Former Seattle Mayor Charles Royer pens an interesting think-piece in Sunday's Seattle Times, urging us to pay more attention to the squeeze on middle class housing in high-cost Seattle. The essay is very diplomatic, as befits a former mayor, but it scores some valuable direct hits on local politics.
Gingerly, Royer calls for a "conversation" about this topic, using a word that normally suggests that the proposer of some strong medicine doesn't really want to be candid. What he's saying is that the city has done a fair job in building low-income housing, going from 8,000 subsidized units to 21,000 today. But what about the middle class?
Large gatherings of writers are normally not fun. More than two in a room are enough to make one wish for an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting instead, where more of the stories are true and no one asks...
The annual tango over the Seattle City Budget has followed the usual dance-steps manual, with the City Council making a few minor tweaks in Mayor Greg Nickels' budget, and declaring a sweeping victory...
A century later, a war of semantics engulfs the World War I-era banishment of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. The urge to purge arose again, of course, on the U.S. West Coast during World War II. And...
Opening statements by the three attending members of the Federal Communications Commission at tonight's hearing in Seattle on media ownership (all PDF files): Michael Copps, Jonathan Adelstein, and De...
Why is it that when a Tim Eyman initiative is thrown out by the courts, as happened this week with I-747, our spineless leaders immediately say they'll abide by Eyman's bad law anyway?
Whatever you...
Former state Transportation Secretary Doug MacDonald fills Joel Connelly's P-I column this morning, and you can read it as the opening salvo of Transpo War II, or Who Lost Transit?
MacDonald makes it clear why he wore out his welcome in Gov. Chris Gregoire's cabinet, for he is incisively critical of the Proposition 1 measure that the governor tepidly endorsed, and lays the main blame for the transportation meltdown on the head of elected leaders.
