New Minimum Wage for Seattle: Where’s the Data?

Posted on March 19, 2014 by DBP

Let me start this post by saying that I have no official opinion on Seattle City Council Member (and self-proclaimed socialist) Kshama Sawant’s proposed $15/hr minimum wage for Seattle workers.

Of course, I’d like to have an opinion on it, eventually. A personal one. And when I do, I’d like it to be an informed opinion. It goes without saying that the City Council’s opinion should be an informed one, too. But before anybody could have an informed opinion on a topic like this, they’d need to have access to some data, and maybe do a little poking around in the small business community, wouldn’t you think? Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Welcome to Amerigroup . . . Are you crazy?

Posted on March 12, 2014 by DBP

Dedicated to Scott St. Clair and Dr. Ron Sterling

OK . . . so I got signed up with Obamacare on schedule, right? As of now, I haven’t been to see a doctor once, so I haven’t gotten anything good from the program yet.

What I HAVE gotten, though, is this:

4  Amerigroup~RealSolutions membership cards
1  Letter from DSHS offering me food stamps (declined)
1  Letter from DSHS denying me health care benefits*

 *for failing to show up for my food stamps appointment

and . . .

Approx. 30 robo-calls (sometimes two in one day) from Amerigroup Final Solutions telling me I need to call them back urgently so they can share some “important” information with me.

I never call the Amerigroup number back. Why? Because I tried that once and guess what happened? Instead of giving me the so-called urgent information, their machine just grilled me for information about my health. Personal information of the kindthat you would only want to discuss with a live human being, preferably a medical professional:

    • Do you have cancer?
    • Have you had a stroke?
    • Are you living with HIV?

Don’t get me wrong. I like the concept of Obamacare.

The CONCEPT of Obamacare.

I’m po’, and I need that shit. But what I do NOT need is for some computer to be calling and asking me about my business. That is exactly the kind of thing Republicans said they were worried about, is it not?

    • Loss of privacy
    • Loss of dignity
    • Loss of freedom

Here. Listen to a recording of my one call with Amerigroup:

David Preston calls Amerigroup~Real Solutions (2.12.14)

(Some bits of personal info have been edited out of the recording.)

As you’re listening to this, please, note the following:

¶ It’s so easy to game the survey it’s laughable

It has limited voice recognition capabilities, so all I had to do to fool it into thinking I was my wife Phea was to say “Yes” to their question: “Is this Phea?” and then give her birthdate. From there I could have proceeded to give all kinds of misleading or just plain wrong information about her health status.

Do you have HIV? –Sure do.
Depression? –Afraid so.
Diagnosed with schizophrenia? –Well, yes and no . . .

¶ They say you can talk to an “agent” at the end

Yeah. You can talk to an agent at the end of the survey, all right. But the agent is clearly no help at all. Worse than nothing, in fact.

What’s the survey for? I asked.
Don’t know, says Agent Tracy.
Have you ever taken that survey yourself? I say
None of your business, she replies.

Hm. Oh, I get it. So your machine can ask me if I have AIDS I can’t ask your representative if she’s ever taken the same survey . . . because that’s a PERSONAL question!

When I asked Agent Tracy why they couldn’t just have someone call me personally and ask for that information, she explained that they’re simply too busy to do that. “We have thousands of insureds,” she said. “We can’t take the time to contact each of them individually.”

To top it off, Tracy is not even in Washington state. She’s at a call center in God-Knows-Wheresville. (Could be a federal detention center for all I know.)

She said that she’d have a manager call me back the next business day, but [surprise] nobody’s ever called me back. And I’m sure nobody ever will.

And in the meantime, Amerigroup’s machine keeps ringing me every goddam day, asking me to call them back. (It’s URGENT!!)

Now remember . . . Amerigroup is not a health care provider. They couldn’t help me put a Band-Aid on my finger, and this Tracy lady probably wouldn’t know a hypodermic if it stuck her in the ass.

Nope. Amerigroup is just an insurance company, one I was given no choice over but had to accept by virtue of the federal mandate that I sing up for medical insurance.

* * * * *

Like I said, I’m not going to call this outfit back or answer any more questions about my health until I get to talk to a live human being. I’m expecting a letter from Amerigroup any day now telling me that my Obamacare’s been cancelled because I’m not being responsive. After that I’m expecting a visit from some IRS goons who will inform me that me they’re garnishing my wages (what wages?) or sending me to prison for non-compliance with Obamacare.

With a little luck, though, the IRS Obamacare punishment section will be run on the same business model as Amerigroup, and instead of paying me a personal visit they’ll just have a robo-dialer call me and tell me to report to a federal detention center at my earliest convenience.

As we go to press I hear the phone ringing . . .

Hold on a sec, blogoszoids. I’ll be back with you shortly . . .

[ . . .]

