1. Manhattan’s prestigious Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) has purchased Police Beat for its permanent film collection. Police Beat, a 2005 film by Seattle indie director Rob Devor and Seattle writer Charles Mudede, was largely based on Mudede’s weekly crime blotter column, which he wrote in the Stranger.
If I may: Mr. Mudede is a close friend, and I had the joy of editing his poetic “Police Beat” column for nine years. I am gleeful about Mudede’s news. A toast to Charles.
2. Last week, in our regular Friday wrapup on the Washington state delegation, PubliCola flambeed Sen. Maria Cantwell: Not only had Cantwell sided with the pseudo populist and meaningless “No Earmark” schtick when she voted for a losing Sen. John McCain amendment to get rid of all the earmarks in the appropriations bill, but then she went and voted for the appropriations bill—which included $80 million of her own earmarks.
This morning, however, we bow down to the junior senator from Washington state for her record of flambeeing her party (and Treasury Secretary Geithner ) over the ill-conceived, $700 billion Wall Street bailout. You know this A.I.G story? The one where you’re like, “Why is the Obama administration giving money to these banks?” The one where A.I.G. was using bailout money—they’ve gotten $170 billion—to pay out $165 million in executive bonuses.
Sen. Cantwell has been sounding the alarm on the potential for this sort of chicanery for months. And you know how the New York Times and Obama and Congress are now all excited because they got A.I.G. to release the names of all the companies that A.I.G. paid off with their bailout money. Well, Sen. Cantwell was demanding that list for weeks, long before Saturday’s outrageous news finally forced Obama to get tough with A.I.G.
Sen. Cantwell was just one of nine Democratic senators (including Sens. Feingold and Tester) to vote against the original bailout, which passed in October, 74-25. (Then-Sen. Obama voted “Yea.”)
Cantwell was also one of just nine Democratic senators (again with Sen. Feingold) who pushed a bill in January to block the release of $350 billion more of the $700 billion that had been approved in October. That measure failed 52-42.
3. Washington state’s unemployment rate is expected to hit 10% next year.
4. We gave PubliCola a slight upgrade last night (ads, aggregated posts). More about this news here.
