Recent Comments

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 12:13 p.m. on Once again an insurgent mayor conquers city hall inappropriate

SDOT is utterly corrupt at the top, purposefully acting against the interests of Seattlers, for automobile-related business interests who derive income from automobile-dependency. Grace Crunican should be fired and given an unfavorable reference for her terrible record. She should NOT work in any department of transportation anywhere ever again. There are way too many Seattle progressive-types who've bought into Crunican's terribly engineered designs; the new Alaskan Way boulevard nightmare, Mercer West, a whole host of major road and highway projects studied to death, bicycle pathway battles, Seattle's putrid sidewalks, SDOT in bed with WSDOT for years both failing to produce a viable AWV replacement. The Deep-bore fiasco is a terrible tunnel option that most Seattlers still question.

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 10:31 a.m. on Once again an insurgent mayor conquers city hall inappropriate

Hey, Sam. Good piece. You bring back a lot of memories, most of them fond ones. Glad to see you are still around.

I'm optimistic about McGinn and his policies revolving around openness. I'm interested to see how he organizes his communications shop, whether he can make openness work.

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 10:11 a.m. on Once again an insurgent mayor conquers city hall inappropriate

Btw, Mayor-elect McGinn has asked "3 questions" of the public about what he should be doing.

My own take is that "personnel policy," understood broadly, is the central issue for him in managing City Hall.

http://citycomfortsblog.typepad.com/cities/2009/11/personnel-policy-as-the-basis-of-organizational-competence.html

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 10:06 a.m. on Once again an insurgent mayor conquers city hall inappropriate

As to the matter of "no experience in managing an organization," that goes for Mayors Rice and Nickels as well as Uhlman and Royer. I believe that either Rice nor Nickels had managed anything larger than their own City Council offices.

That's four out of the last five Mayors lacked "management experience" and you can argue with their policies as Mayor's if you like, but none of them ran corrupt or sloppy ships (at least by the standards of a municipal government.)

In fact the only Mayor to have run an organization of any size was Paul Schell who had managed both the City's DCD (under Uhlman) and Cornerstone Development (which he created.)

I liked Schell and think he had a lot of bad luck as Mayor. A harsher judgment might conclude that management experience is actually counter-productive when it comes to running the City of Seattle.

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 8:08 a.m. on A bad election for moderates inappropriate

Pragmatism is, e.g, the Dred-Scott decion, most infamously. It is when the right long term decision is not made, or not putting in the right rails in the tunnel here in Seattle, it is invariably more costly than what is saved. Here, in Seattle, I have noticed during the 15 years I have been here, cheap runs deep, thus you have some hugely costly "pragmatic" compromises. Somehow with the length of time to reach a decision here, the famous "process," that ought not to be the case. See what the word "pragmatic" does as you invoke it as you reach a decision; have an M.R.I. scan done at the same time, and see what part of the brain blanks out!

Posted Fri, Nov 20, 7:42 a.m. on Once again an insurgent mayor conquers city hall inappropriate

Outstanding piece. I am all for unconventional. But McGinn's unconventional transition has one big thing missing: any accountability that comes with clear communication of organization.

The Mayor-elect says he'll run his transition just like his campaign. Let's hope that management method stops in January. This new Mayor will need to prove he gets the basics and earn a lot of credibility that's missing.

One way to do that is to focus on running the city well first, and saving the big idea policy stuff for later. McGinn will become Mayor, in part, because the city's transportation leadership was spending too much time out of town focused on policies rather than assuring that the basics were well managed.

Businesses will never forget the lost sales last Christmas when the city's transportation department inexplicably made a bad year worse by failing to clear major streets or otherwise deal smartly with the snow. Or that the Mayor's transportation director chose to leave town during the crisis.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:47 p.m. on Following California off the cliff inappropriate

PERS 1 was closed over 30 years ago. The majority of those employees have retired. Reneging on those pensions will bring an expensive lawsuit the state will ultimately lose. The die has been cast.

