Making the best of a bust
Posted Fri, Jul 3, 6 a.m.
Even in hard times, there are signs that livable Seattle can still make progress despite, or even because of, the challenges of the economy
READ MORE COMMENT NOWCrosscut articles of the past 10 days with the most clicks.
Crosscut articles of the past 10 days with the most reader comments.
Crosscut blog posts of the past 10 days with the most clicks.
Posted Fri, Jul 3, 6 a.m.
Even in hard times, there are signs that livable Seattle can still make progress despite, or even because of, the challenges of the economy
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Posted Mon, Jun 22, 6 a.m.
Is the civic grass greener on the other side of the border? Two urban experts each make the case for the others' home town.
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Posted Tue, May 5, 6 a.m.
A Seattle leadership mission studies how two smart citistates in the United Arab Emirates are setting the pace in urban development
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Posted Wed, Apr 29, 9:50 a.m.
Stories of WaMu, Boeing, and Microsoft reflect the character of the people at the top
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Posted Thu, Apr 9, 6 a.m.
Can a Pacific Northwest utopia be shaped on the shared belief that nature is sacred? This latest installment in a series on regional identity looks at the patron saint of the environmental movement, John Muir, and how his thinking informs the desire for a new, greener, and elusive entity some call Cascadia.
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Posted Tue, Mar 24, 6 a.m.
What the challenges of building a safe plane show us about vaccines
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Posted Mon, Feb 23, 6 a.m.
Walling off migration is not possible. But there are ways to downsize our ambitions to a Lesser Seattle, which might be good for America and the environment.
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Posted Thu, Dec 11, 6 a.m.
An artful, if fragile grand compromise has emerged, late in an exhaustive process. Here's a look at its components and its politics — and what could blow it apart.
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Posted Thu, Dec 4, 6 a.m.
The frequent alarm that Boeing is heading out of town is false. More worrisome, argues a veteran Boeing-watcher, is the way the company is becoming, like GE, too focused on the short-term.
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Posted Thu, Dec 4, 6 a.m.
With Obama's new New Deal gaining momentum, let's remain skeptical of big projects that are touted as economic saviors. States like ours may be desperate, but a boondoggle is still a boondoggle.
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Posted Sun, Jun 29, 10 p.m.
Predictions at mid-year regarding sweet deals for developers, a Sonics boon, the precarious viaduct, a Boeing handout, Sound Transit, Pat Davis, and cleaning up Puget Sound.
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Posted Wed, Jun 25, 9 a.m.
If you look away from the Sonics trial for a moment, you can see warning signs that the seemingly immune local economy is actually pretty precarious.
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Home-grown sports teams, airplane builders, and banks are reeling from competition and free trade, and the local mood is to beat up on the outsiders. Tempting, but is it smart?
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Posted Thu, May 8, 4 p.m.
Seattle City Hall has cracked down on drinking and clubs, it's on the verge of banning fast food and taxing plastic grocery bags, and now even plastic-bottled water is a civic sin. Switch to tap water! says the mayor. Mossback thinks enough is enough.
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Posted Tue, May 6, midnight
A primer of regional separatist movements, real and imagined.
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Posted Thu, Apr 24, 2 p.m.
As civic icons like Safeco drift away from their Puget Sound roots, here's a look at the components of a Seattle way of doing business that built up such brands. The key was motivated employees. The poison was rapid growth.
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Posted Tue, Apr 22, 5 a.m.
A group with Northwest ties is aced out of a pavilion bid for Expo 2010 in China. Instead, the U.S. State Department has given the go-ahead to a team with connections to Warner Brothers and a major D.C. law firm. Now all they have to do is raise $80 million.
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Posted Thu, Mar 27, 5 a.m.
The longtime columnist for Seattle's dailies casts an affectionate eye over the many sweeping transformations of the city, and wonders if all the newcomers will learn to cherish the uniqueness of the place.
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Posted Sat, Mar 8, 4 a.m.
In the Jet County, they're expending a lot of energy bemoaning Boeing's failure to win a big Air Force contract. There's not much locals can do about that. But a university, that's another matter.
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Posted Mon, Mar 3, midnight
The state's congressional delegation and others are shocked that we're shipping defense jobs overseas to Airbus. But isn't that the free trade they're always touting?
READ MORE 3 COMMENTSPosted Fri, Jan 30, noon
Not only are jobs getting scarcer, but costs are still rising. What is it about recessions that the government doesn't understand?
MOREPosted Fri, Dec 5, noon 2008
When Alan Mulally was at Boeing, he lectured the unions about the realities of the free market. Now he wants taxpayers to give Ford the security he denied workers.
MOREPosted Thu, Oct 23, 9:52 a.m. 2008
This showdown over outsourcing may turn into big questions about Boeing's staying in Washington state and how well the company is being managed.
MOREPosted Sun, Oct 12, 1:20 p.m. 2008
The gloom may be overstated, but that's no reason for the business leadership of this region to keep abdicating from civic leadership.
MOREPosted Wed, Oct 8, 11:38 a.m. 2008
Want to worry about something more than the financial meltdown at WaMu and banks? Try Boeing. The company is locked in a strike with Machinists that some think will last well into 2009, since the stakes are so high, and is likely to start losing orders as the global economy slows down.
MOREPosted Fri, Sep 19, 10:18 a.m. 2008
Update: GOP challenger Dino Rossi leads Democratic Gov. Chris Gregoire in the latest poll, by Strategic Vision, reports Horse's Ass. The numbers: Rossi 48, Gregoire 46, undecided 6, margin of error 3. Rossi now has led in three of four September polls. ...
MOREPosted Mon, Sep 15, 4 a.m. 2008
Short-term, Boeing benefits from airlines' desperate need for more fuel-efficient planes. That's one reason the order book is fat and the International Association of Machinists thinks this is a good time to strike. (And it's why the strike, in the words of Mike Parks of Marple's Pacific Northwest Letter, "could be a very long one.") Looking at this demand, both Boeing and the state economic forecasters see continued, booming growth for the airplane manufacturer, at least through 2011. But there are two big problems.
MOREPosted Mon, Sep 1, 12:13 p.m. 2008
Between national party conventions, I took an advance look at Joseph Miller's upcoming memoirs, The Wicked Wine of Democracy, to be published next month by University of Washington Press. The book provides an almost too-candid portrayal of politics and lobbying in the Northwest and nationally over 50 years and is an intriguing chronicle of some of the main figures in Northwest political life.
MOREPosted Wed, Aug 13, 11:05 a.m. 2008
The current issue of Marple's Pacific Northwest Letter ($) tallies up personal income figures for Northwest metro areas. One shocker is how low the figure is for Portland, a booming area that is still shy on high-paying jobs. Or, conversely, how affluent Seattle is.
MOREPosted Thu, Jul 24, 11 a.m. 2008
In some moods, I think that Seattle's business renaissance has peaked. Starbucks is contracting, Microsoft is stumbling, Boeing is losing bids, Safeco is sold, and Washington Mutual is sinking. Has our formula of rapid growth spreading across the globe run into the wall?
But then I look at the front page of today's "Marketplace" section of The Wall Street Journal, where three of the four stories are about Seattle-based companies. There's the story of Microsoft's scramble in the executive suite, with the sudden departure of Kevin Johnson, formerly in charge of the Yahoo merger campaign; Costco reporting an earnings squeeze as the prices for merchandise are rising faster than they can pass along costs to its value-seeking customers; and Amazon doubling its second-quarter profits as customers shift from shopping by car to shopping by online.
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