Posted Thu, Apr 26, 7:04 p.m.

Another great piece, and anything by Charles Bowden -- http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/11/big-government-big-fence/ Educate yourselves, Washingtonians -- http://www.hcn.org/issues/42.4/the-war-next-door/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C= Charles Bowden on The War Next Door Adam Smith's invisible hand meets magical realism on the border & Feeding that privatized prison system - this country's entire broken gulag loving policing state: http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/private-prison-corporations-are-slave-traders Private Prison ...

Posted Thu, Apr 26, 6:50 p.m.

Some of the biggest thugs in the business of industrial policing and the culture of little men with big guns, those BP guys. I spent years as a newspaper reporter and college educator along the 2,000 mile "tortilla curtain," La Frontera, the US-Mexico border. These fellows are unprofessional, sadists, and ...

Posted Thu, Apr 26, 4:45 p.m.

Cops walking the beat? Now that's an idea, but . . . .Seattle just got approval for flying those unmanned drones. Seems to be a win-win for SLU and Pioneer Square and those poor ERs dealing with busted noses, knife wounds and general alcohol-induced recreational fun. Imagine, that creative class ...

Posted Wed, Apr 18, 3:52 p.m.

This is the continual meat-grinder mentality of American legislators, privatizers and corporations -- hocking the community. The Jackson School needs more, not less -- as in, more programs, more participants, more public engagement scheme, more high stakes global justice teaching. This world is shaped more by other factors other than ...

Posted Tue, Apr 17, 10:27 a.m.

The funny stuff is coming out of Tenn., Texass, Dakotas, and to a state near you. And the candidates' (or former candidates') mouths. But, humor is a tough line to draw in an age of dour and brain dead America so tuned into iPods, Smart Phones, junk entertainment. Check out ...

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 8:46 p.m.

As in the pseudoscience of bloodletting, just so in the pseudoscience of city rebuilding and planning, years of learning and a plethora of subtle and complicated dogma have arisen on a foundation of nonsense. - Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961). You think these mayors ...

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 2:25 p.m.

When you do not pay taxes, and when your business is predicated on a US war machine paradigm, a big, fat, fancy party boat make more sense than not. Center for Tax Justice just came out with the 2011 tax dodgers award. Boeing made the list -- http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2012/04/big_no-tax_corps_just_keep_on_dodging.php from Daily ...

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 2:09 p.m.

Ahh, the great America quest for acceptance in the world of "creative writing junkies" judging the next great thing. As the writer here continues on, I'd advise her not to fear Seattle's 'creative class' underestimating good fiction or hyper-critiquing her work. I'd really not be so concerned about the vagaries ...

Posted Mon, Apr 16, 1:43 p.m.

Tax Day. Come join us at Denny Park. Then on to 5.5 percent federal taxes paying Amazon Dot Com for a pie eating contest. Below is the posting from Working Washington. Some of us think more drastic solutions are necessary for corporations gouging us, profitting on war, churning the fundementalism ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 10:07 a.m.

Ahh, Occupy is not going "home" because home is their communities. DOn't be too surprised that many "occupy" movements across this country HAVE given all of that above , and more. Join us. In people’s living rooms, in donated office spaces and in indoor parks, Occupy’s working groups are as ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 9:23 a.m.

Part Two -- Some in the crowd, during the public discussion, were concerned about what Amazon-NBBJ was doing to make the community around the proposed sites part of the plan. Pagnesh Parikh, an architect on the Design review Board, posited the questions about how NBBJ and Amazon intended to address ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 9:21 a.m.

Part One -- Jeff Bezos, Free Shipping, and forty Percent of On-line Retail Sales new buildings proposed for retailer's new campus digs Sometimes these land use, transportation, design review, and economic development meetings in Seattle make me feel as if I had just been pushed out of some policy wonk's ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 9:16 a.m.

Sociopathic tendancies, Corporations -- I was at that Design Review hearing dealing with Amazon's plans to infuse those workers, buildings and lovely strips of public green into the Denny Triangle. Lacking from the DesignReview Board? Backbone, thinking, and demands. NBBJ architects had heads scratched when they couldn't answer the questions ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 8:54 a.m.

