China’s Superior Economic Model The free-market fundamentalist economic model is being thrown onto the trash heap of history. “The conservative-preferred, free-market fundamentalist, shareholder-only model—so successful in the 20th century—is being thrown onto the trash heap of history in the 21st century. In an era when countries need to become economic teams, Team USA’s results—a jobless…

Friends, I called both Murray and Cantwell’s office this morning.  The good news is that they both voted in favor of the Udall Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012. Thank them. The bad news is that Udall’s Amendment did not pass, so the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 is set up…

Republicans, “moderate” Dems, and their corporate allies manufactured a budget crisis by handing out tax giveaways to the rich, by wasting trillions of dollars on unnecessary wars, by widespread corruption, and by recklessly deregulating and bailing out Wall Street, Big Oil, and other corporations. Washington State, which has one of the most regressive tax systems…

After doing a bit of mountain hiking a few days back, I had a chance to get involved in a great afternoon conversation with the Alliance for American Manufacturing’s Mike Wessel, who also serves as a Commissioner with the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission; the conversation was about how we’re doing when it comes…

Can the further Left (Occupiers, anarchists, and Socialists) work, in some fashion, with the nearer Left (progressive Democrats, Labor, and groups like MoveOn.org)?  Can the Occupy Movement work with allies without feeling co-opted? [Note: I posted this at OpEdNews as well; see the numerous comments there.    An earlier name for this article was “On Occupying…

Did you know that our state constitution requires Washington to fully fund basic education? In fact, it calls it the state’s “paramount duty”. Washington has the strongest language of any state when it comes to education funding—no other state constitution protects public education to the extent ours does. So, WHY are the Governor and legislators…

Kudos to Gov Gregoire for having the guts to propose a 1/2 cent sales tax hike to help cover the expected $2 billion state revenue shortfall.  The Seattle P-I reports the governor as saying, “I can’t stomach the cuts, I can’t. I can’t cut education more.” But the sales tax is highly regressive. Far better…