Enhancing Freedom,
Opportunity and Cooperation in
Through informing
and networking Liberals and Liberal Organizations.
Our vision is
hundreds of thousands of well-informed
Table of Contents * featured articles Opportunities,
Petitions and Feedback Commentaries from Our Members Ronna
Weltman on Choosing a College Don Smith on Meeting
with Congressman Reichert Dave
Gamrath on Over Population and Consumption Peter
House on State Caucuses* Ray
McBain on Medicare Part D Prescription Costs Andrew
Villeneuve on netroots cooperation* Liberals and Democrats Links to the
Beef Has Bill
Clinton Become a Whiney Victim? Let’s hope
that Republicans Win Equally* During
Our Nightmare, What Should a Liberal Do?* State and Local Links to the
Beef Monitoring
and Influencing Our State Legislature Nation and World
Links to the Beef Preventing
Terrorist Acts in Our United States* Restricting
Our National Guard from Foreign Service Our Liberal Spirit Our Political Priorities ·
Fair Clean Elections and Open Government ·
Fair Taxes and Competent Spending ·
Investment for Productivity ·
Quality Health, Education, Jobs, Income and Retirement ·
Environmental Protection and Energy ·
Personal Security and Equal Rights ·
Justice and Peace Everywhere ·
International Cooperation and Leadership Conservatives
oppose all of these Let’s End Our National Nightmare Let’s
Restore Our American Dream More
on Conservative opposition to our American Dream See
Nancy Pelosi’s political priorities Quote of the Week Remember
that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue
elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity. Socrates
Calendar of Events
Schedule
of Liberal films on PBS
Saturday, January 19 at
6:30 PM at Carrie Bogner’s home (
Monday, January 21 at
Franklin High School (3013 Mount Baker Boulevard South, Seattle) – Martin Luther King,
Jr. Celebration with 9:30 AM Workshop, 11 AM Rally and 12 PM March. For more. [Strongly recommended for suburbanites who need to
understand inner city priorities. Dave
Thomas]
Friday, January 25 at 6:30 PM at
Friday, January 25 at 7 PM
at King County Library Administration Building (960 Newport Way NW, Issaquah) –
5th Legislative District Movie Night Sicko, A film by Michael Moore on America’s failing health care
system
Wednesday, February 6 at
5:30 PM and February 7 at Hilton Seattle
(
Saturday, February 9 at 10
AM at
Saturday February 9, 2008 at 1:30 - Precinct
Caucuses. Find your caucus location.
Saturday, February 16 at 6 PM at Town
Hall (
Saturday, February 23-24
at IBEW Hall (
Saturday, March 22 at 10
AM at
Legislative District Conventions - Saturday April 5, 2008
County Conventions - Saturday April 19, 2008
Congressional District Conventions - Saturday May 17, 2008
Washington State Convention - June 14 & 15, 2008 - Spokane, Washington
Opportunities, Petitions and Feedback
Opportunities
Join
Working America in alliance with labor union members
See MoveOn’s new online tools.
Order Democracy
in America ‘Precinct Organizing’ and other Night School Training videos
Order Sightline’s
2007 Cascadia Scorecard. See other
research that they share with our politicians.
Order Lester Brown’s Plan
B, #3.0, Mobilizing to Save Civilization.
For more.
Petitions and
Donations
Join GoPetition to easily create your own
petitions. Great tool for advocacy groups.
NARAL
Pro-Choice Washington seeks support among precinct caucus participants.
Help
a Liberal Democrat defeat an incumbent Conservative Democratic Congressman.
Ask your congressman to
support hearings on impeaching vice president Dick Cheney.
Tell EPA Administrator Stephen
Johnson to explain why he denied California's waiver request!
Urge top television reporters to
ask presidential candidates about global warming.
AFL-CIO petition
to support secure high quality health care for all.
AFL-CIO petition
to support Employee Free
Choice Act to restore the freedom to form unions.
Ask U.S.
