Washington Liberals

I read Lee Kuan Yew: The Grandmaster’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World. You might call Yew a benevolent dictator. There’s no freedom of the press in Singapore, and people who criticized him usually ended up broke or in jail.  But Yew is considered a genius, for in one generation he turned…

(courtesy of Carol Davidek-Waller) We’re sending our money to Washington, D.C. and Wall Street, but we have the power to bring it back. “How do I protect my own assets from the corruption. So I started my own investment advisory company” and financial software firm. The aim is to decentralize power and money via the…

Economist Ed Dolan, an intellectual leader of the Carbon Tax movement, has a three-part serious about why everyone (conservatives,progressives, and libertarians) should love carbon taxes. As if to prove him right, a new study of the BC carbon tax estimates that it will boost economic activity because “the government uses carbon tax revenue to reduce personal and corporate…

As the Washington legislative session wrapped up, our legislators finally took at least one important step in the right direction. Or rather, they stopped going in the wrong direction. It’s about time. Tuition and fees at the University of Washington are $13,000 — close to a quarter of the pre-tax income of the typical middle…

What: Press Conference & Protest at Bellevue Foreclosure Auction  Time: 10:00 AM Date: Fri., July 19 Where: Northwest Trustee Services, 13555 SE 36th St., Bellevue, WA 98006 Who: SAFE (Standing Against Foreclosure & Eviction) Why: On July 11, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Richard Okrent denied a motion to dismiss a case against both Quality…

Late Tuesday afternoon we learned that nation-wide vigils for Trayvon Martin have been called for this Saturday at noon, exactly the same time as the planned WTF Olympia? rally. At an emergency committee meeting last night we decided to postpone the rally until the following Saturday, July 27, out of respect for this national day of action…

King County Executive Dow Constantine spoke to the 41st LD Democrats Wednesday night. He said that King County is the 13th largest county in the country. It has a population of over 2,000,000 people, making it more populous than 13 or 14 states (each of which has two US senators).  King County accounts for about…

The Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility announced today that a judge gave final approval to the language of their ballot initiative, I-594, which will establish background checks for gun purchases. Gun rights groups had litigated to change the wording of the initiative to something more favorable.  The original proposed wording of the ballot initiative was…

The terrible injustice of the not-guilty verdict for Trayvon Martin’s killer has brought Marissa Alexander’s racist and sexist treatment by Florida courts to center-stage of U.S. and world attention. It is infuriating to think how a white man used Stand Your Ground to avoid any penalties for killing a Black teenager, while a Black woman…

Representatives Rick Larsen and Jim McDermott have signed the Ciccline letter “Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Chained Consumer Price Index should not be used to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security benefits.”  And Rep. McDermott has signed several other  letters in support of Social Security (see table below). But no Washington State…