Character assassination is easy. The great thing about it is you don’t actually have to prove anything. You can use any number of techniques. Guilt by association with other people. Tying the person to something seemingly in contradiction to their values. Vague innuendos that sound like questions. Taking details of a person’s personal life and […]
Author: Tom Barnard
The Big Squeeze
Skyrocketing rents by real estate developers and stagnant wages by employers equal pauperized workers and displacement to low-income suburbs. How do we reclaim our city? If you’ve lived in Seattle for more than a few years, the city you know is disappearing. It’s being replaced by the “Lords of Concrete” – an alliance of real […]
The real meaning of Kshama Sawant's stunning numbers
The strong showing of some 35% by Kshama Sawant in her race against Richard Conlin for Seattle City Council impressed many. Yet even fans such as the Stranger have failed to understand the actual nature of the political earthquake, resorting to exercises in vote counting that border on numerology. Certainly, the facts themselves are amazing. […]
Could WA State actually have the fifth highest unemployment in the nation?
As it turns out, the short answer is “yes.” The longer answer is, it all depends on the way you measure the rate. There are a three ways to look at the unemployment rate: The official rate, which is referred to in official Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) as “U.3.” U.3 only counts unemployed workers […]
Let's stop pretending on the Keystone XL Pipeline
I’ve got a great idea. Let’s stop pretending that Obama isn’t going to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline. Let’s stop pretending that one more trenchant op-ed, one more Change.org petition, one more Sierra Club website, one more MoveOn mass email of the White House is going to sway anyone who has a stake in this […]
The Sharp Pain of Sequestration
Despite some pundits making light of the immediate effects of sequestration, the pain will soon be very real to our nation’s most vulnerable. Sharon Parrott, for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonprofit research group laid it out in stark terms: “In fact, sequestration will have a real impact on Americans across the […]