My goodness. We thought there were only three ways to fix the quake-damaged Alaskan Way Viaduct: rebuild it as an elevated highway, replace it with a conventional trench-and-cover tunnel, or replace it with a surface boulevard.

Make that three-and-a-half: For a while, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was pushing a skinnier trenched tunnel. But the state Department of Transportation didn't like the looks of his Tunnel Lite.

Seattleites, Gov. Gregoire, King County Executive Ron Sims and others fought each other to near-exhaustion over those options. Now – after all the shin-kicking – the DOT has just spread out a menu of 10 options. These include a bridge over Elliott Bay, a retrofit of the existing viaduct, alternative surface routes and three different species of tunnel – including one created by a Dune-sandworm-style boring machine.

Question: It's been more than seven years since the Nisqually earthquake left the viaduct looking as doomed as New Orleans' pre-Katrina levees. Several of these new alternatives actually look promising. Why on earth has it taken the state so long to put them on the table?

Cheap shot: Of course, the DOT may have worried that the perpetually conflicted, process-ridden city of Seattle might have succumbed to complete paralysis had it faced 10 entrees instead of three.

We don’t have much quarrel with the U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding Indiana’s voter ID law, although the majority opinion acknowledged that Republican backers of such measures have not demonstrated there is an actual problem of voters trying to cast ballots using false identities. Washington has looser voter ID requirements, and they appear to be sufficient — as long as election officials do their jobs competently and carefully.

A new Census report showing a $1 billion active-duty military payroll in Pierce County actually understands the economic impact of McChord and Fort Lewis. It doesn’t include the 11,000 civilian workers who work for the military here. Pierce County is fortunate that the long-term future of the now-combined bases appears relatively secure.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

A reader comments:

It has been my feeling that the TNT has been generally pro Obama during the current campaign, so I say congratulations on stepping up to the plate on this topic (Today's editorial). Much easier to dismiss, ignore, or minimize his relationship with Pastor Wright than to tackle it head on.

Even my son, who has been an Obama supporter, is becoming more skeptical.

Mike Day
Tacoma

My response:

Mike,

We did endorse Obama in the presidential primary, but that has no influence on news coverage. The newsroom and the opinion section operate independently.

In the editorials since the primary, I don’t think we’ve leaned one way or another. I couldn’t predict right now who we will endorse in November. McCain, Obama and Clinton all have large vulnerabilities, in our view. It’s a long time until November, and a lot will depend on how McCain and the Democratic nominee conduct their campaigns and flesh out their positions. There will no doubt more exploding grenades to be taken into account.

Regarding Obama and Wright, I’m shaking my head at how a black preacher may end up undoing the best chance in a generation for a black man to attain the White House.

I recall seeing a profile of Obama in The New York Times Sunday magazine last fall, long before Pastor Wright came to national attention, in which Wright acknowledged that Obama would probably have to disavow him if he became the nominee. Wright seemed philosophical about it then; he sure doesn’t now.

Thanks for the feedback.

Dave Seago

The Legislature voted to allow it, but would publicly funded political campaigns work in Pierce County? Would citizens go for it?

A panel of speakers will explore the topic at a public forum Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. Saturday at Tahoma Unitarian Universalist Church, 1115 S. 56th St.

Panelists include Tacoma City Councilwoman Marilyn Strickand, Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata, Craig Salins, director for Washngton Public Campaigns, and Julio Quan, former director of Tacoma's Centro Latino.

The event is sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Tacoma-Pierce County, Washington Public Campaigns, the Pierce County chapter of America in Solidarity and the Tahoma Unitarian congregation.

The election-day nightmare of Republicans is voting fraud, traditionally the specialty of Democratic machines.

The election-day nightmare of Democrats is vote-suppression, the specialty of shifty conservatives who worry about the rabble's political inclinations. The masters of suppression were the old-time Southern Democrats who devised poll taxes, literacy tests, lynching and various other tactics to keep blacks from voting. No – take that back. The masters were the founding fathers, who restricted the franchise to white, male property owners.

That's the political context of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision Monday to uphold Indiana's voter-ID law. Indiana's Republican Legislature in 2005 required voters to produce government-issued, photo IDs when they showed up at the polls. Democrats challenged the law, fearing it would discourage voting by marginalized citizens with no picture ID.

John Paul Stevens, arguably the court's most liberal member, wrote the main opinion upholding the law. The Democrats had pointed out that the Republicans could point to no actual fraud that justified the ID requirement. Perhaps, said Stevens, but neither had the Dems been able to point to any actual suppression that justified overturning it.

Disputes over who gets to vote and who doesn't should be of keen interest to Washingtonians, in light of the incredibly narrow gubernatorial election we saw in 2004. Gregoire, on the second recount, won by 129 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast – one of the closest elections, in percentage terms, in history. (Gregoire, by the way, says she's still asked about that infinitesimal margin wherever she goes in the world.)

So are we a fraud state or a suppression state?

As with Indiana, there's not much evidence of one or the other here, but fraud and allegations of fraud have certainly been more in the news. With motor-voter registration, mail balloting and other super-easy-to-vote policies on the books, most of the complaints have been coming from Republicans – especially since those bundles of ballots kept mysteriously materializing in King County after the election four years ago.

Scott Winship, the kind of community volunteer who surely deserves the “servant leader,” has added another title to his long list of civic contributions: He’ll be the 2008 board president for United Way of Pierce County.

Winship, currently an attorney for Vandeberg, Johnson & Gandara, has alternated between banking and the law for more than 20 years. He was president and CEO of North Pacific Bank when it was sold in 1998 and helped found Northwest Commercial Bank in Lakewood.

On the community service side, Winship has been board chair for both MultiCare Health Foundation and the Nonprofit Center and president and a board member for the Municipal League of Tacoma-Pierce County. He’s also a member of the board for Tacoma Rotary #8.

On the side, he helps his wife Karla raise a couple of teenage sons. I got to know Winship when we both participated in a year-long American Leadership Forum class with other Pierce County members. I’ve met a lot of politicians and community leaders, but few “give back” as much as Scott.

Pierce County labor and antiwar activists expect dockworkers to shut down all West Coast ports for an eight-hour shift on May to protest the war in Iraq and support worker rights.

Activist websites talk as though the action by the International Longshore & Warehouse Union is a done deal, but there's nothing on the ILWU's own website today confirming strike plans.

No independent local confirmation yet. The newsroom is chasing it down.
(7 p.m. update: Cargo Business News, an online shipping newsletter, quotes an ILWU spokesman indicating that the shutdown is planned.)

This email is going around in Pierce County labor circles:

After some vigorous internal debate, the International Longshore & Warehouse Union has confirmed its decision to shut down the ports of the entire West Coast on Thursday, May 1st, in support of workers’ rights and against the bloody and costly Iraq War.

LOCAL SUPPORT on Thursday, May 1st:

· 5 PM Tacoma Demonstration Pacific Ave. I-5 overpass 6:30 PM March to Federal Courthouse Sponsor (Peace Action Coalition Tacoma)

· 7 PM Working Families, Not War program 1911 Pacific Ave. Washington State History Museum, Tacoma 8:30 PM Candle-light Vigil at Federal Courthouse, 1717 Pacific Ave. (Sponsored by America in Solidarity)

Update: Note from reader....

I was told at a meeting last night that eight hour "the shutdown" of The Port of Tacoma is on, but the evening demonstration over I-5 is off (there was some sort of conflict with a sponsoring organization).

Instead, people are being encouraged to go up to Seattle (on the 594 or in carpools leaving from the Tacoma Dome Transit Center) to participate in the anti-war demonstration sponsored by their ILWU local. It starts on the pier along Alaska Way at noon. Later in the afternoon that demonstration will be linking up with the Immigrants Rights Demonstration that will be marching down from Judkins Park.

I plan to wear comfortable shoes.

Rev. Jeremiah Wright is doing his best to wreck Barack Obama’s presidential bid. Obama needs to have a Sister Souljah moment regarding the pastor.

Auburn School Board shouldn’t even have considered creating a special advisory committee that would meet privately to interview and evaluate superintendent candidates. A meeting like that can’t be an executive session.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

In some of Washington's rural areas, teachers and administrators are among the best-paid workers in the community. Their jobs are usually recession-proof, unlike those of most of their neighbors.

In an unusual acknowledgment of hard economic times in Clallam County, 21 school principals, assistant principals and district level administrators in the Port Angeles School District have volunteer to forego their 2.4 percent "step increases" next year. (News story).

The move would save the district around $33,000, but the school board needs to make about $500,000 in cuts to next year's budget. The district is hurting from steep enrollment declines and "unfunded mandates" from the state. In recent years it has closed and consolidated schools to cut costs.

The school board hasn't yet considered the offer. Like teachers, the administrators would still get pay increases approved by the Legislature.

A telling statistic: The Port Angeles district has lost 750 students since 1970, reflecting the steady decline of a timber-based economy. The district expects to lose 100 students next year and another 100 more the following year.

A grim picture.

You knew it was going to be a different sort of author's talk when the speaker walked to the podium in full kilt, preceded by several minutes of bagpipe music.

Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith gave one of the funniest, smartest, warmest talks I've ever heard Saturday at Pacific Lutheran University. And as far as I can tell, he spoke for 40 minutes without notes before answering a good many questions from the audience. Pierce County Library estimates about 1,600 people attended. Smith stayed for about two hours after the talk and signed books for an estimated 400 people.

Smith was at PLU as part of Pierce County Reads, the program (co-sponsored by The News Tribune) in which everyone is encouraged to read a particular book and discuss it. The first library selection was Smith's "The Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency," the book that begins a series about Botswana detective Precious Ramotswe and the interesting people in her life. I've read the first eight books in the charming series and can't wait to start the ninth, "The Miracle at Speedy Motors." (Speedy Motors is the garage run by Ma Ramotswe's husband, Mr. J.L.B. Maketoni.)

I can't begin to capture the flavor of Smith's talk – which focused on the "small things" in life that give it meaning and flavor. He told delightful anecdotes, and revealed that his proudest achievement isn't becoming a lawyer, teaching at Edinburgh University or writing scores of books (he has several different series going), but co-founding The Really Terrible Orchestra in Edinburgh, Scotland. He continues to play bassoon in the orchestra, or at least the lower notes.

To hear a podcast interview with Smith, check out the Pierce County Library site here.

If you attended the event and have a favorite anecdote to share, feel free to leave a comment.

Whoo, that's a nasty cut Washington state Democratic Party chairman Dwight Pelz took at John McCain today. "Job-Slayer John McCain," a party press release dubbed the Republican, who brings his campaign to Washington next month.

Here's the logic. McCain hates Boeing, loves Airbus. If Boeing loses its appeal and Airbus and Northrup Grumman get the big Air Force tanker contract, we can thank McCain for "outsourcing 9,000 Washington jobs to France."

McCain's a Republican. So are Dino Rossi and Rob McKenna, running for governor and attorney general, respectively. So Rossi and McKenna are guilty – by association – of killing Washington jobs, too – unless they disavow the GOP's presidential candidate.

Fat chance. But it was an entertaining piece of partisan malarkey.

=> Read more!

For more proof that wishes are not horses, read Vision 2040.

This is the grand plan for the region's future just approved by the conglomerate of local governments known as the Puget Sound Regional Council.

In a recent Crosscut posting, former Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald pitilessly dissects the document's blueprint for regional population growth.

His critique is well worth reading in its entirety, but here are a few highlights:

Vision 2040 anticipates 1.7 million new people living in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap County by 2040. About a third of them are supposed to move to the "metropolitan" cities: Seattle, Tacoma, everett, Bremerton and Bellevue. Another 21 percent are supposed to move to such "core" cities as Lakewood, Puyallup, Auburn, Federal Way and the like.

The idea is to channel the growth to logical places with existing roads, sewers, etc., and keep subdivisions from overrunning the countryside.

It's not working, MacDonald points out. Seven years into the plan's 40-year horizon, only 13 percent of the growth – not 32 percent – has happened in the metropolitan cities. Another 13 percent has happened in the secondary core cities – not 21 percent.

Most of the newcomers have materialized right where the planners don't want them to be: small cities and towns, and rural areas. In these seven years, Bonney Lake grew by 40 percent, Arlington by 33 percent, Mill Creek by 26 percent. And so on.

Growth control? What growth control?

Matt Rosenberg, who writes a knowledgable transportation blog for the Cascadia Center, offers a cleverly succinct analogy for congestion pricing:

Suppose electricity was free, even at hours of peak usage. Think your power supply would be reliable, then? Exactly. Now apply the same common-sense approach to highway capacity.