This is inmate #4859609 blogging to you from the Federal Corrections Facility in scenic Sheridan, Oregon.

God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America . . .

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Health Insurance: Why is this so damn hard? (Part 2)

Posted on March 6, 2014 by DBP

March 6, 2014

Here’s the latest on my Obamacare travail . . .

Back Story

If you recall, in early February 2014, I received a nasty-gram from the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS). I had just gotten set up with my government-mandated Obamacare a month before that, but the nasty-gram appeared to be telling me that I would not be getting any health care coverage, or food stamps, or anything else from the government, through April of 2014, because – get this – I had failed to show for some appointment. An appointment that I didn’t even know about.

Read my blog post on that here: Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Bitcoin is a Scam

Posted on February 27, 2014 by DBP

February 27, 2014

The Emperor’s New Nuts

Recent news stories about the fictional collapse of the fictional bitcoin currency have me wondering who’s the bigger dupe: the trustifarian nerds who buy bitcoins or the journalists who write about them.

Take this recent story from the Associated Press, via the Seattle Times:

Emperor’s Old Clothes Getting New Look for Spring

The is absolutely typical of the bitcoin media hype. Reporters will talk about someone “seizing” a stash of bitcoins [read: the FBI took someone’s hard drive]. Or they’ll quote some financial “expert” who doesn’t know jack-shit about computers and the Internet but is happy to wing it in order to get his name in the papers.

It’s obvious that the Establishment has been hoaxed on bitcoin. But here’s the beauty of it . . . In order to convince themselves that they’re not actually a bunch of suckers, the hoax-ees all have to keep the hoax going and get more people buying into it. That means they have to keep yammering on about it in such a way that leads you to believe that they are taking bitcoin seriously – even if they’re trashing it at the moment – and that therefore, so should you.

Here’s a quote from the Times print edition in which some banker is talking about the latest bitcoin “crash” :

“This is extremely destructive,” said Mark Williams, a risk-management expert and former Federal Reserve Bank examiner. “What we’re seeing is a lot of the flaws. [Bitcoin] is not only fragile, it’s fragile as eggshells.”

Oh yeah? Eggshells, huh? Try fairy dust! That would’ve been a better metaphor, because compared to what bitcoin is made of, eggshells are like reinforced concrete.

* * * * *

Want more evidence of media shilling for bitcoin? Do an Internet search on the terms “bitcoin” + “wild ride.” [Or click Here.] There’s nearly a million hits on that combo, several of them in the Seattle Times coverage alone. And those hits are spanning several months’ worth of coverage; it’s not like they’re all for one story.

So what does that prove? Just that no one’s doing any original research or writing on bitcoin. Instead, one source (probably someone who is in league with the bitcoin hoaxters) planted a  story trying to bump the price up. The rest of the media (including the AP) then picked up the term “wild ride” and parroted it endlessly:

Bitcoin – wild ride – Bitcoin – wild ride
Squawwwwwwk!

Eventually even the shilliest of media shills has to fess up and admit that bitcoin is nothing but smoke and mirrors. They usually do this between the lines, though, maybe in one of those “What the hell is bitcoin anyway?” pop-ups they have to stick in there for the yokels. In the piece I linked above, the AP admits that the value of bitcoin isn’t pegged to anything. In fact it seems that nobody even knows who started it:

Q: Who’s behind the currency?

A: It’s a mystery. Bitcoin was launched in 2009 by a person or group of people operating under the name Satoshi Nakamoto and then adopted by a small clutch of enthusiasts. Nakamoto dropped off the map as bitcoin began to attract widespread attention, but proponents say that doesn’t matter; the currency obeys its own, internal logic.

–Got that folks? Bitcoin is a mystery! [Insert spooky sounds here.]

Let’s give bitcoin a little grounding in reality, shall we? Because that’s something the media isn’t very good at . . . reality. They tend to speak of bitcoin as if it were its own thing out there in cyberspace. But is that really true? Could bitcoin stand alone as a currency, without another, non-fictive currency (like, say, the dollar) to sustain it?

Here’s a scenario that involves bitcoin and at least one non-credulous person . . . Say you’re trying to sell your old Chevy Impala through Craigslist, and within minutes of your ad appearing online, a nerdy teenager shows up at your doorstep saying he wants to buy the car immediately without even kicking the tires. You quickly agree on a price, but when it’s time to pay, the kids pulls a walnut out his pocket and hands it to you. You stifle a giggle at first, but suddenly you’re worried. What else might junior have in that pocket . . .

“Um, look, I’m sorry kid, but I only take cash,” you say, backing slowly into the safety of your house.

“Oh no, mister. This is Nut-Coin,” the kid says. “It’s better than cash. Nut-Coin is accepted everywhere on the Internet, and there’s no middleman. Plus,” he adds, beaming, “it’s totally untraceable.”