Treasury Department to put a freeze on foreclosures
Ask
President Bush to assign 24 helicopters to help peacekeeping in Darfur
Feedback Needed
Concerning Our Website
We have decided to not offer a blog,
since there are many excellent northwest blogs.
We want to offer a discussion (bulletin) board. Do you know of any inexpensive discussion
board software? Please email me your
suggestions.
Commentaries
>From Our Members
Email from
Dorli Rainey
I work with a group called One Earth.. This
group challenges the wisdom of taking millions of acres out of farming for food
and converting it into growth areas for fuel plants. One Earth is not a group
which wants to antagonize, but live up to the definition of protest (i.e. for
the truth).
There is a company in
Also see the descriptions of the Martin Luther King
Celebration Workshops. Dorli Rainey
Web addresses submitted by
Here's Honda's
official site about their new Hydrogen fuel-cell car, the Clarity.
Here's the link to Honda's explanation about how
to obtain one In
short, only customers currently residing in the Torrance, Santa Monica and
Irvine areas who meet additional qualification criteria will be eligible
to lease an FCX
Clarity. Sound familiar? To me it sounds like a repeat of the story
told in the documentary "Who killed the electric car". Let's
hope it turns out better than how that story ended.
Here's the link to the Smithsonian
Magazine article about biofuels and the
negative impact they already have and will have on our planet's environment and
economy. The article is titled
"Who's fueling whom?" because it leads off with a sensationalistic
story about a promotional stunt where scientists convert liposuctioned human
fat into biofuel. If you read past that fluff, you will be rewarded with
facts about the politics and environmental impact of biofuels. The Financial Post has this article which
corroborates the negative
impact of biofuels on our food resources.
Email from
Ronna Weltman
Hi friends. Some of you
may have seen this article about Paula Bishop, a college finance consultant, in the
If your child is close
to college, it's a good idea to talk to her because she'll help you
understand your options. If your kids are still small, talk to her now and
she'll help you make some financial choices now that will have you better
prepared when the time comes. Paula is one of those people who saves you
multiples of your investment of paying for her expertise. Ronna
Weltman
Washblog Post by Don
Smith about 1/7/08 meeting of MoveOn members with Dave Reichert
Letter by Dave Gamrath published by
In his Jan. 6 guest column, Jared
Diamond discusses the consequences we face because of overpopulation and over
consumption. The numbers are stark, the consequences dire. Diamond closes with
"cautious optimism" because "we can solve (the problems) if we
choose to do so." That would entail Americans volunteering to drive less
and in small cars, live in much smaller homes, consider the environmental
consequences of all purchases and thus purchase goods only out of need instead
of desire. It would also require us to acknowledge that the biggest
environmental decision we make is in regard to our family's size; i.e., having
children, and thus to willingly plan smaller families.
I'm sorry, but those acts fly directly
in the face of today's popular American values and what is so often labeled our
"freedoms."
History as well as a candid view of
today's society shows we Americans won't give up our freedoms unless facing an
undeniable crisis, such as
Real change won't happen until the
consequences of our ways harshly smack us right in the face, likely at a time
when it is far too late to make some relatively simple lifestyle changes to
avoid disaster.
Sad to say, I do not share Diamond's
optimism, even cautiously. Dave Gamrath
Summary of Ray McBain’s Emails
on Medicare Part D Prescription Costs
Under Medicare Part D,
post-transplant medicines my wife takes cost: AARP
MedicareRx-756.48, Aetna Medicare Rx Plus – 728.96 and SierraRx Plus – 513.38
per month. In
Email from
We didn't build Pacific NW Portal for Machiavellian
reasons. We put it up because we ourselves wanted a central place from which we
could track other blogs. And nobody else had done it.
It could have been a private portal but that would have been dumb. Why not let
the public access it?
>>>>> It's possible that one website, newsletter or activist
group will be so successful, that the competitors will throw in the towel and
admit defeat in the marketplace of activism.
I don't think that is going to happen. Daily
There's more cooperation than competition in the netroots community. When one
group or individual scores a breakthrough (gains a bigger audience, greater
visibility, etc.), the rising tide lifts all boats. Netroots Nation was
not NPI's project. We don't have ownership or control over it.