The Cascadia Center, a unit of the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, promotes alternative solutions to transportation and development problems. The Center is a big fan of congestion pricing, which will get its first real-world test in Washington beginning Saturday.

That's when the state DOT opens its first HOT lane on nine miles of SR 167 from Auburn to Renton. Tolls will range from 50 cents to $9, depending on the time of day. If the four-year experiment goes well, the state may expand it to to other highways in the region, including interstates 90 and 405.

Rosenberg offers other updates on tolling issues in today's post. Did you know there's a scholarly journal calling Tolling? I think there's one on Rosenberg's bedside table.

Along with daffodils and tulips, I spotted a couple blue Shawn Bunney campaign signs sprouting at a busy intersection in Tacoma's North End, deep in the heart of the reliably Democratic 27th legislative district.

Bunney is the lone Republican contender for Pierce County executive in November's ranked-choice voting election.

In any other year, Bunney would be off to an early start in the sign campaign. Filing week is the first week of June. Remember the days when candidates traditionally waited until filing week or just before to put up signs?

Court decisions, one of them in a Tacoma case, have busted legal bans on too-early campaign signs. And Democratic Pierce County Councilman Calvin Goings set the all-time record for going early on the sign front when he or his supporters put up some early last fall.

This year's primary election is Aug. 19, and it's a legislative year, so expect yard signs to mushroom all over pretty soon. Call 'em litter on a stick if you like, but they're part of the price we pay for democracy.

Washington's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray does a pretty good job of sticking up for ordinary folks as much as she can, befitting her political roots as "a mom in tennis shoes."

She'll be taking on the oil companies in a speech on the Senate floor Wednesday morning. A weekly schedule from her office says she will . . .

point out that while working families are scrimping just to get by, the economic downturn hasn’t even registered for one segment of America – the major oil companies. The speech will come as most of the major oil companies begin reporting their profits for the year. Experts are saying there is little doubt they will see record profits again this year, even as families continue to pay more at the pump.

No word what legislative action, if any, she will propose. I think it makes sense to reduce some of the long-standing and no longer justifiable federal tax breaks the oil companies have enjoyed. But targeted profits directly is a trickier proposition.

As the Wall Street Journal noted in a recent editorial (that I can't find right now),
oil company profits go to their shareholders – and those sharehholders include big pension funds as well as many ordinary investors. A windfall profits tax would deprive those shareholders of potential earnings.

No surprise that a Weyerhaeuser spokesperson responded to our previous blog item about the big tax break it seeks in the farm bill now pending in Congress.
We may get a more formal response from the company next week, but here's a quick word from Weyco's Kristen Sawin.

The forest products industry is requesting that the inclusion of the Timber Revitalization and Economic Enhancement (TREE) Act to correct the competitive imbalance imposed by the US tax system relative to the more favorable rules for timber investments in most competing nations.

The industry is receiving strong bi-partisan support from a broad geographical base, including support from the Washington State Delegation and Governor Gregoire, as well as other interested stakeholders including labor and conservation.

Timber is a unique asset with extraordinarily long holding periods, large front-end expenditures, and an inability to insure against significant risks of nature. Enactment of the TREE Act provision will help this industry stay competitive in an economic climate that is more challenging than ever.

One of the arguments for the tax revision is that it will help companies like Weyerhaeuser stave off pressure to sell close-in timberlands for development instead of managing them for long-term forestry.

Mindful of our disappearing forests in Washington, I can see that. But I'd like to know what the federal revenue loss would be. Unfortunately, the farm bill is by and large a turkey – bloated and packed with crop subsidies that are no longer justified.

Here's a Weyerhaeuser fact sheet on the TREE provision.

"Dirty Jobs" host Mike Rowe (whose foray into geoduck farming produced the groaner "Is that a geoduck in your pocket or are you just glad sashimi?") has nothing on the poor soul who will have to sort through the muck in an escalating fight over the giant clams.

Taylor Shellfish, as expected, last week petitioned both the Shorelines Hearings Board and Thurston County Superior Court to review a Pierce County hearing examiner's decision that jeopardizes the company's ability to harvest millions of dollars of geoducks planted along the shoreline in Case Inlet.

(Here's our editorial on the issue, and a good overview from NPR.)

Pierce County is also asking the hearing examiner to reconsider his ruling on several issues, the most significant being the shoreline designation at Taylor's farm. The hearing examiner said the site is located partially in a "conservancy" shoreline and partially in a "natural" shoreline; the county claims the whole thing is "natural."

It's a pivotal issue. New regulations passed by the Pierce County Council last year might outlaw future aquaculture at Taylor's current site if, as the county alleges, the shoreline is designated entirely "natural."

=> Read more!

Saturday:

Contributions from Boeing and its workers to United Way drives in the Puget Sound region have topped the $500 million mark. That generosity deserves recognition.

Sunday:

U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks is not taking a back seat to Sen. Patty Murray in fighting the Air Force tanker contract award that went to an Airbus consortium instead of Boeing. Declaring he has “lost all faith” in the Air Force, Dicks says he’ll try to block funding for the contract. Startling words from such a defense hawk. But Dicks, Murray and company have to make a truly compelling case that the Air Force blew it before persuading Congress to overturn a major procurement decision.

The Tacoma School Board opted for a known quantity in sticking with interim Superintendent Art Jarvis for the permanent job. Jarvis has restored stability to the district, but that is not what the district needs going forward. It needs a serious push for measurable progress on student achievement and the dropout rate. The board should set high expectations for Jarvis and hold him accountable.

Monday:

The rise of commercial and residential development near Sound Transit’s light rail corridor in Seattle’s Rainier Valley demonstrates the potential for future light expansion to promote higher-density urban development throughout the region.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

More trouble for the Metro Parks board today. We're hearing that the Community Council of Tacoma last night voted to tell the park district board that the council is "losing confidence in your ability to manage and represent the best interests of the citizens of the district."

The council is made up of three representatives from each of the eight Neighborhood Councils. Neighborhood activists are upset with Metro Parks over, among other things, a revenue task force report that suggested new ways to make money off public parks. We said last week that the board needs to do more to build public trust.

This e-mail is going around among McCain supporters (thanks, Dad!).

There are less than eight months until the election, an election that will decide the next President of the United States. The person elected will be the president of all Americans, not just the Democrats or the Republicans. To show our solidarity as Americans, let's all get together and show each other our support for the candidate of our choice.

It's time that we all came together, Democrats and Republicans alike.

If you support the policies and character of John McCain, please drive with your headlights on during the day. If you support Obama or Hillary, please drive with your headlights off at night.

Now, I drive with my headlights on all the time. Does that mean I support Ralph Nader?

Who knew that Montana's U.S. Sen. Max Baucus was such a friend of the Weyerhaeuser Co. and other U.S. forest-products companies? And that they were such good friends of his?

Although Weyerhaeuser owns no timber in Montana, Democrat Baucus is leading the fight to win a $100 million tax break for the Federal Way-based company. Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Baucus wants it added to the giant farm bill Congress is struggling to pass.

Baucus' provision wold effectively lower Weyerhaeuser's top income tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

A Weyerhaeuser spokesman and Baucus' office say the tax break is needed to keep the U.S. forest-products industry "globally competitive."

I make no judgment about the merits of the proposed tax break. But the Center for Responsive Politics reports that Baucus has received $82,450 in contributions – more than any other candidate for federal office – from individuals and groups with ties to the forest products industry.

This article from The New York Times outlines what a bloated travesty the farm bill has become. Among other excesses, it includes nearly $500 million in tax breaks for the thoroughbred horse racing industry.

The president has threatened to veto it. We're with him on this one.

If I had a Stanford alumni ring, I’d throw it into the bay.

I just learned that Stanford and Cal were considered for the official archives of the Grateful Dead but lost out to UC Santa Cruz. (UCSC crows in a news release here).

As far as I am concerned, Stanford’s reputation as a citadel of learning and culture is in the toilet. Henceforth, my alumni contributions are truckin’ on to some other school.

Anonymous and ashamed member of Stanford Class of ‘71

(If you don't know that's Jerry Garcia pictured here, you just wasted your time on this item. On the other hand, they say that if you can remember the Sixties, you weren't there.)

Here's what we have planned for tomorrow:

Washington lawmakers should fix a law that makes it harder for Simpson to market renewable power from a new plant.

Brown & Haley is helping meet the demand for premium chocolate with its yummy new Roca Buttercrunch Thins.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

They can dynamite cultural relics and destroy girls schools.

But when the Taliban starts knocking out cell phone towers, they apparently have gone too far.

Another reason we love living in the USA.

Penis theft panic hits city..
Wed Apr 23, 2008
By Joe Bavier

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Police in Congo have arrested 13 suspected sorcerers accused of using black magic to steal or shrink men's penises after a wave of panic and attempted lynchings triggered by the alleged witchcraft.

=> Read more!

Want more evidence that this is the silly season?

I just got this e-mail from a regular conservative correspondent who's always good for punchy commentary.

Said correspondent cites a Crosscut report that gubernatorial rivals Dino Rossi and Chris Gregoire have taken their campaigns hybrid:

By the end of May, Gregoire will swap out her current state-leased Cadillac for a just-off-the-assembly-line Chevy Tahoe Hybrid full-sized SUV.

Taxpayers will pick up the tab for Gregoire’s Tahoe (Cost: roughly $1,100 a month in lease payments.) That’s because as a sitting governor, Gregoire is entitled to round-the-clock State Patrol protection. That includes being chauffeured by a state trooper in a vehicle that meets Patrol guidelines for safety and weight.

Gregoire won’t pick up much in gas mileage by switching vehicles. According to www.fueleconomy.gov , the Tahoe Hybrid gets an average of 21 miles to the gallon, while the Gov’s current Cadillac gets 18 mpg.

Rossi, though, is making more of a leap. According to the same Web site, a Ford Escape Hybrid gets an average of 28 mpg compared to 16 mpg for the Ford Explorer.

Rossi's Escape: 28 mpg. Gregoire's Tahoe: 21 mpg. Could the choice in November be any more clear?

Each Wednesday from 10 to 11 a.m., columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. answers readers’ questions in an online chat on www.miamiherald.com. Below are excerpts from this week’s chat. To read the entire Q&A, click here.

Q: What is the hardest story that you had to write?
Pitts: A column 12 years ago on my teenage stepdaughter having a baby.

Q: At what point would you draw the line between government responsibility to its citizens and citizens to help themselves? If given the chance I would ask the presidential candidates the same thing.
Pitts: I think those who can’t help themselves deserve our help. Those who don’t know how to help themselves deserve education and help. Those who won’t help themselves deserve our scorn. And the children of the latter deserve some form of intervention to help ensure they don’t grow up like their parents.

=> Read more!

A long-awaited arbitrator’s decision on a city contract with police union is a mixed bag. The city is going to have to give police retroactively much bigger wage increases than other city employees got, cutting the amount of money the city can spend to hire more officers. But at least the list of cities used for establishing “comparables” will be realistically based on other Washington cities instead of California, where costs of living are much higher. Going forward, police can’t expect to see pay increases as generous as they’ve had in the past.

Federal Way city officials were prudent to end the city's trial of the controversial Prometa protocol for treating drug addiction. The money state lawmakers budgeted to pay for a scientific UW study of Pierce County's Prometa experiment will give policymakers a better idea of its worth.

Here's our editoral take on today's Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania.

Dems’ headache worsens
as Clinton holds ground

Obama fails to gain momentum in Pennsylvania, leaving the Democratic Party still searching for a way to avoid a convention debacle.

John McCain won the Democratic presidential primary in Pennsylvania.

Hillary Clinton defeated Barack Obama by a 10-point margin. But that didn’t immediately translate as the kind of commanding win Clinton needed to rejuvenate her flagging campaign.

At the same time, Obama’s unimpressive showing meant he wasn’t able to land the knockout punch he needed to put Clinton down for good.

At the end of the Pennsylvania bout, Clinton was still standing, even dancing a little, taunting Obama for his inability to “close the deal” in the sort of blue-collar state the Democratic candidate supposedly must win in November.

So the fight goes on, leaving Republican standard bearer McCain free to court donors and voters and prepare for the fall campaign in relatively stress-free mode.

