Posted Fri, Apr 27, 10 a.m.

Leeteg of Tahiti may also have inspired the profusion of black velvet artwork that in the 50s lined the streets of Tijuana just south of the California border. Of course the intrinsic bedroom sleaziness of the medium dominated the work and was central to its aesthetic appeal. But some of ...

Posted Wed, Apr 25, 2:39 p.m.

@ TVD: "It's hard to see how regional political leaders can remain disengaged from this issue, which impacts potentially so many communities." May I propose a modest revision? It's hard to see how regional political leaders can JUSTIFY remaining disengaged...But if the national political trend offers useful guidance to local ...

Posted Mon, Apr 23, 10:17 a.m.

The entropic failures of public institutions are clear enough -- on all levels. The real questions of interest are: Why is this happening everywhere all at once? and, Can anything be done about it? The causes are not too hard to identify. Government works best when its participants are motivated ...

Posted Wed, Apr 11, 1:50 p.m.

Congratulations on an excellent piece. Some of this could even qualify as Serious Woofing -- high praise indeed! Who says an old dog can't learn a few new tricks? The exponential increase in information generated by the electronic age has produced a more than exponential increase in deceit, hypocrisy and ...

Posted Wed, Apr 11, 1:20 p.m.

Well, if you assume that a coal port is eventually going to land somewhere on the west coast, it might as well be at a place that's already been trashed. Maybe better Coos Bay than Cherry Point. "Why has a public entity been so reluctant to allow public access to ...

Posted Tue, Apr 10, 12:30 a.m.

Trying to fix the mess at Hanford is an endless waste of effort. The contractors suck up all the money and nothing ever gets done. So it's time to start thinking outside the kitty litter container. The more creative solution would be to just leave Hanford alone and glassify the ...

Posted Thu, Apr 5, 9:18 a.m.

Ah, it's the lull between the effective end of the primary season and the convention media carnival that officially launches the national campaign, and the political junkies are desperately looking for something -- anything -- to talk about. So the serious addicts ponder the irony that in this age of ...

Posted Tue, Mar 27, 9:21 a.m.

Ah, a trip down Memory Lane disguised as a piece on the (yawn) governor's race. Turns out that I was in Italy during the 1960 campaign and listened to that first Nixon-Kennedy debate on Armed Forces Radio. For those of us who could only hear the voices and not see ...

Posted Mon, Mar 26, 9:41 a.m.

It's not at all clear that allowing the Bush tax cuts to lapse and having the top rates return to Clinton era levels will kill the recovery. I think TVD has quaffed the Republican kool-aid on that one. Income above $250,000 tends not to be heavily spent on consumer goods, ...

Posted Wed, Mar 21, 10:06 a.m.

Trying to narrow the scope of environmental review is a very short-sighted approach for the Cherry Point coal port proponents to take. If they succeed, they merely set themselves up to be reversed when judicial review of the permits occurs at the end of the administrative process. By that time ...

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 9:33 a.m.

In a nation that worships wealth the poor are ashamed of their poverty. Instead of organizing to attack structural injustice and corruption, they hide in the corners and try to disappear.

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 9:24 a.m.

Could it be that Timmy the I-Man is dropping the lucrative initiative gig? I know that Wazzu's hiring of Mike Leach has renewed hopes that our favorite cow college can play competitive big-time football. Maybe this has caused a spike in the online frat-boy jewelry market and Timmy is cashing ...

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 9:12 a.m.

Although Crosscut's title page blurb writer apparently can't distinguish Cantwell from Murray, the confusion disappears once you get into the article. As usual, Vance provides a thorough and knowledgeable stroll through the underbrush of the local political jungle. The indignant howls of Seattle media pundits notwithstanding, I have a hard ...

Posted Mon, Mar 19, 9:43 a.m.

You know, if we add another level with a coal conveyor belt running to Wyoming, maybe we get the Chinese to pay for the whole thing.

Posted Thu, Mar 15, 2:08 p.m.

A Big Idea that goes viral is not necessarily a good idea. One of the paradoxes of the internet age is that the overall effect of an information explosion has been an impulse toward re-tribalization. When the glut of information becomes overwhelming, most folks retreat into symbolic safe havens populated ...

Posted Thu, Mar 15, 1:38 p.m.

"Is religion itself a lost soul? "A new book by Diana Butler Bass, who will be speaking in Seattle on Friday, puts a hopeful spin on the future of religion." This headline is hopelessly provincial and ethnocentric. The fact that mainline American Protestantism is suffering from the agony of irrelevance ...

Posted Mon, Mar 12, 1:35 p.m.

Shrewd but timid is what Rob the Boy Scout does best. But is it enough? He should have no problem with Zarelli's proposal that the UW balance its budget by reducing tuition support to the poor. That's standard Republican fare: the proper role of government is to provide services to ...

Posted Thu, Mar 8, 10:33 a.m.

TVD offers some good points. As matters currently stand, right-wingers hate Obama much more than they are alienated from Romney. So the Republican base is not going to wander off the reservation...unless there is a credible right-wing third party candidate. I think that risk should have been assessed. I'm also ...

Posted Wed, Mar 7, 12:51 p.m.

Unlike the other reviewers, I enjoyed the piece as a witty detour through the mirrored halls of political absurdity. I might have tossed in a line about the itchy weirdness of wearing homespun Mormon underwear beneath a Brooks Brothers suit or the improbable venue of the Garden of Eden in ...

Posted Fri, Mar 2, 10:26 a.m.

"It’s really work that’s about collaboration and prioritization and accountability, that’s happening at the Partnership to sort of oversee this behemoth, and get us all on the same wave length. And that we’re doing the right things first, the science based prioritized right things first, and second, and third, so ...

Posted Fri, Mar 2, 10:01 a.m.

I'm going for Mitt in the prom dress and tiara cooing coyly about the swing vote. That would put Sphinctorum's hair on fire for sure. Mitt may be a lousy frontrunner, but he's the only one we got. He wins by default.

Posted Mon, Feb 27, 10:56 a.m.

Rationalizing the relationship between hydraulic project approvals and forest practice permits is not a bad idea -- depending on how it is done. But using SB 6406 as a Christmas Tree to hang unrelated changes onto GMA and SEPA is less defensible, particular in the current emotionally overwrought political environment. ...

Posted Fri, Feb 24, 9:38 a.m.

I for one am glad that the Republican debate cycle has finally run its course, mercifully done at a mere 20 encounters. It's been like watching a Grade B horror movie with 19 sequels -- each successive iteration striving to be more gory and disgusting than its predecessor. Can the ...

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 10:06 a.m.

Come on, guys, Constitutional arguments are WAY over Carlson's head. Gay marriage is a federal issue because Ed Murray says that it is. And Carlson is a talk-radio jock so he can scream longer and louder than you can. End of argument.

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 9:31 a.m.

If Seattle allows an historic public treasure like the Volunteer Park Conservatory to close down for want of a pittance of financial support (while its cheesy politicians work around the clock to disguise potentially massive public subsidies to a redundant third major sports facility), then its claim to be anything ...

Posted Wed, Feb 22, 9:09 a.m.

Passenger train service will continue to exist in the US only to the extent that citizens demand it. The big money interests -- private and public -- have no use for it. The folks in Olympia are providing wonderful support but will never receive thanks or acknowledgment from Amtrak itself ...

Posted Tue, Feb 21, 2:51 p.m.

Amen, Brother Tooley. SEPA was streamlined back in the 90s when compliance with GMA regulations was deemed presumptively satisfactory for environmental review purposes. I doubt that SEPA can survive a further round of recession-induced "regulatory reform". An in-depth analysis of the current developer push to gut SEPA would be a ...

Posted Tue, Feb 21, 10:04 a.m.

There is surely a Nero-fiddling aspect to the arena debate that can't be denied. But why fight it? There is no serious possibility that Americans in general, or Seattleites in particular, are going to awaken from their self-induced stupor to somehow rationally tackle the myriad problems that this society faces. ...

Posted Mon, Feb 20, 11:04 a.m.

I won't believe all the hype about the NBA coming back to Seattle until Wally Walker is on board. That will seal the deal for me.

Posted Tue, Feb 7, 8:01 a.m.

Legalizing marijuana will bring down its price and stabilize quality and supply. One of the medical benefits of smoking pot is that it dulls the pain of poverty.

Posted Fri, Jan 13, 8:31 a.m.

It's not that courts can never enforce any of their decisions. But they can't force the legislature to spend money.

Posted Wed, Jan 4, 12:58 p.m.

The tar sands pipeline and coastal coal ports are both being opposed based on the potential atmospheric toxicity of the product being transported. One should ponder whether focusing on a secondary impact is really the best political approach. The immediate pipeline issue is the threat a leak creates to the ...

Posted Mon, Jan 2, 9:16 p.m.

One addendum to this little forum: Lurking behind Door Three is Rick Santorum.

Posted Thu, Dec 22, 11:55 a.m.

It's pretty simple. The bleak public open spaces are needed to complement the bleak public buildings. Our real concern should be that Seattle's prideful claim to be the host of the homeliest collection of public buildings anywhere in the Free World is dangerously at risk. The brash, stunning in-your-face quality ...

Posted Mon, Dec 19, 9:43 a.m.

