Category: Policy Topics

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 inPolicy Topics, World Commmunity

Meet the Hypocrites: U.S. foreign policy

by Ken

Ear­li­er tonight, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma laid out his case jus­ti­fy­ing the need for U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Libya, where coali­tion forces under the  aus­pices of a Unit­ed Nations res­o­lu­tion have been knock­ing out the air defens­es of its bru­tal dic­ta­tor. The Unit­ed States and its allies are work­ing to pre­vent Muam­mar al-Gaddafi from con­tin­u­ing to kill […]

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 inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Republicans continue assault on emergency preparedness, even after Tohoku megaquake

by Ken

Read­ers may recall our ire was raised dur­ing the Repub­li­can response to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s 2009 State of the Union Address, when Louisiana Gov­er­nor Bob­by Jin­dal dis­missed fund­ing for vol­cano mon­i­tor­ing as a triv­i­al­i­ty. As res­i­dents of the Pacif­ic North­west, we are all too aware of the pres­ence of vol­ca­noes in our region and the destruction […]

Posted inTechnology

Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 9

by Andrew Villeneuve

After many months of devel­op­ment, Microsoft has final­ly fin­ished work­ing on Inter­net Explor­er 9, which was released to mar­ket a cou­ple of hours ago (9 AM Pacif­ic Time). This iter­a­tion of the brows­er rep­re­sents Microsoft­’s first real attempt to make stan­dards sup­port a pri­or­i­ty, and sports some new use­ful fea­tures. If you’re run­ning Win­dows Vista […]

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. […]

Posted inPolicy Topics, Public Planning

Aftermath of Tohoku megaquake demonstrates the folly of nuclear power

by Andrew Villeneuve

Two days have elapsed since Japan was pum­meled by one of the largest earth­quakes human­i­ty has ever doc­u­ment­ed. In that time, we’ve begun to see the trag­ic and painful extent of the dis­as­ter. The earth­quake (which reg­is­tered 8.9 on the moment mag­ni­tude scale) and the ensu­ing tsuna­mi it spawned have laid waste to sev­er­al previously […]