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: December 2011

After Internet outcry, Verizon backtracks, drops plans to charge $2 “convenience fee”

Excerpt: Chalk up anoth­er vic­to­ry for the Inter­net: Ver­i­zon Wire­less has decid­ed it will not insti­tute the fee for online or tele­phone sin­gle pay­ments that was announced ear­li­er this week. The com­pa­ny made the deci­sion in response to cus­tomer feed­back about the plan, which was designed to improve the effi­cien­cy of those trans­ac­tions. The com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Marko Liias exits congressional sweepstakes; other WA-01 candidates stay in

Excerpt: “[I]t’s often said that democ­ra­cy is about vot­ers choos­ing their politi­cians. But in the redis­trict­ing process, it’s politi­cians choos­ing their vot­ers. And in many ways, those deci­sions can be more impor­tant than elec­tions in some context.” — Nate Persi­ly, Beek­man Pro­fes­sor of Law and Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty, com­ment­ing on the impor­tance of redis­trict­ing […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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Slade Gorton, Tim Ceis unveil proposed congressional district map for 2012–2021

Excerpt: At last, we have a map! Dur­ing a short meet­ing of Wash­ing­ton’s four mem­ber Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion on the Capi­tol Cam­pus this morn­ing, for­mer U.S. Sen­a­tor Slade Gor­ton and for­mer Seat­tle deputy may­or Tim Ceis — who had been tasked with draw­ing new con­gres­sion­al dis­trict bound­aries on behalf of the four-mem­ber com­mis­sion — unveiled the pro­pos­al they’ve […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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Washington’s Redistricting Commission to unveil proposed congressional map tomorrow

Excerpt: With its dead­line for sub­mit­ting new con­gres­sion­al and leg­isla­tive dis­trict maps fast approach­ing, Wash­ing­ton’s four Redis­trict­ing Com­mis­sion­ers announced at a short, ten-minute meet­ing today that they are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant progress in draw­ing up new maps, and expect to have pre­lim­i­nary pro­pos­als to make pub­lic tomorrow. The four com­mis­sion­ers — Slade Gor­ton, Tim Ceis, Tom Huff, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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Overview of the Improvements in Newport (Pacific NW Portal Version 5.0)

Excerpt: After many years of devel­op­ment, Pacif­ic NW Por­tal Ver­sion 5.0 (New­port) is final­ly ready for your brows­ing plea­sure. The fol­low­ing post con­sti­tutes our offi­cial changel­og for Ver­sion 5.0; it describes the changes we made to the Por­tal and our rea­sons for doing so. Please feel free to leave ques­tions, sug­ges­tions for future ver­sions, or oth­er […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements
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Pacific NW Portal 5 (Newport) is now live!

Excerpt: The big day has arrived! Moments ago, we retired the old Pacif­ic NW Por­tal, which has been online in its cur­rent incar­na­tion for over half a decade, and replaced it with Ver­sion 5.0, code­named New­port. (Pacif­ic NW Por­tal releas­es are named after cities and towns on the Ore­gon coast. The last major release was Sea­side). […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements
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Pacific NW Portal 5 launches tomorrow!

Excerpt: Mer­ry Christ­mas and Hap­py Hanukkah! On behalf of the team at NPI, I’m very excit­ed to announce that devel­op­ment and beta test­ing of the next ver­sion of Pacif­ic NW Por­tal, code­named New­port,  is com­ing to a close. Tomor­row, we will launch the new site… just in time for the Feast of the Nativ­i­ty and the Fes­ti­val […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements
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House Republicans formally block payroll tax break “compromise” bill from consideration

Excerpt: As expect­ed, in a series of votes ear­li­er today, House Repub­li­cans for­mal­ly blocked leg­is­la­tion over­whelm­ing­ly approved by the U.S. Sen­ate a few days ago that would tem­porar­i­ly extend the one-year pay­roll tax break enact­ed by Con­gress last year (S. Amdt. 1465 to H.R. 3630) for anoth­er two months. The House­’s action threat­ens the com­pro­mise on […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Los Angeles Times hires David Horsey

Excerpt: Long­time Seat­tle Post-Intel­li­gencer car­toon­ist David Horsey, who also served as an edi­to­r­i­al board mem­ber back when the P‑I had a print edi­tion, is leav­ing the P‑I and Hearst News­pa­pers to take a job with the Los Ange­les Times begin­ning in Jan­u­ary, Times edi­tor Russ Stan­ton announced today. “He will work with 2012 cam­paign edi­tor Cathy […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Media & Culture
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AT&T throws in the towel, abandons scheme to buy T‑Mobile from Deutsche Telekom

Excerpt: For once, fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors have done their job and stood up to Wall Street: AT&T said late on Mon­day after­noon that it had with­drawn its $39 bil­lion takeover bid for T‑Mobile USA, acknowl­edg­ing that it could not over­come oppo­si­tion from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to cre­at­ing the nation’s biggest cell­phone ser­vice provider. The com­pa­ny said in […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Seattle Public Schools to get a chance for a fresh start with Enfield’s departure

Excerpt: Inter­im Seat­tle Pub­lic Schools Super­in­ten­dent Susan Enfield, who took over man­age­ment of the state’s largest school dis­trict after the board oust­ed Mon­i­ca Good­loe-John­son back in the spring, announced today that she will “nei­ther seek nor accept” the per­ma­nent posi­tion of super­in­ten­dent, which means she will depart­ing the dis­trict mid­way through 2012 when her cur­rent con­tract […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Education, Policy Topics
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Senate Republicans propose constitutional amendment to prohibit unfunded mandates

Excerpt: A group of Repub­li­cans in Wash­ing­ton’s state Sen­ate, includ­ing Minor­i­ty Leader Mike Hewitt and Repub­li­can floor leader Mark Schoesler, have teamed up with two Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tors (Nick Harp­er, Deb­bie Regala) to pro­pose a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that would pro­hib­it unfund­ed mandates. (An unfund­ed man­date is an ini­tia­tive that cre­ates a new ser­vice or requires a ser­vice […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Open Government, Policy Topics
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Olympus must rid itself of the crooks/yes men who betrayed its shareholders and customers

Excerpt: Ten years ago, cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca was rocked by a series of account­ing scan­dals that destroyed one of the world’s largest account­ing firms (Arthur Ander­sen) and led to the pas­sage of the Sar­banes-Oxley Act (Sar­box, or some­times sim­ply referred to as SOX). A num­ber of well-known Amer­i­can com­pa­nies — notably Enron, Tyco, Adel­phia, and World­Com — […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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John Stokes wins extremely close election for Bellevue City Council Position #1

Excerpt: It’s over, at last: After a two-day manda­to­ry recount trig­gered by an extreme­ly close final spread in the con­test for Belle­vue City Coun­cil Posi­tion #1, we final­ly have a win­ner: pro­gres­sive activist John Stokes, whose final mar­gin of vic­to­ry end­ed up being just fifty-four votes. That’s less than the pop­u­la­tion of one precinct. Stokes, a […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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