The Real Face of Government: Vancouver council members voted against making themselves pay part of their own health premiums. And they weren’t even brave little greedheads about it, instead questioning their own powers to handle the issue at all.

Shrinking the American Dream: An Oregon man who builds recession-chic micro-cabins wants to create a subdivision of them. The homes range in size from 144 to 800 square feet. Of course, this will necessitate more sprawl.

The Beat Goes On: The litany of woes with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner project continues to grow. It is now three years past due, needs a ton of fixes, and might not even get licensed for the lucrative transcontinental routes. Drink too long of the bitter milk of Leviathan’s teat and this is what happens.

Humanizing the Housing Crisis: ProPublica and the Seattle Times analyzed a large sample of foreclosures and now share the personal stories behind them. It’s interesting that Seattle’s crisis tends to be characterized by a much higher rate of refinancing.

Not Just Seattle: Spokane residents are questioning local police brutality, too. Here’s hoping any guilty cops pay and not just get paid with administrative leave.

The Parallel Economic Reality: As real people have lost jobs and benefits by the ton, and even some government workers have, too, a wide swath of Tacoma city employees have gotten fat raises. Good—this just gives us another reason to fire them all.

The Good Side: If you haven’t heard of the Atlantic Street Center, read this profile. Sounds like a hell of a noble place.

Infuriating: Mitch McConnell says he cannot support the new version of the START nuclear arms control pact because politicians haven’t had enough time to consider it. GTFO, you cynical old dough-face—this is way too serious for dicking around.

Oh Well: Bank of America will no longer process payments for WikiLeaks. That next bailout isn’t going to fund itself.

Ick Spreads North of the Border: Craigslist appears to have removed prostitution ads from its Canadian pages. As soon as Senator-elect Dick Blumenthal bullied Craigslist into doing it for the U.S. this summer, a legion of admiring opportunists in Canada’s political classes launched the offensive up there. Sad to see a pro-prostitute, pro-freedom service fall victim to cynical politicians.

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69 replies on “The Morning News”

  1. As a public employee (Your Seattle City Light!) I can vouch that i make almost as much as I did while being a “manager” for an absolute fluff ball of a dot.com that was eventually absorbed into a diploma mill, thus causing my redundancy.

    In their defense, it was a company full of talented people, and they gave me a lovely severance and a huge dowery of stock options for our absolutely meaningless “product”, for which I am very grateful.

    But I now work much harder, and am held much more accountable, by the city. And I like it that way. I feel like I am actually doing something worthwhile. (and yes, before anyone says anything, I feel horrible for that poor dog and its owner) it’s the sort of work environment that appeals to my iowa work ethic.(i.e. Anything that is not detassling corn or walking beans is a step up)

  2. Canuck, I’m so glad. Though in truth I found the article rather less comforting, since West also brings up facts that indicate how, though that city efficiency is real, it amounts to a difference that makes no difference:

    West illustrates the problem by translating human life into watts. “A human being at rest runs on 90 watts,” he says. “That’s how much power you need just to lie down. And if you’re a hunter-gatherer and you live in the Amazon, you’ll need about 250 watts. That’s how much energy it takes to run about and find food. So how much energy does our lifestyle [in America] require? Well, when you add up all our calories and then you add up the energy needed to run the computer and the air-conditioner, you get an incredibly large number, somewhere around 11,000 watts. Now you can ask yourself: What kind of animal requires 11,000 watts to live? And what you find is that we have created a lifestyle where we need more watts than a blue whale. We require more energy than the biggest animal that has ever existed. That is why our lifestyle is unsustainable. We can’t have seven billion blue whales on this planet. It’s not even clear that we can afford to have 300 million blue whales.”

  3. This is what keeps the mister up at night, too, gus, the sheer wastefulness and consuming nature of our lifestyles, and what our future will look like, given it’s built on fast diminishing fuels. And while he would quite happily live in a log cabin and barter with animal hides for food, I think I would just die of heartbreak if I were denied my iPod and lattes and browsing in stores…I’d like to be hopeful that we will find ways to have fewer children (Catholic church: Gone), develop sustainable power sources, build better public transit, stop subsidizing wasteful suburbs…he says I am dreaming, and that our grandchildren will be hunter-gatherers….yes, this is why I read Slog for laughs!

