My Election Recommendations

A number of people have asked me to weigh in on this year’s elections in the Seattle area and, because it’s always a fun article to write, here we go.  Disclaimer:  I’m a long-time progressive Seattle resident (since 1983), born and raised in rural Pierce County.  If you’re looking for recommendations on Republican candidates, this is the wrong place to look.  As always, do your own research and make your own decisions.  For a starter, you can check out my list of sources at the end of this article.

U.S. Senate:

Given that the U.S. Senate is meant to be our equivalent of the British House of Lords, you’re going to have trouble finding a true progressive in this race (although our two Senate seats usually go to a Democrat).  This year, the incumbent Maria Cantwell is running against 10 other candidates in this race, only 4 of whom openly identify as Republicans.  And the only other Democrat in the race is Paul Lawrence Giesick, who’s using his campaign as a platform for preaching the gospel (literally).  Hold your nose and vote Cantwell.

U.S. House of Representatives:

District 1 (Arlington and southward to Redmond) – Incumbent Democrat Suzan DelBene is running unopposed on the Democratic Party ticket, with 5 Republicans (one who identifies as a Trump Republican, one who calls himself a member of the “Calm Rational GOP Party,” and three of Washington’s garden-variety loony Republicans).  Vote DelBene.

District 7 (North Seattle, West Seattle, & Vashon Island) – Incumbent Pramila Jayapal (Democrat) is running against Democrat Liz Hallock, who has no prior political experience.  Hallock insists she’s “pro-peace” but claims that the best way to ensure peace is to “secure our supply chains, and yes, secure our borders.”  In other words, she’s a conservative, hawkish Democrat who would’ve been comfortable in your grandfather’s Republican Party.  Vote Jayapal.

District 8 (rural Snohomish, King & Pierce Counties, Chelan County, Wenatchee, and Ellensburg) – Democrat Kim Schrier won this district in a close race in 2019, and the Republicans are fielding a woman of color, Carmen Goers, against her.  The other 2 Democrats in the race are Imraan Siddiqi, an Executive Director at the Washington Chapter of the Council for American-Islamic Relations, and Keith Arnold, who is running to support ranked choice voting.  Siddiqi is the more serious challenger from the left, with a strong history of supporting immigrant rights, but he’s had trouble getting endorsements from the usual Democratic Party supporters, who’ve lined up in lock step behind Schrier. Goers, who ran for the State House in 2022 (and lost to Democrat Chris Stearns), is vulnerable to losing the second spot in our Top-Two primary, if enough people decide to vote for Siddiqi in August.  In which case 2 Democrats might be on the ballot in D8 in November, and what a humiliation for the State Republican Party that would be.  It’s your choice to either vote for Schrier, the safe choice, or vote for Siddiqi, if you think he has a chance to knock Goers out of the running.

District 9 (Olympia, Lacey & Tumwater northeast to Lakewood, South Tacoma, & Puyallup) – Incumbent Democrat Adam Smith is facing a challenger from the left, Melissa Chaudry.  Chaudry is proudly pro-peace and against the military industrial complex; however, she’s running in a district that includes the Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the largest military base in the Western United States.  So she faces an ice cube’s chance in hell of winning against Smith, who sits on the House’s Armed Services Committee.  But if you want to register a protest against the Democratic Party status quo (which, yes, includes immense military spending), then vote Chaudry.

State Government:

Governor

I count 28 candidates on the ballot for governor this year, including 9 Democrats.  If Washington residents needed any reason to give up on voting altogether, this would be the main one.  Current WA State Attorney General Bob Ferguson is the outstanding front runner among the Democrats, and Dave Reichert is the front runner among the Republicans.  Ferguson has raised around $7.6 million to Reichert’s $3.8 million, and they’ve both spent around $2.2 million, which means Ferguson will have the money to run numerous campaign ads in the run-up to November.  If anyone is worried about whether Ferguson will win, then rest easy.  He’s also the progressive pick in this race, with his main challenger being the conservative Democrat Mark Mullet, who’s pro-police, voted against the state’s long-term care plan, and is very much against harm reduction, while being a huge booster for forced drug treatment in locked wards.  No Thank You.  Vote Ferguson.

Lt. Governor – In this race that would determine who would run the state government if something happened to the governor, you’d want someone with at least a little bit of political experience.  Vote for Denny Heck.

Secretary of State – There are 2 Democrats running in this race, Incumbent Democrat Steve Hobbs and challenger Marquez Tiggs.  After decades of Republicans serving in this office, Gov. Inslee appointed Dem. Steve Hobbs in 2021.  Hobbs went on to win confirmation by voters in 2022, and he’s now up for reelection.  He’s done a fine job so far, and he’s committed to upholding new laws to expand voter registration in WA State.  Vote Hobbs.

State Treasurer – Incumbent Democrat Mike Pellicciotti is running unopposed on the Democratic ticket.  Vote Pellicciotti.

State Auditor – Incumbent Democrat Pat McCarthy is running unopposed on the Democratic ticket.  Vote McCarthy.

State Attorney General – Outgoing AG Bob Ferguson proved how important this office could be, with his many lawsuits against the Trump Administration’s civil rights violations and other depredations.  Two great Democratic candidates are facing off to fill Ferguson’s shoes:  Manka Dhingra and Nick Brown.  Dhingra has many endorsements from her colleagues in the State Legislature (she’s a State Senator and the Deputy Majority Leader), while Nick Brown has endorsements from a wide range of Democrats, including Gov. Inslee (he was Inslee’s General Counsel).  While Dhingra would do a good job, Brown seems to be much more familiar with what the job entails and has a plan for how to continue Ferguson’s work.  I’m impressed by his knowledge of the issues.  Vote Brown.

Commissioner of Public Lands – There are five Democrats running in this race and whoever survives the primary will be up against Republican powerhouse Jamie Herrera Beutler in November.  In fundraising order, the three main contenders are King County Councilmember Dave Upthegrove ($448,000), State Senator Kevin Van De Wege ($288,000), and Department of Natural Resources employee Patrick DePoe ($147,000).

Kevin Van De Wege serves as Chair of the Senate Agriculture, Water, Natural Resources, and Parks Committee and is mostly running on a wildfire suppression platform; he’s taken donations from the Timber industry, so you know what his wildfire suppression policies will be.  Don’t vote for him.

Patrick DePoe is also running primarily on a wildfire suppression campaign.  Importantly, he cites no other issues on his campaign website – nothing about water quality, salmon habitat restoration, fish farming, parks & public lands, land conservation, or even tribal issues (he’s a member of the Makah Tribal Council, for cryin’ out loud).  That’s probably because he has also accepted large contributions from the Timber industry.  Don’t vote for him.

That leaves Dave Upthegrove, a middle-of-the-road Democrat.  Happily, he’s at least declined to take any contributions from the Timber industry, and one of his key priorities is “preservation of mature legacy forests.”  He’s also hustled up a ton of endorsements from state Democrats and is the leading fundraiser in this race – a good sign that he can put up a fierce challenge to Jaime Herrera Beutler in November.  Vote Upthegrove.

Superintendent of Public Instruction – In this nonpartisan office, incumbent Chris Reykdal is facing a stiff challenge from Reid Saaris, who’s raised almost double the amount that Reykdal has ($286,000 to Reykdal’s $152,000).  Saaris’ main contributors include the largest consulting company in the world, McKinsey & Company [shudder], which has been behind a push to gradually privatize public schools worldwide.  Saaris’ background running a nonprofit that consults with schools on how to expand student diversity can’t compare with the hard work that Reykdal has done to bring the Washington public school system back from the Covid 19 lockdown.  Vote Reykdal.

