[ 1960s subdivision in Medfield, a Boston suburb; click image to enlarge ]

Sticking up for a presumed silent, oppressed majority—real or imaginary—is an unbeatable marketing strategy. Just ask Fox News. And so it goes with noted sprawl apologist Joel Kotkin, who writes:

“A year into the Obama administration, America’s dominant geography, suburbia, is now in open revolt against an urban-centric regime that many perceive threatens their way of life, values, and economic future.”

Joel Connelly exemplified the local version of this pseudo-drama, writing in a column entitled “520 bridge debate shows Seattle at its worst,” that “Seattle politicians should briefly depart from their insular world of interest groups and come [to Medina, the wealthy Eastside suburb] to get a broad view of State Route 520 and how to bridge the problem of cars occupied by just one person. ”

The tired meme goes like this: Those who are critical of the suburbs are an urban elitist minority who don’t understand the suburban way of life, and who hope to use “social engineering” to force suburbanites to swallow a more urban lifestyle. Case in point: State Rep. Ross Hunter, D-Medina, fretting, in Connelly’s paraphrase, that the 520 bridge project “has become a playground for social engineering.”

The first flaw in that argument is that it’s pretty much impossible to be an American and not have had significant direct experience with the suburbs. Our landscape is thick with them, and our culture is drenched in the suburban American dream.

It’s not that critics of the suburbs don’t get the suburbs. For example, I myself had a wonderful time growing up in a suburb, and have spent the majority of my life in relatively car-dependent environments. Most critics understand the suburbs very well. It’s just that when they combine that understanding with a balanced assessment of people and the planet and the future, the inescapable conclusion is that the suburbs no longer cut it.

The mounting evidence on everything from energy use to land consumption to obesity rates is already familiar, and even the free market has begun to chime in. For example, a new report from the Natural Resources Defense Council found that foreclosure rates were lower in compact, walkable, transit-rich neighborhoods than they were in typical car-dependent suburban neighborhoods.

Meanwhile, demand for housing in walkable urban neighborhoods has risen to the point where real estate analysts like Christopher Leinberger expect that the shortage of supply will likely last for decades. If you want to see social engineering in action, look no further than the mountains of policy, regulations, and public investment that were put in place over decades to promote the suburban model of growth, but that now are impeding the market from meeting the growing demand for a more urban alternative.

Yet to the diehard sprawl apologists, none of that matters. If free people have chosen to live in sprawling suburbs, they posit, then sprawling suburbs are good—end of story. And it follows that anyone who criticizes the suburbs is an elitist who wants to tell others how to live their lives.

The underlying source of that attitude is a toxic combination of American individualism and the invisible hand of the free market writ large. And it’s a sorry state, because there are all kinds of reasons free people make bad choices, and we all lose when individual choice is sacred.

What is truly “Seattle at its worst” is when people are so quick to attack those who question the sanity of spending billions on new freeways, when both history and current trends clearly indicate that doing so will propagate bad choices for decades to come. The truly ”insular” people are those who can’t conceive of any solution to congestion other than building roads.

UPDATE: Rep. Hunter responds in the comments:

I did not say I fretted about social engineering. I don’t.

I don’t agree with the positions attributed to “suburbanites” in the rest of the piece and object to the assumption that only “diehard spawl enthusiasts” support the 520 bridge project. I have a long record of supporting transit funding and improvements in how we manage our growth to produce a more compact, transit oriented King County.

I do care that we as a region can make decisions and move forward. Delay costs $100,000,000 ($100 million) per year. We have been working on this project for well over a decade and have broad agreement on both sides of the lake.

I do care that we can reduce the transit time from Redmond to Seattle in the peak afternoon commute by 40+ minutes. Delaying the bridge leaves transit and carpools in the 520 corridor as an unattractive option for people who care about time.

The 520 bridge serves more people from Seattle who work in the suburbs than people who live on the Eastside and work in Seattle. The capacity that is being added is for 3+ carpools and transit, not GP lanes.

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If suburbia is, as Joel Kotkin claims, in “open revolt,” they missed a prime target last week when the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle was crawling with the enemy during the New Partners for Smart Growth conference.

