Motley Blog

As I recall neighborhood matching funds were started in Seattle. I believe they were either Ford Foundation supported or the Foundation noted their success in the first year.

This was just as I was finishing off my degree (at 24) and I got involved. As a side project I did a proposal for a tree planting in Squire Park, between Seattle University and 23rd. I believe this was the first of its sort. I was not involved in the implementation - as I recall the project was completed by the YMCA led by Richard Conlin, now a Seattle City Councilmember.

One of the things this project did was give me my first opportunity at trying out Geographic Information Services. The graphics here are rough, but they are functional.

In the summer of 1994 I was given the honor of editing the Vision Seattle Newsletter, City Watch. Here I talk a little about communications as they apply to civic and neighborhood decision making, as I take up those reins.

This isn't so much a biographical item as an interesting story which I was a somewhat close spectator of.

The district election reform effort would play out as a major scandal. Though not conceived as an attack on the Seattle establishment, it was certainly an effort to make electability more accessible to the average citizen. Kerman Kermoade, the author of the following clipping was a friend on the Vision board, doing this as a project for his later life Poly Sci degree. I was at the initial organizing meetings for their effort in support and followed the issue loosely.

As you may recall this became a scandal when it was revealed that food executive (and active Republican) Tom Stewart was making illegal contributions as a way to seek revenge for previous battles with the City bureaucracy. I wasn't active in the campaign nor know anything about the details of Stewart's other city battles. Stewart, with his company, has since left the State, one of several biggies in the last decade or so.

Tacoma, as you may know, has a mixed system of at-large and district seats - the particular mix I came to favor out of observing these debates. Seattle still talks about it, but does nothing.

Here's a pretty good looking example of my civic involvement in Sound Transit. This particular example wasn't implemented, but others were. I still think the idea was a good one- reducing tunneling costs by exiting Capitol Hill at Lakeview.

This is the write up of a survey I did for Vision Seattle on public finance issues. Though not a huge response the folks were quite varied and vocal - and a great way of going viral on a framework - not an agenda. Note especially the results on the Seattle Commons.

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Before Bill Gates became a big donor at the UW he, through his Father Bill Senior, was involved in an effort to, IMO, bully the campus in order to build a new law school building. This was at the same time they were being actively investigated for anti-trust violations by the US DOJ.

I was the first to write on the subject, below. Rick Anderson of the Seattle Weekly also wrote on the subject and did a better job than I.

Do make note of the advice of Architecture Professor Folke Nyberg, at the end of the article. The Gates would later step up to the plate and make a fair contribution, though not without a fair amount of bad blood with those departments who had been pushed to the back of the line.

(Asterisk)This **may** well also mark the start of their entire philanthropic effort, through the Gates Foundation.

For another perspective worthy of consideration look at this 'priority' as an expression of the authority of Land Use law and it's Institutional Planning regulations to hold itself above its own regulations....

Here's some published architectural photography from the Seattle Press, classic military housing at the Sandpoint Naval Station.

I also had the opportunity to work with Councilmember Chong's Staff, Matt Fox and Jay Sauceda, as well as Tim Baker, staffing a community forum on the future of this public asset. Good event and I do believe some positive seeds were sown in that well run (and substantive) community forum.

Being only 45 minutes from Seattle, and having lived there for fifteen years, I enjoy going back It seems my perspective changes for each visit and this immersion is a big part of the allure.

My purpose this day was a picture of a UW Law School Factory adjunct Professor, who also practices locally.

Twas in Seattle for a bit of a December regional conniviality (sp?) at the Puget Sound Regional Council. The PSRC is just completing another volume of their decade by decade planning document for the bookshelf, and, more importantly, making decisions on funding for the next few years of Transportation funding, both road and transit.

The PSRC does not have real authority, but it is mandated by the Feds as a condition for their dollars, so, the influence is substantial. They attract some of the region's finest electeds, and, unfortunately also, some of the the easiest to manipulate on financial matters. They well may end up being the brokers on the viaduct deal and the approvers of 'economic recovery' monies, the first phase of which is in the pipeline. (500 million for the State, 150 million for the region, tops, if I recall correctly.)

