In 1912, Washingtonians approved a constitutional amendment backed by the Direct Democracy League that created our state’s initiative and referendum process, which gives the people the “power to propose bills, laws, and to enact or reject the same at the polls, independent of the legislature,” as Article II, Section 1 of our state Constitution says.
This past week, Democrats from all 50 states and several territories gathered in Charlotte, N.C., for the 46th Democratic National Convention (DNC). There, delegates unanimously voted to renominate Barack Obama and Joe Biden for a second term, and approved a platform outlining the party’s beliefs. I traveled to Charlotte last Saturday to represent our state as a delegate, and have greatly enjoyed being in the middle of all of the action.
This week, the Republican Party held its 40th national convention in Tampa, Fla, where more than 2,000 delegates nominated Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to be their standard bearers for president and vice president.
A few days ago, counties across Washington began tabulating ballots and reporting results in the state’s 2012 winnowing election.
Every four years, in addition to electing a governor to serve as our state’s chief executive, the people of Washington are called upon to elect several other officers to fill out our state’s executive department, which includes the offices of lieutenant governor, treasurer, auditor, attorney general, superintendent of public instruction, commissioner of public lands, insurance commissioner, and secretary of state.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently held three days of hearings on a series of challenges filed against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the landmark health insurance reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama in early 2010 after nearly a year of discussion and debate in Congress.
This past Saturday, Republican activists and voters in each of Washington’s 49 legislative districts met in homes, schools, and churches around the state to participate in the 2012 GOP precinct caucuses, which took place less than a hundred hours before Super Tuesday.
A few weeks ago, as many Redmond residents are now aware, our City Council voted to approve the signing of a development agreement with Group Health, the regional health care cooperative, which is preparing to dispose of its old hospital near Microsoft after relocating operations to a new building on the Eastside adjacent to I-405 in Bellevue.
On Wednesday, Capitol Hill was jolted by perhaps the most extraordinary protest ever organized in the history of the United States of America.
Every 10 years, after the census required by the U.S. Constitution has been successfully completed, each state begins the process of redistricting, or drawing new boundaries for its congressional districts. Here in Washington, our redistricting process is overseen by a five-member commission with four voting members (two from each major party) and one nonvoting chair, who helps facilitate and guide the commission’s work. The commission has the unenviable task of not only drawing up new congressional districts for the next decade, but legislative districts as well.
It seems that Congress has never been more unpopular than it is right now.
Almost a year after it first convened, the 112th Congress has, in the eyes of most Americans, made virtually no progress towards solving our nation’s problems. Most of the days the House and Senate have been in session this year have been dominated by gridlock and bickering instead of harmony and cooperation.
If you’ve watched any television recently, or paid attention to the contents of your mailbox, chances are good that you’ve seen many of the ads for and against I-1183, Costco’s latest attempt to rewrite the rules regarding the sale of hard spirits in its favor.
A year after approving a pilot project to test whether red-light cameras would make several well-trafficked Redmond intersections safer, the City of Redmond appears poised to pull the plug on the cameras and end the pilot project – while possibly continuing to operate a speed camera near Einstein Elementary during school hours.
When President Obama recently unveiled his plan to pay down the deficit, congressional Republicans’ first reaction was to call it “class warfare” because his plan calls for increasing taxes on the wealthy and recovering revenue that we currently give away as a nation to powerful corporations in the form of tax loopholes.
Voters on Tuesday brought the forthcoming general election into greater focus, setting final matchups for November in contests where three or more candidates had filed.
Compared to 2010 or even 2009, 2011 may seem like a sleepy election year, with not much on the ballot.
But that’s no reason not to participate. Odd-numbered years are when we decide who’s going to represent us close to home. The decisions that our locally elected leaders make directly affect our lives.
Nobody seems to understand this truth better than 2011’s most inspiring candidate – Richard Mitchell. Mitchell is running against incumbent Jane Hague in the Sixth County Council District (which spans Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Mercer Island, and other nearby communities) because he believes his neighbors deserve a council member who listens and shows up for the job all of the time – not just part of the time.
America is often talked about as the land of opportunity — a place where people with little wealth or power can find or create a good paying job for themselves, become successful, and lead happy, rewarding lives.
Unfortunately, as many Washingtonians have seen firsthand, opportunities (especially good-paying jobs) aren’t easy to find these days. The already wealthy are doing just fine or getting even richer, while a great many families and entrepreneurs are struggling to make ends meet.
Last year, the Supreme Court of the United States struck a devastating blow against open government when it decided Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 50, holding that corporations have the power to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcome of elections.
Although the Court did uphold disclosure requirements as part of the decision, corporations have found an easy way to circumvent them: Any corporation that wants to covertly influence the outcome of an election can simply funnel an unlimited amount of money into a fake nonprofit organization, and use the nonprofit to anonymously buy millions of dollars’ worth of paid media.
Legislation has been proposed that would curtail this and other practices made possible by the “Corporations United” ruling (particularly the DISCLOSE Act), but Republicans have repeatedly killed it.
In all the debate I’ve witnessed so far over red-light cameras, the discussion seems to have centered around whether the mechanical eyes are a good or bad thing.
Almost nobody seems to have tried to ask — let alone answer — what I consider to be the deeper and more meaningful question: Why do people run red lights in the first place?
On March 20, Sound Transit will officially inaugurate service at its new Mountlake Terrace highway station at 236th Street Southwest in Snohomish County. The new station, which sits in the Interstate 5 median, is one of the last capital projects planned as part of Sound Move – the regional transit system approved by voters in November 1996. It includes several bus bays, platforms for riders with weather shielding, and glass walls to reduce noise pollution. It also features a covered pedestrian bridge, built to connect the station to the third floor of the Mountlake Terrace Transit Center.
As activists and candidates are well aware, the moment one election cycle ends, another begins.
Only a few months have passed since the 2010 midterms, which featured an array of corporate-funded ballot measures, a hard-fought U.S. Senate race, and several closely contested U.S. House races.
Those irritated by insidious advertising, endless robocalls, and nonstop “horse race” coverage on cable news will be relieved to hear that 2011 looks like it will be one of the quietest election cycles in recent years, permitting at least a temporary reprieve before 2012 contests heat up.
At nearly every town hall, legislative action meeting, or budget question-and-answer session that I’ve been to in the last few months, someone has inevitably brought up the subject of tax loopholes, wanting to know why Gov. Chris Gregoire and legislative leaders aren’t talking about raising revenue by repealing outdated, unnecessary exemptions that no longer serve the public interest (or never did).
Every year, during the final weeks before January rolls around again, retailers and automakers go to great lengths to persuade us to buy as much stuff as our credit cards will possibly allow.
