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On walkable cities
“Walkable City: how downtown can save America, one step at a time”, by Jeff Speck, was exciting to read. Speck presents all sorts of evidence and arguments that walkable downtowns — designed for people, not cars — increase real estate values, increase tax revenue, improve health, attract businesses, and make for fun places to live.…
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Answering doubts about MoveToAmend
Wednesday evening I went to a meeting of eastside MoveToAmend activists, in Bellevue.  Attendees discussed plans in place to collect signatures for I-1329, the initiative in support of an amendment to the US Constitution overturning the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that treats corporations as people and money as speech. Once the Secretary of State’s…
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Update on DoS attacks against Black Box Voting
Thank you for your patience and support as we migrate the huge old website to the “new” Black Box Voting. We identified the perpetrators of the DoS (Denial of Service) attack that permanently shut down our forums. The attack came from a source that turned out to be readily identifiable and to my surprise, is…
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Not just Republicans are to blame for economic inequality
Oxfam released a report recently about economic inequality, World’s 85 richest people own nearly half of global wealth: Oxfam report. “In the US, the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population grabbed 95 per cent of post-financial crisis growth between 2009 and 2012, while the bottom 90 per cent became poorer.” “Wealthy elites have co-opted…
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Inspire Seattle: Jan 25: No New Jim Crow
     Saturday, January 25, 2014 at 6:30pm * Main discussion topic for this evening: No New Jim Crow *To receive InspireSeattle invitations, click here to provide us with an email address. Following the Civil War and continuing right into the 1960s, African-Americans were racially segregated and systematically discriminated against by a series…
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Seattle Hosts Progressive Media Gathering – Is Radio Dead?
Progressive radio fans and broadcasters gathered in Seattle’s Pioneer Square on January 18th to discuss the future of the media. A standing room only crowd listened to guest speakers including Norman Goldman and local journalists Geov Parrish and David Goldstein. The event was organized by Progressive Radio Northwest. PRNW was founded by former listeners of…
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Too cheap, too expensive
See also Killer Fact: 30-40 Percent of Health Care Spending in the U.S. Is Tied to Excess Sugar Consumption: And our political system does nothing but subsidize the problem. For the Love of Money “In my last year on Wall Street my bonus was $3.6 million — and I was angry because it wasn’t big…
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Video of SCCC forum on public transportation
Here’s the video of the noon session of the Jan 16 Forum on Public Transportation at the Broadway Performance Hall in Seattle. The state of WA only spends 2-4% of the budget on bus transit, they spend over 50% on roads. Meanwhile King County taxpayers are the biggest money donor in State, getting back only…
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Testimony on establishing a state bank for the cannibas industry
I testified today in support of Bob Hasegawa‘s S.B. 5955 which would establish a State Bank to create a financing infrastructure for the cannabis industry. My testimony begins at time mark 29:15 in the linked video. The audience enjoyed my characterization of Wall Street banksters as the real criminals that we should be worried about.…
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Free, regular sex for Boeing execs
State lawmakers should consider giving regular, free sex to Boeing execs to convince the company to stay in Washington State. Inspired by this article: Washington state pitches more help for Boeing. As Brendan Williams said on facebook: From 167-page state proposal offering Boeing further concessions on top of $8.7B tax break: On workers’ comp, “we are committed to working with you to identify and implement additional administrative and,…