The kid looks dead serious, so you decide to humor him, just to see if he’s part of some new Mormon ploy to get into people’s houses.

“Where did you get that er . . . Nut-Coin, kid?”

“Off the Inter-nut, naturally. (Duh!)”

“I see. And how much is that thing worth, exactly?”

“It depends,” he replies. “Yesterday Nut-Coin was worth five cents, but today it’s worth a million dollars. Who knows how much it’ll be worth tomorrow? Right now, as of this second, I’m sure it’s worth several times more than your car.”

(You see your chance.)

“But I’m only selling this jalopy for six large. I can’t make change for your million-dollar Nut-Coin.”

“Oh, that’s all right Mister,” he says. “You can keep the change. I’ve got plenty more Nut-Coins in my account.”

“Uh-huh. Well, look. I think I’ve decided to keep the car after all. But tell me something, sonny. Who’s guaranteeing this Nut-Coin of yours?”

“Huh? Guaranteeing?”

“I mean . . . who do I see if want to change a Nut-Coin into dollars. Or into yen. Or into pickled herring? You can do that with a currency that’s based on something real; you can exchange it for another currency or for a more-or-less static amount of goods or services.”

“I’m still not following, mister.”

“OK, look. The value of the dollar is based on the ability of U.S. government to tax its citizens and businesses, which is in turn based on the ability of those citizens to produce something that they and other people want. So . . . what is the value of this Nut-Coin thingie based on? Hm?”

“Gosh!” he says. “I never thought about it like that. I guess I don’t rightly know who’s behind Nut-Coin. Some squirrels probably. Squirrels are amazing critters aren’t they? They sure know their nuts.”

“They sure do, kid. They sure do. I’m feeling rather squirrely myself right now as a matter of fact. But yeah, look . . . I’m sorry, but like I said, I’ve decided not to sell the car after all. Did you want to talk to me about something else? The Book of Mormon maybe?”

“The Book of Who?”

“Never mind, kid. Never mind.”

To be continued.

* Take your pick.

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , , | 9 Comments

Rats! ~ How the Health Department threw their work (and your money) down a hole.

Posted on February 19, 2014 by DBP

The documents below tell the story of how one government agency in Washington State, the Seattle King County Department of Public Health, failed to do its job and serve the public interest.

Of course, government failures happen all the time. Unless they’re especially spectacular or costly, they’re not news. What sets this particular failure apart is the fact that the agency in question – the Health Department – had everything it needed to succeed. It had the time, the money, the expertise, the good will. And most of all, it had the experience. And yet it failed anyway.

What went wrong? Continue reading →

Posted in General, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Health insurance: Why is this so damn hard?

Posted on February 8, 2014 by DBP

Don’t answer that. I already know why it’s hard. In a word: Bureaucracy. Mindless, wasteful bureaucracy.

See the insurance card below? It’s the third one the government-mandated insurance provider has sent me in the forty days since I signed up for Obamacare. All together, I’ve received half a dozen mailings from various organizations connected with my new health insurance, each one chock-full of small-print gobbledygook that looks like it was farted out of some robo-lawyer’s ass. And in all that time I haven’t even been in to see a doctor. Or a nurse. Not even a fuckin’ receptionist!

But actually, I couldn’t care less about that. Let me tell you what else I got in the mail though, just last Friday.

Ah . . . nope. I think I better back up a little first. Give you some history.

Obamacare: Tuning In and Turning On Continue reading →

Posted in Essays, General | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Stupor Bowl

Posted on February 2, 2014 by DBP

Why do football players make a hundred times more money than Nobel laureates? Why do American high schools students know more about sports teams than they know about the Vietnam War?

Look, football is a game. By any measure of social benefit, it’s less important than the effort to cure cancer, fix our schools, or heal our planet. So . . . why all the fuss?

I’m glad that some people get enjoyment out of this game, but as for me I cannot support its glorification, because to do so would send a message to others that I think this country has its priorities straight, when in fact the opposite is true. Our national priorities are backwards, and football is the epitome of that backwardness.

I live in Seattle, and I can assure you that the “Seattle” Seahawks don’t have any organic connection to this city or its people. The players aren’t from here, they don’t spend much time here, and many of them don’t even live here. Regardless of whether the team wins or loses, it will have little impact on the lives of anyone outside the team and a few obscenely wealthy TV executives.

I would no more cheer for such an organization than I would cheer for Microsoft or General Motors.

In the end, the Super Bowl is just a lot of money and energy down the drain . . . resources that could have been used to do better things.

