An addendum to last week's article on light rail planning: a remarkable coalition has come together in the south end in recent months to fight the inequitable burden of displacement being projected for south side residents. Save Our Valley is something rare in Seattle activism: an actual multi-racial, multi-cultural group fighting for neighborhood rights. In this case, it's the right to have Sound Transit spend as much in cushioning the displacement for lower-income, non-white south end residents as they're willing to spend to make life better on the north side. To get involved, call SOV at 206-621-9898.--Geov Parrish

How do you guarantee that more people will die from food-borne illnesses? Answer: let industry inspect itself. The USDA has released its first study that shows that there is now more e. coli in meat than ever before under new laws that allow the meat-packing industry to employ its own inspectors, instead of submitting to USDA spot inspections. In random samplings of hamburger taken last year, the USDA found more e. coli than during all of the past four years combined. The Centers for Disease Control have reported that there were seven major outbreaks of e. coli last year, compared to two in 1997. Jack in the Box, which has an intensive testing process for e. coli in the meat it buys (for obvious reasons), reports that last year they found about one in 1,000 batches of ground beef was tainted with e. coli, as compared to zero in 8,500 batches tested between 1997 and 1993 (when 4 children died and 500 other people fell ill after eating tainted hamburgers at Western Washington Jack in the Boxes). On top of that, half of all e. coli related ground beef recalls were prompted by consumer complaints, not by industry testing. Remember the kids who ate tainted meat at the Puyallup Fair this summer? I bet their parents are happy to know that the meat-packing industry took short cuts to make sure those burgers were cheap and plentiful ... but obviously not healthy.--Maria Tomchick

We have a bit of an editorial split here at ETS! Central. (Yes, it happens.) My estimable co-editor--and, to be fair, many other folks I know--think the recent spate of pie-throwing at capitalist celebrities is at minimum amusing, and maybe even a righteous political act. I think it's neither. It shows, if anything, the utter bankruptcy of political dissent in this country. Instead of being taken seriously as an alternative policy vision, we're reduced to the Three Stooges sound bite, without any explanation of why, and without any possible impact on the policies thus opposed. It leaves the protesters coming off as infantile jerks, and accomplishes the remarkable feat of engendering mainstream public sympathy for CEOs and elected officials whose crimes deserve no sympathy. I'm not amused. We can only hope the emotional three-year-olds ("Hahahaha! Mom! Look at ME!") perpetrating these triumphs get tired of their heroic acts as soon as the media's 15 minutes of infatuation is up.--Geov Parrish

Okay, okay, you caught me again. I do like seeing men in three-piece suits with cream pie all over them. Maybe it's a personal fetish. But perhaps it's because of the serious way that businessmen, economists, lobbyists, and the media present such absolutely ridiculous notions as the salvage logging rider, or loaning more money to countries already heavily in debt so they can pay off their debts. Such ideas deserve a pie in the face. Also, the lionization of ruthless people like Bill Gates, for example, deserves a moment--however brief--of humor to show that, like everyone else, powerful people are no different from you and me; they don't shit gold. The prank, though, gets a little old when it's done too often. It is time to put down the pies. At least for now.--M.T.

While I'm at it--warning, serious political heresy approaching--I wonder about the efficacy of last month's takeover of SR520 by UW anti-I-200 protesters. I have more mixed feelings about this one, both because any and all signs of campus activism are so welcome and because car culture, by definition, deserves disruption. I've helped instigate two I-5 marches, in '91 and '92, and they were glorious. But one of the first rules of political organizing is to understand your audience, and tailor your message accordingly. Seattle freeway occupations in the past have happened around the King verdict, the Gulf War, Vietnam. Wars. Police beatings of minorities. Issues big enough they warrant forcibly jerking people out of their daily routine. Sympathetic as I am to the cause, I can't help wondering whether the ballot-mandated loss of affirmative action on the UW campus qualifies as that sort of life and death issue. Clearly, most of the public didn't; on the talk shows in Seattle, much of which voted against I-200, the protesters were uniformly reviled, with the extra bonus that media didn't know who the protesters were, so the students didn't get their side out much.--G.P.

ETS! had a great Tom Tomorrow cartoon last year on the theme of lefties calling everything "fascist" or "Nazi" (well, Limbaugh does it, too...), and how that trivializes the real thing. I'm having the same problem with Clinton defenders decrying the recent burst of--quote--"sexual McCarthyism." It's a cute term, but misleading in a major way. The McCarthy era was notable not just for witch hunts, but because those hunted were often innocent. So far, nobody is claiming that any of the politicians--Democrat or Republican (as if there's a big difference)--who have been outted as moral hypocrites are actually innocent of these deeds. And the point isn't that these folks (gasp) had extramarital sex, or a kid out of wedlock, or whatever. It's that they're making political careers out of demonizing less powerful folks (e.g., teenagers) for doing the same things. They deserve all the misery these revelations bring their way. Clinton especially. Karma, baby.--G.P.