The Clemyjontri Park playground fills a 2 acre site in Fairfax VA, and features four outdoor "rooms" surrounding a central carousel. Surely, Seattle can top Fairfax VA.

Nothing against Dale Chihuly, or museums in general, but I was deadly serious the other day when I proposed a kick-ass playground to replace the Seattle Center’s soon to be closed Fun Forest, instead of the lovely, respectable, and inevitably kid-unfriendly look-don’t-touch museum that appears to be the favorite of city planners. And I sure do hope that council members and civic leaders take my proposal seriously.

The Seattle Center has long been the number one family destination in a downtown that, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly family-friendly. There are no K-12 schools in downtown Seattle, no athletic fields or basketball courts or other youth-oriented amenities. And little in the way of playgrounds, kick-ass or otherwise.

And yet if we want to build the kind of downtown urban density necessary for our region to grow sustainably into the 21st century and beyond, then we’re going to have to do something to keep couples from moving out into the suburbs the minute they pop a bun in oven. And, well, replacing a virtually unique, downtown amusement park with a pay-to-view glass museum doesn’t exactly strike me as a move in the right direction.

A playground on the other hand — a really kick-ass playground — would not only provide a desperately needed family amenity, but would be entirely in keeping with the spirit and heritage of the Seattle Center, which from its very inception has always been a destination for families seeking diversion and amusement.

And don’t be so limited in the scope of your imagination to believe that a mere playground can’t be as much of a tourist attraction as a Chihuly museum. I’m not talking about a couple of jungle gyms and a seesaw here; think of it as a one-acre canvas for showcasing the inventiveness, creativity and yes, playfulness of our city… perhaps a gigantic, multi-level Rube Goldberg contraption filled with running, joyful children.  I mean hell, if something as inherently boring as a library, for chrisakes, can be reimagined into an instant architectural landmark and cultural icon, then so can a playground. You know, a really, really kick-ass one.

Seattle’s civic leaders should stop trying to prove how grown-up we are by matching older, East Coast cities museum for stodgy museum. A) We’ll never do it; and B) being a grown-up is way overrated. Instead, let’s unleash the inner child in all of us and build something that no other downtown in America has: the most amazing, jaw-dropping, joy-inspiring, kick-ass public playground any child or adult has ever seen.

A Mississippi county school board announced Wednesday it would cancel its upcoming prom after a gay student petitioned to bring a same-sex date to the event. [...] The announcement alarmed [18-year-old senior, Constance] McMillen.

“Oh, my God. That’s really messed up because the message they are sending is that if they have to let gay people go to prom that they are not going to have one,” she said. “A bunch of kids at school are really going to hate me for this.“

Ya think? And you think the vindictive pricks on the school board didn’t realize this when they canceled the prom in response to her request? I imagine it’s hard enough being openly gay in rural Mississippi, but now the local school board has publicly branded her as the dyke bitch who ruined prom.

I guess the real message to students is, “Shut the hell up and stay in the closet, or else the figurative gay bashing may become a literal one.”

ARTICLE II, SECTION 36: WHEN BILLS MUST BE INTRODUCED.
No bill shall be considered in either house unless the time of its introduction shall have been at least ten days before the final adjournment of the legislature, unless the legislature shall otherwise direct by a vote of two-thirds of all the members elected to each house, said vote to be taken by yeas and nays and entered upon the journal, or unless the same be at a special session.

I heard  Sen. Joe Zarelli, SB 6883’s prime sponsor, on the radio this morning attacking majority Democrats for wasting the 60 days they had, yet I’m not really sure how filing a symbolic bill that can’t be considered helps to explicate matters during the busy final days of the regular session? Republicans complain that they have been excluded from crucial budget negotiations, but if this is the sort of “constructive” role they hoped to have played, it’s easy to see why.

Regardless, it doesn’t take an act of the legislature to pass up the $90 a day legislators are reimbursed to cover housing, food, travel and all other expenses incurred during session. So I would hope my friends in the Olympia press corps might ask Senators Zarelli, Carrell, Holmquist, Becker, Stevens, Morton, Parlette, Honeyford, Brandland, King and Hewit if they’re just, you know, grandstanding, or if they’re actually willing to set an example for the rest of their colleagues by voluntarily declining the meager compensation that is their due?