Speakers at the conference included Obama appointees U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. Last summer these three agencies collaborated to create the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. Last week HUD launched a new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, DOT established a new Office of Livable Communities, and the EPA announced expanded support for their Office of Sustainable Communities.

The urbanists are on the move.

For the past week and a half, I’ve been wondering what’s going on with the Sasquatch! lineup for 2010. May isn’t that far away and despite a few confirmations (Pavement, Miike Snow, Wale, etc.), the Sasquatch! camp had been mostly quiet.

That is, until now. This morning, Live Nation sent out a press release stating that for the first time in the festival’s history, the lineup will be announced live.

The announcement will happen at the Crocodile next Monday, 2/15, with performances by Surfer Blood, Fresh Espresso, and Atlas Sound. Check out the full press release after the jump.

Seattle, WA – Live Nation and Adam Zacks are pleased to announce The 2010 Sasquatch! Music Festival Launch Party presented by Esurance and sponsored by Jack Daniel’s happening on Monday, February 15, 2010 at 7:00 p.m. at the Crocodile.

For the first time in the festival’s history the lineup will be announced LIVE at this very special event featuring performances by Surfer Blood, Atlas Sound and Fresh Espresso and hosted by Luke Burbank. Prize packages from Esurance and Xbox will be given away all night, along with limited-edition festival posters and more.

Free tickets are available courtesy of Esurance by listening to 107.7 The End all week to win, or by stopping by either Easy Street Records locations starting Friday, February 12^th at 9:00 a.m. (limit 2 per person).

Surfer Blood calls West Palm Beach home and, while still in their early 20s, pen summery indie songs that even the most hook-laden power pop band would rightfully be jealous of. Called “irresistibly catchy” by Pitchfork, Surfer Blood’s critically acclaimed debut album, Astro Coast, was released on January 19.

Atlas Sound is the solo moniker of Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox, so named since 1994, when a sixth-grade Bradford made recordings on a karaoke cassette machine. Now signed to 4AD, Atlas Sound is those ideas that he “can’t make work with a five piece rock band,” employing stream-of-consciousness writing alongside ambient electronics.

Fresh Espresso, named by local blog SoundOnTheSound as representatives of “the next wave of Seattle hip-hop,” is producer/composer P Smoov (of Mad Rad) and MC Rik Rude.

1. Voters have two more days to mail in their ballots in this year’s school levy election. We strongly agree with last week’s superior court ruling that the state isn’t meeting its constitutional obligation to fully fund education. However, until that matter is resolved by the courts, schools still rely heavily on levies for basic stuff like textbooks, vocational training, and safe buildings. In Seattle, for example, levies fund about 23 percent of basic school operations.

Prop. 1, the capital levy, will raise $270 million for seismic improvements, roofs, energy efficiency improvements, and playgrounds, and Prop. 2, the operations levy, will raise $433 million for teacher pay, books, and reduced class sizes. Both are renewals of existing levies, and both deserve your vote.

2.

4. Ted Inkley and Phil Brenneman, two controversial assistant city attorneys under Tom Carr who were asked to leave by new city attorney Pete Holmes, recently filed a massive public disclosure request with from Holmes’ office. According to Holmes’ spokeswoman Kathy Mulady, the  two attorneys have asked for copies of all communications between Holmes and members of his small transition team related to “staffing changes, reorganizations in the office, plans for increases and decreases of staff, and the salaries of proposed hires.” Holmes’ office is releasing the documents in batches, and Brennamen and Inkley are reviewing them in person at the city attorney’s office.

3. As he announced in his inauguration speech, Mayor Mike McGinn is launching a series of five group discussions focusing on youth and families. The first one will be at the Rainier Community Center, 4600 38th Ave. S., on February 22 from 7 to 8:30 pm.

4. Children’s Hospital and the Laurelhurst Community Club have “reached an agreement on some matters” related to the neighborhood group’s lawsuit challenging the hospital’s expansion plans, according to a letter from Sally Clark, chair of the council’s built environment committee. “Council does not have a copy of or know the specifics of the agreement,” Clark says in the letter.

