Posts published in “Issue: September 2018”

The Thurston Conservation District (TCD, District) has been the locus of an ideological fight in Thurston County that lumbers on. Last year, the District lost a third of its funding when three board members (including the Chair) failed to vote at a critical meeting. Chairman Johnson was quoted in the Olympian saying the revenue loss could be viewed as “taxpayers saving nearly $600,000 that would have gone to overcompensated bureaucrats sucking the public teat.”

A pattern of conduct by the Chair and another Board member eventually provoked complaints of disruptive behavior serious enough to merit investigation by the state. The loss of funding has led to the departure of staff, as well as the sacrifice of important functions of the District. At this time, only 7 of 15 employees remain, and many programs have been eliminated. “Staff is drowning in workload,” says Executive Director Sarah Moorehead.

The Washington State Conservation Commission (SCC) that oversees the TCD recently completed its investigation of the District and recommended possible removal of two board members—Eric Johnson and Richard Mankamyer.

The investigation found that the two board members engaged in acts that constitute neglect of duty and malfeasance. A hearing to consider the report and the two board members’ response will be scheduled at a special meeting of the SCC on August 29. That meeting is open to the public....

Congress votes $77 billion increase in Defense Dept Budget In April 2017, Works in Progress reported on Trump’s proposal to increase the annual Defense Budget from $582.7 to $639 billion. The bill passed in December of 2017, increasing the budget by $53.9 billion. This past June, the Senate voted to…

A mother whale bearing its dead child plies the local waters. Why does the image get to us so? It is surely a poignant one but its impact on us is something more than maudlin. It is a tragic image of Shakespearean proportions. It is also disturbing. Like the homeless person on the street corner that stares mumbling at you through the glass of your car. The image can haunt the rest of your day with a voice somewhere uttering, ‘is there something really wrong happening here?’...

The contrast between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren First things first: Should the Left participate in bourgeois democratic elections? Yes—for the following reasons. 1) Parliamentarianism is a living, politically alive form in the functioning of American democracy. Although I agree with Borges that in the next life we should commit…

The view from the Green Party It’s no secret we need a better voting system. The US uses the plurality system, where the party with the most votes wins, even if it’s not a majority but only a plurality (where the winner gets less than half the votes). In the…

The house across the street from me has a big sign in the window that says Water is Life. I see it every day coming and going, and despite being awash in news reports of record droughts and mega-fires, rising sea levels and shrinking aquifers, empty reservoirs in Capetown and poisoned water pipes in Flint, I haven’t usually given it a second thought. Not until...

How some states work to take away the right to vote Purges: A Growing Threat to the Right to Vote is a newly-released report by the Brennan Center for Justice. The report comes during a wave of efforts to keep people from being able to register to vote; and to…

Officials in some states are determined to make voting a complicated task—purging voter rolls, reducing the number and open hours of polling places, prescribing specific IDs etc. Not the Pacific Northwest.  With all mail ballots, voting is easy though it might have lost an important contribution to civic life represented…

(Ed. note: this is an excerpt from Noam Chomsky speaking on Democracy Now!) Take the issue of interference in our pristine elections. Did the Russians interfere in our elections? An issue of overwhelming concern in the media. But it’s really a joke.  First of all, if you’re interested in foreign…

On August 21, men and women in prisons across the US declared a nationwide strike to take place from that date through September 9. Their demands are for humane living conditions, access to rehabilitation, sentencing reform and the end of modern day slavery. Prisoners in at least 17 states agreed to withhold their work; to engage in peaceful sit-ins, to boycott prison stores, or to...

The Northwest Detention Center (NWDC) is located on a Superfund site in the tideflats of Tacoma. It is privately owned by the GEO Group —the second largest private prison contractor in the US—and can hold up to 1,575 people. All are imprisoned here to await a court hearing that will decide whether they will be deported or granted asylum or possibly some other legal status...

“Get back. We are going to hit the center.” “All our work was there, we lived there, our memories were there,” said Idrees Talib, Palestinian theater director. “I gave my colleagues some hope that a change would happen, but I don’t know what I can say to them after the…

The 2018 Middle Eastern Film Festival offers an opportunity to experience works of cinema that diverge from the mainstream.  This year’s festival presents three engaging feature films, two of which are animated.  All three films will be shown October 6 at Capitol Theater in downtown Olympia.  An exhibit of Yemen-focused photographs will occupy the mezzanine along with a number of children’s activities.

The festival’s goal is to expose the South Sound community to Middle Eastern films and multimedia artworks, as well as raise funds for the Shuruq IV: Olympia Arab Festival—coming to the Olympia Center on October 6....

Residents of the Applehill neighborhood in NE Olympia were shocked when we learned through social media that the City was proposing to establish a legal encampment for the unhoused in our neighborhood, along with an “Urban Rest Stop” that would serve a larger number of homeless.  We quickly organized...

Labor Day – 3 September 2018 The first Labor Day was celebrated 136 years ago on a Tuesday, September 5, 1882 at a time when working people took their grievances to the street, and their organizations embodied that spirit. Rank and file workers have begun to remind us that through…

This month’s interview on “Glen’s Parallax Perspectives” will inform, inspire and motivate us to urge local our governments to do a better job of protecting the environment. People everywhere really do care about the environment, but environmental problems persist all the way from the global level down to the local…

Sometime between the years 2040 and 2050, the demographics of the US will have shifted to such an extent that seventy percent of the people will live in just fifteen states. Put another way, thirty percent of the population will live in thirty-five states....

In the debates over the causes of wage stagnation, the decline in union power has not received nearly as much attention as globalization, technological change, and the slowdown in Americans’ educational attainment.

Unions, especially in industries and regions where they are strong, help boost the wages...

The Lewis County Coalition to Abolish Nuclear Weapons wrote a Resolution asking the Lewis County Board of County Commissioners to support the abolition of nuclear weapons. We asked them to place it on the agenda of a regular meeting in order to have a public discussion on...

Fundraiser for Capital Homecare Cooperative September 3, 5 to 8 PM at Pizzeria La Gitana For caregivers, care receivers, and interested people. Buy some pizza (20% donated to the cause) and connect with other caregivers. What’s Blooming in Budd Citizen monitoring of Budd Inlet, to identify plankton and algae affecting…