Daily Score Blog

Update: Watch the story here.

If you’re in range, tune into KOMO television (channel 4 in Seattle) tonight at 5 pm to see Alan Durning taking carlessness to the streets – literally.  

KOMO’s John Sharify interviewed Alan this sunny morning and caught footage of the Durning family's car-less experiment in action, telling the story of how a neighborhood like theirs – compact, with nearby shops and services, bike and pedestrian-friendly street design, and good bus service – has made the year-long experiment possible.

Northwest endangered species have been generating a lot of ink lately. Rocky Mountain gray wolves are likely heading for de-listing. Meanwhile, Puget Sound's orcas were recently added to the list. Even a recovery effort for a handful of rare rabbits made the news. There are plenty more examples, of course, but these species remind us that much of the region's natural heritage relies on the protection afforded by federal laws.

So it's a bit worrisome that there's lately been whispering about big changes to the US Endangered Species Act. (A leaked memo from the US Fish and Wildlife Service suggests the agency is considering an adminstrative re-write of some rules.)

But perhaps even more worrisome was today's revelation:

A senior Bush political appointee at the Interior Department has repeatedly altered scientific field reports to minimize protections for imperiled species and disclosed confidential information to private groups seeking to affect policy decisions, the department's inspector general concluded.

[The appointee] "admitted that her degree is in civil engineering and that she has no formal educational background in natural sciences" but nevertheless repeatedly instructed Fish and Wildlife Service scientists to change their recommendations on identifying "critical habitats."

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

A comprehensive new analysis of the latest US income data finds that:

• "While total reported income in the United States increased almost 9 percent in 2005... average incomes for those in the bottom 90 percent dipped slightly compared with the year before, dropping $172, or 0.6 percent."
• "...the top 1 percent of Americans — those with incomes that year of more than $348,000 — receiving their largest share of national income since 1928... The top 10 percent, roughly those earning more than $100,000, also reached a level of income share not seen since before the Depression."
• "The gains went largely to the top 1 percent, whose incomes rose to an average of more than $1.1 million each, an increase of more than $139,000, or about 14 percent."

In truth, the analysis almost certainly understates real income disparities, something the authors readily admit. For one thing, the study relies on IRS data, which does not completely capture business and investment income -- largely a province of the wealthy. For another, it overlooks the continued erosion of benefits and government services -- health care, child care, education benefits, retirement, and the like -- items that are far more critical to the middle class than to the affluent.

Just one word for you, middle class: "bootstraps."

Think about it.