The commuter version of the Cascadian Calm

I see you, Virginia.

We're just too nice out here. We won't ask you to coffee, we'll be nice to your face, but we won't invite you to the barbeque.

And, we are too nice when we're driving. *Too* nice. And, this means we're unsafe, ironically.

But that isn't actually true. We are actually safe drivers around here. Way safer than Virginians at least.

If you look beyond the data provided by All State Insurance in the linked article above, it's hard to find anything that points to Washington or specifically Seattle area drivers being unsafe. In fact, we consistently rank as one of the most safe.

CDC stats are here for the metros (and I ranked them here) and an interesting study by the University of Michigan are here on statewide stats.

So, this Washingtonians-as-nice-but-jerk-drivers things strikes me as a bit of anecdote becoming truth sort of thing. And, it's interesting that this and a lot of other similar stories are framed from the point of view from someone who came here from somewhere else.

It seems to be a different angle on the Seattle Freeze vs. Cascadian Calm story.

Again, from the linked story:

“I grew up on the East Coast,” Tim Godfrey of North Beach said. “The driving there was significantly more aggressive than here, and in particular, if you were going slow or even the speed limit in the left lane, people were on your bumper, flashing lights, honking if you still didn’t move.”

This is just about the nut of it. This story (and most stories about how we are as a regional personality) are told from the frame from people who are just arriving here. This is the same thing I noted when I wrote about the Cascadia Calm, which is in fact our regional personality.

Something I noted back then was that searches and mentions of "the Seattle Freeze" correlates when there is a large influx of new residents to Washington. We don't talk about the way we are here when new people aren't coming to town. It only happens when new residents notice that people here have a different way of being.

So, if you ask me, we're fine out here. We're not like other regions and we don't have to be. I'm not an aggressive driver and I don't have to be. I leave in plenty of time to get where I need to be.

If only the KKK had been worse at lobbying, Honeyford wouldn't have to worry about unmasking anarchists

So, it's possible that running around with a mask on and smash things is impolite and already illegal. But making it illegal additionally to do it while masked is probably a bad idea.

It isn't even a new idea though.

Rep. O.R. McKinney of Pierce County made a valiant effort in 1923 to rip the mask off the Klu Klux Klan in Washington. His bill would have made wearing a mask during a public protest illegal. In the 1920s the Klan was leaking across the border from Oregon and at the time of McKinney's bill, was just about to hit their zenith.

But, in March of 1923 they were strong enough to stand in the way of an unmasking bill.

The Klan was so powerful apparently, that it is almost painful to watch McKinney contort himself not cast shade on them:

I did not introduce the bill as a religious fanatic or because I wish to do away with an klan or any other organization. We have an organization in this state called the Klu Klux Klan. I am not opposed to it, but it is important to have the state regulate such organizations. 

It is a dangerous thing to allow masked men to parade over the country. If we were sure that no one but members of the Klu Klux Klan wore masks we could put our fingers on the men who committed depredations, but the failure to pass this bill opens the way for depredations by masked persons who are not members of the Klu Klux Klan.

When McKinney's bill was first introduced in January, the chair of the house judiciary committee was greeted on his homecoming to a "sheaf" of telegrams from Klan members opposing the bill. “Throughout the entire country we are being persecuted," said at least one.

Honeyford's bill isn't going to pass just like McKinney's wasn't going to pass. But, that is where the comparisons end for something like this. Both groups use masks. But, the Klan was an evil group founded by the powerful to keep people and religions they considered impure out of the American mainstream.

No one is backing up anarchists or trying to bend over backwards saying they aren't opposed to anarchists while trying to pass an anti-mask bill. The power dynamics behind punching up to attack the clan in the 1920s and punching down to the attack the anarchists almost 100 years later is totally different. 

The anti-mask bill won't pass this year because it is a low priority policy for a legislature that needs to deal with real school funding, culvert repair and budget issues. It is a cheap trick. In the 1920s the bill was introduced in the early part of the session and had a real run out before the Klan killed it.

Anarchists won't kill this bill, they can't hardly engage in the legislative process. Good government and higher priorities will kill this year's unmasking bill.

Would $10 have been enough to monitor septics at poisonous Summit Lake?

Not for nothing, but this post was hard to write straight-faced. I feel like this should be a light your hair on fire moment for this county commission and their constituents. I can't believe people aren't screaming at the county commissioners demanding to know why they didn't stand up for public health and institute a measly $10 annual fee. Even the high end of $54 A YEAR seems like a steal compared to toxins in your drinking water.

