When first is worst: Washington’s taxes best-in-nation at soaking the poor

Let’s hear three jeers for Washington State, which yet again has the ignoble distinction of the most regressive tax structure in the nation – a “soak the poor” system where those with the least pay the highest tax rates. An updated report from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) that examines how state…

Town Hall Seattle: Gar Alperovitz: America Beyond Capitalism

Wednesday, October 3, 2012, 7:30 – 9:00pm Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street. $5. Activist and economist Gar Alperovitz offers a diagnosis of what ails America, and prescribes what Noam Chomsky calls “concrete and feasible” solutions. Alperovitz’s emerging “new economy” strategies propose locally-based, bottom-up efforts that democratize wealth and empower communities—changing a faltering system that,…

State of the Movement: Lessons Learned From One Year of Occupy Wall Street

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned as an activist since the birth of the Occupy Wall Street movement on Sept 17, 2011. Personal Empowerment = Social Empowerment As we learn to accept and allow folks to use their own individual voices, the group is empowered. With OWS we are learning how to bring…

The REAL "Entitlement" Programs Benefit the Rich

“Real entitlement programs are ones where beneficiaries do not contribute, like when we working taxpayers pay bankers hundreds of billions of dollars “interest” on their reserves, or pay for puffed-up and no-bid government contracts or farm and oil subsidies, or pay pharmaceutical companies full retail price instead of negotiating discounts, or “borrow” money from the…

Ocean Report

A couple of items on things oceanic came to my attention this week. NYT had a story on collapse of the cod fishery: The Shocking News About Cod The ideal fish for human consumption would mature quickly and reproduce in staggering numbers. This does not describe the Atlantic cod. Cod mature late — at 4…