Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin picked a curious tactic to demonstrate her capacity for higher office: bolting mid-term on the people who elected her.

Her strange announcement Friday did not explain how she came to the decision to jump ship, but it did answer one question. Have you ever wondered what happened to President George Bush's speech writers? She virtually declared mission accomplished for her public service in Alaska, and said it was time for a creative person - such as herself - to move on.

In the absence of any insights from Palin about her bailing out, everyone is invited to speculate.

Maybe in the wake of all those ethics investigations, the law doggies were getting close. She might have considered an abrupt resignation a relatively painless way to spare her reputation and aspirations for higher office.

If she is indeed self-absorbed enough to imagine a path to the White House, does she expect to gain an advantage with a 36-month campaign touting her experience...as governor?

Perhaps she is headed to the land of conservative foundations with a generous dollop of money to tide her over. The 2008 presidential campaign did introduce her to a luxe lifestyle.

Sarah Palin has a lot of explaining to do. Remind me, with whom in the Republican Party, or even prefers GOP, does she connect? Who are Palin's advocates?

So what is the deal with Dow Constantine and his decision to so blatantly hitch his political wagon to Susan Hutchison, one of his four rivals in the King County executive's race?
Constantine is making a career out of getting as close as possible to the cameras by following Hutchison around the county and then watching his poll numbers soar.
The latest Dow-stalking-Hutchison event came Wednesday when Constantine and fellow council member and executive candidate Larry Phillips crashed Hutchison's press conference on the county budget. They seemed like all they wanted was a little camera time. and they got it.

Fun Fact: Did you know that King County has never had an elected county exec from outside Seattle. Elected is the key word because Ron Dunlap of Bellevue served as an appointed short-term executive for about a year in the early 1980s after John Spellman became governor.
This year in the crowd of five major candidates there are two Eastside contenders, though their poll numbers are not much to crow about.
State Rep. Ross Hunter of Medina and state Sen. Fred Jarrett of Mercer Island are both polling in single digits but are both extremely interesting and qualified candidates.
Hunter is an active and busy budget writer in Olympia. Jarrett is well versed on state transportation and education.matters.
Either would be the first elected executive from the Eastside but the challenge is getting through the primary. One more fun fact: there are way more county voters than Seattle voters, a margin of roughly 2 to 1.
Go figure.
I admire Jarrett for challenging fellow candidates to release questionnaires from various interest groups showcasing answers to a long list of questions on issues. Real meat. I admire Hunter for responding to the challenge and posting his. Here is an editorial on the subject.

Epic scammer Bernard Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison for swindling investment clients out of billions of dollars. Even with the maximum punishment, he got off easy. Madoff claimed lives as surely as if he had repeatedly pulled a trigger.

Investigators are still sorting through the details. The latest estimate puts the losses from $13 billion to $21 billion. Staggering sums, but less than a third of some early estimates. Yet to be determined is how Madoff achieved his colossal, long-running deception. Details are starting to emerge via lawsuits.

My column on the use of political party names on the ballot was, predictably, of interest to political types and probably not too many others. Writes one voter:

We have more serious problems than whether someone uses the moniker Republican or GOP in our elections. I have known what GOP referred to since I was 12 years old. I am more concerned having uninformed voters in the process.

I am too, but what would one say about uninformed voters in a column? Come out against them? Anyway, the question of who can put a party’s name on the ballot—the party or the candidate—is of central interest to the party people, and not only the Democrats and Republicans. I got a call from Linde Knighton of the Progressive Party. She said this is of interest to her party and also the Libertarian, Constitution, American Heritage and Green parties. These parties, she told me, had trademarked their names. They want to be able to decide who is a Progressive, a Libertarian, etc., and not have just anyone be able to say they’re of the party.

The only thing about Michael Jackson that died today was his body.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY/ AFP/Getty Images

Michael Jackson.

The rest of the King of Pop including his outsized talent, soul-stirring voice that could start a verse in a vulnerable whisper and end it with an aching falsetto lives on many singers today.