Seattle University and Seattle City Hall -- You have until April 27 to see this show. Looking Into Light In 2009, more than 170,000 American families spent the night in a shelter—a 30% increase since 2007. Homeless families can be found in every state in our nation and in many ...

Posted Fri, Apr 6, 7:41 a.m.

Thursday -- SCCC meeting -- 3-4:30 -- to discuss more free speech infringements. Outcomes -- Students and faculty are fed up with more and more tweaks to campus expression. Possibilities -- More faculty, staff and students from SCCC opening up campus classes and space and their own sweat to help ...

Posted Wed, Apr 4, 11:15 a.m.

louploup -- Seems pretty delusional of Ruckelshaus to not know the history of the FBI. Or anything about its mandate under Hoover. Again, one of the books referenced can be Cliff Noted on today's Democracy Now -- sort of an important date: the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. 44 ...

Posted Sat, Mar 31, 10:24 a.m.

I'd recommend reading Chris Hedges, The Death of the Liberal Class, and Juan Gonzales' News for All the People to get some insight into the Fourth Estate's sordid history in this country: http://www.realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/6241/ And, you probably have this link: http://mediamatters.org/research/ Luckily, truthdig, Nation of Change, Mother Jones are also alternative ...

Posted Sat, Mar 31, 9:11 a.m.

Indeed, northender, I have students going into $40K or $60K debt, or more, to go to a decent college for a graduate degree in both a subject and with heavy doses of work in psychology, curriculum planning, special education, English as a Second/Other Language. You know, putting in the work ...

Posted Fri, Mar 30, 6:03 p.m.

A town with critical low or moderate level rentals not able to think maybe this building has a purpose, a real community purpose? A town that loves that green washing grin, but can't fathom the "greenest building is already built axiom" employed by many great energy-smart planners and architects? No ...

Posted Fri, Mar 30, 12:58 p.m.

I'd recommend you read the WA Department of Early Learning's work in this regard, and it's not just parenting that puts Zero to 6- or 7-year-olds at risk: Here's some good reading: http://www.del.wa.gov/publications/research/ At this point in time, it's way too simplistic to blame kids and keep them from having ...

Posted Fri, Mar 30, 8:08 a.m.

Aspirations are interesting pies in the sky for politicians. Like Bush and his cronies, by 2014, under NCLB, all students should be proficient in reading. Sounds like saying, “After trillions of dollars spent, on the War on Drugs, there will be no illegal drug use in America by the same ...

Posted Thu, Mar 29, 2:48 p.m.

Pepper2000 -- There are some amazing heroes working in government in the Nixon era, to include Daniel Ellsberg, and, a politician: Another hero in the Watergate cover-up is none other than late Senator Robert C. Byrd. In the 2006 West Virginia Law Review, a good account of Byrd's investigation shows ...

Posted Thu, Mar 29, 11:18 a.m.

Connecting Ruckelshaus' career to his other work in the world, and, giving readers some book titles, including one on the FBI, and, parsing out one quote passage from the writer's article here at Crosscut, none of that is ad hominem. I think Mr. Ruckelshaus got his platform for expression just ...

Posted Thu, Mar 29, 9:23 a.m.

Oh yeah, Source Watch: After his second stint at the agency he formed a consulting firm called William D. Ruckelshaus Associates, which was then hired by the Coalition on Superfund, an organization seeking to weaken the Superfund law by absolving polluters of strict legal liability for their actions. The coalition ...

Posted Thu, Mar 29, 9:21 a.m.

"Big money wants control; it's as simple as that." — Thomas Kimball (1991) Former President of the National Wildlife Federation "[T]he master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 8:51 p.m.

More cool things happening in Seattle, tied to modes of transportation other than auto! South Park Neighborhoods on Foot Walking Map Final Community Meeting Tomorrow If you live, work, or play in South Park join Feet First and provide your feedback to the very first walking map of South Park. ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 6:20 p.m.

Ironically, my background includes five years just outside Paris when my old man was stationed in France with the US Army -- years ago, 1960-66. Then, planning courses, oh, from 2001 to 2010, all the while being a journalist who ended up traveling and writing about those travels. Canada, Mexico, ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 5:09 p.m.

