Having pushed Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle into talks about recycling, the environmental activists at the As You Sow Foundation in San Francisco have turned their attention to Starbucks.

In a proposal that Starbucks shareholders will vote on at this Wednesday's annual meeting (and are voting on by mail now), the activists are pressing the world's largest coffee-shop chain to take more steps to recycle its bottles, cans and cups and to increase the recycled content in its containers.

Starbucks goes

A city inspector sent warnings this month to Cherry Street Coffee House and three other Pioneer Square businesses, saying their sidewalk boards were illegally placed. Two shops said they lost sales after taking the signs down.

While reporting that story, I noticed that Elliott Bay Cafe is among the dozens of businesses with sidewalk boards and called to ask if they are moving with Elliott Bay Book Co. to Capitol Hill next month. Yes, they said, and the current location will stay open, too. After

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Brian Baird ended his long deliberation over health reform Saturday by announcing that he will switch his vote to a yes, belatedly joining a Democratic majority that appears well on its way to passing the historic bill.

Baird, who voted against the House reform bill in November, said he weighed the merits of the new bill that the House will vote on Sunday and concluded that passing it would help more than doing nothing.

"Considering that the status quo is unstainable, I will vote

A worker was killed Friday in an accident at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor when he was run over by a large vehicle at a construction site, according to the Kitsap Sun.

The man worked for Intermech, a subcontractor for Kiewit Bridge and Marine Construction, according to a news release from Naval Base Kitsap. His name, age and hometown were not released by the Navy.

The Sun could not reach a company spokesman on Saturday.

The driver of an SUV was killed in a head-on crash Sunday morning in West Seattle.

The SUV was heading east in the 3700 block of Admiral Way Southwest around 2 a.m. when it lost control and collided head-on with a westbound truck, according to Seattle police. The driver of the SUV was pronounced dead at the scene.

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The driver and a passenger in the truck were treated on scene by Seattle Fire department medics and later transported to Harborview Medical Center with serious injuries.

Our

Literally, twice. No one was seriously injured.

• STEM Defection Seen to Occur After High School - Schools produce a strong supply of STEM candidates but many go into other fields once they

OLYMPIA -- House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler said Saturday the Legislature is so bogged down that the governor needs to be clear whether she'd support a sales-tax increase.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has not included a sales-tax increase as part of her revenue proposals, but given the special-session stalemate, Kessler, D-Hoquiam, wants to know, "Would she veto a sales tax? That's a question that needs to be asked."

It's a question reporters have repeatedly asked Gregoire without getting a clear answer.

The state House passed its revenue package this afternoon 53-42, getting close to the $800 million mark, the golden number in negotiations between the House and Senate. The House had been closer to $700 million before the special session. (The Senate passed its $800 million revenue package yesterday, coming down from $890 million.)

The House package is the compromise plan proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire last night. Most notably, it does not include a sales tax. The Senate revenue package still includes

Nurses, a PDX indie band I adore, just found a transcendent gimmick. They’re using Chat Roulette to make videos. Chat Roulette is a new social media program that lets a user set up a webcam and be connected instantly to another random user. If a user doesn’t like what they see or gets bored by the conversation, the user can hit the ‘next’ button, and they will be randomly assigned a new person. It’s kind of like speed dating except the chances of seeing a dude masturbating is way higher.

Nurses

WASHINGTON -- Rep. Adam Smith announced Saturday that he willvote for the health-care bill, leaving Rep. Brian Baird as the sole member of Washington's congressional delegation who remains undecided about the historic House vote scheduled for Sunday.

Smith, D-Tacoma, voted for the original House health-reform bill in November with great reluctance. But he said the Senate-based version of the bill that the House is now weighing controls costs more effectively and is a better piece of legislation.

"

The LA Times published a story today on the PI.com’s one-year anniversary. The article takes a look at the new media landscape and gives PubliCola a nice shout out :

The PI and Seattle find themselves in an extreme case of the broadening and flattening of media around the country. More voices and outlets keep staking out niches. No one is preeminent.