I was thinking of Jackson's reach earlier this week when I attended a Maxwell concert at the Paramount Theatre. The R&B singer was all smooth slides, gyrating hips and elastic springs upon knees that must require cortisone injections to endure. He was, In two words, Michael Jackson 20 years ago. That's no slam against Maxell. Jackson's sinewy swagger lives on in young singers from Usher to Justin Timberlake to even Adam Levine, lead singer of Maroon 5.

Jackson was more than one of the best entertainers in the world. He and his brothers made up the Jackson 5 , the alpha of boy bands and the omega of family musical acts - there has not been such an amazing family act since the Jackson boys. The Jackson 5 were emblematic of the cool, the verve and the hard-working, prodigious talent within black America. They kept the hits coming. Growing up, family gatherings always included a moment where my sisters and I would slide across our polished basement floor mimicing steps we had seen performed by the Jacksons. I knew the words to "ABC" and "I Want You Back before I knew about love. Back in the day, every boy wanted a red leather jacket and Jheri curl like Michael Jackson's. Girls, we just wanted Michael.

HIs whole family, which included a very religious mother and hard-charging father plus three girls including singer, Janet Jackson, was part of the popularity. Their story was that of a hard-working, close-knit family growing up poor in Gary, Indiana. It was a perfect picture of the black American family.

Time called Michael Jackson, then 25, a one-man rescue team for the music business. The video release for the song Thriller was a much-anticipated event aired on a major television network during prime time. When he moonwalked, people including me screamed in our living rooms and wished for the technological ability to hit replay. for One need only look back and see how many times he was on the cover of People to gauge Jackson's impact on music, fashion and pop culture.

Civil disagreements with Lynne Varner and Bruce Ramsey, members of the Seattle Times editorial board is a weekly feature of the Ed Cetera blog. Bruce and Lynne often disagree on major issues--and health care reform is no exception.

Lynne Varner: Bruce: As someone with a greater sensitivity toward the proximity of government in our lives, I suspect you have plenty to say about the debate over health care reform.

Me, I'm ecstatic! Hillary Clinton got pilloried in the early-1990s for daring to try and fix our broken health care system. Now people get it and according to polls, most Americans want change.

Paying for health care is one of our greatest expenses, both in terms of our tax dollars and the money we spend privately on health care for ourselves. A new system should rein in skyrocketing increases and provide coverage to the 47 million without insurance and the millions of others who have paltry plans that cover very little.

If we don't, taxpayers will continue to pay the costs of a broken system. You know the litany Bruce. People without health insurance tend to put off medical attention until it is an emergency. They go to the hospital, run up a gigantic bill which if they cannot pay it - and chances are they cannot or they would've paid for insurance coverage - leaves hospitals with millions in uncollectable debt. Law prohibit hospitals from refusing to treat patients based on the size of their wallets so the only recourse is to pass the costs to taxpayers.

It isn't only the poor who don't have health insurance coverage. The working poor often opt to pay for food and rent rather than insurance premiums. Others opt out of insurance for reasons including religion.Their situations revolve around a similar theme: without insurance, being healthy can be an expensive, and impossible proposition.

A prominent study tied bankruptcy to medical bills, not even major health catastrophes, but just the grinding onslaught of expenses due to doctor visits, tests, prescription drugs and the like.

Another problem is expensive medical procedures and tests ordered by doctors who fear if they don't throw everything but the kitchen sink at an illness, they can be sued for somehow not being medically prescient enough.

President Obama's health care reform plan is outlined here. There are competing plans in Congress. It seems everyone wants reform, from businesses to labor to people like you and I who enjoy pretty good health care options.

Cost estimates of $1.6 trillion are breathtaking. But there will be cost-savings as well in a more efficient system in which costs are shared by a larger percentage of the population. One idea I like is assessing large companies like Wal-mart that do not offer employees health insurance.

An idea I do not like is foregoing a federal plan and giving states autonomy to develop coverage options. Can you imagine the inequalities as Massachusetts develops its plan and Mississippi develops, or not, another one?

