[Editor's Note: Lots of reporting by Erica C. Barnett and some by Josh Feit.]
1. According to today’s NYT , seven fiscally conservative “Blue Dog” Democrats on the House commerce committee are the key to passing or torpedoing President Obama’s health care reform bill.
However, according to us, one flaming liberal on the commerce committee, Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA, 1)—who’s writing a series of cost-containment amendments to incentivize less expensive treatment and one amendment to equalize medicare reimbursements regionally—is the key to winning over the Blue Dogs.
If Rep. Inslee can sell his progressive ideas as remedies for ballooning costs to the conservative Democrats—replacing fee-for-service profits with result-oriented programs, for example—President Obama will have the Blue Dogs in his corner.
Pay attention to the action in this committee this week where mark up was already postponed one day.
2. The Cascade Bicycle Club might want to reconsider its endorsement of City Council candidate and former King County Prosecutor’s Office civil division head, Sally Bagshaw. (The Club chose Bagshaw over her main rival, lefty church activist David Bloom.)
The CBC tells us they weren’t impressed with Bloom because he “spends too much time listening to folks who think preserving auto capacity is a social justice issue, rather than a burden for disadvantaged communities.” But they should check Bagshaw’s contributors list.
According to campaign finance reports , Paul Nerdrum, the general manager of the Salmon Bay Sand & Gravel Co., has maxed out to Bagshaw. Salmon Bay Sand & Gravel is the company that’s suing the city to stop work to complete the Burke-Gilman commuter bike trail. They want to preserve the segment for cement and oil trucks.
3. “It’s slap in the face” from Mayor Nickels, according to a community organizer quoted in the The Rainier Valley Post. Previously committed to attend tonight’s Southeast Seattle Candidates’ Forum, Nickels canceled just 24-hours before the event, citing a scheduling conflict according to the RVP report .
One Southender quipped in an email to PubliCola: “Does he [Nickels] think light rail was enough to lock up any potential south end votes? Or worried he’d get skewered?”
4. And here’s some more anti-Nickels griping: A crew (that appears to be Mike McGinn supporters ), like landscape architect Brice Maryman and compatriots like urbanist blogger Dan Bertolet (Hugeasscity ), have put their names on an anti-deep-bore tunnel website: Tunnelfacts.com .
Mayor Nickels, of course, is the leading advocate of the $4.2 billion freeway tunnel along the waterfront, which Tunnelfacts.com claims (among other problems) will be unable to accommodate mass transit.
5. Pike Place Express—a batch of about a dozen Pike Place Market fresh-produce vendors, including Full Circle Farm —has been up and running at City Hall Plaza (on 4th Ave. between James and Cherry) since June. The satellite farmers market for the Southend of downtown (where about 1500 people work) sets up shop every Tuesday through September.
Pike Place Express at City Hall, photo by Erica C. Barnett
6. For Serious Wonks Only : At its 9 am meeting today, the City Council’s land use and neighborhoods committee will hear 22 proposed amendments to the city’s Comprehensive Plan—the city’s master land use document that was originally passed in 1994 in accordance with the state Growth Management Act.
One of our favorite proposed amendments (honestly): An amendment from controversial neighborhood activist Chris Leman “discouraging extra-heavy transit buses and solid waste trucks that unacceptably damage Seattle’s roads and bridges.”
This morning’s Morning Fizz brought to you by Candidate Survivor .
Cascade should stick to organizing bike rides and stay out of the endorsement business altogether.
Two things:
1. The market at city hall debuted several weeks ago and I hear has been doing great.
2. Tunnel facts doesn’t list any contact info on the king county exec or county councilmembers. Is it no big deal if the people who run the actual transit agency don’t hear from people? Or is it just because it’s only really about the mikes (running for city positions)?
@1 I’m with you. I find it hard to believe that anyone of these candidates would be so bad on cyclists that you couldn’t work with them. I ride and I can’t say I’m overwhelmed by Nickels. I try to ride north of the city rather than in it. The roads are much better and that’s more important in most cases than having so-called bike lanes. Most of them are bogus anyway: too narrow, dead end suddenly, mined with storm drains, etc. And because they are there, people expect you to stay in them even when conditions dictate otherwise. I think they are dangerous. Use a light and make your presence known.