Laurelhurst residents have spent several years fighting Children’s expansion plans, arguing that a bigger hospital will create excessive noise and traffic havoc in the neighborhood. The committee will hear oral arguments from both sides at its meeting this Wednesday at 9:30 am.

Today’s pick:

1. St. Vincent is playing at Neumos tonight. Her music (and her voice) is remarkably pretty, lulling, français, almost boring, and then, all of a sudden, it’s overwhelmed by a wave of computerized whooshes and dance beats, or it turns into fast-jazz quirkiness. It’s very hip right now.

She is also gorgeous. Her music videos are melodramatic, featuriing slow-walking and death contemplation and uncontrollable weeping. This video for “Marrow” is crazy.

GameNerd Sam Machkovech adds: “Highly recommended, especially when Clark flexes her experimental guitar muscles (which she worked up as a member of Glenn Branca’s 100-Guitar Symphonies long, long ago).” I did not know that. Awesome.

With Fences and Wildbirds & Peacedrums. Tonight at Neumos (925 E Pike Street), 8 pm. Tickets are $13.

This weekend:

1. Joshua Ferris’ first book, Then We Came to the End, was an inquiry into the minds of corporate drones (it was even written in the third person). Ferris, who worked in a Chicago ad agency while writing the book, gives center stage to the universal American paranoia about getting fired, in a work environment where practically nothing else exists. It’s funny the same way “The Office” is funny, of course, but it also has density of plot and character and an emotional depth that goes far beyond the sitcom.

Ferris’ new book The Unnamed is about a high-powered Manhattan lawyer who constantly has the compulsion to walk as far as he can. Ferris is reading from the book tomorrow at the Seattle Public Library’s University Branch.

Tomorrow at 2 pm, at SPL University Branch (5009 Roosevelt Way NE). Free.

2 Experience Music Project is opening its Graham Nash-curated exhibition of rock and roll photography tomorrow night. Graham Nash, if you care—I don’t especially—was in Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young in the ’70s. But at noon, there’s a discussion on Neil Young by one of his photographers and an archiver of his music, and it’s free. Yeah, Neil Young. That’s more like it.

Also, going to the EMP is actually really fun, and this is a good excuse. Every once in a while, I like to be reminded of how many ridiculous guitars Jimi Hendrix owned.

Tomorrow at noon at the EMP (325 5th Ave N). The Neil Young lecture is free–a Graham Nash interview with other photographers, at 2 pm, is $20.

3. Blood Red Dancers are a great Seattle hipster band. I say hipster, because if anything typifies the 2010 hipster, it’s the appropriation of things that were hip in the ’70s and ’80s and are now embarrassing. Dude: It’s ironic.

On second thought, though, there’s nothing embarrassing about the sound Blood Red Dancers emulate. Sometimes they sound like Glenn Danzig over sparse piano. Sometimes they sound like Jonathan Richman howling over dance beats. They’re the perfect retro rock mixtape.

BRD are opening for D. Black, a rising Seattle hip hopper, at KEXP’s monthly Audioasis benefit. DJ Hannah Levin broadcasts her show from the venue, and all the proceeds go to local nonprofits (tomorrow night’s go to the CD Forum).

With People Eating People. Tomorrow night at 9 pm, at The Sunset (5433 Ballard Ave NW). Tickets are $7/$8.

In her original story, the reporter who wrote today’s front-page Times story on Bushnell, Emily Heffter, claimed that over the past couple of weeks, “some of McGinn’s critics targeted Bushnell, tipping reporters to questions about his educational and criminal background. They also called for his firing and blamed him for McGinn’s decision to eliminate 200 of the city’s top positions.” (Heffter’s editor later changed the story to acknowledge that PubliCola broke it, the editor confirmed in a phone call).

In emails to Hannan, Heffter went on to say that she didn’t want to “drag [Bushnell] through the mud over a felony conviction 15 years ago, and that the kind of court reporting she was trying to do “takes time, but when someone’s reputation  is at stake, I think it’s worth it.”

