Washington State has a law that limits the amount of money a school district can raise through property taxes. The Seattle School District has already hit this lid, but the Seattle Teachers Unions is considering Running a city wide initiative to raise more money anyway.

What the teachers hope to do is avoid the law by raising the money through the city and then having the city transfer the money to the school district.

At this point, it sounds like the politicians seem a little skeptical, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

It appears as though our mighty President's approval ratings have hit its lowest level ever. Only 34% of Americans approve of the job George Bush is doing, and perhaps more interestingly, most Americans now say the president does not care much about people like themselves (51% think he doesn't care).

If this is his approval rating at home, I wonder what it is abroad? I guess thats why our fearless leader is bringing about 5,000 people to protect him during his upcoming visit to India.

The Seattle times is reporting that several prominent Democratic senators (i.e Kerry and Kennedy) have called for a filibuster of Samuel Alito's Supreme Court nomination.

If you think Murray and Cantwell should join them in this effort, please give the call.

• Contact Senator Murray
• Contact Senator Cantwell

A new Zogby poll released yesterday found that 52% of Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge's approval Fourty-Three percent did not want the president impeached.

According to the guy who commisioned the poll, Bob Fertik co-found of AfterDowningStreet.org, "The American people are not buying Bush's outrageous claim that he has the power to wiretap American citizens without a warrant. Americans believe terrorism can be fought without turning our own government into Big Brother"

Lets hope he's right.

I guess Republicans finally realized that Tom Delay was giving politicians a bad name.

Paul Berendt, Chair of the Washington State Democratic Party, has resigned. Your can read his letter of resignation below.

An Arrest warrant has been issued for Tom DeLay. While his lawyer called this "a matter of routine", DeLay has been charged with conspiracy and money laundering in a campaign finance scheme and could face up to life in prison if convicted.

Various news organizations are quoting former first lady Barbara Bush, while touring the hurricane relief centers with her husband George Bush, as saying This is working very well for them.

In a segment on American Public Media's "Marketplace" at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to Houston, Barbara Bush said:

Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston.

What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.

I stole this from Operation Yellow Elephant.

I think this speaks for itself.

A group of people for Tennessee just figured out why the war in Iraq isn’t going as smoothly as most of us her in the U.S. would like.

The Rev. Fred Phelps, founder of Westboro Baptist in Kansas, contends that American soldiers are being killed in Iraq as vengeance from God for protecting a country that harbors gays. The church, which is not affiliated with a larger denomination, is made up mostly of Phelps' children, grandchildren and in-laws.
The church members carried signs and shouted things such as "God hates fags" and "God hates you.

Stories like this make me wish the Department of Defense would expand its global fight against extremism.

The Hill (A newspaper for and about the Congress) reports: that in an early poll Senator Catwell leads her presumed GOP opponent, Mike McGavick, by eight points.

Honestly, I would like to see it a little bit larger, but I'll take eight points. It will be interesting to see what happens once the rest of the State knows who Mike McGavick is, and has some kind of an opinion of the former insurance executive.

Here is Washinton State polling topline results.

The PI's Joe Connelly has a great article on what Republicans, many of whom were elected by criticizing the excesses of government, have been doing for the Country since they took over government.

The next time you hear someone talk about accountability and the excesses of government, remind them of what their Republican elected officials are doing for our State.

What's amazing, however, is how the Republicans have expanded all the excesses they howled at when Democrats ran the show in D.C. Examples:

• The K-Street Project: Since gaining control of Congress in 1994, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill have pressured major D.C. lobbying firms to hire only Republicans and not to employ Democrats or contribute to their causes.
  Home to many trade and lobbying groups, K Street was a bipartisan employer. But House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has made partisan hiring the price of access.
  A conservative D.C. operative, Grover Nordquist, posts information about lobbyists' contributions on the Web site of his Americans for Tax Reform.

Whether you love it or hate it I-901, the smoking ban, is officially on the ballot

Sponsors of Initiative 901 submitted a total of 321,615. Far more than the 224,880 valid voter signatures needed to make the ballot.

Smoke free clothes here we come!

Sound Transit's Light Rail system is Seattle's first serious attempt at tackling our transportation problem. But, instead of making the tough decisions and building a truly effective system, the Sound Transit Board is planning to vote to kill the First Hill Station tonight.

First Hill — home to Seattle University, two major hospitals, 22,000 jobs and 6,000 households — has more people (24,685 per square mile) than any other neighborhood in the city. More people live and work on First Hill than anywhere else in King County or Washington state.

