Pope Francis has called on atheists to unite with religious people and work for a “homemade peace” that will spread worldwide. I say: Christians, if you really believe in peace and in the teachings of Jesus, stop voting for conservative politicians who start immoral, disastrous wars; who sell the soul of the US to mammon;…

The January/February issue of Mother Jones has an article “Can’t Touch This:  The wars are winding down. It’s the age of sequester. So why won’t the Pentagon live within its means?”.   The article lists examples of the tremendous waste in the Pentagon budget and identifies Senator Patty Murray as one of the key liberal hawks…

Some conservative-leaning coworkers were saying yesterday that the problem with America is that 47% of people don’t pay taxes. Echoing Mitt Romney, my coworkers said democracy leads to a situation in which people vote for candidates who promise them public money. I replied: I agree we have too much socialism and redistribution of wealth: socialism…

Jeff Lyles and I wrote: Jingle Bells, something smells, Santa is a spy. He works for the NSA. What a sneaky guy! Jingle Bells, something smells, in the USA. The Constitution is at risk. Our rights have gone away. It would be nice to fit Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, and Chelsea Manning in the song.…

Most debates about politics in America concern the question of how big the government should be. Conservatives want small government. Liberals want big government. At least that’s the standard framing of the issues. Of course, it’s not quite true that conservatives favor small government.  When it comes to national security, most conservatives have been strong…

Matt Preedy, deputy WSDOT viaduct replacement program administrator, and Chris Dixon, project manager with Seattle Tunnel Partners, announced today that engineers had discovered what’s blocking Bertha, the giant tunnel-boring drill stuck beneath Pier 48 on the Seattle waterfront:  Rodney Tom and Pam Roach of the Senate Majority Coalition. Engineers discovered that Tom (D-48th LD) and…

If government is broken, fix it, don’t destroy it.  For further explanation, see: Anarchism, Libertarianism and the way forward Without Government We’d Still be Hunter-Gatherers Government is like a Computer Operating System

The Nation selected the Seattle Teachers Association as the MOST VALUABLE UNION: The Progressive Honor Roll of 2013. “When teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School refused to administer the Measures of Academic Progress test to ninth graders in January—with support from parents, students, rank-and-file activists from Seattle Equality Educators and local NAACP leaders—they put the…

http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/13/zuckerberg-to-use-facebook-to-boost-immigrant-worker-bill/ Progressives unknowingly allied themselves with rich corporations on immigration reform. High tech companies like Microsoft, google, Apple, and Amazon.com hire thousands of foreign engineers but generally refuse to pay taxes that would support educating local workers.

(originally published at the Bellevue Reporter, in condensed form) Anyone paying attention to the goings-on in Olympia would know that there’s nothing bipartisan about the Senate “majority coalition” under the leadership of Bellevue’s Sen. Rodney Tom. Rodney Tom, a former Republican, is nominally a Democrat. But he’s been voting and speaking like a Republican. Recently,…