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: September 2013

Dwight Pelz to retire as Washington State Democratic Party Chair in February

Excerpt: For­mer King Coun­ty Coun­cilmem­ber Dwight Pelz, who has ably led the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty for more than three fourths of a decade, announced today that he will retir­ing as state par­ty chair on Feb­ru­ary 1st, 2014, the date of the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cen­tral Com­mit­tee’s next meet­ing in Vancouver. In a let­ter copied to […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Party Politics
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House Republicans bent on taking another vote to defund the Patient Protection Act

Excerpt: The black­mail con­tin­ues: House Repub­li­cans plan to attach a one-year delay of [the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act] and a repeal of its med­ical device to a stop­gap spend­ing bill on Sat­ur­day, a move that could ensure much of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shuts down on Tuesday. Speak­er John Boehn­er (R‑Ohio) out­lined the maneu­ver to Repub­li­cans in a […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics
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Michael King’s embezzlement demonstrates why progressive and Democratic organizations need strong internal controls

Excerpt: Yes­ter­day, King Coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors charged Michael Wal­ter King, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the now-defunct Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cam­paign Com­mit­tee (SDCC) with six counts of theft fol­low­ing a six month inves­ti­ga­tion, in which Seat­tle police found that King had stolen more than a quar­ter of a mil­lion dol­lars from the Sen­ate Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus to fund his […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Meta, Policy Topics
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Pacific NW Portal 5.6 (Otter Rock) released

Excerpt: On behalf of the NPI team, I’m pleased to announce that we have com­plet­ed work  on a new release of Pacif­ic NW Por­tal – Ver­sion 5.6, code­named Otter Rock. Otter Rock is a main­te­nance release – the sixth in the New­port series. In oth­er words, there aren’t any new major fea­tures… just bug fix­es, updates to the […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements, Meta
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The tech pundits are wrong: BlackBerry may be struggling, but it’s not a doomed company

Excerpt: On Fri­day, Black­Ber­ry Lim­it­ed (for­mer­ly Research in Motion) announced that it expect­ed to lose some­where between $950 mil­lion to $995 mil­lion in the sec­ond quar­ter of its cur­rent fis­cal year, and plans to lay off forty per­cent of its work­force in an attempt to con­trol costs and adjust to the decline in revenue. Inevitably, this […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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House Republicans vote to slash food stamps with disgraceful “let them starve” legislation

Excerpt: Once again, we have occa­sion to say: So much for com­pas­sion­ate con­ser­vatism. By a vote of two hun­dred and sev­en­teen to two hun­dred and ten, the Repub­li­can-con­trolled U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives has vot­ed to make sig­nif­i­cant and destruc­tive cuts to SNAP, the Sup­ple­men­tal Nutri­tion Assis­tance Pro­gram, col­lo­qui­al­ly known as food stamps. Their leg­is­la­tion reduces fund­ing […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Economic Security, Healthcare, Policy Topics
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Why creating House districts could make the Washington State Legislature more diverse

Excerpt: Edi­tor’s Note: The NPI team is pleased to wel­come Richard Cham­pi­on as a con­trib­u­tor to the NPI Advo­cate. Richard is a com­mit­ted Demo­c­ra­t­ic activist who cur­rent­ly serves as the 2nd Vice Chair of the King Coun­ty Democ­rats. He resides in the 30th LD and is active in the 30th LD Democ­rats. As with all posts […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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White House: Larry Summers has withdrawn his name from consideration as Fed Chair

Excerpt: The White House has just dropped a Sun­day evening bomb­shell: Neolib­er­al econ­o­mist Lar­ry Sum­mers — who Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma was on the verge of nom­i­nat­ing to be the next Chair­man of the Board of Gov­er­nors of the Fed­er­al Reserve — is no longer being con­sid­ered for the posi­tion, at his own request! “Ear­li­er today, I […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics, Public Service
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Larry Summers’ nomination for Fed Chair isn’t official yet — but it’s already in trouble

Excerpt: If the Belt­way rumor mill is to be believed, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma is on the verge of nom­i­nat­ing his old pal Lar­ry Sum­mers to be the next chair of the Fed­er­al Reserve. Sum­mers, as most read­ers prob­a­bly know, is one of the coun­try’s most promi­nent neolib­er­al econ­o­mists and an admir­er of Mil­ton Fried­man and Alan Greenspan. […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Policy Topics, Public Service
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Dissecting conservative Justice Jim Johnson’s dissenting opinion in Freeman v. State

Excerpt: Yes­ter­day’s sev­en-to-two deci­sion in Free­man et al. v. State of Wash­ing­ton et al. was a pret­ty resound­ing vic­to­ry for the peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton and two pub­lic agen­cies that build and main­tain trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture on the peo­ple’s behalf (Sound Tran­sit and the Wash­ing­ton State Depart­ment of Transportation). But it was­n’t a unan­i­mous deci­sion. The court’s two […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Public Planning
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When are SSL and VPNs not secure? Why, when the NSA wants to spy on you, of course!

Excerpt: With each pass­ing week, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that for­mer NSA employ­ee Edward Snow­den’s doc­u­ment dump con­sti­tutes the largest and most impor­tant leak in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States of America. While Snow­den remains in Rus­sia, news­pa­pers in the West con­tin­ue to sift through the doc­u­ments he leaked, using those as the basis […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, National Defense, Policy Topics, Technology
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Microsoft buying Nokia’s handset division in $7.2 billion deal; Stephen Elop returning

Excerpt: Well, how’s this for late-break­ing Labor Day news: Microsoft has just announced that it’s struck a deal with Nokia to buy “sub­stan­tial­ly all” of the Finnish phone mak­er’s Devices & Ser­vices busi­ness, plus license Noki­a’s patent port­fo­lio for ten years, for $7.1 bil­lion in cash. As part of the deal, for­mer Microsoft exec­u­tive Stephen Elop […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Technology
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