Category: Uncategorized

In Washington state law, there is a section that is unenforceable and takes a clear shot at tribal treaty rights. In addition to telling congress that steelhead should be a nationwide gamefish, RCW 77.110 declares that treaties should not be taken into consideration when managing natural resources. And now HB 1172 looks like after more than…

Or, how did a socialist candidate win the most conservative precinct in Thurston County? There is a lot of talk about the just now starting civil war within the ranks or Republicans. My favorite example of this is the King County Republican chair demanding the Mainstream Republicans remove “Republican” from their name. But however this…

1. I got into a discussion this afternoon with a local, talking about the state of the Olympian and whether it would be worthy of support if it changed its corporate structure to a non-profit. Here’s the original argument: I don’t disagree about local news being produced by non-profits. Great idea. The Olympian is the…

Grand Mound from highway to today: It wasn’t a member of the Thurston County commission, but there was a county commissioner at a recent hearing on exempt well bills last month. One of our commissioners was there too, but the Mason County commissioner said (and I’m paraphrasing) that the county’s economy needed a boost. What…

Rob Richards has a lot of reforms he’d like to see in Olympia, city government structure wise. Some of his ideas are pretty interesting (like hard wiring advisory boards into city decision making), but one of them seriously caught my interest. Rob said that we should elect city council-members by district, rather than at-large. He…

The history goes that if not for another community down on the Columbia River, Lacey would be called Woodland, which was the original name Lacey-folks put down on an application for a post office. This was decades before Lacey actually became a city, but post office names usually reflected some sort of area identity. But,…

Cliff Mass, simply by moving the starting point further back to October, says it is really just the second wettest. But, as a history person, I am going to pick on the use of the phrase “in Seattle History.” So, obviously, you know where I’m going. Record keeping on this sort of thing started in…

1. The West Side pollinator pub crawl is a lot less exciting than it should be. But, if you’re into that sort of thing, I mean, it seems like it would be okay. 2. Janine points out that sometimes people straight up buy time on local websites. And, as a reminder, I write (and get…

Unless someone makes a move for a vote among the PCOs tomorrow night, it looks like the Thurston County Dems are leaving Joe Hyer on the list for Thurston County Treasurer: For immediate release2/21/2010 7:00 PM From: Jim Cooper, Chair, Thurston County DemocratsContact info: 360-451-xxxx or jimcooper@thurstondemocrats.org We support Councilmember Joe Hyer as a friend…

We were on our way to dinner tonight, and thought it was strange that dozens of “No on R 71” folks were out in force on the westside of Olympia (a pretty liberal part of even Olympia). But, after reading this it make a lot of sense. Via facebook: Action Alert: We need more sign-wavers…