Better yet from McCain’s perspective, Clinton and Obama have to reload for more battles down the road, girding for yet one more round of “crucial” primaries on May 6 in North Carolina and Indiana.
The way things are going, one wonders if tiny Guam might yet prove to be a “crucial” primary. It won’t come to that, of course, but Democrats who had been anticipating easy capture of the White House have to be reaching for their Excedrin.

Clinton and Obama have done a marvelous job of carving up each other, revealing lines of attack that will be useful to Republicans this fall. Clinton has hurt herself with tall tales of bravery on the tarmac in Kosovo; Obama had to waste of lot of energy fighting charges of elitism after his controversial remarks about “bitter” voters. And the harder Clinton hits Obama with negative TV ads and personal jabs, the more she raises her own negatives in national polls.

Obama still holds a commanding lead in the delegate count and in popular votes. He enjoys a huge money advantage, with $40 million in his campaign coffers at the end of March, compared to Clinton’s $8 million.

In Pennsylvania, the onus was on Clinton. In Indiana, the burden will be Obama’s. Expected to win in North Carolina, he has to show he can do well in another state whose demographics are much like Pennsylvania’s.

One guess is as good as another, but the outcome on May 6 may leave the protracted Democratic slugfest just about where it is now – Obama winning by the numbers, but not with the kind of momentum that makes a candidate look like a winner.

Returns from the Pennsylvania primary haven't started trickling in yet, so us wonkish types have to get our political fix by poring over exit polls that will be obsolete in another hour.

One thing that fascinates me – a pattern that's been seen before, but seems especially pronounced in Pennsylvania – is Hillary Clinton's appeal to traditionalists of one kind or another.

On the issues, you could hardly fit a razor between Clinton and Obama. They argue over who would pull troops out of Iraq most quickly, who would provide the most universal health coverage, who hates George Bush's policies the most, etc. They don't argue over whether to pull troops out of Iraq, provide universal health, etc.

Yet Clinton has a clear lead over Obama among gun-owners, Catholics, weekly churchgoers and the elderly. A lot of the working-class voters going for her are presumably the socially conservative "Reagan Democrats."

Didn't Hillary used to be the bete noire of some of these people?

Also interesting are the responses that suggest that Democrats who consider gender important are tilting toward Clinton, while those who consider race important are tilting away from Obama.

As other observers have noted, Obama seems to have an "Archie Bunker problem."

Let's be clear here: Most of Pennsylvania's traditionalists are not bigoted. But the Archie Bunkers out there appear to dislike the prospect of a woman in the White House less than they dislike the prospect of a black man in the White House.

We'll know in a few hours how the Pennsylvania presidential primary turned out, and we'll do a quick turnaround editorial for the morning's paper. (We'll post it in the blog tonight.)

But here, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal, is a glimpse of the intensity of the TV ad campaigns Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama waged in Pennsylvania in recent days:

-- The two campaigns together have spent around $20 million on TV ads, making it one of the biggest primary ad battles ever.

-- The average daily diet of campaign ads in Harrisburg, the state capital, was 228 ads.

--Ninety-four percent of registered Democrats had seen a TV ad for Obama; 88 percent had seen one for Clinton.

Typical voter comment on the ad blitz: "I'm sick to death of them."

The conventional wisdom is that Clinton will win Pennsylvania, but she needs a convincing win to stay alive. But Democratic consultant Tad Devine, a veteran of six Democratic presidential nominating battles, predicts a win for Obama. See his reasoning here.

Our newspaper counterparts in Mobile, Ala., have gotten a taste of U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks' aggressive style. In an editorial Tuesday, the Press-Register said Dicks' comments about the decision to award the Air Force tanker contract to Northrop Grumman-EADS were over the top.

Alabama, it must be remembered, is in line for 1,500 aerospace jobs should the Northrop-Grumman-EADS contract survive challenges from Boeing and Congress.

There's a new leader in the Boeing political hyperbole contest over the selection of Northrop Grumman-EADS and Mobile for the $40 billion Air Force refueling tanker.

U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., has topped all his outraged fellow Congress members in the states of Washington and Kansas, not to mention CNN's Lou Dobbs....

What did Rep. Dicks say? "Congress has a responsibility to correct one of the worst decisions in modern history."

He didn't say just one of the worst decisions made by Congress, although that alone would have covered a lot of territory. No, he said all of modern history. Presumably that covers wars, pestilence, dictators, assassinations, environmental disasters, economic errors, political gaffes and the University of Alabama's hiring of Mike Price as football coach.

Just in case you didn't get that last dig, Price is the WSU football coach who won a dream job coaching Alabama, only to lose it within weeks after he was caught having fun with a stripper in Florida.

But our Alabama friends probably didn't know that Dicks, in fact, is a former UW linebacker who truly bleeds purple and gold. They should have tried a zinger instead about the Husky gridders' string of losing seasons.

Metro Parks board members Ryan Mello and Victoria Woodards felt they didn't get a fair shake in our editorial last week about faltering public faith in parks district leadership. They plan to submit a guest column this week, but here's an early look at their take:

Over the past two years, the District has been consistently going the extra distance to actively engage citizens in public process. Literally thousands of community members have participated in dialogue with the District about 2005 Bond Improvement projects through advisory and steering committees, charettes, workshops and a host of design meetings.

We wonder why, with that demonstrated commitment to public engagement, skepticism about our intentions exists. After all, many of our bond projects begin the public process with the aid of a steering committee which develops initial ideas intended to spur dialogue during meetings with the broader public.

=> Read more!

The leadership of Tacoma’s black community, which staged a rally Monday to back superintendent candidate Alan Ingram of Oklahoma City, is clearly pressuring the school board to hire a black candidate. A good case can be made that Ingram is the better choice strictly on the terms of his experience and background, but the rally does inject an unmistakable element of identity politics into the situation. The board’s job is to pick the best candidate available regardless of race.

Will the outcome in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary keep Hillary Clinton’s fading chances alive — or put an end to the Democrats’ fractious and damaging nomination battle? (We’ll post this editorial online late this evening.)

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Pierce County budget director Pat Kenney released on Friday a four-page "white paper" on the county's ever-worsening budget woes. It should have been called a "red paper" -- red for alarming, or for red ink.

Kenney called it the county's worst financial crisis in 25 years.

In the simplest terms, here's how bad it is: The county budgeted for a 7 percent increase in general fund revenues in 2008. Kenney says the actual increase could turn out to be zero. The county has a $320 million GF budget this year.

The County Council made up $4 million of the deficit last month by dipping into reserves and other one-time revenues. But now the county has to cut progams and staff by 1.5 percent this year and 3 percent next year.

Department proposals for budget cuts are due to County Executive John Ladenburg next week. Some esssential services - like law enforcement - could be cut less, others more, Kenney said.

Kenney warned that this depleted condition is likely to be the "new normal" for a long time.

Without a major new source of General Fund revenue (e.g. Utility Tax), the concerns outlined in this memo and the massively important 1% property tax limitation (I-747) will likely result in tight budget years for the foreseeable future.

Read on for the full text of Kenney's memo:

=> Read more!

Sound Transit has to decide by mid-July whether a scaled-down Phase II expansion proposal to voters in November, or wait until 2009.

No doubt where the environmental community stands. A coalition of green groups called an Earth Day press conference Tuesday to urge a vote this fall.

Representatives of Environment Washington, the Sierra Club, Futurewise, Fuse Washington and Transportation Choices want an all-transit proposal, as opposed to a massive roads-and-transit package that cratered at the polls last fall.

Among the supporting groups listed in the announcement are Tahoma Audubon Society (of Pierce County) and Tacoma Streetcar. (Editorial comment: Audubon we understand. Why Tacoma's streetcar advocates think why a regional transit system should pay help pay for local-service streetcars eludes us.)

From the announcement:

In Washington State, driving accounts for almost 60% of air pollution and climate change emissions. The environmental community celebrates Earth Day this year by demanding more and better alternatives to driving alone. With skyrocketing gas prices, more people stuck in traffic and the urgent need to slow global warming, we need real transit solutions now.

We will deliver a strong message to the Sound Transit Board that Washingtonians care about real transportation solutions and want to see a great transit package on the ballot this November.

Valoria Loveland, director of the state Department of Agriculture, has announced she will retire as of May 5.

Loveland, a former state senator from the Tri-Cities, has headed up the agriculture department since June 2002.

When I mentioned the news to my colleagues, Pat O'Callahan and Kim Bradford, I pronounced Loveland's first name the way it looks like it should be pronounced. They both quickly corrected me, saying her name is pronounced "Valora," with a silent "i." They should know: Both are former Tri-City Herald reporters.

David Koenig of Federal Way clearly has a grudge against the police. He and his lawyer are making good money by requesting public records from police departments and suing cities and collecting penalties when they fail to respond properly. Yes, he’s a royal pain, but all cities and counties have to do is simply make it a point to understand the law and comply — every time. Plus a pat on the back for the City of Tacoma and Pierce County for scoring well on a state audit of compliance with open records law.

Safe Streets is launching a timely campaign to fight graffitti – but volunteers are needed to make it effective.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Bitter, bitter, bitter.

First Barack Obama said small-town Americans were so bitter about losing their jobs that they wound up clinging to guns and religion. (Such pathetic losers!)

Then some of those small-town Americans got bitter that Obama thought they were bitter.

Hillary Clinton remains bitter that so many Democrats still don't understand that she's entitled to the nomination.

And Democrats have to be bitter that Clinton and Obama are locked in a cage fight while Republicans sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

Now commentators are bitter that ABC's anchors trivialized last Wednesday's debate – and again brought up the "bitter" issue.

A few excerpts from other editorialists:

The Sacramento Bee:

Welcome to the "Jerry Springer Show," presidential campaign edition.

Wednesday’s presidential debate between Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, tells you something about why the media have credibility problems. The questions were set up to demean the candidates and to bait them into small-minded mudslinging.

=> Read more!

I was searching the Internet this week for editorials about an interesting case before the U.S. Supreme Court – Kennedy v. Louisiana – which deals with the constitutionality of imposing the death penalty for the rape of a child. I came across a USA Today article that mentioned nine states had signed on to an amicus curiae brief in support of Louisiana's death penalty for child rape.

Imagine my surprise when I saw that Washington was one of those states.

The other states that signed on are Texas, Alabama, Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Along with Louisiana, these are not the kind of blue-state company Washington usually keeps. And this state's death penalty only applies to the "worst of the worst" – aggravated first-degree murder.

So why did Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna sign on to the brief?

=> Read more!

There are lies, there are damn lies – then there are the malicious deceits purveyed by political partisans in election years.

Like this shameless piece of mendacity from the state Democratic Party:

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Statement on Sam Reed's "Eliminate Choice" Ballot

SEATTLE – In response to Secretary of State Sam Reed's release of rules regarding I-872, Washington State Democratic Party Chairman Dwight Pelz issued the following statement:

"Today, Sam Reed made it official that Washington state has outlawed minor parties. The Libertarian, Green, Independent, and Progressive parties can sell their office furniture and computers, because they will never again see their names on a meaningful ballot in our state. Dishonestly framed under the auspices of promoting choice, Sam Reed's Top Two annihilates voters' right to choose among a wide range of candidates and the ideas they represent.

=> Read more!

Saturday:
The proposed federal shield law deserves passage – not to protect reporters, but to ensure that the public gets news it might otherwise never see.

Sunday:

1. Haitian mud patties exemplify the hunger spreading through undeveloped countries. American ethanol is a part of the problem. Among other things, we should be rethinking biofuels made from crops that would otherwise feed people.

2. South Sounders can stand up to gangs by taking part in an upcoming Safe Streets project: Operation Graffiti Cover-Up. It’s a way for neighborhoods to take back territory that gangs claim with their graffiti.

Monday:
Last we checked Tim Eyman was no expert on traffic safety. So why are some cities allowing him to decide how they should police red-light runners?

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

In one of Congress' more notorious moments, a Southern lawmaker in 1856 took his cane to U.S. Sen. Charles Sumner in the Senate chamber and beat him to a bloody pulp. This happened after Sumner delivered a ferocious speech against slavery; relations between the North and South went downhill from there.

And that's the only precedent I can think of for Allen Yanity's assault last year on his fellow Key Peninsula fire commissioner, Jim Bosch.

This was part of a feud: Bosch and Yanity had been at each other's throats for months. Finally, during a recess last April, Yanity bashed Bosch's head with a coffee mug, splitting his scalp and sending him to the hospital.

Yanity was convicted last week. A lucky guy: The jury decided not to nail him with a felony. He wound up convicted of fourth-degree assault, a gross misdemeanor.