Ahh, we in the bottom of the 99 percent will have some difficulty "getting used to it." I teach many places with my four college degrees and three decades instructing. Freeway flyers we are called -- adjunct professors. So, I pay for $8 a gallon gas while Gates and Company, ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 4:47 p.m.

[CONTINUED} The security at the Foundation would not accept the signed letter asking the Gates Foundation to divest from Monsanto. I talked with several Foundation employees – researchers with higher degrees. They said that Foundation's policy employees is to “not let us engage in any dialogue on any issues of ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 3:23 p.m.

I think the government made it entirely easy for the Auto Nation to progress quite effectively since the 1950s, using tax dollars, eminent domain, tons of bailout money, unending tax abatements, and facilitating the death of decent inter-urban buses, regional buses and decent passenger rails. I believe population growth, and ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 3:15 p.m.

Worth a Dam -- Here is some stuff on The Lands Council in Spokane and beaver restoration. http://www.downtoearthnw.com/stories/2011/mar/22/beaver-fever/ http://www.downtoearthnw.com/stories/2011/mar/27/beaver-gurus/ And, an interview of one of your own in Martinez -- http://www.downtoearthnw.com/stories/2011/may/10/environmentalism-dying/ http://www.downtoearthnw.com/stories/2011/may/10/environmentalism-dying/?audio

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 11:18 a.m.

Wow, that Amazon.dot love from Crosscut. Another take? http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2009/03/the_new_scrooge.single.html Their giving campaigns are just $9.99 and free shipping inspired. ______________________________________________________ And Amazon's vulture publishing schemes -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/27/authors-guild-amazon-andrew-wylie _________________________________ And utilization of sweatshops -- Check out Mother Jones this month, and, I Was a Warehouse Wage Slave My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 10:58 a.m.

Another take on Gates Foundation and that essential field trip: When A Non-Profit Gets In Bed With The Enemy: Monsanto's Chemical War on the World It's huge – asymmetrical, shaped like two fat slugs meeting in on the same cornstalk at their mouths. The benefactors call it a campus. Some ...

Posted Wed, Mar 28, 10:32 a.m.

Hmm -- So many really important stories out here in the Seattle-Puget Sound area. Missed by Crosscut. Makes some sense, though . . . . I'm really not sure what this on-line "news source" is shooting for? everything from a shallow political spin? Seattle Correctness? Let's see -- a. 1,500 ...

Posted Tue, Mar 27, 12:58 p.m.

Sure, WSJ and this one lone prof. Fair, balanced, and equivocating. Hmm, 7.3 billion in Texas damages to farms, ranches, due to, what? Computer modeling? I'll stick to objective sources -- That’s the conclusion of a major new analysis of the scientific evidence in Nature Climate Change, “A decade of ...

Posted Tue, Mar 20, 7:32 a.m.

Interesting that Right Livelihood Award Laureates are working on fighting nuclear enegy and nuclear weapons around the world -- just recently at Jeju Island Naval base construction site in Korea. "Anti-nuclear protestors cut through the fence and entered the construction site on Friday, March 9. The activists, among them Angie ...

Posted Thu, Mar 8, 10:02 a.m.

Shoot, I spent the last five days in Olympia, and the children Seattle supposedly got rid of are right there, in the Capitol, running scared of Head Start workers, educators, activists, and others wondering why there is an attack on children vis-a-vis education cuts. Even the Wells Fargo lobbyist ran ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 7:25 p.m.

Heck, here's something from the BFF email exchange: The Beacon Food Forest has truly become a "beacon" and the world is watching. The attention has brought in literally hundreds of new contacts and possible volunteers. Emails of support and encouragement are coming in from around the USA, Australia, Africa, European ...

Posted Tue, Mar 6, 7:22 p.m.

Absolutely, CommonSense 1, I've eaten (and grown mulberries in El Paso, Texas). Look, some of us aren't wall flowers or web crawlers. I've eaten mulberries in Mexico, in Vietnam, in France, and near, Rice, Washington, at a sustainable farm. That being said, my old man was in US Army, and ...

Posted Sun, Mar 4, 3:48 p.m.