This is the chair of the Transportation Committee, Julia Patterson - she got her start towards the end of my five plus years as an active friend of the group. Patterson doesn't look to happy, she's reacting to a bit of a play by Mark Weed, chair of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce's Transportation Committee, in the tone of their recent efforts to push through their preferred alternative for the Viaduct, without paying for it.

Seattle's Satan, Mark Sidran is leaving the Washington State Utilities and Transportation Commission - apparently to little notice by the media. By my quick survey his 12/16 press release only made the Daily Journal of Commerce, Bellingham Herald, and the online blog of the Tacoma Pierce County Tribune.

I speculated in the comments of that TNT post about Sidran's reasons for leaving - wondering if, perhaps, it was due some political ramifications from white collar criminal defense lawyer Mike McKay's rather duplicitious 'defense' of the Port's actions - masquerading his defense as an 'investigation'.

The reason for the concern is that Sidran, with some UTC influence over the Port, once worked for McKay, so, professionally their relationship is tight. Relationships are something to never underestimate in the legal profession where unspoken history often trumps any articulated rational legal analysis. I was taken to task for daring to so speculate in that comments section (linked above). Don't forget also that there is a history of problems associated with public dollars and white collar crime locally - including the assasination of US Attorney Thomas Wales. As a prominent white collar defense lawyer chances that the perpetrator is only one step removed from McKay are quite high. But I digress.

Is Downtown Seattle still a healthy commercial real estate market? The Puget Sound Business Journal thought so back as recently as Friday, December 19.

But things can change quickly.

The next Tuesday, the 23rd, the online paper announced that JP Morgan was vacating over 700 thousand s.f. in downtown Seattle.

Curiously, the very next day, based on pre-WAMU meltdown statistics, Downtown became 'distressed', making a top ten list of worst off cities....

Perhaps it's just me, but I'm smelling a Pike/Pine Parking Garage style bailout play. Such a pity, these poor oppressed commercial real estate folks.

Governor Christine Gregoire is expected to announce her decision on the single biggest civic discussion and capital project within Seattle proper in decades before the end of the year. Given the players involved and their involvement in national financial scandals her decision will perhaps reveal more about her than anything else.

This is turf that certain folks in Downtown Seattle claim as their own, even though the money they want to spend is not theirs. We don't know who all of them are, but the Greater Seattle Chamber Board is a good place to start looking.

Note that the chair is a partner at Foster Pepper, long time 'counsel' for Washington Mutual, whom I, and many others, have recently wrote about at length. He's backed up on the board by Judy Runstad, also a questionable character with a history.

Foster Pepper's original solution was the seawall tunnel. Frankly, after ten years or so of seemingly credible folks claiming this work, contrary to recent history of such 'big dig' projects I was begining to think that maybe it was the way to go.

Washington Department of Transportation engineers though just finished their analysis and that alternative didn't make the cut. I'm gonna be blunt here and call these downtown naysayers control freaks - presumably stemming from the work environments that formed them. And, in my opinion, that's exactly what's involved in the latest media blitz.

The Washington State Citizen's Legislature convenes today for it's 2009 season, and, at the risk of reinforcing Seattle centrism in media, let me throw in my solution for the viaduct replacement, arguing that the surface option is the best way to act now.

Governor Gregoire once took the leadership on this subject, but she has now bailed once again, taking along with her Ron Sims and Greg Nickels. Though she claims to have a solution proposed in January we've been hearing similar promises for quite some time - in reality the ball is in the Legislature's hands.

And on this subject they have proven quite able.

Ron Sims is no Jefferson Smith, the lead character from the 1939 Capra movie, 'Mr. Smith goes to Washington'. Sims may well be the administrative/stimulus official to make sure that Obama does not repeat the mistakes of boomer era executives, for example, Norm Rice.