Good article on two chronic political issues, one curable and the second not. The police problem can be cured with a strong infusion of political will to stand up to the bullying of the Guild. But since that kind of courage isn't part of the Seattle culture, the default setting ...

Posted Thu, Dec 15, 10:20 a.m.

The problem with Christmas (and with Christianity generally) is that a 2000-year layer of cultural and commercial sediment has obscured any sense of original meaning. All we see now is the surface muck. For starters, there is of course no historical evidence that Jesus was born in mid-winter. Christmas historically ...

Posted Thu, Dec 15, 9:46 a.m.

The problem with lodging a formal complaint to the grandiose bureaucratic void known as the Office of Professional Accountability is that it's a waste of time. As we all know, the SPD is accountable to no one. Note to the peanut gallery: the question is not whether one likes the ...

Posted Tue, Dec 13, 9:53 a.m.

On a personal level, people who disagreed with Goldwater liked him individually. But many people who know Gingrich and agree with him politically despise him as a human being. Gingrich's appeal thus lies almost exclusively in his ability to excel at articulating a mean-spirited rage among white conservatives. That looks ...

Posted Mon, Dec 12, 9:57 a.m.

If nothing else, we have learned a bit about human nature. For years the unstated assumption has been that when clearly and unequivocally faced with a threat to its survival, humanity would awaken from its slumber, rise up from its bed of self-indulgence and join hands in a coordinated effort ...

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 10:55 a.m.

It's hard to make sense out of existence if your fundamental premises are that your consciousness has only one short window of opportunity (a single human life) to get everything of importance done and that the consciousness you experience is by nature wholly individualized and separate from the totality of ...

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 10:32 a.m.

Happy to see this -- the Brewster/Berger gang has always tended to ignore anything on the south end. It probably started back when Eastside Week decided that Renton couldn't possibly be part of the Eastside. Can't sell any diamond rings there. (It also turned out that the hip techie target ...

Posted Thu, Dec 8, 10:12 a.m.

According to reliable sources in Vegas the odds are currently 5-to-2 that more customers on the road to the casino will eventually trump environmental impacts. In fact, with Intalco, the oil refineries and loss of the Cherry Point herring stock, the salmon food pyramid has long been compromised and the ...

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 12:26 p.m.

My observation was more existential than historical. Without doubt, the process of separation began with the defection of southern Democrats as a consequence of Lyndon Johnson embracing the civil rights movement. What 1972 brought was more a final sense of alienation. Locally we were still digging out of an extended ...

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 11:51 a.m.

Sustainable must be new to Crosscut. McKay's piece is in the upper echelon for factual accuracy and objectivity. Wait until he gets a whiff of a John Carlson offering.

Posted Tue, Dec 6, 9:56 a.m.

McGovern has always struck me an idealistic but impractical figure. Certainly, his 1972 nomination represented the furthest leftward movement of official Democratic presidential politics. It was the moment when the party lost contact with the white working class, never to be effectively regained. Of all the many unhappy consequences of ...

Posted Mon, Dec 5, 7:26 a.m.

"Confessions of a messy regionalist" -- this is almost supermarket tabloid sort of stuff. Followed by a high school civics class explanation of what the term regionalism means. Wow!

Posted Fri, Dec 2, 12:02 p.m.

@ swiftylazar: Your point is well-taken, but here is the dilemma. If you've watched this saga over time you will have noticed that Lil' Blue is on the computer 24 hours a day, either blogging or doing his "research". My best guess is that he's either an unemployed post-adolescent living ...

Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:14 a.m.

I'm offering a deerskin pouch of wampum and and a good palomino pony for BlueLight's scalp.

Posted Fri, Dec 2, 10:01 a.m.

There can be no doubt that Romney is telling the right-wing base things that he doesn't believe but knows it wants to hear. You can euphemistically call that "pragmatism" if you want, but "opportunistic lying" seems closer to the mark. The article's unexamined question is whether Romney can later show ...

Posted Thu, Dec 1, 10:56 p.m.

Steve, thanks for your comments. I didn't mean to imply that the interstitial withdrawal between waves takes us back to the starting point. Clearly it does not, in the many ways that you cited. It's more the "take two steps up the hill, then slide back one" model. Or perhaps ...

Posted Thu, Dec 1, 9:39 a.m.

The fun thing about the 60s is that it is a Magic Mirror. Everyone gets to see what they want to see. According to the standard liberal individualistic calculus (expressed above) nothing happens on a social level until the formless inchoate ferment is shaped by the emergence of a leader. ...

Posted Wed, Nov 30, 9:53 a.m.

Another ungainly and uncoordinated committee to study Washington's ungainly and uncoordinated transportation mess. It's a mistake to call any part of it a "system" because that's precisely what it's not. For those seeking a more practical solution, next Saturday from 9 to 5 WSDOT will be holding a sidewalk bake ...

Posted Wed, Nov 30, 9:37 a.m.

Rumor has it that Phil Knight plans to install Chip Kelly as the new UO president. But some regents remain skeptical. Having just been burned by the no-huddle offense, they are looking to slow the game down. They could try bringing in Mark Emmert -- he's a schmoozer and spineless ...

Posted Wed, Nov 30, 9:22 a.m.

if he gets really desperate, he could always audition for a job in Pullman. The Cougs will can Wulff, then find that nobody more attractive actually wants the job. Enter Rick stage right. His only serious competition will be Dennis Erickson.

Posted Tue, Nov 29, 10:24 a.m.

The article is a wish list, not an itemization of accomplishments. The Occupy movement is the seed of change, not change itself. Not to throw cold water on the party, but a lack of realism about the vastness of the process serves no useful purpose. This is likely the beginning ...

Posted Wed, Nov 23, 2 p.m.

The official motto for the Age of Denial is: "Too little, too late." Coming soon to a theater near you. Flip the dial and you can see the scenario being played out this week on the Euro zone stage -- Greek tragedy for the modern taste. Folks will get serious ...

Posted Wed, Nov 23, 1:45 p.m.

At least the state forecast is more cheerful than the comments from the peanut gallery. All future projections are by definition speculative, but you have to do the best you can with what you have. Speaking of all that, isn't it about time for another End of the World prophecy? ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 9:20 a.m.

Starting out with a quote from Gibbon was nice touch. But it might have helped to balance it out with a snippet from Jean Genet or perhaps even PeeWee Herman. The sole function of the Supercommittee and its breathless deadline was, of course, to fill a gap in programming between ...

Posted Tue, Nov 22, 8:55 a.m.

A little historical perspective might help here. Levy fatigue originated with Sam Levy who, waking up one morning after a long night in the bars, stared into the mirror and said, "I've had enough." Unfortunately, it turned out that Grover Norquist was hiding just out of sight behind the bathroom ...

Posted Sat, Nov 19, 10:39 a.m.

Meyer raises a valid point. There are many contradictions in Tea Party adherent behavior, and the movement is constantly subject to manipulation by clever pols like Armey. But in my view the Tea Party is not monolithic and has attracted many sincere (if misguided) participants. It is the presence of ...

Posted Fri, Nov 18, 7:25 p.m.

Both TVD's article and the comments are on target. Newt's flaws are so palpable that only the willfully blind could miss them. One would like to believe there is still enough sanity left in the American collective psyche to reject this bright but mentally unstable hypocrite, liar and opportunist. The ...

Posted Thu, Nov 17, 9:26 a.m.

The Occupy supporters need to understand that they will be trashed by everyone with a stake in the status quo -- not just the usual right-wing media hacks. In order to survive, they will be forced to focus on clearly stated public goals. Vague goals allow their detractors to emphasize ...

Posted Wed, Nov 16, 9:40 a.m.

Although he provides some interesting details, McKay's understanding of the coal port review process is deficient. Starting with an incidental misconception, Whatcom County has been operating under a charter since 1978 that provides for a County Council and Executive, not Commissioners. Also, in terms of the political personality scorecard, coal ...

Posted Tue, Nov 15, 9:15 a.m.

Carlson, as usual, misses the point. The issue is whether NPR has a double standard driven by its eagerness not to offend right-wing zealots -- a forgiving one for militarists and Wall Street apologists and a much harsher one for their critics. It's a pretty subtle distinction. No wonder Carlson ...

Posted Thu, Nov 10, 9:32 a.m.

This is a very thorough piece. Huntsman has to attack Romney because stealing votes from him in the early New Hampshire primary is his only hope for gaining traction. But Huntsman obviously has no shot at the Anybody But Romney prize because he, like Romney, is a moderate. The thrust ...

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

The lesson here is that the voters are perhaps not as crazy as the breathless media types describing them. And maybe -- maybe -- the populist hysteria has crested. But we have the inane November 23 deficit fix deadline on the horizon: another opportunity for angry partisan stalemate and for ...

Posted Wed, Nov 9, 9:13 a.m.

Linville's victory in the race for mayor probably has more to do with her political strength overall than with perceived differences with Pike over the coal port issue. The city, after all, is not a reviewing agency for the coal port application. The meaningful outcome for coal port politics is ...

Posted Tue, Nov 8, 10:21 a.m.

Let's hope the good folks in Colorado can indeed find the Big Structural Fix to turn around the slow process of decay. The problem is that the entropic downward spiral contains a strong counter-force logic of its own: the Self-fulfilling Prophecy. That is, as government programs get cut they usually ...