  4. Yet UNPAID INTERN has no problem harassing some labor rights organization to get his Russian girlfriend a letter so she can get a visa. Talk about entitlement issues.

  5. We require more energy than the biggest animal that has ever existed. That is why our lifestyle is unsustainable.

    I’d love to belong to the “science-and-technology-will-save-us” school of thought but I can’t. I’m pessimistic. I don’t think that people in high-energy-consuming countries are going to cut back all that much, and people in developing countries are going to continue to aspire to the the energy-rich lifestyle we’ve had for so long, and the world’s population is going to keep growing and growing and growing. I sure hope it won’t, but I think the future is going to get very ugly.

  6. @ 55, my sense is that we’re getting worse. For example, I see people idling their cars in parking lots all the time now – like, for 15 or 20 minutes! They’ll be there when you pull in, they’ll still be there when you leave. I’ve been pretty sensitive to noticing that kind of waste since I come from a pretty polluted city (America’s second worst air, after LA), and I can’t recall seeing that before the advent of wifi, smart phones and the iPad.

  8. @ 57, so I’ve heard. You think they’d actually send a patrol car to give them a ticket? (I don’t really want to be a prick, but OTOH some folks getting tickets might curb that a bit…)

  9. You know, being a cop isn’t much like what you see on television. A lot of the time it’s boring as hell. Now, I’m not going to promise that they’d send a patrol car, but I could see it happening.

  10. It’s illegal to sit and idle in a running car in Colorado?!? Seriously? That’s stupid.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m against pollution and people shouldn’t be idleing (idling? sp?), but how can a law like this even be enforced? What if you start your car to warm up and are brushing snow off of it for a couple minutes… can the cops give you a ticket for that? Is there a specified time period… 15 minutes ok, 15 minutes, 1 second and you get a fine?

    I can see cops saying “Jesus christ, another fucking regulation we have to piss people off with?” but did CO legislators really pass a bullshit idling law?

  13. gus, if you’re still reading, Mr. Canuck read the NYT article, found Geoffrey West giving a lecture on Youtube, watched it until the battery died on my laptop, and is now continuing on his office computer…although we took a break to watch a season 1 episode of Glee (he is not a convert, alas)…and I’m wondering about the irony of how much energy we used to watch Dr. West talk about our energy dependence??

  14. Canuck, I’m pretty sure whatever it takes for Mr. Canuck a) to help us understand West’s work and b) develop a greater enjoyment of Glee will pay back immense returns on the energy investment.

  15. Sorry all, didn’t mean to ignore the thread today, but I was north of the border and not jacked in. I did quickly notice svensken’s question.

    @ svensken — My main career plan is to keep writing. I don’t have my next gig set up yet and there’s a good chance I’ll have to get a day job once the holidays are over, but the main thing is to be a writer, for sure. If anyone knows of opportunities for me, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

  16. Good luck, Unpaid Intern. If I could offer you any advice from the vantage point of my advanced years, it would be to get a day job that you really like, because I, too, once thought I would be a writer, and so far the only thing I’ve had published consistently are letters to the editor. Oh, and writing a Xmas letter every year that doesn’t contain any medical maladies or “my son the doctor” references…you could always start a blog…?

  17. @ Canuck — I’ve been running a blog since June! If I hadn’t, I don’t think I would have ever gotten this internship. What was once daily posting is now more like weekly, but I expect it to pick up again come January. Anyways, thanks for advice and good luck with your own writing!

  18. Why so snippy about the Vancouver council members? They–unlike our dear unpaid intern–may actually be aware of the following provision of Article XI Section 8 of our State Constitution:

    The salary of any county, city, town, or municipal officers shall not be . . . diminished after his election, or during his term of office . . . .

  19. Humanizing the Housing Crisis: […] Seattle’s crisis tends to be characterized by a much higher rate of refinancing. The neighbours across the street refinanced five times in ten years, the ones north of us refinanced six times in eight years, as did the homeowner behind our northern neighbours. The latter two homeowners owe more than their homes are worth. I imagine each of those refinances cost at least 1.25% the then-values of their houses.

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