The amazing thing is that both these guys are still on the fire commission. Bosch is trying to have Yanity recalled, and Yanity says he intends to return the favor.

And you thought Hillary and Barack were being too rough on each other.

I spotted this short editorial on the wire and thought News Tribune readers would enjoy it. The writer is someone whose longer pieces occasionally run on our pages.

Buckling up for Baghdad
An editorial by Dale McFeatters
Scripps Howard News Service

The hazards of driving in Baghdad are such that you would think the last thing a harried Iraqi motorist needs is a $12.50 fine for not wearing a seat belt. What with IEDs, suicide bombers, roving militias, carjacking, checkpoint shakedowns and getting run off the road by Blackwater convoys, the driver has enough on his mind.

Surprisingly, however, a campaign by the Iraqi traffic police to enforce the seat-belt law has proved enormously popular with the Iraqi people, perhaps because it seems a small step on the road to normalcy.

“It is part of the healing process of this country and of Baghdad to enforce the law, law by law,” a top traffic commander told The New York Times. Added a taxi driver, “It is a symbol of civilization. Western people in Europe and America have it so we are like them.”

Even our former enemies and now friends are getting into buckling up.

=> Read more!

Times do change. Pierce County telecom entrepreneur Brian "Skip" Haynes, once hated the very idea of Tacoma Power's Click!Network.

Now his growing company, Rainier Connect, is using the utility's fiber-optic network to expand its business and is moving its headquarters to Tacoma.

The irony is not lost on the folks at Tacoma Power, although there was no trace of it in Click's announcement today. The news: Rainier Connect, the 97-year-old,family-owned firm formerly known as Mashel Telecom, has signed to become the fourth private company, or ISP, providing broadband Internet services via cable modem to Click customers.

Rainier Connect has been using the city's fiber-optic network since 2001 to provide phone and data service.

No small irony here. Back in 1996, when the City Council debated whether to allow Tacoma Power to build the network and provide a cable-TV alternative to widely detested cable monopoly Viacom (later TCI, now Comcast), Haynes objected loudly.

(Correction: TCI, not Viacom, was the unpopular cable giant serving Tacoma at the time. As the commenter notes,
TCI CEO Leo Hindery, a Bellarmine grad, showed up to lobby strenuously against the Tacoma Power proposal.)

Haynes authored an oped piece for the TNT arguing that government had no business competing with private telecom companies. But Viacom's reputation for lousy service was so bad that the public clamored for any alternative for cable TV, even if it was Tacoma Power. The council vote was unanimous.

There's no disgrace in Rainier Connect's new hookup with Click!. The company has agilely reached unserved parts of the rural market in Pierce County and earned a reputation for responsive service.

Now Haynes and Rainier Connect are ready to compete with Comcast and the three ISPs that operate over Click's network. And the winners are the Click! customers who have far more telecom alternatives to choose from than most U.S. consumers.

I haven't talked to Haynes lately. But I expect he would admit that he never foresaw the competitive opportunities that Click! ultimately opened up for his business.

Times do change.

I recently discovered a hilarious Web site, www.punditkitchen.com. It's the political version of www.icanhascheezburger.com.

The only thing funnier than spelling-challenged kitties is photos of political big shots with rude captions.

Here's a good one of Hillary.

State Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland, former Tacoma mayor and Pierce County executive, really got P.O.'d today.

Sutherland, a second-term Republican facing a spirited challenge from Eastern Washington Democrat, rancher and environmenalist Peter Goldmark, didn't like the suggestion that as county executive, "the closest he probably came to a tree was a ceremonial planting of one."

In high dudgeon, the Sutherland campaign sent this riposte to the media this morning:

To: Washington Political Reporters
From: Sutherland Campaign

In a year when McCain and Obama are stressing optimism and reaching across party lines, there are still a few who cling to the politics of partisan cheap shots.

Today’s Spokesman-Review reports that “Before becoming lands commissioner, Sutherland was Pierce County’s chief executive ‘where the closest he probably came to a tree was a ceremonial planting of one,’ [State Democratic Chairman Dwight] Pelz said.”

=> Read more!

1. We take a close look at Dino Rossi’s transportation plan. Do the numbers add up?

2. Parks Appreciation Day – a grassroots beautification and cleanup project – deserves the public’s support.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Just came across a nifty letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal today that sticks a fork -- maybe -- in the oft-heard claim that mile for mile, flying is far safer than driving.

Mile-for-mile comparisons lead to statements like one attributed to a top FAA safety official in 2006: If you flew on a U.S. jet once day for a year, it would be 43,000 years before you faced a 50-50 chance of being in a fatal crash. "In other words, the risk is almost zero."

In fact that claim is made in the first of two consecutive letters in today's Journal. The second letter, however, points out the fallacy of that type of comparison. Jets fly so fast and so far that the number of miles is vastly inflated in any comparison used to estimate risk.

The second letter notes that calculating the number of deaths per billion passengers based on one hour of exposure, as University of Oregon researchers did, tells a different story:

The number of deaths in airplane travel is 1,450 per billion versus car travel deaths at 1,200 per billion. A plane can travel approximately 600 miles in an hour, whilde a car can travel only 60 to 75 miles.

If this post seems a little off the reservation, it's because I'm posting from home while recuperating from a hellacious cold. Blame it on the cough syrup.

Candidates would get to indicate their party preference on the state's first Top Two primary ballot on Aug. 19. But the ballots won't show who the parties prefer.

That's the proposal Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed announced today.

Our two cents: Voters who loved the old blanket primary will like it, because they can cast crossover votes up and down the ballot. But Democratic and Republican parties will hate it.

Apparently Reed and state Attorney General Rob McKenna think ballot wording making it clear that the candidates' stated party preferences don't reflect party endorsements will meet the legal test set by the U.S. Supreme Court in February, when it upheld the Top Two primary method.

It will probably take another court case to determine whether they're right. It all depends on whether the parties can demonstrate, after August's election, that voters were confused about who the parties actually wanted to win.

The state's voter guides and local newspaper coverage, plus campaign mailings, may adequately do the job of telling voters which candidates have party support.

Here's the announcement from Reed's office:

=> Read more!

If you're heartily sick of all the feigned outrage over Barack Obama's "bitter" remarks, welcome to the club. Here is the beginning of a pungent response from lefty journalist Nicholas von Hoffman, writing in The Nation:

Bitter? You Should Be!
by Nicholas von Hoffman

Last week Barack Obama, destiny's tot, suggested blue-collar Americans are feeling bitter about their financial condition, which has been on a bit of a decline during the last five, ten, fifteen, twenty years or so. Rival politicians immediately pounced and they've been wailing on him ever since.

How dare Obama suggest people are bitter? Americans are not bitter! Americans are happy, proud, peppy, content and optimistic!

Maybe. But if millions of them are not bitter and/or angry at this point, there is probably something wrong with them.

In his new book, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, Steven Greenhouse of the New York Times writes, "Since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private-sector, non-supervisory jobs) have risen by just 1, after inflation. For male workers, the average hourly wage actually slid by 5 percent since 1979... the nation's economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their workers a bigger piece."

A one percent raise in almost thirty years? Still not bitter?

1. It’s good to see Benedict XVI condemning pedophile priests more forthrightly than the Vatican has done to date; we’d like to see his comments reflected in a change in canon law.

2. The uproar over a Metro Parks task force's work to identify ways for the park district to make money has a lot to do with the park district's recent history. The district's failure to keep the public in the loop and to deliver on its promises have made neighborhood interests wary.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

This has to be a first: The Tacoma School District today gave notice that two school board members will meet at 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Oklahoma City Hilton and at 8 a.m. Thursday at the Oklahoma City Public Schools office to consider superintendent candidate Alan Ingram's qualifications.

Ingram is Oklahoma City schools' chief accountability officer. Board members are visiting his district in part to fulfill a promise they made to scrutinize superintendent candidates more closely. But two board members do not a quorum make, so the public notice of an "executive session" is a bit odd.

We're not usually inclined to fault public bodies for going above and beyond what's required of them by the state's open meetings act. The Tacoma School Board – which also canceled a trip to a Florida conference to meet superintendent candidates over open meetings concerns – is clearly trying to prove that it's learned its lesson about being transparent.

Perhaps school board members could offer some advice to the Metro Parks board, which is feeling the heat this week for not keeping the public in the loop regarding a task force's work to identify possible new ways of generating money for the parks system.

Parks commissioners, like the school board, have baggage. The controversy that erupted three years ago over a Tacoma megachurch's proposal to use Franklin Park left many residents distrustful, as has the park district's failure to deliver a replacement for Titlow pool as promised in a 2005 bond.

But unlike the school board, the parks board doesn't seem to fully appreciate that past missteps engender a greater responsibility to make sure the public is well aware of what the park district is up to and has plenty of opportunities to give input. Look for an editorial on that subject in the coming days.

One of our letter writers was inspired by the Dalai Lama's visit to come up with a musical parody taking digs at Gov. Chris Gregoire.

Here's his effort:

Don’t blame me. You guys put the shot on Sunday’s front page that inspired me. I don’t normally channel musicals, you know. Still, I hope you enjoy it. And well under 250 words to boot!

Hello Dalai!
Well, hello, Dalai! You’re looking swell, Dalai. It’s so nice to see you back ‘round Puget Sound.

I see you like our Gov., Dalai. So may I suggest, Dalai, you take her with you when you go.

See, she spends too much money, Dalai. And it’s not hers, Dalai. But she keeps going, she keeps rolling, she keeps spend-ing strong.

So be a pal, Dalai. Give some peace of mind, Dalai. Please take spendthrift Governor Chris with you when you go!

Thanks-so-much, Dalai! I’ll never forget you for this, Dalai! Dalai-Dalai-Dalai don’t you come back too soon! Oh, Dalai-Dalai-Dalai, I…love…you….

Bill Barker
Shelton

Two attorneys let an apparently innocent man sit in prison for 26 years for the sake of protecting a murderer they'd defended.

Sounds crazy. (You'll see an editorial on the topic shortly).

I asked the chief justice of the Washington Supreme Court, Gerry Alexander, about attorney-client privilege. That's the ethical rule that prevented the two public defenders from disclosing that their client had actually done the murder the other guy was convicted of.

Alexander – an affable, unassuming, glad-to-be-of-help kind of guy – said the two defenders really couldn't have done anything else. If a defendant confides to his attorney that he's going to harm someone, the lawyer can go public. If he confides that he did harm some one, mum's the word:

=> Read more!

Curious about what the Stadium High School Ecology Club created on a $400 budget for the Daffodil Festival Grand Floral Street Parade Saturday? This float is all that's preventing Tacoma schools from being barred from participating in next year's festival. We editorialized last week on the subject and the challenges facing the Daffodil Festival. Click here to read the editorial.

Not surprisingly, given the meager budget, the float wasn't a prize winner, so a photo wasn't included in our Sunday coverage of the event. For a slide show of the floats, click here.

Here it is.

Tim Eyman just broadcast this e-mail account of how he concluded that "more unites us than divides us" and officially joined the Democratic Party on Sunday.

The guy is a genius at staying in the news.

April 14, 2008

RE: King County Democrats newest member: Tim Eyman

Last Thursday, I sent an email to the King County Democratic Party chairwoman and the King County Republican Party chairwoman that I'd be attending both conventions, the GOP's on Saturday at Green River Community College and the Dems' on Sunday at West Seattle High School.

Me going to the Republican convention? Of course. Me going to the Democratic convention? Uh oh.

The King County GOP convention was super fun (I live in Snohomish county and have already been elected a delegate to the state GOP convention in Spokane this May). I paid the $100 fee for a table. Lots of supporters, lots of pictures being taken, warm handshakes, hugs and kisses - what you'd expect. Initiative 985 was enthusiastically embraced: opening of carpool lanes, synchronization of traffic lights, dedication of red light camera money -- I-985's policies were warmly received. Again, totally expected.

What nobody knew or expected was the reaction to me and Initiative 985 at the King County Democrat convention in the heart of Seattle. Based on my numerous high profile run-ins with Democrat politicians, it was certainly reasonable
to assume a not-so-warm reception. That assumption proved to be wrong.

=> Read more!

1. Local governments should tread carefully, but not rule out vehicle taxes to support road projects. Both I-695 and I-776 unwittingly sapped cities’ ability to keep up with basic road work.

2. Tighter controls are needed to prevent the scandalous abuse of government credit cards.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

At the grave risk of bringing my patriotism into question, I urge that the yellow ribbons be taken down.

Not just from the Freedom Bridge. From everything.

