Oppression for a Cause

This is what happens when a county (or city) permitting department is taken over by overzealous environmentalists. King County has been run so long by the same group of political gangsters that permitting has gone from bad to about the worst it can get.

When you go in for building permits from King County, you are not working with people that have any sense of customer service and certainly no accountability. You are trapped in their Byzantine system and forced to acquire from their monopoly a necessary input prior to constructing your home. The staffers in these offices are not interested in economic development and especially not interested in helping families. Their reviews of you permitting applications are based almost exclusively on the supposed “environmental impact” of your planned construction. Safety, sound planning, and all the rest have little to do with it now.

Environmental issues, within reason, should be considered as part of the permitting process. Nobody wants to see a river rerouted or every tree in sight ripped down. Nor do we want to see poisons dumped into salmon spawning areas or a complete disregard for water run-off and erosion. But, the county’s environmental concerns have gone way beyond that. These days, staffers go bird watching on a property and charge an hourly rate to do so that is well over $100.

It shows an increasing degree of government based on animosity towards citizens. Not just a disregard for property rights, but the fundamental objection to the entire concept of property rights. As with most things in King County and Seattle, politicians and bureaucrats seem to actually believe that your money is not really yours, and that they can and should use their positions of power and as gatekeepers to siphon as much wealth from you as possible. They are not likely to give you a permit, but will charge thousands of dollars in the process, and later happily tax you for the propert that you cannot use when permits are denied.

“Progressivism,” as it is expressed in the Northwest, has very little connection to it’s past. It has lost any interest in actually helping people, except those that can be made completely dependent on government. The rest, workers and people in the middle class, are viewed with disdain, seen as the source of “the problem,” an unlimited source of extorted funds, and a large group in need of behavior modification.

Some balance is desperately needed. But, the Seattle Borg continues to vote for their oppressors. The Borg remind me of convicts who have lived so long in prison that they describe themselves as fully “institutionalized” and actually seek to avoid their release. Freedom and responsibility scares them.

Even still, I have to believe that something will eventually break the back of the Borg. I don’t know what it will be. Perhaps the multiple new tax proposals for projects such as Sims’ plan to give everyone a bus, and Nickels’ “bridging the gap” with the lie that transportation money is not available, even though it is clearly in the budget but city’s abundant tax revenues have been deliberately moved away from transportation projects. The gas tax was raised astronomically as a supposed "final fix." Now we see that politicians are calling on more money for activities that any reasonable person would think surely must be within the existing budget.

Perhaps they will finally go too far. Well, it’s something to hope for anyway.

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Chilling

Malvo on his senior accomplice in the Washington DC area sniper campaign:

Muhammad introduced Malvo to the Nation of Islam and spoke to him about race and socioeconomic disparities. "The white man is the devil," Malvo said, summing up Muhammad's thinking.

Those that were in the Washington DC area that summer, regardless of race, may not think they are devils, but they do remember living in hell.

Those that have read the SPS definition of racism may not see the word "devil," but they might sense a similar attitude behind the fancy wording. One has to wonder about the resulting climate in the schools.

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Nickels "Bridging the Gap" With Lies

Mayor Nickels just launched a program supposedly designed to fix the $500 million backlog in road maintenance:

The mayor's package will eliminate the current $500 million backlog in transportation maintenance projects. If approved, projects the city would fund include:

• Installing or replacing 80 pedestrian signals annually
• Improving or constructing sidewalks at 60 schools
• Rebuilding 400 lane miles of Seattle roadway
• Doubling the amount dedicated for road resurfacing
• Repairing or rebuilding seismically vulnerable bridges
• Completing Seattle's urban trail network
• Replacing 17,000 street name signs
• Removing graffiti from traffic signs within 48 hours
• Increasing street sweeping in neighborhood business districts

I guess Nickels got tired of the bumpy ride in his gas guzzling limos. To smooth out his ride, Nickels proposes new anti-business, anti-commuter and anti-property-owner taxes to pay for this work:

The mayor's 2006 Transportation Initiative proposes to raise $65 million in the first year through a property tax levy, a commercial parking fee, and a business transportation tax.

The levy would cost the owner of a median-valued Seattle home about $195 the first year.

The commercial parking fee would levy 10 percent fee on motorists using commercial parking lots, and generate approximately $13 million annually. The business transportation tax would levy a $25 fee for every full time equivalent employee, and generate approximately $5.5 million dollar annually.