~ David Preston  2/2/14

 

Top Ten Seahawks by Salary

Player
2013/2014
Zach Miller
$11,000,000
Sidney Rice
9,700,000
Russell Okung
9,540,000
Marshawn Lynch
8,500,000
Chris Clemons
8,166,667
Red Bryant
7,600,000
Max Unger
6,000,000
Brandon Mebane
5,200,000
Percy Harvin
4,900,000
Michael Bennett
4,800,000

Source: http://www.sportscity.com/nfl/salaries/seattle-seahawks-salaries/


Top Ten NFL Quarterbacks by Salary

1. Peyton Manning, Broncos – $18,000,000
2. Michael Vick, Eagles – $12,500,000
3. Matt Ryan, Falcons – 11,500,000
4. Philip Rivers, Chargers – $10,200,000
5. Aaron Rodgers, Packers – 8,000,000
6. Jay Cutler, Broncos – 7,700,000
7. Joe Flacco, Ravens – 6,760,000
8. Josh Freeman, Buccaneers – 6,585,000
9. Sam Bradford, Rams – 6,000,000
10. Matt Hasselbeck, Titans – 5,500,000

Source: http://www.sportscity.com/nfl-salaries-top-10-salaries-for-quarterbacks/2012/07/01/

Washington State College/University Employees by Salary

Agency Title Name Job Title 2010 Gross Earnings
UW SARKISIAN, STEPHEN A COACH-FOOTBALL $1,982,918
UW ROMAR, LORENZO COACH-BASKETBALL $1,147,050
WSU BONE, KEN HEAD BASKETBALL COACH $746,416
UW HOLT V, NICHOLAS ASSISTANT COACH-FOOTBALL $652,229
WSU FLOYD, ELSON PRESIDENT $625,000
WSU WULFF, PAUL L HEAD FOOTBALL COACH $551,670
UW WOODWARD, DAVID SCOTT ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT $550,008
UW SEKHAR, LALIGAM N PROFESSOR WITHOUT TENURE $547,980
UW REYES, JORGE DIONISIO PROFESSOR WITHOUT TENURE $521,304

Source: http://blog.thenewstribune.com/politics/2011/08/10/sarkasian-is-washingtons-top-paid-state-employee/

 

 Top 10 Surgeon Salaries (national average)

1.    Orthopedic surgery — spine: $714,088
2.    Neurological surgery: $701,927
3.    Cardiovascular surgery — pediatric: $681,408
4.    Neurological surgery — pediatric: $656,282
5.    Cardiology — electrophysiology: $601,111
6.    Orthopedic surgery — hip and joint: $589,267
7.    Cardiology — invasive-interventional: $586,765
8.    Dermatology — Mohs surgery: $586,083
9.    Cardiovascular surgery: $567,171
10.  Orthopedic surgery — trauma: $562,688

Source: http://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/25-highest-paid-physician-specialties-by-hospital-ownership.html

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

Nickelsville Glassyard Site Clean-up Costs: $37,500 and Counting

Posted on January 28, 2014 by DBP

Below is an itemized list of the City of Seattle’s estimated clean up costs at Nickelsville Highland Park (aka the “Glassyard Site”).

If you recall, Nickelsville was evicted by the Seattle City Council after being on that spot illegally for two and a half long, trashy years. The formal eviction date was September 1, 2013, but Nickelsville residents weren’t completely gone from there until about a week later, at which time the city had to come in, supervise garbage removal, and pay a private security company to keep people off the site.

Costs for that phase of the operation:

Garbage pick-up
at Glassyards		 $16,199.07
Pest Control $8,924.26
Security $4,063.75
Subtotal $29,187.08

See the breakdown here. Continue reading →

Posted in General | 2 Comments

ppl (1.23.14)

Posted on January 23, 2014 by DBP

This lady’s been chillin’ at the intersection of Highland Park Way SW and West Marginal Way SW in Seattle:

It’s right where Nickelsville used to be. A world-class destination for panhandlers:

Would you like to know what her sign says? –Of course you would!

Mom and newborn baby. Please help. Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | Leave a comment

The Schizophrenic Times: SHARE in the News

Posted on January 23, 2014 by DBP

Three recent articles on SHARE’s Tent City 4 from the Seattle Times:

Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2014 ~ Sammamish OKs moratorium on homeless camps

This article is supposed to be about the City of Sammamish’s decision to impose a moratorium on tent cities, but it clearly reads like a puff piece. Discussion of the moratorium itself is limited to a single paragraph at the end, which contains no direct quotes from council members, but which summarizes the Sammamish City Council’s majority position as being that the city needs a breather so they can develop a permanent process for welcoming (!) homeless encampments. Continue reading →

Posted in Essays, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Homeless, Inc. ~ Catholic Community Services

Posted on January 21, 2014 by DBP

This page contains a discussion of a specific low-income housing provider business in Seattle. For the main page and introduction to this topic, see here: Homeless, Inc.

