Category: Economic Security

Posted inEconomic Security, Media & Culture, Policy Topics

News Corporation drops bid for BSkyB, citing overwhelming public opposition

by Andrew Villeneuve

Vic­to­ry! Rupert Mur­doch’s media group News Cor­po­ra­tion bowed to pres­sure from the pub­lic and par­lia­ment on Wednes­day and with­drew its bid to take full con­trol of pay-TV com­pa­ny BSkyB. All three main polit­i­cal par­ties were poised to call on News Corp to aban­don its offer in a vote in the House of Com­mons lat­er on Wednesday. […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Media & Culture, Policy Topics

Senator Jay Rockefeller wants U.S. probe of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation

by Andrew Villeneuve

U.S. Sen­a­tor Jay Rock­e­feller of West Vir­ginia, who chairs the Sen­ate’s Com­mit­tee on Com­merce, Sci­ence, and Trans­porta­tion, called today for the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to inves­ti­gate pos­si­ble wrong­do­ing by Rupert Mur­doch’s News Cor­po­ra­tion (and its many sub­sidiaries) in the Unit­ed States. Rock­e­feller is among the first elect­ed lead­ers in the Unit­ed States to weigh in on […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Media & Culture, Policy Topics

Rupert Murdoch’s empire in crisis following News of the World closure

by Andrew Villeneuve

Rupert Mur­doch’s News of the World may have print­ed its final edi­tion yes­ter­day, but the fall­out from the uneth­i­cal and like­ly ille­gal activ­i­ties of its for­mer employ­ees con­tin­ues to swell. The phone-hack­­ing scan­dal is beyond a headache for Rupert Mur­doch — it’s become a cri­sis that is threat­en­ing his entire media empire. Here’s a roundup […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Our Environment, Policy Topics

Grays Harbor Paper: 1993–2011

by Andrew Villeneuve

Grays Har­bor Paper, which has for years sup­plied the Harbor/100 paper that we at NPI use for our every­day print­ing needs, announced yes­ter­day that it is shut­ting its doors per­ma­nent­ly and lay­ing off two hun­dred and forty peo­ple in the process. GHP’s pres­i­dent, Patrick Quigg, released a state­ment attribut­ing the shut­down to the fol­low­ing major […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Education, Policy Topics

The search for a long-term answer for coherence in Ryan Blethen’s columns

by Andrew Villeneuve

Appar­ent­ly obliv­i­ous to the real­i­ty that he has as much cred­i­bil­i­ty as Tim Eyman does when it comes to talk­ing about pro­tect­ing pub­lic ser­vices, Seat­tle Times edi­to­r­i­al page edi­tor Ryan Blethen has penned yet anoth­er col­umn lament­ing the dire straits that Wash­ing­ton’s pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties are in. The piece, which ran in today’s Sun­day edi­tion, does a […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics

Statehouse goes into lockdown; Gregoire trying to shut out protestors?

by Andrew Villeneuve

Fel­low activists who are at the Capi­tol in Olympia are telling NPI that Gen­er­al Admin­is­tra­tion has just put the state­house — the peo­ple’s house — under lock­down, pre­vent­ing any­one with­out a gov­­ern­­ment-issued iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card from enter­ing. The lock­down has evi­dent­ly been insti­gat­ed so that Gov­er­nor Gre­goire and law­mak­ers can go about dis­man­tling the peo­ple’s government […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Policy Topics, Public Planning

Tim Eyman gloms onto another anti-red light camera measure — this time in Redmond

by Andrew Villeneuve

I’ve lost track of the num­ber of times I’ve been asked (usu­al­ly in con­ver­sa­tion) what moti­vat­ed me to cre­ate Per­ma­nent Defense more than nine years ago. Reg­u­lar read­ers are undoubt­ed­ly famil­iar with the sto­ry of PD’s found­ing, because I’ve told it or referred to it many times over the years. The cat­a­lyst, of course, was Tim […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Humor & Satire, Policy Topics

Costco to Washington State Legislature: “Have we got a deal for you…”

by Steve

From: Cost­co To: Mem­bers, Wash­ing­ton State Leg­is­la­ture RE: Your finan­cial trou­bles Dear law­mak­ers, As one of Washington’s largest pub­­licly-trad­ed com­pa­nies, Cost­co feels an oblig­a­tion to self­less­ly assist its state in weath­er­ing the ongo­ing fis­cal storm that has had such a dev­as­tat­ing impact on cit­i­zens and con­sumers alike. Last year the vot­ers of our state rejected […]

Posted inEconomic Security, Litigation

Recall efforts well underway in Wisconsin, Democratic Party says

by Andrew Villeneuve

Heart­en­ing news from the Bad­ger State: In anoth­er sign that the Wis­con­sin GOP’s quick pas­sage of the bill to roll back bar­gain­ing rights is only caus­ing the fight to esca­late, Dems have now col­lect­ed over 45 per­cent of the sig­na­tures nec­es­sary to hold recall elec­tions for eight GOP state sen­a­tors, the Wis­con­sin Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty tells me. […]