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Oh man I'm so excited to see a Pacific Northwest thread! I've lived in Seattle area my whole life and it is interesting to see the perspective of out of staters. And to learn more about Oregon, as that place is a mystery. Regarding liquor privatization that was definitely a Costco initiative. The campaign funding was about $22 million from Costco, $50k from Trader Joes, and the rest was spare change. Another poster was right that Costco is currently taking a hit on their margins to keep it from being worse, and also there was some local coverage about how Costco was one of the only retailers to have proper inventory control. Grocery stores that just added a liquor aisle and called it good are have severe shoplifting issues. Also for Washington politics, while I agree that they look dark blue there is a danger of Democrats losing a Senate seat or the governor's mansion in a good year for the GOP when combined with a strong challenger. In 2004, Christine Gregoire only beat Dino Rossi 1,373,361 to 1,373,228, and in 2010 Rossi popped up again to lose a senate race to incumbent Patty Murray 1,314,930 to 1,196,164 (which is pretty close for this state.) To add to a previous question, what do people find to be good news sources for the Seattle area? My go-to source is the Seattle Times as they have excellent business and sports coverage, although they are anti-minimum wage increase and aren't helping to get the Sonics back.
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Mar 12, 2014 19:30
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Gerund posted:The cult only paid for outside goods in silver dollars so that the locals would know how much he was pumping into the economy. Oh man I recently learned about the Rajneeshpuram and they are endlessly fascinating. I didn't know about the silver dollars, but I did finally get what the Simpsons were referencing in the cult episode when everyone takes a break from bean picking to watch the Leader drive by. Rajneesh was famous for driving by all his followers in Rolls Royces. Also, the compound was named "Rancho Rajneesh," and I'm starting to think that's where the Simpsons got "Rancho Relaxo." Matt Groening showing off his Oregon heritage. If you want to learn more the Oregonian did an exhaustive look at what happened, http://www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/
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Mar 13, 2014 01:36
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Spatula City posted:Yeah, we even had a Republican AG for quite a while. I am so loving glad Rob McKenna lost. Jay Inslee is exactly the perfect model of Washington governor: liberal, boring, and competent. I love the mail ballots so much! I've never had to stand in line at a polling place, I just get my ballot and have a few weeks to research and figure out my vote, and after I send it in there is a paper record of what happened. I'm sure it isn't perfect but after hearing about people standing in line for hours in Florida I'm not sure why every state doesn't adopt this system. Especially since election day is in the middle of the week and people don't get paid time off. On another PacNW subject, I've been wanting to learn more about Boeing's culture and mentality. I'm very glad Boeing is here as having heavy industry with international customers provides tens of thousands of good jobs, but I don't care for their threats to move (and how they did move their HQ to Chicago a few years ago.) Especially since after Boeing moved some production to South Carolina they began having serious QA issues with wires being installed wrong, which you really don't want on passenger jets. My question is has Boeing always been like this, or was there a shift to more jackass management a few years ago?
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Mar 13, 2014 17:27
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What's the general opinion about Spokane? I lived there for a few years and while it does stack up poorly next to Seattle culturally and with things to do, it's not a total wasteland. Some pros: -Extremely cheap cost of living (sub-$100 rents for college students) and some new grads were buying houses and it wasn't a terrible financial decision -Downtown has some cool bars and bookstores -Because snow is an annual event, the plows do an excellent job keeping the roads clear. This was a huge contrast in 2008 when Seattle was making international news for not being able to handle a blizzard (buses over the overpass, mayor run out of office) -Tons of cool camping and hiking nearby Some cons: -The main road to downtown, "Division Street", is the ugliest street I've ever been on. A pure mix of billboards, crappy businesses, jaywalkers every half mile, ugh. -Not really close to any other major cities -Crappy food
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Mar 14, 2014 17:17
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Have many goons gotten out to the San Juan Islands? They are really nice for a weekend visit or even a day trip to go hiking, even riding the ferry and seeing all the tinier islands is a lot of fun too. It would be nice to live there but I think their economy is bit limited, and they lack some modernization. About a year ago the underwater fiber optic line going the islands got cut, and so no one had phones, internet, or could buy anything with a debit/credit card for about three days.