The city has faced declining dedicated transportation funds over the past 35 years. Because of court decisions, citizen initiatives, and the state's funding formula, dedicated transportation revenue has fallen to $13.1 million this year, from $37.5 million in 1995.

Declining transportation funds? Hardly. The City has diverted transportation funds to things like the Office of Sustainability and Environment. The table below compares the City’s operating budget for 2000 to 2006. Still, even just within the operating budget, transportation expenditures have grown.



Please note that this is just the operating budget, or "sub-budget," which shows only how Seattle city government spends the tax dollars it collects. Actual revenues and expenditures are in the billions, and includes federal and state dollars contributed to projects the city conveniantly keeps off the operating budget. You wont find declining funds spent on transportation when looking at the total budget either. The City's total spending in 2000 on transportation was $121 million. In 2006, it is already budged to be $180 million, before the new taxes!

Even within the operating budget, transportation funds could have grown by more had the city not diverted revenue growth into things like supporting art, which was 13% of the budget in 2000 and is now 17% of the budget. If the 2006 budget for artsy fartsy were held at 13% of revenues, there would be an additional $26 million available for transportation projects this year.

Building and maintaining roads is a basic function of government and the reason we already pay a variety of taxes to the city. Moreover, we pay large taxes on automobiles to pay for a light rail system that will hardly make a dent in the transportation mess we have. That money could have given us first class roads and easily alleviated the congestion and confused mess we have now. Because the Mayor and the rest of city government are so addicted to ever growing revenues and their pet projects, transportation gets the short end of the stick. City government suffers from an extreme case of mission drift.

Don't fall for it, Seattle. This is a false crisis. City government should find the money needed for road work in its existing budget.

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Competition: Good for Workers

Google has come to town and raised the bar for the treatment and pay of Microsoft employees.

This could have been happening for Boeing workers. But, mistress Chris made sure it didn’t. When Airbus showed interest in locating facilities in Washington State, she announced that they were not welcome.

This shows what really happens in the unholy alliance between government, industry, and labor. Gregiore was working with Boeing management. Boeing management did not want Airbus in the state, balancing out their power and competing for employees.

Labor bosses, of course, went right along with it. One has to wonder if they are really so stupid as to give up the opportunity to raise the wages of the rank and file, or if they are just that corrupt. I suspect it’s a little of both.

You can look south to see what the long term effects will be on any industry in which government chooses looses and winners. This sort of triangle of corruption is exactly what keeps Mexico from employing more of its own citizens. Government, monopolies, and labor bosses, conspire to maintain their power, wealth, and control. Competition is killed, so is innovation, and fewer people are employed and at lower wages.

Cantwell and Murray opted not to support building an ineffective wall. Good for them. Understanding the formula for power from their own state, they aren't calling on Mexico to change either.

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Stalin Would Be Proud

While dysfunction reaches epidemic proportions in Seattle Public Schools, one small but successful program will be killed.

Thurgood Marshall Elementary has shared a challenge with schools all over Seattle and the country: Test scores were falling among African-American boys.

Six years ago, the school decided "to take charge and say we're going to do something about it," Principal Winifred Todd said.

The school's innovative response was to divide boys and girls in most of their classes. Discipline problems dropped because kids were less likely to show off, and teachers could try different strategies for each gender. Test scores shot up, said district Education Director Pauline Hill.

Too much of a threat, I guess.

Bureaucrats, idiot school board members, and Caprice “future time orientation” Hollins, ought not have anything to do with it. Let parents decide which school they want their kids to go to. The decision then becomes quite easy: close the empty schools.

If that were done, I suspect we’d find burgeoning demand for Thurgood Marshall Elementary school.

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Caprice Hollins, Angry Anti-Whitey

After reading the definition of racism on the web site of Seattle Public Schools (and watching Caprice Hollins' video on the Seattle Channel web site), I've had the image of Howard Stern's movie stuck in my head: "kill, kill, kill, da white people" .... An official, such as Caprice Hollins, Director of Equity and Race Relations for SPS, who invokes that image is probably not doing much that is constructive.

Caprice Hollins seems primarily interested in creating division. (Women Studies is particularly focused on the language of division and victimhood.) She is half white and half black, which on the surface would seem to allow her to unify people, bridge the divide (real or imagined), and help blacks and whites understand each other. But, it seems pretty evident that her background primarily left her angry at white people. As she describes, her white grandparents rejected her, which would leave me angry too! One can hardly blame her.