Sims is a real human being, and a pragmatic one, making, what he believes, are honest decisions about weighing practicality with ideals. How he handles his new authority to further advance the idealistic in King County, at this moment in time, will show whether he has succumbed to the temptations and corruption of power or will rise to the constitutional responsibilities of his federal position.

Salvador Mungia is the President-elect of the Washington State Bar Association and he has weighed in on a local legal controversy in a manner that raises my hopes for the resolution of widespread corruption in the Seattle/King County Bar.

You work for your corrupt lawyer, not he, or she, for you.

Sure, you benefit, but only by agreeing to be a party to the corruption.

And you'd better darn well believe that the Republican Tarp and the Obama Stimulus is only going to benefit the corrupt. Obama is only president because the Chicago Bar has certified that he is someone who can be manipulated through standard PC 'Best Management Practices'.

It's a tough question, are you going to own up to your failures or are you going to sell your soul to the devil in order to NOT be a responsible adult?

Are you a businessperdon who isn't fit to be an assistant manager at a fast food joint? Are you a public servant whose ideas are nothing but a white sheet for your acts of hate against the American public?

Consider the case of Enron. Did any of those lawyers get held accountable? Not a one, and it should've been a lifetime disbarrment for senior counsel as well as jail.

Did we fix the problem? Damn well we didn't, we only repeated the same type of complicated scam throughout corporate and financial America.

And we may well be going to hell for our sins, if we don't send those responsible there damn quick.

Charles Mudede, from the Seattle Stranger, went to the University District to check out what folks who were actually aquainted with her thought.

The picture is a bit different from the sweet little daddy's girl stuff put out by the Seattle media and her family. - and, not surprisingly, consistent with the Italian evidence. I'm not saying she's guilty of murder, but she's darn well guilty of something.

I will also postulate, for your consideration, that Ms. Knox's behavior is the result of school and workplace practices which have basically reinvented the cycle of abuse as a best management practice. There are specific legal ways this was done, one of them was a legal standard that accounts holding a woman accountable for her actions as legally actionable harrassment.

This attitude spoiled Ms Kircher, thinking she could do whatever she wanted. Now, most folks are not going to end up in her situation, but that does not justify the practice.

Worse is the fact that these abusive school and workplace practices aren't the result of a sorry individual, they are a rationally constructed tool of corruption by the King County Bar to control and extort from government and corporations.

Isn't that right, Daddy?

I won't come down either way with Kerlikowske, I was pretty much leaving the City as he was coming on board. However, the reasons I left are germane to a measurement of the man and I do have strong concerns, especially considering the history of abuse associated with our local DC 'lobbyists'.

Like Ron Sims, Kerlikowske has also successfully negotiated the minefield of Seattle gender politics. The question though is, at what cost?

A quick suggestion for Greg Nickels - hire Norm Stamper as your interim Seattle Police Chief!

No way in the world does Stamper deserve even the slightest hint of stigma for what happened during the WTO riots. Protest is a right in this society and accomdating it in exactly the manner he, and Mayor Paul Schell, did was perfect.

The problem at the WTO protests was the failure of a multi-force security team to immediately address the troublemakers - deliberately allowing the situation to get out of hand so all participants could be smeared.

We should be ashamed that we allowed Seattle politics to be so easily manipulated by these 'WTO Types' - the same sorts of no-accounts who are responsible for Enron type problems and their current manifestation.

A state legislative bill, HB1490, which seeks to mandate growth around light rail stations has been quite controversial. Although largely symbolic the folks who win will have garnered political 'coup' - a strange practice in Seattle.

Mayor Nickels has come out opposed to the bill, but this is really just political posturing on his part - angling against Councilmember Sally Clark. Everything being equal I'd probably choose Nickels over Clark, but Nickels himself has enough baggage to make him unfit to serve. Clark does not yet have that baggage, but definitely has the potential to be even worse - as this issue would suggest.