Insurance Commissioner – The leading Democrat in this race is State Senator Patty Kuderer.  She’s committed to protecting women’s access to reproductive care, including abortion, in Washington State, and ensuring that insurance companies won’t restrict access.  Vote Kuderer.

State Legislature:

Most Democrats are running unopposed in Seattle, but there are a couple of contested races:

District 43, House Pos. 2 (Belltown, Capitol Hill, Fremont, UD & Laurelhurst) – Four Democrats are running in this race, and the two most viable candidates are Andrea Suarez and Shaun Scott.

Suarez has accepted contributions from a number of real estate developers and construction executives.  That’s not surprising, given that Suarez appears to be a neighborhood NIMBY who set up her own nonprofit to pick up trash and needles from public spaces and harass homeless people to “get treatment.”  She does not appear to have a campaign website (yet), so you can’t read about her positions (if she has any), but the people who are supporting her campaign are a who’s who of rabid conservatives.  Don’t make the mistake of voting for her.

Scott, who works as the Policy Lead at the Statewide Poverty Action Network, has previously run for Seattle City Council.  This time around he’s gotten endorsements from a bunch of progressive Democrats, including Girmay Zahilay, Teresa Mosqueda, Nicole Macri, and the Washington State Labor Council.  Vote Scott.

District 46, House Pos. 1 (Northeast Seattle) – Incumbent Democrat Gerry Pollet deserves a challenge from left field, but unfortunately his opponent is the right-wing neighborhood NIMBY Ahndylyn Kinney.  Vote Pollet.

State Supreme Court:

There’s one spot open on the State Supreme Court, after the retirement of Justice Susan Owens from Position 2.  The front runner in fundraising is Sal Mungia, who’s raised $264,000 compared to Dave Larson, his closest challenger, who’s raised $31,000.  Larson appears to be running on a law-and-order platform, with support from Republicans; he recently appeared at a campaign event for Republican Dave Reichert (who’s running for governor).  Mungia, on the other hand, is very qualified for this position, having been president of the Washington State Bar Association, president of the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association, and a law clerk for the State Supreme Court.  He’s also been endorsed by most of the current WA Supreme Court Justices.  Vote Mungia.

Local:

Seattle City Council, Pos. 8 – Progressives are doing their best to think of the current Seattle City Council as the Interregnum.  So it’s not surprising that Alexis Mercedes Rinck is backed by a ton of progressives, including former Councilmembers Tammy Morales, Lisa Herbold, and Andrew Lewis, and a former progressive contender for Seattle Mayor, Cary Moon.  Rinck is also way ahead in fundraising, having over $100,000 in her campaign coffers vs. incumbent Tanya Woo’s $20,000.  Woo was appointed by the current city council in January and, although it’s only been a few months, that’s been a half-year of unremarkable (if not outright cringe-worthy) work by Woo.  Vote Rinck.  Please.

Sources:

The candidates’ campaign websites (if they have one).

WA State Public Disclosure Commission’s Contribution Lookup Page:  Political Disclosure Data | Washington State Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), https://www.pdc.wa.gov/political-disclosure-reporting-data

King County Elections Candidates page:  Candidates - King County, https://info.kingcounty.gov/kcelections/Vote/contests/candidates.aspx?eid=44

Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission page:  Seattle Elections, https://web6.seattle

Review of "Alif the Unseen" by G. Willow Wilson

A boy with a computer program that can identify people on the Internet by their keystroke patterns. A girl with a book written by djinn entitled “The Thousand and One Days.” And outside their doors, it’s the beginning of the Spring Revolution all over the Middle East. Wilson finds the common thread between technology and mytholoy and wraps it all in a modern fantasy adventure that’s gripping and fun to read.

In Arab mythology the djinn are called the “invisible ones.” But Wilson quickly draws a parallel between the magical folk of myth and young people who spend most of their time socializing online. When the hero, Alif, is hunted down by State Security and forced to go offline, he wails to his two friends, Dina and Abdullah:

“And now I’m a ghost in the machine. By next week all the hacks and geeks and hats I call my friends will have forgotten who I am. That is the nature of this business. That is the Internet.”

“You still have real friends,” said Dina. The two men made identical derisive noises.

“Internet friends are real friends,” said Abdullah. “Now that you pious brothers and sisters have taken over half the planet, the Internet is the only place left to have a worthwhile conversation.”

But Wilson’s book doesn’t dismiss Islam in simple terms. One of the main characters is the Imam of the local mosque. And he has a very realistic view of what’s wrong with society:

“Oil,” the sheikh shook his head. “The great cursed wealth from beneath the ground that the Prophet foresaw would destroy us. And statehood--what a terrible idea that was, eh? This part of the world was never meant to function that way. Too many languages, too many tribes, too motivated by ideas those high-heeled cartographers from Paris couldn’t understand. Don’t understand. Will never understand. Well, God save them--they’re not the ones who have to live in this mess. They said a modern state needs a single leader, a secular leader, and the emir was the closest thing we had. So to the emir went all the power. And anyone who thinks that isn’t a good idea is hounded down and tossed in jail, as you have so recently discovered. All so that some pantywaist royal nephew can have a seat at the UN and carry a flag in the Olympics and be thoroughly ignored.”

The best parts of the novel involve the intervention of the unseen world into this reality, both the world of the djinn and the online world. Wilson makes strong connections between the zeros and ones that symbolize data and functions on a computer with the metaphors of mythology, literature, and the Koran which symbolize deeper themes, and have multiple meanings simultaneously. When her hero attempts to program a computer to understand metaphors, the narrative turns in a wild and unforeseen direction.

Even the characters themselves embody multiple meanings. Her hero, Alif, has two names: his online handle (Alif)--the first letter of the alphabet, shaped like a single vertical slash--and his given name, which remains unseen throughout most of the novel. He’s half-Arab and half-Indian, and is forced to master multiple languages: Arabic, Hindi, English, C++, and eventually the language of the djinn.

The unnamed city itself is a conglomeration, but not a melting pot, each area separate, but ultimately involved with the other: “The City, Abdullah had once quipped, is divided into three parts: old money, new money, and no money. It had never supported a middle class and had no ambition to do so--one was either a nonresident of Somewhere-istan, sending the bulk of one’s salary home to desperate relatives, or one was a scion of the oil boom.” Or one is like Alif, a child of two worlds, living with his Indian mother, but surviving on the “driblets” of money sent by his wealthy, absent father--a child of Nowhere-istan, unless you count the unseen world of the Internet.

This is a fantastic work of fiction (in multiple ways), and takes us inside the hearts and minds of the young protagonists who fueled the Spring Revolution. And it gives us a beautiful peek inside the unseen world (at least in the West) of Arab mythology and cultural concerns.

 

Review of "NW" by Zadie Smith

The novel is told in three voices:  two women who’ve grown up together in NW London and, between their separate sections of the book, a seemingly unrelated man who’s grown up in the same area and is trying to escape his past to make a better life. The two women have outwardly pulled themselves out of poverty, but Smith’s skill lies in showing the inner poverty of their lives; how external expectations keep them from even knowing what they really want from life, much less living the lives they want.