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Mar 15, 2014 16:15
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ladyboy pancake posted:
I'm voting for the bus funding, but that Proposition is poorly written and confusing. From reading the Proposition, "...an annual vehicle fee of sixty dollars ($60)..." I thought it was imposing an additional $60 annual car fee, but then I read that it is actually just $40 more a year? Between that and the sales tax increase I don't think this is super likely to pass 
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Apr 6, 2014 20:59
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The Bus Vote Is Happening
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I visited Portland for the day and their downtown seems much more walkable than Seattle. I was impressed by the packed, clean streetcars that kept going by, especially how they weren't covered in ads for casinos or "WE BUY GOLD." Plus Powell's Books was fantastic as usual. Are there some serious downsides to Portland that I'm missing? Lack of a pro-football team ?
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May 4, 2014 00:26
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Ah, thank you for the insights on living in Portland compared to Seattle. I did wonder about how all those four way stops would hold up in rush hour traffic. I probably won't be moving anytime soon, but if I did those food carts would be a big part of my motivation. I can also report that on the drive back to Seattle there was a bizarre vehicle going about 45 mph that looked like someone had converted a UPS truck into a old-fashioned train car, complete with fake giant wheels on the side and a cow catcher up front. Slogans painted on the back of this vehicle reminded drivers that this is one nation under God, and that this should be one country with one language. Why yes, the front of the vehicle DID have "Vancouver, WA" printed in huge letters!
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May 4, 2014 15:20
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I remember when Shoreline switched from being "Unincorporated King County" to "The City of Shoreline", but at the time I was way too young to know why it was happening. I remember hearing that it may have been because of school busing concerns, that residents of Shoreline didn't want their kids to be sent to south Seattle instead of local schools (if you've been to Innis Arden, aka North Mercer Island, this is believable). Was this remotely accurate in why Shoreline was formed?
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May 18, 2014 20:35
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I'm currently engaged in a one-man pub crawl in Ballard (pre-trivia night at Market Arms) and I started wondering, which neighborhood is the most authentically "Seattle"? Like in terms of retaining some of the older culture and not being overrun by software millionaires or chain stores? Would Phinney be another contender?
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May 22, 2014 02:52
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Looks like President Obama is visiting today for a fundraiser that requires crossing a bridge to get to the Eastside, at the same time I-90 bridge has reduced lanes for construction. People really don't seem happy about it, and it does seem tone deaf to complicate traffic for fundraising reasons. I wish they could just rent a ballroom near SeaTac and use that, but then I guess some rich guy wouldn't be able to show off his house.
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Jul 22, 2014 14:12
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I agree that the Seattle Times does cater to the rich excessively, but they do have some redeeming features. Their sports coverage is excellent and a lot of fun to read, and they aren't a friend of Mars Hill and recently had a front page report on the church imploding. Plus their website is easy to navigate and their article archive is great. The Stranger is good for their in-depth voting guide, but I don't like how they seem to be on the extreme left for every news article as it makes it hard to figure out if something is important or if it's just something Evergreen students would walk out about.
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Oct 9, 2014 18:03
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Thanatosian posted:Sooooo... how long have you been working for the Seattle Times? Haha that would be a interesting gig. I don't work there but I have been reading them for decades, and remember the controversy when they switched from evening to morning delivery. I do need to seek out more decent sources of news for the Seattle area. The TV network news sites are pretty awful, although KOMO is passable and has good weather coverage. I should check out Seattle Weekly more often. I had a question about Washington government, I had thought that as far as American states go we are pretty lucky to have decent governors and a non-insane legislature. Governors like Locke and Gregoire seem to have been boring but responsible, and we don't have the absurd scandals that put the governor in jail like Illinois or Virginia. It is accurate to think Washington has one of the best state governments, or am I way off?
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Oct 10, 2014 18:15
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oxbrain posted:We're just a lot better at hiding our corruption and ridiculousness. Remember when we had a special session to pass a law giving boeing $8.7b in tax breaks? With a republican controlled senate and a sharply divided congress it passed both nearly unanimously. They got anti-tax eastern WA republicans to vote for the biggest state government handout in US history. Dang that does sound pretty bad. Is any state government considered to be good? Vermont passed single-payer healthcare, but I can't think of any others.