I (we) am (are) even more of a threat when logged into Facebook. Click here.

[T]he top 1% of households in the U.S., (about 1 million households) accounted for about 20% of overall U.S. income in 2000, slightly smaller than the share of incme of the bottom 60% of households put together. That’s about 1 million households compared with 60 million households, both with similar slices of the income pie! Clearly, the analysis of the top 1% of U.S. households is paramount. The usual analysis of the “average” U.S. consumer is flawed from the start. To continue with the U.S., the top 1% of households also account for 33% of net worth, greater than the bottom 90% of households put together. It gets better (or worse, depending on your political stripe) — the top 1% of households account for 40% of financial net worth, more than the bottom 95% of households put together.

The gist of Citigroup’s analysis is that its clients should invest in the type of things that the top 1% consume — “toys for the wealthy” — because economically, the rest of us don’t really matter.

In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or the “U.K. consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

Likewise, there is no such thing as a “Washington taxpayer” either.

On average, Washington is a relatively low tax state, ranking only 35th nationally as a percentage of personal income, even according to the conservative Tax Foundation. But due to the highly regressive nature of our sales tax reliant tax structure — the most regressive in the nation — this burden is distributed incredibly unevenly, with the bottom 20% of households, those earning less than $20,000 a year, paying an average of 17.3% of their income in state and local taxes, while the top 1% of households, those earning over $537,000 a year, pay only 2.6%.

This is, of course, class warfare, and as billionaire investor Warren Buffet is famous for saying, his class is winning. And his is the class who the editors at the Seattle Times defend.

In Seattle, the total general rate is already 9.5 percent. That is higher than New York City’s rate of 8.875 percent and the same as San Francisco’s. If Seattle’s rate goes to 9.8 percent it will be higher than Los Angeles’ 9.75 percent or Chicago’s 9.75 percent, effective July 1.

Raising the state portion of the sales tax to 6.8 percent would likely make Seattle’s rate the highest of any major city in the United States. We think people will notice. We think this will hurt investment, commerce and job creation here.

Yeah, well, we think that people who invest in job creation will notice the entire tax and business climate… you know like the fact that on top of the sales tax, Chicagoans pay a 3% income tax while Los Angelenos pay a top personal rate of 10.3%. Of course, here in Washington, we have no state income tax.

We think people will notice that on every single ranking of business climates, from Forbes Magazine to the conservative Tax Foundation, Washington consistently ranks near the top of the list, while California is buried near the bottom. Likewise, we think that people who look at tax rates when making the decision where to locate their home or business might notice that Washington’s state and local tax “burden” consistently ranks in the bottom two quintiles nationwide, while California ranks in the top.

The point is, the Times’ editors… they can’t have it both fucking ways!

They can’t argue against adding an income tax to the revenue mix by claiming it will turn us into another California, while at the same time bitching that our sales tax — a tax on which we rely for the bulk of our state revenue — now approaches that of, well, California.

Note to Times: we have one of the highest combined sales tax rates in the nation because we have no income tax! Yet when Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown proposed slashing the sales tax by a penny — a better than 10% cut in a Seattleite’s annual sales tax bill — and replacing it with a 4.5% income tax on only the top 1% of wage earners (less than half what they would pay in California), you decried it as an “awful idea.”

Again… what the fuck?

Well, the fuck is that the Times simply opposes all taxes, under any circumstances, for any reason, and all their mock-authoritative sniping on the subject is just sophistry, pure and simple. That’s why the Times only selectively picks at the bits and pieces of our spending and revenue system, and never, ever, ever debates the tax structure as a whole. For to actually talk about taxes in any meaningful way, might just undermine their publisher’s entire political agenda.

Please join us tonight for an evening of politics under the influence at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally. We meet at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. beginning at about 8:00 pm. Stop by even earlier and enjoy some dinner.

Not in Seattle? There is a good chance you live near one of the 344 other chapters of Drinking Liberally.

A plan to turn part of the Seattle Center grounds into exhibit space for glass artist Dale Chihuly is generating controversy after gliding along quietly for months.