The first section, told through the eyes of Leah, is rough going. She’s depressed and lonely, feels trapped in her “happy” marriage and her respectable but boring job, and doesn’t want to have the child her husband craves so much. It’s only in the third section, told through her best friend Natalie’s eyes, that we see what kind of child Leah was: a empathic girl who becomes a rebel in high school, hangs out with artsy intellectuals, and flirts with lesbianism in college. And yet she ends up marrying a very conventional family man and living just a few doors down from the house where she grew up, in the same NW lower-class neighborhood.

Natalie’s story takes a different trajectory: she’s the little girl with a tough exterior who gets straight-A’s, goes to law school, puts in her requisite three years as a public defender, then takes a cushy job in a corporate law firm. She marries a rich, handsome, playboy banker and pops out two children, a boy and a girl, and seems to all outward appearances to have the perfect life. Except that inwardly, her life mirrors Leah’s more closely than she’s willing to admit.

The stories of these two women bracket the story of Felix, who as a black man, has a harder time making a success of his life. Whereas Leah (who’s white) and Natalie (who’s black) find it easier to climb the socioeconomic ladder, Smith reminds us that black men are viewed by all of society as inherently dangerous once they reach puberty. This applies even to Felix, whose name means “happy” and whose demeanor is always upbeat. He has a quick, creative mind, and is easily the most likable character in the book, yet he never gets a real break from anyone, except maybe his newest girlfriend, Grace. She’s presented in stark contrast to his former girlfriend, Annie, a drugged-out déclassé white woman who wants to support Felix’s work as a filmmaker, but whose drug habits pulled him down in the first place. As much as he loves Grace, Felix can’t easily let go of Annie, whose outlook on life, while more jaded, seems more realistic in the end.

In the fourth and final section, Smith artfully links together the three characters in a way that makes the reader feel as if you’ve been given the full tour of NW.

Overall, this book was fantastic, although a little hard to get into.  Once you reach Felix’s section, though, Smith hits her stride and there’s no turning back.

Review of The Yellow Birds, by Kevin Powers

So many good reviews have been written about this book is that I was puzzled to find it lacking in many ways.

 

It’s a first novel written by a young poet, and it contains many of the elements of good poetry:  archetypes, vivid metaphors, wrenching themes, alternating stanzas that lead us eventually to a final reveal, and a strong central voice.  But for those reasons, it doesn’t quite hold together as a novel.  Archetypes, when used in a longer narrative format, quickly become uninteresting stereotypes—for example Sterling, the hard-bitten sergeant whom everyone agrees is the perfect soldier.  And we never get attached to the younger soldier that the narrator has promised to protect (conveniently named Murph, as if he were a cute, stuffed toy unable to hold his stitching intact in a hostile environment).

 

So instead the book becomes an exploration of the soul of its narrator, and succeeds on that level.  Its poetry reminds us that the young men we send into war are not machines, not the brutal automatons that the army wants them to be, but young people full of life and the urge to experience beauty and a sense of purpose.  As the narrator says of himself and Murph while they’re getting ready to be deployed: “Being from a place where a few facts are enough to define you, where a few habits can fill a life, causes a unique kind of shame.  We’d had small lives, populated by a longing for something more substantial than dirt roads and small dreams.  So we’d come here, where life needed no elaboration and others would tell us who to be.”

 

But a novel is not just the poetry of its language and the insights of one narrative voice.  And sometimes the metaphors in this book stretch to the breaking point and beyond, as when the narrator struggles for an image to describe what it’s like to fly home as one of the survivors of a pointless war.  His words are buffeted by so much turbulence that the reader eventually loses the sense of what he’s saying or what the character is thinking.

 

And we never get a sense of the day-to-day routine of deployment in Iraq.  Amongst all the lovely metaphor, the book is strangely lacking in description.  I felt that less poetry and more straightforward narration would have served the story better.  Fortunately, the novel is short in length so that the reader isn’t asked to stay involved with the characters too long.  And the disjointed narration lends truth to its overall message, presented as a sudden insight the narrator has after going AWOL in Germany:  “I realized, as I stood there in the church, that there was a sharp distinction between what was remembered, what was told, and what was true.  And I didn’t think I’d ever figure out which was which.”

 

I can’t say I liked “The Yellow Birds” as much I expected to.  And I find the high praise that critics and other writers have given it to be more an expression of their guilt over not condemning a war that was obviously unnecessary from the beginning, than a clear-eyed look at the qualities of the book itself.  Nevertheless, I think everyone should read it in spite of its flaws, and take the opportunity to get inside a mind that’s been battered and torn by war.

 

Review of "2312" by Kim Stanley Robinson

My first impression of this novel is that the author could use a good editor, or needs to take up short-form poetry to sharpen his descriptive skills.  Much of the book is repetitive and does little to propel the narrative or bolster the main themes.

And yet...I haven't read a book in decades that reminds me of the best long-form science fiction of the Silver Age ('60's and '70's) like this book does.  Robinson looks forward to an era when humans have populated and terraformed Mars, Venus, and the moons of Saturn, when space-flight within our solar system is common, and human lifespans have more than doubled.  And, of course, the main theme of the novel is not just whether humanity can grow up as it grows outward, but what will humanity become--what will being "human" mean--when people can incorporate genes from animal species and alien bacteria into their bodies, and even implant quantum computers into their brains.

In one passage that falls in the center of the book, Robinson riffs on the similarity between a linked group of quantum computers and the human brain.  He asks:  "if you program a purpose into a computer program, does that constitute its will?  Does it have free will, if a programmer programmed its purpose?  Is that programming any different from the way we are programmed by our genes and brains?  Is a programmed will a servile will?  Is human will a servile will?  And is not the servile will the home and source of all feelings of defilement, infection, transgression, and rage?...could a quantum computer program itself?"

The difference, of course, is that humans "programming" themselves with their own brains is how we might define "free will."  But Robinson nicely illustrates that our free will is limited by physical externalities: our physical bodies, the environment around us, the society in which we live, and the deceptively remote influence of historical forces.

And so this big, sprawling work brings us back around to a question that lies at the heart of most American fiction:  how self-reliant and self-actualized do you really need to be?  In the end, don't you need other people--a connection to human society--as much or even more than your personal, individual freedom?

For that, the book is worth the time it takes to read all of its 560 pages.  And Robinson does provide many beautiful descriptive passages like this one of Titan, the terraformed moon of Saturn:  "True sunlight and mirrored sunlight crossed to make the landscape shadowless, or faintly double-shadowed--strange to Swan's eye, unreal-looking, like a stage set in a theater so vast the walls were not visible.  Gibbous Saturn flew through the clouds above, its edge-on rings like a white flaw cracking that part of the sky."  I just wish the book were as condensed and strking as this lively passage.

Review of Arcadia, by Lauren Groff

This little, poetic book soared above my expectations.  Equal parts sunshine and shadow, it tells the story of Bit, a boy raised in a hippie commune in upstate New York.

Any fiction about alternative lifestyles of the 1960's and 70's has the unfortunate potential to become an anticommunist or antianarchist screed.  Groff easily avoids that pitfall by focusing on the hard work of a back-to-the-land, build-society-from-scratch commune, combined with an exacting eye for the personalities (and clash of personalties) involved.  Telling it from the perspective of a sensitive boy makes it possible for her to explore the outcome: what kind of man is made from a childhood that's built on hard labor and semi-starvation, livened with the beauty of nature and communal love.

