Washington’s new cell phone law makes it illegal to use a hand-held phone.

Right-Mind says:

Yesterday, #1 son was hit on his bicycle in Moscow by a driver who was talking on his cell phone (#1 son is fine; but the bike needed to go into the shop).

Personally, I think this is great news. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve had a near-accident because of people talking-and-driving.

Unfortunately, the new law does nothing to stop people from talking-and-driving.

It will, though, make it harder for you to determine whether someone’s poor driving is due to talking on a cell phone or some other behavior that fouls judgment, attention and reaction time.

From Eye On Boise:

If legislators need a reason to start wrapping up their session, now that it’s moved into its 64th day, here’s one: Today is the opening of the filing period for the May primary election, and every seat in the Legislature is up for a vote.

Here is a better one: If they end the session there will be no more misguided legislation passed.

With respect to the May primary election: apply term limits. Send all the incumbents home.

The Oregon legislature is going to have an off year special session.

No good can come of this unless they do the unexpected and ban such sessions or spend significant time revoking previously passed legislation.

Legislatures tend to spend their time passing legislation, you know, they think they know best how the rest of us should live our lives and spend our money. Unfortunately, most of this legislation consists of patchwork fixes to previously passed legislation.

One thing we know is that they will not be doing is the people’s business. The people do their own business, voluntarily, with each other. Legislatures do the business of government, bureaucracies and the corporate welfare system.

A so-called rainy day fund might be a good idea. However, governor gregoire should not be pretending that she does not have a role in overspending:

“We’re got to have a savings account,” shielded from easy spending by lawmakers or vulnerable to the initiative process, the governor said at a news conference last week.

The democratic team of gregoire and legislature seemed perfectly comfortable dramatically raising state spending levels during the last legislative session.

If she were serious about “enforcing discipline” and smoothing out peaks and valleys she would have worked with the legislature to minimize increases in spending, if not reducing them. If needed to enforce fiscal discipline she certainly could have wielded her veto authority.

Steve Kelley is back to wanting to subsidize the Sonic’s owners and players. OK, I understand. He has never been opposed to using tax payer money to line Clay Bennett’s pockets; to help pay the dramatically excessive player salaries.

Some comments on a few of Steve’s thoughts:

These robber barons want to move the team, period.

Nothing new here. The rest of us knew this from the day the sale was announced.

And this detailed relocation plan is a sobering call to arms for Seattle’s mayor and city council, for the governor and the state Legislature. And a call for help from this city to Stern.

Call to arms? Why? There is nothing that the mayor, city council, governor or the state legislature should be doing about this.

This situation has gotten so ugly and so contentious, Stern almost has to get involved.

Do you expect Stern to fund the stadium?

And, I believe, if this area can finalize a viable arena deal that already is in discussion, he will find a way to keep the team in Greater Seattle.

The only VIABLE arena solution is one that is privately funded. If it can not be made to work without public funds it is clearly a money losing proposition.

The problem with “The Montreal Expos/’Major League’ Exit Strategy,” is that Seattle isn’t Montreal. And the only way the league is going to allow Bennett to move is if the city or the state does nothing.

Then let’m move to Oklahoma City. There are apparently a bunch of suckers living there.

There are very wealthy people in this area who also are passionate about the NBA and the Sonics. And it is absolutely essential that they get together with Mayor Greg Nickels and Gov. Christine Gregoire and put together a plan that keeps the team here.

Then let these wealthy people build a stadium with their money. There is certainly no reason to involve politicians.

Unless you are proposing propping up the robber barons with public funds.

I think the only folks who might find this to be essential are potentially unemployed sports writers and talk jocks.

Just upgraded the site to Wordpress 2.2.1

Fairly painless but who knows what might end up broken….

Let me know is something does not seem quite right.

Here is the good news:

A Florida-based racetrack developer has abandoned plans for a $368 million NASCAR speedway near Bremerton, where local opposition to the project was fierce.

Unfortunately there is some bad news as well. First, the governor and the legislature did not immediately say no to this project. Second, the developer may be back looking for another handout:

But the company said it will look for other track sites in the state and might come back to the Legislature with another proposal in the future.

“We think the Northwest is still a great opportunity for the company,” said ISC spokesman Lenny Santiago. “Hopefully, we can find a way to make this project work.”

….

But the company said Monday it had been told more changes were needed for the legislation to move forward.

“These additional changes to the legislation were unacceptable and would have had a significant negative impact on our financial model for the speedway development,”

Well, there is an easy way to make the project work: ISC can change their financial model and bring enough of their own money to fund the whole thing. What seems pretty obvious is that they do not have a business plan that will attract enough investors to move ahead with out a public handout. Prove me wrong and I’ll support them 100%.

ISC officials argued that the track, by drawing tens of thousands of visitors from out of state, would generate more than enough additional tax revenue to cover the state’s share of the project.

Except that those tax revenues should not be used to fund this project. Rather, they should be used to reduce the overall tax rate on Washington citizens.

