The City Council sure was busy last week. It pays to sneak in lots of controversial votes just before a holiday, when everyone's making vacation plans and not paying attention. After approving a massive pay raise for cops, they voted to extend tax breaks to developers who set aside 20 percent of their units for "affordable" housing. But the "affordable" tag is a joke. The new rules deem $1,200 per month for a studio apartment "affordable." And the units only have to meet the limits for 12 years, after which an apartment building can be converted into high-priced condos. The saddest part of this tale: truly affordable housing will be knocked down to build these expensive new units. Our developer-friendly mayor and council members have no time or sympathy for the people who clean their offices, cook their food, type their memos, care for their kids and grandkids, or repair their cars. Or drive city buses. Or collect garbage. Or do any of the thousands of essential jobs in this city that pay a lot less than median income. --Maria Tomchick

The King County Council has loosened a longtime ban on building permanent structures in floodplains. County residents can now build "farm pads" on lands that usually flood in the winter. The Council says these pads will help farmers who are reluctant to farm low-lying areas because they might lose tractors or animals to floodwaters. But the very farmers who are supposed to benefit from the new rules are against them. Apparently anyone can build the pads--the only limit being that the pads contain only nonresidential buildings of 5,000 square feet or less. Hello, big box stores! And the requirement that pad-developers prove a legitimate agricultural use? Well, farmers have to buy food, clothing, cars, and iPods like everyone else, don't they?

In fact, last year's flooding in Lewis County was made much worse by permanent buildings in the floodplains, because local governments stretched the rules to include developments with only a tangential relationship to agriculture. In other words, they gave a free pass to retail stores. And once you begin building flood pads upstream, the flooding tends to get worse downstream, inundating lands that were never at risk before. It happened in Chehalis, it can happen here. --M.T.

Don't believe the hype about the credit crisis being over. The first wave of credit misery will crest this summer, as the bulk of subprime mortgage loans will reset within the next six months. Subprime mortgages were at the height of their popularity during the summers of 2005 and 2006, and we're nearing the deadline for those loans to reset to their new, higher monthly payments. With a few months' lag time between when homeowners get the first notice of their new payments and when they finally file for bankruptcy, the peak of subprime mortgage foreclosures should hit by the middle of next year. Note that most economists are predicting that the economy will be getting better by early 2009. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Just as soon as the first wave tapers off, the second wave of credit misery will begin. Option ARM loans, which allowed borrowers to make less than their full payment of interest (and no payment of principal) each month, will reset within the next few years. Unlike subprime loans, no one knows yet how many option ARMs are out there, or what the impact will be. Just be ready, because the credit crisis is shaping up to be a multi-year disaster. And it makes me sick to hear all the happy talk from politicians about how the economic recovery is just around the corner. Maybe in geologic time. --M.T.

A music teacher has been sentenced to six years in a federal prison for assisting a group of people who set fire to a research facility at the University of Washington. US government prosecutors argued that the woman should be sentenced as a "terrorist." In 2001 the Center For Urban Horticulture at the University of Washington was destroyed by an arson fire. No one was injured, but it cost the University of Washington $6.2 million to rebuild the facility.  The government claims that a 32-year-old violin teacher from Seattle, Briana Waters, helped plan the crime, and that she served as a lookout for the group responsible for setting the fire. She was charged with two counts of arson. Federal prosecutors blamed the group "Earth Liberation Front," who they say targeted the building because the group believed that a genetic engineering research lab was located there. Five people have been charged with participating in the crime. Two defendants accepted a plea bargain in exchange for their testimony implicating Waters in the arson fire. A third man is currently a fugitive and a fourth man allegedly committed suicide in jail. The US government asked the judge in the case to designate Briana Waters as a "terrorist" when considering her sentence. Water's attorney, Neil Fox, told US District Judge Franklin Burgess that the government's use of the word "terrorist" has been manipulated by politicians seeking to advance their own personal agendas. Ms. Waters has maintained her innocence throughout the trial. In her testimony she told the court, "I am not a terrorist. I don't agree with property destruction or violence." The judge sided with the government, ruling that Waters is a domestic terrorist and sentencing Waters to six years in a US federal prison sentence.