A few points of clarification:

1) PubliCola did not get the story from “McGinn critics.” We heard it from multiple sources, including people involved in the McGinn campaign who were disappointed with the mayor’s decision to hire Bushnell, people who did not support McGinn, and people who were not affiliate with either mayoral candidate.In fact, the majority of those pushing us to pursue the story were distressed McGinn supporters.

2) At no time did anyone who contacted us mention anything about McGinn’s proposed job cuts. Maybe Heffter’s sources had, as she said in an email to Hannan, “political motives,” which would be “an important part of the story.” Ours came from across the pro-to-anti-McGinn political spectrum, and never mentioned his proposal to cut strategic advisors in any context.

3) Far from looking into the story for “the past few weeks,” we’ve actually been looking into it for well over a month. We, like Heffter, are well aware that good reporting takes time, and we took that time reporting the story and getting it right. We weren’t given access to Bushnell—despite requesting it repeatedly, from both McGinn’s office and by calling Bushnell himself—but I think we gave him a “fair shake” with our reporting despite the mayor’s office being unwilling to play ball.

4) I think a felony fraud conviction is both relevant and newsworthy, even if it was 15 years ago, when it pertains to someone who’s advising the mayor of a large city on economic policy (the seawall ballot measure), not to mention hiring and firing decisions (the displacement of budget director Dwight Dively by Beth Goldberg, with whom Bushnell worked at King County; transportation department director Grace Crunican.)

Moreover, lying about having a degree in a professional context, particularly when you’re a public servant, just isn’t kosher no matter how low you are on the food chain. Heffter may disagree, but I firmly stand by our decision to run with this thoroughly reported story, as well as by the details of the story itself.

Tonight’s event is called “Miles Davis Electric” and is focusing on Davis’ much talked about electric period. Even though some jazz purists lambasted Davis for going electric, the legendary trumpeter was always keen to float between jazz sub-genres regardless of what anybody thought, and more often than not, he was onto something. Just last night, I saw Arunga blaring pure hip-hop tunes out of his horn while on stage with the Physics, so he too knows a thing or two about crossing genre lines in the interest of music.

When asked via email what he wants to accomplish this evening, Arunga said: “I want it to feel like Halloween. When you walk in to the room the music should make you feel like  having no inhibitions forgetting where you are, being in tune with the moment.”

He’ll have a bevy of young jazz lions joining him this evening including Thaddeus Turner (guitar), Gerald Turner (bass) Mark Cardenas (keyboard), Mark Sampson (keyboard) Andrew Joslyn (horn), Doc Rhodes (sax) Grant Shroff (drums) and a few surprise gifts.

Arunga did give me early word that local hip-hop do-it-all Larry Mizell Jr. is going to be spitting some hip-hop verses over the song “Doowop,” a Davis record that his father, Larry Mizell Sr. is credited with producing. How fresh is that?

The event takes place tonight at Electric Tea Garden (1402 E. Pike St.) from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. and cost $5. It’s 21+ and DJ Sho-Nuff will be DJing as well.

Washington state’s junior senator, Sen. Maria Cantwell, is both a technocrat and a populist.

Getting her footing in the Senate just as the Enron debacle was blowing up in the early 2000s, Cantwell found her niche drawing up wonked-out policy from a lefty perspective to protect energy consumers and energy markets. Cantwell spent the first several years of her Senate career doing obscure, yeoman’s corporate accountability work, like passing the Commodities Future Modernization Act to regulate energy derivatives. (And her nerdy but righteous toiling continues: During last year’s health care squabbles, she locked in an unsung corporate accountability amendment to regulate pharmaceutical  profiteering by pharmaceutical benefit management companies, PBMs.)

However, as the Democrats struggle to respond to Wall Street wrongdoing and the great recession, Cantwell’s detail-oriented populism has suddenly turned her into a high profile and invaluable Senator for the Democrats—the “Most Valuable Senator” of 2009,  according to the lefist mag The Nation.

Cantwell sat down for a 20-minute interview with PubliCola yesterday to talk about her emergence as the Democrats populist all-star (or black sheep?) whose yearlong challenge to Democratic President Barack Obama’s economic policies has put the national spotlight on her banking reform message—a message that may be the Democrats’ only hope of warding off a major backlash from angry voters and Tea Partiers in November.