The book is told in four parts: 1) Bit as a 5-year-old boy when the commune is first being built in the early 1970's, 2) Bit as a 14-year-old, experiencing the commune at it's height and sudden downfall, 3) Bit in his late 30's living in New York City with his young daughter, and 4) Bit in his 50's, returning to the land that once held the commune to care for his ailing mother.

What holds all these pieces together isn't just Bit's story, but the lives of the women around him.  Groff makes it clear that the women of the commune are its center and what keeps it together for so long, and Bit is their child more than he is the child of the men who ostensibly make the big decisions.  Each section of the book is defined by Bit's relationship to key women in his life: the first section belongs to his mother, the second to his teenage love, the third to his missing wife and daughter, and the fourth brings him back to his mother--to the source, so to speak, of his life.

In this journey, Groff touches on interesting themes of freedom vs. responsibility, individuality vs. community, and loneliness vs. connection.  And they emerge as a natural part of the narrative, never as a sermon, so that this book goes down as easily and sweetly as a fine glass of wine.

Review of Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

This book is number one on a list of twelve literary fiction books that I want to read this year, and it was a fantastic beginning.  Usually I don’t like historical fiction that uses real historical people as its main characters because it’s so difficult for a modern author to get the characters’ psychology right.  But Mantel is so steeped in the historical details of her time period and is so skilled at depicting her characters’ motivations that she makes it all look effortless. 

But the subtle psychological details are only one small part of the beauty of Wolf Hall.  Mantel weaves in the details of daily living in a way that propel the story forward and illuminate the characters like the details in a 15^th century portrait.  As a consequence, you feel like you’re living in the period, and the details are never boring or a distraction to the narrative. 

But what I appreciated most is that Mantel understands politics at a level that’s difficult to find in historical fiction published in the US.  She captures both the political machinations at court and the toll that political scheming takes on her characters.  Take this example from an early scene in the novel when Thomas Cromwell witnesses the eviction of his mentor, Cardinal Woolsey, from his palace: “Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know.  You don’t get on by being original.  You don’t get on by being bright.  You don’t get on by being strong.  You get on by being a subtle crook…” (Page 49.) 

Or later in the novel, when Cromwell is discussing his own turbulent past with one of his rivals, the Spanish ambassador, Eustace Chapuys:  “But it is no use to justify yourself. It is no good to explain.  It is weak and anecdotal.  It is wise to conceal the past even if there’s nothing to conceal.  A man’s power is in the half-light, in the half-seen movements of his hand and the unguessed-at expression of his face.  It is the absence of facts that frightens people; the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.” (Page 294.) 

And so Mantel conveys a deep link between the way a man like Cromwell wields power, and the way a historian must sift through facts to try and get at the deep inner lives of her characters, which in the end always remain somewhat remote, vessels into which she—and, in turn, her readers—pour their fears, fantasies, and desires. 

Most of all, the author masterfully reveals how the world works, even today.  In the scene in which Cromwell must talk sense into Harry Percy and force him to give up his attachment to Anne Boleyn, he tries to make Percy understand that he might not fear the king, but he should fear his creditors:  “How can he explain it to him?  The world is not run from where he thinks.  Not from his border fortresses, not even from Whitehall.  The world is run from Antwerp, from Florence, from places he has never imagined; from Lisbon, from where the ships with sails of silk drift west and are burned up in the sun.  Not from castle walls, but from countinghouses, not by the call of the bugle but by the click of the abacus; not by the grate and click of the mechanism of the gun but by the scrape of the pen on the page of the promissory note that pays for the gun and the gunsmith and the powder and shot.” (Page 309.) 

Which is, of course, the reason to study history and read historical novels:  because they remind us of lessons from the past that are still relevant today. 

But Mantel also understands the conflicts of that time period.  She’s been accused of doing what many historical novelists do:  imposing modern tastes on her main character.  Her depiction of Cromwell is of a man who treats women as human beings and not property, who is kind to children and animals, who’s skeptical about the existence of an all-powerful and all-knowing God.  But the final showdown between Cromwell and the inflexible Thomas More, who’s been imprisoned in the Tower of London, embodies the struggle of a rising middle class pulling Europe out of the religiously repressive Dark Ages and into a more secular, humanistic world.  The exchange begins with Cromwell: 

“I am glad I am not like you.” 

“Undoubtedly.  Or you would be sitting here.” 

“I mean, my mind fixed on the next world.  I realize you see no prospect of improving this one.” 

“And you do?” 

Almost a flippant question.  A handful of hail smacks itself against the window.  It startles them both; he gets up, restless.  He would rather know what’s outside, see the summer in its sad blowing wreckage, than cower behind the blind and wonder what the damage is.  “I once had every hope,” he says.  “The world corrupts me, I think.  Or perhaps it’s just the weather.  It pulls me down and makes me think like you, that one should shrink inside, down and down to a little point of light, preserving one’s solitary soul like a flame under glass…”  (Pages 519-520.) 

And this is what elevates Wolf Hall to the level of art; the fact that it works on so many levels makes it one of the best novels I’ve read in years.  I can’t remember reading a modern historical novel this good.

This Year's Reading List

This year I wanted to plan my recreational reading more than I have in past years.  I seem to flit from one mystery series to another, and while there’s nothing wrong with reading a good mystery or two, I haven’t been getting to the much better books that are gathering dust on my shelves.  With that in mind, I made a list of 12 fiction books that I want to read this year, approximately, one per month, although I probably won’t read them in the order I’ve listed them below.

Top Ten Fiction Books to Read in 2013 (plus a couple of classics)

1.    Wolf Hall, Hilary Mantel
2.    Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel
3.    NW, Zadie Smith
4.    The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers
5.    Arcadia, Lauren Groff
6.    The Round House, Louise Erdrich
7.    Live By Night, Dennis Lehane
8.    This Is How You Lose Her, Junot Diaz
9.    State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
10.  The Orchardist, Amanda Coplin
11.  Classic #1: Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust
12.  Classic #2: Germinal, Emile Zola

Numbers 1 and 2 are both winners of Britain’s Man Booker Prize for fiction, and they’re the first two books in a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the infamous secretary to Henry VIII.  Historical fiction is right up my aisle, so these are must-reads for me.

Number 3 is Zadie Smith’s novel of four Londoners who grew up in the same council estate but who lead very different lives as adults.

The Yellow Birds made several of the year’s best novel lists for 2012.  It follows two, young US soldiers during a stint in northern Iraq, where they’re thrown into the midst of an urban battlefield.

Number 5 narrates the history of a commune in upstate New York from the 1960’s to the present day through the eyes of the first child born there.

Number 6 needs little explanation, since Erdrich’s works are heavily reviewed and discussed in the US media. This one has garnered a lot of praise, and I’m interested in taking a look.

Dennis Lehane is one of my perennial favorites, so Live By Night was going to make this list no matter what.  And it’s historical fiction novel set in Prohibition-era Boston.  What’s not to like about that?

I have a secret to confess:  I’ve never read Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which would make me a pariah in any group of supposedly well-read people.  And I say, “So what.”  I’ll just make up for it by reading This Is How You Lose Her.

I’ve heard so many people rave about Patchett’s State of Wonder that I broke down and bought a copy, but it’s been gathering pixel dust on my Kindle ever since.  I’m determined to get to it this year.

Number 10 made a few of the year’s best lists, too.  The Orchardist was written by a local author and is set in the Cascade foothills, so I’m eager to see what the fuss is about.  And, again, it’s historical fiction, which I deeply enjoy.

