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: April 2015

Vashon parks levy, Enumclaw school bond cross 60% minimum threshold for passage

Excerpt: Some good news to share this after­noon: The lat­est num­bers uploaded by King Coun­ty Elec­tions fol­low­ing today’s bal­lot count show that two bal­lot mea­sures to fund parks and pub­lic schools in two dif­fer­ent areas of King Coun­ty are now pass­ing, after hav­ing been short of the six­ty per­cent thresh­old in ear­li­er counts. The first, a […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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April special election results: King County public safety radio network levy winning big

Excerpt: Min­utes ago, King Coun­ty Elec­tions pub­lished the results of the first round of bal­lot count­ing for the April 2015 spe­cial elec­tion. While there are no offices up in this elec­tion, vot­ers in a num­ber of juris­dic­tions were asked to decide the fate of a num­ber of bal­lot mea­sures, includ­ing a coun­ty­wide levy to replace a […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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It’s Special Election Day! Have you voted?

Excerpt: In many juris­dic­tions across Wash­ing­ton State, today is a spe­cial elec­tion day. While it is com­mon knowl­edge that we hold a Top Two elec­tion in August and the gen­er­al elec­tion (which is real­ly more like a runoff, thanks to Top Two) in Novem­ber of every year, state law also pro­vides for two spe­cial elec­tion win­dows: […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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Horrible tragedy unfolding in Nepal following massive quake; thousands dead and injured

Excerpt: Last night, as most of the Pacif­ic time­zone was head­ed to bed or snooz­ing away fol­low­ing the end of anoth­er work­week, a mas­sive earth­quake struck Nepal, includ­ing the cap­i­tal of Kath­man­du. Ini­tial­ly report­ed as a mag­ni­tude 7.5 trem­blor by the U.S. Geo­log­i­cal Sur­vey, it was lat­er revised to 7.8. The quake stuck at a depth […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:National Defense, Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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Washington State Legislature adjourns Sine Die; special session to begin next week

Excerpt: With a great deal left undone, the Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture adjourned sine die this evening, two days ahead of the dead­line for adjourn­ment of an odd-year reg­u­lar ses­sion fixed in the Wash­ing­ton State Constitution. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic-con­trolled House and Repub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate remain far apart on an oper­at­ing bud­get for 2015–2017, and haven’t yet fin­ished work­ing on […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Legislative Advocacy
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Loretta Lynch confirmed as the United States of America’s new Attorney General

Excerpt: Well, it’s final­ly hap­pened. After many con­temptible delays, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate final­ly took up Loret­ta Lynch’s nom­i­na­tion today and vot­ed to con­firm her as the nation’s next Attor­ney Gen­er­al, which means that incum­bent Eric Hold­er can final­ly pack his bags and leave office, as he has want­ed to do for many months. A relieved […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, Public Service
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Lake Washington teachers latest to walk out in protest of inadequate education funding

Excerpt: Teach­ers in the Lake Wash­ing­ton School Dis­trict — which serves 26,700 stu­dents in NPI’s home­town of Red­mond along with the neigh­bor­ing cities of Kirk­land and Sam­mamish — have vot­ed to walk off the job on Wednes­day, May 6th in protest of the Leg­is­la­ture’s com­plete­ly inad­e­quate response to the Supreme Court’s McCleary deci­sion, and its refusal […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Economic Security, Education, Legislative Advocacy, Policy Topics
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Ubuntu and Kubuntu 15.04 “Vivid Vervet” released; Debian 8 “Jessie” due Saturday

Excerpt: Edi­tor’s note: If the terms GNU and Lin­ux don’t mean any­thing to you, this post is prob­a­bly going to read like a bunch of gib­ber­ish. Sor­ry. But do read on if you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about the won­der­ful world of free software.  Free soft­ware enthu­si­asts, it’s time to rev up your Advanced Pack­ag­ing Tool […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Celebrating Free Software, Policy Topics, Technology
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Maria Cantwell, Ron Wyden vote to fast-track Trans-Pacific Partnership in Senate Finance

Excerpt: Deeply dis­ap­point­ing news to share tonight: So-called “fast-track” leg­is­la­tion that would pre­vent Con­gress from con­sid­er­ing amend­ments to pri­or to a future vote on rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship is mov­ing for­ward after the U.S. Sen­ate’s Finance Com­mit­tee vot­ed twen­ty to six to advance it. Among the twen­ty sen­a­tors who vot­ed in favor were Wash­ing­ton’s Maria […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Open Government, Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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Browse with confidence: NPI’s core network now encrypting all visits by default

Excerpt: It seems like hard­ly a week goes by these days when we don’t hear about yet anoth­er data breach or new­ly-dis­cov­ered exploit in wide­ly used soft­ware. Bad neigh­bor­hoods have exist­ed on the Inter­net for a long time, but dan­ger now seems to present itself at every turn. There’s mal­ware lurk­ing all over the place, email […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Announcements, Meta, Policy Topics, Technology
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Analysis: State Treasurer’s grand tax reform plan is fatally flawed, shouldn’t move forward

Excerpt: Yes­ter­day, State Trea­sur­er Jim McIn­tire — who is respon­si­ble under state law for man­ag­ing and over­see­ing the invest­ment of the pub­lic’s mon­ey — unveiled a rather grand and ambi­tious plan for reform­ing the state’s tax code, which he says he hopes will be a “con­ver­sa­tion starter”. The plan would dra­mat­i­cal­ly alter Wash­ing­ton State’s tax struc­ture […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Legislative Advocacy
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NPI to region’s congressional delegation: Stand strong against fast-track for TPP

Excerpt: Edi­tor’s Note: The fol­low­ing mes­sage regard­ing the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship is being sent today to our region’s Unit­ed States Sen­a­tors and Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, exclud­ing Ron Wyden and Dave Reichert, who are on record in sup­port of leg­is­la­tion to give Pres­i­dent Oba­ma the author­i­ty to nego­ti­ate a final incar­na­tion of the Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship that could­n’t be amend­ed by […]
Written by:Robert Cruickshank
Categories:Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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Federal grand jury returns ten count indictment of State Auditor Troy Kelley

Excerpt: State Audi­tor Troy Kel­ley has been indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury for fil­ing false tax returns, mak­ing false dec­la­ra­tions, obstruct­ing jus­tice, and pos­sess­ing stolen prop­er­ty, the Unit­ed States Attor­ney for West­ern Wash­ing­ton announced today. The ten count indict­ment was returned by a jury in the U.S. Dis­trict Court in Seat­tle. Kel­ley is due to […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Elections, Open Government, Policy Topics
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Live in King County? Vote Yes by April 28th, 2015 to upgrade our region’s emergency public safety radio network

Excerpt: April may not seem like an elec­tion month, but in Wash­ing­ton, it’s actu­al­ly one of two times dur­ing the year when local juris­dic­tions may sched­ule spe­cial elec­tions, most often for the pur­pose of send­ing the vot­ers a levy for their consideration. This year, the nine-mem­ber King Coun­ty Coun­cil has opt­ed to place a propo­si­tion on […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections, Policy Topics, Public Planning
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