Posted Thu, Nov 3, 10:06 a.m.

If we can wish away climate change, surely we can find the strength and courage to wish away the Roadless Rule as well. I think what we need to do for starters is find some good Old Testament quotations to throw at it.

Posted Thu, Nov 3, 9:55 a.m.

From the headline I thought: at last, some meaningful analysis of what's happening in the region as a whole. But no, it's just ferment outside the Seattle city limits being teased up as context for further, in-depth examination of the vacuity of the Seattle election. Nothing is there, and Crosscut ...

Posted Wed, Nov 2, 3:14 p.m.

It's always instructive to take a quick peek at an article's underlying assumptions, which usually don't become explicit until the final paragraph or two. In this instance: --First, that we are somehow off the track, as if our conventional trajectory were actually leading us someplace else; and --Second, that we ...

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 11:28 a.m.

Blue, how about if I "link" you up to some simple logic? You don't really need a citation if you understand how the GMA affects the market. Without growth controls inexpensive housing is supplied by the process of urban sprawl: developers head out to rural areas and buy up cheap ...

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 9:06 a.m.

As long as lurid details remain absent, the Hermanator can probably weather the sexual harassment storm. The people most likely to be offended in the abstract by allegations of sexual harassment never vote in Republican primaries. In GOP circles the minor expression of a traditional male prerogative is deemed a ...

Posted Tue, Nov 1, 8:39 a.m.

BlueLight needs to update his information (and some day maybe even learn how to analyze his data). In a real estate market where prices are plummeting, the GMA is a stabilizing factor. Admittedly, the GMA with its simple urban/rural methodology is a blunt tool, but it is better than nothing ...

Posted Fri, Oct 28, 1:11 p.m.

Ol' Blue is no doubt correct when he surmises that increased participation of women in social decision-making has profoundly affected the process. But I'm not sure it leads to the conclusion he is itching to draw. We are probably only at the beginning of a transition that will play out ...

Posted Fri, Oct 28, 11:33 a.m.

"Conventional wisdom would say, 'it's the industrial development, stupid,'?" Stick told Crosscut. "But it's a lot more complicated than that." We have become imprisoned by the sophistication of our willful ignorance. The herring thrived off Cherry Point for what? 10,000 years? 50,000? Millions? Who knows how long? Some 20 years ...

Posted Wed, Oct 26, 9:35 a.m.

This is a nice appreciation of Raban, who arguably is the best writer currently gracing this neck of the woods. It's hard to take serious issue with his comments about Seattle provincialism: in smaller cities out on the fringe the self-appointed local elites are always trying to catch up with ...

Posted Tue, Oct 25, 10:32 a.m.

"Since many Japanese must retire at 60, a bridge job is required." The writer makes a good point, but important questions remain unanswered. For starters, how many bridges can there really be? I reckon not likely enough to take care of everybody over 60. At a minimum, we need to ...

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 8:57 a.m.

This is a worthwhile but clearly experimental project. There are two things the article should have pointed out. First, the fresh/salt water interface is a dynamic area; predicting mitigation outcomes in such an environment is difficult at best. Second, the reason that the slough needed to be restored in the ...

Posted Mon, Oct 24, 8:39 a.m.

In these fractious times bland on bland doesn't look all that bad. The only thing worse than an ignorant, uninformed electorate that is politically apathetic is the same ignorant, uninformed electorate marching in the streets in support of half-digested Eternal Truths.

Posted Thu, Oct 20, 9:49 a.m.

Is Seattle having an election? I didn't know...

Posted Thu, Oct 20, 9:43 a.m.

Mormonism is a movement that originated historically as a persecuted cult and has been working overtime to become mainstream. This one reason why the public images leading Mormons project tend to be devoutly bland and conventional to the point of appearing cartoonish. As noted, they are extremely good at supporting ...

Posted Wed, Oct 19, 12:23 p.m.

One has to agree that Raggedy Andy did not acquit himself well as moderator of the Debate in the Desert. But I'm not sure why anyone would expect anything other than incoherence and confusion from a Republican presidential cattle drive. The purpose of this exercise is to gin up noisy ...

Posted Wed, Oct 19, 9:50 a.m.

This is a great history of a tumultuous local controversy. By way of providing a fuller context, knowing a few more details about the Kiewit proposal might be instructive. In the early 1980s, a few years after the CBI saga ended, Kiewit came in with a similar proposal at the ...

Posted Mon, Oct 17, 9:19 a.m.

Ron is energetic, a visionary and, unlike most career Democratic politicians, has the political courage to take chances. Unfortunately he is a lousy administrator. Too bad there isn't an open Senate seat somewhere -- he would thrive in a legislative environment.

Posted Fri, Oct 14, 10:11 a.m.

For Crosscut this is a better than average political piece. It provides real factual information, not just the usual generalities and ideological pablum. Keep up the good work! Norquist's goal, simply put, is to destroy government by rendering it incapable of taking effective action, then pointing to its failures as ...

Posted Fri, Oct 14, 9:40 a.m.

It is easy to romanticize, dismiss or demonize the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon because it is so inchoate: like a Rorschach image you can read into it whatever you want. Does this reduce it to just another instance of meaningless cultural fluff? Not necessarily. From the Tea Party on the ...

Posted Wed, Oct 12, 10:20 p.m.

Romney would be foolish to select Christie for his VP. Another Northeasterner on the ticket would magnify his weakness with the Republican base. Rather his preppy slickness needs to be balanced by someone from the Deep South with impeccable redneck credentials. His best bet is a good old boy with ...

Posted Fri, Oct 7, 9:41 a.m.

The world has become a Rorschach Test. Like rats on a ship, everyone senses that the boat is sinking. And we each project onto the screen the causes and culprits that appeal to us most. It's quite interesting, really. There is a fair amount of consensus, for example, about the ...

Posted Fri, Oct 7, 9 a.m.

This is a fascinating, well-researched article. Many thanks!

Posted Fri, Oct 7, 8:55 a.m.

It's hard to imagine getting sentimental about the closure of any Barnes & Noble corporate book outlet anywhere in the known universe. Did you also shed nostalgic tears when the Taco Bell chihuahua uttered its last gasp? As for northern border fences, I think we're looking at the prospect of ...

Posted Thu, Oct 6, 11:50 a.m.

If traffic light co-ordination requires trust, no wonder Seattle has a speed deficit. Democracy is way too messy and slow. Maybe Reverend Tony is right, we just don't have time for this kind of crap anymore. It's simple. What America needs is a dictator we can TRUST. Absolute Power + ...

Posted Wed, Oct 5, 9:28 a.m.

Likely the fact that coal is a low-tech commodity extracted by primitive methods infects the industry's entire worldview. What stands out about both the Longview and Bellingham sagas is that in each case the coal transportation company committed stupid, unnecessary blunders at the outset of the permitting process. In Longview ...

Posted Mon, Oct 3, 9:21 a.m.

Despite all the religious bloviating, this is a body-conscious culture from top to bottom -- and right, left and middle. So bodies and their attractiveness are always going to be part of the American mindset and popular conversation. Does anyone imagine that Sarah Palin would have the same political appeal ...

Posted Fri, Sep 30, 9:44 a.m.

"During the heady days of building, many cities simply adopted a plan that included a wish list to be constructed at future dates, whenever financing was available." Well, it's a little trickier than that. The GMA requires a jurisdiction to determine that the infrastructure needed to support a development will ...

Posted Fri, Sep 30, 9:16 a.m.

While Christie has more substance in just about every sense of the word, Sarah would be a lot more fun to watch. Since I get most of my news from the boys at Comedy Central, I'm rooting for her to take the plunge. In my crystal ball the chance of ...

Posted Fri, Sep 2, 9:33 a.m.

Good article. You have to be excited about bringing in the High Line architects to design the project. And you need to be concerned about a bold concept being gummed to death by Seattle's endless philistine committee process and its inherent bias toward timidity and compromise.

Posted Wed, Aug 31, 9:31 a.m.

@ BlueLight: "Too bad the people paying don't have access." I don't know who is paying, but it certainly can't be Brother BlueLight. This kid is blogging 24-hours a day -- hard to imagine that any employer is paying him to do that.

Posted Wed, Aug 31, 9:24 a.m.

This mid-day scan feature can be a useful tool for those of us who don't spend the entire day grazing on the media news flow. The key to success, needless to say, will be developing an ability to spot important stories or views that might otherwise get lost in the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 24, 7:20 a.m.

A la John Anderson in 1980, Huntsman is destined to become the Democrats' favorite Republican in the presidential primaries. With time on their hands and nothing better to do, should Democrats and liberal Independents sneak into the Republican fold and support Huntsman? I say, "Why not?" It might move the ...

Posted Mon, Aug 22, 10:01 a.m.

My recollection is that the 6-year moratorium is required by state law but enforced locally.

Posted Wed, Aug 17, 9:27 a.m.

This truly is a great accomplishment, especially when you consider that so much earlier residential development on the Chuckanut slopes has been burdened by rapacious grading. Also, the city was probably lucky that Horizon's portfolio was picked up by Washington Federal and not some national mega-bank.

Posted Tue, Aug 16, 11:32 p.m.

"Corporations are people, my friend." Have you considered maybe corporations are actually much better than people? (I know it's late, but stay with me on this.) Just as eventually computers will become so much smarter than people that people may become totally obsolete -- all they have left to solve ...