In the last three years, the city has seen the emergence of a pair of nonprofit websites, Investigate West and Crosscut, that produce deeper public service

February Link ridership numbers increased slightly over January’s average to 16,741 boardings each weekday, 13,744 on Saturdays, and 12,076 on Sundays. That actually beats out the record for weekdays, set in October, of 16,192.  The weekend records were set in the July opener and are unreachable for the foreseeable future.

Prediction and analysis on this subject are fraught with peril, but the major change in February was elimination of the 194 as part of a reorganization

Seattle police arrested a 16-year-old boy after two groups of suspected gang members exchanged gunshots near Seattle Center Friday night.

Officers working a club-emphasis patrol around 11:30 p.m. at Broad and Thomas streets were talking to a group of people who had just left a club when they heard three gunshots coming from nearby.

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Police contacted club security officers, who provided a description of the people involved. Club security told police that two groups of what appeared to

The Senate just passed their revenue bill with several new amendments, and it is not the package the governor or House wanted. In short: The sales tax increase was lowered, not eliminated (as the House had wanted.)

The Senate moved from an 0.3 percent increase to an 0.2 percent increase, which will cost them about $104 million in revenue.

Bottom line: The Senate has proposed a smaller revenue package—going from their original proposal of $890 million in new revenue to $809 million. (The House proposal

Tonight:

You can look at Seattle’s BirthDIYfest, taking place at the Vera Project tonight, in a couple of different ways.

If you’re an artist, particularly someone obsessed with making your own beats, or pressing vinyl records out of your friend’s band’s mp3s, or trying to start your own weirdo arts collective, it’s like a networking event where people from a few different uber-indie record labels are going to have tables set up.

Or you can just go to peek your head into Seattle’s hippie DIY scene,

Adding density to our neighborhoods doesn’t have to mean slapping up poorly-designed and unattractive multi-family housing.

Many architects and developers do their best to maximize both form and function on odd lots and among lots of old buildings.

Bad-looking housing—whether designed for renters or owners—is such an urban issue that City Council member Sally Clark, along with architects from AIA Seattle and other concerned parties, are hosting a town hall meeting tomorrow morning in Greenwood

A 68-year-old Mercer Island man was killed Friday morning when he "dumped" his motorcycle in an intersection and slid into another vehicle in Woodinville.

The man was riding a 2007 Kawasaki Ninja 650 east on Northeast 195th Street around 9 a.m. when he made a left turn onto northbound Woodinville-Snohomish Road, crossing the intersection. At the same time, a 2004 Jeep Liberty, heading west on Northeast North Woodinville Way, crossed the same intersection.

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It appears the motorcycle went

In response to my my last column on the Puget Sound Regional Council Transportation 2040, Rick Olson, PSRC director of government and communications, emailed me with two major points refuting some of the arguments made by Cascade Bicycle Club and Futurewise.

First, though, I need to start by making a quick correction. I wrote that David Hiller, Cascade Bicycle Club’s advocacy director, said the latest draft of Transportation 2040 contains less investment in transit than in the Alternative 5 option

A deal is strating to take shape between the House and Senate in Olympia over the stalled budget. Cola reporter Camden is in Olympia and will file a report momentarily.

But the basic is: The Senate is scaling back it’s sales tax proposal from 0.3 percent to 0.2 percent. As a result, they’ve got find some more cuts.

Details to come.

As Jim Brunner of the Seattle Times reported this morning, the governor said she wants the Legislature out of here by Sunday.

Wishful thinking. The sheer mechanics of passing a budget probably won’t allow it. The Senate is planning on voting their revenue package over to the House this afternoon (the first official move by either chamber during the special session to get the ball rolling on wrapping up the budget), and a capital budget still needs to be agreed on. Not to mention all of the policy

-- By Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge:

Police are asking prosecutors to file reckless driving and assault charges against a Seattle man who nearly ran down two bicyclists on First Avenue, opened his car door into one of them and then twice flipped the same bicyclist off his bike.

