We're posting Jabe Blumenthal's popular ballot guide on the Web so people can share it on Facebook & tweet about it. - Matt Lerner & Jesse Kocher
Back by popular demand, here is the 2009 version of my voter recommendation email. The fine print:
* The views expressed here are mine and mine alone, etc., etc..
* I used to focus just on ballot measures, but now include a few candidate races.
* If you want my half-informed opinions on other races (or just want off this list) send me an email.
* For great candidate and issue summaries and links, check out Fuse’s excellent www.progressivevotersguide.org.
* For more opinionated and colorful (PG-13) recommendations, check out The Stranger’s voting guide.
* If any links below don’t work, just cut and paste them into your browser.
* Please forward, especially to anyone who might not know about 1033 or the King County Exec race.
* The following will make a lot more sense if you have your ballot in front of you.
Thanks!
Only have 60 seconds? The Reader's Digest version
* Initiative 1033: Eyman tries to screw us again, but for good this time! NO on 1033!
***** Special Alert for King County Voters *****
It is very easy to miss 1033 on the King County ballots. It is in the lower left corner of the first page immediately below the instructions. Let people know!
* Referendum R71: But Eyman isn’t the only one screwing people! YES on R71!
* King County Exec: A non-partisan right-wing fundamentalist neo-con? Vote for Dow Constantine!
* King County Charter Amendments 1-4: You gotta love the Stranger. Yes on all Amendments!
* Seattle Proposition 1: Brother, can you spare a penny? Yes on Prop 1!
* Seattle City Council No. 8: The best environmental candidate in the state. Vote for Mike O’Brien!
* Seattle Mayor: I prefer politicians who know something about policy. See below.
* The elephant in the room: thoughts on the tunnel. See below.
Have 10 minutes? Here's some more detail.
Still have more questions after that? Ask me or check out the sites listed.
Initiative 1033: Eyman tries to screw us again, but for good this time! NO on 1033!
***** Special Alert for King County Voters *****
It is very easy to miss 1033 on the King County ballots. It is in the lower left corner of the first page immediately below the instructions. Let people know!
It would be hard to overstate the disaster for just about everyone and everything that 1033 would be. That’s why pretty much everyone from across the political spectrum opposes it, including rather conservative outfits like Washington Roundtable, Washington Realtors, King & Snohomish Master Builders, Seattle/Tacoma/Vancouver/Everett Chambers of Commerce, and the main daily papers from Spokane, Yakima, Tri-Cities, Vancouver and even Walla Walla! And yet recent polls show more Yeses than Nos. How is this possible? Because it sounds so reasonable. It caps what state, county, and city governments can collect in taxes at what they have collected the previous year, adjusted for inflation and population. But that means that it takes this year’s budget – the worst in decades, when 40,000 low-income people in Washington lost their health insurance and $1.5 billion was slashed from education – and makes it permanent! As we recover from recessions, it will be impossible under 1033 to restore basic services to reasonable funding levels. In 1992, citizens in Colorado passed a similar law with disastrous consequences: the share of low-income kids without health insurance doubled and per capita funding for education plummeted to 49th in nation. Though I don’t like to do fund-raising in this letter, this one is so important and money/media to expose 1033 is key to winning, that I will give the link to the No on 1033 campaign: https://www.upwardstech.net/noon1033
Referendum R71: But Eyman isn’t the only one screwing people! YES on R71!
This should be a no-brainer. One of the few courageous things the state legislature did last session was to extend all the state-granted rights of marriage to same-sex registered domestic partnerships (12,000+ people, many with kids). R71 asks us to approve these already legislatively approved rights. Why, because people who wanted to deny those rights got enough signatures to put R71 on the ballot, knowing that a significant % of people vote “No” to any and all ballot measures. So, ironically, we need to reapprove the legislature’s action by *voting Yes* for a measure placed on the ballot by a bunch of right-wing homophobes. Got that? Ah, politics!
King County Exec: A non-partisan right-wing fundamentalist neo-con? Vote for Dow Constantine!
The Stranger called Susan Hutchison a “closet Republican”, which was A) the nicest term they used for her, B) unfair to the kind of generally moderate Republican’s that King County has, and C) a total cop-out. The tiniest inquiry reveals that: Hutchison donated generously to McCain/Palin, Mike Huckabee (!!), Dino Rossi, and the Republican National Committee; she was on the board of the Discovery Institute, birthplace of Intelligent Design, aka Creationism; she spoke this month at the Washington Policy Institute, a conservative think tank currently promoting a film denying climate science and dissuading climate action; and she spouts the usual right-wing “government is evil”, “God is my political co-pilot” rhetoric. Closeted? She’s dancing around naked in the middle of the bedroom with Sarah Palin! Yet she claims to be “non-partisan”. How can she do that? Because she helped fund the successful measure last election to make this race “non-partisan”. (You might recall that last year I warned you that this would *not* lead to non-partisan politics, noble though that goal is, but would just lead to even greater ignorance about where people stand. To the many of you who disagreed with me then… Told you so!! Told you so!! Told you so!!) Meanwhile, there is actually a really good candidate, Dow Constantine, who has been an effective progressive leader on the King County Council and in the state legislature. While Dow has always been my first choice, I would have been quite happy with Larry Phillips or Ross Hunter. If Hutchison is elected, we should all be deeply, deeply embarrassed. This is the one other race that is so important and where money/media to expose Hutchison so key to winning that I will give the link to Dow’s campaign: http://dowconstantine.com.