•••

PubliCola: I want to talk about the populist note you’ve been hitting nonstop lately. Voting against the bailouts, dressing down [Treasury] Secretary Geithner, voting against [Fed Chair] Bernanke last week—you’ve been consistently sending a message to the Obama administration that on economic policy, they don’t get it. Does President Obama just not get it on economic issues?

Sen. Cantwell: Well, first of all, I think that this is actually a message about competitive capitalism too. I believe in good old-fashioned American capitalism where you have true competition and transparent markets. And that you have money flow to IPOs to create new technology. If you’re spending all your money in dark derivative markets—and that’s more lucrative—then how are you really getting capital flowing to small businesses?

So while it may seem it’s just “populist,” it’s really about what’s made our country great. Getting capital and competition has made our country great. And if the big banks are too big, and they push the small banks out, and more and more concentration of big banks is the norm, that’s  going to hurt the competitiveness and effectiveness of getting capital to small businesses.

PubliCola: Do you think that President Obama doesn’t understand that?

Sen. Cantwell: Well, I think the president said in his State of the Union that he is going to look for a strong bill on his desk or he’s not going to sign it when it comes to reg reform, and I thought that was a new commitment by him.

I do think he’s got members of his economic team who have been part of the past strategies that have failed, and I think they’ve got to be clear that they are for strong regulatory reform and for getting capital to small business not just getting capital to big banks.

PubliCola: Did he give enough specifics in his State of the Union about what he needed to see in that regulatory reform bill?

Sen. Cantwell: I thought he had a great speech. I thought the specifics about saying “And if it’s a weak regulatory reform bill I won’t sign it” and “If it isn’t strong enough I won’t sign it,” was good.

[Editor's note: It strikes me that Sen. Cantwell is being polite. Here's what President Obama said after running through some platitudes about "guarding against recklessness" and "middle class families hav(ing) the information they need to make financial decisions"  :

"And if the bill that ends up on my desk does not meet the test of real reform, I will send it back until we get it right. We've got to get it right."

Super vague.

In contrast, asked for her own list of must have real reforms, Cantwell's office provided us with detailed specifics including: absolute separation between commercial and investment banking (reenactment of the Depression-era Glass Steagall Act); a cap on bank size by market share; all derivatives shall be traded and regulated through a central clearinghouse; and stricter standards governing market speculation like limits on aggregate positions across markets.]

Sen. Cantwell: My critique [of Obama's speech] is that the treasury responded very quickly to get access to capital to big banks, and yet it’s been over a year to get access to capital to small banks which is the conduit for small businesses to get lending. I personally believe, and several of my colleagues do, that they [the White House] can act now, they don’t need legislation to do that. They can design the program and get it out tomorrow. And so I don’t want to lose any more time because every day that goes by there’s more bankruptcies and they [small businesses] are just as important in trying to solve the problem in dealing with what we dealt with a year ago. More than a year ago.

PubliCola: Did you hear from the White House after you went on MSNBC and said you weren’t sure why Treasury Secretary Geithner still had a job?

Sen. Cantwell: Yes.

PubliCola: What did they say?

Sen. Cantwell: They just wanted to know what my concerns were. And I told them my concerns were about getting a strong regulatory reform bill and getting treasury to support that instead of supporting loopholes. And they wanted to see exactly what I was talking about, and we sent them the documents where treasury earlier had said that these were the reforms they were going to support, but then, when the House came up with a weaker bill how Treasury had weighed in in support of the loopholes.

PubliCola: What was the White House response to that?

Sen. Cantwell: Well, we’re going to see when the Senate takes up regulatory reform whether the White House will help us get a strong bill.

PubliCola: Two-thirds of U.S. senators are millionaires, 68 senators are millionaires. Do you think the U.S. Senate understands the economic problems people are facing? Is this a problem for getting real reform?

Sen. Cantwell: I don’t think it stopped Ted Kennedy and it doesn’t stop me. [With a net worth of at least $2 million, Sen Cantwell is 28th on the list of 68 Senate millionaires.] It’s about digging in on what some of these issues are. Consolidation of banking  is going to create continued havoc if we don’t fix this.