Posted Mon, Aug 15, 10:13 a.m.

Don't worry BlueLight, we'll put a different motto on your fleece. And on your bib too. More seriously, Ruckelshaus is a true public hero and a stellar public servant. For many years moderate Republicans like him were the glue that held our political society together. Too bad no one is ...

Posted Mon, Aug 15, 9:49 a.m.

"Conservatives believe in small government, reduced spending, and a go-it-alone foreign policy. But solving climate change will undoubtly (sic) require robust government, increased expenditures, and a great degree of international cooperation." This statement assigns far too much rationality to conservative opposition to acknowledging human contributions to climate change -- particularly ...

Posted Fri, Aug 12, 11 a.m.

The fact that liberals have long been hiding behind the label "progressive" suggests that the question of backbone is moot.

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 1:23 p.m.

Since going off their DDT diet them pesky eagles are darn-near everywhere. But I haven't seen a whole lot of starlings lately. Maybe they're about due for an ESA listing.

Posted Mon, Aug 8, 10:29 a.m.

In a race down South between a Mormon Republican and a wounded black Democrat, Romney can afford to lose a few points to religious bigotry and still win handily. But neither Romney or Obama will generate much excitement, except perhaps in theological circles over which is the more likely to ...

Posted Fri, Aug 5, 9:27 a.m.

The fundamental concept of biodynamic agriculture is to treat the farm itself as a living organism, not simply as a factory for manufacturing products. So at bottom it is grounded in a worldview that challenges the prevalent industrial model. That model focuses on generating massive production (and profit) in the ...

Posted Thu, Aug 4, 10:30 a.m.

Not a promising start. The key to project approval lies in convincing a skeptical public that adverse impacts will be minimized. Thumbing your nose at wetlands regulations displays arrogant indifference to local concerns. Also, according to the notice of violation the grading exceeded the original proposal reviewed in 1998. So ...

Posted Fri, Jul 29, 10:24 a.m.

At seven words BlueLight has just set a new personal reading record. Who says No Child Left Behind can't work?

Posted Thu, Jul 28, 10:42 p.m.

It is entirely healthy for underdeveloped Third World economies to compete briskly for the privilege of selling raw materials to the Chinese Empire. The successful suitor can expect to receive steady low-paying work for the natives and attractive bribes for the local elites. But it might help if the wise ...

Posted Thu, Jul 21, 10:39 a.m.

I think coolpapa has identified the problem but balked at offering the obvious explanation. Worship of the "private sector" has become a religious belief unrelated to, and in defiance of, any basis in fact. Corporate brainwashing and supportive right-wing ranting have duped Americans into believing that private services are always ...

Posted Wed, Jul 20, 10:42 a.m.

You should not allow your personal contacts with Murdoch to influence your analysis. I know that encountering someone so rich and powerful who is not also an unbearably egotistical jerk is a relatively rare event, but that does not tell us whether what the man did (or permitted to be ...

Posted Thu, Jul 14, 10:14 a.m.

The best literary shrine I've ever seen is the outhouse at Ferlinghetti's place in Bixby Canyon north of Big Sur. The walls are covered with graffitic scribbles from all the San Francisco greats -- Ginsburg, Snyder, Corso, et al. You can sit there and ponder the meaning of life. Locally, ...

Posted Mon, Jul 11, 2:35 p.m.

When some future Chinese historian documents the descent of the West into barbarianism prior to its collapse, I suspect much credit will be lavished on Rupert Murdoch for his part in dumbing-down the culture and pandering to the citizenry's worst instincts.

Posted Thu, Jun 30, 9:58 a.m.

Having knocked Carlson in the past for having tried to palm off egregious political flackery as objective reporting, I am happy to note (along with Mr. Watson) a marked improvement in his latest offering. Not perfect, mind you, but at least a serious attempt overall to marshal actual relevant factual ...

Posted Fri, Jun 24, 10:34 a.m.

Van Dyk appears to be unduly pessmistic concerning the prospects for further economic stimulus. Obama's impending political burial certainly qualifies as a shovel-ready project. It will lead directly to full-employment and prosperity for GOP hacks of every stripe and persuasion. I'm led to ponder that if the Republicans had been ...

Posted Fri, Jun 24, 10:16 a.m.

SSA Marine would be foolish to contest this decision -- both from a public relations standpoint and a legal one. Nothing could hurt them more than to go through the entire permitting process and then have an appellate board or court toss the proposal back to the county because of ...

Posted Fri, Jun 17, 10:18 a.m.

No one can seriously imagine that Whatcom County government is capable of doing an objective job of environmental review on the coal port issue. Since the 70s the premier Whatcom County official development fantasy has been that the road to easy money lies with massive industrial development adjacent to the ...

Posted Wed, Jun 15, 10:06 a.m.

While one has to wonder about the sanity of someone whose idea of fun is to plow word-by-word through the land use provisions of the Seattle Municipal Code, Valdez nonetheless raises some important issues. McDonald is surely right when he points out light rail alone can't produce an orderly land ...

Posted Wed, Jun 8, 9:03 a.m.

Dick Lilly says you should trust Bill Gates because he's got lots of money to toss at our many problems. Abby Hoffman said you shouldn't trust anyone over 30. But since he said it more than 40 years ago, that doesn't help much because 30 then has become 70 now. ...

Posted Wed, Jun 8, 8:31 a.m.

Lilly obviously wants to be a Big Thinker but unfortunately lacks the tools for the job. Getting one large idea into his head takes up so much room that there is just no space left for figuring out how it connects to everything else.

Posted Tue, Jun 7, 1:52 p.m.

Obama has been searching far and wide, high and low, to find a great political cause that would unify both Democrats and Republicans and heal the divisive wounds that plague and paralyze this great Nation of ours. Now he's finally done it! Everybody has joined hands in opposition to his ...

Posted Mon, Jun 6, 8:56 a.m.

That polluted stormwater runoff is poisoning the Sound is not exactly headline news -- we've known this for more than 20 years. What keeps being updated are the exact dimensions of the problem. And the debate over what to do about it. A mandate system of detailed, strict rules and ...

Posted Mon, Jun 6, 8:33 a.m.

The Seattle city hall is generic northwest bland, but all things are relative. So please recall that it is a vast improvement over its predecessor, which largely defied comparison, but sort of had the look and feel of a 50s airport motel somewhere in Kansas. And bland looks pretty darn ...

Posted Wed, Jun 1, 12:12 p.m.

Trying to discover meaning in the tunnel vote flap is the kind of trivial pursuit that only a devout political junkie could love. It only serves to distract us from more important concerns. The term "deep bore" carries multiple nuances here.

Posted Wed, Jun 1, 12:03 p.m.

It will be interesting to see if Emmert shows more backbone here than he did in sweeping the Cam Newton ruckus under the rug as it threatened to upset a big bowl game TV payout. My take on Emmert is that he is the consummate opportunist. His performance could give ...

Posted Tue, May 24, 8:50 a.m.

Nice piece. We need to think really hard about identifying all the things that over the last 50 years have divided us and commit now to limiting and, where possible, reversing the process. Great damage has been done, but it is never too late change directions. On a philosophical note, ...

Posted Fri, May 20, 10:29 a.m.

When is a door not a door? When it's ajar. This saga of the absurd lends mighty support to my developing hypothesis describing the ongoing exponential explosion of social entropy, which, as it turns out, aligns perfectly with Moore's Law governing the increasing capacity of integrated circuits to host transistors ...

Posted Sat, May 14, 8:11 a.m.

I mostly agree with coolpapa except that I think that the primary/secondary system eventually looks more like Waldorf education than Montessori. You can't get the technique right until you figure out who the child is and what you are trying to teach her. We live in a fragmented society whose ...

Posted Fri, May 13, 9:27 a.m.

You need to get the formula right. Here's how it works: Just close your eyes real tight and silently say to yourself, "Collaboration! Collaboration! Collaboration!" as many times as you can possibly stand it. Then click your heels three times, open your eyes and, presto, it's done. You know, Toto, ...

Posted Fri, May 13, 8:18 a.m.

Out in suburbia, middle-class kids coast through school uninspired. There is “severe disengagement with learning.” (Pope) This observation is offered then dropped from further discussion. What it suggests is that even among well-off white kids from functional families, the school system is failing. Maybe the question to be answered first ...

Posted Wed, May 11, 11:55 a.m.

Good article. There are obviously lots of skeletons in the Mormon closet that raise the eyebrows: polygamy, misogyny, intolerance, secretiveness. And belief in a scriptural saga that is uniquely bizarre in its level of historical improbability. So it's legitimate to wonder about where Mr. Young stands in relationship to all ...

Posted Wed, May 11, 11:20 a.m.

You wouldn't expect to find Atlantis somewhere in the Pacific, now would you? According to the esoteric lore, this would have to be Lemuria. Who knows, maybe Madame Blavatsky was onto something.

Posted Fri, Apr 29, 2:57 p.m.

You know you have hit bottom when you get a lecture on maturity from Brother BlueLight.

Posted Tue, Apr 26, 11:32 a.m.

If the off-shoring scenario is indeed being driven by the need to evade the draconian fiscal impacts of an impending Hot Air Tax, a less drastic approach might be simply to export the primary generator of offending emissions instead of the entire quasi-journalistic operation. John Carlson in Daejeon has a ...