King County Charter Amendments 1-4: You gotta love the Stranger. Yes on all Amendments!
Normally I write my own material but I had nothing to add to this from the Stranger. Warning: Some language may be offensive to children and politically correct Seattle liberals.
“What f***wit wrote the King County Charter anyway? The thing was so poorly drafted that voters have to approve an assload of amendments every goddamn November. Was it written in Tlingit and mistranslated by a room full of retards—oh, sorry. That's rude. Let's try this instead: Was the thing written in Tlingit and translated by a room full of ‘research fellows’ at the Discovery Institute?
Okay, King County, we read all four of your stupid amendments, and the only one we care about is No. 4. It would protect 156,000 acres of natural open space that the county owns—including Cougar Mountain, southeast of Bellevue—and set a high threshold for changing the status of these ‘high conservation value’ properties. If the county wants to sell any of these properties in the future, or change how they're used, it will require seven votes on the county council and public hearings. Good idea, since there will no doubt be pressure to develop some of these lands as the county population grows. Approve!
As for the others... Amendment No. 1 deletes references in the charter to sections that no longer exist. Approve—why do we have to vote on crap like this? Amendment No. 2 removes requirements for outdated budget procedures. Approve—but who writes budget procedures into county charters anyway? And Amendment No. 3 requires the county council to confirm appointees to the commission that writes charter amendments—you know, all those 'tards from the Discovery Institute. Approve!”
Seattle Proposition 1: Brother, can you spare a penny? Yes on Prop 1!
The Seattle Housing Levy is not a new tax but simply renews one passed by us in 2002 to create and preserve housing for our most vulnerable neighbors: seniors, people with disabilities, domestic violence victims, veterans, and formerly homeless individuals and families. There is even more need now than there was then, so now is certainly not the time to cut support. The price tag is about $65 per house. For every dollar of home value that’s not a dime, not a penny, not even a tenth of a penny; it’s just under 2 hundredths of a penny. You can afford it.
Seattle City Council No. 8: The best environmental candidate in the state. Vote for Mike O’Brien!
I used to have two reasons to vote for Mike: 1) he is the strongest environmental candidate in the state in my humble opinion; 2) Rosencrantz is conservative by Seattle standards. Now I’ve got a third reason: 3) Rosencrantz has been running dishonest and unethical campaign pieces against Mike. I guess that’s what politics does to otherwise nice people.
Here’s what environmental Godfather Denis Hayes said of Mike: “Mike is smart, strategic, personable, and absolutely committed to making Seattle the greenest city in the world. Mike has spent much of his adult life organizing around environmental causes – building broad coalitions but never compromising his principles in his fight for environmental values. He is the sort of environmentalist we need to start electing. I'm convinced he is prepared to make the hard choices that Seattle needs to make, not just the politically popular ones. He is a natural leader who recognizes that sometimes a leader has to be out ahead of the crowd.”
I underlined the qualities that impress me the most. Mike is a truth-teller about climate like no one else. He was among very few environmental leaders to take a stand against the original 2007 Transit Prop 1, which had some good public transportation but even more bad highway building and would have been a step backwards on climate. Most of the community felt it was a devil’s bargain we had to accept, but he didn’t and was key to its defeat. The next year, Mike was equally key to the passage of the 2008 Transit Prop 1 with just the public transport and not the bad highway building. He was principled, effective, and ultimately right, but most impressively, he did so while maintaining good relations with everyone on both sides of the issue.
While Mike has worked mostly on environmental issues, we expect all our city council members to be smart and effective on education, employment, housing, safety, etc.. Through his campaign I’ve seen Mike bring the same qualities to bear on these other issues. I could go on but it would be more of the same. Mike is the real deal!
Seattle Mayor: I prefer politicians who know something about policy. See below.
It’s tempting to skip over this race for fear that those who disagree with me will discount the other recommendations above. So, to be clear, regardless of who wins this race, the world will still turn, which is not the case if 1033 passes or Hutchison win. But, still, this is an important position, I have met with both candidates, and it feels lame to dodge this one. So here goes. I’m supporting Michael McGinn. I’ve known Michael professionally for several years. While I get along with him fine, I totally understand the reservations people have about his personal style. But I’ve got no reservations at all about his values or background in public policy; he is strongly progressive with years of experience working for livable neighborhoods and sustainable cities.
