not frills. We've put off these cleanups and amelioration until it became obvious that doing nothing was costing us more ...

Posted Mon, Nov 23, 6:29 a.m.

One thing young people can't remember about Kennedy is that he was fun. After discovering how out-of-shape the Army was, he demanded that we be fit enough to walk 20 miles in a day, and for a few weekends it seemed like half of America was out trying to meet ...

Posted Mon, Nov 23, 5:59 a.m.

Yes, as another 40 year student of this madness, I would say the prohibitionists are impervious to logic, although I suspect there is a good deal of plain old pecuniary interest driving the emotional appeals. In the early 90s I became interested in the process of "writing to my legislator". ...

Posted Sun, Nov 22, 10:47 a.m.

Thanks, Judy, for responding so rationally to my heavy-handed comment. My frustration springs from the fact that the potential objections have been refuted so often and so long that, really, only the annual "bonus question" remains to be revealed and answered. By "bonus question", of course, I mean the annual ...

Posted Sat, Nov 21, 3:31 p.m.

I wonder why author Lightfoot would like to hear a "dissenting voice" in a discussion of ending a cruel and expensive social policy mistake. Does she not realize that major commissions have studied the legalization of marijuana (the Indian Hemp Commission (1898), The LaGuardia Report (1943), and the Schaefer Commission ...

Posted Wed, Nov 4, 6:18 a.m.

This all reminds me of some of the dishes I used to make for dinner- some good ingredients, some ingredients that sounded good or are supposed to be good for you, tempered by time and heat to a familiar, somewhat tasteless, and, sadly, indigestible mush. Over all looms an oligarchy ...

Posted Sat, Oct 31, 10:29 a.m.

Ah, the Hearst press, lecturing radio and citing "the hysteria that followed Sunday’s dramatization" as proof of irresponsible broadcasting. That, of course, would be totally different from the hysteria the Hearst press engendered about the 'Yellow Peril'. It would be different from the relentless anti-Mexican Hearst press of the thirties, ...

Posted Wed, Oct 28, 1:20 p.m.

So, after all we've heard about how "McGinn rides his bicycle to work", and now we learn it's an electric bicycle? Sounds pretty typical for the McGinn campaign.

Posted Sat, Oct 24, 7:35 a.m.

Actually, it's the "anonymous" (most of whom are actually pseudonymous) commenters who depend on reason and information to make their case. Ted Van Dyk depends on his name, and offers up a column that would be rightly judged as pablum were it anonymous. Ted thinks the power of his name ...

Posted Fri, Oct 23, 6:01 a.m.

The odd thing here is the number of people with money who are willing to throw a monkey wrench in the King County works. There can't be much doubt at this point that Hutchison is a far-right candidate out of touch with planing and development of Puget Sound. The effect ...

Posted Thu, Oct 22, 7:53 a.m.

Van Dyk begins his editorial by telling us that "massive public works projects and unsustainable budget expansions — simply cannot be continued in the present period of economic and public budget distress". And this is true- we have discovered that the era of building freeways and sprawl must end, as ...

Posted Tue, Oct 13, 5:55 a.m.

The Seattle Process is good at killing things like parks or the monorail. And boy, Paul Allen must have been hurtin' the day the citizens told him he could just keep his proposed land donation and develop it himself. When it comes to a real boondoggle, like the Port of ...

Posted Mon, Oct 5, 9:25 a.m.

After the Seattle Commons debacle I decided to move out of Seattle. The wisdom of that decision is confirmed by the outcry against the tunnel solution, and the ritual invocation of Saint Jane of Jacobs. How fortunate we are to have a priesthood of Jacobism v. 2.0 (not the Bonnie ...

Posted Wed, Sep 30, 11:15 a.m.

Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding areas dealt with this problem back in the 1920s by setting up the Little Miami conservancy District. In this district numerous properties were purchased and set aside to fill with water and allow controlled discharge and runoff when major rain events occur. Most of the ...

Posted Tue, Sep 29, 6:31 a.m.

Just for the record, I do not have 'car hatred'. I have owned, among others, a Morris Minor, a DS-19, numerous Mercedes, and a 65 Chevelle with a big block, fast cams, and 14 hand-rubbed coats of metalflake. When you drive into a small town and people bow to you ...

Posted Mon, Sep 28, 12:44 p.m.

Well, excuse me, but jmrolls is just being silly. A viaduct rebuilt in the same location would still be standing when the automobile is just a memory. The whole thing is just preposterous on every level. As for the "many safe, modern elevated roadways under construction all over the world", ...

Posted Sat, Sep 26, 2:17 p.m.

This is about as screwed up as I've seen Seattle since about 1972. You certainly have to wonder how so many people, who otherwise probably wouldn't have even noticed the thing, could get so worked up about the tunnel. McGinn is the perfect candidate for time when people have a ...

Posted Thu, Sep 24, 12:56 p.m.

A couple of things stand out really clearly here. First, the only chance of preserving indigenous housing stock from townhouse development lies in allowing the owners of indigenous housing stock to add cottages. Second, the houseboat community is overwhelmingly small houses, most with no 'yard' whatsoever. Still, this is some ...