Catholic Community Services
of Western Washington

Total Seattle HSD Budget for 2013:
$1,513,453

CEO:
Michael Reichert

CEO’s total compensation:
$192,000 (2011)

Ties to Scott Morrow / SHARE?
Yes

Below is an itemized and downloadable list of housing-related contracts between the City of Seattle’s Human Services Department (HSD) and Catholic Community Services of Western Washington (also known as Catholic Housing Services of Western Washington). These contracts were force services to be provided in 2013.

I gathered this material using a Public Disclosure Request.

1. Lazarus Day Center

Services Provided (page 10):
    Meals and daytime shelter for 1,915 older men

Total HSD Budget (page 2):  $118,618

2. Sacred Heart Shelter* Continue reading →

Posted in Politics, Profiles | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New Feature: Homeless, Inc.

Posted on January 16, 2014 by DBP

If you’ve been following TBQ, you’ve heard me talking about Homeless, Inc.

Homeless, Inc. is the name I have given to Seattle’s mammoth low-income housing industry. It numbers among its members some of the most familiar names in the charity business, as well as some of the most obscure. Big or small, what all these organizations have in common is that get money from the government to provide shelter and shelter-related services to Seattle’s poor. Many of them have an unusually cozy relationship with government and with each other (for comparison, think military-industrial complex) and a few of them, notwithstanding the misleading term “non-profit,” manage to rake in a tidy surplus with which to reward their top execs. All courtesy of you, the taxpayer.

Continue reading →

Posted in General | 1 Comment

The Village Quixotic (or: How to avoid headaches by thinking with your tear ducts)

Posted on January 16, 2014 by DBP

Some astute TBQ readers have been linking me stuff about Olympia’s new Nickelsville knock-off, a joint called “Quixote Village.” Here’s an extract from the 12/31/13 edition of the Olympian newspaper:

The residents of Camp Quixote are no longer vagabonds. They no longer need to move their temporary shelters from church to church every six months in the greater Olympia area.

Read more here.

 

Earlier reportage (and I use the term loosely) from Christmas Day:

On Christmas Eve, Linda Austin admired her new home as she set down a box of belongings. A couple of years ago, she faced dark and difficult times. That’s when Camp Quixote, a self-governing tent community for the homeless, took Austin under its wing.

The tent camp’s nomadic existence ended Tuesday as residents moved into 30 new cottages at Quixote Village. The project at 3350 Mottman Road SW was years in the making.

Read more here.

 

Other articles in the series:

Quixote Village a step away from opening (9/28/13)*
Quixote Village soon to take shape (6/9/13)

* * * * *

Quixote Village (no relation to this blog) is a pet project of the the Olympian, a handful of state and local legislators, and a non-profit group called Panza. I imagine that there are strong connections between this project and Seattle’s SHARE/Nickelsville, but I don’t have any proof of that. Yet. (I plan on asking around.)

Now, mind you, I’m not necessarily against this type of subsidized micro-housing project. In fact, some aspects of it seem very level headed. I like the idea of having people living indoors instead of in tents, for example. And I’m glad that this outfit is not directly under the auspices of SHARE, Scott Morrow, Peggy Hotes, et al., even if it was inspired by that bunch. Continue reading →

Posted in Essays, General, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Nickelsville – Skyway Landlord in the News (and not in a good way)

Posted on December 20, 2013 by DBP

Update: 12/21/13
Go to Update

Check out this article from the online version of the Everett Herald:

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20131215/NEWS01/712159841

It discusses two fires that occurred in properties owned by Peter Sikov within a short period of time.

Background: If you’ll recall, Peter Sikov is the same guy who owns the property that Nickelsville moved onto illegally (but with Sikov’s permission) and holed up at for three months this fall. In addition to the Skway property, Sikov has several other properties in the area. Collectively, these properties are worth millions of dollars. Continue reading →

Posted in Essays | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

$64,000 (and counting) To Keep Out Nickelsville Refugees!

Posted on December 20, 2013 by DBP

In earlier posts, I told you how the City of Seattle has had to shell out for a series of post-Nickelsville clean-up operations at Myers Way South, a mile up the road from where the original Nickelsville camp was, before it was evicted.

Here’s a picture of the Myers Way clean-up in progress in late October:

Here’s a pic of the fence the City built around site. It was finished a few days ago:

And here’s a picture of homeless people (probably ex-Nickelodeons) moving right back in behind the fence:

See also this series of posts:

October 8, 2013
October 27, 2013
October 28, 2013
December 3, 2013
December 18, 2013

 * * * * *

As promised, I put in a public disclosure request to the City of Seattle to find out how much the Myers Way clean-up operation and fence cost us. The total cost is around $64,000 so far. That’s about $26,000 for the clean-up and $38,000 for the fence.

Now here are the itemized bills. And remember: this is just for the Myers Way refugees. It doesn’t even count the City’s costs for cleaning up the Nickelsville camp itself. (That stuff is coming.)