Thankfully, some of us who went through graduate planning schools and worked in neighborhood planning as volunteers, we understand that a good city plans for the least capable of deploying their disposable income to live a decent life. Older people with physical challenges and children who are dependent upon adults ...

Posted Sun, Mar 4, 10:51 a.m.

What was transformational for many subjugated by the British Petroleum felony was interestingly creative for an Evergreen College graduate, farmer, filmmaker and, now, an environmental specialist for the Upper Columbia United Tribes, Marc Gauthier. Marc went to the Gulf on a shoe-string budget and just wanted to use his skills ...

Posted Thu, Mar 1, 10:30 a.m.

a. An emerging body of evidence shows that, as is intuitively obvious and commonsensical, much more than smarts is required for success in life. b. Cognitive skills measured by achievement tests are important but so are the socio-emotional skills often called character traits: - Motivation - Sociability; ability to work ...

Posted Thu, Mar 1, 10:28 a.m.

Let's see, Washington State has set up a Department of Early Learning for many good reasons, some of which have much to do with how quickly America is splitting into two America's -- the very rich and upper middle class and the divide over to the poor and lower economic ...

Posted Tue, Feb 28, 8:57 p.m.

GaryP -- You probably have this one under your belt -- add to the list of human exploiters many more/many more of the companies that just keep adding to the planned and perceived obsolescence junk "we all just have to buy to keep this growth economy humming," and they -- ...

Posted Tue, Feb 28, 5:39 p.m.

.... the suburban poor population more than doubled during that time. The recession merely served to accelerate the trend, as suburbs added 3.4 million poor from 2007 to 2010—1.4 million more poor individuals than cities. http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2011/0922_metro_poverty_berube_kneebone.aspx or....... Racially Exclusive Suburbs Across U.S. Dubbed the New 'Whitopia' Some of the fastest-growing ...

Posted Tue, Feb 28, 5:15 p.m.

Microsoft is god -- from supporting Franken-crops -- GMOs or genetically engineered crops -- to loving that geo-engineering blues, i.e., turning on and off the planet's systems using geo-engineering like iron shavings in the seas or massive pollution plants spewing out heavy smoke to cool the earth -- to pushing ...

Posted Tue, Feb 28, 4:32 p.m.

Wow – All the research, evidence and common sense show that suburbs everywhere else – think Sunbelt States – are struggling for obvious reasons. Think poverty, housing stock broken, bruised, abused. Think the poor moving in with two or more families habitating together under one Leave it to Beaver roof. ...

Posted Sat, Feb 18, 8:44 a.m.

Trendy? Unlikely to succeed? Like the trend to plant trees in Kenya, throughout the world? Like the gardens the Germans have along the railroad tracks? Trendy is a dead-pan word, applied to incite, what? Disregard? Fear? Superficiality? Food Forest = It's permaculture, old school agriculture that should come back into ...

Posted Fri, Feb 17, 7:37 p.m.

Vampire Hedge Funds Are Sucking Greece Dry If Goldman Sachs is a vampire squid, as Matt Taibbi so aptly named it, then hedge funds are like piranhas or sharks, eager to strip the financial carcass to the bone. Check out Taibbi over at Rolling Stone, and Joshua Holland at Alternet. ...

Posted Fri, Feb 17, 2:26 p.m.

The real compelling articles are tied to embedded slavery, embedded carbon around many companies, but one big one, the Foxconn operation, with more than 1.2 million enslaved folk working for the i-Industry in China, against their wills & the John Robbins one, right after Valentine's Day, ahh: Then's the Is ...

Posted Fri, Feb 17, 11:36 a.m.

Again, The Death of the Liberal Class by Chris Hedges explains the greenie weenie syndrome and why dour democrats have no intestines and why lobotomized liberals love their Suburus. As an educator who got put in jail alongside priests protesting NAFTA in El Paso, blocking the international bridge with several ...

Posted Thu, Feb 16, 11:45 a.m.

Ahh, thank goodness for Real Change News -- we covered this project way early, during my first few weeks living in Sad Seattle, last summer, 2011, having moved from Spokane after 10 years working as a community college teacher, activist, urban planner, and radio show host. http://www.realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/6289/ Man, on my ...