According to a Seattle police report released Friday, the two bicyclists were stopped at a red light near the 2800 block of First Avenue on Monday when a man in car raced up to the intersection and slammed on the

A Pierce County man accused of killing his ex-wife during a counseling session at a Federal Way church on Wednesday was charged Friday with first-degree murder, according to the King County Prosecutor's Office.

Charles "Chuck" Parson of Lakewood is scheduled for arraignment on March 30 at the Norm Maleng Regional Justice Center in Kent.

Parson, 42, was attending a counseling session with his ex-wife Carol Parson, 38, at Calvary Lutheran Church in Federal Way when he pulled out a handgun and fatally

Struggling to close a $2.8 billion budget shortfall and unable to agree on how to do it, lawmakers in Olympia entered legislative overtime this week.

Gov. Chris Gregoire called the special session after lawmakers were unable to balance the state budget during the regular 60-day session. It's the first multi-day extra session since 2003, and the first time since 1994 a special session has been called when one party had control of the Legislature and the governor's office.

The disagreement between

I had a perfectly fine time at the packed King County Municipal League’s 100th Anniversary Awards Ceremony at Showbox Sodo last night: I mingled with 500 civic-minded people. And I heard Peter Steinbrueck heap praise on Futurewise and the Transit Oriented Communities report that I coauthored.

But in a lame attempt to save this from being the most boring PubliCola “Last Night” post ever, here’s what I saw after leaving the event out on 1st Ave in Sodo:

Some of those Muni-leaguers really know how

Rep. Hans Dunshee (D-44) said the governor, who has been pushing for job creation late in the session, is putting pressure on Senate leadership to make his Jobs Act of 2010 happen.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” said Karina Shagren, spokeswoman for the governor’s office. Although she cautioned that the governor still has concerns about the size of the proposal.

As we reported here, the House’s first action in special session was to pass Rep. Dunshee’s proposal to fund energy retrofits at public schools

Phillip Lopate is one of the best known essayists in the country. And one of the most well-regarded. Check out the blurbs:

“‘The Stoic’s Marriage’” is a mordantly funny brickbat tossed at every diarist egged along by big publishing dreams.”

–Jan Stuart (New York Times, review of Two Marriages)

“Lopate is a storyteller. He is always teasing, luring and guiding us with cinematic clarity into a world of sight and sound…, of characters and talk.”

–Margo Jefferson (New York Times, review of Getting Personal:

So, if King County Executive Dow Constantine is thinking (like all King County Executives do) about ever running for Governor, he got some good news last night: He outraised GOP Attorney General Rob McKenna, a likely opponent for the state’s top job.

The results of last night’s auction at the Municipal League of King County 100-year anniversary dinner are as follows:

Lunch with KC Executive Dow Constantine (at Dahlia) went for $1,000.

Lunch with City Council Member Tim Burgess (at Wild Giner) went

Seattle’s Department of Transportation has recommended the Two-Way Broadway alignment for the First Hill Streetcar, without a park loop as initially proposed. The recommendation was presented in a presentation to the interested parties Wednesday night, according to Richard Sheridan from the department.

The Two-Way Broadway alignment performed the best on most metrics the city measured; perhaps most importantly in this climate, it is expected to be

Senate Democrats are supposed to caucus on a new tax package after lunch Friday and then take a floor vote. The package still has a sales tax. Details are supposed to come out this afternoon.

Assuming Senate Democrats have the votes to pass a measure, House Democrats will take it up next. Both houses are expected to work through the weekend. The two sides have been stalled for weeks over whether to approve an increase in the state sales tax.

House Democrats have opposed the idea, but that may be changing,

Our own Dan Bertolet gets namechecked in national pub as Yimby poster child.

-- From Times staff reporter Christine Clarridge:

A 22-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting last year of a Seattle rap performer and promoter on First Hill.

According to Seattle police, Tyrese Harrison was arrested Friday by a fugitive task force in Youngstown, Ohio and is now in custody. Police and prosecutors alleged in charging documents that Harrison shot and killed 22-year-old Max Gasoi on Ninth Avenue near St. James Cathedral on Nov. 27.

