Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Blogworthy, November 3rd, 2007

Here's the latest edition of our occasional review feature touching on news and developments that we couldn't get around to writing about earlier, as well as items we have accidentally overlooked.

The Republican nominee for prosecutor, Dan Satterberg, is so desperate to win Tuesday's election that he is laundering illegal contributions through the Washington State Republicans, David Goldstein reports:
[T]he Washington State Republican Party is flooding the prosecutor’s race with money over the final few days of the campaign, laundering huge, lump sum contributions from developers and other special interests, through the party, and back into Satterberg’s coffers. Make no mistake, these contributions were earmarked for Satterberg’s campaign, and Satterberg clearly knew the money was coming.

First Satterberg goes $40,000 into debt buying TV time, and then magically, Thursday night, nearly $40,000 gets transfered into his campaign from the WSRP.

Then after he books yet more TV time for the final few days of the campaign, the WSRP transfers another $81,000 into Satterberg’s account. That brings the total to over $155,000 from the state and county party in just the past couple weeks.
It's too late for Democrats to financially counter these massive cash infusions - but activists still have a chance to help Bill win on Election Day by participating in get out the vote efforts over the next few days.

SUNDAY UPDATE: Josh Feit has more at The Stranger.

Unsatisfied with the way negotiations are going, Hollywood writers are prepared to strike starting this Monday. That could spell trouble for the industry. The first programs likely to be affected? Late night talk programs such as The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Tonight with Jay Leno, and The Late Show with David Letterman. In local entertainment news, fired KOMO reporter April Zepeda has filed suit against her former employers at Fisher Communications.

We're less than a year out from the 2008 election, but it's never too early to start learning about Okanagan rancher Peter Goldmark's campaign for Lands Commissioner. Peter is running to bring progressive values and policy directions to the Department of Natural Resources: thoughtful planning, sustainable land use, environmental protection, and wise forestry management. You can learn more about his priorities at YouTube in this video clip.

The Approve 67 campaign has released new web-only videos which show through stories why we need this consumer protection law. Meanwhile, the insurance industry is setting a spending record with the millions of dollars it has poured into its astroturf front group "Consumers Against Higher Insurance Rates".

United States mayors have been meeting in Seattle over the last few days to talk about what cities can do to combat the climate crisis. The need for leadership at the local level is especially important right now because the Bush administration refuses to act. Hopefully that will change on January 20th, 2009 at the end of an error known as the Dubya presidency.

The Seattle P-I has once again editorialized against Initiative 960 in a well-written editorial urging readers to reject Tim Eyman's latest right scheme to paralyze government. Meanwhile, Eyman seems less sure of winning than he usually does...in an email to supporters yesterday, he strongly alluded to the possibility of losing.

In technology news, Microsoft recently staked money on Facebook's future by buying a share of the company, and Google improved Gmail by announcing support for IMAP, or Internet Message Access Protocol. IMAP is one of two widely used standards for email (the other is POP, or Post Office Protocol, which is older but more prevalent). IMAP is preferred by many people who need to be able to synchronize their email on different devices.

Surprise, surprise...Clay Bennett wants to move the Sonics to Oklahoma.

The Port of Seattle and King County have agreed on a plan to acquire an Eastside rail corridor from Burlington Northern Sante Fe. The county plans to develop a recreational trail on the land which will link Woodinville and Renton while keeping open the possibility of future train service.

Mr. Born-Again Conservative (ahem, Mitt Romney) spoke with Michael Arrington of TechCrunch on technology issues, and the interview was posted yesterday. This guy's identity is...complicated. It's also at Brave New Films. (Contributed by Garlin)

Finally, Daniel Kirkdorffer has a thorough drubbing of the Seattle Times' recent No on Proposition 1 rubbish, while the mayor of Minneapolis, here for the mayors' conference, talks about the importance of transportation investment and urges voters here to approve Roads & Transit. And David Horsey makes fun of Roads & Transit opponents, who can't agree on what would be better.

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