PubliCola: The Tea Party is currently seen as the country’s populist movement. They’re mad at Obama on economics. They’re mad about the bailouts for the fat cats. These are the issues you’re touching on. How is your populism different than theirs?

Sen. Cantwell: Are they for strong regulatory reform? Because I haven’t seen that yet. And when Scott Brown was asked whether Wall Street should help pay back some of the money, he wasn’t for that. So, I’m not sure exactly what they’re saying on that front. But I know this: There are many Democrats here—and many people on a bipartisan basis—who want the reinstitution of Glass-Steagall, the separation of investment banks and commercial banks. I haven’t heard the Tea Party call for that.

PubliCola: But the Tea Party has captured this Main Street anger and it’s also something you’re speaking about right now, and I’m trying to differentiate your pos…

Sen. Cantwell: Yeah. The Democrats should be loud and clear that we want competition in banking, that we’re not for the consolidation of big banks, that we’re going to be for reform, that we’re going to be getting access to capital to small business, that we’re going to have competitive models because basically large scale monopolies choke things like access to capital and true competition. Let’s see how many Republicans fight for those real reforms.

PubliCola: You teamed up with Republican Sen. John McCain on Glass-Steagall. Why didn’t you team up with 58 Democrats or the President? Do they really support it?

Sen. Cantwell: There are several other Democrats on the bill—my colleague Sen. (Ted) Kaufman from Delaware and Sen. (Bernie) Sanders [an Independent from Vermont], and Sen. (Barbara) Boxer (D-CA) , and I think Sen. (Russ) Feingold (D-WI). So, I think we have a good group of people who are supportive of that concept, but we’ve got a lot of work to do because there are a lot of bank lobbyists up here telling people not to support that kind of legislation.

PubliCola: Does the Obama administration support it? I felt like the President gave a vague nod to it in his State of the Union when he said he didn’t want the financial markets messing with people’s savings. Was that a reference to what you and Sen. McCain are pushing?

Sen. Cantwell: I think he was referring to something he came out with called the Volcker Rule, which would say that commercial banks could not do proprietary trading. The problem with that is that the definition is too narrow about what proprietary trading is. There’s a bunch of people, like The Economist, who’ve said you can’t do that, it’ll just be a bunch of loopholes. Even the Goldman Sachs people are like, ‘Oh, we can’t do it that way? We’ll just keep doing it this way.’

So, I think it’s cleaner just to say investment banking and commercial banking are separate. They’re two separate things. One is about risk and taking risks, and the other is supposed to be about securing deposits. I think it’d be cleaner to go back [to Glass-Steagall]. So, we’ll see. The White House kind of said, ‘We’ll see what Congress comes up with.’

PubliCola: The White House acknowledged they were caught of guard by the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts . Were you surprised?

Sen. Cantwell: Lots of things can happen when you have a short [race] like that. And obviously, something happened. [Laughs]. I think [Democrats] have to be keen on what our fiscal policies are and the effectiveness of them. Looking at exit polls, voters really were uncomfortable about the economic situation. So, I think that’s where we should be focusing, and I think the president is turning his attention to that.

PubliCola: Are you going to watch Sarah Palin’s speech on Saturday?

Sen. Cantwell: I don’t. Believe. I will be.  … But I bet you it’ll be somewhere replayed.

PubliCola: There’s a lot of speculation that the Democrats are facing a real populist backlash in November 2010. Do they need to get on board with your populist message to avoid that?

Sen. Cantwell: I think as I said before this is about investing in good-old fashioned American capitalism by having competition and having access to capital from a lot of different sources, and having a lot of people get access to capital not just a few, and I think that my colleagues who see this and understand it —like Diane Feinstein (D-CA) or Carl Levin (D-Mich)—I think are going to be effective when we come to the floor when regulatory reform comes up.

PubliCola: But aren’t regulations exactly what people like the Tea Party activists are complaining about? That things like health care reform, the public option, actually destroy competition? And that’s what they’re nervous about with the Democrats … that there’s this expanding government?