What's wrong with yellow ribbons? Here's what's wrong with them: They perpetuate the influence and memory of The Most Annoying Song of the Seventies: Tony Orlando's "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree."

I'm old enough to remember its reign of terror at the top of the charts. It's an unusually vicious ear worm – cloying, crummy and unforgettable. I'd barely purged my brain of it (by frequently humming the "Gilligan's Island" theme) when the Iran hostage crisis erupted and that misery of a tune came into vogue again. On cue, Americans started wearing yellow ribbons to show solidarity with the imprisoned Tehran embassy staff.

Since then there's been no escaping those wretched yellow ribbons whenever Americans have wound up in harm's way.

Must you love yellow ribbons to support the troops and the USA?

If so, the class must stand and recite:

"I pledge allegiance to the yellow ribbon of the United States of Inanity, and to the jingle for which it stands, one nuisance, overplayed, with saccharine and triteness for all."

Had a nice chat this week with Kelly Haughton, the former charter review commissioner who is probably responsible more than anyone else for ranked-choice voting method Pierce County will use in November.

Haughton wasn't happy about another voting change coming our way: The state's first Top Two primary in August. Last month the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the 2004 state initiative calling for the Top Two system – which allows the top two primary votegetters to advance the general election even if they represent the same party.

Haughton is a Libertarian; RCV elections are supposedly more favorable to independents and minor-party candidates. But Top Two virtually wipes out their hopes of making it to the general election.

In 2000, Haughton noted, 60 Libertarian candidates around the state made reached the November ballot. This year, probably zilch. Well, maybe one. Thanks to RCV voting, Tacoma City Councilman Mike Lonergan, running for county executive, might be the only independent on the November ballot anywhere in the state.

Mike Lonergan said he was going to run for Pierce County executive as an independent. But the Tacoma City Council member said today he's going to try to get on the ballot as a Republican.

Lonergan sent a message to delegates to the GOP's county convention Saturday saying he will seek their support. Under local party rules, any candidate who gets at least 40 percent of the vote may carry the Republican name.

Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney is expected to be the top vote getter. If Lonergan doesn't hit the 40 percent mark, he can still run as an independent.

County Democrats have more liberal rules (natch) and will allow up to three candidates to carry the party banner in races for county executive and council. Assessor and sheriff positions will also be on the ballot, but those races are non-partisan. All of these county offices except for prosecutor will be decided in November in the county's first ranked-choice voting election.

A reader took strong exception to an anonymous online comment we "reverse-published" on our letters page today. Here's the comment, the reader's complaint, and my response:

You can bet if I had a neighbor with an aggressive pit bull they would definitely get a "spiked" T-bone steak thrown across their fence some night . . . an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The reader:

One further point: as you say, it is conventional on the web for those posting to blogs and chat rooms to do it pseudonymously, and I suppose it would discourage participation in the TNT's online forum if that convention were flouted. (Whether or not the world would somehow be poorer because fewer people participated is a separate question we need not consider here.)

When comments posted to the online forum are published on the editorial page of the print edition, however, they have moved from the web to a different medium with its own conventions. One of these, and an excellent one, is that everyone who participates in the public discussion must be identified. If web posters' comments are to be published on the editorial page, then they ought to be identified by their true names just as those who write letters to the editor are. That's the custom of the printed medium, quaint as it no doubt may be, and if we're going to respect some customs let's respect all of them.

Either that, or start publishing anonymous letters to the editor. Not every would-be dog poisoner has the luxury of access to the internet, you know, and if what we want is to encourage the articulation of vile and odious ideas, why limit ourselves only to those of the web-savvy?

Publication of comments over the writer's true name allows everyone else to evaluate the credibility and possible biases of the writer, and discourages people from expressing their most intemperate and discreditable because they know that their personal reputations will be affected by what they say. There may be an argument for the value of the unbridled expression that anonymity encourages, but there is also one for the value of the civility and self-suppression of unworthy impulses that identifying oneself encourages.

I continue to question the judgment of the editor who chose to publish even a hypothetical threat to poison a neighbor's pet. Would that editor also choose to publish hypothetical threats based on poster's objections to having neighbors of a different race? And why put dog-poisoning ideas into the heads of the many whackos who inhabit the world? Life is tough enough without that kind of help.

Our response:

Thanks for your comments. I recognize the apparent contradiction here.

Our main reason for “reverse publishing” anonymous online comments is that our print and and online news products are rapidly evolving into an integrated, 24-hour production. With the increasing prominence of the Web, that is a matter of survival for the TNT and most large newspapers. So we need to reflect part of our online presence in the print publication as well and help drive readers to our website.

As the reader rep noted, posting comments anonymously is a web convention. But we try to make sure that they don’t cross the line into objectionable remarks that don’t deserve to be printed. Deciding what is too objectionable is a judgment call, of course. In this case, we think the reader’s comment about throwing a “spiked” steak over the fence reflected the strong feelings that many readers have about dangerous dogs. It’s not likely the letter would plant the idea in the mind of anyone who wouldn’t otherwise think of it.

I agree the difference between appropriate and objectionable can be a fine line and that not everyone will see it the same way we do. But we do try to turn up the editorial radar and be careful when we reverse-publish those online comments.

David Seago
Editorial page editor
The News Tribune

The first thing audience members noticed as they showed up for Leonard Pitts Jr.'s talk at the University of Puget Sound Thursday night was the big security contingent of Tacoma police officers and campus security.

It seemed a little odd to have our purses searched as we entered Kilworth Chapel. But it turns out there was good reason: Several e-mail death threats had been made against Pitts.

UPS media relations manager Melissa Rohlfs confirmed Friday that both Pitts and UPS had received the e-mails, which threatened his life if he spoke at the university. UPS notified the police so that extra protection could be arranged and is working with the police and the FBI. Additional security was also arranged for Pitts at the the undisclosed location where he stayed in Tacoma.

Pitts is no stranger to threats. A column last summer – criticizing whites who claim that black-on-white crime stories are not as widely reported in the media as white-on-black crimes – resulted in many death threats. And his home address and phone number were posted on a white supremacist Web site.

The UPS audience gasped upon hearing the columnist mention the most recent e-mail threats. Pitts thanked campus security and the police officers for their presence. The good news, he joked, "is this is one of the safest rooms in Puget Sound."

=> Read more!

I gave Pierce County Republican Party chairman Deryl McCarty a hard time this morning about the party convention Saturday booked at the Sharon McGavick Center at Clover Park Technical College.

If you're old enough, you'll remember that McGavick, former CPTC president, was the widow of Don McGavick. a big man in Pierce County Democratic politics back in the day. And McGavick herself is a confirmed Democrat.

But McCarty deftly dodged my jab:

Since I may older than are you, I do know that the McGavick family in Tacoma
was D. They did send a branch to Seattle, one of the original brothers, who
was an R, from whence comes Mike! (of Safeco and US Senate candidate fame).
In any case, R or D, people contribute to their community and are recognized
with building memorials and other honorifics. Hopefully, our presence
honors Sharon's contributions and dedication.

The man can dance.

Each Wednesday, columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. answers readers’ questions in an online chat on www.miamiherald.com. Here are excerpts from this week’s chat:

Q: I have this terrible fear that if Barack Obama is elected as president, some fool will assassinate him before or after he takes office. What is your opinion?
Pitts: I have the same fear, but I think the bottom line is that you can’t live in fear. Living in fear is an oxymoron.

Q: Shelby Steele has some interesting ideas regarding Barack Obama and white guilt in “A Bound Man.” Thoughts?

=> Read more!

Those of you who aren't so privileged deserve a taste of what it's like to be among Tim Eyman's e-mail recipients.

The following cc'd missive arrived yesterday, addressed to "John Ladenburg, Pierce County Executive, Terry Lee, Shawn Bunney, Calvin Going, Roger Bush, Tim Farrel, Barbara Gelman, & Dick Muri, Pierce County Council, Bill Baarsma, Tacoma Mayor, Spiro Manthou, Tacoma Deputy Mayor, Rick Talbert, Julie Anderson, Marilyn Strickland, Connie Ladenburg, Mike Lonergan, & Lauren Walker, Tacoma City Council":

The Tacoma News Tribune will report this week that you're plotting to take away our $30 tabs and the citizens' right to vote.

We've been researching the level of support our statewide initiatives have enjoyed among the voters of Pierce County. It turns out that the voters there are extremely supportive of the policies and principles contained in our taxpayer protection initiatives.

I'll skip over his immense detail about how the voters like cheap car tabs. Then:

I want to know the following:

• Who amongst you will sponsor/co-sponsor/support the ordinance that tries to unilaterally increase vehicle fees without a vote of the people?

• Who amongst you will oppose any increase without a vote of the people?

• When will you bring it up for a public hearing (time/date/location)? I want to be notified because I want to come and testify.

• When will your Council vote on it?

You may choose to disregard your constituents' right to have the final say on this tax increase. You may choose to ignore their ballot box decisions on I-695, I-722, I-747, I-776, I-900, and last year's I-960 and Proposition 1. There's nothing anyone can do to stop you. But the voters in Pierce County have a right to know when you plan to take away their $30 tabs. They deserve to know that you are trying to take away their right to vote. And I'm going to do my dead level best to make sure the voters of Pierce County know about your upcoming tax increase every step of the way.

I ask each of you to respond to the above questions. That way in my upcoming press releases and emails, I can target only the anti-taxpayer, anti-voter-approval representatives on your councils.

Sincerely, Tim Eyman

It's the attitude that fascinates. From the imperious tone, you'd think Washington had acquired a fourth branch of government: Tim Eyman.

Today's editorial looks at the challenges facing the Daffodil Festival as it marks its 75th anniversary – everything from declining donations and volunteers to the disappearance of the daffodil fields that originally inspired the festival's birth in 1933.

Huge crowds once flocked to downtown Tacoma to watch the Grand Floral Street Parade (last year's Daffodil court float is pictured), which also travels to Puyallup, Sumner and Orting. In recent years, attendance in Tacoma has been about what it is in Orting. And Tacoma schools didn't even enter a float in 2006 or 2007; this year's float is a $400 effort by the Stadium High School Ecology Club.

If the students hadn't come through, Tacoma schools would have been barred from electing princesses and competing for the 2009 scholarships given out to the Daffodil court.

So what can be done to breathe new life into the venerable festival? Any great ideas out there? We'd enjoy hearing them, either here or in the Comments on the editorial.

The protests aimed at the Olympic Torch are aimed a deserving target: China and its repressive record on human-rights. But actually blocking the torch relay hurts the wrong people.

The Clover Park School Board took the advice of its search consultant and declded not to release the names of semifinalists for its superintendent position. That’s the traditional view, but Tacoma has shown that more openness doesn’t necessarily hurt the search process.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

As we all know, the Children's Museum of Tacoma hit a wall last month in its bid to locate a new museum on the Foss Waterway.

Executive Director Tanya Andrews reports that they've gotten up, dusted themselves off and launched another site search. A note on that and other news from Andrews:

The Museum has formed our site search committee, and I’m thrilled that John Folsom has agreed to head the effort. Other members include Brad Cheney, Bill Evans, Mike Hickey and Stuart Young. We hope to have our search criteria revised by the end of May, at which point we’d love to share our results with you and the community. We’re getting lots of ideas for possible homes, and I can’t wait to have some definitive criteria to match against the suggestions.

(That search committee is a strong lineup: John Folsom, president of the insurance firm Brown & Brown, is an indefatigable civic leader. He's still in the midst of co-chairing, with wife Buzz, a Goodwill Industries capital campaign. Brad Cheney does some real estate development and heads the Ben B. Cheney Foundation. Bill Evans is a former Tacoma city councilman and small business owner. Mike Hickey is a partner in Neil Walter Co. And Stuart Young is a principal at the BCRA architecture firm.)

Andrews is also involved in local Early Learning efforts. She further reports:

=> Read more!

State Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, may be a Democrat, but he’s still gonna get a pat on the back at a luncheon next week from a pro-business group called Enterprise Washington.

From an oped piece the group submitted, I learned that Kilmer gets business brownie points for helping the state maintain “a vibrant and productive business climate.” The article says:

Senator Kilmer made sure that economic development and business success were factored into bill discussions. He worked diligently for better workforce training programs, for fair taxation and to reduce the regulatory burden in Washington State.

Well, when Kilmer’s not in session, he works for the Economic Development Board for Tacoma and Pierce County, so it figures that he would be attuned to business concerns.