Steve Kelley in a column about whether Spencer Hawes may stay another year or more at Montlake quotes Bill Frieder:

“If he leaves and does whatever he’ll do in the NBA, he’ll never have another day that compares with today,…”

There was a point in the second half of yesterday’s win over UCLA that I said the same thing from my couch as I watched Hawes overflow with excitement after a particularly nice play.

Earlier in the article Kelley says:

Deep into his first year of college, Hawes is digging life on Montlake. The game is slowing down. The pressure isn’t quite as intense. And all the unique, personal spoils of college life remain his to spend.

Some additional explanation is in order here. Just what are these unique, personal spoils?

If Kelley is referring to the emotional high that Frieder describes then, yes, he is correct though it is not clear just how Hawes can spend that feeling.

Treasure it, yes!

Perhaps he is referring to the education one can earn and the relationships that one can build during college.

The Free Dictionary gives these definitions of spoils:

1. spoils

a. Goods or property seized from a victim after a conflict, especially after a military victory.
b. Incidental benefits reaped by a winner, especially political patronage enjoyed by a successful party or candidate.

2. An object of plunder; prey.

None of these look particularly positive….

Which is it, Steve?

Earlier tonight I was enjoying reading the Seattle Times* while eating dinner with the burner-reichart debate playing in the background. This bit of multitasking was not all that hard as the candidates were dramatically content free.

About halfway through the debate this blissful time was interrupted by the phone which would have been fine had it been a friend calling. But no, it was the fine folks at Meyer Teleservices who note on their website:

Our goal is to reach out, in a friendly personal manner, using the telephone to engage prospects in a one-to-one conversation with immediate results.

They lie.

The phone rang and even though it was an unfamiliar number (336-1894) I answered. Wham! My ear is blasted by an amplified version of reichart. Exactly what he was saying on the TV. This lasted 2-3 seconds and then the call disconnected. So much for “a one-to-one conversation.”

I believe, though, that they did get the immediate results that they desired: was our household listening to the replay of the debate? How did they figure out the answer? Simple! They had the debate playing on their side of the ‘conversation’ and measured the feedback which would not happen if the debate was not playing.

Did I say that they lie? Yes, they do. When I called them back (1-425-336-1894) I received a very nice canned message with lots of information (a plus) and words something like:

We attempted to contact you on behalf of one of our political, non-profit or business clients. We are sorry we missed you.

They lie. They did contact us and they did not miss us. They hung up on us. Perhaps there will be a follow up call in the next day or so.

Which candidate were these folks calling on behalf of? I suspect burner. My weak rationale is that Meyer Teleservices touts some other democratic related work that they have done. On the other hand, this seems like just they type of thing that the republican national congressional committee would do. Kind of consistent with all the misleading hate burner mail they have been sending over the past few weeks.

Did anyone else get this phone call?

Dave Postman has more on the debate along with some interesting comments from is readers. The debate was live blogged by On the Road to 2008.

Update (10/12): Andrew Villeneuve, cited by burner for his fine NW ProgressiveInstitute site, has posted a lengthy summary of the debate.

*I suspect the folks at the Times think all their readers spend 30-60 minutes with the paper every morning. Not! For the few minutes I have in the morning something much lighter, e.g., a few minutes with the King County Journal is about right. Also, it is much quicker going through the Times in the evening…all but a few of the stories are, by then, nearing 24+ hours old and are, well, old news. Page 3, though, is almost always worth spending some time on and there is frequently entertaining stuff on the editorial pages.

Today’s Seattle Times has some interesting articles on population growth in Seattle and Phoenix. There are many more important issues in both articles however in this brief note I simply want to ask the question: Why don’t they read their own articles before they put the paper to press?

In the Seattle article is the following:

Nickels favors the most aggressive of four growth scenarios envisioned by planners, one that would add 350,000 people to Seattle’s population, which now stands at about 575,000.
……
Planners generally agree that the four-county Puget Sound area will see its population swell by 1.6 million in the next 34 years. But skeptics question the purported benefits of Nickels’ plan and the city’s ability to pull it off.

Richard Morrill, geography professor emeritus at the University of Washington, doubts Seattle could attract 20 percent of the region’s growth by 2040 no matter what Nickels does.

“That magnitude of change hasn’t happened anywhere except maybe Beijing,” Morrill said.

For the city to reach such a goal, Morrill said, likely zoning changes and “somewhat astounding density” would reduce the number of single-family homes and families with children in the city, leading to “some kind of rebellion.”

And in the Phoenix article is this:

But since growth chased the Sperlings to Phoenix in 1990, the population of this desert metropolis has jumped 50 percent, to about 1.5 million; …..
….
The United States’ sixth-largest city, and expected to grow another 50 percent in the next eight years, ….

Some basic arithmetic shows that Phoenix will have grown from 1,000,000 in 1990 to about 2.25 million in 2014 or about 125% in 24 years.

This is, of course, significantly greater grown than the paltry 60% over 34 years that Morrill is analyzing.

Surely the ST’s reporter, Bob Young, and the slew of editors that they have should have noticed that an example contradicting their expert was in the same edition of the paper.

Or, gosh, directly tied the Seattle story to the Phoenix story.