The choice now is between investing hundreds of millions now to fund PERS 1 for the twenty year pay out or to spend $2 billion dollars a year to pay as we go.

The only logical thing to do is to invest now to meet the coming crisis. Unfortunately taxes will need to be raised to save the taxpayers from a worse fiscal crisis. Raising taxes in this state will certainly bring the knee jerk anti tax initiative.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:37 p.m. on Following California off the cliff inappropriate

Who are these mythical "out of control" legislators?

This state has not raised general taxes since John Spellman was Governor. They have made cuts after cuts. Unfortunately the public tells them to cut taxes and at the same time increase services.

The people voted in 3 strikes laws, minimum wage increases, teacher class sizes, performance audits, teacher salary increases, alternative energy mandates and training for home health-care aides without an inkling of how to pay for any of it. In fact it is hard to discover many initiatives that withstood the test of time.

I agree that the Legislature and the Governor should have been more responsible in 2004. But, what outrageous things did they do? They gave modest increases to public employees which Governor Locke had basically deferred. They fully funded the two voter approved teacher initiatives. They funded a basic health plan for Washington citizens as we now approach one million Washingtonians without healthcare.

The two-thirds majority requirement must go. The Republicans cannot defy the majority of the Legislators if they cannot even get a majority to vote their candidates at the polls. The Democrats need to stop worrying about Eyman and getting reelected. The people deserve Legislators who will do right for the state and not be swayed by the latest TV polls.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 7:39 p.m. on Obama: that cornered feeling inappropriate

Obama gets an "F". 'Cap and tax' and 'health care insurance reform' legislation are both pathetic, phone book, trash talk tirades that smack of socialistic shenanigans. Dithering on Commander-in-Chief issues; the racial screw-up with the cop/professor, the abysmal overseas trips, the faux Nobel Peace Prize, the continuing nicotine addiction, excess golfing... all add up to FAILURE. Without mainstream media propping up and fawning over President Baby O, he would already be burnt toast.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 3:40 p.m. on Sex, death and 'Bodies' inappropriate

Thanks Mossback for a great reflection on the exhibit, and the great discussion it has raised. To add to BKochis's comment: I also think the question of why we want the inside story on other peoples' insides may have to do with our estrangement from death. For most of history, and still in many places in the world, death was/is domestic: my grandmother and her sisters laid out their mother on the kitchen table when she died, washed and dressed her, and carried her to the living room so relatives could say a formal goodbye. For many of us, death is cinematic, experienced only on film--so why not go see a really cool show with dead people, which probably teaches the average person as little about anatomy and physiology as the History Channel conveys about the messy realities of history? It strikes me too that the sidewalk shrines that appear spontaneously to honor the dead contain a lot more than a tribute to the individual killed on the spot. They hold our collective awe and reverence for a power that eludes and terrifies us, but is made comfortable and accessible by opening antiseptic, anonymous bodies.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 11:23 a.m. on Mayor McGinn: Welcome to City Hall inertia! inappropriate

Just to set the record straight:

- SeaTran doesn’t exist anymore. It was reorganized in 2002 and later renamed the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT).

- The department actually has 790 employees who work across eight divisions. Each division is overseen by a seasoned senior manager who reports to one of two deputy directors.

- Combining planners and designers of infrastructure with operations staff who build and maintain it is a common organizational alignment, one that eliminates communications difficulties.

- The city has a backlog of $300 million in deferred street maintenance, not a billion dollars. The Bridging the Gap (BTG) levy is addressing that backlog.

- SDOT is replacing old signs and fixing aging roads. In BTG’s first three years nearly 95 lane miles of road have been repaved, along with replacing street signs at more than 3,400 intersections. More info is available at http://www.seattle.gov/Transportation/BridgingtheGap.htm .

- Progressive organizations learn and adapt, so SDOT has a new best practices based snow plan. You can read about it at http://www.cityofseattle.net/transportation/winterweather.htm .