I turned down the oped because it mainly seemed aimed at calling attention to the work of Enterprise Washington and a project called GROW Washington, or Growing Roots for Our Workforce. Here’s the skinny on GROW Washington:

It's a web-based information resource that makes it easy for companies and their employees to learn about candidates, both incumbents and challengers, and the issues that impact their business. The site will soon keep track of each state lawmaker's voting record on business issues; right now that information is available for officials at the federal level. GROW also provides information on polling locations, voter registration, and contact information and offers a way to instantly send a lawmaker a personal letter.

In other words, if Joe Businessman or Bill Bluecollar is thinking about writing a check to a legislator’s campaign, he can check the GROW website and find out if he has a business-friendly voting record.

Nothing wrong with that. It’s "voter education" with a business spin.

One way to tell how big a political cheese you are is whether U.S. Rep. Norm "Earmarks" Dicks knows how to say your name.

Minor embarrassment fell upon Metro Parks Commissioner Ryan Mello and Tacoma City Councilman Jake Fey Monday when Dicks introduced the local dignitaries on hand for Gov. Chris Gregoire's campaign kickoff event in Tacoma.

Dicks called Mello "Mee-lo" and Fey "Fay," causing titters in the audience. Fey is pronounced "fie," and Mello is, well, "mellow." My informant notes that the congressman had no trouble handling state Rep. Jeannie Darneille's moniker.

Memo to staff: Norm needs phonetic spelling on the cue cards.

There have been a lot of political "firsts" in Calvin Goings' campaign for Pierce County executive – announcing super-early was just one – but here's a new one.

Goings' wife, Amy, is holding an "Amy's Club" brunch May 3 to recognize his women supporters. From her email announcement:

With just seven months left until Election Day 2008, we are now working harder than ever to make sure that all voters hear Calvin's positive
vision of making Pierce County a leader in early learning opportunities,
environmental sustainability, and community safety.

I am doing my part as well, forming "Amy's Club," and thanking the hundreds of women who have endorsed Calvin and who are contributing to his campaign. I am especially proud that all of Pierce County's Democratic women legislators have endorsed Calvin for Executive.

The "donations welcome" event will be held at the Goings' home on Vickery Road East. The invitation also includes my first sighting of what appears to be the county councilman's campaign slogan: "Calvin Goings: Your 1st Choice for a New Direction."

We’re happy to plug Tacoma School Board member Kim Golding's latest project: soliciting gifts of books for the sixth-grade library at the South End’s Stewart Middle School.

The Sunrise Rotary Club is working with Stewart students to design and stock a reading space designed for sixth graders – “like Starbucks, but with books!” according to student body president Maria Abando.

The club donated $5,800 and obtained a $2,500 grant from the school district to create the new space and help renovate the old library. Golding has launched a book donation drive at Multicare, where she works as a respiratory therapist.

New and “gently used” age-appropriate books can be dropped off at the school, 5010 S. Pacific Ave. An online wish list has been created at Amazon.com; type in“Stewart Middle School” after following the wish-list links. Books ordered online will be sent to the school.

For more info, email booksforstewart@yahoo.com.

Washington's economic fundamentals are strong enough that some think the state might be able to ride out the national downturn if people would stop talking about being in tough times.

That's a fast-vanishing might. As FDR might have said, we're getting done in by fear itself.

Harbingers of regional recession have been hitting Pierce County government for months. The county has seen various recession-sensitive revenue streams – including development fees, excise taxes – take a nosedive.

The first quarter of 2008 has been genuinely alarming. County budget director Pat Kenney, who folllows these things, says the county's general-fund revenues grew 6.9 percent in 2006 over 2005. In 2007, they grew 7.5 percent over 2006. This year, Kenney says, there's "almost no growth at all."

Zero percent is a pretty big comedown from 7.5 percent.

"That's really unusual for us in the first three months of the year," he said.

"What I see now is a sharp downturn," Kenney says. "I don't know how long it will last and I suspect nobody else does either."

Now that I've told you the bad news, could we all just shut up about it?

Michael Ramirez, a syndicated cartoonist whose work regularly appears in The News Tribune, is among the Pulitzer Prize winners announced today. We ran his cartoons on Sunday and Monday, and in honor of his big win we'll run another one tomorrow.

Ramirez, who also won a Pulitzer in 1994, works for Investor's Business Daily and is syndicated in more than 400 newspapers by Copley News Service.

The Pulitzer judges cited Ramirez for the "provocative" nature of his cartoons. That they are – sometimes bordering on mean. (We don't tend to run those.)

Ramirez is one of the few cartoonists whose work leans conservative. His drawing is very fine and detailed, so the only place we can run his cartoons is in the lead spot on the main editorial page; they need to run large enough to see what's going on.

Even if you disagree with what he says in his cartoons, his artistry can't be disputed.

For a complete list of Pulitzer winners (including Bob Dylan!),
click here.

The South Sound’s military families will surely welcome word that the Army will end its 15-month tours of duty in Iraq, shifting back to 12-month tours and providing at least 12 months stateside between return tours. But the repeated combat tours continue to imposes serious strain on the Army — a prospect that should prompted a more concerted effort to reduce the U.S. role in Iraq.

It’s simply outrageous that the Bush administration is backing a legal doctrine called pre-emption, which would shield drugmakers from lawsuits even if they hid damaging information about their products from the public and the FDA.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

The sight of Multicare's new boiler plant under construction on South I Street across from Wright Park had me wondering how it's going to look when finished. Here's a preview:

The project stirred community concern last year; critics feared the building's sheer mass and four emissions towers would have an unsightly visual impact on the park and neighborhood.

After a round of community meetings, Multicare's architects revised plans for the plant's exterior to make it less industrial-looking. Multicare spokesman Todd Kelley sent along these drawings showing the final "look."

Kelley comments:

This design was the result of a series of meetings we had with some neighbors that represented groups and concerned individuals. We were able to build consensus for a design. The front will be clear glass, allowing passers-by to view the inner workings and the exterior will be inscribed with the names of the scientists that discovered many of the forces at work in the building.

Erik Bjornson, a downtown Tacoma attorney and frequent poster on local urban-scene blogs, has raised alarm about the possibility of the downtown Rhodes Building being used, at least in part, for low-income housing.

Bjornsen implies the Tacoma Housing Authority, which is buying the building from the state, is pulling a bait-and-switch because THA officials initially said they had no plans for providing residential housing in the building.

I asked THA Director Michael Mirra for an update:

Dear David:
Thanks for your email.

THA is seeking to buy the Rhodes Building and its two related structures, the Market Street Building and the parking garage, from the State. We would do this for four main reasons:
1. The property will be our future administrative home;
2. We need the cash flow to support our mission in the face of declining federal revenues;
3. In answer to your question, yes, we will examine if we could add housing to the property. We do not know which structure would be most suitable for this purpose. I think it is not likely to be the Rhodes Building. Perhaps construction on top of the parking garage would be possible and would make the most sense. Nor do we know what the income mix for any such housing would be. In general, we favor mixed income communities. The downtown needs housing for a wide variety of incomes, especially work force housing. If we do this, we would seek all the applicable city permits and engage in the various public processes that would apply to such a proposal.
4. We think we can do a good job preserving the historic nature of the Rhodes Building and in general, sprucing up that portion of downtown.

I asked Mirra what is meant by "workforce housing."

=> Read more!

Speaking of RCV voting, I'd like to note for the record that the TNT editorial board has made no decisions on how it will endorse candidates in Pierce County's first RCV Nov. 4.

I'm told that an RCV advocate at a recent forum quoted me as saying the TNT would rank its top three choices in each race.

We might do that. We might not. We haven't decided. Voters are perfectly free to rank only their top choice, their top two choices, or their top three choices. Voting for only one candidate does not, one RCV expert tells me, hurt that candidate's chances. It won't work to rank your favored candidate first, second and third, either.

In the county executive's race, there will be at least four candidates – Democrats Calvin Goings and Pat McCarthy, Republican Shawn Bunney and independent Mike Lonergan.

I sort of hate having to say which of these candidates we think is the worst in the field, even though all are credible candidates. It does complicate the endorsement process. We're used to endorsing one Republican and one Democrat in the primary, then backing one in the general. RCV means having to weigh the relative merits of all the candidates in each race – if we rank more than one in each race.

Comments welcome.

Several RCV tidbits:

A legal view

Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy passes on an informal legal assessment of what the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Washington's Top Two primary means for the county's RCV election:

In my opinion, the Supreme Court's decision dismissing the facial challenge to I-872 does not impact the Ranked Choice Voting procedure placed in the County Charter by voters in 2006. As you know, the Prosecutor's Office advised the Charter Review Commission that adopting RCV was within the power of a charter county under Art. XI, Sec. 4 of the Washington Constitution, and we continue to adhere to that view.

The recent Grange decision resurrects the Top 2 primary, whereas RCV eliminates primaries for county offices except judges and prosecuting attorney. Under Charter 4.15(2), political parties have authority to control party label on the RCV ballot, whereas (according to the Attorney General's Office) under I-872 approved party label will not appear on the ballots. These are distinct but lawful differences between the two election processes.

Douglas W. Vanscoy
Chief Civil Deputy Prosecutor

"Collaborative campaigning?"

On his blog, RCV backer Kelly Haughton has been posting comments from county executive candidates on how RCV might affect their campaigning. Councilman Calvin Goings says he's asking voters whose top choice is someone else to make him their second or third choice. Goings also talks about "collaborative campaigning" with Democratic rival Pat McCarthy.

Rival Mike Lonergan, a Tacoma City Council member running as an independent, dismisses that strategy. He doesn't want to be anybody's second choice, Lonergan says.

RCV vetoed in Vermont

Fairvote.org director Rob Richie, whose group backs RCV and other voting alternatives, dropped by recently to update us on developments around the country.

The Vermont Legislature approved a bill that would make the state's election for the U.S. House of Representatives an instant-runoff vote - same thing as RCV.
Vermont has two U.S. senators and one representative.

Update: Gov. Jim Douglas vetoed the measure Friday, Richie reports. The city of Burlington already uses IRV for its municipal elections.

Here's Richie's lament:

=> Read more!

In an oped piece on our letters page today, Krystal Kyer of the Tahoma Audubon Society contends that there is no conclusive research evidence one way or the other on the environmental impact of geoduck farming.

(You can find her article online by going to opinion link of the TNT home page.)

She cites a review of the scientific literature by Washington Sea Grant, a federally funded marine science agency. Here's the link if you want to see the source material yourself.

See our latest editorial on Pierce County's geoduck controversy here.

Today must be Friday. While our morning editorial board meetings are typically spent discussing the day's more serious news, today's hot topic was bugs. More specifically, pill bugs.

Don't know what a pill bug is? Neither did we. If you're from these parts, you are more likely to call it a potato bug, another common name for the woodlouse – those little critters that curl into a ball if attacked.

This seemingly random discussion was sparked by the Nose, who noted how the proposed Emerald City Center in Seattle looks remarkably like the plate-armored bugs.

A quick check of Wikipedia turned up this gem: A Harvard dialect study that surveyed 10,000 people to find out what they called these bugs.

If you're from Texas, you might know them as doodlebugs. "Sow bug" seems pretty popular in the Great Lakes region. And there are some smarty-pants on the East Coast who call the crustaceans by their real name.

But the hands-down winner? Roly-poly. Score one for my colleagues, Pat O'Callahan and Cheryl Tucker, both of whom poked their first roly-polys somewhere other than the Northwest. (Dave and I, who grew up in Tacoma and Portland respectively, know the creature by its rightful name, potato bug).

Yep, this is the kind of stuff that sometimes occupies the minds of the people who put together the opinion pages. So much for the Ivory Tower.

UPDATE: More research turns up the fact that the critter isn't a bug; it's a crustacean – and an edible one at that. Here's a recipe for a nice woodlouse sauce. If anyone tries it, please let us know how it was.

Collect a quantity of the finest wood-lice to be found (no difficult task, as they swarm under the bark of every rotten tree), and drop them into boiling water, which will kill them instantly, but not turn them red, as might be expected. At the same time put into a saucepan a quarter of a pound of fresh butter, a teaspoonful of flour, a small glass of water, a little milk, some pepper and salt, and place it on the stove. As soon as the sauce is thick, take it off and put in the wood-lice. This is an excellent sauce for fish.

Also, they make great pets. Click here for care and feeding instructions.

Saturday:

When kids are afraid to come to school, that’s a big problem. Bethel school officials are taking fears about gangs and racial tensions at Bethel High School so seriously that they’re taking advice from reformed gang members on improving school security. That’s smart.

