I usually leave the talk radio blather watching to the experts, but I went on a hunch hunting trip this morning and had to share. Yesterday afternoon Dori was railing about how even though he liked Ron Sims’ idea for transportation in King County, he wouldn’t actually vote for a tax increase to support it….
Month: June 2006
Civic republican platform: participatory budgeting
In a response to Michael Tomasky’s essay on civic republicanism as a voice for Democrats, Brad Carson writes that we need to move beyond just rhetoric: The “common interest” is fine as a rhetorical ploy. Tomasky’s “common good” won’t be the Democrats’ grand narrative, though. Because, its linguistic utility notwithstanding, the “common good” lacks any…
Civic republican platform: participatory budgeting
Cross posted at Better Donkey In a response to Michael Tomasky’s essay on civic republicanism as a voice for Democrats, Brad Carson writes that we need to move beyond just rhetoric: The “common interest” is fine as a rhetorical ploy. Tomasky’s “common good” won’t be the Democrats’ grand narrative, though. Because, its linguistic utility notwithstanding,…
Another argument for civic republicanism
Washington Post: A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two. The comprehensive new study paints…
McGavick, Locke and the golden parachute
David’s question this afternoon about whether Safeco Shareholders are pissed about Mike(!) McGavick’s Golden Parachute reminded me of something that I noticed a couple of weeks ago. Gary Locke, our former Democratic governor… (you remember him, right?) has been on the Safeco board of directors since early 2005: Safeco’s board of directors has appointed former…
The initiative process isn’t the problem, Dunmire is the problem
Cross posted at Printer Democracy That the initiative process has been used in Washington in the past ten years to run rough-shod over state government’s finances isn’t evidence that the initiative system is broken, it is evidence that initiatives are the territory of the rich. Regular people, folks not like Michael Dunmire, don’t get their…
I’m always going to read Don Brunell’s column at the Vancouver Columbian
Because they allow comments immedialty following opinion pieces. And, not those cheapo haloscan comments either in a pop up window, but real in line comments. Don recently wrote a lame brain piece on how local communities should stand aside while telecoms lay down tracks. He used the Ashland, OR example to build up his straw…
MySpace as Civics Class
Cross posted at Better Donkey A while back I had an idea of creating a school based civics/democracy program using a social network like Myspace (withouth the iritating music though). My thought was that while kids aren’t familiar with the how to be a citizen (who among us is?), they do know how to work…
MySpace as Civics Class
A while back I had an idea of creating a school based civics/democracy program using a social network like Myspace (withouth the iritating music though). My thought was that while kids aren’t familiar with the how to be a citizen (who among us is?), they do know how to work in an online community. But,…