Seattle Times, Editorials: It's time to end the pingpong match over the viaduct tunnel project

The Seattle Times takes a swing at calling on the mayor to recognize that the political game is over.

The city, state and county have haggled long enough over the deep-bore tunnel to replace the aging and dangerous Alaskan Way Viaduct. At some point, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn has to concede he lost this debate. The time to march forward is now.
. . .
At some point, the mayor has to concede he lost this debate. The time to march forward, and live up to his campaign rhetoric, is now.

Editorials | It's time to end the pingpong match over the viaduct tunnel project | Seattle Times Newspaper

The short answer is that he can't choose to stop. He must keep going through the motions until his supporters let him off the hook. The problem for Mayor Mike McGinn is that they never will. Opposition to the tunnel for the majority of his supporters is stronger than their support for him. That is the truth he needs to embrace, and maybe he has.

This is a no-win situation. He won election by a thin margin by agreeing to not stand in the way, but he got into position to win by opposing the tunnel. If he stops his opposition he stands to lose his base, if he obstructs he loses his majority support from last November's election.

It is a lose-lose proposition.
But wait, it could get worse for the mayor. He is managing to create opposition to him personally by focusing on the actions and motives of others.
This is a fundimental attribution error, or Actor-observer bias, pick your favorite. The problem is wrongly attributed to the person rather than the subject.

Coming out of this "debate" over how the State will pay for the State's highway will people leave their opposition attached to the project, or has the mayor made the opposition about him?

It is one thing to lose a debate in your first year, but quite another to be ineffectual and ignored for another three.
On subjects where he might find common ground he makes it difficult for the people he opposes to overcome their dislike of him.
The short answer: Mike McGinn needs to stop acting like a jackass.
I just don't think he knows how.

Andy Grove: We must rebuild structure to create U.S. jobs

Tribal knowledge is not a commodity, it is a core competency.

As we give away what we know and then borrow money to buy back what we have given away in the form of manufactured products we should not be surprised at the state of the Anerican economy.

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman recently encapsulated this view in a piece called "Start-Ups, Not Bailouts." His argument: Let tired old companies that do commodity manufacturing die if they have to. If Washington, D.C., really wants to create jobs, he wrote, it should back startups.

Friedman is wrong. Startups are a wonderful thing, but they cannot by themselves increase tech employment. Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.

The scaling process is no longer happening in the U.S. And as long as that's the case, plowing capital into young companies that build their factories elsewhere will continue to yield a bad return in terms of American jobs.
(read the whole thing, please, here: Business & Technology | We must rebuild structure to create U.S. jobs | Seattle Times Newspaper

Jeremy posted this on Facebook, I am pushing it along.

Nellie Goodhue School, also, RSA: Crisis of Capitalism

There is something disarming and somewhat pleasing about watching a cartoon, even if it is digging at the nature of the global financial crisis. To a great extent, on America's birthday, I think it is fitting that we have a little Marxist cake to go with the 3 decades of Capitalism's frosting.

To further the sugar/frosting metaphor, we should all look at the fat and empty American life to see if we are happy, or at least living a sustainable life. The short answer is too often "no" but we look for ways to mitigate the bad things and take steps toward individual happiness (whatever that is for you). One of the reasons that the answer is "no" is that somebody is making a lot of money off of us for their benefit, and they don't give a ratsass if we become miserable in the process.

Stick together everybody.

I hope you will watch this 11 minute and 10 second video from www.theRSA.org. They have a Youtube.com www.theRSA.org channel with this, and other videos.



I am not about to adopt the Lesser Seattle philosophy, but I will expect that when I vote for parks and sidewalks that they actually show up in existing neighborhoods, and not in some housing development for the benefit of a billionaire.

While we are here:
Two blocks away I have 26 plots of urban blight. This gem used to be a mothballed Seattle Puble School called the Nellie Goodhue School.

1946: Opened by Shoreline School 
District No. 412 as Shoreline 
Health and Guidance Center  
1954: Annexed into Seattle School 
District on July 1; renamed 
Nellie Goodhueon 
August 13  
1954–57: Operated as annex to 
Northgate School  
1957–61: Operated as independent 
school  
1961: Closed in June as a classroom 
facility  
1961–: Used for North (Area) 
Guidance Center/North 
Region or Region I Student 
Services  
Present: Northend Annex 

www.seattleschools.org/area/historybook/goodhue.pdf.

"Present" on the timeline ended, and was sold two years ago to a housing developer.

Urban blight sounds bad until you know what the alternatives were for the site.

The responsible school official listed for this determination is Ronald J English. English was recently the center of another questionable environmental skirmish in the same Haller Lake residential neighborhood when he was involved with the proposed sale of a Seattle School District building - the former Nellie Goodhue School - located at Meridian Ave N and Roosevelt Way N. The school district initial determination would have opened the residential neighborhood to an onslaught of trucks because of a "determination" that it was zoned for a warehouse. The Haller Lake Community Club sued and the property has now been sold to be converted into 26 single family homes.
Majority Rules blog

To understand what having a warehouse and lots of truck traffic would mean you should know that there are more rainwater ditches than sidewalks here, more post WWII houses turning over in generations to young families that have small children, to an area with remarkably few stop signs.
In 1954 when seattle annexed this land it was on condition that Seattle provide sidewalks. Some 65 years later it was being offered a warehouse and truck traffic.
Commerce calls on our unelected officials

Application Number(s): 3004747 and 3005091

I'll tie this together, I swear.
Capitalism isn't everything.
State Authoritarianism isn't the answer.
Sometimes you have to band together, as the Haller Lake Community Club did.
A vacant lot could be worse if left to the worst combination of Capitalism and Authoritarianism.
Lastly, I might join one of these groups of people that are looking out for each other, because nobody else is.

Happy Birthday to you, America!