Proving once again that the Port of Seattle is a cozy little clubhouse, Port Commissioners voted this month to rent prime space in its new Bell Street "World Trade Center" office complex at below-market rents to some of their pals. The price break and subsequent loss of revenue for a publicly financed agency is, in effect, a gift of public money to the four nonprofit trade groups involved. The four conservative, business-friendly groups--the Japan-America Society, the National Center for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, the Washington State China Relations Council, and the Washington Council on International Trade (WCIT)--will rent the top floor of the facility at about $15.80 per square foot for five-year leases, compared to downtown market rates of $20-25 per square foot.

What prompts the generosity? Well, it helps that Port Commissioner Pat Davis is WCIT President, and Port Commissioner Jack Block--the 24-year incumbent who serves as the Port of Seattle's union "representative"--is on WCIT's executive board. (WCIT, you'll recall, led the successful business opposition to Seattle's recently proposed selective purchasing ordinance for Burma.) The groups' physical proximity will doubtless be useful in future networking on how best to use enormous bucketsful of tax dollars to, um, uh, create jobs! Yes, that's it!--G.P.

When is a tent a house? When the Seattle Parks Department and the Department of Transportation decided on June 11th to evict squatters from the homeless community commonly known as "tent city" under I-5 on Beacon Hill. The local Post-Intelligencer newspaper cheerfully dubbed it "housecleaning," "spring cleaning," and "maid service." But these maids acted like a bunch of thieves, commandeering and discarding anything that the squatters couldn't carry away, including: camping gear, tents, bedding, tarps, boards, cardboard, and other items necessary for living outdoors 365 days a year in a city with a dwindling supply of affordable housing, not enough shelter beds, and wet, rainy weather for nine months of the year.

In response, two groups, Seattle Housing and Resource Effort (SHARE) and Women's Housing Enhancement and Equality League (WHEEL), have proposed the creation of a permanent tent city with portable toilets, regular garbage collection, and police services. To make their point, they went ahead and erected tents on the west side of the Beacon Hill Reservoir, and some of the evicted homeless folks joined them at the new, more visible squat. So far the city hasn't sent police or Parks Department maids to roust them out.

Many of the folks pushed out of the original tent city have not joined the demonstration; after all, a "permanent" tent city is hardly a long-term or permanent solution to homelessness--affordable housing where residents can come and go without police supervision is. But as a way to make this issue more visible and force our reluctant mayor to actually do something, the new tent city is long overdue.--Maria Tomchick

It's unclear what, if any, practical effect will come from the Washington State Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling throwing out a 1988 law that banned malicious, intentional lying in political campaigns. In a decade, only 13 fines have been levied, and only three cases referred for possible criminal action, though a whole lot more lies than that have been told. But the larger implications of the ruling are frightening. As one of the dissents noted, this is the first time that a court anywhere in the U.S. has found that intentional falsehoods (e.g., yelling "fire" in a crowded theater) are a constitutionally protected form of free speech.

But the whole debate may be moot; as we enter the 21st century "free speech" is more and more a direct function of money. The ruling will have little effect on campaigns for office, where falsehoods are usually directly and quickly challenged (though in the final days before an election, that's sometimes not enough). But for ballot measures the implications are enormous. For example, under this ruling, last year Paul Allen could have made the claim that he was paying for the Seahawk's new stadium all by himself--a direct and obvious lie.

But with the money to saturate the state's media with that lie over and over and over, Allen could have drowned out any annoying naysayers wondering why the vote was even needed. His money, and his dominance of the political and judicial process, ensured that he--but not stadium opponents or other critics of corporate handouts--had not only free speech, but the ability to create any distorted version of reality he liked, and have it become fact.

But isn't that how the system has been functioning anyway? --G.P.

The top polluter in the state of Washington this year is the Weyerhaeuser Co., according to the EPA's annual report on toxic releases in the U.S. Weyerhaeuser spewed some 4.77 million pounds of pollutants into the air, water and soil around its Longview plant; its closest competitor was James River Corp. in Camas at a measly 1.38 million lbs. of hazardous waste.

I'm starting to see a trend here. Both Weyerhaeuser and James River process wood, pulp, and paper products. Other members of the same industry made the top ten, too: number four is Boise Cascade in Wallula (1.26 million lbs.) and number nine is Georgia-Pacific West, Inc. in Bellingham (1.04 million lbs.). Refining companies, which suck in enormous amounts of electricity, also vomit up large quantities of toxics: Kaiser Aluminum in Mead was number three (1.29 million lbs.), Reynolds Metals Co. in Longview was number seven (1.22 million lbs.), and Vanalco Inc. in Vancouver was number eight (1.07 million lbs.).

It's important to note that the annual top ten list is not all-inclusive. The EPA only tracks some 500 known toxins and carcinogens; thousands more potentially carcinogenic chemical combinations are routinely used in industry and sprayed on farmlands without being monitored. Also, the EPA only keeps tabs on certain industries. For example, it doesn't track releases from electrical utilities or power generating plants.--M.T.

Last year, Congress enacted a one-year moratorium on the production, sale, and use of landmines, which is to take effect on Feb. 12, 1999. But apparently even this minor restriction is too much for the Clinton Administration, which--virtually alone in the world--continues to refuse to sign the Ottawa Treaty to Ban Landmines. There is now a move by the administration to have Congress repeal the moratorium. The Pentagon's "grave and substantial concern" about the moratorium--a one year hiatus in the business of blowing the arms, legs, and torsos off of innocent civilians is predictable enough. So, unfortunately, is Bill Clinton's eagerness to service the armed services, and the reluctance of Clinton's liberal apologists to hold him accountable for yet another policy atrocity among many.--G.P.