The one thing that could torpedo reform efforts is if Congress gets bogged down with political shennaginans. Such as trying to block President Obama's plan because it includes a government subsidy and well, we all know goverment can't be trusted to do anything right.

I hate that argument. It flies in the face of everything government does, like ensure water comes out when you turn on your taps, or that when you dial 911, someone will answer and come to your aid and when you hop in your car and hit the highway exit you get paved roads and interstate highway systems.

It can be funny when government is made to be the inefficient, bumbling whipping boy but in this case it impedes progress on healthcare reform. Are you bothered by this also Bruce? Or would you like to impede progress on healthcare reform?

Bruce Ramsey: Lynne, I am not so joyous as you. To me, this seems like a hash of stuff being marketed under dubious and self-contradictory slogans.

Start with the goal. Do we believe everyone has a right to medical care, like a right to an attorney if you’re arrested? Our parents and grandparents didn’t have that right. They got along, most of them. And if we decide we want it, what do we give up for it? Money? Freedom? Flexibility and innovation in the medical system? Maybe all of these things.

If you get a free attorney, you’re probably not going to have top-quality representation. You know that, and accept it. If you get the government’s medical plan, shall it be that kind of quality? It’s not being marketed that way. Are we expecting farm workers to receive the same quality of care as attorneys? Would that be fair?

The first thing you mentioned was controlling costs. The second thing was adding 47 million beneficiaries. It will be no easy task to have both. Yet that is the sales pitch: there are gross inefficiencies, and we’re going to squeeze them out with a government program.

When people talk that way, they think about single-payer. You scrape away the insurance companies and have a big Medicare for everyone. That does get rid of overhead. You have, however, lost some of your freedom: You are in this program whether you want it or not, like Social Security. It is run by the government, it is the same nationwide, and it is difficult for any reformer or entrepreneur to change anything in it.

Medicare is also cheap coverage. The reimbursement rates are low. Doctors and hospitals are always complaining about it. The hospitals deal with it by charging the private plans more. But if you get rid of the private plans and all you have is Medicare, then who subsidizes Medicare? If the answer is, “no one,” then you ration the care. You have what the British have.

But Obama isn’t going to give us single-payer. Apparently it’s an add-on government plan, like Medicare for Everybody Else. Fine—but then, where are your efficiencies? If it’s just a new government program, it can’t help but cost more. The Congressional Budget Office scored one of these at a trillion dollars more over 10 years--almost certainly an understatement.

Where are the savings coming from? There are some unnecessary procedures and tests, but one reason we’re doing them is that there is legal liability for not doing them--and we are not lessening the legal liability. The other reason is that they’re paid for by a third party, and we’re not lessening that, either. We’re increasing it.

Furthermore, there are these deficits. Bush and Obama have, together, just blown a trillion and a half out the door. We’re talking deficits at 13 percent of GDP, something like that. The highest percentage GDP since 1945. Huge borrowing from the Chinese, to a point that the leaders in China worry publicly about the integrity of the dollar. And in the midst of this, we say, “Oh, let’s insure 45 million people, and if they can’t pay, that’s all right.”

This Obama era is a wonder, Lynne. He leadeth us into the Promised Land.

In the end, the politics surrounding Seattle's recently enacted employee head tax were just too overwhelming.
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and the City Council approved the $25 per employee a few years ago as part of "Bridging the Gap'' legislation that pays for street and sidewalk improvements.
Flash forward to summer 2009, election season, with two mayoral candidates appropriately wailing on the tax amid a daunting recession. If the tax made sense in 2006, and it didn't, it makes less sense now. A head tax is a headache for businesses large and small
So this week, Nickels, feeling the heat on this issue from challengers Joe Mallahan and James Donaldson, joined several council members in saying they want to eliminate the tax.
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This is the right move, yes, even at a very politicized moment.
Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess joined the mayor and a few other council members in saying repeal is overdue. Seattle is not only becoming unffordable for middle class residents but the head tax is a symbol of a wrong-headed attitude toward medium and small businesses.