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: June 2015

Revised transportation package clears Washington State Senate on bipartisan vote

Excerpt: Moments ago, the Wash­ing­ton State Sen­ate took yet anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant vote, this time con­cern­ing trans­porta­tion rev­enue. By an over­whelm­ing four-to-one mar­gin, the Sen­ate vot­ed to approve SB 5987, which would raise the gas tax and vehi­cle weight fees to pay for a long list of high­way projects, a short­er list of rail, bike, and pedes­tri­an […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Our Environment, Policy Topics, Public Planning
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FREEDOM WINS!!! U.S. Supreme Court makes marriage equality law of the land nationwide

Excerpt: This morn­ing, in a his­toric and ground­break­ing deci­sion, the Unit­ed States Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that states may not pro­hib­it cou­ples from mar­ry­ing on the basis of their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. The court’s major­i­ty opin­ion in Oberge­fell v. Hodges means that mar­riage equal­i­ty is sud­den­ly and final­ly the law of the land in all fifty states […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Litigation, Policy Topics
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Tim Eyman’s paid signature drive for I‑1366 is done — so why is he still fundraising for it?

Excerpt: For the past four days, ini­tia­tive pro­mot­er Tim Eyman has been send­ing out dai­ly emails ask­ing his fol­low­ers to give gen­er­ous­ly so he can make a final pay­ment to his asso­ciates to fin­ish the sig­na­ture dri­ve for Ini­tia­tive 1366, his lat­est attempt to sab­o­tage Wash­ing­ton’s cher­ished tra­di­tion of major­i­ty rule. I‑1366, as reg­u­lar read­ers will recall, […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections, Open Government, Policy Topics
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The party of government shutdowns is at it again

Excerpt: If there’s one thing you can count on when Repub­li­cans con­trol one part of gov­ern­ment and Democ­rats con­trol the oth­ers, it’s that Repub­li­cans will force a gov­ern­ment shutdown. We saw it in Con­gress in the fall of 2013 when John Boehn­er shut down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment in an attempt to defund the Patient Pro­tec­tion and […]
Written by:Robert Cruickshank
Categories:Legislative Advocacy
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White supremacist guns down nine at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

Excerpt: Hor­ri­fy­ing and repul­sive does­n’t even begin to describe how awful this news is: A white gun­man killed nine peo­ple dur­ing a prayer meet­ing at one of Charleston’s old­est and best-known black church­es Wednes­day night in one of the worst mass shoot­ings in South Car­oli­na history. Heav­i­ly armed law enforce­ment offi­cers scoured the area into the […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Civil Liberties, Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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Everything you need to know about a state government shutdown

Excerpt: Judg­ing by the news today, the pub­lic is start­ing to become aware of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Repub­li­can intran­si­gence over the bud­get could cause a shut­down of the Wash­ing­ton state gov­ern­ment. If a bud­get isn’t approved by June 30, then start­ing on July 1, many state gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions will slow or cease. As a pub­lic ser­vice, the […]
Written by:Robert Cruickshank
Categories:Unscheduled Programming
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Coalition fighting Tim Eyman’s incredibly destructive Initiative 1366 is gaining strength

Excerpt: For the past few months, we’ve been sound­ing the alarm about Ini­tia­tive 1366, the most cyn­i­cal, mean-spir­it­ed, destruc­tive ini­tia­tive that Tim Eyman has ever spon­sored (and that’s say­ing some­thing!) and ask­ing orga­ni­za­tions com­mit­ted to the defense of Wash­ing­ton’s val­ues to join us in oppos­ing I‑1366. We are hap­py to report that our efforts have been […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Elections
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DelBene, Kilmer, Larsen planning to vote for fast-track; McDermott, Smith, Heck opposed

Excerpt: As many read­ers of the Cas­ca­dia Advo­cate may have heard, the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives is set to vote tomor­row on con­tro­ver­sial “trade pro­mo­tion author­i­ty” leg­is­la­tion that would grant Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma the pow­er to fast-track the pro­posed Trans-Pacif­ic Part­ner­ship. This leg­is­la­tion has already made it through the Sen­ate and is now await­ing a vote […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, World Commmunity
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Comcast suffers major DNS outage; affected areas include Puget Sound and Bay Area

Excerpt: A large num­ber of cus­tomers of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions giant Com­cast are report­ing tonight that they can­not con­nect to the Inter­net, report­ed­ly because of a wide­spread DNS (domain name sys­tem) serv­er outage. Affect­ed areas include Puget Sound and the Bay Area. The Domain Name Sys­tem, for read­ers who don’t know, is like the Inter­net’s phone book. It […]
Written by:Andrew Villeneuve
Categories:Policy Topics, Technology
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