NPI's Cascadia Advocate

Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Monthly Archives: January 2012

Suzanne Bonamici elected to succeed David Wu in Oregon’s 1st Congressional District

Excerpt: Ore­gon’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion is final­ly whole again. After hav­ing spent near­ly six months with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Con­gress, vot­ers in the Beaver State’s 1st Con­gres­sion­al Dis­trict (which spans the north­west­ern part of the state) final­ly got the chance this month to choose a new rep­re­sen­ta­tive to serve them in the U.S. House. And tonight, with the first […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Elections
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Happy seventh birthday, Pacific NW Portal!

Excerpt: One of our most impor­tant projects, which we’ve been invest­ing a lot of ener­gy into late­ly, is turn­ing sev­en today: Pacif­ic NW Por­tal, first launched on Jan­u­ary 31st, 2005, has now been online for a grand total of eighty four months. Since the day it launched, it’s helped to bring the net­roots of Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Meta
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Big vote on marriage equality tomorrow

Excerpt: In a mat­ter of hours, Wash­ing­ton’s Sen­ate is set to take up Ed Mur­ray’s bill, SB 6239, to make mar­riage equal­i­ty the law of the land across the Ever­green State. At least twen­ty-five sen­a­tors (includ­ing some Repub­li­cans) have already com­mit­ted to vote in favor of the bill, so it is expect­ed to pass. How­ev­er, if you […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Meta, Policy Topics
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Congressional insider trading bill being considered in the U.S. Senate today

Excerpt: Last week in his State of the Union Address, Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma renewed the call to end the lit­tle-known uneth­i­cal prac­tice that helps mem­bers of Con­gress increase their wealth through insid­er trading. Today the Sen­ate will con­sid­er S. 2038, spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Joe Lieber­man (Par­ty of One — Con­necti­cut) which will pro­hib­it mem­bers from trad­ing […]
Written by:Ken
Categories:Open Government
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Bill to require more transparency in ballot measure advertising moves forward

Excerpt: Ear­li­er today, along with NPI board mem­ber Steve Zemke and NPI con­trib­u­tor Steve Breaux, I par­tic­i­pat­ed in a pub­lic hear­ing in sup­port of House Bill 2499, prime spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Andy Bil­lig. HB 2499 would require adver­tis­ing for or against bal­lot mea­sures in Wash­ing­ton to include the name and address of the enti­ty pay­ing for […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Open Government, Policy Topics
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Pacific NW Portal 5.1 (Agate Beach) released

Excerpt: Last month, when we unveiled Pacif­ic NW Por­tal Ver­sion 5.0 (code­named New­port), we also com­mit­ted to adopt­ing a more fre­quent release cycle for the project, deliv­er­ing improve­ments on a more incre­men­tal basis, like we did dur­ing Pacif­ic NW Por­tal’s ear­ly days sev­en years ago. I am pleased today to announce that the first fruits of our […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements
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Liveblogging the 2012 State of the Union

Excerpt: Wel­come all to NPI’s 2012 cov­er­age of the State of the Union address. We’ll be updat­ing this post peri­od­i­cal­ly through­out the Pres­i­den­t’s speech. Var­i­ous dig­ni­taries are cur­rent­ly fil­ing into the House cham­ber, and Rep. Gabrielle Gif­fords (D‑AZ) just entered the cham­ber to a stand­ing ova­tion. Gif­fords looks radi­ant. Her hus­band, astro­naut Mark Kel­ly is a […]
Written by:Patrick Stickney
Categories:Live Coverage, Policy Topics
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Marriage equality gains twenty-fifth vote in state Senate; Haugen to vote yes

Excerpt: Great news this after­noon: We final­ly have the votes to pass mar­riage equal­i­ty in the Wash­ing­ton State Legislature! Min­utes ago, Sen­a­tor Mary Mar­garet Hau­gen — who had pre­vi­ous­ly said she was only will­ing to sup­port putting the issue on the bal­lot for a pub­lic vote — reversed her posi­tion and decid­ed to join the forces […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics
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BlackBerry maker Research in Motion names new chief executive officer and board chair

Excerpt: Big, big news out of Water­loo (Ontario) tonight: Black­Ber­ry mak­er Research in Motion, one of Canada’s largest and most pres­ti­gious com­pa­nies, has announced that its two top exec­u­tives — who have joint­ly led the com­pa­ny as as co-chief exec­u­tive offi­cers and co-chair­men of the board for many years — are step­ping down from those posi­tions, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News
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News networks project a Newt Gingrich victory in South Carolina Republican primary

Excerpt: If news net­works’ pro­jec­tions are to be believed, Newt Gin­grich has just won the 2012 South Car­oli­na Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry, mak­ing him the third can­di­date in the par­ty’s nar­row­ing pres­i­den­tial field to have won a nom­i­nat­ing con­test this month. As pun­dits on cable tele­vi­sion are not­ing, nev­er before have Iowa, New Hamp­shire, and South Car­oli­na Repub­li­cans […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections, Party Politics
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Leaders of opposition to SOPA and PIPA in Congress congratulate Net strike organizers

Excerpt: As we report­ed ear­li­er today, Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Har­ry Reid has scrapped plans to hold a vote on the “Pro­tect IP Act”, also known as PIPA, next Tuesday. PIPA is one of the two MPAA and RIAA-backed bills that would per­mit major media con­glom­er­ates to indi­rect­ly cen­sor the Inter­net, using the long arm of the […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Public Planning, Technology
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Harry Reid calls off next week’s vote on PIPA

Excerpt: Anoth­er vic­to­ry! From Sen­a­tor Har­ry Rei­d’s office: In light of recent events, I have decid­ed to post­pone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act. There is no rea­son that the legit­i­mate issues raised by many about this bill can­not be resolved. Coun­ter­feit­ing and pira­cy cost the Amer­i­can econ­o­my bil­lions of dol­lars and thou­sands of jobs each […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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Governor Gregoire declares state of emergency in response to winter storms

Excerpt: Gov­er­nor Chris Gre­goire pro­claimed a win­ter storm emer­gency this morn­ing, fol­low­ing a series of events that have forced schools and offices to shut their doors and made many roads impassable. “This is pure­ly a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure,” Gre­goire said in a news release. “So far, we haven’t received any requests for state assis­tance – but we […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Public Planning, Unscheduled Programming
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Mission accomplished: Internet strike turns SOPA, PIPA into a top story for the first time

Excerpt: We’re back! Twen­ty-one hours ago, we took down this blog, The Advo­cate, along with Pacif­ic NW Por­tal and our home page to protest two destruc­tive bills that threat­en Inter­net free­dom, sta­bil­i­ty, and secu­ri­ty: the “Stop Online Pira­cy Act” (SOPA) and the “Pro­tect IP Act” (PIPA). In their place, we acti­vat­ed an action cen­ter explain­ing our […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Technology
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