Liberal Talk Radio

Josh Feit wants to know why conservatves are more aggressive in using voter initiatives than liberals. I think a large part of the answer is simply the fact that Democrats control both houses of the legislature and the Governorship. Initiatives referenda are better suited to the party out-of-power. But Feit also makes a larger point [...]

David Brewster has an unintentionally hilarious article on how stuff gets done in Olympia these days. All legislation goes through Frank Chopp, which means that every legislation has to appeal to Chopp’s erogenous zones “values field”: As the various parties try to sort out a new solution for the Seattle waterfront (divert some traffic through [...]

Brier Dudley’s right: tax incentives for Yahoo! and Microsoft to build data centers in WA are triply absurd. (1) there’s no other place they can go for cheap hydro power, (2) Microsoft’s going to shut down the Yahoo! data center as soon as they buy the compay, and (3) data centers don’t create jobs. They [...]

Nick Beaudrot (of Drinking Liberally fame) has put together a map showing the county-by-county breakdown of Obama’s victory in Washington State. You can see that Clinton did better (but still lost) out on the coasts in the working-class towns around Aberdeen, and in the Latino-heavy areas around Yakima and the Tri-Cities.

The bill I blogged about last week on climate change and the GMA is out of committee, says Josh Feit, but that may or may not be a good thing: Yesterday, the bill got the yay vote out of committee and the green light from leadership to get it into Rules (the last stop before [...]

I’ve long harped on the fact that changing land use policies is central to curbing emissions. We simply can’t cut greenhouse gases substantially without changing our living, traveling, and commuting patterns. In that vein, here’s a good bill being debated in Olympia that would tie climate change to the State’s Growth Management Act. If a [...]

On the show this week, we railed a bit on the Democrats in the Washington State legislature for being incredibly timid with this upcoming session. It’s not quite clear to me how much of this is House Speaker Frank Chopp’s doing, and how much of it is Governor Gregoire’s (who’s up for re-election). Certainly there [...]

Two stories today are bad news for people who are fans of the Planet called Earth. Both revolve around the fact that, despite having a weakening economy and a weak president, the United States government is still powerful enough to kick the Earth in the proverbial shins every now and then. In Bali, where countries [...]

It’s considered newsworthy that the waste management business might be engaged in some unethical behavior.

Gov. Gregoire has called the legislature into special session to restore the 1% cap on property tax increases, caving into Republicans and Tim Eyman right before an election year. Goldy’s pretty hot and bothered over it, but why? I mean, doesn’t he realize that Dino Rossi will be so awesomely outmaneuvered by Gregoire’s clever ploy [...]