Relatives of Gasoi said

I remember, last summer, launching a minor rant on this blog about texting during movies. It's something I feel pretty strongly about -- movies are getting increasingly expensive, and nobody wants to have their pleasure at sitting in the dark enjoying "Alice in Wonderland," say, ruined by the flashing lights of some idiot three seats over who's trying to set up a post-movie hookup. But I've recently been wondering, sadly, if this ship has sailed and I'm left on the dock, sadly waving a futile hand

A hit-and-run accident around dusk Thursday night in Burien's Three Tree Point neighborhood caused a lot of damage to a parked Toyota Corolla and a protective wall outside a house, according to B-townblog.com.

"We were eating dinner and we heard this incredibly loud noise," a woman named Rachel, who lives in the house where the wall was damaged, tells B-townblog. "I was honestly afraid that someone was driving through the wall of our home."

In addition to damaging the parked car and destroying the

OLYMPIA -- Legislation to boost the state's hazardous-substances tax on oil, fertilizer and other chemicals could come up for a vote in the state House some time Friday.

The tax bill -- which would raise about $100 million a year for clean-water projects -- has prompted a last-minute frenzy of lobbying and deal making.

Oil refineries, which would pay most of the tab, have been trying to kill the proposal all session.

Friday morning, 47 agricultural groups, from the Asparagus Council to the Turfgrass

You'll pardon me for being the last to talk about it, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it -- but the reincarnation of the old Sitka & Spruce as Nettletown is now complete, and the ever-talented Christina Choi -- with help from her friend Matt Dillon -- has opened her new Eastlake cafe.

Taking the sting out of spring, at Nettletown [photo courtesy Nettletown].

If you're a regular at the Saturday University District Farmers Market or the Ballard Sunday Farmers Market, you may recognize Christina

Last year, the Governor vetoed Transportation Benefit District authority for transit agencies. As she clearly really likes that line-item veto power, we’d like to ask her to do it again – to veto the “private provider” language in SB 6381, currently headed to her desk.

Wednesday morning, Rep. Marko Liias asked his colleagues to sign on to a letter to urge the governor to veto this provision. Essentially, it’s turning out that the provision would affect more grants than originally intended, would

Earlier this week plans for the Bullitt Foundation’s Cascadia Center for Sustainable Design and Construction were presented to the City of Seattle’s Design Review Board, and the innovative project garnered front page attention from the Seattle Times. To be located at the corner of 15th Ave and Madison in the Central District, the Cascade Center is the first mid-rise building in Seattle to pursue the Living Building Challenge, a rigorous new “deep green” building standard developed by the Cascadia

The Snohomish County Sheriff's Office has released more information on the shooting Wednesday morning of a man in the Clearview area of Snohomish County.

The man suspected of the shooting has been identified as Robert Scott, 36, a convicted felon. The Sheriff's Office has probable cause to arrest Scott for first-degree assault and first-degree burglary in connection with the shooting.

The Sheriff's Office says Scott is suspected of shooting the victim in

Not everyone buys the new research that says coffee is good for you.

Marina Kushner does not dig caffeine, and she has written books and started a nonprofit to tell people how dangerous it is. She also sponsors March as National Caffeine Awareness Month, which has been recognized by official proclamations in eight states and 23 cities including Redmond and Richland, WA, according to Kushner.

She is pushing the FDA to mandate that caffeinated products carry labels showing how much they have and a health

A 45-year-old woman was taken to Harborview Medical Center following a car-pedestrian accident early Friday in Seattle's View Ridge neighborhood.

According to the Seattle Fire Department, the woman was struck and critically injured near the intersection of Northeast 45th Street and 36th Avenue Northeast.

We will have more details as they become available.

The district seems unable to follow federal and state guidelines. The problem with the program was discovered in 2007 when the federal Department of Education audited their Title VII grant, a part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Discrepancies in Seattle's program were brought to the district's attention,