Rick Sheridan, SDOT

(posted by Allie @SDOT)

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 11:07 a.m. on Obama: that cornered feeling inappropriate

Douglas: Polling data consistently have shown independents to be most greatly concerned with federal deficit spending---related, of course, to the fact that much of that spending has flowed to those perceived as having caused the financial/economic crisis (your primary point).

Bob Reich, as Clinton's Labor Secretary, and before and since, has not been concerned with financial issues. Nor is he conversant with them.
There are a number of non-Wall Street-affiliated economists and financial experts, though, who might be called upon to succeed Geithner. He is not likely to be replaced in the near term, however, barring calamitous setbacks in financial recovery.

One thing to watch: The TARP program expires Dec. 31. There is unspent money left in TARP which some in the Congress and administration have proposed be devoted now to deficit reduction. On which side will Geithner fall on this issue? Will he ask for extension of the TARP and, perhaps, new resources for it? Or will he go along with its foldup?

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 10:49 a.m. on Obama: that cornered feeling inappropriate

Attributing independents flight from Obama to the deficit, without substantiation, is politically wishful thinking.

I can't speak for others, but for me an independent with leftie roots it is not the deficit - a Keynesian necessity in any economic crisis - but in the bailing out of the very people who created the problem. This is a substantial problem.

Obama needs to take a jobs oriented approach to fiscal recovery, Robert Reich, former Labor Secretary, might well be just the guy to take over from Geithner.

On health care, an 'opt-in' cross-state private option should be added. Medical Malpractice reform is a larger question probably not addressed with at this time.

The argument can be made that America has been a Single Branch, two party socialist country ever since Gore v. Bush. Medical malpractice needs to be viewed in the context of accountability and recourse within the 'officers of the court'. At this time it may well be the case that the legal profession is a direct threat against every honest, hard working, American.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:32 a.m. on A bad election for moderates inappropriate

sarah, I agree that "liberal" and "conservative" aren't terribly useful as political terminology, but I'm not quite ready to give up on "pragmatism".

The main problem with Brewster's article is that he doesn't explicitly define the term. Instead, he seems to be working with an implicit definition in which pragmatism is inherently bipartisan and is something like a middle ground on today's right-left continuum. I don't think that's correct.

In my mind, pragmatism is a bottom up approach to politics that isn't locked to a particular ideological framework. If your answer to every problem is cut taxes and privatize it, you are not a pragmatist. If you see every problem as a matter of rich white guys exploiting everyone else, you are not a pragmatist. If you insist on imposing your values (e.g., christianity, vegetarianism) on everyone else, you are not a pragmatist.

Pragmatism doesn't guarantee we'll come up with the best solutions. Or that we place the same priorities on various problems. And of course, even self-proclaimed pragmatists cling to pet solutions and ideas, even in the face of unsupportive facts. But pragmatism is an ideal worth pursuing, even fetishizing, especially when you consider the alternatives.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:28 a.m. on Saying Yes inappropriate

What a lovely article! I'm a psychotherapist, and in my work I've often had the experience of being able to connect and have good, enjoyable, meaningful conversations with people who have mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. Whatever we mean by "mental illness," isolation makes any kind of mental illness worse, and connection can really help. And it's true that relationships form and change our neurochemistry. So--cut someone off from relationships and you guarantee their mental health will worsen. Restore relating, and I think everyone benefits--it's not a one-way street.

One of my reasons for becoming a therapist was actually that I traveled a lot throughout my childhood, and was able to see how different cultures shaped people's mental and emotional differences. In a village in Egypt where my family lived, doing community development work, I saw that a man who talked to invisible strangers was a valued and deeply accepted member of the community; no one would ever expect a straight answer from him, but everyone counted on him to be the one person who could say a perfectly disruptive truth no one else would dare to utter. But back home in the States, that same man would have been homeless and everyone would have averted their eyes when they passed him, and his life would have been shorter and more dangerous, for him at least. And no one would have gotten to enjoy his wicked humor.