Sen. Cantwell: Well I think [Washington State's] basic health plan has driven down costs to the state government and to everybody by getting a population that had been previously uninsured … insured. And that’s been a big benefit.

We had a bunch of people who were in our office who I think were with one of the Tea Party things, and they came by to see me. And they were saying how they didn’t like this about health care reform and they didn’t like that. And I explained what we were trying to advocate for … how the Northwest needs a better Medicare rate  because we’re doing good efficient work, and we should be rewarded for that instead of being punished.

And I brought up the Basic Health Plan. And this woman who was there said, ‘the Basic Health Plan? I love the Basic Health Plan.’ And I said well that’s what I’m talking about.

There are good ideas about how to do cost effective health care without giving big tax subsidies to the insurance industry. And that’s what Democrats should be saying.

PubliCola: You’re not on the banking committee. Yet you’re the one who’s introducing a lot of the banking reform bills. Why has it fallen to you? Does the Democratic leadership and the committee not get this? Are they beholden to the banking industry? What’s the issue there?

Sen. Cantwell: I guess I had a five-year tutorial on this with Enron. That taught me a lot on what to look out for on derivatives.

PubliCola: So did the banking committee come to you? Or did you say, I’ve seen this before, and you went to the banking committee?

Sen. Cantwell: Since 2001 or 2002, we’ve been trying to shine a light on these kind of manipulations. We started with derivatives legislation with Sen. Feinstein and I trying to close the Enron loopholes.  And so that was why I felt like we were a little more ready [in 2008] to also talk about why TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) in general, turning the keys over to these people, was a bad idea. That we shouldn’t be picking winners and losers. We should be creating an equity program that was clear and that people could take advantage of it. Banks could decide. They could say yes we want to survive and we want to take advantage of that or they could say no we’re going to fail. But instead, we went around picking winners and losers.

PubliCola: Do you and your staff have a nickname for Tim Geithner?

Sen. Cantwell: No. No.

PubliCola: Do you have anything nice to say about Tim Geithner?

Sen. Cantwell: Well, I think, [pause] um [long pause] … I think the Treasury Secretary is, um [very long pause] ….  um …  earnest, in saying at hearings  that he wants to work on getting capital to small business, but I don’t know that he understands the urgency of it.

It’s the first week of February, which means it’s time to celebrate the birth of global music icon Bob Marley.

Although Marley didn’t invent reggae, he did more to further the genre than anybody else ever has. So on the day of his birth, February 6th, reggae fans around the world tend to celebrate.

If you’re into reggae, I highly recommend checking out Reggae Consciousness, a two-day event happening this weekend at King Cat Theater.

Unfortunately, the scheduled headliners of the event, Rootz Underground— an amazing roots-rock-reggae band out of Kingston, Jamaica—had visa issues and were unable to enter the country (deep sigh). But there’s still a bunch of good reggae talent on the bill. Clinton Fearon and the Boogie Brown Band—the undisputed kings of Seattle reggae—are headlining Saturday night. Fearon is still a legend in Jamaica, thanks to his work with the Gladiators and Lee “Scratch” Perry, and Seattle is lucky to have him.  On the international tip, Belize’s top reggae star, Ras Indio, is coming into town to perform, as areBambu Station, who hail from St. Croix.

Sunday night features lovers rock champ Lloyd Brown, plus a few bands that I’m not familiar with but are probably worth your time. I do know that despite their gamer name, Publish the Quest, who perform on Sunday, are supposed to be good.  Plus Scientist, dub pioneer King Tubby’s main associate, is doing sound and effects for both nights.

The folks behind Culture Yard are the only reggae promoters in Seattle doing anything on a consistent basis, and they deserve some credit for making this show happen. For tickets ($25) and more information, check out their web site. Tickets are $25 a day; tickets and info available at Culture Yard’s web site.

Image via SDOT.

Although McGinn advisor Chris Bushnell (Haugen) resigned yesterday, the city will still scrap all of the bids it received to build the downtown Seattle seawall, thanks to a conflict of interest involving the company Bushnell’s wife works for.

Last week, McGinn’s office announced that the city would be reissuing a request for qualifications (RFQ) for companies to design the seawall, after discovering that Bushnell’s wife Megan worked for a company that was on one of the design teams seeking work on the project.