Myers Way Clean-up Bill

Myers Way Fence Bill

(Note: The owner of the fencing contractor, All-City Fence, donated to Mike McGinn’s re-election campaign. See here.)

* * * * *

So what’s the lesson here? What can other communities learn from Highland Park’s experience with Nickelsville? Just this: Don’t ever let a Nickelsville franchise get started in your neighborhood, or you’ll NEVER see the end of it. When you finally do get the main part of them to move on, you’ll still be faced with a long and ugly clean-up: building fences, wasting money, and gradually losing control of your parks and green spaces.

It was already hard enough for the City to keep hard-core homeless people from living in our greenbelts before these folks came here. When you add the Scott Morrow / Nickelsville attitude of angry entitlement on top of that, it becomes nearly impossible.

(Thanks to Ms. Nancy Craver and the Seattle Public Disclosure staff. These people are, in my opinion, some of the best public servants we have.)

Posted in Essays, Photos (Stuff) | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Ghettoization of the Soul

Posted on December 19, 2013 by DBP

Here’s another Nickelsville hype piece from our friends at Real Change News. The story is designed to make you believe that Nickelsville is the last place of refuge for families with children:

Nickelsville Elementary Continue reading →

Posted in Essays, General | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

ppl (12.18.13)

Posted on December 18, 2013 by DBP

ppl is an ongoing series of posts about the post-Nickelsville clean-up. Nickelsville is an illegal squatters camp –now three separate camps – that was evicted from the Highland Park neighborhood of West Seattle in early September, 2013. See the previous entry in the series here.

This is a photo of a fence that the City of Seattle just finished erecting along several blocks of the roadway in the 9900 block of and Myers Way S in the Highland Park neighborhood. Looking north.

The sender described it like this: The finished product. Sad. Continue reading →

Posted in General, Photos (People), Photos (Stuff) | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

White Center: More bars in more places

Posted on December 10, 2013 by DBP

See this place? Papa’s.

Papa’s was raided by the Feds for weapons narcotics and shut down over two years ago. But Google doesn’t update its “street view” photos very often, so Papa’s is still there on the street view map, bold as you please. Check it out. [Click]

Since Papa’s closed, another joint came in there. It was called Meander’s Kitchen. Meanders didn’t pull down the Papa’s sign; they just put their own sign on top of it.

Then Meander’s moved on and hauled their sign off with them, and now the Papa’s sign is back, and everything is right with Google’s world once more. And yet somehow, something is still not OK . . .

* * * * *

See that lady out front?

[Click]

She’s been fucking standing there in that exact same spot for two years. Every day at 8:00 AM, rain or shine, she’s out there, smoking her ciggie, waiting for Papa’s to reopen.

Ya really gotta admire that kind of brand loyalty.

Especially in a drunk.

* * * * *

White Center, Washington: My town.

A sonnet upon it.

Posted in Essays, Photos (People) | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Friends of Mike McGinn

Posted on December 8, 2013 by DBP

Dedicated to . . .

The WA State Public Disclosure Commission
N.C. & N.H., for their devotion to public service
J.R., for her amazing secretarial skills
Scott St. Clair, for his inspiration
The people of the Great State of Washington, for RCW 42.56 

and of course . . .

The many, many Friends of Mike McGinn

Friend of the Day: Seattle Aquarium

McGinn Campaign Donations: $350

City Contracts: $6,035,755

Read more about Mike’s Fishy Friends Here

 

 * * * * * Continue reading →

Posted in Essays, General | 5 Comments

Nickelsville: Finding a solution

Posted on December 6, 2013 by DBP

I offer this recent guest editorial from the Seattle Times for your edification. The author, one Derek Low, is a student* in the MSW (Master of Social Work) and MPH (Master of Public Health) programs at the University of Washington:

Find a permanent site to replace Nickelsville Continue reading →

Posted in Essays, General | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

ppl (12.3.13)

Posted on December 3, 2013 by DBP

(“ppl”  is an ongoing series of posts about the post-Nickelsville clean-up. Nickelsville is an illegal squatters camp –now three separate camps – that was evicted from the Highland Park neighborhood of West Seattle in early September, 2013. See previous entries in the series here and here. And also here.)

Nickelsville truly IS the gift that keeps on taking.

Below we see how the City of Seattle is STILL spending time and money cleaning up the mess left by Nickelsville. Today the City began erecting several hundreds of feet in fencing to keep ex-“Nickelodeons” from returning to a greenbelt near the camp’s old location. See here for the area I’m talking about.

* * * * * Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Nickelsville Skyway: They’re trashing our town!

Posted on November 30, 2013 by DBP

Background: “Nickelsville” is a series of Seattle-area squatter camps run by a man named Scott Morrow and his lady friend Peggy Hotes. Morrow and Hotes also run a non-profit shelter organization called SHARE that already gets millions of dollars in funding from various government agencies and is always clamoring for more.