By contrast, Joe Mallahan has basically paid no attention to politics or policy until about a year ago when he worked on the Obama campaign and, inspired, decided to run for mayor. I and all of my colleagues who have talked with him have noted how uninformed he is on most majority issues (with the exception of social justice, to which he seems to have given some genuine thought) and, further, how quickly he seems to get bored by policy discussion. There are two problems with this:
1) It turns out that public policy is really complicated and even someone quite interested in policy (which Joe wasn’t until recently) will take several years, not months, to become a deep thinker. This explains why Joe is pretty shallow still after several months of campaigning. He’s not dumb, he just hasn’t thought about this stuff much. And having barely voted in the last decade isn’t a problem, it’s a symptom of a problem: he just hasn’t been interested enough in politics or policy to vote much.
2) We don’t know whether Joe will even be progressive because, honestly, he doesn’t know. Yes, he supported Obama but that’s the “ante” to get into the Seattle Mayor game at all. The majority of the members of the Chamber of Commerce are also mildly progressive. They would be considered liberal radicals if we all lived in Houston. But we don’t live in Houston, and there are very few of them I would consider remotely ideologically acceptable for Mayor of Seattle. I’m hopeful that once Joe learns more about the issues and forms some less superficial opinions, he’ll turn out to be moderately progressive, and that his soliciting support from the more conservative elements in Seattle will turn out to be just a campaign strategy. But there is just no basis for this to be anything other than a hope.
So, the risk averse part of me sees risk in both candidates but more risk and downside in Joe. Meanwhile, the optimistic side of me sees more upside in Michael. That’s why I came down where I came down. But I know that not all of my friends and colleagues feel this way.
The elephant in the room: thoughts on the tunnel.
This is another issue I’d love to dodge. But it’s an important issue in the mayor’s race at least and there’s much misinformation out there that people have come to accept as truth. So I’m going to explain why I support some candidates who think that: A) the tunnel decision process was a deeply flawed one, B) the tunnel probably isn’t the best solution to our multiple societal goals, and C) it’s worth taking the few months and few $M to get it right on what will be a multi-$B project with a 50-100 year lifespan. And I feel the same way, as do many people more thoughtful and informed than myself – Denis Hayes, KC Golden, and Alan Durning to name just a few.
I’m not against the tunnel per se. I’m in favor of whatever solution meets the three goals of:
1) a vibrant/sustainable/livable city
2) adequately meeting our mobility needs
3) complying with our state emission and vehicle-miles-travelled (VMT) reduction goals
all within a price that is realistic and leaves some funding capacity for waterfront parks and improvements.
The stake-holder process, which included the city, county and state departments of transportation, began by taking #3 off the table as a goal (rather ironic given that it was immediately after the Governor and legislature had passed emission and VMT reduction goals). In December of 2008, the three department of transportation heads announced the two final hybrid recommendations, and carefully explained why those two and not others. One reportedly said “I cannot imagine any situation in which the bored tunnel would be a good use of WSDOT's money." In particular, their modeling showed that the combination of surface streets, transit, and I-5 improvements (S/T/5) would meet our traffic needs.
Then the backroom meetings and deals began, with pressure on the Governor from Boeing, Tayloe Washburn (Chamber of Commerce), the Discovery Institute and others. Thrown into the mix was the desire to thwart Chopp’s viaduct replacement idea. And voila, an answer emerged, one not recommended by the DOTs and not supported by technical analysis.
Somehow people have come to think that the process favored the tunnel and that the surface street option was shown to not work. Whatever one thinks of the tunnel, this version of events is simply wrong.
Now, back to that #3 above. Had climate impacts actually been considered, the case for S/T/5 and against a tunnel becomes *stronger*, as the tunnel certainly has the highest embedded *and* operational carbon impact. No one seems to talk about this much even in the environmental community. Here’s where I pause and ask of whatever subset of us really believe that we care about climate change: Do we really think that we have any hope of reducing our societal emission by the necessary 80-90% and our VMT by 50% in 40 years if we remove climate from consideration and optimize for single occupancy vehicles when making 50-100 year infrastructural decisions? I mean, get real!! “But won’t the cars all be electric soon?” By 2020? No way. By 2030? No chance. By 2040, some but not a majority. By 2050? Many, not all. And will the electrons all be 0-carbon? Not a chance. And will it amount to anything like a 90% reduction? Dream on. That’s *why* the Governor and legislature realized that we *had to reduce VMT by 50%*. Sadly, at some level, most of even us supposed climate change warriors are climate change deniers; even we don’t admit that, yes, we have to make our major societal decisions *differently* to have any hope of addressing climate change.
If I were designing a city to maximize VMT and if I assumed that money will someday grow on trees once the current recession is over, a tunnel sounds pretty good to me. But otherwise it is a highly questionable conclusion. Given that, and the expense, and the near certainty of cost overruns, and the potential for lawsuits (one with a lot of merit was just filed last week over the failure to complete the required environmental impact statement), and the climate implications, and the 50-100 lifetime of whatever decision we make, and the flawed process… it not just reasonable but responsible to question and revisit this “decision”. You don’t have to agree with this statement but the more I learn about the issue and the process, the more reasonable a point of view it seems to me and I’m grateful that we have at least a few candidates questioning things.
If interested, check out People’s Waterfront Coalition Executive Directors blog on the topic: http://hugeasscity.com/2009/09/30/special-guest-post-tunnel-digest/
That’s it.