Google imagery of Summit Lake. Obviously, where else was I going to get it?

The Thurston County commission passed a new plan to manage septic systems last winter.

A new set of county commissioners were seated and voted to strip the ability to actually pay for the plan a few months later. A $10 annual fee was just too much to help ensure clean, drinkable water.

Then there was an outbreak of poisonous algae in Summit Lake. According to the state Department of Health, malfunctioning septic systems are one of the likely causes of a poisonous algae outbreak.
The problem on Summit Lake is that the same residents who live along the lake and use septic systems to deal with their human waste also depend on the lake for their drinking water.

Do we know for sure that septic systems are the cause of excess nutrients in Summit Lake that caused a poisonous algae outbreak? Well, no, we don't. But that we don't know this is the main problem.

Any sort of expanded monitoring or education that could have done anything to prevent a situation like the one at Summit Lake will go wanting for lack of funding.

In the approved, but apparently unfunded septic plan, the county specifically called out Summit Lake as a very vulnerable spot for mismanaged septics. Said the plan:

Summit Lake, which is used by most residents for their drinking water source, shall be designated as a Sensitive Area. All wastewater disposal systems in the Summit Lake watershed shall have required operational certificates and dye testing to assure that routine inspections and maintenance is completed at least every three years and failing systems are identified and repaired. 

The plan also pointed out that Summit Lake, despite being the water source for drinking water for people living on Summit Lake, presents some real issues about how exactly septic tanks wouldn't pollute that source:

Its steep slopes, shallow soils, and generally small lots sizes make siting and functioning of on-site sewage systems around the lake difficult. A 1992-1997 sanitary survey found 58 systems failing (18%) – the majority of which were repaired. Surface waters cannot be adequately protected from contamination to be safely used as a domestic water supply without treatment. A public health advisory issued in 1987 advises against consumption of untreated lake water at Summit Lake. A comprehensive program would ensure routine inspection and maintenance of all OSS within the Summit Lake basin and identification and correction of failing systems. The Summit Lake watershed should be considered for special area designation due to the serious threat posed to the drinking water supply by failing septic systems.

Twenty years ago they knew that 18 percent of the septics were failing because they went out and looked. Just like when they found 14 percent failing on Henderson Inlet.

Here's the underlying point: Since 1997 the county hasn't gone back to take another look at septics around Summit Lake. Now the water has too many toxins to drink. The reason we can't rule out septics as the source for algae with toxins is because we haven't looked.

Nothing that I've seen from the county says that they can do anything to track down the source of the algae. The very least you could say is that $10 a month could have gone to a small bit of dye testing to see if in twenty years any septics around the lake started not working.

Right now what the county is doing is just waiting for sunlight and time to deal with the algae. But, I'm sure a more progressive standpoint would be get out there and start figuring out why we have a public health crisis on Summit Lake to begin with.

Three reasons why we should keep Heck in Congress

National Precinct Map by Decision Desk HQ

Or, rather, three reasons why the nascent movement to oust centrist Democratic Rep. Denny Heck is a bad idea.

Tomorrow night there will be a meeting at Traditions in Olympia to talk about the idea of ousting Rep. Heck from Congress. The reasons are what you might expect, that Heck isn't as liberal as we need Democrats to be to really change our country:

The banking and insurance industries are bankrolling his campaign, and he gets the vast majority of his support from the business community. If we are ever going to achieve the progressive change our nation and world so desperately needs, then we are going to have to replace Trump, the Republicans, and corrupt establishment Democrats in Congress with representatives who will reject corporate money, stand up to corporate power, and put people over profits.

Whether Rep. Heck represents "the people" or progressives in general, his only real job is to represent his constituents. And, it's an open question whether his brand of politics is a fair representation of the WA10. Though geographically centered on Olympia, the 10th stretches up into Pierce County, mostly around Joint Base Lewis McChord. So, if any anything defines the WA10, it isn't the culture of liberal Olympia, it is the institution of the military.

A Republican could win in the WA 10. Or, at the very least, a conservative independent could.

1. Since 2012, Heck really hasn't been challenged.  Despite Pierce County supplying a steady stream of down ticket Republicans to challenge Heck, they've all been underfunded. In three elections, he has far out-raised his Republican opponents. I mean far outstripped.