Although SHARE claims to be providing shelter beds for homeless people in the city of Seattle, the group has been unable to account for how they spend the money they get. Meanwhile, SHARE operates two roving “tent cities” at church properties around King County, in addition to to three roving semi-legal homeless camps they collectively refer to as Nickelsville.

Story Updated: 11/30/13

* * * * * Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

What puffery is this? (Parts 1 & 2)

Posted on November 29, 2013 by DBP

Part 1
Go to Part 2

Here’s a cleverly disguised puff-piece from a recent copy of Seattle Times. You can file this one under “Corporate Media Bias”:

Football team owner funds research into brain injuries Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

My Little Socialist: Kshama Sawant

Posted on November 27, 2013 by DBP

Seattle Councilmember-elect Kshama Sawant is all over the Interblogz these days, and not just for being a nerdy young Woman of Color who beat out a stodgy Old White Man. That would have been news enough, but on top of that, it appears that she’s a card-carryin’, megaphone-totin’ member of the Red Menace. No sooner was the election called than Ms. Sawant marched down to the local shopping mall and called the Boeing company a bunch of economic terrorists.

She then floated the idea of the workers taking over the factories, turning bomber jet planes into butterflies, putting LSD in the public water supply, and so on.

See news story here:

Newly Elected Socialist Has Some Radical Ideas for Seattle

A word about semantics. Workers taking over factories is not a socialist idea. It’s not even a communist idea. It’s an anarchist idea.

Historically speaking, socialist governments have limited themselves to heavy taxation of private property and income, including factory wages. Socialist governments seldom take over factories themselves, to say nothing of letting the workers take them over. Socialist governments have been known to buy controlling shares in national industries – as France did with the failing Renault company in the 1980s – but in fact capitalist governments have been known to do the same thing. Thus, when President Obama’s right-wing critics accused him of being a socialist – for bailing out the auto industry temporarily – they were right, because that was, essentially, a socialist policy. But they were only temporarily right.

Socialism, Russian Style

Free Housing

So what is a socialist state? Continue reading →

Posted in General, Politics, Profiles | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Monica Spain Is Missing!!

Posted on November 22, 2013 by DBP

Update: 11/26/13
[Go to update.]

Who’s Monica Spain? you ask. Continue reading →

Posted in General | 5 Comments

Lisa Herbold ♥’s Scott Morrow

Posted on November 19, 2013 by DBP

Look everyone! It’s Lisa Herbold! On faKebook.

[click image to enlarge]

* * * * * Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , | 15 Comments

Independent Media: Why it matters.

Posted on November 18, 2013 by DBP

In a recent issue of the New York Times, I saw no fewer than three stories that illustrate problems with corporate media. And when I say corporate media, I mean any media source that depends on:

  1. Ad revenue
  2. Stockholder/owner approval of stories
  3. Relationships with government, business, or other interested “sources”

Any news provider that depends on any of those things is susceptible to lying, fudging, and under-reporting.

The first article relates to this is about Bloomberg News knuckling under to the Chinese government, which was getting tired of Bloomberg running critical pieces and had ordered them to stop:

Bloomberg News is Said to Curb Articles
That Might Anger China

* * * * * Continue reading →

Posted in General, Media, Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

KPLU: Time to start paying your interns

Posted on November 14, 2013 by DBP

Update!
Retraction! (sort of)

11/12/14: Thanks in part to you, my diligent readers, Ms. Erin Hennessey, News Director at KPLU, got back to me on KPLU’s Skyway Nickelsville piece (see below). She also had a couple of clarifications for me:

1) The author of the KPLU piece, Ms. Monica Spain, is not, in fact, an unpaid intern. She’s a freelance writer and was therefore presumably paid for the story. 

2) The two e-mails I sent to the station trying to make contact were not answered because they had gone into the SPAM folder, so nobody saw them. In other words: KPLU was not ignoring me.

Ms. Hennessey assured me that KPLU understands the depth and complexity of the Nickelsville story. She explained that that story can’t be told in a single article (don’t I know it!) but told me that KPLU has been covering the broader story over time and will continue to do so. I thanked her and assured her that I’d do some analysis on their historical coverage to see if the overall trend is one of thorough and comprehensive reportage or not. Either way, I’ll report my findings.

Ms. Hennessey expressed an interest in working with me as a source. So we’ll see how that works out.  In the meantime, I’ve got to layoff the interns. Or lay on them.

Or something . . .

I still don’t have Ms. Spain’s contact info, by the way. If anyone can dig that up for me, I’d appreciate it.

 

ORIGINAL STORY
Published on November 11, 2013

How many times have we seen this happen?

How many times have we seen the local media cover Nickelsville like it was a sweet, furry little kitten that needed adopting? How many times have we seen the media ignore the complicated –and sometimes ugly – truth about Nickelsville by making the whole story about Those Poor Homeless People?

