Some public officials in Mason County, Washington, want to get rid of their petty criminals by sending them to their neighbors. Under a proposed county ordinance, people arrested for crimes like public drunkenness, malicious mischief, and theft would have the charges dropped in exchange for leaving [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Washington’
June 19th, 2024 - 10:41 pm § in Law and Courts
A Washington county wants to send their criminals to you
Semi Bird takes flight on Trump conviction
Misipati Semi Bird (photo, left) wants to be Washington’s next governor. But the Benton County GOP chair and former school board member (profiled here) won’t be, despite an attention-grabbing name that makes you think of a bird with one wing. First he’d have to defeat popular forme[...]
May 21st, 2024 - 7:14 pm § in Economics, Environment
Why Washington’s natural gas law won’t save the planet
New restrictions on natural gas use in Washington State were signed into law by Gov. Jay Inlsee in April 2024 (see story here). Democrats, Republicans, progressives, and the building trades council (a mouthpiece for developers) disagree on what the law means. It’s confusing, because after fail[...]
College degrees divide Washington’s voters
That’s a loaded question, and the answer offered in this post won’t cover all the bases, and certainly isn’t definitive. This post focuses on a Seattle Times article (read it here) that’s based on the results of an Elway poll of Washington voters and another one funded by a w[...]
Can Tiffany Smiley get 44% of the U.S. Senate vote?
One of Washington’s U.S. Senate seats is on the November 2022 ballot, and Tiffany Smiley is the GOP nominee. She was more or less anointed in the primary; all the other entries were nobodies, and none got 10% of her votes. She’s a political nobody, too, having never run for any public of[...]
America, the tribal society
Politics, a WSU professor says, is “not about the facts or any sort of reality, it’s about group identity.” Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat, a longtime observer of Washington politics, agrees. He says, “Social or cultural sorting is what drives elections; policy stands, not so muc[...]
April 20th, 2022 - 5:11 pm § in Donald Trump, Politics
Joe Crackpot for Congress
Rep. Jaime Herrera-Butler (R-WA) probably will be re-elected. Age 41, now serving her 7th term in Congress, Herrera-Butler’s never had a “real” job. She’s a career politician, of the sort wingnuts want to “term limit.” They have another reason for term-limiting he[...]
A simple answer to vote suppression
GOP legislatures are scrambling to restrict voting rights. In Arizona, “Republicans have introduced a bill that would … [also] allow the state legislature to reject election results” (see story here). (That’s not all. “The people who took video of police killing George [...]
December 5th, 2021 - 1:48 am § in Politics
Washington redistricting probably won’t change much
Every 10 years, coinciding with the federal population census, Washington redraws its legislative and U.S. House district boundaries — like other states. In Washington, this is done by a 4-member commission (2 Democrats, 2 Republicans) appointed by the legislature. If they don’t agree on[...]
May 13th, 2021 - 12:01 am § in Politics
Washington State outlaws displaying guns in public buildings and at protests
“Openly carrying guns and other weapons are now prohibited at the Washington state Capitol and public protests statewide, under a measure signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Jay Inslee,” the Associated Press reported on Wednesday, May 12, 2021. Read story here. “The new law, which &#[...]