Despite getting close to 60 percent in two Presidential cycle elections (2012, 2016), he has never broken 60. Also, his one off cycle election (2014) Heck got 54 percent, despite out-raising his opponent by over $1.5 million.

You could assume that given a better financed conservative opponent, he'd be in trouble.

2. The WA10 is slightly (I mean ever so slightly) more conservative than the state of Washington. 

If you take every statewide candidate last year and look how they did in the WA10, conservative candidates did .38 percent better than their statewide returns. This doesn't mean a whole heck of a lot. But, in a Presidential year when there were certainly more Democrats going to the polls, Republicans did better in WA10 than they did statewide. This isn't saying a lot, but it does underline that the WA10 is less liberal than it should be for a safe Democratic congressman.

3. Independents in Thurston County

This is a sort of constant theme for me, but conservatives can win countywide races in Thurston County. If they drop the Republican label. Sure, typically, Congressional races are much more partisan than county commission races with national party organizations having a ton of input. But, with identified independents in Washington becoming the largest single group in the state, why not run a conservative independent against Heck?

So, imagine a world where a well-funded progressive knocks off Denny Heck in the primary and runs to the left off another well-funded conservative running as an Independent. In this world, I could see the WA10 flipping from a somewhat safe (if ignored) congressional district for a Democrat to one represented by a conservative.

"Building Ghosts" is a really good book, it's a freaking pillar of light. You know?

I dropped the library copy of "Building Ghost" by Jim Burlingame into my nine year old son's lap, hoping he'd hold onto it as we pulled away from the library. He immediately started flipping through it as I explained it was a book about a part of Olympia's history.

Specifically, it was a book with pictures of new buildings placed next to photos of the same location in the past.

"Building Ghosts" pairs a series of photos Burlingame took in 2014 of vacant buildings with historic photos of the the same location at some point in the past. Also included in the book is a well thought out essay on why he did what he did.

[By the way, you should buy this book. You can do so here.]

"How can this be the same building," he said, thinking hard on pages 28 and 29 (the former Last Word Book location at 211 E. 4th). But, then he realized it was taken from a different perspective. And, then it all made sense to him, especially 3900 Martin Way East, one page further in. That page shows a series of small houses on the former side paired with a former Subway franchise location in an anonymous strip mall on the more current side.

Burlingame's book is like that, it makes you think harder about seemingly anonymous corners of Olympia. It's easy for us to roll around in the prettier and more stately buildings in town, but much more of our human history revolves around small anonymous houses on the edge of town replaced by strip malls on roads like Martin Way.

He starts the essay in the front of the book talking about the experiences at the old video store on the westside, how anonymous strip mall commercialism is unrecognized human history:

All around us, we have chances to see the literal infrastructure we pass through and spend time in every day as aspects of another kind of infrastructure altogether: the brick by brick accretion of details that sustain the meaning of those locations, both for individuals and the community they're a part of. Of course, the latter is made up of an ever-changing set of members, most of whom don't have much knowledge of the earlier incarnations of the places they frequent. Thus the near-invisibility -- yet ubiquity -- of these pillars means there's a phantom palace overlaid upon the mundane world we know.

I bolded that last phrase, because I'm trying to set up the criticism of my next point nicely.

This book makes me want another book. As much as I like Jim's effort here, it seems like more of a proof of concept than a finished piece. That he took his 2014 photos before researching what historic photos were available of the same locations means (as my son figured out) that they're often of different perspectives.

I would have also like there to be a way for his essay to not be separated from the photos. The ideas are so powerful that reading them across the same wide pages the photos were laid out on was tiring. I've read and reread the essay and it speaks to me. I really like it, but laid out narrower, next to the photos, would have been better.

The way he talks about trying to draw out the mundane past into the mundane future and the phantom palace (and later in the essay his "pillars of light" vs. Springsteen's darkness on the edge of town) makes me want more. 

Washington had a surge of Independent voters. What does that mean?

Here is the last 10 years of Survey USA statewide poll results charted out (background data), focussing only on how the respondents identified their partisan affiliation.

Basically, following the trendlines, both the Republican and Democratic parties have lost marketshare and three times since 2006 there have been more identified independents than anything else. Also, in the most recent survey from last fall, the independent identification has a big lead.

It is worth noting that independents have always been strong in Cascadia, but I'm convinced we're seeing something different in this trend here.