The plan would use the Center’s existing Fun Forest arcade building, plus much of the open space where kiddie rides now stand, to create 44,000 square feet of exhibit space for Chihuly’s work. Patrons would have to pay to enter the building, but some works would be installed outside, where the public could view them for free. The site would include an “art garden” and “glass house” separate from the building, as well as a gift shop and café inside.

As a divorced father with a young child, the Seattle Center was a bit of a mecca for us. Between the Children’s Museum and the Science Center and the various rotating events at the Center House and elsewhere, there was a several year span when my daughter and I probably visited the Seattle Center at least once a month. And yes, the Fun Forest was a regular part of our outings, and, in fact, often the highlight for my adrenaline-addicted, roller-coaster-loving little girl.

Personally, my preference would be to keep the Fun Forest, as tacky and cheesy and déclassé as it might be. But if the economics don’t support it, do we really have to convert the space into yet another hangout for latte-sipping yuppies? I mean, Chihuly is great and all that, but he already has a fantastic museum in nearby Tacoma, plus several excellent public installations throughout Seattle. But what we don’t have in our city, as evidenced by the hordes of young families who already crowd the Center in good and bad weather alike, are enough great spaces for children to be children.

So here’s a rather simple idea: rather than converting the Fun Forest into yet another high-priced museum (for the cost of our combined tickets to the EMP, for example, my daughter could have gone on 15 rides), why not convert the space into the nation’s most kick-ass public playground?

Think about it: climbing toys, ball pits, zip lines, slides, swings and fun stuff like that, part open to the sky and part covered (it sometimes rains in Seattle, you know) and all of it attached to an indoor/outdoor cafe where parents can keep an eye on their kids while relaxing with a cup of coffee or a civilized glass of wine. A destination where families can hang out together, instead of yet another place to just, you know, look at art, if you’re willing and able to pay the price of admission.

Seattle’s a great city, but it isn’t exactly family-friendly, and we sure as hell don’t make it any family-friendlier by replacing an amusement park with yet another museum. A kick-ass playground is what this city really needs — a huge, outrageous, jaw-dropping, eye-popping, whimsical, indoor/outdoor play zone. And the Seattle Center’s dingy old Fun Forest is the perfect place to build it.

Er, maybe not so much. The Washington Post is reporting:

Former Rep. Eric Massa has been under investigation for allegations that he groped multiple male staffers working in his office, according to three sources familiar with the probe.

The allegations surrounding the New York Democrat date back at least a year, and involve “a pattern of behavior and physical harassment,” according to one source. The new claims of alleged groping contradict statements by Massa, who resigned his office on Monday after it became public that he was the subject of a House ethics committee investigation for possible harassment.

So yes, Massa described himself as a progressive, but he is also an ex-Republican from a very conservative district, so who the hell knows what makes the guy tick? Was his supposed progressivism just an act during a period of wide-spread dismay over Republican actions and policies? Don’t know.

What we do know is that, in an era of spectacular crash and burns, this one is pretty strange, and so of course Glenn Beck would try to glom on. Beck doesn’t need to worry about his credibility, because he doesn’t have any, at least among anyone remotely serious about achieving better governance.

This sorry episode would seem to highlight, with an exclamation point, the need to make sure candidates are thoroughly vetted before progressives support them. That’s easier said than done, of course, because ordinary folks aren’t in the business of running detective agencies. But you can tell a lot about people by what they do and who their supporters are, which is at least a starting point.

Yeah, all I can say is that just when you think American politics can’t get any more disgusting, seamy and ridiculous, it somehow does. It’s small wonder that regular folks, going to school, jobs and taking care of their families, often throw their hands up in disgust. The irony, of course, is that the more regular people check out, the more power is ceded to those who stand to extract even more power and money from this completely fucked up political system, awash in money and moral corruption.

Nobody walking on this earth is perfect, and demanding purity and perfection from politicians is silly. But the sorry collection of freaks, sadists, perverts, criminals and liars that have dominated headlines for the last twenty years or more, in both major parties, is a sad testament to our inability to govern ourselves. We need to kick the damn walls down and get some more halfway normal people in office. I know there are plenty of them already in office, but they seem to need some help right about now.

Just sayin’.