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Oct 10, 2014 20:06
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Holy cow, I knew that there had been an open-carry gun rally in Olympia but I thought it was people handing rifles to each other outside the capitol building in defiance of what they thought the new gun law prohibits. I didn't know that these citizens decided to push the open carry issue to the point of going into the public gallery of the legislature to wave rifles in the air. Check out the guy in the bottom right of the photo with the gas mask.  Here's the link to the article, be sure to browse the photo gallery: http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Legislature-weighs-ban-on-openly-carrying-guns-in-chamber-288857421.html
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Jan 17, 2015 17:17
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Reason posted:Anyone get stuck in traffic yesterday? I saw protestors chained together on 99 north just after the battery street tunnel and heard there were more at the mercer on/off ramp. Yeah, I was driving from near the Museum of History and Industry to get on I-5 South. Traffic was ok at the start (it is just a few blocks from the parking lot to the on-ramp), but I started hearing sirens and seeing Seattle police cars going somewhere. I thought there was an accident, but as I went along the street I saw maybe two dozen protesters walking down the middle of the road. The protesters were walking in the middle of the street towards the I-5 North and South on-ramps. They seemed to waver between which way they would go, but the larger number of them went for the northbound on-ramp and the handful on the south entrance gave that up and jogged over to join them. Politics aside, it seemed badly organized (people going in different directions) and really unsafe. A good number of cars were confused about what was going on and there weren't any visible police directing traffic, and if a protester darted in the wrong direction or a car didn't spot them in time it could easily have been a bad accident.
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Jan 21, 2015 05:37
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Error 404 posted:So that explains the early years of statehood, what about all the poo poo in the years from then to now? Yeah, the wealth Innis Arden neighborhood in Shoreline still has the (unenforceable) racial restrictions in their housing covenants (as of 2005, but I didn't see any newer stories that they had been repealed): Homeowners find records still hold blot of racism quote:Racial restrictions, validated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1926, then ruled unenforceable by the same court 22 years later, are linked to the original deeds of the 500-plus homes, north of Seattle in Shoreline. I wonder what horrible obscure historical figure included that embarrassing clause? quote:Written into the neighborhood's bylaws by Boeing founder Bill Boeing, the 60-year-old restrictions prohibited the sale or lease of the homes to anyone who wasn't white. Blacks and Asians, the restrictions said, could occupy the homes only as domestic servants. At least the neighborhood considers updating their covenants to be a top priority? quote:The neighborhood needs notarized signatures from two-thirds of the households in the development — 360 in all — before it can file amended documents with King County to replace the old ones. This isn't surprising, I grew up near Innis Arden and those rich folk will sue each other for YEARS about tree removal or anything that might block their view.
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Jan 26, 2015 01:27
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Gerund posted:So is there anyone willing to counter-argue with The Stranger's cheat-sheet for the Seattle mail-in ballot? I've got it hot and ready in my hands and I'm not going to drop it off until Thursday. Ooh good reminder I need to check the Stranger cheat sheet. Even for the candidates not on my ballot it's a good read.
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Oct 20, 2015 04:11
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(Cross posting from USpol) In WA state, our longest serving Republican State Senator has been kicked off a task force on sex trafficking for verbally attacking victims. quote:In a scathing letter sent Monday, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen said he was removing Roach, R-Sumner, from the task force after receiving “numerous complaints” about her conduct at a Dec. 14 meeting of the panel. quote:She has previously been banned from Republican caucus meetings, barred from speaking with staff and advised to get anger-management counseling. Owen’s letter noted she previously had sanctions imposed or recommended against her, most often from Republican leaders, in 1999, 2003, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012. quote:“You attacked agency staff, persons both present and absent, stakeholders and persons who have miraculously survived being victims of trafficking,” his letter said. quote:The Department of Commerce had been considering restructuring the task force solely to limit Roach’s contacts with trafficking victims and advocates. Owen wrote that would be a disservice. Instead, he said he’d exercise his authority as the Senate’s presiding officer to kick Roach off the task force. Sen. Pam Roach booted off sex-trafficking panel for ‘victim-blaming,’ other insults
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Jan 26, 2016 15:48
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Best Friends posted:It's super important to keep local news papers alive but good god I cannot bear the thought of supporting the Seattle times. How did our only surviving, viable paper in this super liberal part of the country end up being the conservative one? Agreed the Seattle Times is super-NIMBY and has regressive editorials, but I do enjoy their sports coverage. They had a nice headline today: 
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Sep 25, 2016 02:27
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