The impression that Canada caved to the U.S. in order to settle the dispute over the trade of lumber is fueling widespread opposition to the agreement and to the Canadian government.
Canada would forfeit some of the $5+ billion in duties paid to the U.S. government, under the deal to end the long-running dispute. Opposition to the terms is so strong that analysts say it could threaten the Conservative Party government this fall.
Seattle is close to snuffing out its club scene and is losing the people who produce the city’s music, according to a pair of articles in The Stranger. Whether you’re a club-goer or not, Seattle needs all the diversity it can get.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels is drafting a series of rules that reportedly would make it easy to close down all of the city’s clubs on drug-related technicalities. The proposal is unworkable in the extreme, as shown in this hilarious story.
Meanwhile Portland is becoming “Seattle’s hot new neighborhood” as musicians move south. The attraction is a lower cost of living, an influx of talent into the city and new music venues. Not that this is a new trend — the Doug Fir lounge, cited as one of the new draws, opened two years ago.
The proposed rules are part of a trend that threatens Seattle’s character by discouraging vibrant nightlife. No doubt The Stranger would argue that outspoken coverage of these issues is important for the city. It’s convenient that it also makes a brilliant defense of the paper’s advertising base.
To help voters navigate through the thicket of competing political campaigns during the election season, the Municipal League of King County just published its series of candidate ratings for legislature, supreme court and Seattle city council.
The nonpartisan community group has been rating candidates for office since 1911 based on four critieria: Involvement, Effectiveness, Character and Knowledge. The ratings are the only independent non-partisan, non-agenda driven evaluation of candidates in the area. On the group’s web site voters can see the ratings and read questionnaires filled out by the individual candidates.
I served as a volunteer on one of the evaluation committees that met evenings throughout August to rate some candidates for legislature. I can attest to the nonpartisan nature of the process and the fairness of everyone involved (the natural result: candidates from both parties earned high and low ratings). A printed voters guide with the ratings will be available at Safeway stores and other locations in King County next week.
During the last six months Stockholm tested a sophisticated traffic-management system designed to ease congestion, cut pollution and improve the quality of life in the city, according to a story in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required). It’s a model that could easily be implemented in Seattle, which has a central area that’s roughly the same size and has similar geographic chokepoints for traffic.
The Swedish city used a congestion-pricing system that charges drivers different amounts depending on the time of day. A windshield-mounted transponder automatically deducts the tolls from the driver’s bank account every time the car passes through a checkpoint. Since the tolls rise or fall depending on congestion, drivers adjust their habits. The result is more space for bicycles, pedestrians and buses, and less time for thousands of cars to spew exhaust while stuck in traffic.
A similar system would fit well with the Seattle’s stated goal of making the city friendlier for travel by bicycle. Stockholm ran the test and plans a referendum to decide whether to keep it. A yes vote would sustain public support better than any plan imposed by a bureaucracy would.
Similar congestion-pricing programs have been discussed in Cascadia, where gridlock is likely to spread even if residents heavily tax themselves to pay for mass transit and road projects. The Puget Sound Regional Council years ago won a federal grant for a pilot project that would use car GPS to assess tolls on some roads. But it’s unclear how that project paid off or might be more widely implemented.
Washington’s so-called property-rights initiative, I-933, is receiving only lukewarm support from business groups that generally want to roll back land-use laws, according to a report today. Supporters of a similar measures a decade ago reportedly are taking a pass this year because they see it as a lost cause.
Don’t be so sure. While there may be differences over this specific initiative, momentum is behind the “government causes our problems” mindset, especially in exurbs and rural parts of the state.
Over breakfast in Concrete, Skagit County, today I noticed that the latest Sedro-Woolley Times-Courier carried an opinion piece by the Building Industry Association of Washington, laying blame for the state’s affordable housing cruch on restrictive growth-management laws. Technically the group isn’t working to pass I-933 but its efforts to undermine land-use laws will help the measure. Similar screeds are appearing around that state and could easily put I-933 over the top.
Unfortunately the campaign against I-933 hasn’t caught fire. They talks about abstractions, like how much traffic the repealing land-use laws would supposedly cause. But it’s far from clear that those those abstractions will persuade enough voters to support the status quo in November.
The chattering class overwhelmingly seems to think that Mike McGavick’s open letter last week admitting several personal mistakes was itself a mistake.
In the letter, U.S. Senate hopeful McGavick said his regrets include being a lousy husband, getting a DUI, being an absent parent and laying off people while he was Safeco’s CEO. In 2003 his ex-wife told me that he was on the phone with Slade Gorton while she was in labor with their son.
These issues may have been brought up by Maria Cantwell’s camp late in the race. Confessing now gets them out into the open and also makes McGavick seem like the honest, aw-shucks guy who most voters like to support. It’s another opportunity for McGavick to talk about personality instead of issues, in a year when his party’s record and stance seem deeply unpopular in this state.
