Posted Thu, Dec 16, 8 a.m.

Perhaps when voters reject taxes at the ballot box or when they sign a Tim Eymann initiative they aren's saying anything about the state's budget. Linking rejection of the soda tax or any other state revenue plan to a rejection of state programs for education, the poor or the elderly ...

Posted Tue, Nov 2, 9:20 a.m.

Polls, polls, more polls, take your pick. Yes, national polls show that independent voters are ready to make a change, but that's where the ironies begin. In polls that measure the general aroma of parties, Republicans rank very low, much lower than Democrats. When asked about issues, voters and likely ...

Posted Mon, Nov 1, 5:10 p.m.

Dogs love trucks. Republicans love the Rasmussen Poll & Survey USA. Dems love Gallup. And all politicians love spin. Polls have been all over the map in this state. If you go by the numbers Chris' 'rout' looks more like a rollback of big Democratic gains in the past two ...

Posted Thu, Oct 28, 5:27 p.m.

National polling experts are warning not to take any creedence in any single poll, particularly in US House races. There have been too many outliers. Polls, they say, should be only by analyzed in the aggregate, then factoring in the past accuracy rate of each poll. A national polling analyst ...

Posted Thu, Oct 28, 9:40 a.m.

Besides liquor taxes, does the state make a profit from liquor stores after paying overhead? Back in the day, profits another revenue stream for state coffers.

Posted Wed, Oct 27, 8:29 a.m.

One reason the state has remained in the liquor business is that on a day-to-day basis most Washingtonians don't give it much of a thought. I don't have the statistics at my fingertips, but total sales of spirits have dropped precipitously from levels of 30-40 years ago when a more ...

Posted Fri, Oct 8, 9:06 a.m.

One has to read polls very carefully this year. Real Clear Politics seems to aggregating Rasmussen polls at par this year while many political pros are handicapping it with a 3-5% lean to the GOP. It's methodology is falling out of favor and has difficulty getting a representative sample.

Posted Sat, Oct 2, 11:38 a.m.

National media and political experts are now warning that you have to be very careful reading political polls. There are good polls and there are bad ones. Some have a political skew depending on who commissions them and some are just plain sloppy. Because this will probably be a low-turnout ...

Posted Thu, Sep 30, 12:23 p.m.

I do have one major problem with the Seattle Times reporting on this story. Given the serious nature of their charges, the Times should have gotten a reaction from the Senator herself, or maybe, a press aide from Murray's senate staff. A campaign staffer would have no idea about the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 4, 5:16 p.m.

More important than whether a news website allows anonymous posts is whether or not the forums or reader reaction posts are moderated and too what extent. At one time one Seattle daily newspaper allowed staff bloggers to cull comments that were off-point, repetitive, meaningless and hateful. At the same time ...

Posted Mon, May 31, 9:05 p.m.

Dino will probably be a a fine Republican 'establishment' type candidate. Similar to the kickoff of this senatorial campaign, Rossi relies on broad conservative boiler-plate answers. I wonder if the local news media more closely question his views this time around or let the generalities go by.

Posted Mon, Dec 7, 9:17 a.m.

Hearst Newspapers development of this new digital news delivery platform might have meant more to the Seattle market when it had the full muscle of staff of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer behind it. Granted the plucky, but very small, staff of Seattlepi.com is keeping it's head above water on the headline ...

Posted Tue, Nov 3, 10:17 a.m.

The battle cyclo-cross in West Seattle is so reminiscent of the conflicts over the use of Discovery Park that it should spark a conversation over the purpose of Seattle Parks. Are the parks meant for all citizens of the city or are they just green bits of nature for the ...

Posted Wed, Aug 26, 8:22 a.m.

Nice compilation of statistics, but I have one quibble. Real life stories I have run across indicate that the rapid population growth in the fax exurbs is simply because housing costs are cheaper, not because of anri-density ethic. Fill-in housing in the city and close suburbs is still beyond the ...

Posted Mon, Apr 20, 9:06 a.m.

In case it wasn't pointed out before, the UW athletic department, including the salaries of coaches and staff, is not supported by state taxpayers, unlike the other colleges in the state. It is supported by ticket sales and private donors. The bulk of the costs of the renovation of Husky ...

Posted Tue, Apr 14, 9:23 a.m.

Since a spurt of growth under progressive Republican leadership in the mid-1960s, the state legislature has undervalued higher education. Our number of enrolled college students per capita the last couple of decades rates with the deep south. Because the state is an attractive place to live, businesses here have thrived ...

Posted Sun, Feb 15, 10:21 a.m.

Gregory: I think my point is that sooner or later good journalism get down to doing lots of hard work -- setting yourself aside, calling people up, keeping contacts and studying your beat -- rather than just repeating rumors that fit a political bent or pulling stuff out of your ...

Posted Fri, Jan 30, 9:34 a.m.

Despite the mystique of the news business, most of the work of daily newspapers is the simple business of meat-and-potatoes journalism – going to meetings, monitoring government, writing stories about people in our community and, on a good day, exposing something that has gone amiss. And all of this needs ...