What could have caused this?

I have a couple of theories, but I'm far from totally convinced by them.

I think the Top Two primary had something to do with this. Especially, in combination with a redistricting process in 2010 that had a lot to do with protecting incumbency and not with creating competitive districts between the traditional left and right.

So, since the first Top Two primary in 2008 and redistricting races in 2012, we're seeing more legislative level races that aren't competitive between the two major parties. So what do member of a minority ideology do when left in the cold without a standard bearer? I think it's possible they drop the partisan standard all together.

I think there's also something wrong with how we structure party politics around here that encourages not identifying as a partisan. Basically, political parties, the local county and legislative district ones, aren't forces in the lives of most voters or even most activists.

Campaigns can be built, volunteers recruited and advertising funded, without a lot of help from local party officials. The web has a lot to do with this, but the fact that the basic party structure is an obscure elected official called a precinct committee officer probably doesn't help.

What does this mean?

I think we're already seeing the impacts of what a possible non-partisan identifying stable plurality or even majority could mean in Washington State. With little buy-in with their actual policies, the Thurston County commission is now made up of conservative independents. There is was also an independent election on the Grays Harbor County commission, a more conservative but still usually solidly Democratic county.

Also, in Grays Harbor, you saw them support a Republican for president for the first time since the Democratic party was near its death in the 1920s in Washington State. My guess is that they voted for Trump not because was running as a Republican, but because he was running as a non-partisan under a partisan label.

What could this mean in the future is two things:

One, maybe Bill Bryant could have won if he'd shed the partisan banner. With 41 percent and growing, the independent population in Washington serves as a much handier base than a shrinking third place identification. It also seemed to me that Bryant ended up not running as really a conservative, but as a better version of the centrist pro-government governor we already have.

And two, on the local level, even more independents. I hope.

 It is one thing for three anti-growth regulation independents to be elected in a county that voted overwhelmingly for an urban environmentalist of lands commissioner. That (plus the way we voted for the independents across the county), means that enough voters didn't know what policies they were actually supporting and just pulled the lever for the non-partisan.

But, what happens when there are two non-labeled candidates in the race? What shortcuts do the voters use to make their decision? Or do low information voters drop out and leave the election to the voters who have their minds made up?

What went on with rural growth in Thurston County?

Grand Mound from highway to today:

It wasn't a member of the Thurston County commission, but there was a county commissioner at a recent hearing on exempt well bills last month. One of our commissioners was there too, but the Mason County commissioner said (and I'm paraphrasing) that the county's economy needed a boost.

What she was talking about was that building houses, more people living in the rural parts of Mason County would give their county a boost.

Despite evidence to the contrary that rural residential development is good for the government bottom line or anyone's economic well-being (I mean other than homebuilders and realtors) it did get me thinking about the rural landscape and how it's either being put to work (with farms or logging) or put to rest (by building houses).

Here's an interesting chart I've been toying with for the last few weeks. It plots the acres of land in Thurston County in farms and logging against the population in the non-city parts of the county:

What I see are a couple interesting things.

One, no one seems to keep track of land in active forestry by county, which is really weird since it is literally taxed differently in Washington and county assessors should really care about that. I was able to find two data points, so it's just sitting on the chart as something I'd like to add in if I can find it.

Also, I also wasn't able to find was any sort of description of residential zoning by acreage, so I used general non-incorporated population as a stand-in. This might be slightly unfair since most of this population is concentrated up in Tanglewild. But, as you can see in the gif at the top of this post, even Grand Mound has seen some significant changes since then.

Two, the 1960s seem to be a big turning point in the change of how Thurston County's rural areas were in terms of a shift from farming to rural growth.

If you zoom in on the 60s, you see the drop off of farm acreage happening just as non-city residential growth picks up.

What is also interesting is that even as no it seems like farm acreage has stabilized, the non-city population continues to increase, which means the rural areas are either getting denser or they're overtaking acreage that isn't in active farming.

Lastly, and this is more of a fun fact than anything. I wrote years back about the unincorporated area east of Lacey was Thurston County's invisible city.

I used to talk about this when I was on the Timberland Library board of trustees about how we should expand library service between Rochester and Grand Mound (which is currently served by a kiosk). But, that if you took the two census tracts that surround Highway 12 between I-5 and the county line, you'd have the fourth largest city in Thurston County at almost 13,000 people.