The recent earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami a few years ago and Katrina a bit earlier were all tragic and…
Policymakers should remove regulatory barriers that increase the cost of building a home and drive up the cost of living in our state.
I have stumbled upon the perfect solution for a problem that has plagued fathers since God mistakenly created daughters. The problem is boyfriends.
Applying for unemployment benefits last month was one of my least favorite experiences of all time, ranking right up there on my list of things to avoid like the plague between certain Newcastle City Council members and elective nasal surgery.
The other night I said to my wife, “Let’s go out for dinner.” OK, so what do we want to eat? Nothing that comes in a paper wrapper, I have to be seated when the food is brought to me, and I’m not willing to carry my own drink to my table.
So now we have another version of the lottery coming to Washington.
Starting Sunday, Powerball will be on the menu at 4,000 retail outlets across the State of Washington – about 35 of them in Kent.
It’s the ultimate in random selection: organizers draw five white balls out of a drum with 59 balls. And one red ball – the aforementioned Powerball – comes from a drum of 39 balls.
Facebook and politics do not mix. Anyone who’s spent time on the social network will probably recognize this scenario very well:
Last week, I finished my opinion piece by offering to take up the cause of those people who are against the school levies (if they could convince me). About a third of the voters vote against them, and I wanted to know why. Here are their top reasons.
On the last day of Barack Obama’s first year as president, the voters of Massachusetts, one of the few states more reliably Democratic than Washington, sent Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate.
Kaboom.
Up until two weeks ago, I produced special events for a local city. My position was eliminated as a result of budget cuts, but I’m not angry about it. Truth be told, I was burnt out and sought a new direction in my life. After the events of last week, however, it would have been nice to have been able to quit – if only to stand up for my principles.
I’m always curious about the reasons why 35 percent of us vote against school levies. Maybe you’re in this group, and you have good reasons, but we just haven’t heard them yet. No one filled out a statement against (for Tahoma School District levies) in the voter’s pamphlet this year.
In the past I have told you how community college job-skills training programs have helped people build entirely new careers after a layoff. I have written of Boeing engineers who retooled their skills at Bellevue College then found new employment in health care at even higher salaries than before, and the single father who, by learning information technology skills with us, was able to move his family off welfare and build a future of promise.
There is a mood developing; you can almost feel it… of increasing anger toward government borne of mistrust. It’s not just about taxes, spending, deficits and debt. It’s about people in both parties and even no party looking at their federal, state and sometimes local government and saying: “I don’t trust you anymore”.
I can’t blame you for not wanting to go to the informational meetings and open forums put on by our local governments and schools; I’ve had more fun in hospital waiting rooms.
But what happens when nobody shows up is that a tiny handful of people get to make all of the decisions. And then we get angry when the tiny handful don’t make the decisions that we like. The consequences of some decisions aren’t fully revealed until many years later, and we’re left to blame the bad decisions on a lack of foresight. Except now we’re five years behind.
A friend was telling me about an article she read about New Year’s resolutions with a different take on the annual appeal for self-improvement. Not only did it give us a good chuckle, but it got me thinking.
But what happens when nobody shows up is that a tiny handful of people get to make all of the decisions. And then we get angry when the tiny handful don’t make the decisions that we like. The consequences of some decisions aren’t fully revealed until many years later, and we’re left to blame the bad decisions on a lack of foresight. Except now we’re five years behind.
When the media went looking for an authority on national security after the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day, they called a former U.S. senator from Washington. The one who’s been out of office for nine years, Slade Gorton.
One of the most popular and oft-repeated cliches in American history, which comes to us from Benjamin Franklin, humorously posits that “in the world, nothing can be said to be certain except death and taxes.”
This short phrase, which is both simple and concrete, has spawned many variations over time, but all of them contain the memorable words “death and taxes.”
The Washington state Legislature convenes Monday, Jan. 11. Its members face a daunting task the state’s projected deficit is $2.6 billion.
Sometimes I feel like I was born to be a cranky old fart, and I’m just suffering through my youth until I can realize my true self.
So right now, I’m in the middle of forming my 20-year window of the “good old days,” which I can use as a lens to view everything through when I’m finally old.
Today, Tuesday, Jan. 5, is my first official day as a working mom.
It was a strange thing walking out the door for the first time without my daughter, who is just shy of seven weeks old as I write this, to get into my car and go back to work.