The two classics on this list hardly need an introduction.  This year is the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, so it’s about time I got around to reading the first book in Proust’s monumental work, Remembrance of Things Past (or In Search of Lost Time, depending on how literal you like your translations to be).

I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve never read Zola’s labor classic, Germinal, but it’s true, I haven’t.  It’s time to change that.

 

Review of “Paranoia & Heart-Break; Fifteen Years in a Juvenile Facility” by Jerome Gold

Jerome Gold worked for fifteen years as a counselor in a juvenile detention facility in Washington State, from 1991 to 2005, and this is his day-to-day journal.  It’s a gripping read, and the reader soon begins to care as much about some of these kids as the author does himself.

The first thing that strikes you is the terrible histories of these kids, and the fact that each was once a victim of a violent crime or abuse at an appalling young age.  Many, but not all, of the kids are gang members or have older siblings or fathers who were involved in gangs.  Gold was working at a time when the crack cocaine epidemic was taking its worst toll on impoverished communities, and he spent much of his time trying to teach these kids how to resist drugs and gang culture.

But violence isn’t solely the province of gang activity; poverty and isolation are also big factors.  Most of these kids were trying to make the best choices they could when their options were severely limited.  In most of their families, violence and sexual abuse was passed down through generations.  And Gold and his colleagues do their best to break the cycle.  But the author also makes it clear that they’re trying to counteract the effects of a racist and dysfunctional system.

About halfway through the book the author describes a conversation with a friend, who’s a parole officer: “I deal with a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic kids—disproportionate to their numbers in society—whose families are impoverished, who almost always come from single-parent families, whose mom or dad or both have a drug or alcohol problem, whose mom or dad themselves may have served time or are serving time. So let’s face it: society doesn’t love these kids and wants them exactly where they are: in prison. And I am society’s representative. I am the father society wants them to have, even though I despise society for all the reasons the best of my generation despises society. So, however I want to see myself, I do represent oppression.”

He describes the inherent conflict in trying to teach kids to follow the rules of the system—go to school, get a job, live by society’s standards—but at the same time he has to teach them how to question the authority of gang leaders, abusive parents, and criminal justice authorities who don’t treat them fairly.

And this is where Gold’s book really shines.  He doesn’t just talk about the children in the facility, he also illuminates how these facilities are run, by whom, and for what objectives.  And like any institution, some employees are good at their jobs, and some are terrible.  Meanwhile, the administrators have no clue what it’s like to work directly with the kids, and sometimes they make terrible decisions.  Some psychiatrists are good, but others are wedded to a treatment agenda that won’t work for every kid, and they refuse to adapt accordingly.  Adequate funding is always a problem.  And beneath it all is a persistent struggle by staff to avoid burnout and to see each new kid in the system as someone who can be rescued and rehabilitated.

This book should be required reading for politicians and public policy makers.  But everyone can benefit from a better understanding of why kids commit crimes and how hard it is to piece together a normal life once a child has been abused, acts out, and then is incarcerated.

Not All Guns Are Created Equal

Seven killed at a Sikh temple.  Twelve killed and 58 wounded at a movie theater.  What do these two mass murders have in common?  The weapons used.

When we talk about gun control, gun advocates repeat the old refrain:  “guns don’t kill people; people kill people.”  While there’s truth in that, we should also add:  “the type of gun used can make one murder into a mass murder in a matter of seconds.”

The shooting two weeks ago in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, was accomplished with three weapons:  a 12-guage, pump-action shotgun; a Smith & Wesson M&P15 semiautomatic rifle; and a Glock 0.40-caliber semiautomatic pistol.

To kill 12 people and wound 58, the shooter had to fire a huge number of rounds in a matter of a few minutes.  The gunman started with the shotgun, which probably fired about 5 rounds, then switched to the semiautomatic rifle, which was fitted with a 100-round ammunition barrel.  He sprayed the crowded theater with a shower of bullets until the ammunition barrel jammed, then he dumped the rifle and pulled the semiautomatic pistol.

Now, the semiautomatic rifle he used is an AR-15, which is similar to the military’s fully automatic M-16.  The AR-15 rifle used to be restricted for civilian purchase and use under the 1994 assault weapons ban.  The ban expired in 2004, and politicians have been too cowardly to renew it ever since.  The high number of casualties and wounded in the Aurora shooting is a direct result.

The 0.40-caliber Glock pistol is similar to 9-mm handguns, which are popular with drug gangs and are used in the vast majority of mass murders in the U.S.  Gun control advocates have been trying for decades, with the help of the nation’s police departments, to restrict the manufacture and sale of 9-mm handguns for those very reasons.  We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that the man who shot up a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, yesterday also used a 9-mm handgun as his weapon of choice.

In debates about gun control we should always remember that not all guns are created equal.  Some can raise the death toll from two or three people to a dozen within a matter of minutes.  As a society we have to ask ourselves:  should we allow everyone the freedom to rain death on the maximum number of people in the shortest amount of time?

Is a few people’s “fun”—the ability to spray targets at the local gun range with a semiautomatic weapon—worth the lives of so many innocent and unsuspecting people, some as old as your beloved grandparents, and some as young as the unborn child lost by a pregnant woman wounded in the Aurora, Colorado, shooting?

The answer is no.  Gun control is not the all-or-nothing proposition that the NRA would have you believe.  The type of gun matters, and Americans and the politicians who represent us need to realize that sooner and not later.

 

To Bain or Not To Bain: That’s Not the Question

The media continues to obsess about whether Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital from 1999 through 2001.  As the New York Times puts it, “At stake is whether Democrats can hold Mr. Romney responsible for a series of now-controversial investments Bain made during the period in question, including companies that specialized in outsourcing, laid off some of their workers, or declared bankruptcy.”

Yes, Democrats have run ads that question Romney’s responsibility for outsourcing American jobs.  And, yes, Romney has denied that he was in charge of managing investments at Bain during the period in question, when he was living in Utah working at his new job managing the Olympic Games.

During that three-year period Romney was still listed as the chief executive and sole owner of the parent company Bain Capital Inc. and his name appeared on 142 different documents that were filed with federal regulators.  But in practice, he probably didn’t have anything to do with making specific decisions on which companies were bought and sold by Bain’s various funds.

This is an aspect of Wall Street that’s difficult for most working class Americans to understand.  A rich man’s name may be on the legal documents of a company and he may draw a six-figure salary (as Romney did, receiving at least $100,000 from Bain Capital in 2001) for any number of reasons that have nothing to do with putting in an honest day’s work.  Sometimes wealthy people are paid only for the use of their names, and they never sign any documents, read any of the documents they do sign, never attend board meetings, never provide any advice, and never make any decisions.

Nice work if you can get it.

Remember, though, that the money paid to rich people for the use of their names is part of the enormous profit squeezed out of the companies owned and managed by hedge funds and private equity companies like Bain Capital Inc.  Jobs are outsourced and companies run into the ground so that outsized profits can be wrung out of them in order to pay wasteful overhead, including outsized salaries to rich people who don’t do anything.  Mitt Romney has benefited enormously from this disgusting practice, and he’s never condemned it.

Mr. Romney claims that he was never involved in outsourcing jobs.  But he did profit from the practice.  And he’s never actually said that jobs should stay in America and that everyone should invest in America.  According to his 2010 tax return—the only one he’s made public—he has many investments in offshore funds through his Bain Capital holdings.  Most of those offshore funds were set up so that clients of Bain Capital could avoid paying U.S. taxes.

