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: February 2014

Republican Pedro Celis confirms he’ll challenge Suzan DelBene for U.S. House

Excerpt: With less than nine­ty days to go until the fil­ing dead­line arrives, the Repub­li­can Par­ty has final­ly found a chal­lenger for U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene: Pedro Celis, a fifty-four year old for­mer soft­ware engi­neer who resides in Red­mond. Celis worked for Microsoft for more than a decade and is now a mem­ber of the board […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Arizona’s Jan Brewer vetoes anti-LGBT bill in landmark defeat for fundamentalist right wing

Excerpt: Ari­zona Gov­er­nor Jan Brew­er has vetoed a bill that would have legal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion in the 48th State on the basis of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, after pro­gres­sives and busi­ness groups mobi­lized against the bill fol­low­ing its pas­sage out of the Grand Canyon State’s Leg­is­la­ture, which is con­trolled by Republicans. The Ari­zona Repub­lic reports that Brew­er revealed her […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Civil Liberties, Policy Topics
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) finally headed to Windows Phone; will debut this summer

Excerpt: Dis­pelling recent reports in the tech blo­gos­phere to the con­trary, Black­Ber­ry announced this morn­ing that it is work­ing to bring BBM, Black­Ber­ry’s pop­u­lar and increas­ing­ly cross-plat­form mobile-to-mobile mes­sag­ing ser­vice, to Win­dows Phone, in part­ner­ship with Nokia. BBM will also be present on Noki­a’s new Android-based Nokia X smart­phone plat­form when it launch­es in a few […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Policy Topics, Technology
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

How Jay Inslee can stand up for Washington’s kids

Excerpt: In the wake of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate’s remark­able, bipar­ti­san revolt against stan­dard­ized test­ing man­dates, the issue has rock­et­ed to the top of the state’s polit­i­cal agen­da. It was a promi­nent issue across the state yes­ter­day at the var­i­ous leg­isla­tive town halls. Edu­ca­tion reform groups are mobi­liz­ing to reverse the Sen­ate’s deci­sion, voic­ing con­cern that as […]
Written by:Robert Cruickshank
Categories:Education, Legislative Advocacy
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Washington should follow California’s lead and resist flawed federal education demands

Excerpt: Next week Wash­ing­ton Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee will meet with U.S. Edu­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Arne Dun­can to dis­cuss the state’s waiv­er from the require­ments of the failed No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law. Last year Dun­can’s depart­ment threat­ened to revoke the waiv­er unless the state leg­is­la­ture man­dat­ed that dis­tricts include stu­dent test scores in teacher eval­u­a­tions. Cur­rent­ly […]
Written by:Robert Cruickshank
Categories:Education, Legislative Advocacy
Tags: ,
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Washington State Senate revolts against teaching to the test in key vote

Excerpt: Ever since Rod­ney Tom and Tim Shel­don facil­i­tat­ed the coup that gave Repub­li­cans con­trol of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate, true bipar­ti­san­ship in that body has been a rar­i­ty. Tom’s dis­ci­plined right-wing cau­cus have bat­tled Sen­ate Democ­rats over every­thing from repro­duc­tive rights to trans­porta­tion choic­es to the state’s con­sti­tu­tion­al oblig­a­tion to ful­ly fund our pub­lic schools. […]
Written by:Robert Cruickshank
Categories:Education, Legislative Advocacy
Tags: , , ,
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Latest spat between Republicans in the Washington State Senate proves Rodney Tom’s “majority coalition” is a fiction

Excerpt: In the wake of the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate’s speedy vote in favor of an improved ver­sion of the DREAM Act, sev­er­al of the more uncom­pro­mis­ing mem­bers of the Repub­li­can Cau­cus have decid­ed to declare their inde­pen­dence from Rod­ney Tom’s so-called “Major­i­ty Coali­tion Cau­cus” by hav­ing their names scrubbed from the MCC’s web­site, the Seat­tle Times’ […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Comcast plans to acquire Time Warner Cable for $44 billion; FCC and DOJ should veto deal

Excerpt: Media and telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions con­glom­er­ate Com­cast, the nation’s largest provider of cable tele­vi­sion and the own­er of NBC Uni­ver­sal, has just announced it has agreed to acquire the nation’s sec­ond largest cable tele­vi­sion provider, Time Warn­er Cable, in a $44 bil­lion plus all-stock megadeal. Bloomberg reports: Com­cast is pay­ing about $159 a share in the trans­ac­tion, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Media & Culture
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

U.S. Senate breaks Ted Cruz’s filibuster, joins House in voting to pay nation’s bills into 2015

Excerpt: Well, that was fast. Less than a day after the Unit­ed States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed to give the Depart­ment of the Trea­sury the author­i­ty to con­tin­ue pay­ing the nation’s bills into March 2015, the Sen­ate fol­lowed suit, in the process break­ing a fil­i­buster staged by Tea Par­ty dar­ling Ted Cruz of Texas, who is upset […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

House of Representatives votes to continue paying America’s bills past midterm elections

Excerpt: With the mem­o­ry of last autum­n’s dis­as­trous man­u­fac­tured fis­cal cri­sis and com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary fed­er­al gov­ern­ment shut­down still fresh in their minds, the lead­er­ship of the U.S. House Repub­li­can Cau­cus today allowed a bill to come to the floor to autho­rize the U.S. Depart­ment of the Trea­sury to pay the nation’s bills for anoth­er year, through […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Governor Inslee halts death penalty: “During my term, we will not be executing people”

Excerpt: Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee this morn­ing imposed a mora­to­ri­um on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment while he is Wash­ing­ton State’s chief exec­u­tive, declar­ing at a news con­fer­ence in Olympia that after much reflec­tion and dis­cus­sion with vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, police, and pros­e­cu­tors, he had come to the con­clu­sion that equal jus­tice was­n’t being served. “If a death penal­ty case comes […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Move King County Now! Local leaders prepare to go to the ballot to save Metro, bypassing Rodney Tom, Andy Hill, Senate Republicans

Excerpt: Mak­ing good on last mon­th’s promise to act in the event that the Repub­li­can-con­trolled state Sen­ate con­tin­ued to block leg­is­la­tion allow­ing King Coun­ty to save Metro and KCDOT from evis­cer­a­tion, coun­ty law­mak­ers vot­ed unan­i­mous­ly today to take the first step towards putting a fall­back plan before vot­ers in April. The Coun­cil used its exist­ing author­i­ty under […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

State Senate Republicans set new date to finish negotiating with themselves on transportation plan they don’t have votes for

Excerpt: Top law­mak­ers in Wash­ing­ton’s dys­func­tion­al Sen­ate Repub­li­can Cau­cus said today they still plan to release their own revised statewide trans­porta­tion pack­age, despite blow­ing past anoth­er self-imposed dead­line to get it done. Speak­ing with The Olympian’s Brad Shan­non a day after the new pro­pos­al was sup­posed to have been released, Major­i­ty Leader-in-Name-Only Rod­ney Tom said, “We’re going […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Public Planning
Tags:
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed

Huge snowstorm hits greater Portland and the Willamette Valley, causing massive backups

Excerpt: It’s a mess out there: City offi­cials have a sim­ple mes­sage to Port­land metro area res­i­dents in the midst of one of the biggest snow­storms the region has seen in years: Don’t dri­ve unless you absolute­ly have to. Any­where from 3 to 7 inch­es of snow could hit the metro area by Fri­day, fol­lowed by a round […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Breaking News, Unscheduled Programming
Bookmark:Permalink | Comments closed