Okay that’s my rant.
WTF CBC? Nice to know that it has become an advocate of bike riding instead of driving for “disadvantaged communities.” Now if only it could tell us how to stop the displacement of poor people to neighborhoods with shitty transit service.
@2,
We hadn’t put contact info for King County positions for a couple reasons:
1) Without Ron Sims (who actually signed the Memorandum of Understanding) there isn’t a clear “somebody” to yell at.
2) The County’s portion of the tunnel plan is, at $190 Million, substantially smaller than the City’s ($930 Million), or the State’s ($2.82 Billion), and it mostly goes toward Metro service on the waterfront. We don’t want people haranguing King County to complain about increased bus service.
3) We’d rather have people contact their City and State representatives, as they’re in a better position to stop or change the plan.
Hope that answers your question.
The TunnelFacts Team
I thought Salon had a pretty good article on the blue dogs today, dealing with the Senate and not just the House:
“In the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus and a handful of moderate Democrats are engaged in painstaking, secretive talks with moderate Republicans in an effort to draft a proposal that might win bipartisan support. None of the senators involved in the talks would discuss them with reporters this afternoon, but they insisted they were doing the right thing.”
Maria, are you part of this???
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/07/22/healthcare/
I think the CBC’s justification of their (crazy) Bagshaw endorsement is actually a sharply stated reason to vote for Bloom: he spends “too much time” listening to poor people’s issues. We need a bit more of that on the council.
At a West Seattle candidates forum last night, Bagshaw came off as nearly incomprehensible, lurching from one bullet-list talking point to the next with nary a transition — or honest though — between.
Too bad more CBC Board Members weren’t willing to consider Dorsol Plants for endorsement in the position.
After all, he actually doesn’t own a car, gets around by bus or Zipcar, not only listens but works every day with folks in disadvantaged communities, and understands the changes we need to bring to our community as we look to the future…
@8: How do you know they weren’t willing to consider him? Or do you mean they considered him but came to the wrong conclusion?
@9: I believe I was considered for the CBC endorsement, and at first was told they were withholding till the primary was over.
Making space for bikes is a priority to me because I’ve actually been hit while biking downtown by a “cellphone” driver. We try and force people out of their cars without providing them with sidewalks to use, bike lanes, or a transit system that can arrive on time. It’s an issue that effects all of us, including a high number of the homeless I work with on a street. Many of them have bicycles they use to get around since they can’t afford the bus, and they; like all of us, deserve a way to move about safely.
@10 Impressed to see you talk about *poor* bicyclists — that’s never part of the discourse.
We really need to be talking about mobility as a civil right. That would mean improving bus & cycle infrastructure first to serve the poor, disabled, and other transit dependent folks. And miracle of miracles, if you improve the system for those who have no choice but to rely on it, you end up making it easier for others to begin relying on that system too.
@9: The Fizz makes it sound like they didn’t consider him at all… I’m aware that at least one Board member personally supports Dorsol; and I have been told that Bagshaw did some hard lobbying of the Board members to make an endorsement after they initially made none in this race.
Perhaps my wording could have been better. I do think they chose wrong, and I think it’s odd that enviros have avoided endorsements in this race (see also Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters). None of them have a particularly remarkable resume on these issues, of course, but I think enviros should be supporting the candidate who actually bikes and uses transit on a daily basis and talks about working with neighborhoods to come to agreement on density and development.
Heh, the wordy pages on TunnelFacts don’t really grab me, but I love the “how much you could get for 1.7 miles of deep bore tunnel.” The P-I’s asking price? $45m, or 90ft of tunnel. Heck, Chase only paid $1.9b for WaMu’s carcass.
So, Publicola folks, is Nickels continuing to advertise with you? Because RVP is a little concerned that he’s taking their coverage personally.
http://www.rainiervalleypost.com/?p=13503#comments