The Met: As much a legacy as a name
Whoever ends up buying the Metropolitan Performing Arts Center from troubled Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Inc., we’ll always know the 1915 vaudeville house as the Met theater. Or will we? Just as “the Met” nicely echoes “Metropolitan,” the next owner might want to forge a fresh corporate connection in the minds of Spokane theatergoers. The proprietors of Silver Collector Car Auction recently made a bid on the Met, for instance. The Silver theater certainly has a nice ring to it.
And then there’s Davenport Hotel owner Walt Worthy. He’s interested in purchasing Metropolitan’s 17-story Metropolitan Financial Center downtown. If Worthy bought the theater, too, he could rename it the Dave. It would be pretty cool to tell friends, “I’ll meet you at the Dave,” no?
Other large local employers could offer the Met equally fun new names. Agilent might dub it the Agile. Empire Health Services could call it the Emp, but that would probably upset the folks behind Seattle’s Experience Music Project. The Hunt would work, if Huntwood Industries expanded into theatrical events. Or Itron could pick up the theater and just call it the It.
It’s too bad Thudpucker’s had to give way to that new office building at Browne Street and Riverside Avenue. Imagine if the chicken fried steak emporium had stuck around long enough to sop up the Met with some of its gravy. Who wouldn’t want to take in a show at the Thud?
Bipartisan patriotism
Regardless of party affiliation, legislators who fight for bedrock democratic values always deserve praise. So let’s heap some this week on two Idaho Republicans, Sen. Larry Craig and Rep. Butch Otter. Taking a patriotic stand against further White House attempts to erode our civil liberties in the name of the war on terrorism, Craig and Otter are leading the congressional charge to roll back the worst portions of the USA Patriot Act.
Similar House and Senate bills sponsored by Otter and Craig would curb secret searches of bookstore and library records, for instance, while requiring the feds to inform citizens after they’ve been subjected to “sneak and peek” searches. That’s according to The Hill, which calls itself “the newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress.”
Without such principled GOP legislators by their side, Democrats would stand little chance of eliminating Patriot Act excesses. So Craig and Otter’s “Nixon goes to China” move might just save the Bill of Rights, if we’re lucky.
Lies, damned lies, and statistics
When out-of-work folks stop searching for jobs, the government drops them from unemployment statistics. That keeps the jobless rate artificially low in tough economic times, which benefits politicians running for re-election. But the most recent unemployment report for Washington shows how this statistical sleight of hand can burn incumbent presidents during economic recoveries.
Even though state employers added 21,700 jobs last month, Washington’s unemployment rate hit 6.3 percent in April, up from 6.1 percent in March. That’s because the improving economy instilled thousands of long-term jobless people with hope. When they dipped their toes back into the labor pool, the ripple effect raised unemployment rates. That trend will continue until the workforce reabsorbs the growing number of born-again job seekers. Ironically, then, a modest recovery – or even an all-out boom that arrives late in an election cycle – actually can harm a president’s re-election chances. Talk about a burning Bush.