The real issue is whether working class Americans think a man like Mitt Romney represents their interests.  After all, that’s the main question we should ask ourselves before we vote for any politician:  does this person understand and agree with my interests and concerns, and can he represent me?

The answer is that Romney neither understands nor cares about the economic conditions under which most Americans live.  He’s been content up till now to live off the profits of a system that has shrunk the “middle” class to a handful of people making over six figures a year and plunged the majority of Americans into poverty and insecurity.

And he’s happy about that.

King 5’s Cowardly Reporting

On Monday, local TV station King 5 aired a special report on their 11:00 news hour about ocean acidification and its effect on the local shellfish industry.  They spent several minutes on the topic, but managed to avoid mentioning the words “global warming.”

 
They did give a partial reason for ocean acidification:  more CO2 in the water causes the water to become more acidic, and there’s more CO2 in the water because there’s more CO2 in the air.  But they didn’t go on to say anything about the sources of all the extra CO2 in the air.

Ocean acidification is a well understood and predictable side-effect of global warming, and the fact that it’s now observable and progressing much more rapidly than climate scientists predicted is a major piece of proof in the global warming hypothesis.

Furthermore, King 5 viewers need to know where CO2 comes from:  coal-burning power plants (which make up about half of our utility plants in the US), certain industries (especially oil refining and extraction), and the tail pipes of our automobiles (unless you drive a fully electric car or one that burns cooking oil).

Maybe Americans didn’t realize that they were choosing to drive their SUV’s at the expense of being able to eat shellfish in the future, but that’s no excuse for hiding that fact now.  Ocean acidification is man-made, not some mysterious natural event, which is what the King 5 report implied.

There’s no excuse for such an act of journalistic malfeasance.  I felt sorry for Lori Matsukawa, who looked as if she could barely keep herself from blurting out the words “global warming, folks, that’s what this is all about.”

We have a scientific community that accepts global warming as a fact.  We have a President who accepts global warming as a fact.  Our higher courts have ruled that global warming is a fact.  It’s past time for the media to report it as a fact.  Because, as the King 5 report proved, you can’t accurately report on the effects of global warming, if you can’t admit that it even exists.

 

Culture Crash: X-Men vs. Buck

This is a match made in hell. Cowboy vs. Mutants, and the cowboy comes out the winner.

X-Men: First Class might have been a good film, except the scriptwriters forgot the first rule of comic book adaptations: comic book worlds are not the real world. They should have dropped the stupid Cuban missile crisis plot line and invented a fictional mad scientist who holds the world hostage, ala James Bond. Instead, we get mutants in rubberized, bullet-proof, superhero suits clustered around a black-and-white TV watching old JFK speeches. Yech.

I’ll stick to the boy-on-boy wrestling between Professor X and Magneto. If you’re like me, you’ll be going to this movie to see James McAvoy in the aforementioned rubberized suit, but you’ll soon be asking yourself where did that glorious Michael Fassbender come from? This is his coming out party: other than a bit part in Inglourious Basterds, most people haven’t seen him before. Except maybe in Centurion before it went to DVD. (Note: must log into my Netflix account…)

That’s as close as you’ll get to seeing anything sexy in this film, however, because January Jones and Rose Byrne pull out all the stops in their battle for the Cardboard Cut-out crown. Jones is the winner by a lacquered blonde hair. Byrne, on the other hand, gets the award for Female Stick Figure.  Somebody buy that girl a pizza.

You don’t go to see comic book films for the message, but usually there’s one struggling to dig itself out from beneath all the rubble left from the action scenes. X-Men pretends to have something to say about humanity and acceptance of people’s differences. Instead, it sends the message that living in the closet is the best, safest, and most humane thing to do. Yuck.

Buck, on the other hand, provides more than just a man in his chaps. It’s a documentary about Buck Brannaman, the cowboy who trains (not “breaks”) horses. Brannaman, who was rescued from an abusive family situation when he was a young boy, uses his past experiences with people to inform his relationships with animals. His message: if you want a big animal to respect you, you have to respect it…and violence has no place in that relationship.

The filmmakers follow Brannaman as he drives around the country teaching clinics to horse owners. They interview Brannaman, his wife and daughters, his step-mother, several of his friends and clients, the former town sheriff, and Robert Redford, who starred in The Horse Whisperer. And if they could have, they would have interviewed the horses, too, I’m sure.

Brannaman, it turns out, is a very entertaining guy. But he shares the stage with dozens of horses. And, even if they can’t speak, their body language communicates volumes about the kind of respect a person can win by being polite, firm, and nonviolent.

I recommend that you go see Buck; but take a pass on X-Men: First Class, unless you’re dying to see Magneto lift a nuclear submarine ass-first out of the ocean. (Damn, I wish I could do that!)

Why Does Greece Matter?

If you read or watch the news much, you’ve seen news reports about problems with Greece’s economy and its debt. Greece can’t pay back its lenders, and somehow that’s a disaster for the world’s economy. But Greece is a small country, right? How can its problems possibly bring down the whole of Europe and threaten the US economy, too?

Welcome to a world of massively increased bank profits based on hugely magnified risk.

Greece’s debts are not terribly big; for example, French and German banks (its biggest lenders) hold about $90 billion in Greek debt. That’s less than the US spent on the war in Afghanistan last year. For a small country that’s a lot of money, but for the global financial system, it’s peanuts.

So why can’t European banks restructure the debt and give Greece more time to pay off its loans? Answer: healthy banks could do this, but European banks are not healthy. They lack the capital to cover the lost income from Greece’s regular debt payments. European banks are structured the same way US banks are: loans have been used as capital to support making further loans. In accounting terms, banks have treated their loans as tangible assets instead of the intangible assets that they truly are.

That’s common practice in the worldwide banking industry, and most of the negotiation over new reform rules for banks is about what banks should consider “capital” and how much capital banks should have on their books vs. how much money they can lend out. Regulators want banks to stop considering loans as capital, and they think banks should hold more cash as capital. The strictest regulators want banks to hold 14% of all their assets in cash (capital) to offset losses on loans. The banks are holding out for 7% or less, and are arguing about what should be considered “capital.”

Why are the banks fighting against a regulation that would help to stabilize the banking industry and avoid a situation where the collapse of a small country’s economy could threaten the health of their entire industry? Answer: profits.

The more loans a bank can make, the more income it generates. Requiring banks to sit on piles of cash and stop using loans as capital would severely cut down on the amount of loans banks can make, thereby reducing the banks’ income. Huge bank profits mean huge bonuses for bankers and big profits for shareholders. Financial industry stocks have driven much of the growth on Wall Street in the past 15 years.

Okay, so French and German banks would be in trouble. Big deal, right? Why should the US and other countries care about a few foreign banks? If they fold, then that means more business for our banks, right? Wrong. The global financial industry is interconnected. One bank failure can lead to massive problems for all other banks. Think back a few years ago to the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and you’ll get an idea of what I’m talking about. The collapse of one bank sent a shockwave through the worldwide banking sector. It led to the near demise of AIG and forced the merger of several large US banks in order to avoid another Lehman Brothers. The US Treasury and the Federal Reserve poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the banking system both in the US and abroad; in fact, the Federal Reserve loaned more money through its discount window to foreign banks than it did to US banks.