The race for governor in 2004 showed that a nice-guy image can nearly beat a solid policy wonk (Dino Rossi would be governor except for a few dozen votes!). By basing his campaign in Seattle and spending more, McGavick is sure to improve on Rossi’s record. Until Cantwell’s campaign gains some traction on the issues, McGavick’s chance of winning remains much higher than Democrats want to think.
The Seattle area continues to defy the national trend of a sharply slumping housing market. The result is fewer people can afford homes, especially anywhere near their work. So what to do about it?
A thoughtful commentary by a realtor ran in the Seattle Times Wednesday, making the case that the affordable housing cruch was caused by the state’s Growth Management Act. That law required counties to figure out how to focus development in order to curb sprawl. It also upset a lot of rural landowners, and spurred a rollback measure this fall called I-933.
Though he doesn’t take a stand on I-933 — which many business groups support — he suggests five sensible policy steps:
• Require that growth-management plans under the GMA result in no net loss of housing opportunities;
• Require that growth-management plans balance projected job growth with growth in the housing supply, to ensure employees can live in communities where they work;
• Ask communities to increase affordable-housing opportunities. Some strategies include flexibility in lot sizes and allowing detached “accessory dwelling units,” such as those proposed by Mayor Greg Nickels;
• Establish performance measures for growth-management plans, to measure whether they actually accommodate growth and to verify that municipalities are adjusting plans to accommodate growth, as they are required to by law;
• Make the funding of critical infrastructure projects — such as roads, sewers and water — a priority in state and local budgeting.
Voiding current growth laws is a big mistake. But there are critical missing links. The Seattle area should follow examples of its Cascadia neighbors Vancouver and Portland in fixing them. Encourage more dense in-fill development and build the infrastructure necessary to make living in built-up areas attractive.
Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski conceded defeat in his reelection bid Tuesday. The longtime politician lost the Republican primary to a small-town mayor who now faces Democratic ex-governor Tony Knowles in November.
While Cascadia includes part of southeast Alaska, the outcome of the election is important because of the impact Alaska’s governor can have on the economy of the overall region. Murkowski was a proponent of more oil drilling and construction of a new natural gas pipeline across Canada. The governor also appoints officials who regulate the fishing industry based in Seattle and the cruise industry, whose ships sail from Vancouver and Seattle.
A thorough report on why this governor’s race is important to the region and nationwide is here on the Washington Post’s web site.
“I always vote but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. What else can I do?” That was the question of a gray-haired lady who took time on a sunny Saturday afternoon to hear a senator from North Dakota talk about making globalization more fair.
Unfortunately Senator Byron Dorgan didn’t give answers. In Seattle to promote his new book Take This Job and Ship It, he told a few dozen people sad tales of workers who had lost their jobs when companies shifted production abroad. An example: he said he’s outraged that Huffy bicycles are now made in China by workers who are paid 33 cents an hour while American taxpayers are stuck paying the pensions of former American workers.
Dorgan wrote the book because he’s frustrated that Republicans in Congress control trade policy. He rightly blamed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its corporate backers for laws that ignore the concerns of workers. But will populist anger without solutions win Democrats votes?
Obviously there are lots of losers in the current form of globalization. Yet in Cascadia, the most trade-dependent region on the continent, people want to hear how to make the system work better. Leaders need to explain concrete steps that can help more people benefit, things like better educating Americans (and Canadians!) while improving environmental and worker standards overseas.
In a nod to Seattle’s reason for being, several times Dorgan said “I support trade. I’m not against trade. But it has to be fair trade.” But that’s a classic canard of protectionists. In fact, Dorgan voted for the 2002 Farm Bill, which unfairly doles out billions of taxpayer dollars to support prices of U.S. crops so farmers in poorer countries can’t compete. Their only choice is to shift to cut-rate manufacturing — an opportunity corporations eagerly provide.
Dorgan’s book actually includes some solid ideas (tax policy that discourages exporting jobs and pollution, for example). If the book reaches readers who are brainwashed by pro-globalization cheerleaders like Tom Friedman it may add to the policy debate. But Dorgan wasted his opportunity in Seattle, leaving yet another old lady and many like her worried about globalization with no idea what to do about it.
To win a seat in the U.S. Senate this fall, Mike McGavick needs to persuade Washington’s middle-of-the-road voters AND every conservative Republican.
On issue after issue, this requires contortions. The Stranger has a succinct report on how McGavick is finessing his support for teaching creationism in schools. He’s repeating the performance on other subjects at campaign stops around the state.
To keep the effort going, McGavick announced on Friday that he is loaning his campaign $2 million. The money, of course, is part of the mega-million payday McGavick got from his time as CEO of Safeco. Thanks to Safeco, McGavick can more than match the personal fortune Senator Maria Cantwell used in 2000 to defeat McGavick’s old boss, Slade Gorton.