But we benefit from it. Similarly, we benefit from
the success of Daily Kos even though it is under the complete control of Markos
Moulitsas.
Liberals and Democrats
Has Bill Clinton Become a Whiney Victim?
Bill Clinton has recently been complaining that the
media isn’t being critical enough of Barack Obama. Shouldn’t he continue his usual Happy Warrior
stance? Shouldn’t he rejoice in Hillary
Clinton’s largely successful struggle to become our president. I much prefer Bill the promoter to Bill the
attack dog. Dave Thomas
Let’s hope that Republicans Win Equally
Huckabee in
During Our National Nightmare, What Should a
Liberal Do?
Our nightmare will continue until January
2009. Let’s not waste our time in anger
and depression. Let’s do what we can to
lessen the nightmare. And lets prepare
for a third Liberal revival of the last 100 years. Here are some useful activities.
·
Learn about our Liberal values, struggles and victories.
·
Learn about our current issues, priorities and policies.
·
Learn about our Conservative opponents, their threats, resources and
vulnerabilities.
·
Learn about effective political strategies for realizing our Liberal
policies, priorities and values.
·
Learn to find and evaluate news about our state, national and global
challenges and alternatives.
·
Become well informed about state, national and global news.
·
Join or assemble a small group or network of Liberals for exchanging
Liberal ideas.
·
Find one or several issues of interest, join their advocacy groups, and
engage in their activities.
·
Become politically active, with the Democratic, Green or other Party or
with a candidate.
·
Become spiritually based. Know
our human situation and possible responses.
Decide what your life is about.
Many more possibilities could be added. But even a few of these should keep you
busy. Go to our website for resources to
help you do them. Happy hunting. Having endured our nightmare together, our
experience during our third revival will be all the sweeter.
Couldn’t resist publishing this.
Here’s the Beef
Democratic
presidential candidates are ignoring many issues.
Not all change is
good. What changes do we want? What priorities do we have?
Obama proposes
hope, change and harmony. Can he
deliver?
Obama
says, “We will.” Not, “I can.” or “I
will.”
What’s
important? Building a movement or Legislative
accomplishment or both?
Hillary
Clinton opposes Nevada casino caucus sites for easier employee participation.
Is
Huckabee’s support based on his populism, or his Conservative Christian
beliefs? For more. More.
See
Nancy Pelosi’s political priorities.
Liberals
lose faith in elections, as Democrats submit to Bush on Iraq and other issues.
The
New Republic Congressional Roundup. More. More. More. More. More. More.
Will
the supreme court decide to support voting restrictions which inhibit liberal
voters? For
more.
Republican
presidential candidates compete for South Carolina anti-choice supporters.
Learn
about MoveOn’s campaigns.
State and
Local
Monitoring and Influencing Our State Legislature
Our
commercial media do not give nearly the attention to our state legislature that
they give to national or local events.
But they do provide some coverage.
You can go to their websites and search for their articles and commentaries
which refer to our 2008
Also watch
TVW and go to their website. View the various northwest blogs by going to
the Pacific Northwest Portal. For a weekly review of legislative
activities, go to our
Here’s the Beef
View
Governor Christine Gregoire’s 2008 Washington State of the State address.
Due to audit,
several legislators vow to toughen state statutes regulating port procurement.
Learn which local
Washington candidates have been supported by Progressive Majority.
Nation
and World
Preventing Terrorist Acts in Our
In their book The
Next Attack, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon first describe the evolution
of El Qaeda’s terrorist threats to our
·
Stop terrorist from committing terrorist acts by capturing or killing them
and disrupting their cells.
·
Keeping the most dangerous weapons from them.
·
Protecting facilities that would cause catastrophic damage if attacked.
·
Halt the creation of new terrorists by dealing with their grievances.
To halt the creation of new terrorists, we must:
·
Cease acts against recognized
·
Cease acts of imperialism, such
as invading
·
Cease support of dictatorial governments (such as
·
Cease support of Israeli colonialism;
·
Encourage economic and civic development (as we did with the
·
Encourage ethnic and religious tolerance throughout the world.