Clark's support of this bill should be viewed in the context of her role in neighborhood planning - as staffer to Tina Podlodowski the 'Microsoftie' who took over the effort after outspending and defeating neighborhood candidates. Neighborhood planning is being fastracked for exactly the same neighborhoods that have been the subject of HB 1490 - enthusiasm for the effort is lacking, as documented in this article. including outright opposition from the official neighborhood. Perhaps the history of Ms. Clark and her crew has something to do with this?

Wisely the Washington State Legislature refused to fund Seattle's Mercer street redesign through a neighborhood largely controlled by former Microsoft executive Paul Allen (and his professonial staff).

Why, why in the world should we be spending stimulus money 'bailing out' Paul Allen?

I spent my pre-teen years in Southern California, a half hour or so from the Beach, a favorite destination, especially during times of hurricane generated waves - 'Red Flag' weather.

I never learned to surf, but still being in the rough stuff body surfing was quite memorable.

Politics in Seattle, dominated by tax dependent 'businesses' (many owned on the Eastside) has such weather, whenever the hegemony gets close to being held accountable. After the second defeat of the Seattle Commons was one such time - which begat the whole Nordstrom Parking Garage thing. So too were the WTO riots, which may well have begat the assasination of US Attorney Thomas Wales.

BE CAREFUL, BUT NAIL AS MANY OF THESE SLIMY BASTARDS AS POSSIBLE. LET'S MAKE SURE THIS NEVER HAS TO HAPPEN FOR QUITE AWHILE.

The field of potential challengers to Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels continues to narrow, however one name remains on the active rumour circuit, architect Peter Steinbrueck. He has not announced a candidacy by any means, but a poll, source unknown, has been leaked that shows him as a viable candidate - beating Nickels 46% to 24%.

In Tacoma an architect is the only current candidate - Jim Merritt for the mayoral position in that 200,000 soul locale (800 in the County, a similar ratio to Seattle/King). Merritt cut his teeth as a young architect being directly inspired by leaders like Victor Steinbrueck. In Tacoma he has been a civic force for decades leading the development of community grounded solutions to such major problems as the Asarco superfund site and the construction of the 705 freeway connecting I-5 to Downtown Tacoma, all while running a successful architectural practice.

While it is the case that junior Steinbrueck might not have the managerial experience to run Seattle it also may well be that his respect in the **community** could easily outweigh any such deficiency. Many hands certainly make for light work.

The election of both Steinbrueck and Merritt would certainly signal a sea change in current approaches to regional decision making - god knows who actually controls that now.

Russell Investments is considering a relocating its Headquarters as part of it's current planning processes - a big topic in the Pierce County media of late.

Seattle is a major suitor for Russell - and there is definitely a logic to it - Russell is an international company, and Seattle, an international City.

But Seattle is also a City marked by major financial scandal and a power structure that has not yet evolved away from that Corruption. Moving into the former WAMU HQ would be an apparent coup for Russell, but if you are bailing out the corrupt and, at least in part, acknowledging even a smidgeon of authority then is that good for anyone?

My $.02 for Russell - punt on this one, for now - turn down both the Seattle and Tacoma offers.

The global finance world is changing - most likely becoming much more decentralized as a response to the corruption in such centers as Seattle and New York City. Your location in Tacoma might turn out to be just about right - very near a large global powerhouse, but far enough way to remain, uh, honest.

When it comes to attacting business, whether it be a firm or a City - it is really only honesty and accountability that matters. Any other strategy will only bring the undesirable, of whatever stripe, and income.

Peter Callaghan has a great piece on the Sound Transit Berm through the Dome District of Tacoma. Instead of repeating myself I'll leave it to Peter to put his spin on matter. See also the piece in the Tacoma Weekly.

It is looking like incumbent Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels will not make it through yesterday's primary, losing out to former Sierra Club Chapter President Mike McGuinn (a staunch opponent of the proposed 'big dig' Seattle Tunnel) and T-Mobile CEO Joe Mallahan.

I would suggest to you, dear reader, that it is not just Nickels that folks are dissatisfied, but the entire crew of downtown limousine liberals - including the 800 folks at City Hall making over 100k a year and certain segments of DT professionals.

