This from the Puget Sound Business Journal: Mayor Paul Schell has finally discovered Seattle's vacant building problem. Hello? If he had been listening to affordable housing advocates, he would have heard all about this problem years ago. According to the Dept. of Construction and Land Use, Seattle has 222 vacant houses, 55 empty apartment buildings, and 24 vacant commercial buildings. Of those vacant buildings, 217 are in violation of the city's wimpy codes governing vacant structures (i.e., buildings can remain vacant, so long as they're properly sealed off). Well, Paul, it's time to cite them and to fine those suckers bigtime! Unfortunately, the city only imposes an anemic $15 per day for violations of the city's vacant building codes. And Mayor Schell isn't about to force any of the property owners to raze or sell their buildings; he'd rather "induce" them to make changes. Such "inducements" should include the following: enact an ordinance similar to one in Spokane that requires property owners to either renovate their buildings to make them habitable, or demolish them.--Maria Tomchick

Something close to an audio revolution is happening in the Bay Area, where angry listeners of Pacifica Foundation's KPFA Radio have been subjected to armed guards, mass arrests, and a virtual paralysis of the station after the mass firing of KPFA's on-air staff for insistence on covering the in- house controversy over control of the station's future. Space doesn't permit going into all the gory details here, but the net result is an unprecedented demand by a station's staff and listeners that they, not Clintonoid consultants and liberal (in the worst sense of the word) management, should control the fate of one of the country's few remaining voices of consistent mainstream media dissent. The sheer size of the rebellion gives listeners more hope than, say, the multiple spasms of protest surrounding Seattle's KCMU, where management could smugly wait out the storms because, simply, they had the license. In Pacifica's case, there's talk of selling the stations to commercial interests or worse, rather than letting the rabble have a say in how a "community" radio station is run.

Meanwhile, over at the Tide Foundation's Institute for Global Communications (IGC), another Bay Area non-profit whose ties to Pacifica in management and in thinking were solidified by the hiring of KPFA's controversial former manager last year, another icon of the left is biting the dust. IGC was an early Net provider whose PeaceNet, LaborNet, and other issue-focused user groups have been an invaluable resource. Now comes word that IGC is being sold to the very commercial Mindspring, an Atlanta-based ISP that is the very model of those annoying rags-to-riches Net stories for its investors. It's getting harder and harder to find a socially responsible non-profit--not just corporations, mind you, but non-profit--that isn't being run by the principles of the worst of corporate greed and excess. The loss of Pacifica, in this sense, would be a huge symbolic milestone for the left in this country. Quite aside from the desperate practical need for someone to provide an alternative to NPR on a mass scale, there's the need to have a model out there of institutions that have grass roots control and political integrity. It's getting harder and harder to find.

In Seattle, don't even get me started on Central Co-op, which ran roughshod over its membership and has literally mortgaged its future for a spiffy new Safeway-style store now opened on East Madison. These are dark days for alternative community institutions. Most of the ones in Seattle advertise in ETS!, and you can see for yourself how few that is. Support folks like Left Bank, Recollection Books, Lucky Palate, 911, and Essential Baking while you can. They're more valuable than you know.--Geov Parrish

King County Metro is short on drivers. For months now, the county has experienced the worst shortage of new drivers in nearly 30 years, culminating with the cancellation of some bus routes last July and November. Recently, things have gotten a little better: a new radio ad campaign and a new recruiting task force have beefed up the driving staff at Metro. But the shortage persists. One of the problems is that new drivers are forced to start out with only part-time work, which isn't enough to pay the bills for most. In addition, the seniority system at Metro allows the most senior employees to choose the best bus routes and times--usually the cushy express routes out to the suburbs--while leaving the harder, in-city routes for the newest drivers (including the dreaded, pain-in-the-butt #7 and #43 trolley routes). On top of that, worsening traffic congestion has made it impossible for even veteran drivers to stick to their time schedules. It's not hard to see why Metro's shorthanded...or why so many Metro drivers have become cranky in the last few years.--M.T.

Former Chilean dictator Augosto Pinochet is still fighting in British court to keep from being extradited to Spain to stand trial for murder, torture, and genocide. Meanwhile, here in the U.S., the CIA has released documents showing that the U.S. government knew about Pinochet's crimes from the very beginning. Within days of the 1973 coup that brought him to power and deposed the democratically-elected government of Chile, CIA employees sent word back to Washington that Pinochet planned "severe repression" against his opponents. Nevertheless, the Nixon administration continued to provide support for Pinochet--even sending material to set up detention camps for political prisoners--while denying that it had helped the Chilean military plan the coup. Although 6,000 documents were released, they are only a small, selective portion of the government's documentation covering U.S./Chile relations during 1973-78.

Some of the withheld information covers the 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier, a Pinochet opponent and a diplomat for the Allende government. Letelier and his American assistant, Ronni Moffat, were killed by a car bomb in Washington, D.C. Human rights groups have claimed that Pinochet is responsible for this assassination. The CIA refused to release documents on this incident, claiming that the Justice Department is still investigating aspects of this case--which, of course, is a lie.--M.T.