I have no problem with the actions and efforts of people in the black community to help themselves, heal wounds, and deal with hurt that results from a horrible history (slavery) and - let's face it - the racism they must still experience on occasion even today. If there is some anger and anti-white feeling is expressed among the black community, I can hardly blame them. Calling on more resources, and even set-aside spots in government contracts and hiring preferences, seem reasonable to me, given the history.

The problem, however, is that Caprice’s anger and divisiveness has no business being sponsored by government. And, her anger and hatred is palpable in the definitions of racism she provides on the Seattle Public School Districts web page. Definition after definition focuses on whites as brutish patriarchal oppressors of victims in various racial identity groups. Moreover, in her video, she describes the entire SPS as if it were some sort of conspiracy orchastrated by David Duke to create systemic racism against all these supposed victim groups. Yes, even the whites in ultra-liberal Seattle are somehow part of this grand conspiracy.

For example, she says:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites).

Perhaps Caprice should visit the web site called iAbolish. This is the web site of an organization fighting contemporary slavery. Much of this slavery is in Africa, where black Africans enslave other black Africans. Why? Because some groups in Africa believe they are superior to other groups. I'm not sure where whitey figures into that, except that various organizations that presumably include at least some whites have helped to free some of these enslaved people.

Then, Caprice goes deeply into making racism charges against every feature of Western Culture she can identify. For example, racism can be seen in:

Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers.

She started out pretty good, identifying unfair stereotyping as racism. But, then seems to loose control. "Future time orientation"? And, the thinly veiled swipe at capitalism and individual liberty is so obviouisly unrelated to racism that it hardly needs to be addressed.

The last place these sorts of bizarre and elastic concepts of racism should be taught is in the public school system. Imagine that, telling kids that “future time orientation” is a form of racism, but then trying to convince them that they should prepare for their future by attending school and applying themselves for future gain. A special office dedicated to meeting the educational needs of black students seems like a good idea to me; however, Caprice isn’t filling that need.

On top of that, black boys are suffering the most in public schools. The anti-male ideology Caprice learned in “Women Studies” doesn’t offer those kids much hope. She's got plenty of criticism for black men, as well. If you watch her video, you will hear her criticize black men for, supposedly, prefering lighter skin women like her. Looks to me like she should look in the mirror to find a "superiority complex."

Having such absurd definitions of racism provide a clear sign of poor judgment on the part of Caprice Hollins. She's plenty smart, but not very savy and she'll keep steppin' in it. I doubt she will be around long, even in a bureaucracy as screwed up as SPS. In the meantime, I hope school administrators who are less driven by anger and strange ideology contain the amount of damage she can do.

The path to success in education involves an obsession with "future time orientation." That's just so obvious that it's hard to imagine anybody taken seriously who would suggest otherwise. Even in Seattle.

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Don't Look So As Not to See

Little surprise here, as yet another study proclaims an “epidemic” of domestic violence. There are so many people feeding at that trough now that one can hardly expect all of these “experts” to find anything but increasing domestic violence. Why, that would be as unimaginable as, say, Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment raising doubts about whether anything they do matters, much less whether global warming actually exists.

Bias is shown in the choice of what to study. It’s politically correct to study violence in heterosexual coupling and, of course, to find it in epidemic proportions. Against women, that is, and perpetrated by men.

It’s sort of like the old question; does a tree that falls in the woods make a sound when there is nobody there to hear it? Does an epidemic exist when there is nobody there to study it? For that matter, does an epidemic exist if there is nobody around to receive money to study it?

What is an epidemic anyway? Does this “epidemic” mean that domestic violence is worse now than it used to be? And, if so, what changed? The general feminization of culture and society, and reconstruction of the American family that has clearly occurred, has actually made “patriarchal control and oppression” worse? Does that mean women were actually better off in the 1950's?

Well, enough of asking the questions of a sentient being. (And, Jonah Goldberg, you should stop exercising such critical judgment as well!) There is nobody there to answer these questions; at least no “experts” that would risk funding and acceptance among the cultural Gestapo. Really, the choice of what is studied is not even interesting any more. It’s all too predictable.

What is interesting about this study, however, is how it was conducted. The "problem" with so many studies about domestic violence in the past is that they have too often surveyed and asked the same questions of both women and men. The usual pronouncement after all of these studies has been the headline grabbing report of out-of-control “violence against women.” That’s the one that attracts the attention and the dollars.

