Turnout was huge at Saturday’s 41st LD Town Hall at Somerset Elementary School in Bellevue. Scores of people were standing around the perimeter of the gymnasium. The largest component of the crowd was school teachers dressed in red, many of them holding signs in favor of fully funding education.  There were scores of teachers outside…

In What scares the new atheists John Gray argues that militant atheists, such as Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Danniel Dennet, are mistaken in their belief that secularism can cure the world’s problems. Rather, suggests Gray, the atheists are cultural imperialists who, like the proponents of Social Darwinism a century or so ago,…

Robert Kuttner, of the American Prospect, has written a clear and convincing repudiation of right wing worship of the free market — the kind of worship you hear from the Freedom Foundation. Kuttner writes in It’s Bizarre: Libertarians Are Clueless About the ‘Free Market’ That They Worship: “the free market is neither efficient, nor fair,…

Republicans in Washington State are planning to raise your taxes. On Monday, March 2, the State Senate, under control of the Republicans, voted to raise gas taxes by 11.7 cents over three years. Now, in fact, I support raising the gas tax, both because it generates revenue needed for transportation and because it discourages driving,…

For background, see Democrats Challenge Republican Two Thirds Rule, Shut Down Senate Transportation Vote The Democratic amendment, which lost on a party line vote, would have also blocked a controversial GOP amendment that takes all sales tax revenue from transportation projects out of the general fund (about $1 billion) and puts it into the transportation…

In Road Kill: How Bertha Left the Surface-Street Option In the Dust, Ellis E. Conklin reports that “Powerful interests rallied around the tunnel and diverted then-Governor Gregoire from a less costly route.” Specifically, “The downtown business interests, the Chamber of Commerce, Boeing, the unions, they all wanted a highway, period. Nothing was going to stop…

For more info see, Microsoft’s tax avoidance schemes: national and in Washington State.

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/virtuallyspeaking/2015/02/06/gaius-publius-and-alan-grayson

Many Washington State legislators were elected courtesy of the Koch Brothers. In particular, Andy Hill and Steve Litzow squeaked by in 2010 via attack ads funded by the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity. The State Republican Party was later fined for violating election reporting requirements in that election.See State Republicans fined for violating reporting requirements…