A year ago, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels said it would be short-sighted to not build there. Sound Transit's has said in the past that building a First Hill station would "increase ridership from 27,000 to 60,000".

Seems like common sense that any effective mass transit system would stop there, right?

What can I do?

Board Member Richard McIver is leading the charge to save the First Hill station. This vote is tonight, so please take 2 minutes out of your day and copy and paste the following text and email it to the addresses below!

I am very please and excited to announce that Music for America has picked Seattle as one of three cities to focus their initial grassroots efforts.

What this means is more local MFA shows in the area, help from MFA on local issues, a new burst of energy in the local political scene, and a new Seattle blog. That’s right, MFA has just started a blog for the Seattle community (http://www.musicforamerica.org/washington).

The Northwest Progressive Institute make a great point about I-912 (the anti-gas tax initiative)

Basically it boils down to this. Be careful what you wish for, Eastern Washington. You may want to repeal this gas tax because you don’t want to pay for the states' critical transportation infrastructure in the western part of the state, but don’t forget that Western Washington sends far more money to Eastern Washington than Eastern Washington send back.

And most importantly,

The wise realize that our government provides many valuable services - services that we cannot ourselves provide - and that tax dollars pay for these services. Therefore, taxes are wise and useful investments - much sounder investments then any investment in a stock market exchange.

The unwise simply believe that government wastes their money, and they don't want to give "that government" a single cent. The unwise are shortsighted.

We cannot allow the unwise to spread false misinformation about the gas tax increase. We must stand up for our good values: a stronger America, a better future, a more effective government, broad prosperity, and mutual responsibility.

We have a challenge. Let's work to defeat Initiative 912.

Evergreen Politics has a great interview with Lisa Brown Washington State's Senate Majoriy Leader. Its well worth the read.

This is where a breakdown between rural and urban voters shows up and is one of our biggest challenges as Democrats. I am the only Democratic Senator in Eastern Washington and there are only 4 Democrats from Eastern Washington and we are all from the Spokane area. There is a real decline in people in Eastern Washington who identify as Democrats and environmental legislation, particularly land use and natural resource regulation, is at the crux of that decline. This stems from the changing nature of the economy. Rural Washington used to be natural resource-based economy. That is changing and the change brings a lot of dislocation for folks. This is at the core of the differences between rural and urban voters

At this time, people often get their information and form their views based on limited sources. So they don’t see the whole story, as in the anti-tax initiative I mentioned before. There is a lot of skepticism of people in power, which is positive on the one hand but also limited. A lot of people on the street think that politicians waste their money. They ask only, “What’s in it for me?” This attitude makes it hard to govern well for the longer term. I don’t have answers, just questions.

It looks as the war drags on, and military recruitment continues to slump, that the Military is now going to build a database of high school and college students (as young as 16 years old) to help identify possible recruits.

I guess filling out the paperwork that prevents recruiters from going through you school records may no longer be enough.

And if you don't like privacy, you'll really like this, the Washington Post is reporting,

The system also gives the Pentagon the right, without notifying citizens, to share the data for numerous uses outside the military, including with law enforcement, state tax authorities and Congress.

Maybe that’s why the Republicans are to cutting student aid and get rid of affirmative action, its not that Republicans want to keep people down, its just

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting that

The income gap between the rich and the rest of the US population has become so wide, and is growing so fast, that it might eventually threaten the stability of democratic capitalism itself

The Fed chief than added that the 80 percent of the workforce represented by nonsupervisory workers has recently seen little, if any, income growth at all. The top 20 percent of supervisory, salaried, and other workers has.
The result of this, said Greenspan, is that the US now has a significant divergence in the fortunes of different groups in its labor market. "As I've often said, this is not the type of thing which a democratic society - a capitalist democratic society - can really accept without addressing," Greenspan told the congressional hearing

During a hearing on the renewal of the Patriot Act, The the Republican chair walked out of the meeting, turning the microphones off, leaving Democrats screaming into the microphone.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler D-N.Y., protested, raising his voice as his microphone went off, came back on, and went off again.

"We are not besmirching the honor of the United States, we are trying to uphold it," he said.

Democrats asked for the hearing, the 11th the committee has held on the act since April, saying past hearings had been too slanted toward witnesses who supported the law. The four witnesses were from groups, including Amnesty International USA and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, that have questioned the constitutionality of some aspects of the act, which allows law enforcement greater authority to investigate suspected terrorists.