Phil Berrigan and I crossed paths several times in and out of jail in the last 15 years; one of his daughters, Frida -- a leading anti-nuclear and arms trade analyst and activist at the New School in New York City -- is a personal friend. I won't belabor the point; I wrote a column on Phil (at www.workingforchange.com) that came out December 5, the day before his death, describing his legacy in greater detail. He's the only '60s radical I can think of (excepting perhaps Tom Hayden) who leveraged his celebrity into still greater things, starting Jonah House, helping start the Plowshares movement, never letting go or letting up, always teaching, always inspiring.

Simply put, long after we've forgotten the ringing obituaries offered up by progressives who, often as not, ignored or distanced themselves from Phil's radical and principled activism while he lived, his living epitaphs -- including our own Jackie Hudson of Kitsap County's Ground Zero, a 67-year-old nun now imprisoned in Colorado for pounding on nose cones -- will keep on hammering on nuclear warheads, pouring their own blood, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, speaking truth to those who mistakenly think theirs is the greatest power, and taking serious risks in Phil's memory.

It's hard to imagine a better measure of greatness.--Geov Parrish

Tom Warner did Castro when Castro wasn't cool. And now, the 77-year-old Secretary of the local Seattle/Cuba Friendshipment Committee finds himself in trouble in a nationally precedent-setting case. It involves a sister city conference held last February in Cuba, which was attended by some nine Seattle area people, about 160 Americans, and a like number of Cubans. Among the attendees was Alice Woldt, new head of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, and Democratic county councilman Dwight Pelz, along with two county council staff, negotiating for a proposed sister city agreement between King County and Granma province. Just as that agreement came to a vote in late October -- it failed by one vote -- Pelz and Woldt received harassing letters from the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), demanding to know how the pair spent their money on the trip, upon risk of $10,000 fines. No other, non-high-profile locals got the letter, but Lisa Valanti, the Pittsburgh head of the sponsoring U.S.-Cuba Sister Cities Association, also did -- even though both the conference and its attendees were fully licensed.

And so did Warner, who never left Seattle. He got a more serious letter, with a $20,000 tag, essentially accusing him of having "organized" a "...trip (described by the USCSCA as a `conference')." But Tom Warner not only didn't organize it or go, he isn't even involved with USCSCA. His crime? He posted a calendar notice on his web site, just like ETS! does every issue, just like millions of Americans do every week.

Free speech. Use it, or lose it. --G.P.

One of the more obscure stories of late on the economic front involves control of two key Congressional offices. One is the Joint Committee on Taxation. It's a small group of legislators who, among other things, issues reports on the cost to the national budget of various tax-cut proposals. For years, Republicans have been pushing to change the way the committee calculates its estimates to a system called "dynamic scoring." Dynamic scoring assumes that tax cuts put money in people's pockets which they'll spend to boost the economy, which will eventually put more tax revenue in government coffers. Lindy Paull, the outgoing director of the JCT, has always been skeptical of dynamic scoring, and with good reason. First of all, it's a very delayed effect (if any), which might not trickle through the economy for months or years, while tax cuts have an immediate impacts on the federal budget. Secondly, tax cuts usually benefit the very wealthy, whose spending has a minimal effect on the economy. Finally, during a recession, consumers usually use tax cuts to pay down debt or boost savings, instead of ratcheting up their spending. The Bush Administration is looking to find a replacement for Paull who will be an ardent supply-sider, a cheerleader for tax cuts, and willing to push for dynamic scoring. The same holds true for the other key Congressional office up for grabs: the Congressional Budget Office, which also weighs in on the cost of tax-cut proposals.--Maria Tomchick

After the defeat of Referendum 51, fans of building a tunnel to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct went back to the drawing board. The $11 billion plan that would have buried the whole structure, built a new seawall, made improvements south of downtown, constructed a replacement for the Battery Street Tunnel, and built a cap over the highway near the Seattle Center, was scrapped. Proponents had to start chopping off pieces of the proposal: bye-bye to the cap at Mercer Street, so-long to south-of-downtown improvements, and forget the replacement for the Battery Street tunnel. The worst amendment was cutting out all the ramps into downtown. (That's a real head-scratcher.) They eventually pared the plan down to about $4.5 billion. But that's still too much, according to state legislators Ed Murray and Helen Sommers, who pointed out that $4.5 billion is still about two-thirds what Ref. 51 would have raised for the whole state. So now the state Department of Transportation and local politicians are looking at two options they initially refused to consider (but should have): a proposal to tear down the viaduct and replace it with an at-grade boulevard, or an option to repair the current viaduct.

The boulevard plan has the advantage of fitting well with other plans for the waterfront: widening sidewalks, adding pedestrian improvements, and adding parks. It could be a beautiful solution similar to Portland's waterfront boulevard or Connecticut Avenue in Washington, DC. But it has three serious drawbacks: 1) it wouldn't accommodate the same number of vehicles as the current viaduct, thereby sending more cars over to the already-congested I-5 corridor, 2) it would eliminate a lot of parking space for nearby businesses, and 3) it could make it more difficult to access businesses on the waterfront and the ferry terminals. These drawbacks might not be enough to offset the cost savings. Mayor Greg Nickels likes it, however, because some of the money saved building a boulevard could be spent on extending Sound Transit's light rail line to Northgate. (Uh, maybe we should build at least one leg of the light rail line first, before we start talking about extending the thing.)

On the other hand, repairing the current viaduct--an option proposed by Nick Licata earlier this year--could be the best option. The problem is that other politicians won't look at it, because the viaduct is an "eyesore" and "unsafe." But transportation solutions don't have to be pretty, as long as they're effective. And if we address the safety issue with repairs, then extending the life of the viaduct may be the best fiscal decision the city could make in the next year. Remember, we're in an economic downtown that has hit the Puget Sound area particularly hard. In another ten years, we can revisit this issue, and maybe then we'll have the money to spend on a waterfront tunnel.--M.T.