But haven’t things changed since then? Well, no. If anything, things are more precarious now. The big banks are even bigger, having swallowed up several of their large competitors and many mid-size banks, too (and taken on bigger debt loads in the process). The Dodd/Frank bill that was supposed to bring real reform to Wall Street contained only a vague restructuring of the regulatory agencies, while leaving the details of new reforms to those agencies to work out. Wall Street and the Republicans in Congress have fought against every change that the regulatory agencies have tried to make, and been extremely successful at stopping any meaningful reforms.

As a consequence, US exposure to Greece’s debt problems may be higher than anyone knows. The US market for derivatives is probably the largest in the world, although no one knows for sure because derivatives are still the unregulated Wild West of the financial world—traded privately, with no reporting to the SEC. In the year since Greece’s troubles first came to light, European banks have probably purchased huge numbers of credit default swaps to insure their investments in Greek debt. In other words, if Greece defaults, US banks may have to make payments on those credit default swaps to European banks. This is what brought AIG to the brink and, while Greece is not as big a problem as the AIG mess was, nobody really knows how big a mess it is, and that’s enough to scare everybody.

Credit default swaps are another risky way that banks boost their profits. But US banks aren’t the only ones with exposure to Greece. US money market funds buy a lot of short-term debt of other financial industry players, and foreign bank debt is particularly popular. Spooked by the 2008 collapse on Wall Street, many investors are keeping their savings in money market funds, which in turn have to hunt for enough short-term debt to buy to ensure a small income for investors. It’s not clear that these funds could sell off their European bank debt even if they wanted to. With record cash inflows and investors demanding safe and steady returns, and with an economic downturn that’s stifled public works projects around the world, where else could money market funds go to buy “safe” debt?

So the pressure on the Greek government is enormous. Twenty or thirty years ago it would have been routine for lenders to refinance or restructure a nation’s debt, as so many developing countries did during the 1980’s and 1990’s. But now the only solution is to force the Greek populace to absorb tax increases, job cuts, wage cuts, cuts in social services, and a sell-off of public assets. These austerity measures were used in the 1980’s and 1990’s, too, but never during a worldwide recession and under conditions that make it impossible for Greece to increase exports to help stimulate it moribund economy.

The global banking industry, because if its own greed, now has to squeeze blood from a stone. From here on, the choices are simple, but stark: Greece will either become the poorest nation in Europe, destabilized by riots and a crippling collapse of its economy, or the banks will have to restructure Greece’s debt. If the banks give in, then maybe the financial ripples will be small. But don’t bet on it, because Greece is not alone: Ireland, Iceland, Portugal, Spain, and even Italy are also in trouble because of their debts.

So things are not looking good for Greece. Unfortunately, the political and social turmoil there may get a whole lot worse. Political leaders may find out that allowing banks to operate without any oversight can lead to severe political repercussions, ones they never expected.

Improvements at Metro? We'll See!

No more empty Metro buses running to the ‘burbs! Metro may end the 40/40/20 rule.

The King County Council’s transportation committee voted last week to change the way Metro allocates bus service. In the past, Metro used a 40/40/20 ratio to allocate new bus service: 40% would go to south county routes, 40% would go to east county routes, and the remaining 20% would go to routes inside the city of Seattle (even though the vast majority of bus riders live inside the city). The 40/40/20 rule was a compromise with the conservative members of the county council who didn’t want to fund new bus service unless their constituents in the suburbs and rural areas of the county got the majority of new routes.

But in the last two years, as Metro has struggled to provide funding for basic bus service in the face of an economic downturn, the 40/40/20 rule has proven to be a huge liability and a system-breaker. Last year Metro had to balance its budget by cutting 75,000 hours of service. The cuts were spread evenly across the system, based not on ridership or demand, but on the service hours on each route. The in-city routes, which had received only 20% of new service hours in the past decade, were forced to take 60% of all the cuts last year, leaving a lot of Seattleites and north-county riders standing at their stops while full buses passed them by.

Last year, an advisory group recommended that Metro transit do away with the 40/40/20 rule. The county council is finally on the way to making that a reality. The full council will vote on new allocation criteria within the next few weeks. Under the proposed new rules, service levels will be based on the number of households on each route, the number of jobs in a given area, the number of low-income households on each route (as lower income folks tend to use the bus more than wealthy folks do), and the location of natural “growth hubs” (for example, major employers, like Microsoft or the University of Washington, or major retail areas, like the Northgate Mall, Bellevue Square, or Southcenter.)

Under the new rules, Metro expects that only 1% of its bus service will shift to in-city routes, which doesn’t match the expectations of most in-city riders I’ve talked to. Nor is it a cure for Metro’s worst problems: its growing budget shortfalls and its worsening on-time record.

Crowded buses are one thing. Buses that run chronically late (when they bother to show up at all) is another. Metro’s on-time record for its in-city routes has become abysmal. There is no excuse for making passengers stand for more than half an hour in the downtown bus tunnel at 7 pm waiting for a bus to the University District; yet this is becoming a common occurrence--and these are the most frequently travelled routes in the entire system. It’s also common to stand in the bus tunnel for long periods of time (20 to 40 minutes) with no buses arriving at all, but plenty of empty light-rail trains at seven minute intervals.

Even worse are the drivers who are routinely early and who suffer no consequences for it. I recently flagged down a #67 bus that was speeding by a stop a full ten minutes early. The driver shrugged his shoulders and said: “those times are just estimates.” Well, no.  They're not, at least not for the rider. We expect the bus to be on-time when we’re standing outside in the rain in 40-degree weather. Ten minutes late is okay, but ten minutes early? Never!

The main cause of Metro’s on-time problem is simple: Metro recently shortened drivers’ layover times at the end of each route. Now drivers have every incentive to zoom through their routes early; otherwise, they barely get a bathroom break before they have to begin their next route. This is a prescription for a chronic on-time problem. Extending driver’s break times, of course, would cost money which Metro doesn’t have.

The King County Council is currently looking at a proposal for a $20 car tab fee to fund Metro transit. But for the proposal to pass the council, it would need a supermajority of 6 out of 9 council members to vote for it. Four of the most conservative council members have already said they’ll vote it down. Alternatively, the council could vote with a simple majority (5 to 4) to put the tab fee on the ballot for voters to decide in November. They should do this as soon as possible, so transit advocates have time to gear up a campaign in support of the ballot measure.

Without that funding, Metro will have to cut 200,000 service hours next year in order to plug the hole in its budget. The bus system is already in trouble; a cut of 200,000 hours could cause one of the nation’s largest and most reliable transit systems to collapse.

My Favorite Films at SIFF 2011

Here’s a list of the best films that I saw at this year’s Seattle International Film Festival:

Documentaries:

How to Die in Oregon (directed by Peter Richardson) – Oregon’s Death With Dignity law has been in force for a while now, and Richardson wanted to find out who is using it and why. The film is a finely crafted, humane, and hopeful examination of a subject that no one wants to think about until it happens to them or someone they love: if you’re nearing the end of your life and the pain becomes too much to manage, what do you do? This was, hands down, the best documentary that I saw at this year’s festival. It will have a repeat showing as part of The Best of SIFF program at the SIFF Cinema (in the Seattle Center) on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 1 pm.

The Interrupters (directed by Steve James) – My second favorite documentary this year is about a group of Chicagoans, many of whom are former gang members, who are working to decrease the number of shootings and related gang violence in poor neighborhoods of Chicago. They call themselves “violence interrupters,” and this film follows them around as they do their jobs. It’s a long documentary (over 2 hours), but each story is important and complex, just like real life.

