Give Republican King County Council members Brian Derdowski and Kent Pullen credit. They led the principled opposition to a supposedly "innocuous" pro-WTO resolution introduced in late August by other Republicans on the council (co-sponsor Rob McKenna told me it was a direct response to Derdowski's touting the council's anti-MAI vote last Spring--so it wasn't meant to be innocuous at all). Some of the 60-80 activists who packed council chambers twice to encourage members to do the right thing came away disappointed by the final, compromise resolution, after an initial anti-WTO vote caused the White House (!) to successfully lobby spineless Democrats Larry Phillips, Cynthia Sullvian, and Greg Nickels to change their votes. But the opposition not only led to a resolution that was better than the original; it demonstrated a level of political support for fair trade proponents, on council and in the community, that will give November protests a lot more legitimacy in the eyes of mainstream media than "just" a bunch of demonstrators would. Last week's front-page article in the Seattle Times on anti-WTO protest preparations took folks like the Ruckus Society a lot more seriously than it would have had the council vote not happened. --Geov Parrish

In the article "Keep the Henry Library Where It Is" (ETS! #3-39) I wrote about the proposed site for the Henry Library in Capitol Hill. The proposed site was to be much taller than neighboring buildings, added 260 parking spaces, combined a retail shop with an institution of learning, and would not be owned by the library. Well, good news! Due to vocal opposition to this outrageous plan, the Seattle Library Board rejected the public-private partnership proposal. The Library Board will now consider choosing between expanding the existing site and the Lowell school, located just off Broadway. --Robin Denburg

This week's rumor regarding the ill-fated Colman School, supposed home of the African American Heritage Museum, is that the Museum--hijacked after 14 years of grass roots efforts by a clique of well-connected downtown types- -won't be happening at all, and the Colman site will be turned into condos. Said to be behind the plan is King County Executive (and liberal extraordinaire) Ron Sims. Is it true? A lot of previous rumors about the Museum haven't panned out, but this one sounds all too credible given the financial abyss the supposedly fiscally more responsible "legit" Museum board has plunged the project into. Stay tuned. --Geov Parrish

I happened to be looking for a synonym for "militant" and made the mistake of asking Microsoft Word's thesaurus for suggestions. Here are the terms the good people at Microsoft consider to be synonymous with "militant." First, as an adjective: belligerent, aggressive, combative, contentious, militaristic, quarrelsome, warlike, bellicose, offensive. And as a noun it's even worse: terrorist, radical, activist, revolutionary, rioter, protestor, demonstrator, violent objector, soldier.

Activist=radical=terrorist. Hmmm. I guess we're all guilty.--Davis Oldham

When Congress reconvenes after its summer recess, it will send its tax-cut package to Bill Clinton for him to veto, then it'll begin a second round of bickering over a "compromise" tax-cut bill. Any compromise, however, is still going to be very bad, because the current package has almost nothing in it that will help lower and middle income taxpayers. Of the changes that would apply to individual taxpayers (as opposed to businesses), the only provision that might help poor folks is a change that would allow them to deduct a portion of their health insurance premiums as "above-the-line" deductions subtracted from their adjusted gross income. Currently, only self-employed people can do this. But even this change ignores the fact that many low income people have no health insurance at all.

While the media and politicians have been making a big fuss over the provisions that would alleviate the so-called "marriage penalty," most of them don't really understand how the tax brackets work. Currently single people pay more in taxes than married people do--with one exception: married couples with both spouses working full-time and making about the same amount of money, a situation more common for low income families. Most middle and higher income couples pay far less tax on their combined income than they would if they were single. This is especially true in families where one spouse works full time and the other (usually the wife) works part-time and makes less than 30% of what the full-time spouse makes. This is more common than most people think, especially since women are routinely paid 20-30% less for doing the same work as men. The couples that save the most money are single-income families--more common amongst the wealthy. The new tax-cut package would help lower and middle income couples a little bit, but it would help wealthy a lot and do almost nothing to alleviate the single taxpayer penalty. So much for helping single moms trying to get off welfare.

In the meantime, here's what the rich would get from this new tax bill: relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a further capital gains cut, a phase out of estate and gift taxes, the ability to set up a Roth IRA, the ability to deduct money spent on renovating "qualified historic homes," and the ability to save up to $2,000 per year in an education IRA (mostly used by higher income families). In addition, to make Wall Street happy, there's an increase in the annual amount people can contribute to their IRAs and 401(k) plans (again, this helps a minority of Americans--most save very little or nothing for retirement, especially among the poor). In particular, the capital gains cuts, the AMT changes, and estate and gift tax cuts are an enormous step backwards: they help mostly the wealthy and they add up to a $200 billion give-away. While Bill Clinton has vowed to veto this awful bill, you can bet that at least some of these provisions will make their way into a compromise bill that he'll sign.--Maria Tomchick. Source: "In Search of a Tax Bill--Act I," NTA-363, Practitioners Tax Action Bulletins, Practitioners Publishing Co., 8/17/99 and "In tax matters, married couples still get the better break," Jane Bryant Quinn, Seattle P-I, 8/31/99.

It's probably obvious, but let's review what's being left out of current rehashed coverage of "revelations" in the Waco attack on the Branch Davidians six and a half years ago--revelations that have been common knowledge to documentary viewers and anyone else following the case for years. For one thing, the federal government murdered approximately (nobody bothered with an exact body count) 86 men, women, and children, because the victims were allegedly (pick one or more) a) Christian fanatics, b) gun nuts, c) child molesters, or d) paranoid. (Their fears, as it turned out, were rather understated.) For another, the people who conducted and authorized the murders--from members of the BATF and Delta Force right up to Janet Reno and Bill Clinton--will never stand trial or face recriminations of any kind for their crimes. And, finally, let's not forget that many of the surviving Branch Davidians are rotting away in federal prison on various charges that essentially add up to having had the nerve to not die. They must be considered political prisoners and adopted as such by the left, just as surely as Mumia, Peltier, the Puerto Ricans, New Afrikans, or any of the many others being held in the federal gulag due to their political beliefs. The complicity of much of the left in its willingness to buy into the Branch Davidians' marginalization--exactly the same sort of marginalization that dooms people like Mumia--is, in a word, shameful.--Geov Parrish