Posted Tue, Apr 26, 11:16 a.m.

The next UW president will need to have the wisdom and patience to wait out the storm without clutching in panic after some trendy panacea. Young looks like he may have that capacity. At his worst he will surely be an upgrade over his obsessively ambitious and shamelessly opportunistic predecessor.

Posted Tue, Apr 19, 8:42 a.m.

The larger picture sketched here offers a perfect demonstration of why unions continue to spiral in a downward tailspin. Unions are losing power because they have become craft guilds that are solely concerned with the selfish economic interests of their members. In this instance the tenured faculty feels no solidarity ...

Posted Mon, Apr 18, 7:43 a.m.

This is a McKenna campaign piece posing as objective reporting. Hard to see how Crosscut can posture as "high quality local journalism" while continuing to run shameless flackery such as this.

Posted Thu, Mar 31, 10:20 a.m.

Well, last year the M's had unrealistically high expectations and panicked, so low expectations should take the pressure off. It should at least allow them to perform at a mediocre level and provide breathing space for the younger talents to develop. So sign me up for Milton Bradley Bobblehead Night ...

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

Among public sector unions that need to be made more accountable, the Seattle Police Officers Guild would be near the top of any list. The irony is that the abusive privileges which characterize the Guild contract give all public sector unions a black eye, but when the backlash comes the ...

Posted Wed, Mar 23, 11:42 a.m.

It seems to me that we have reached the point where no rational and sane individual would want to run for major public office. So that basically leaves us with egomaniacs and ideologues -- sometimes, when we're real lucky, we get both in the same package. Politicians may hate fundraising, ...

Posted Tue, Mar 22, 12:16 p.m.

In 1990 Grishchenko may still have been a Soviet patriot, but he was a Ukrainian hero.

Posted Thu, Mar 10, 12:04 a.m.

"He's positioned to make a tangible difference as both a representative of the United States and as an agitator for democratic reform." Gary Locke never made a tangible difference anywhere, no matter which position he pretended to assume. Not as King County Executive, not as Governor, not as Commerce Secretary. ...

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 9:57 a.m.

The health care mandate was an unprecedented expansion of Commerce Clause authority -- prior to 1932. For better or worse, since the New Deal this kind of expansive usage has been rather common. It looks to me like the Choir Boy is looking for a safe pew to hide under.

Posted Wed, Mar 9, 9:46 a.m.

The best thing Obama has going for him is the weakness of the alternatives. Objectively, Romney looks best in the abstract, but his smarmy opportunism offends the right-wing purists who are the critical foot soldiers of the primary campaign and don't find convincing his recent conversion to hard-core conservatism. Being ...

Posted Wed, Mar 2, 9:40 a.m.

When in doubt, appoint a task force. OK, this will not be your ordinary task force; it will be "powerful", maybe even "robust". And, yes, get rid of the dead wood in the front office -- can't argue with that. And talk to absolutely everybody, as if ignorance multiplied will ...

Posted Tue, Mar 1, 9:36 a.m.

What's all the fuss here? For decades the Georgia-Pacific pulp mill operated a chlorine plant on the Bellingham waterfront directly upwind of downtown. If that sucker had blown, it could have bleached a swath a half-mile wide and three miles deep. And don't forget the transmission pipeline a few years ...

Posted Tue, Mar 1, 9:25 a.m.

It is interesting to ponder this article in the context of the currently accepted view that, while the cause of the crash of Pacific herring stocks off nearby Cherry Point is unknown, it certainly can't be related to refinery releases or emissions.

Posted Wed, Feb 23, 8:59 p.m.

Despite Bellingham's attractive green patina (maybe it's all the gold that turned out to be brass), Whatcom County is at heart a banana republic, a sleazy prima donna always awaiting an opportunity to sell its soul for a pot of cash. Maybe this is it. The Cherry Point industrial zone ...

Posted Mon, Feb 21, 10:52 a.m.

This really was a great game to watch. But, as the last few minutes again showed, the Huskies have a couple of problems that make it hard to win close contests. First, their game is all about speed and rhythm, and when they are firing on every cylinder, it can ...

Posted Thu, Feb 17, 11:52 a.m.

This is an interesting follow-up on the NYT article. Based on what is presented here, I'm struggling to see how Millenium thinks it can win on the SEPA issues and why it's wasting time and energy on the appeal: -- Shorelines Hearings Board review is de novo, which means it's ...

Posted Fri, Feb 11, 11:51 a.m.

One remembers Reagan fondly in the context of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld buffoonery that followed. Reagan's saving grace was to have the prescience to install a few capable adults like George Schultz and James Baker in key policy positions. I think it's good that Crosscut undertakes to provide its readers with the ...

Posted Thu, Feb 10, 9:41 a.m.

I think it's good for politicians to keep their mouths shut now and then when they truly have no expertise to offer. Egypt is a Muslim country and produces no pork, so why should members of Congress even care what happens there? More fundamentally, Egypt will likely do just fine ...

Posted Wed, Feb 9, 9:45 a.m.

All transportation systems are subsidized to a major degree. The question should be: taking all costs and impacts into account, which combination best serves the public interest? Oops, I forgot. We no longer believe in the public interest; that's just a code phrase for "socialism". And, alas, a rational systemic ...

Posted Tue, Feb 8, 9:57 a.m.

The problem with this approach is that it has been simplistically designed to bear down selectively on only one component of a complex problem. How about this modest variation? We withhold foreign aid from Egypt pending democratic reforms and from Israel pending removal of its settlements in Palestinian areas. I'm ...

Posted Tue, Feb 8, 9:41 a.m.

This is a thorough and well-considered piece. I would expand on the first recommendation to add that in a perfect world urban police officers would receive on an ongoing basis both training in the social dynamics of aberrant psychology and access to a forum where they can discuss and work ...

Posted Fri, Feb 4, 8:52 a.m.

These are tough times for a politician. You need to be able to balance irreconcilable force vectors while steadfastly refusing to see the contradictions. If you are not a chameleon, you'll most likely get squashed. The proper level of intelligence here is enough mental agility to explain the conventional wisdom ...

Posted Tue, Jan 25, 9:08 a.m.

This is partisan political spin masquerading as journalism.

Posted Mon, Jan 24, 9:43 a.m.

There are potentially thousands of systems and labels, but it all comes down to this: greed is harmful, unselfishness is good. America has become a society that worships personal greed, and we are suffering the social consequences of this meanness of spirit.

Posted Mon, Jan 24, 9:11 a.m.

In many ways the Tea Party is a revolution still looking for a target. At its core is a gnawing sense that things are going in the wrong direction and some sort of fix is in that prevents effective remedial action. But they are not quite sure what and who ...

Posted Fri, Jan 21, 10:04 a.m.

Let's look at Podlodowski's facile and superficial assumptions here: --The factor of human interaction is assigned no value in the educational equation. The entire enterprise is cartoonishly characterized as consisting solely of crowded and boring mass lectures. --Khan, the online wizard in her example, is presented uncritically as an unerring ...

Posted Fri, Jan 21, 9:08 a.m.

This an eloquent piece, and rather sympathetic to the difficulties of the situation in the light of historic Native experience with the duplicities of our justice system. It will be the first real test for Dan Satterberg. The only defensible outcome is to prosecute the officer, but the politics of ...

Posted Wed, Jan 19, 9:09 a.m.

I don't see how you can tell this tragic story without mentioning Phil Condit, the little engineer that couldn't. As Ron Woodard famously quipped, McDonnell-Douglas bought the company with Boeing's own money. That's Phil's legacy.

Posted Wed, Jan 19, 8:55 a.m.

Nice article. Shriver seems to have been a thoroughly decent human being and, most improbably, a politician without a huge ego. And to be "always buoyant and brimming with enthusiasm" throughout the ordeal of the McGovern campaign would require an almost saintly sense of inner peace.

Posted Tue, Jan 18, 12:02 p.m.

If it needs to, WSDOT can exercise the power of eminent domain to condemn the 619 Western building. So the more interesting question is whether the preservation board will go along with its demolition. If an old Denny's on Queen Anne is historically significant, why not the 619 Western? Of ...

Posted Thu, Jan 6, 8:57 a.m.

It seems like we have two choices: -- Pray that it won't be too much longer until the Chinese take over and have an opportunity to correct the deficiencies in our school system; or -- Reconsider whether test-based rote learning is really and truly the essence of the educational enterprise. ...

Posted Wed, Jan 5, 10:32 a.m.

It is certainly true that males in this society are increasingly losing their moorings, but I doubt it has much to do with the politics of sexual oppression and retribution. Women generally derive more of their sense of social structure from family and friendship bonds while men identify themselves more ...

Posted Fri, Dec 31, 5:07 p.m.

Steve E.: I appreciate your thoughtful comments, and congratulations on your record of success. I certainly agree that one of the main attractions of the administrative adjudication process is that it provides non-attorney citizens a chance to participate effectively in a way that would be far more difficult to do ...

Posted Fri, Dec 31, 11:26 a.m.

This is an excellent summary of a very convoluted history. Quickly, a further update and a question: -- The old guy at King County DDES who buried the POI paper in a desk drawer is still there. He has become a pariah within the Department but his seniority protects him ...