Sunday:

Sound Transit’s planners are shifting toward more emphasis on acquiring right of way for a future light-rail connection to Tacoma — which we’e glad to see. Tacoma streetcar advocates have a good cause, but they shouldn’t be looking to regional transit to fund it — a plan they’ve been shopping around to neighborhood councils.

The bust of the Barragan meth smuggling gang is a huge boost for anti-meth efforts in Western Washington. Good sustained teamwork by law enforcement agencies.

Monday:

Lakewood is considering a ban on pit bulls in the wake of recent incidents. If city officials decide a breed-specific ban isn’t the way to go, Auburn has a dangerous-dog ordinance that offers a good model to follow.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

To write today's editorial on the Case Inlet geoduck fight, we put in a lot of time trying to unravel the dispute. The only thing that seems certain is the situation is a mess, and the legal uncertainties involved don't benefit anyone.

Judging from our mailbag this week, the controversy is bound to continue. We published an op-ed from Taylor Shellfish earlier this week that blasted Pierce County for its "about face" on the Case Inlet farm.

The column generated a good deal of response. Krystal Kyer, the conservation coordinator with Tahoma Audubon, differed with Bill Taylor's statement that "Considerable research has shown that the environmental issues raised by these opponents are unfounded and that geoduck farming does not harm the environment."

Kyer, who is a member of the state Shellfish Aquaculture Regulatory Committee, said a review of the literature shows there is little to no peer-reviewed research on geoduck aquaculture issue, including whether or geoduck aquaculture helps or harms the environment. You can see more of her comments on the Tahoma Aububon's blog here. (Look for an op-ed by Kyer in Sunday's paper).

We also heard from Richard Wooster, president of the Case Inlet Shoreline Association, who likened geoduck farms to "feedlots with 83 full grown beef cattle per acre." He advocates a moratorium on new project approvals until more study on the effects of geoduck farming can be done.

County Council Chairman Terry Lee told me yesterday that he checked into a moratorium last year before the council adopted interim regulations intended to limit geoduck farming to rural areas. He was told by legal staff that a moratorium is not possible.

I'm used to seeing all kinds of odd things in my email inbox, but this one today was a first:

Prayer Request
Amazing things can happen when people come into agreement. It's a principle directly from God's Word, and Benny Hinn Ministries is dedicated to praying in unity with people, just like you, who desire to see the Holy Spirit's miracle-working power unleashed.

When you send your prayer requests, they are instantly sent to our Mighty Warrior Intercessors Army, a worldwide group of tens of thousands of faithful believers.

It is my prayer right now that you see God's supernatural power at work in your life. Please complete the request form so we can join with you and intercede for your specific need.

Your First Name:
Your Last Name:
Country:
Your Email Address:
Prayer Request is for:
The Prayer Need Is:
Prayer Details:

Good bless you as you do so

.

If I responded, I suspect a contribution request would follow shortly.

Pierce County Auditor Pat McCarthy recently showed me a draft copy of a mailer that will be used to prepare voters for the county's first ranked-choice voting election in November.

"Ranked Choice Voting. A new part of your voting experience" is the slogan, devised with the help of former adman Ron Klein, head of the county's communications shop.

McCarthy says voters will see two ballots for the general election: one will be the RCV ballot for the county executive and council races; the other will be a conventional ballot for all the others, including the presidential race. The RCV ballot will allow voters to rank their top three choices in each race.

At this point, McCarthy says, she expects the RCV ballot will not show which candidates are endorsed by their respective parties. It will show, however, which party the candidate "prefers." (See clarifications from McCarthy below).

Another new wrinkle to expect: On election night, the auditor's office will release only the raw vote totals for the RCV contests; the computer logorithm that carries out the process of determining a winner won't be run until the end of election week.

That may not mean a week of suspense, however. McCarthy said San Francisco's experience with RCV elections shows that the candidate with the most first-place votes on election night has been the eventual winner every time. Each election has its own dynamics, of course, so that's not guaranteed to be the case in Pierce County's RCV contests.

Pat McCarthy adds:

A couple points of clarification. Our discussion revolved around the differences between the top two primary and our RCV election. The RCV ballot will clearly identify candidates who have been given approval to use the party name. The top-two primary ballot and subsequent traditional general election ballot will reflect the candidate’s party preference.

Your understanding of the results reporting is correct; the first unofficial algorithm (not logarithm) will be run by the end of election week. Additional unofficial algorithms will be run periodically until final certification.

What I stated in regards to the San Francisco RCV experience, was that in every case the front runner in the first pass prevailed in the final analysis. In clarification, the first pass does not mean the totals on election night. The first pass matches the raw totals at the time the algorithm is run. Periodic algorithm reports provide a snapshot in time. They are unofficial. Everything is unofficial until certification.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions. It’s complicated!

Thanks, Pat. Sorry for the errors.

The following is a bonus column from Leonard Pitts Jr. on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

By Leonard Pitts Jr.
Martin Luther King stood on a motel balcony facing a row of rundown buildings near downtown Memphis. The door to Room 306 was open behind him. Inside, his best friend, Ralph Abernathy, was putting on cologne, getting ready to go out. In the parking lot below, his aides, Andrew Young, Jesse Jackson and James Orange among them, waited for him. Musician Ben Branch was there, too. "Ben," he said, "make sure you play 'Precious Lord,’ 'Take My Hand’ at the meeting tonight. Sing it real pretty." Branch promised he would.
At first, Abernathy thought the popping sound was a firecracker. Then he saw King, sprawled on the balcony floor, clutching at his throat where the bullet had ripped it open. Abernathy ran to him. King’s mouth quivered. "I got a message from his eyes," Abernathy would later say.
This was 40 years ago, April 4, 1968, a night when tragedy spiraled into violence across the country. But also, a night when tragedy was elevated into greatness and grace.

=> Read more!

Sound Transit, which normally chugs at choo-choo speed, is ripping along like a bullet train at the moment.

When the agency's executive board met this morning, the staff passed around a two-page draft list of projects to be funded if – if – the board decides to put a new package on the November ballot.

This would be a downsized, cheaper, transit-only successor to the Roads and Transit measure the region's voters drop-kicked into the Pacific Ocean last fall.

During today's meeting, it became clear that one of the projects occupying a hopeful place in the draft – a $149.4 million extension of the Sounder line from Lakewood to Dupont – was already dead.

Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg, a board member and former chairman, said too many of the commuters now catching Sound Transit's express buses from DuPont are from Olympia. Until Thurston County joins the Sound Transit district, Ladenburg and other South Sound board members don't want to spend a fortune providing Olympians with train service they aren't helping subsidize.

That's part of a larger shift in priorities that's occurred this week.

=> Read more!

A Republican operative in Olympia – who shall, as protocol requires, remain nameless – calls to our attention an article headlined "The Clean Energy Scam," in the latest issue of Time magazine.

My correspondent notes:

The law of unintended consequences in action. (Or how government biofuel mandates are actually increasing global warming and, by raising food prices, exacerbating hunger.)
And, yes, Washington state enacted its own biofuel mandate in 2006, per Gov. Gregoire request legislation (ESSB 6508).
A fascinating read.

Yes, I replied. And I recall that state Sen. Janea Holmquist, R-Moses Lake, a friend of Washington agriculture, championed that biofuel mandate back in 2006. And Republican members of Congress in the Midwest have been ardent boosters of federal subsidies for ethanol because, natch, corn growers are among their constituents.

Sorry, Deep Throat. I couldn't resist. Yes, a lot of the biofuels hype doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Likewise with cap-and-trade carbon-credit schemes. They have to be devised very carefully to prevent gaming the system and to get the desired result of reducing carbon emissions.

Does anybody have any update on Washington's biofuels mandate and how it's working out? Any legislative reports on that?

You know those "invisible fences" used to train dogs to stay in their yards? It looks somebody's invented something similar to drive off unwanted loiterers.

Kid you not. This Baltimore Sun article I spotted on the news wires says an English inventor has come up with a sure-fire teen repellent.

From that impulse to help rid his local market of loiterers came his invention, “the Mosquito,” an electronic contraption that emits a high-pitched pulsating sound that can mostly be heard only by teens and people in their early to mid-20s. It works because an age-related hearing loss called presbycusis reduces the ability to hear high-pitched sounds after the late 20s. The device is mostly inaudible to older adults, young children and pets.

In the United Kingdom, the Mosquito has become the next big thing in crowd and crime control — and it may one day be coming to a teen hangout near you.

I'm waiting for the pocket version myself.

I've been wanting to go up to Seattle to see the Gates of Paradise and Roman Art from the Louvre shows at Seattle Art Museum. But the idea of dealing with crowds at the exhibits deterred me from going on a weekend, and I didn't want to pay for pricey parking during the week.

The solution? Take a day off midweek and ride the Sound Transit 590 express bus from the Tacoma Dome station.

It worked out perfectly, although the Dome station parking garage was so full at 8:30 a.m. that I had to park on the roof level – in one of the very few remaining spaces. The cost was $3 each way (you'll need exact change), and the trip from the Dome to 4th and Seneca took only 40 minutes. The walk to SAM was only two blocks. I got there half an hour before opening, so I walked up to Pike Place Market and wandered around.

I caught the bus home at 2nd and University. It couldn't have been easier.

SAM's Gates of Paradise show ends this weekend, but the Roman art show continues through May 11. It's definitely worth seeing. If you go, be sure to pick up a free audio guide at the entrance. A highlight: UW Coach Ty Willingham speculating on how many hours in the weight room a mere mortal would need to get the hard-body physique of the god Jupiter.

Columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. is coming to the University of Puget Sound next Thursday at 8 p.m. I have my ticket to go and am looking forward to actually hearing the person whose column I handle on The News Tribune opinion pages.

If you don't get to hear him in person you might want to visit with him online. Every Wednesday from 10 to 11 a.m., Pitts answers readers’ questions in an online chat on www.miamiherald.com.

Here are excerpts from this week’s chat:

Question: May be out of the blue ... but what did you think of the media’s blatant shunning of Ron Paul? I personally did not think he was presidential material myself, but I thought that with such a big following the lack of coverage that man got was very unfair. It makes you wonder, who picks our president these days?
Pitts: You may have a point. There did seem to be a lot of Ron Paul bumper stickers out there for a guy who never got any face time on the networks. That said, he lost me when his connection to some virulently racist fliers (a decade or so ago) was revealed.

Q: Do you feel Hillary Clinton should withdraw from the race for the presidency? If she stays until the end will it hurt the Democrats chances of capturing the White House?

=> Read more!

Why would the nonprofit good-government group Citizens Against Government Waste emerge as a vocal defender of Airbus-Northrup Grumman team that bested Boeing in the Air Force tanker competition?

Because there's money in it for CAGW, of course. This Washington Post article
details how the political fight over the controversial contract award is making strange bedfellows.

In a separate item, the Post notes:

Boeing has been getting support from such conservative nonprofit groups as the Center for Security Policy, led by former assistant defense secretary Frank Gaffney, and Frontiers of Freedom, which claims conservative lobbyist Grover Norquist as its director.

By the way, a good place to research such advocacy groups is SourceWatch, an independent organization that provides info on the money and political agendas behind them.

The fight over whether a 5-year shorelines permit for a lucrative geoduck farm on Case Inlet reveals a host of legal uncertainties about regulating such operations not only in Pierce County but elsewhere in Puget Sound. County officials have angered Taylor Shellfish, the state’s most prominent shellfish grower by ruling that Taylor’s permit has expired, but in truth they don’t have much to go by. With so much money at stake and many shoreline property owners strongly opposed to geoduck farming, it won’t be easy to work out the way forward.

The success of the School of The Arts’ robotics teams shows there’s a lot more to the Tacoma School District’s innovative high school than tubas and toes shoes.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Oh, boy - here's a bad idea: allowing airline passengers to use cellphones and PDAs like Blackberrys in flight.

Imagine being trapped shoulder-to-shoulder with a businessman talking to the home office or worse, a teenager shouting to a buddy somewhere in the continental U.S., "Trisha, guess where I am!"

Aaaiiieee!

But that's the pitch in this unsolicited oped piece that arrrived this morning from a representative of the U.S. cellphone industry. It seems that European airlines already allow in-flight use of cellphones. But U.S. regulators still ban it.

A new aviation agreement between the U.S. and Europe means more European airlines will be serving U.S. markets. The cellphone guy argues that the U.S. ban on in-flight cellphone use will put American airlines at a competitive disadvantage.