Although the conflict, obviously, no longer exists, Matassa says the city has no choice but to move forward with the rebidding process; “the original bids were formally rejected, and we can’t just go back” and un-reject them,” Matassa says.

The re-bidding process will set the project back about four weeks. Rick Sheridan, a spokesman for the Seattle Department of Transportation, says rebidding the project will cost the city the equivalent of about 40 staff hours.

Bellevue City Council member Kevin Wallace wrote recently that locating the downtown Bellevue Link light rail station next to I-405 would “maximize transit-oriented development (TOD) opportunities.” That claim has been challenged qualitatively, but what do the cold, hard numbers say?

Applying the methodology described in Futurewise’s Transit-Oriented Communities Blueprint to a quarter-mile radius area around the two station options (shown in the aerial photo above), yields the following estimated capacity for jobs and housing based on current zoning:

I detect a pattern. Compared to the I-405 location proposed in Wallace’s plan, the originally proposed Transit Center location provides nearly 50 percent more developable land, and the potential to hold about three times as many jobs, and almost four times as many housing units.

What else is there to say?  Jobs and housing within easy walking distance of the station are the most fundamental ingredients of successful transit-oriented development (TOD).

It’s tough to quantify the value of the greater buildout capacity in the Transit Center station area. But over the long term, that advantage, combined with the benefit of not having a freeway cut a gigantic gash right through the middle of the station area, would dwarf any short term savings that might come with the I-405 alignment.

So why then, is the I-405 plan even being considered? One obvious answer is that politicians are pandering to their most vocal constituencies, whose attitudes are summed up well in this Seattle Times report:

“Scores of homeowners along Bellevue Way Southeast, and condominium owners on 118th Avenue Southeast, strongly oppose putting the line near their buildings or neighborhoods. They say the trains would be noisy, increase traffic, bring crime to the area and cause a loss of property and property value for homes next to the line.”

Caving to those myopic gripes—some of which are demonstrably false—is lack of leadership, plain and simple.

Worries about the negative impact of construction on downtown businesses are legitimate. But that impact would be temporary, and can be mitigated. And in the end, light rail will bring more foot traffic and increased vitality for downtown businesses.

But some speculate that council members are playing a different game. The Bellevue City Council would have no qualms approving the Transit Center alignment if it was underground. But a tunnel would cost an extra $300 million and Bellevue doesn’t want to pay for it. Meanwhile, Sound Transit—stretched thin by dropping tax revenues—is in no position to fork out $300 million either.

And so might it be that Wallace’s plan (and perhaps also the new Mercer Slough alignment?) is actually a tactic to strong-arm Sound Transit into helping fund a downtown tunnel? Like I said, speculation. But the truth is, the tunnel is the best solution, and it would be great if Sound Transit and Bellevue could find a way to work together, share the extra expense, and get the right thing done. After all, people have been building subways for more than a century.

On April 15, Microsoft will shut off its original Xbox’s online game service for good. That announcement came in a midnight (?) press release last night from Xbox General Manager Marc Whitten, who confirmed the shut-off but didn’t provide any rationale.

The move is bound to confuse, as the online service in question, Xbox Live, runs two platforms at once: the old Xbox from 2001, and the newer Xbox 360 from 2005. Then again, this is the company that released, what, 14 editions of Windows Vista?

So, to clarify, Microsoft’s April shutdown will only affect the original Xbox’s games, which are typically not found on store shelves anyway.

Thing is, though, the shutdown includes 2004’s Halo 2, arguably the most popular online game ever released. In August, rumors leaked out of Microsoft indicating that Halo 2’s continued popularity had stayed the life of the old network. Whitten’s press release doesn’t say either way, but this news confirms my long-held belief that running disparate services under the same Xbox Live name was confusing and utterly Microsoftian. (Also worth noting: Microsoft has advertised its old Xbox games as discounted downloads on the Xbox 360’s online store—feigning support for the old network, only to yank the carpet today.)

Microsoft reps were unavailable for response at press time, having gone to bed. I’ll update with any response to my questions.