Posted Thu, Dec 30, 11:06 a.m.

Interesting that the one obvious name that didn't get dropped here is our dynamic, can-do former governor, Gary Locke. As the current Commerce Secretary and a son of Chinese immigrants who has assiduously cultivated contacts in his ancestral land, it says quite a mouthful about his perceived value that he ...

Posted Mon, Dec 27, 10:18 a.m.

Mike McGinn's historic role is to generate among the locals nostalgic warm and fuzzy memories of the good old days under Greg Nickels. As for expecting on the national level a serious debate over debt reduction and co-opting the Tea Baggers as "ordinary citizens and taxpayers, more independent than partisan, ...

Posted Wed, Dec 22, 9:19 p.m.

I'm not sure why so many white low-lifes hate the local Indians. After all, they signed away their lands without a fight and moved peacefully onto their assigned reservations, just as requested. What's there to complain about? These righteous critics seemed to think it was some kind of cheating when ...

Posted Fri, Dec 17, 12:56 p.m.

Spin is spin. On the local scene "de Debbil made me do it" is probably closer to the truth than the more attractive "greater productivity" gloss. The problem with the greater productivity claim is that in government agencies the actual staff reduction process hardly ever proceeds according to a rational ...

Posted Tue, Dec 14, 5:24 p.m.

In the immortal words of the 2oth century's greatest political philosopher, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

Posted Mon, Dec 6, 8:41 a.m.

In all this no mention of creativity, development of analytical skills or the excitement of intellectual discovery. The debate is over whether college should be a mandatory goal of our test-based vocational training process. Kammerer points out, quite reasonably, that some people lack the mental tools to benefit from a ...

Posted Mon, Nov 29, 11:57 a.m.

Maybe try to cross-pollinate this article with the piece down the page on the possibility for an independent/moderate political initiative. What this country really needs is a genuine movement for encouraging small businesses and liberating them from stifling regulatory strictures primarily designed for larger enterprises. Small entrepreneurs tend to default ...

Posted Tue, Nov 9, 10:28 a.m.

Barbara Brenner's political agility continues to dazzle. Did you know she got her political start back in the late 80s as a neighborhood environmental activist opposed to expansion of the Waste Management facility on Slater Road? You've come a long way, baby!

Posted Tue, Nov 9, 10:14 a.m.

What's especially scary about Canadian politics is that elected officials up there wield real power and are capable of getting things done. Good thing we don't have any of that dangerous nonsense down here, where the noise and bluster may be deafening but, beneath it all, nothing actually happens.

Posted Tue, Nov 9, 10:04 a.m.

"  Tricky suburban balancing act, rhetoric that undercut his own strengths, and a résumé that never grew..." The reason it's hard to make a résumé grow is that nobody is quite sure how large it might get. Beyond that, I'm sort of hoping that Dino will turn into our very ...

Posted Fri, Oct 29, 9:44 a.m.

Timmy, if we vote to approve 1053 and the Legislature let it stand, then you would be out of a lucrative gig and would have to go back to selling mail order frat-boy jewelry in order to survive. These are perilous times, especially for economically marginal folk like WSU grads. ...

Posted Wed, Oct 27, 9:08 a.m.

The white heat of anger is hard to sustain. It wears out the adrenal glands. Dare we hope that the fever is beginning to break?

Posted Mon, Oct 25, 10:17 a.m.

How can Crosscut aspire to become a paragon of good journalism when it's clear that no one is editing the articles? An explanation of the mechanics of R-52 is a worthwhile project, but even the most causal reading of Stang's piece tells you that it needed major reworking.

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 11:03 a.m.

Pepper, Timmy the Eye spotted this trick eons ago. Most of his initiatives are legally flawed. That way he can recycle them every election in slightly altered form. Also, if a really bad initiative passes, you can have a second one later to repeal it. Double your pleasure! The possibilities ...

Posted Mon, Oct 18, 9:09 a.m.

The ultimate question is whether enough Americans are capable of thinking rationally about our myriad problems to support implementation of intelligent systemic solutions. At this juncture fear, anger and the resultant denial and scapegoating are carrying the day. We can certainly hope that election of more Republicans will create some ...

Posted Fri, Oct 15, 10:39 a.m.

Arthur Laffer is a credentialed moron, which makes him a perfect pundit for the Tea Party era.

Posted Fri, Oct 15, 10:34 a.m.

Sounds like it was a good political insider bull session. Y'gotta have sympathy for Chris Vance's plight -- an independent mind trapped in a Republican body. What to do?

Posted Thu, Oct 14, 2:01 p.m.

I think Robinson's real point is that the content of the I-1098 debate points to a deeper cultural malaise. And he's right. In a sense, the archaic struggle between the social forces of community and place and the individualistic forces of egotism and greed has subtly tipped too far toward ...

Posted Tue, Oct 12, 10:48 a.m.

The 24/7 Wall St. exercise has been seriously mislabeled to enhance its political sex appeal to the Tea Party crowd. At most it could perhaps be defended as a current list of the "least to most stressed" states. The key metric comparisons in the survey mostly describe the uneven economic ...

Posted Mon, Oct 11, 9:54 a.m.

Didn't know that Lou Dobbs was a ranch kid from Idaho and now raises oaters in Joisey. Maybe that explains why he comes across as a horse's ass. Is he also a member of the Illuminati? If so, they have really lowered their membership requirements. Next thing you know they ...

Posted Fri, Oct 8, 9:51 a.m.

This piece hits the bullseye for understanding why mainline Protestantism has sunk below the horizon. It carried me back to my Fifties high school dalliance with suburban Congregationalism, where the main attraction at the Sunday evening youth group was that the cutest girls in town hung out there. Christianity Lite ...

Posted Tue, Sep 28, 2:18 p.m.

Ah, a BlueLight special on today's menu. A savory zinger! Let's start with US v. Washington (aka, the Boldt decision), an obscure case that began way back in the 70s and continues in various forms even today. The original Boldt decision held that the State of Washington was systematically violating ...

Posted Tue, Sep 28, 10:43 a.m.

"I believe in polling." Ah, in these dark and dreary times it is good to have some eternal verity on which to anchor one's faith. More seriously, Vance provides an insightful explanation of the voter probability variable that underlies the interpretation of polling data. But where does it end up? ...

Posted Tue, Sep 28, 10:12 a.m.

Breaking promises to Native peoples is as American as apple pie, a great and hallowed tradition. It's about time that this venerable historical practice was restored to its rightful place in the God-ordained social order.

Posted Thu, Sep 23, 1:29 p.m.

I guess my favorite barfly bard quotation is more akin to Li Po than Bukoski: "Malt can do more than Milton can To justify God's ways to man." From A.E. Housman, a curmudgeonly Victorian classicist and minor poet.

Posted Tue, Sep 21, 11:24 a.m.

BlueLight, relax. Tribal sovereignty is more a metaphor to support cultural autonomy than an overarching legal reality, and tribal leaders understand that. The concept carries some legal weight on the reservation in allowing tribes to resist the regulatory predations of state and local governments. It also offers protection against being ...

Posted Mon, Sep 20, 10:30 a.m.

"The RFP’s criteria began with two overarching principles. First, it established a requirement that any successful proposal demonstrate that it will be revenue neutral to Seattle Center both in capital and in ongoing maintenance and operating costs. Second, it established a strong preference for proposals that demonstrate clearly their organizational ...

Posted Fri, Sep 17, 11:26 a.m.

The northern Vietnamese are quite fond of thit cho, the meat of a small mammal that they prepare in a number of ways -- steamed, grilled, in soups, as sausage. If Seattleites took to eating thit cho, there are substantial public benefits that could be experienced: -- Reduced need to ...

Posted Thu, Sep 16, 9:57 p.m.

As our dear Watson points out, it's elementary. Rossi is neither far enough right to fire up the Tea Baggers nor far enough left to attract many independents. Didier's lack of enthusiasm appears to be a bigger problem than Rossi anticipated.

Posted Wed, Sep 15, 11:44 a.m.

A thorough analysis that separates the wheat from the speculative chaff. The problem for the Democrats is trying to get the electorate to make fairly subtle rational distinctions in the midst of an emotional storm. Anger and fear are not amenable to logical parsing. So there are really only two ...

Posted Fri, Sep 10, 10:09 a.m.

I think Amazon.com is behind this.

Posted Fri, Sep 10, 10:07 a.m.

"We’re a tolerant society and this is intolerant." Actually, America is an increasingly intolerant society chafing under a tolerant constitutional framework. But never fear: we have the worst Supreme Court in history working on the problem. They'll fix it in no time. The fact that a serious discussion is trying ...

Posted Fri, Sep 10, 9:51 a.m.

This is a fairly ambitious article, but it provides too much partially-digested information and may confuse more than it clarifies. Certainly, the question of whether to oppose 1098 is a simple one for two sets of people: those who don't trust government to ever do anything right and those among ...

Posted Wed, Sep 1, 10:32 a.m.

"Infectious reality" -- I like that. It has a nice ring to it. It carries a sense of a plague spreading inexorably through the madding crowd. But whether the alternatives are truly authentic or just less egregiously contrived is also a topic for exploration. As for me, I'll have the ...

Posted Tue, Aug 24, 9:11 a.m.