Look at the story this so-called alternative news station ran the other day. It was written by someone named Monica Spain, who I’m guessing is an unpaid intern, just out of journalism school:

At Roughest of Nickelsville’s Sites, a Strong Smell

OK, the first thing wrong with this piece is . . . well . . . everything.

It conveys almost no information about Nickelsville or its history. And such information as it does convey can be summed up in two or three info-crumbs:

  • Felicia Leathley is a pregnant 19-year-old who’s left her family and now lives at Nickelsville’s new Skyway squat. A guy named Andy lives there, too.
  • Nickelsville’s not a nice place to live. There’s garbage, there’s no water, and you have to do chores.
  • Nickelsville needs donations (hint, hint). They still owe $9000 to somebody for . . . something.

The rest is your basic adopt-a-kitten stuff: Felicia doesn’t care if there’s trash at Nickelsville, because Nickelsville is her new fambly.

Well, isn’t that just puh-WEH-shus!

* * * * * Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Nickelsville ~ End of an Illusion

Posted on November 12, 2013 by DBP
Yo!  This be the latest entry in an ongoing Web journal about a squatters camp in Seattle, Washington. For the complete journal, see the “Nickelsville” item in the menu above.

Previous Entry: October 30 ~ How I know there’s no investigation into SHARE

November 9, 2013

WHY there is no investigation into SHARE.

Just a little recap for you . . .

In my most recent series of front-page posts, I’ve been discussing the fact that there is no meaningful investigation into the Seattle non-profit shelter provider known as SHARE. SHARE is suspected of wrongdoing on several accounts, including: discrimination, embezzlement, and fraud. Continue reading →

Posted in General | 1 Comment

So why did McGinn lose, really?

Posted on November 6, 2013 by DBP

Simple: The guy had bad karma.

And how did he get bad karma? By being a fool in a past life, maybe. Or, more likely, being a fool in this one.

As most of my readers will already know, by spring of 2013, many of Nickelsville’s Highland Park neighbors, including me, were putting pressure on Mayor McGinn and the city government to do something about this nuisance. It had been two years since they set up shop at the bottom of the hill, and in that time the Mayor and Council had made no serious effort to find them another place, evict them, or even get them to clean up their act. Things were getting worse there by the day, with new panhandlers moving in from all over the country and camp rejects sticking around in the neighborhood after being kicked out for rule violations or political differences with the camp management.

Eventually, the local neighborhood committee submitted a petition with several hundred signatures on it (Get them outta here!) and a local business owner sued the City for over a million bucks. In short, a lot of people really wanted Nickelsville gone

As in . . . yesterday.

So, what was Mayor McGinn’s response to this situation? His response was to send a letter to the City Council, proposing, as one of the options, to make Highland Park Nickelsville’s forever home! In sending this letter, McGinn not only completely disrespected the Highland Park neighborhood and what they had been through, he proposed to nullify, in the stroke of a pen, decades’ worth of hard-won land-use regulations.

Pretty foolish, right? Right.

But the Mayor wasn’t done being foolish. Not just yet.

A group of people from all over West Seattle, outraged by the Mayor’s general cluelessness, arranged to meet with him personally to discuss the issue of why Nickelsville was a problem. At this meeting, people who had beaucoup experience with the place (both good and bad) explained to the Mayor that Nickelsville was not only not getting homeless people the help they needed, it was not even providing them with a safe place to be. Beyond that, it was creating a huge nuisance in the neighborhood.

When the Mayor heard these things, he acted concerned. He acted like he believed that Nickelsville was a problem. Why, he even acted like he wanted to do something about the problem. But you know what he did then? He punted.

He said [paraphrasing]: “Gee, I really want to take action on this, but I can’t unless there’s a whole bunch of public outrage. So what you all need to do is go tell the Stranger about the situation, and have them write a big article about it, and get everyone stirred up. And then maybe I can do something.”

Or in other words . . . Bring me the Witch’s Broom!

So there you have it: A politician telling his constituents that he knows what the right thing to do is, but that he can’t actually do it until someone else makes him.

Hmm . . . now where have I heard that before? [Hint: Starts with an “O”.]

At least one of the folks at the meeting did contact the Stranger about Nickelsville, but the Stranger, having the attention span of a stoned Chihuahua, naturally didn’t do squat. As we know, it would be several months more before the City Council would finally evict Nickelsville, and then it was over the objection of the Mayor.

I know not what the Mayor’s real intentions toward Nickelsville were, but I tell you this: Any man who needs to be compelled to do what’s right is a fool and a coward into the bargain. I don’t know whether this Ed Murray fellow deserved to win the Mayor’s seat. But I know that Mike McGinn deserved to lose it.

Good riddance, fool!

Posted in General | 8 Comments