(The trick to finding high incidence, by the way, is to mix everyday emotional stresses that any two people living in close quarters would experience with actual physical violence and report on the combination as domestic violence. Then, ask women surveyed if they have ever in their life experienced this elastic definition of abuse. Practically all of these studies are very careful not to draw a distinction between actual physical abuse and emotional discord. And, you can get an extra nudge towards making females the majority of victims simply by avoiding the scientific approach to correcting for response bias - in other words, structure your questions according to the responses desired and, for God's sake, don't let it slip that men are less likely to admit being victims than women. You can find a bunch of well known statistical biases here that most of the DV surveyers seem to go out of there way to incorporate. You know, science and statistics are all part of the patriachal conspiracy, and so on.)

But, anyone that cared to look deeper would find that these same studies found similar rates of violence against men, perpetrated by female domestic partners. Not only that, some of the worse perpetrators are lesbians. Men’s and father’s rights groups, concerned about the institutionalized abuse of the basic civil rights of their constituents as well as the general anti-father attitude of our society, did just that. They just can't seem to keep their mouths shut about it and continue to point out the rather obvious fact that the topic was hijacked by feminists with a gender-political axe to grind. And, that's a problem for the DV establishment.

The ideologically inspired "experts" found a solution to this inconvenience, however. They simply leave men out of the survey.

Among a random sample of 3,429 adult female members of Group Health ....

That way, you find violence (remember, everything ranging from physical abuse to disagreement over what to have for dinner equals violence) and you only find it perpetrated against the people surveyed: women. The victims.

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A Whole Office

Gotta love this quote in the Seattle Times article:

"We're a city in which the stakes are pretty high," said Steve Nicholas, who directs Seattle's Office of Sustainability and Environment. He said a 50 percent reduction in North Cascades snowpack has strained the city's ability to manage drinking-water supplies.

"We have to worry about sea-level rise. We may be in store for wetter, longer winters and our stormwater-drainage system is already a challenge," he said.

The Seattle silly government has an Office of Sustainability and Environment? More tax dollars going towards promoting the lunatic fringe.

This Nicholas cat, though, is pretty good at disconnecting cause from effect. I love the practical connection he makes between global warming hysteria and storm-water drainage. And, of course, the arbitrary concern over a "50 percent reduction in North Cascades snowpack." What's that relative to, anyhow? Is snow pack 50% less than it was in the last Ice Age?

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Stop Exhaling!

Well, it's come down to bare knuckles. The Silly of Seattle, I mean city, is spending our tax dollars to sue for the EPA to control carbon dioxide emissions.

There was once controversy over whether someone ever inhaled. Now, the issue is all about your natural habit of exhaling carbon dioxide. I've been trying to exhale less, but I keep turning blue and passing out. I guess the good thing about that, from the perspective of Mayor Nipples and the Seattle Silly Council, is that people who are unconscious think less.

Time to cross one more thing off the short list of things the Seattle silly government says you can do. (Remember, we are converting from a list of “can’t do” to a restricted list of “can do” because the former list simply got too long).

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Islamic Extremism

Plans in the works 


So much for freedom 


Modest ambitions 


Voices of reason 


Nice guy 


Slay, behead, butcher, demolition, extermination .... 


Ugly photos 

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You Get What You Reward

Here is definitive proof that financially rewarding divorce promotes divorce.

Think it can't happen in America? Think again.

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Thanks Kim!

Kim Wells, Executive Director of the Corporate Alliance to End Domestic Violence, was kind enough to comment on a previous posting about a survey her organization conducted. Moreover, she then followed up with a link to the results of her organization’s survey.

Thanks, Kim, for following up. I think the various sides of this debate are too willing to demonize each other. (You can probably find some of that on this blog, so I’m making no claims to being perfect in that regard!). It’s good to see someone active in this area willing to engage in a discussion.

I posted additional questions for Kim regarding her organization’s survey in the comments section of the original post. I’m optimistic she will respond.

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Stubborn Death March

Newspaper circulation continues to decline in Seattle even though the population is increasing. The newspapers themselves refuse to face the reason for their decline: bad product.

In an amazing display of marketing prowess, both the PI and the Times recently doubled their newstand price in the face of declining demand. That sort of denial of reality is also reflected in the continuing obsession with printing nothing more than conventional wisdom and a liberal echo chamber of columnists and editorials.

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Sleepy Newspaper Wakes Up, Smells Coffee

The Seattle Times had an astonishing editorial in response to Nick Licata's (of the Seattle Silly Council) proposal to add $1 billion in new taxes and spending to promote the “arts” while also providing a few dollars to remodel Key Arena for the Sonics.