Posted Thu, Sep 24, 12:25 p.m.

Well, the simple fact is, it's easier to get 'A's than 'D's, a fact well known to slackers, who use it to cruise through our lives as well as their time at school. Anyone who's had much contact with doctors or lawyers will know what I'm saying. The prominence of ...

Posted Tue, Sep 22, 11:59 a.m.

Frankly, the idea of John Fox commenting on the economics of South Lake Union is just nuts. The guy spent 20 years of his life trying to prevent any development there that would drive up rents in aging apartment buildings. And now he's going to say "That development is terrible- ...

Posted Tue, Sep 22, 11:38 a.m.

Judging from the bulk of Mr. Tooley's comment, I don't see his defense of Fox as ironic, but as inevitable. Let's get back to reality here for a moment. For years South Lake Union was an economic and ecological wreck- literally. Anyone who ever shopped at Burke's Surplus or Jerry ...

Posted Mon, Sep 21, 12:38 p.m.

Well, BOO-HOO. I've lived here all my life and all of these whining not-Seattle places have had more say in how they grew than Paris Hilton. In every small town, and I'm including Tacoma as a small town, the locals had their say, zoned the way they wanted to zone, ...

Posted Mon, Sep 14, 3:35 p.m.

This kind of thing is hi-larious. So, the voters Chris references didn't mind when Bush made it "legal" to disappear American citizens in the middle of the night and torture them for months or years while holding them incommunicado, but now they're worried about Obama's "Big Government" agenda? But if ...

Posted Sat, Sep 12, 1:12 p.m.

Incidentally, Crosscut shouldn't even be publishing this industry boilerplate- or label it clearly at the top. Wading through the whole piece to discover the author isn't even a misguided and uninformed private citizen leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Posted Sat, Sep 12, 12:46 p.m.

Well, setting aside the long list of straw men and curiously misguided ecologists the author attacks, I turned to Climate Progress, and soon learned that, in 2008, the USGS issued a report that, after studying factors not considered by the IPCC, concluded "Inclusion of these processes in models will likely ...

Posted Sat, Aug 29, 8:33 a.m.

Y'know, we keep hearing about how people want to live in suburban homes. But a mere 75 years ago, as can be plainly seen by a drive through Seattle, people preferred to live in urban neighborhoods with very small lots. And if you go to places like NYC it seems ...

Posted Fri, Aug 28, 10:47 a.m.

OMG, if it's good enough for Yarrow Point and Clyde Hill, it oughta be good enough for me. Those places are so totally not slums.

Posted Fri, Aug 28, 10:40 a.m.

The summary here is that if, as Doug MacDonald says, only 5% of transportation is public transit by the year 2040, nothing else he's said will matter. That 5% marketshare only comes if we ignore AGW, and if we do that, by 2030 the game is lost, and by 2040 ...

Posted Mon, Aug 24, 9:04 a.m.

If Seattle had been building for the Olympics, the cost overruns would have made it impossible to pass ST2 or possibly even finish the first LINK. The handwriting on the wall was the defeat of the Commons plan. It's hard to say which was more appalling, the idea of some ...

Posted Sun, Aug 23, 10:46 a.m.

Some days Glaeser just makes it too easy. To put the kibosh on Obama's high-speed rail, Glaeser "proves" that Houston-Dallas is not a viable route. Well, that might explain why it's not on Obama's map. Glaeser goes on to suggest that HSR won't have a stimulus effect. Tell that to ...

Posted Fri, Aug 14, 10:21 a.m.

So, the fact that the car was so small and light tempted Knute to take vigilante action. Y'know, you don't often see a statement that tells you so much about a person made so publicly and voluntarily.

Posted Sat, Aug 8, 10:37 a.m.

Newport, population under 10,000, puts up $24 million in subsidies? Something fishy about that.

Posted Mon, Jul 27, 1:39 p.m.

If you look critically, the anti-tunnel arguments are not impressive. Let's start with including the cost of seawall replacement in the 'tunnel cost'. In reality, the seawall has deteriorated and needs to be rebuilt, regardless of what is done about transportation. Then we also see mass transit and street improvements ...

Posted Thu, Jul 23, 5:21 p.m.

Nice catch, Knute, but I'm having trouble with some of the text. For example, in your article you tell us Seattle is a streetcar city, and then you tell us it was fashioned one handmade craftsman house at a time. Certainly it can be both, but a large number of ...

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 2:09 p.m.

Or, you could do the short form. Seattle's two daily papers got most of their profits from advertising for suburban homes and for cars (which may explain the incredible reign of Ted van Dyke). In the 50s and 60s Seattle was run as the industrial wasteland contrasting with the beautiful ...

Posted Wed, Jul 22, 1:47 p.m.

One thing should be made clear- the Seattle of the past bore no relation to Knute's florid memories. For example, the Olmstead plan was never implemented, and, while Jim Ellis was a great leader, the major problem he attacked was the pollution of Lake Washington that had made it too ...