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: May 2011

Grays Harbor Paper: 1993–2011

Excerpt: Grays Har­bor Paper, which has for years sup­plied the Harbor/100 paper that we at NPI use for our every­day print­ing needs, announced yes­ter­day that it is shut­ting its doors per­ma­nent­ly and lay­ing off two hun­dred and forty peo­ple in the process. GHP’s pres­i­dent, Patrick Quigg, released a state­ment attribut­ing the shut­down to the fol­low­ing major […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Our Environment, Policy Topics
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Republican state legislator skipped special session to go on a European cruise

Excerpt: Accord­ing to a sto­ry in The Kit­sap Sun, State Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jan Angel (R – Port Orchard) was absent for almost the entire spe­cial ses­sion of the Leg­is­la­ture – because she was on a Euro­pean cruise. Angel won the Euro­pean cruise at a Port Orchard event in Novem­ber and claims to have con­sult­ed with Repub­li­can lead­ers […]
Written by:Steve
Categories:Open Government, Party Politics
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Here’s another chance to help improve our collective understanding of online activism

Excerpt: Edi­tor’s Note: A few years ago, we asked read­ers to par­tic­i­pate in an online sur­vey to help researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ten­nessee and Texas Tech Uni­ver­si­ty learn more about how Amer­i­cans use the Inter­net to obtain polit­i­cal infor­ma­tion. The folks who put togeth­er that sur­vey are present­ly con­duct­ing a fol­low-up, and would like NPI […]
Written by:Barb Kaye
Categories:Announcements, Media & Culture
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Register for NWroots 2011

Excerpt: Short­ly before we lost our beloved Lynn Allen to ovar­i­an can­cer three months ago, she entrust­ed us with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing for­ward the polit­i­cal and civic caus­es she was so pas­sion­ate about. One of those caus­es was bring­ing pro­gres­sive activists togeth­er to orga­nize and mobi­lize for change. Not long after Lynn and I attend­ed […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements, Events
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Mercenary petitioners hawking Tim Eyman’s l‑1125 target Bellevue College students

Excerpt: Though it’s not appar­ent from look­ing at Vot­ers Want More Choic­es’ most recent reports to the Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion (PDC), NPI can today con­firm what we have sus­pect­ed since the begin­ning of the month: Tim Eyman has found a new wealthy bene­fac­tor to put up the mon­ey for his lat­est scheme, Ini­tia­tive 1125, which he […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning
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Congratulations, Michael!

Excerpt: Con­grat­u­la­tions are in order to our good friend Michael Hood, who has been keep­ing a crit­i­cal eye on talk radio over at blath­er­Watch since 2005. Yes­ter­day, Michael became the first blog­ger from the Pacif­ic North­west cre­den­tialed to cov­er a White House press brief­ing, which is a pret­ty big deal. As Michael recounts, it may have been just […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements, Media & Culture
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Sound Transit christens University Link tunnel boring machines at Husky Stadium

Excerpt: Let the tun­nel­ing begin! This morn­ing, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton’s Husky Sta­di­um, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, Fed­er­al Tran­sit Admin­is­tra­tor Peter Rogoff, and local elect­ed offi­cials gath­ered to join Sound Tran­sit in chris­ten­ing the bor­ing machines that will exca­vate the tun­nels between the U‑District sta­tion at Husky Sta­di­um and the Capi­tol Hill sta­tion at Broad­way and Denny. Uni­ver­si­ty […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Events, Policy Topics, Public Planning
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Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 billion

Excerpt: Microsoft con­firmed today that it is spend­ing eight and half bil­lion dol­lars in cash to acquire peer to peer com­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny Skype, which oper­ates the world’s most pre­em­i­nent VOIP (voice over Inter­net pro­to­col) platform. The deal, which was first report­ed by the tech press a cou­ple of days ago, is the biggest acqui­si­tion in Microsoft­’s […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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Peter Steinbrueck: Our fractured metropolis (Text of the keynote from NPI’s 2011 gala)

Excerpt: Edi­tor’s Note: Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of our Spring Fundrais­ing Gala a few days ago, we have been asked if we could make the text of Peter Stein­brueck­’s keynote speech avail­able. He has kind­ly agreed to do so; what fol­lows are a pol­ished ver­sion of his pre­pared remarks, deliv­ered on April 28th at the Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­ter […]
Written by:Peter Steinbrueck
Categories:Events, Policy Topics, Public Planning
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He’s not rich, he’s you

Excerpt: Excuse us for a moment as we break out our tiny vio­lins and a box of kleenex to lament the plight of Con­gress­man Den­ny Rehberg (R‑MT), who is chal­leng­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor Jon Tester for his seat in 2012 . You see, although Mr. Rehberg is the 23rd rich­est mem­ber of Con­gress he informed con­stituents at […]
Written by:Ken
Categories:Unscheduled Programming
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Conservatives clinch majority in Canadian Parliament; New Dems now the opposition

Excerpt: You would­n’t know it from watch­ing Amer­i­can cable tele­vi­sion or read­ing Amer­i­can news­pa­pers, but Cana­da today held a major fed­er­al elec­tion to deter­mine who will sit in the House of Com­mons of the 41st Cana­di­an Parliament. (For those read­ers not famil­iar with Cana­di­an pol­i­tics, the House of Com­mons is their equiv­a­lent to our House of […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections, Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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BREAKING: Osama bin Laden is dead, officials say; President Obama addresses the nation

Excerpt: Details are sketchy as of this hour, but Amer­i­ca’s tele­vi­sion net­works, cit­ing mul­ti­ple sources, are report­ing that U.S. forces have killed Osama bin Laden in Abbot­tabad, Pak­istan, and have pos­ses­sion of his body. Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma is sched­uled to speak to the nation short­ly. The admin­is­tra­tion has not offi­cial­ly con­firmed the news, but the pres­i­dent is […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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Who’s responsible for the Associated Press’s ongoing Tim Eyman worship?

Excerpt: A few moments ago, NPI’s news crawler alert­ed me that the Asso­ci­at­ed Press has just dumped anoth­er half-baked — no, make that quar­ter-baked — “sto­ry” out on the wire, glo­ri­fy­ing an announce­ment Tim Eyman sup­pos­ed­ly made about attempt­ing to qual­i­fy an ini­tia­tive for the bal­lot this year. I say sup­pos­ed­ly because I haven’t seen any oth­er […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning
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