Rap your legislators

Vox Populi: Rap your legislators Record your message to our legislators, concerning the state budget. I will compile the various recordings into a group rap performance. I’m testing the tool and soliciting feedback and suggestions.  Click here to add your voice.

Deliver petittions to Dave Reichert this Thursday, May 23 in Issaquah

Eastside Organizers Delivery of Petitions to Reduce Gun Violence Thursday, May 23, 2013 2:00PM – 2:30PM Rep. David Reichert Vanguard Building 22605 SE 56th Street, Suite 130 Issaquah, WA 98029 Sign up to help deliver online petitions to Rep. Reichert here Organizers, Volunteers, Supporters and Interested Folks, When the President changes his mind, we change…

How do liberals and conservatives differ? Review of Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind

According to Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are divided by politics and religion, liberals and conservatives differ significantly on the moral foundations on which they base their lives.  Haidt thinks that conservatives base their ethics on additional principles beyond those used by liberals, and those extra principles give conservatives an…

Suzan DelBene's anti-deficit workshops with the Concord Coalition

Rep. Suzan DelBene (D, WA-01) is inviting constituents to workshops, in Mount Vernon and Bothell, on deficit reduction. The workshops are presented in conjunction with the “bipartisan” Concord Coalition, whose mission is to educate “the public about the causes and consequences of federal budget deficits, the long-term challenges facing America’s unsustainable entitlement programs, and how…

Republicans "get" transportation. They need to "get" other things too.

At the meeting of the 41st LD Democrats last night, Rep. Judy Clibborn, state house transportation leader, discussed the gas tax, tolling I-90, and auto tab fees.  She said that the gas tax will be raised maybe $0.10, and eventually I-90 and other roads will have some sort of tolling. I asked: but will Republicans…

Without government, we'd be hunter-gatherers

According to the Pulitzer Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, the transition from a society based on hunter-gathering  to a modern state progressed hand-in-hand with the development of agriculture.  Government protections and laws enabled trade, storage, and distribution systems. Surpluses resulting from agriculture funded government.   Farm labor could be enlisted for…

Hunger Strike Song

This video might be challenging for some viewers, because of the people of color, the rap-inspired chant, and its (quite reasonable!) support for the rights of the (innocent) Muslims who are hunger-striking. I posted the video in accordance with the email I received: The Peace Poets and Witness Against Torture have collaborated on a Hunger…

Close Tax Loopholes!

Over the weekend, volunteers with FUSE plastered areas on the Eastside with signs calling for the closing of tax loopholes. Areas targeted include the neighborhoods where Senators Rodney Tom, Steve Litzow, and Andy Hill live — three Republicans* whose votes will be crucial in order for the state legislature to eliminate some tax loopholes, as…

Bipartisan task force concludes Bush administration responsible for torture, war crimes

A non-partisan, blue-ribbon task force sponsored by the Washington-based Constitution Project issued a report on US treatment of detainees in the wake of the September 11 attacks. The task force, after a two-year investigation, unanimously concluded that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture,” and that “the nation’s most…