Miller times

Between national party conventions, I took an advance look at Joseph Miller's upcoming memoirs, The Wicked Wine of Democracy, to be published next month by University of Washington Press. The book provides an almost too-candid portrayal of politics and lobbying in the Northwest and nationally over 50 years and is an intriguing chronicle of some of the main figures in Northwest political life.

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Seattle outpaces Portland in income growth

The current issue of Marple's Pacific Northwest Letter ($) tallies up personal income figures for Northwest metro areas. One shocker is how low the figure is for Portland, a booming area that is still shy on high-paying jobs. Or, conversely, how affluent Seattle is.

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Seattle and the elixir of growth

In some moods, I think that Seattle's business renaissance has peaked. Starbucks is contracting, Microsoft is stumbling, Boeing is losing bids, Safeco is sold, and Washington Mutual is sinking. Has our formula of rapid growth spreading across the globe run into the wall?

But then I look at the front page of today's "Marketplace" section of The Wall Street Journal, where three of the four stories are about Seattle-based companies. There's the story of Microsoft's scramble in the executive suite, with the sudden departure of Kevin Johnson, formerly in charge of the Yahoo merger campaign; Costco reporting an earnings squeeze as the prices for merchandise are rising faster than they can pass along costs to its value-seeking customers; and Amazon doubling its second-quarter profits as customers shift from shopping by car to shopping by online.

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Sausage Links, mayor-about-town edition

Oh, Greg. You are trying to break our hearts! Just when we vilify you for airballing the Sonics all the way to OKC for a cool $45 million — you show you're a real Mayor-about-town houses and plastic bag taxes.

For better or worse, everybody's talking about Mayor Nickels' proposals today. Erica C. Barnett at The Stranger says she spotted a "Plastic Monster" at last night's public-comment meeting about the proposed plastic bag tax, while Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat warns if we don't choose paper the plastic bag police will get us. Meanwhile, the folks at Sound Politics rail against Nickels for the new town house plan, which they argue will regulate affordable housing "out of existence." ...

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Seven premonitions you can take to the bank

Predictions at mid-year regarding sweet deals for developers, a Sonics boon, the precarious viaduct, a Boeing handout, Sound Transit, Pat Davis, and cleaning up Puget Sound.

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A week of weakonomics

If you look away from the Sonics trial for a moment, you can see warning signs that the seemingly immune local economy is actually pretty precarious.

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A Boeing field trip

I made the decision last month to pull my seven-year-old daughter from school for field trips of our own. For one day every two weeks, for the remainder of the school year, we are exploring the Northwest's offerings, history, and culture.

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Rah, rah for the home team

Home-grown sports teams, airplane builders, and banks are reeling from competition and free trade, and the local mood is to beat up on the outsiders. Tempting, but is it smart?

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Polimedia lunch links, gun-ban edition

According to Sen. John McCain, local voters are most concerned about the war. Meanwhile, The Seattle Times wonders if McCain will even bother with Washington voters. ...

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A city of scolds

Seattle City Hall has cracked down on drinking and clubs, it's on the verge of banning fast food and taxing plastic grocery bags, and now even plastic-bottled water is a civic sin. Switch to tap water! says the mayor. Mossback thinks enough is enough.

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Annals of Northwest secession

A primer of regional separatist movements, real and imagined.

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What made the Seattle style of business a success

As civic icons like Safeco drift away from their Puget Sound roots, here's a look at the components of a Seattle way of doing business that built up such brands. The key was motivated employees. The poison was rapid growth.

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Shanghai Surprise

A group with Northwest ties is aced out of a pavilion bid for Expo 2010 in China. Instead, the U.S. State Department has given the go-ahead to a team with connections to Warner Brothers and a major D.C. law firm. Now all they have to do is raise $80 million.

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Recession alert: Put Oregon on the danger list

Marple's Pacific Northwest Letter, a bible of the Northwest economy, is predicting that Oregon, "if not yet in recession, it likely soon will be." The reasons: sectors like lumber exposed to the homebuilding recession; continued manufacturing decline in computer chips and electronic instruments, which have not fully recovered since the dot.com meltdown; and overall manufacturing decline since mid-2006.

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Cheers not jeers to Speaker Chopp on the Microsoft tax concession

The Columbia Basin Herald this past week characterized House Speaker Frank Chopp as being a Forrest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does" villain for opposing big proposed tax breaks for Microsoft and Yahoo. The tax concession, those companies said, were necessary to keep them from fleeing Grant County, where they have huge server farms. The requests were similar to the $3.2 billion in breaks Boeing Co. got from Governor Gary Locke and the Legislature when it threatened to take some of its assembly operations elsewhere.

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Jean Godden on Seattle: My, how you've changed!

The longtime columnist for Seattle's dailies casts an affectionate eye over the many sweeping transformations of the city, and wonders if all the newcomers will learn to cherish the uniqueness of the place.

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The Lazy B's blue funk descends

In the Jet County, they're expending a lot of energy bemoaning Boeing's failure to win a big Air Force contract. There's not much locals can do about that. But a university, that's another matter.

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The Boeing tanker slapdown

The state's congressional delegation and others are shocked that we're shipping defense jobs overseas to Airbus. But isn't that the free trade they're always touting?

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What gives Seattle so much global sizzle?

An article in the February 19 Singapore Straits Times (registration required) makes the striking observation that Seattle alone has produced approximately the same number of leading global brands as the combined population (3 billion) of Asia. On the Seattle list are: Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, UPS, Nordstrom, Washington Mutual, Costco, and Safeco. The list from Asia (excluding Japan) is: Singapore Airlines, Lenovo, Samsung, Hundai, San Miguel, Arcelor-Mittal, Oberio, Cathay Pacific, Acer, and Thai Airways.

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Is McCain the scourge, or the stooge, of corporate lobbyists?

Flimsy allegations of hanky-panky aside, the probing into Sen. John McCain's background and associates is continuing, and it's starting to go to the heart of his claim for being above reproach. He clearly swims in a sea of lobbyists for large corporations, even if he also can be the lonely foe of some corporations such as Boeing. Also, the corrupt Arizona milieu is also starting to catch up with him. The Arizona story took a turn with the indictment of Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi, who also happens to be the honorary co-chair of McCain's Arizona presidential campaign. McCain was quoted as saying he expected Renzi to leave that post: "He's obviously going to be very busy," was his only comment. Renzi was charged in a 35-count grand jury indictment with pressuring people to buy land in connection with federal land swaps, with Renzi allegedly getting kickbacks and providing favorable legislation

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