My other favorite documentaries, in no particular order, are:

Mama Africa – a film directed by Mika Kaurismaki, one of the Finnish Kaurismaki brothers (Aki is the better known brother here in the US, and his film Match Factory Girl is a must-see). Mama Africa pieces together the story of South African singer Miriam Makeba, who was exiled from her home country for her anti-apartheid activism. She came to the US to pursue her career in the early 1960’s, but was blacklisted after marrying Black Panther spokesman Stokely Carmichael. Then the two of them moved to Africa, where she proceeded to have a long and illustrious career singing (and teaching) African music in numerous native languages. Add to that her incredible voice and some great concert footage, and you have a thoroughly enjoyable film.

Project Nim (directed by James Marsh) – It was the Sixties, so why not adopt a chimpanzee into your family? This film follows the fortunes of the first chimpanzee to be raised like a human baby, as part of an experiment to try and teach an animal human language (and, almost coincidentally, human culture). In the process, it also reveals the shocking treatment of animal test subjects in laboratories. After watching Nim frolic with his human brothers and sisters and hang out with his 20-something friends at a university laboratory, it’s difficult to watch him get sold off to a medical laboratory. Will Nim be rescued? What happens to the other chimpanzees who were sold along with him? Watch the film and find out.

Revenge of the Electric Car (directed by Chris Paine) – A follow up to Paine’s very popular film Who Killed the Electric Car, this documentary will probably also get a wide release. It’s slicker than its predecessor, with a bigger budget and a lot more access to the movers and shakers in the auto industry. That access shows in the tone the film takes: it unquestioningly portrays all efforts to build an electric vehicle, whether it’s Tesla Motors’ fits and starts, Nissan’s drive to be the first with a vehicle on the market, GM’s new Volt, or some random guy in a battered warehouse converting gasoline cars into EV’s. I suppose you could call that being objective or comprehensive. But I couldn’t help thinking, “Why all this fuss about the personal automobile, when we should be trying to get more people out of their cars and into mass transit?” Still, this a great film for your car-loving, beer drinking buddies; take a few to see this (when it gets wide release) and have a good argument afterwards.

Best documentaries I didn’t get to see:

At the top of this list is If a Tree Falls (directed by Marshall Curry), a documentary about the Earth Liberation Front. I had a ticket to see it, but the film was cancelled by a twitchy theater manager who thought there might be a bomb in the building (there wasn’t). Shame on SIFF for sending 90% of the audience home, then continuing the screening for an audience of only 20 people, and then not giving one of its “to be announced” slots to it so it could be shown again in Seattle. (It screened in Everett, but who’s gonna go all that way to see one film?) Fortunately, it will be showing again in Seattle sometime in July.

Another documentary that deserves a wide release is the film that won the Grand Jury Prize at SIFF for best documentary, Hot Coffee (directed by Susan Saladoff). Also, animal lovers and nonviolence activists should see a great little film entitled Buck (directed by Cindy Meehl) about Buck Brannaman, who trains horses (not breaks them) and trains people how to get along with, and communicate with, their horses.

Feature Films:

I love a good feature film, but there has to be a theme or message that resonates with me. My favorite this year was the following:

King of Devil’s Island (directed by Marius Holst, in Norwegian with subtitles) – A prison for boys on a rock off the coast of Norway is the setting for this historical film that examines how young people choose to resist abusive power, and the consequences. This powerful film will have another showing at The Best of SIFF at the SIFF Cinema on Sunday, June 19, 2011, at 8 pm. I highly recommend that you see it.

There were four other feature films I enjoyed, in no particular order:

Route Irish (in working class British English, so you should turn on the subtitles) – one of Ken Loach’s better films about a security contractor returning from Iraq who investigates a cover-up surrounding the death of his best friend.

All Your Dead Ones (directed by Carlos Moreno, in Spanish with subtitles) – Shot in the director’s home province of Cali, Colombia, this black comedy is about a simple farmer who finds a pile of bodies in his cornfield, but can’t get the local officials to do anything about it because it’s Election Day. Sounds a little like here, doesn’t it? This film hasn’t been shown in Colombia yet, but (gulp) the director wants it to be. My fingers are crossed.

The Names of Love (directed by Michal LeClerc, in French with subtitles) – Sexy, French, funny, leftist Characters who can laugh at the themselves. What more do you need for a fun film experience?

Maybe a little chaos and a lot of sound? Sound of Noise (directed by Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson, in Swedish with subtitles) subverts the musical genre by supplying an entertaining film about experimental music. One scene of tuxedoed and diamond-clad audience members fleeing a concert hall reminded me of a recent Seattle Symphony audience’s tepid reaction to a fantastic program of modern music at Benaroya Hall. As one of the movie’s heroes puts it: “You have to forgive them. Music is all they know.”

I urge everyone to check out SIFF’s Best of SIFF program this coming weekend. You can find more info at www.siff.net.

Top 10 Overhyped Stories of 2010

1) Tea Party candidates. We heard way too much about their personalities and not nearly enough about their policies…because they didn’t have any policies to speak of, except a general anti-government bias. Yet they still wanted to be part of the government. Who were the bigger fools: the Tea Party candidates, the media that covered their every fart and sneeze, or the idiots who voted for them?

2) Financial reform will protect you from evil banks. Wrong. You have no protection from evil banks. Who do you think runs this country, anyway?

3) Healthcare Reform will make your healthcare costs skyrocket. It’s not the reform bill that’s doing that; it’s the delay in implementing it that’s given insurance companies the permission to jack up premiums now, before the law takes effect.

4) Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is still in force in the US military. In fact, the courts issued an injunction on the enforcement of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell this summer, and the military has largely given up on it. Yet Congress can’t pass a bill to repeal it. It’s the policy that died a secret death. Kind of ironic, don’t you think?

5) Taxpayers are making money on the bank bailouts. Not when the government is still pouring money into Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and GMAC. Oh, and GM still hasn’t paid back its bailout money, but it nevertheless went ahead and bought a subprime loan company to take the place of GMAC. Business as usual in the corporate welfare state.

6) Ban on deepwater oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. It was announced by Obama right after the BP oil spill in April, but his underlings in the Interior Department didn’t get the memo. Approvals for drilling permits went on as usual all throughout the summer until the ban was officially “lifted” several weeks early.

7) Airport body scans are “confidential,” and pat-downs are making airline flights safer. With the posting of thousands of body scans on the Internet straight from a federal courthouse scanner in Florida, the “confidential” claim was proved ridiculous. And with only a few airports using the new body scanners and pat-downs, any claim that these screenings are making us “safer” is an outright lie.

8) Iranian nukes and North Korean attacks. Both are natural consequences of our aggressive, expansionist foreign policy. If they’re really such big problems, why don’t we do something about it, for example: sideline Hillary Clinton, hamstring the CIA, and bring the troops home. There, problem solved.

9) I-1077 would’ve imposed an income tax on all Washington residents. Uh, no. It was a tax on couples with income over $500,000 per year and singles with income over $250,000 per year. If the state legislature had voted to extend the tax to all Washington residents, we would have repealed it via initiative. Duh. That’s how the political process works, people.

10) The Candy Tax was a tax on food. No, no, no, no, no. And I got so sick of the TV commercial with the woman who makes organic candy bars whining about paying the tax. What does she think we are? Suckers? Well, I guess the majority of us are…or else we really like our suckers!