The Seattle Times asks:

Since when has it been the taxpayers' responsibility to improve the wages of workers in the art world? Never mind the reason those taxes were grudgingly accepted by restaurant owners and hotel operators was because of sunset provisions. Once in place, try to remove any tax.

Could the Times, or at least one member of its editorial staff, be waking up to the idiocy of Seattle government? Let’ hope so. Maybe they will then ask the obvious next question: Why are Seattle taxpayers spending 1% of every infrastructure project on "art"? In a city with more than its share of billionaires (historically, the best art was not sponsored - like Van Gogh - or was sponsored by the wealthy, rarely will you find art originally sponsored by government that stands the test of time), why is government subsidizing artists such as those running plays that “explore” the sexual relationship between an adult lesbian and her teenage prey?

Maybe the Times paper will even begin to question he general silliness of Seattle’s Mayor and Council. I know hell will freeze over first. But, we can still hope.

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Protests Were 24 Days Early

The protestors on the streets were off on the date by 24 days.

Presidente Fox of Mexico will be in Washington State on May 24. Instead of protesting against the rule of law in the United States, the protestors should have been marching in complaint against the power structure in Mexico and most other countries of Latin America. It is that power structure that stiffles Latin economies and hordes the goodies for a select few.

Presidente Fox was once a hopeful sign for Mexico. From the PAN instead of the PRI (which up to 2000 controlled Mexico for more than 70 years), he was perhaps the first democratically elected Presidente in Mexico's history. But, Fox quickly sold out to the ruling oligarchy of Mexico.

(To be fair, the story of Fox is much more complicated than I present in this posting, and actually still quite hopeful. Please read an excellent article by Enrique Krauze - the preeminent scholar of Mexican history - in Foriegn Affairs to learn more about the heroic acheivements of Fox as well as his failings).

Not only is there still a ruling monopoly in practically every industry in Mexico, but those monopolies are stronger than ever. In fact, the Mexican Congress recently passed legislation that strengthens the hold that Telmex and Televisa have over their respective industries.

Illegal immigrants in the US, who have had to leave their homes and families in order to find work north of the border, should be protesting against the ruling oligarchy back home. Moreover, they should be calling for the US to exercise more of its economic power to open up markets in Mexico and force the Mexican government to stop protecting monopolies and the small number of families that control them.

It's not too late, though.

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Mayor Nipples on Guns

Mayor Nipples asks:

"Why the gun lobby is so powerful in Washington, D.C. and Olympia, I don't know."

Answer:

Because of blowhards like you that are obsessed with controlling every little aspect of our lives. It reminds people of the government oppression that prompted the revolution that formed this country.

Personally, I can't stand having guns around. About the only time I've actually enjoyed a gun was during the few occasions I have tried target shooting. In fact, that's the only time I can remember ever touching a loaded gun. Target shooting feels sort of like playing pool or golf. You can leave me behind if you want to go hunting, though. Also, most people who have gun collections sort of freak me out; I don't get them. (Not that I get stamp collectors either).

But, I agree with the gun lobby on one thing. A healthy skepticism and distrust of government that seems just a little to eager to involve itself in so much of our lives is a good thing. That may seem just so quant to someone like the mayor that has spent his entire career working in government.

While the Mayor and the Chief of Seattle Police Department are trying to control your access to guns, we should be asking them what they are doing to control their own use of guns. Let's not forget that there are bad apples in police departments all across the country. They are by far the exception, but they are there. And, increasingly, police seem to enter situations with their guns blazing. In particular, they respond to ideological politics. Oddly, the Seattle Police Department seems to be avoiding examining their own use of force. The last time they examined their own use of force that I can find was in 2001.

It's a little too easy to use the public's emotions resulting from a spate of violence to call for gun control. It's a bad habit in which politicians, especially in Seattle, increasingly seem to indulge. The fact is that liberty and personal freedoms come at a price. We all must carry some risk that some portion of society will abuse those liberties. Yes, even some of us who are law abiding citizens will suffer as a result. However, we can manage that risk to a large extent by not frequenting the sorts of nightclubs where drunk hot heads might be found. Similarly, we can keep our teenagers out of all-night sessions with people we don't know.

Thankfully, even though Nipples is happy to trample over our Constitutional rights whenever he gets the chance, he doesn't have any say over what those Constitutional rights are. There are limits to what he can do. Let's keep it that way.

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