I'd love to be able to use my laptop on the plane. But please, God, don't unleash the loud talkers. I think that might qualify as torture under the Geneva conventions.

Read on to see the cellphone-industry argument:

=> Read more!

Hillary may run into some more sniper fire for comparing herself yesterday to Sylvester Stallone's character in Rocky:

"Let me tell you something, when it comes to finishing a fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit," Clinton told a Pennsylvania union gathering.

For her, not the best Hollywood allusion. In the movie, Rocky indeed goes the distance. He also loses – but not before inflicting enough damage on frontrunner Apollo Creed to put the tenderized champ in a wheelchair.

Oh yes, another inconvenient detail: Apollo was a black guy.

And one more: Rocky is rooting for McCain.

Environmentally-minded Seattle may soon be the nation’s first city to require grocery, drug and convenience stores to charge customers a 20-cent “green fee” for using disposable plastic and paper bags.

The city also plans to ban polystyrene food containers. Environmental groups hailed the plan, of course. From their statement today:

Revenue generated by the fee would be used for education and outreach about recycling and waste reduction, including free cloth bags in the first year. Seattle would also be the first to require the use of “compostable–only” alternatives to polystyrene food containers, which would be phased in July 1, 2010.

Foam-Free Seattle, a grassroots citizens’ group formed to advocate for plastics reduction in Seattle, began working on this effort in the fall of 2006 . . .

Plastic bags don’t biodegrade, instead they photodegrade—breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces blow around on our beaches and end up in our creeks, in Puget Sound and out into the Pacific Ocean where they accumulate in a plastic soup in the middle of the huge North Pacific Gyre.

Chime in here and let us know if you think Tacoma and other Pierce County cities ought to follow Seattle’s lead.

My wife already makes it a practice to use cloth bags to haul our groceries home. I confess that I ask for paper grocery bags now and then because I use them to line the kitchen trash can. Am I retrograde?

The Bush administration’s proposal for overhauling regulation of the markets leaves a lot to be desired; ending the Fed’s close monitoring and oversight of bank activities is a bad idea. This matters to ordinary Americans because the safety of a lot of pensions and savings are ultimately at stake.

Our page one story today on the market for contraband tobacco in state prisons prompts chief editorial writer Pat O’Callahan to muse on the addictiveness of tobacco. If tobacco were being introduced as a new product today, would it be allowed?

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Gene Foster, a member of the group fighting plans to convert the North Shore Golf Course in Northeast Tacoma to 800-plus homes, sends this word:

SaveNETacoma commissioned the Wild Fish Conservancy to conduct a survey of the lower reach of Joe's Creek to determine the existence of steelhead or other salmonid species. This survey was completed on March 12. No steelhead were found, but fingerling coho salmon were discovered indicating a prior presence of spawners. This is exciting news as it promises the recovery of a coho run providing Joe's Creek undergoes no further ecological upsets.

A copy of the Conservancy's report (PDF file) is attached.

This situation poses a potential conflict. The headwaters of Joe's Creek are located on the North Shore Golf Course within the City of Tacoma. And as you know, they are currently reviewing an applications to install high density housing on the golf course. The remaining two-mile reach of Joe's Creek flows through Federal Way to Dumas Bay. Federal Way is attempting to restore the last mile of Joe's Creek and recover its salmonid population at considerable cost. This effort hinges on the ecological balance of the creek being maintained and it could be seriously damaged by upstream developments.

Given the recent news of our dwindling salmon runs and the simmering golf course conflict, this issue could be interesting to your readers.

The City of Tacoma and the developer, Soundbuilt Homes, are still locked in an unresolved legal battle over Soundbuilt's permit application.

Former Tacoma mayor Brian Ebersole thinks the City Council should have openly debated the offer City Manager Eric Anderson put before Russell Investments executives Monday.

Here's Ebersole's message, and the responses I received from Anderson and Mayor Bill Baarsma: (See our editorial Wednesday morning).

Ebersole:

Hi David, May I suggest a line of thought for an editorial? As much as I want the Russell Company in Tacoma, I was really bothered by today's story.
Evidently, the city manager has offered 65 million dollars to help keep the
company here. That is a BIG policy decision.

Either he polled the City Council in private beforehand which is doing the public's buisness behind closed doors, or he didn't poll the council which is usurping the role of the elected councilmembers to make public policy. Unbelieveable.There should have been many, many public hearings and much open discussion on this action.

Some would say invest in 12 smaller home- grown firms such as Brown and Haley and Divita. Some{such as me} would say invest a bit in homeless shelters to keep the transients off the sidewalks downtown. 65 million, even if its bet on the
come, is worth a public discussion! And the public discussion should have
happened BEFORE the announcement of the offer of massive amounts of public
money.Not to mention the creation of an International Financial Services
District. Another hugh policy decision that should be made by the council in
public.Now the discussion is biased.
Brian Ebersole

Seago

Bill, Eric,
We assume that the city manager wouldn’t have made the offers of city tax breaks to the Russell Group without the implicit approval of the council. But Brian Ebersole raises a fair question: Is this the sort of thing the council should have discussed and decided publicly before making the pitch? did the council in effect make a decision in private that legally should have been made in public session?

What answer would you give Ebersole or any other citizen who raises this issue?

Baarsma:

Dave: The assumption is correct. There was tacit approval albeit no formal vote or affirmation in detail. It was more of a show and tell with feedback. I believe that everyone is so concerned about the company leaving that whatever Eric came up was ok. The city attorney has assured Anderson that there was no collective decision made.

We had an after the fact discussion today at the Committee of the Whole meeting. I guess the answer here is the stakes are so high that the city had to come up with the best and most reasonable proposal—so in the end, whatever the decision might be—we did our best. Also, with this form of government the only staff support for such a proposal rests solely with the city manager.
Bill Baarsma

Anderson:

To answer your question, as I prepared the proposal for the International Financial Services Area and Russell, I wanted a general sense of the Council’s comfort level of the direction I was heading. I spoke with individual Council Members about the need to eliminate the local B & O tax on international financial services. I did not ask for a vote, but asked that if I were heading in a direction they opposed, that they indicate so to me. I did not ask them to confer with each other concerning this.

Based upon my belief that it was an acceptable strategy, I told Russell that I was prepared to propose the elimination and that, in my judgment as City Manager, it would pass. I included it in the presentation.

Seago to Ebersole:

Brian,
I note that the city's proposal says all of the city's proposed actions are subject to the approval of the City Council.I agree there is the appearance of implicit approval by the council, but I'm not sure that a decision has been made in the manner that would be a violation of the open meetings law.
All of this is far from a done deal.
Dave

Final comment by Ebersole:

Dave, I agree with your analysis. My point is that [1]the city council,not the city manager, should be making this policy decision and[2]they should be doing it in public with public imput. The city manager is acting as though saving the presence of the Russell Company is the City's top priority. That is a policy decision for the Council, not the Manager. He is to carry out the
will of the council, not determine their direction.

What if he announced saving shelter services of Martin Luther King Housing Development was the top priority? Or providing more low income housing? .Or fixing potholes.Or providing more public money for low income city reidents to get higher education? Why bother with elections for council members.If the Executive Council wants to give away private money,swell. If they want to give away the citizens' money, go to the citizens'representatives. Everyone else has to. It's messy. It's humbling. It'ss not business-like, but it's the way democracy is supposed to work.

Can't resist the chance to scoop newsroom blogger Niki Sullivan. Here's the gov's announcement that she's vetoing sections 1 and 8 of the toxic toys bill that's been the subject of so much enviro vs. industry lobbying lately.

I can't say the governor's move distresses us greatly, although we editorialized in favor of signing the whole bill. It looks to me like she decided there was a fair risk of regulatory overkill and wants more work on the concerns raised by toymakers.

The issue of toxic toys will be back in the legislature next year, I'm sure. I also notice that the word "veto" appears nowhere in the governor's news release about the bill-signing. Very artful.

I knew Roads & Transit did badly at the polls last November, but I didn't know how badly it did just about everywhere.

Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl and two of her lieutenants were in this morning to calm us down about Pierce County not getting a rail connection to the airport in the new ballot measure the agency is contemplating.

The last measure – Roads & Transit, AKA Prop 1 – failed in King, Pierce and Snohomish counties by a rather convincing 56 percent to 44 percent margin. But open this map of the region's precincts to get the full story. (The yellow, orange and red areas voted no.)

You might think Seattle would have gone for all the transit in Prop 1. Nope. You might think Eastsiders trapped on 405 every day might have liked the highway improvements. Nope – not many, anyway.

In the entire region, Earl said, only three cities approved Roads & Transit: Mercer Island, Lakewood (figure that one out) and Woodway. Woodway? I just looked it up; it's a tiny, wealthy enclave just south of Edmonds. I come from Snohomish County, but I'd never heard of it.

Post-election polling suggests that the region's old transit-vs.-roads did a lot to kill the package. Roads & Transit offered both highways and mass transit (hence its name), but lots of pro-transit voters didn't want money spent on highways, and vice versa. Mutual assured destruction: The two camps hated each other's priorities more than they liked their own.

Then there was the price tag. The poll suggests that two-thirds of the voters didn't know how much Roads & Transit cost. They just knew it cost too much.

A posting by our Word on the Street blogger, Scott Fontaine, alerted us to a regulatory situation that may shut down the Commencement Bay Coffee Co. at 25th and South Jefferson. That's an alarming prospect given the role in the community the coffeehouse has made for itself. There’s a lively discussion of the issue on Exit 133.

After reading a letter by owner Keith Prichard to the Hillside Development Council (there's a link to it on Exit 133), I was concerned that he might be getting a raw deal from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency. The PSCAA had fined him $8,730 for roasting coffee without required emission-control equipment. He can’t afford the fine and says the action “will push Commencement Bay Coffee into bankruptcy.”

He goes on:

The PSCAA letterhead proclaims “Working Together for Clean Air,” but I haven’t experienced any “Working Together.”

As it often turns out, there is another side to this story. I talked with Jim Nolan, PSCAA’s director of compliance, on Tuesday. He said his agency told Prichard in June 2006 that his large roaster violated clean air rules and needed emission controls to incinerate particulates that are a byproduct of roasting. It “was suggested” that Prichard pursue one of three alternatives: Only use his smaller roaster, which was exempt from controls; invest in emission controls for his large roaster; or contract out the roasting.

Prichard opted for the second alternative, Nolan said. But when the PSCAA returned in January 2007, nothing had changed. That’s when the agency called for an immediate cessation of roasting and fined Prichard $13,878 for the violation. It reduced the fine to $8,730 “because he convinced us that we had overcalculated the economic benefit,” Nolan says. Prichard has been contracting out his roasting for the last 14 months.

It could sound like big government beating up on a little guy, but Nolan says it’s a matter of fairness. Why should one small roaster get a financial advantage over another by violating clean air rules?

Prichard had the right to appeal the fine, but did not do so. He also has made no effort to work with the PSCAA, which Nolan says is more interested in compliance than in shutting down businesses.

Nolan says Prichard should call him, that PSCAA is always interested in trying to "work out a better arrangement."

Nolan's number is 206-689-4053.

Tacoma City Manager Eric Anderson and other city leaders made a solid – and, we hope, persuasive – pitch to the Russell Investment Group to keep the firm in Tacoma. Aiming for development even beyond Russell was smart strategy.

We like the new College Bound scholarships the state has launched to help more low-income students afford college if they keep their grades up.

Candidates can run, but they can't hide, thanks to the Internet. Anything a candidate has ever said or done (in public, at least) may be revealed with the click of a mouse.

An interesting Washington Post article looks at the effect the Internet is having on the presidential race – from viral revelations of Mitt Romney's flip-flops on abortion and gay rights to Ron Paul's astounding fund-raising success.

It's also played a big role in the rise of Barack Obama, according to the article by Jose Antonio Vargas:

Without the Web, the relatively unknown Obama would have been unable to mount such a strong challenge to the more prominent (Hillary) Clinton. Nearly 60 percent of the $193 million that Obama has raised so far in his campaign – about $112 million – came from online contributions, with 90 percent of them in amounts of $100 or less.

"What we're watching is an evolution away from Washington's control, away from the power that big money and big donors used to have a monopoly on," says Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat and former Senate majority leader.

Adds Richard Viguerie, often called the "funding father" of the modern conservative movement for his effective use of direct mail: "The establishment, the power structure, the Karl Roves, are losing control of the process. There's a new center of power developing."

And I don't see anything wrong with that.