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: November 2012

What greed and instant gratification look like: Inside a Georgia Wal-Mart on Black Friday

Excerpt: Through­out the past week, in hon­or of Thanks­giv­ing and in protest of Black Fri­day, we’ve been tak­ing a crit­i­cal look at exces­sive con­sumerism and the con­se­quences it por­tends for our­selves as a soci­ety and plan­et Earth. We’ve cov­ered the plight of Wal-Mart’s under­paid and poor­ly treat­ed work­ers (some of whom have gone on strike), talked about […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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It’s Brave Friday! Learn about the consequences of overconsumption by watching The Story of Stuff today

Excerpt: It's a good day to think about the environmental cost and consequences of our use it up and throw it out culture, which is extremely wasteful and unsustainable.
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Holidays
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Stay home and sleep in this weekend: The Black Friday madness isn’t worth it (literally!)

Excerpt: This week­end is Thanks­giv­ing week­end, tra­di­tion­al­ly one of the longest week­ends of the year (owing to Thanks­giv­ing always falling on a Thursday). It’s also tra­di­tion­al­ly the begin­ning of the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son, and is thus a very impor­tant time of year for retailers. Since the turn of the cen­tu­ry, major retail chains have gone to […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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“Seattle’s Progressive Talk” to be shut down; CBS Radio converting AM 1090 to sports

Excerpt: Last week, as we report­ed a few days ago, Clear Chan­nel pulled the plug on pro­gres­sive talk radio in Port­land, con­vert­ing AM 620 KPOJ (“Port­land’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”) to a Fox Sports affil­i­ate after more than eight years of serv­ing as a home for pop­u­lar hosts like Thom Hart­mann, Ed Schultz, Ran­di Rhodes, Nor­man Gold­man, Rachel […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Media & Culture
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Randy Dorn says I‑1240 is unconstitutional; he may go to court to overturn the initiative

Excerpt: Wash­ing­ton Super­in­ten­dent of Pub­lic Schools Randy Dorn is con­tem­plat­ing legal action against I‑1240, the char­ter schools ini­tia­tive financed by Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Jeff Bezos, Q13 Fox’s C.R. Dou­glas report­ed last night. “Cre­at­ing a new agency under the governor’s office to over­see ten to forty pub­lic schools, to me, is a clear vio­la­tion of […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Education, Elections, Policy Topics
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Occupy offshoot launches “Rolling Jubilee”

Excerpt: Last week an off­shoot of Occu­py Wall Street launched Rolling Jubilee, a new project billed as “a bailout for the 99%”. The project, which has been gen­er­at­ing con­sid­er­able inter­est in the finan­cial press, aims to help out ordi­nary Amer­i­cans by pur­chas­ing and abol­ish­ing their debt. It’s a nov­el idea: Banks sell debt for pen­nies on the […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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U.S. Representative Suzan DelBene sworn into office as our newest member of Congress

Excerpt: All of us at NPI would like to extend our warmest con­grat­u­la­tions to our good friend Suzan Del­Bene, who, as of today, is the newest mem­ber of Con­gress from the great state of Wash­ing­ton, suc­ceed­ing our governor-elect. Suzan, as most read­ers like­ly know, was eas­i­ly elect­ed to serve out the remain­der of Jay Inslee’s term […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Elections, Public Service
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Research in Motion to launch new BlackBerry 10 smartphones on January 30th, 2013

Excerpt: Big news out of Water­loo, Cana­da today: Research in Motion has just announced via press release that it has set a launch date for Black­Ber­ry 10, the com­pa­ny’s next gen­er­a­tion mobile-oper­at­ing sys­tem, which Black­Ber­ry fans like us have been anx­ious­ly await­ing for many months. Black­Ber­ry 10 marks a clean break from RIM’s old­er Black­Ber­ry OS, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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Clear Channel kills progressive talk in Portland; activists rallying to bring it back

Excerpt: Clear Chan­nel has struck again. Last Fri­day, with­out pro­vid­ing any expla­na­tion, the radio and out­door adver­tis­ing con­glom­er­ate trashed the entire pro­gram­ming line­up for KPOJ 620 AM (“Port­land’s Pro­gres­sive Talk”) and con­vert­ed the sta­tion into a Fox Sports affiliate. The sud­den for­mat change means Ran­di Rhodes, Mike Mal­loy, Thom Hart­mann, and oth­er pro­gres­sive hosts can no […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Media & Culture
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Rob McKenna concedes gubernatorial race; congratulates Governor-elect Jay Inslee

Excerpt: Repub­li­can Rob McKen­na is final­ly throw­ing in the towel. After hav­ing spent sev­er­al days main­tain­ing that there was still a viable path to vic­to­ry over Jay Inslee, McKen­na and his cam­paign team have come to the same con­clu­sion that we reached when we assessed the race dur­ing the last few min­utes of Novem­ber 6th: Jay Inslee […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Elections
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Rob McKenna’s camp still hanging on to hope of victory; Team Inslee says Jay will win

Excerpt: Today is the third “day after” the 2012 gen­er­al elec­tion. Bal­lot count­ing con­tin­ues in most of Wash­ing­ton’s thir­ty-nine coun­ties, as coun­ty elec­tions offi­cials open mail, ver­i­fy sig­na­tures, and tab­u­late votes. In the mean­time, the out­come of sev­er­al races remains uncer­tain (par­tic­u­lar­ly the con­test for Sec­re­tary of State). The guber­na­to­r­i­al race is not as close as many […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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Congratulations, Gael!

Excerpt: Last night, as the first elec­tion results were released, one of our own learned that she will almost cer­tain­ly be the next fresh­man state rep­re­sen­ta­tive from Wash­ing­ton’s 36th Leg­isla­tive Dis­trict, which encom­pass­es neigh­bor­hoods like Mag­no­lia and Bal­lard as well as much of Queen Anne. On behalf of all of NPI’s oth­er board mem­bers and all of NPI’s […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections, Meta
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Secretary of State contest very close: Democrat Kathleen Drew trails, but could reclaim lead by end of the week

Excerpt: Over the last few days, I’ve heard sev­er­al peo­ple pre­dict that Wash­ing­ton’s 2012 guber­na­to­r­i­al race would like­ly be as tight as the 2004 con­test between Chris Gre­goire and Dino Rossi, which dragged on for weeks as bal­lots were count­ed and recount­ed. It does­n’t look like that will be the case; Jay Inslee has a lead […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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Record number of Democratic women headed to U.S. Senate for 113th Congress

Excerpt: Exact­ly two decades after the 1992 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, some­times called the “year of the woman” or “year of the women”, the Amer­i­can peo­ple have made his­to­ry by elect­ing a record num­ber of female can­di­dates to the nation’s upper leg­isla­tive cham­ber. Near­ly all of them are Democrats. Vot­ers enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly reelect­ed Sen­a­tors Maria Cantwell of Wash­ing­ton, Kris­ten […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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