The Politics of Self-Destruction. Author Thomas Frank on why the working-class sided against itself

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Locked Cabinets

By Cydney Gillis | January 31, 2007

Guild fights city over access to police-misconduct files

The police are headed for a showdown with the citizens of Seattle. But this time around, it won’t be on the streets of Seattle. It will be in a state labor court.

That’s where the Seattle Police Officers Guild and the City Attorney’s Office will face off April 24 in a case that will decide what rights the police department’s civilian review board has and what information it gets to see — a far-reaching dispute that pits a worker’s right to bargain against the citizenry’s right to hold police accountable. ...

Gone Nuclear

By Cydney Gillis | January 24, 2007

Repeat protesters get harsher treatment for actions at Kitsap submarine base

They expected to get arrested. They didn’t expect to spend a day and a half in jail.

The three unlucky demonstrators who blocked the road last summer at the naval base in Bangor, Wash., say it’s part of a crackdown on people who protest the nuclear weapons carried by Trident submarines.

The protesters, however, plan to use their misfortune to make a point: In a trial that started this week in Port Orchard, they intend to turn the tables and put Trident on trial. ...

Insider Out

By Cydney Gillis | January 24, 2007

Police watchdog leaves behind a complex legacy

Sam Pailca is leaving her city job in February, and the Seattle Police Officers Guild couldn’t be happier.

Since the day she entered the police department in 2001 as head of a now six-year-old civilian oversight office, the union and its members have fought the feisty attorney tooth and nail, from suing the city to stop the creation of the Office of Professional Accountability to the latest move: filing an unfair labor practices claim to stop OPA from getting unredacted police reports showing officers’ names. ...

A Sane Exit

By Cydney Gillis | January 17, 2007

McDermott travels to the Middle East looking for a way to get the U.S. out of Iraq

“You’re listening to the wrong people.”

It doesn’t sound like much. But it’s a message U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott heard over and over in Amman, Jordan, and plans to repeat to his fellow representatives as they struggle in the coming months with what to do in Iraq.

Betting that the Democrats would take the House in November and be in dire need of real information on the war, McDermott says he got on a plane Nov. 8 and went to Amman for four days of discussions with moderate Iraqi, Israeli, Palestinian, and Jordanian leaders called together on his behalf. ...

Just Heard... Jan 17, 2007

By Cydney Gillis | January 17, 2007

Union speech

A lawsuit that started in Washington state over the political use of union dues has gone all the way to the Supreme Court, thanks to an anti-union legal group backed by Wal-Mart billionaires.

Last week, attorneys from the Virginia-based National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation argued that the Washington Education Association shouldn’t be allowed to use non-member dues to pay for its political activities. The WEA, which represents teachers, gets to collect fees from non-members to pay for its contract negotiations with schools. ...

Starved for Air

By Cydney Gillis | January 17, 2007

Third-party candidates can’t get seats at televised debates

Aaron Dixon wasn’t in jail very long, but it was long enough for the Green Party candidate to make his point: Money decides all things in elections, even who gets to speak in a TV debate put on in the public’s interest.

Dixon, last year’s anti-war challenger to Sen. Maria Cantwell, got arrested Oct. 17 after going to the Seattle studios of KING-5 and demanding a podium beside Cantwell, Republican Mike McGavick, and Libertarian candidate Bruce Guthrie, who had already made the same point in a different way. ...

In D.C. and in Control

By Cydney Gillis | January 10, 2007

Washington’s reps prep for 2008

A new Congress. A new, and long, list of priorities.

With the Democrats back in power, the House of Representatives started plowing through a calendar of bills this week that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi aims to pass in the session’s first 100 hours.

But Seattle Rep. Jim McDermott says the push — to cut deficit spending, enact 9/11 recommendations, raise the minimum wage, and more — isn’t so much about the first 100 hours as the 2008 election and forcing the president’s hand on the Democrats’ agenda. ...

Go Slow

By Cydney Gillis | January 3, 2007

Legislature starts with long list of requests from groups

“You can’t always get what you want.”

That’s the warning being raised by some housing and human services advocates heading into the 2007 legislative session that starts next week. The state may be flush with revenue now, says Nancy Amidei, who follows state bills for the newsletter PolicyWatch, but the good times are only expected to last one year.

As a result, says Amidei, an instructor at the University of Washington School of Social Work, legislators aren’t going to want to provide new funding for programs past 2007. ...