Chasan wants us to take a dispassionate look at the state income tax issues, citing Krugman's call for a rational world. Good luck, guys! This is 2010 and the crazies are baying at the moon. Utter lunacy has become a badge of honor -- proof positive of populist chops. I ...

Posted Wed, Aug 18, 2:56 p.m.

"No one noticed that, in many cases, the packages' underlying real value was close to zero." This a fun piece: an attempt to imagine a silver lining hidden in the rubble of financial and political collapse. I would account us fortunate if we do no worse in 2012 than Romney; ...

Posted Fri, Aug 13, 10:02 a.m.

Recruiting a dude named Ludovic Morlot certainly helps. It's a moniker that screams out, "Wine and cheese, please." Can you imagine what it would be like trying to sell a conductor named Rufus Klottz?

Posted Fri, Aug 13, 12:02 a.m.

In my crystal ball I'm seeing Linda McMahon and Jesse Ventura as the can't-miss GOP presidential ticket for 2012. McMahon is a bright new angry face, and the seasoned and experienced Ventura brings to the ticket a touch of dignity and gravitas without coming across as unduly staid and predictable. ...

Posted Tue, Aug 10, 9:25 a.m.

One-time cash payments were made in the 40s -- land claims extinguished for pennies an acre. Got another good idea? There was also the trust land management system administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, where minerals and timber on Indian land were leased out by the agency but the ...

Posted Fri, Aug 6, 10:17 a.m.

Yawn. The top-two voting system invites strategic sabotage. The only way to make this soporific race interesting is for independents and progressives to rally behind Clint Didier. It will drive Dino crazy.

Posted Fri, Aug 6, 9:51 a.m.

Wow. Competent investigative journalism right here in little ol' Crosscut. Who would of thunk it? I'm impressed. When the history of the decline of the American empire is finally written, a couple of central themes may be the following: 1) Violence targeted against a limited objective never works out as ...

Posted Tue, Aug 3, 10:12 a.m.

Mossback's argument that the Muni League's ostensibly neutral evaluations are affected by the larger political trends is irrefutable, as the Nickels, Mallahan and Derdowski examples all demonstrate. But as for his assertion that the Derd was effective, I think that clearly was not the case. The Derd was too liberal ...

Posted Mon, Aug 2, 8:34 p.m.

What's not amusing about Chihuly? And why isn't the decision to blow good money on an admission ticket to his showroom not a financial teachable moment? The new Fun Forest plan offers the best of both worlds. Here's the clincher: Chihuly glass installations look a lot like cotton candy, except ...

Posted Mon, Aug 2, 11:37 a.m.

Certainly Pastor Robinson is right in decrying the descent of Christian churches into entertainment and consumerism (to say nothing of the hateful bile that characterizes much religious political activism). But isn't the core problem simply that Christianity no longer has either a clear sense of its mission or a body ...

Posted Thu, Jul 22, 8:57 a.m.

A catchier headline: "Dunphy depicts Degginger dallyin' over dinner in Dalian in won-ton disregard of domestic duties."

Posted Tue, Jul 20, 10:36 a.m.

In an age of massive social entropy great public visions are doomed to drown in a sea of dog poop.

Posted Fri, Jul 16, 8:50 a.m.

"....it gets underway at 10:30 a.m. on July 25 (a Saturday)." Saturday is the 24th; the 25th is Sunday. The mystery deepens. And the winner is: Saturday the 24th! Hey, Maude, better giddy-up on the ladder and fix the danged sign board.

Posted Thu, Jul 15, 3:50 p.m.

Since there is controversy over whether to have a vote on the tunnel, the first step in a fair and complete process will obviously have to be to vote on whether to have a vote. Once we have determined that there is indeed a public mandate to vote on the ...

Posted Mon, Jul 12, 11:02 a.m.

Is Seattle suffering from the heartbreak of "selective boondoggle opposition"? Let me count the ways. A lot of it is the underlying dynamics of herd mentality. There is surely an apparent erratic quality to green politics -- everything is either all good or all bad, and the pendulum often swings ...

Posted Wed, Jun 23, 10:29 a.m.

Chris has done a workman-like job of laying out the details and examining them. But I am wondering if anyone besides me feels that poring lovingly over the minutae of of an election driven by fear and rage is the modern equivalent of Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

Posted Tue, Jun 15, 10:03 a.m.

"At any rate, given the momentum behind the reformers' insistence that paying teachers based at least in part on their students' test scores is the way to improve teaching, we can be sure that the perverse incentive contained in the proposal will be blithely ignored. In a different world, it ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 12:47 p.m.

Ted, thanks for the kind weekend wishes. Now if you could do something about the weather, that would be even better. To some extent we just may have to agree to disagree, but probably we are not ultimately that far apart. I mean "accept" in the sense of "make peace ...

Posted Fri, May 28, 10:44 a.m.

Painful as it seems to have been, this has been a productive exercise. One point that nobody alluded to is that the anonymity option is built into the process. If I blogged as "Joe Kluttz" rather than "woofer", you would assume that was my real name but have no way ...

Posted Thu, May 27, 10:44 p.m.

Harris Meyer may be on to something. A verbal food fight between Crosscut writers and bloggers may not be high art, but it could be a step forward. It would at least get the insiders and outsiders talking directly to one another. That surely would be an improvement over the ...

Posted Thu, May 27, 11:55 a.m.

"The people most hurt by this online clutter are serious readers who want serious dialogue about issues being addressed in articles." I suppose I am bothered first of all by this "serious" stuff. When I first started submitting comments to online blogs, I too imagined that this new technological opportunity ...

Posted Mon, May 24, 9:24 a.m.

Using zoning reguilations to censor Real Change out of Pioneer Square is indeed fraught with First Amendment problems. Unless Real Change can somehow be linked up to Al Qaeda. That of course would trump free speech rights (and the rest of the Constitution to boot). Where is GW Bush now ...

Posted Wed, May 19, 5:16 p.m.

"So maybe when we test students to see how good their teachers are, we're testing the wrong people. Maybe we are testing the victim. Maybe the answer is to test the teachers." Dick Lilly hints at the answer but apparently lacks the courage to go far enough. He doesn't follow ...

Posted Mon, May 17, 9 a.m.

"Insure" in the sense that AIG can package the doom and gloom as a credit default swap and someone can make a fortune shorting it.

Posted Fri, May 14, 8:50 a.m.

Sub-area equity for Staten Island! This injustice has gone on long enough.

Posted Thu, May 13, 10:47 a.m.

King County government, and by extension the regional governance superstructure in which it participates with other municipalities, are all constructed along tried-and-true feudal principles. The entire agglomeration is built up out of semi-independent feudal fiefdoms that negotiate with one another and with the central executive authority to conclude mutual support ...

Posted Tue, May 11, 10:03 a.m.

The critical question may be whether our institutional machinery has degraded past the point where some sort of regenerative self-correction is still possible. It appears that three of Ted's influential friends have concluded that this point of no return has been passed. An ability to self-correct implies a framework that ...

Posted Mon, May 10, 9:42 p.m.

What does it say about our contemporary situation that parody and satire have become our most reliable sources of political analysis? If you were stranded on a desert island and offered one cable media source of information -- Anderson Cooper and Larry King on CNN or Jon Stewart and Stephen ...

Posted Mon, May 10, 12:29 p.m.

I see that mythologizing around death is alive and well. First, long automobile death parades were clearly a transitional 20th century phenomena. Before 1900, horse-drawn hearses followed by mourners on foot prevailed for hundreds of years. Now, traffic congestion becomes a prohibitive factor for urban automotive events except when a ...

Posted Thu, May 6, 11:48 a.m.

The sediments of Bellingham Bay are full of mercury. During port-based maintenance NOAA could refurbish its deep water research thermometers for free simply by lowering a bucket on a rope and hauling up this valuable mineral resource. I wonder whether the NOAA analysis also may have failed to factor in ...

Posted Thu, May 6, 11:07 a.m.

This is a nice summary of an effort that is essential to the maintenance of a vital Native culture. What is happening with Lushootseed is of course being repeated with other key languages as well. Instead of trying to retain every local dialect, efforts consolidate on preserving the strongest strain ...

Posted Tue, May 4, 11:26 a.m.

No doubt a hybrid government between the Lib-Dems and Tories would be an odd looking creature and difficult to cobble together. But elsewhere in today's Crosscut there is mention of grizzlies mating with polar bears, so one should keep an open mind about these things. My sense of it is ...

Posted Mon, May 3, 11:02 a.m.

I applaud Gates Senior's effort to create a rational tax structure. He appears to assume that a rational proposal producing a clear social benefit will naturally elicit a rational response from both the voters and the state Supreme Court. Therein lies the problem. The tea bagger mentality is that all ...

Posted Mon, May 3, 8:18 a.m.

Jordan raises questions that deserve to be considered. But I wonder if I am the only person who finds it annoying that his articles always read like position papers for his next political campaign.

Posted Fri, Apr 30, 2:57 p.m.

Congratulations on a balanced, in-depth article -- a useful antidote to the usual ratings-driven cable news hysteria that tends to dominate the discussion. In the bigger picture, the Arizona immigration crisis is an instructive paradigm demonstrating a structural issue that now plagues contemporary America on many levels, and promises to ...

Posted Thu, Apr 29, 12:54 p.m.

