Monthly Archives: February 2014

Posted inElections

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inBreaking News, Civil Liberties, Policy Topics

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inBreaking News, Policy Topics, Technology

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inEducation, Legislative Advocacy

How Jay Inslee can stand up for Washington’s kids

by Robert Cruickshank

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 […]

Posted inEducation, Legislative Advocacy

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

by Robert Cruickshank

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 […]

Posted inEducation, Legislative Advocacy

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

by Robert Cruickshank

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. […]

Posted inElections

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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’ […]

Posted inBreaking News, Media & Culture

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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, […]

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inBreaking News, Economic Security, Policy Topics

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inCivil Liberties, Policy Topics

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inPublic Planning

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]

Posted inBreaking News, Unscheduled Programming

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

by Andrew Villeneuve

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 […]