Seattle Business columnist Bill Virgin has made the leap from the failed P-I to a series of contracts, including replacing Dan Voelpel at the Tacoma/Pierce News Tribune.

Bill is every bit Mr. Voelpel's equal, we should be very proud to have him. Who knows, he might even bring a few friends of his caliber with him.

For a measure of this, see his first article in the TNT.

Dan Satterberg, prosecutor for King County Washington, and Rainn Wilson, the actor playing Dwight Shrute on NBC's 'The Office' are both from suburban Seattle. This blog piece irresponsibly speculates on a shared parentage, given the very close physical resemblance.

That's a nice professional picture of Rainn Wilson. Kinda looks like he could be the prosecutor for the nation's 12th largest County, right?

Compare to this somewhat embarassing 'backyard' shot of the real King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg.

For more Halloween fun, consider this advice from Satterberg, er, Rainn. (I'd better get this one right!)

Washington Senator Maria Cantwell, whom I usually like, has come out in support of Amanda Knox, convicted of murdering the mixed race Meredith Kircher in Perugia, Italy. Admittedly much of the evidence is circumstantial, but, nonetheless there is a dead body.

Curious how the University of Washington finds white males guilty of harassment **without** evidence, a policy and management attitude that would also facilitate arrogant female prima donnas that think they are above accountability. Just saying, Senator Cantwell - nothing more than circumstantial evidence, right?

Personally, I'm still wondering about the rapes by black football team members that were overlooked by the former black Dean of Students, Ernest Morris.

Just saying Ms. Cantwell, perhaps you should get your priorities in order?

Curiously coincidental with the Pete Holmes takeover of the Seattle City Attorney's office is is the release of Mark Sidran's archives, holder of that office from 1990-2002.

All the more curious for me is the fact that I am indexed in these archives, only one of eight individuals including also Michele Malkin and John Hoff.

http://nwda-db.wsulibs.wsu.edu/nwda-search/fstyle.aspx?doc=WaSMAR4400_02.xml&t=k&q=tooley

Click through for the text of a Bar complaint against the King County (Seattle) Prosecutor's Office, received at the WSBA Office May 26th, at 10:25 A.M.

In the Spring of 2007 my last 'regular' work, an independent contractor arrangement ended and I began exploring new career options as well as revisiting previous issues that led to the end of my first professional career.

Addressing many of these issues was a Washington State Bar complaint I filed against the disgraced Bush 2 US Attorney, John McKay, one of 8 nationwide in this well know incident. Though John McKay is an okay guy, I do believe that the Bush administration got this one right, probably coincidentally and the only one of the 8 to be so - for reasons more to do with Washington State legal practice rather than McKay's own character. (His brother Mike, the office holder under Bush 1, is a completely different story.)

Here's a link to the Press Release I issued - not all that long before I started this blog.

Download file

Whenever I get the chance I repeat the story about the assassinated Senior Attorney in that same office at the start of McKay's term, Thomas Wales.

I have thought long and deep on the question of whether to support Dino Rossi in his 2010 challenge to Washington State Senator Patty Murray - and the answer that emerged is quite clear - NOPE.

The recent statewide election contests of Mr. Rossi are an interesting story. In 2004 he ran for the open governor's seat as an outsider against the heavily favored Attorney General, Christine Gregoire. His campaign was personally directed and he crafted it with a 'real', sincere outreach to independents and the nicely phrased crossover 'dino-crats'. Surprising all he won that race, unfortunately it was a victory **exactly** like Al Gore's in 2000.

Since that time I've realized (and been reminded!) that his centrist political positions were not at all consistent with his role as a 'neighbor' in the Issaquah/Sammamish area - marked by hyper-partisanship and extreme divisiveness - though likely also not without blame from the opposing camp. That history likely shows the true character of the man behind the facade.

This 2008 rematch against the now incumbent, Gregoire, curiously, foreshadowed the emergence of the Tea Party.