Since little fauna survives in NYC beyond pests like rats, roaches, flies and starlings, it is hardly surprising that the Times failed to appreciate the charm of encountering an intact specimen of the Great White Palouse earthworm. Maybe the university in Moscow should make the Great White its official mascot, ...

Posted Thu, Apr 29, 10:10 a.m.

A nice history, and a textbook-perfect "making lemonade from lemons" pitch to rally the troops. The likelihood of a deep-pocketed entrepreneur stepping forward in this economy seems unlikely, so the community facility option is probably the best approach. And with Art Skolnik in your corner, how can you miss?

Posted Tue, Apr 27, 9:58 a.m.

My favorite absurd ad agency butchery of an Italian film title was the Sixties classic, "Il Posto" (literally, "The Place"), which was droll reverie exploring the ennui of every-day office life in a big corporate office. It has an unforgettable scene set in a large room with a long line ...

Posted Tue, Apr 27, 9:29 a.m.

I'm OK with condos at Lake View so long as an 100 foot protective buffer is maintained around Bruce Lee's grave site.

Posted Mon, Apr 26, 9:16 a.m.

"Third, many churches, instead of challenging Culture War polarities, only mirror them." This could be the understatement of the century (OK, it's still early). As we surely all know, churches have largely created the fires of polarity and throw gasoline on the flames whenever they show signs of dying down. ...

Posted Fri, Apr 23, 10:03 a.m.

This initiative relies on two problematic assumptions: first, that in the emotional swamp of 2010 politics a majority of Washington voters are capable of making a rational decision on anything, and second, that they will be able to do the basic math required to appreciate the initiative's net effect on ...

Posted Tue, Apr 13, 10:24 a.m.

Very good article. As one who has chided this blog for its inability to see beyond the Seattle city limits, I am happy to report that this is precisely the kind of analysis that can make Crosscut into a genuine regional resource. Who better to lead us down into the ...

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 6:53 p.m.

I apologize for the lack of substantive detail in my smart-ass "conventional wisdom" gibe. I should learn not to blog on the fly; the perceived need for brevity inevitably puts me into a quick-strike mindset. Brother Van Dyk clearly invests a lot effort into his articles and deserves a more ...

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 8:24 a.m.

If Z has enough bad luck this year to balance out his good luck from last year, it will be a long season.

Posted Mon, Apr 12, 8:08 a.m.

Conventional Wisdom 101. No new insights here, beyond learning that "China is a huge, populous country." That's an eye-opener.

Posted Tue, Apr 6, 9:45 a.m.

A carbon tax would achieve the same revenue goals and just maybe save the planet in the process. The only reason that politicians favor cap-and-trade over a carbon tax is that the former creates a speculative market for their friends on Wall Street to manipulate and exploit.

Posted Sat, Apr 3, 1:13 p.m.

I guess you know the writing is on the wall when your anchor advertising account is a dentist in Lake Forest Park.

Posted Fri, Apr 2, 10:49 a.m.

Dan Chasan could do a whole series called, "Orphans of the GMA", about the snippets of turf that don't fit neatly into the simplistic Growth Management Act paradigm. Under the GMA scheme all urban areas are destined to be incorporated. But where the cost of providing urban services exceeds the ...

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

Good thing you labeled this up front as "humor". Otherwise, who would know?

Posted Tue, Mar 30, 11:31 a.m.

I will account us fortunate if we escape with nothing more virulent than a Ross Perot.

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 11:05 a.m.

Obama's appointment of Summers and Little Timmy to oversee the financial portfolio sent exactly the wrong message to Wall Street. Party on! Your favorite friendly lap dogs are still on duty. Obama now seems to intuit that his sanguine approach was wrong, but whether these two mutts can be taught ...

Posted Thu, Mar 25, 10:46 a.m.

I think Brewster is right in reading this as a revival of the Gorton strategy: infuriate the Seattle liberals while currying favor with the suburbs and Eastern Washington. And since McKenna also hails from the Seattle area, he may have decided that he needed to preemptively establish his good-old-boy rural ...

Posted Wed, Mar 24, 9:13 a.m.

Well said. The Philosopher provides some context and social wisdom. I would also mention the therapeutic function of protests. A mass public protest offers a relatively benign emotional outlet for accumulated anger and a momentary sense of power to those who feel disenfranchised -- not a perfect vehicle in either ...

Posted Tue, Mar 23, 3:56 p.m.

The states can demonstrate standing in their own right if the legislation places new burdens on state government.

Posted Tue, Mar 23, 3:04 p.m.

Count me among those who are disappointed by McKenna's opportunistic move. I think joining this legal challenge to the health care bill will do more to alienate the center than actually placate the right. He could have finessed the issue by expressing some personal sympathy for the cause but then ...

Posted Tue, Mar 23, 10:34 a.m.

In the bigger picture Obama needed to move on and it was better to go out with a win than a loss. Even a Pyrrhic victory is better than a humiliating defeat. And Americans instinctively respect success, even if they have misgivings about its objectives. Given the limitations on our ...

Posted Mon, Mar 22, 11:48 a.m.

It needs to be understood that the "reasonable person" envisioned by the alarm standard is a slightly portly, balding middle-aged white guy who sobs quietly while watching Glenn Beck and is not at all upset by seeing his mirror image toting a firearm in the suburban mall coffee shop. On ...

Posted Mon, Mar 22, 11:16 a.m.

It needs to be emphasized, for clarity, that the judge's decision was purely procedural. The NEPA environmental review process was not properly followed. The decision was, then, procedurally correct but provided no guidance on the underlying question of whether the Federal Building warrants preservation.

Posted Fri, Mar 19, 2:35 p.m.

All this anguished hand-wringing over Seattle Identity fails to take into account a fundamental overarching reality: Seattle is a second-class city that happened to land in a first-class location. Before the arrival of Rem's Kool Haus on 4th Avenue, it sported uniformly the ugliest, most pedestrian public architecture in the ...

Posted Wed, Mar 17, 11:33 p.m.

The problem with the landmark preservation process is that history and aesthetics can work at cross-purposes. A structure can have some level of historical significance and at the same time be totally useless and butt-ugly. Minor historical importance ("a representative example of the classic late 50's drive-in style") should not ...

Posted Wed, Mar 17, 11:03 p.m.

Excellent article. Micro-farming is one area where encroaching gentrification and a rural economy can hope to live in harmony. The catch is, of course, that the micro-farmers are typically recruited from the newly arrived gentry, not from the traditional rural community. Still, it's step forward from the earlier model of ...

Posted Sat, Mar 13, 9:51 p.m.

Sean raises a fair question. For starters, a clarification: I'm not arguing that Crosscut needs to start covering the deliberations of the Eatonville School Board or anything like that. I'm suggesting a need for articles on matters of importance and interest to Seattleites as well as to those outside the ...

Posted Fri, Mar 12, 12:43 p.m.

I think it's a bit early to declare victory. If Crosscut has already "become the Puget Sound region’s best journal of informed commentary and in-depth writing on public affairs", all that can really mean is that there is no serious competition. The potential is surely there, but the actual menu ...

Posted Fri, Mar 12, 10:08 a.m.

Well, Jesus always said to expect his return. He just never told us it would be in the form of Glenn Beck. What a brilliant disguise!

Posted Fri, Mar 12, 9:48 a.m.

There are two cardinal principles underlying the successful exercise of contemporary American governance: 1) The way to fix a public problem is to pass a law prohibiting its outward manifestations. People are not concerned about a problem so much as having to look at it. 2) Citizens don't actually dislike ...

Posted Fri, Mar 12, 1 a.m.

Seattle Center was chihulied long ago; this would simply make it Official. How about a shrine to the Seafair Pirates? I can see them now perched on a bigger-than-life model of the Miss Budweiser, smiling and nodding, waving to no one in particular

Posted Mon, Mar 8, 9:05 a.m.

I guess we'll find out if there is any reward in heaven for attempting to legislate a path through the budget shortfall thicket. One can disagree with particular choices, but overall the plan appears to be a responsible approach. Mr. Austin obviously subscribes to the conventional wisdom that Democrats will ...

Posted Thu, Mar 4, 10:11 a.m.

Ugh!!: "beyond catchy apps highlighting civic assets, and "disclose and discuss" high-value data sets." More wonkish drivel from the cyber-utopians. People are already drowning in useless information. The critical task now is learning how to filter out the non-essential.

Posted Thu, Mar 4, 9:42 a.m.

Just take out the bridge and convert the remnant shoreline freeway stubs into pedestrian-only ferry terminals with bus transit hubs. Solves the offramp to nowhere conundrum and adds a charming amenity to the Montlake complex. Use some of the $4B allocated to 520 expansion to install the terminal infrastructure, buy ...

Posted Tue, Mar 2, 10:07 a.m.

Over the years the Mariners have done lovable with more gusto than they have done competent. In fact, past management policy has been that if you do lovable well enough, nothing more is required for business success. Now that this nonsense has been dispelled, they are back to trying to ...

Posted Tue, Mar 2, 9:27 a.m.

A+ with a firm commitment to the west side lid is the probable ultimate compromise.

Posted Sat, Nov 7, 10:12 a.m.

If Curley can learn to enjoy Sammamish politics, he may indeed have a future. His ability to charm will come in handy.