A peace treaty for the Viaduct wars
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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Crosscut articles of the past 10 days with the most reader comments.
- Monorails: the idea that will not die
(19 comments) - 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear, Essay 7
(17 comments) - Seattle school closure plan, due Tuesday, still doesn't add up
(12 comments) - Viaduct politicians reach a big moment of truth
(9 comments) - Think before you cut the state auditor's budget
(8 comments) - 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear. Essay 5
(6 comments) - 2008: Year of Hope, Year of Fear. Essay 8
(6 comments) - Recession, wrecking balls, and history
(5 comments) - Seattle Times Co. still trying to close sale of Maine papers
(5 comments) - Five things that make even a Mossback happy
(4 comments)
Boeing
Crosscut most recent
Boeing is going! Boeing is going!!
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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The Gravy Train to nowhere?
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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Seven premonitions you can take to the bank
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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A week of weakonomics
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.
READ MORE 2 COMMENTSRah, rah for the home team
Posted Thu, Jun 19, noon
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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A city of scolds
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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Annals of Northwest secession
Posted Tue, May 6, midnight
A primer of regional separatist movements, real and imagined.
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What made the Seattle style of business a success
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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Shanghai Surprise
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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Jean Godden on Seattle: My, how you've changed!
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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The Lazy B's blue funk descends
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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The Boeing tanker slapdown
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?
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Tukwila: cradle of Puget Sound civilization
Posted Mon, Jan 7, 5 a.m.
From site of one of the earliest white settlements to crossroads of the metro area, the once-humble Seattle suburb is looking back on more than a century of history. That history includes a disappearing river and an airplane that never flew.
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Has Seattle's dream for rail transit run its course?
Posted Thu, Dec 13, 5 a.m.
All the factors that made such a strong case for rail in 1968 are much weaker now. Jim Ellis, the architect of the dream, recalls how the crusade began and why Seattle seemed the perfect city for an extensive rail system.
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Lou Dobbs, the unlikely populist
Posted Wed, Nov 14, noon
In Seattle, the CNN star whacks Boeing, Bill Gates, and the Bush-Clinton dynasty – plus he predicts that none of the current 2008 presidential candidates will make it to the White House. Or perhaps that's just wishful thinking.
READ MORE 3 COMMENTSNorthwest businesses start to sense the gold in going green
Posted Tue, Nov 6, midnight
Frustrated by national policies that create uncertainty, many businesses are plunging in to find profit-driven solutions to global warming. A recent Chamber of Commerce conference revealed a lot of progress.
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How Sputnik 'beeped' Seattle into the 21st century
Posted Wed, Oct 3, 5 a.m.
Fifty years ago, the launch of the first satellite changed the world, but one of the places that felt the impact most was Seattle. Not only did the orbiter alter the city's course, it influenced the generation of world-shapers that includes Bill Gates and Paul Allen.
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Is good news for Washington bad news for Dino Rossi?
Posted Thu, Jul 12, 4 p.m.
While Gov. Chris Gregoire trumpets her leadership in the state's booming economy, likely GOP candidate Dino Rossi is sweltering in Moses Lake, warning of trouble ahead.
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Just another metropolis
Posted Fri, Jul 6, midnight
There remain only hints of Seattle's scrappy, provincial heritage of fish, timber, and frontier commerce – of even the sonic and binary booms that propelled the modern city to greatness. Seattle no longer feels unique.
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Blog posts
Detroit's welfare queens
Posted 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.
MOREThe Boeing strike is getting more ominous
Posted 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.
MOREIs the local sky falling, or just getting grey?
Posted 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.
MOREBoeing rings the fire bell
Posted 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.
MORESausage Links, finance-crisis-free edition
Posted 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. ...
MOREFly now, pay dearly later
Posted 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.
MOREMiller times
Posted 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.
MORESeattle outpaces Portland in income growth
Posted 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.
MORESeattle and the elixir of growth
Posted 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.
MORESausage Links, mayor-about-town edition
Posted Wed, Jul 9, 2:49 p.m. 2008
Oh, Greg. You are trying to break our hearts! Just when we vilify you for airballing the Sonics all the way to OKC for a cool $45 million – you show you're a real Mayor-about-town houses and plastic bag taxes.
For better or worse, everybody's talking about Mayor Nickels' proposals today. Erica C. Barnett at The Stranger says she spotted a "Plastic Monster" at last night's public-comment meeting about the proposed plastic bag tax, while Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat warns if we don't choose paper the plastic bag police will get us. Meanwhile, the folks at Sound Politics rail against Nickels for the new town house plan, which they argue will regulate affordable housing "out of existence." ...
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