Of course there are risks in any relationship, and I think your "freestyle volunteering" would be most suited to volunteers who are emotionally skilled and confident in their ability to suss out risks, and to set limits easily. Once, many years ago, I unintentionally helped catalyze a stranger further into his psychosis--this was before I had any professional training, and I didn't realize that just being listened to with eye contact could, for someone, be way too intense and weird an experience to handle. The episode ended with him feeling threatened by me and then becoming threatening toward me. So, as in any relationship I think it's important to proceed with care--but I agree that we are so much more afraid of mental differences than we need to be. So brava to you for your fearless compassion!

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:18 a.m. on Saying Yes inappropriate

This is an exquisite piece, a real navigational aid that expands how I might interact with the world rather than more carping about all our constraints. I immediately thought of four people I had to send it to. Interesting to me as well was how playful and lively a reading experience this was, without much recourse to our current friends irony and sarcasm. The Sun is an interesting model for how this newfangled invention of nonprofit public media might find energy in inductive personal witnessing as opposed to deductive expert analysis.

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 9:10 a.m. on A bad election for moderates inappropriate

Sarah: "Pragmatic" is the voodoo concept one [or a group] invokes when one [a group] decides to do what it wants to do anyway, and usually, as in the cases that I cited, pragmatic is the easiest the laziest of "solutions" ; pragmatism is THE all-American ideology. To give a few momentous examples: when Carter + Brzesinski to destabalize Afghanistan to draw in the Russians; when the American people are paranoided into supporting the Bush/Cheny/Rumsfeld desire to conquer their once ally against Iran, Saddam Hussein; when Obama decides to "go forward" [a phrase also used by Bush to put the pragmatic disaster of a then few years past behind him] and not pursue crimes committed by his immediate predecessors - the decisive element, the element that allowed permitted these "minds" to do what they did was their belief [and at the moment of belief minds close, thinking stops] was invocation of pragmatism, that it was the pragmatic, the "BEST" thing to do [always of course UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES!]. These are the matters I mean when I suggest some thought be given to automatically adhering to "pragmatism "- I am not talking about what is the best way to drive a nail into a piece of two by four. It is this way of "going forward pragmatically" that ensures that the same old same old stays the same, that you keep making the same mistakes over and over, inadvertently? For example, something that would be to the general good would be full employment and a guaranteed living wage even when there is not enough work: because it would ensure consumption and production and general basic health - that is something a large family might decide for itself as being pragmatically advisable for the present and the future. It is most unlikely to be instituted on a national level isn't it?

Posted Thu, Nov 19, 8:33 a.m. on Sex, death and 'Bodies' inappropriate

Thought-provoking comments, too! I'm creeped out by "Bodies" because they use bodies of nonconsenting and likely murdered people. This piece reminds me that such practices are nothing new, that "Bodies" is just the latest in a long seamy tradition of resurrection men profiting by desecrating the dead. It would be good to have the chance to see a Dr. Hagens exhibit--same technology, but using bodies of people who'd volunteered to participate in it--and then meditate on the cultural questions it would raise.

Posted Wed, Nov 18, 10:57 p.m. on A guide to the City Hall transition inappropriate

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

Posted Wed, Nov 18, 9:01 p.m. on Sex, death and 'Bodies' inappropriate

Excellent meditation on the exhibit. The nicely turned dactylic hexameter of "a full human skeleton that hung like a dry cleaned suit in the corner of one room" is, itself, worth the price of admission. Two issues emerge: 1) is a corpse worthy of human dignity or does the science of anatomy trump dignity, stripping the body from the person, and 2) what is fueling the CSI obsession in the TV viewing public? Why does that public want to probe the viscera of victims? My guess is that Berger is on to something in the psychosexual nature of this, but why has this become a social fascination now? Is it the wars we're in or, maybe, a parallel to the stripping away of our private identity via technology and surveillance, medicine and science?
Thanks for a thought-provoking piece.