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Report on Adam Smith's Town Hall at Mercer Island
A mere twenty people or so showed up at Congressman Adam Smith’s Town Hall meeting on Mercer Island on April 23, 2014. I arrived five minutes beforehand and found myself standing alone with Rep. Smith. I asked him why he didn’t support the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Better Off Budget. He said he voted against the…
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Why in Oregon, Washington, and California (but not Texas or New York) did poorer counties vote for Romney?
In High poverty counties tend to vote Republican in Washington State, I observed that Washington State counties with a higher percentage of people living below the poverty line tend to vote Republican. In this article, I extend my analysis to other states. The following scatter graph shows, for counties with population greater than 10,000, how…
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Steve Litzow and Andy Hill benefit from Koch brothers funding
For details see How the Koch Brothers worked to defeat Democrats in Washington State
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Regressive taxes are mentioned in the news and opinion pieces about Proposition 1
The issue of regressive taxes is in the news recently and is being raised by both supporters and opponents of Proposition 1. The Seattle Times, in their April 5 editorial against Proposition 1 mentioned regressive taxes twice. The editorial begins: “VOTERS should weigh the regressive tax request embedded in King County Proposition 1 against history.”…
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Computer-generated Bible verse
[The text below was generated statistically, using quadgrams, according the frequency of occurrences after previous words. Words in italics were deterministic: each such word was the only word that appeared anywhere immediately after the previous three words.] And it came to pass, when Ahab saw Elijah, that Ahab said, By myself have I sworn, saith…
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High poverty counties tend to vote Republican in Washington State
Washington State counties with a higher percentage of people living below the poverty line tend to vote Republican. Poverty is defined as the percentage of residents living below the poverty line, according to the 2010 US census. Conservativeness is defined as the proportion of voters who voted for Romney (versus Obama) in 2012. Source of…
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Conservative counties in WA are less educated
With the exception of Whitman County (population 44,776), the counties that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 are less educated than those that voted for Barack Obama, as measured by the percent of citizens 25 years and over with at least a bachelors degree. Click on the image for a larger version. Notice that the…
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Guess which counties are the welfare queens
Republicans complain about taxes, but the data show that, with a few exceptions, Republican-leaning counties in Washington State take in more in state revenues than they pay in taxes. The following graph plots conservativeness (on the x axis, as measured by the proportion of voters in that county who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012…
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Bellevue Reporter's wrong-headed political cartoon about transportation
(published also at the Bellevue reporter) The March 21st edition of the Bellevue Reporter has a political cartoon by Shiers, Jr. titled “Why the legislature can’t pass a transportation package….” It shows a farmer driving farm equipment on a field of wheat. The farmer is saying “Why should my taxes go up … to pay…
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Plutocracy is comin, to the USA
New, alternative lyrics for Leonard Cohen’s “Democracy is coming, to the USA” (see videos below) Lyrics (c) Donald A. Smith D G D It’s coming from corruption that’s profane D A D From Grover Norquist’s government-hating brain G It’s coming from the spiel G_sus G That makes your head reel D G D when you…