To eliminate terrorist cells, we must obtain the
cooperation of intelligence and law enforcement agencies throughout the
world. This requires that we regain the
world’s respect though:
·
Ceasing to insult those who disagree with us;
·
Ceasing to obstruct global initiatives such as attempts to reduce global
warming, the International Criminal Court, and the convention to eliminate land
mines;
·
Respecting our treaty obligations such as the United Nations Charter;
·
Ceasing to unilaterally act militarily in disregard of our United
Nations and NATO; and
·
Coordinating our anti-terrorist actions with those of other countries.
We should cooperate with other nations to restrict
access to weapons of mass destruction. Only when countries offer safe haven to
terrorists, should we attack them with attempted support from other countries.
We should identify and protect transportation,
manufacturing and other facilities whose destruction would cause large numbers
of casualties. We should not let
effective performance of these tasks be obstructed by the special interests of
politicians and private businesses. Our
Department of Homeland Security, National Guard and other agencies should be
organized to perform these tasks, while still maintaining their other
functions.
Implementing many of these recommendations will
require a dramatic change from our present practices. Our Republican candidates for president have
supported few of these recommendations.
But our Democratic candidates have only supported a few of them. Except for ending
Restricting Our National Guard from Foreign Service
While our Democratic congress can pass little
legislation in opposition to Bush and his congressional colleagues, it can
propose legislation to embarrass the administration and prepare public opinion
for its passage in 2009.
One possibility is legislation that our National
Guard can only be assigned overseas, if there is a congressional declaration of
war. Except in such an emergency, their
task is to protect us from natural and other calamities here at home. Many of our present National Guard members
did not anticipate foreign service. They
have be grievously mistreated. This must
stop.
Here’s the Beef
In the face of independent
powerful countries, our United Nations is unable to meet challenges.
Venezuela
offers an alternative to U.S. supported dictators and draws our governments
ire.
President
Bush’s Mideast trip showcases his ties to dictators and brutal Israeli
colonialism.
Official version of U.S. –
Iranian ship contact is fraudulent. Like
the Gulf of Tonkin.
CNN’s Lou
Dobbs repeatedly showcases hate group FAIR leader.
View
Environmental Defense’s 5 environmental initiatives.
Presidential
candidates fail to discuss cost-controls necessary to save for Medicare.
AFL-CIO perspective on U.S.
health care.
250 Massachusetts
doctors say health care coverage by private insurers is failing.
Compared to Canada,
expensive tuition discourage U.S. students from applying to medical school.
It’s no longer a
wonderful world. George Bailey lost out
to sub-prime lending greed and chicanery.
New
Orleans is being privatized and upscaled.
Will
economic stimulus package include making Bush tax cuts permanent?
Look what President
Bush did in 2001. What will we allow him
to do in 2008?
Lessons
we’ve learned since 9/11
Our Liberal Spirit
Our Dark Night of the Soul
Our national nightmare has lasted for 7 years and will
largely continue through this year, with ramifications for a few years
more. Many of us have become angry and
depressed. Yet when things around us go
badly, we can still maintain utilize our many freedoms and opportunities. Like football players when a game is going
badly, we can still perform our own role well.
The way to cope with our tendency toward anger and depression is to
act. To act effectively and sustain our
actions, we need to find colleagues.
Misery doesn’t love the company of those who aren’t
miserable. But such company is necessary
to distract us from our focus upon our personal woes. We need to find others who will listen well
and cautiously offer suggestions. We
find such colleagues through deciding what challenges we wish to confront,
identifying others who are facing these challenges and joining with them.
Now is the time for us to examine our various advocacy and
political groups, to identify the ones we want to work with, to contact,
associate and cooperate with them. One
major strategy we can implement this year is to better network ourselves. We can create our Liberal infrastructure for
enabling rapid progress in 2009. Let’s
hit the ground running.
Through networking, we not only strengthen our ability to
end our national nightmare. We also
alleviate our personal nightmare. As we
turn our attention to issues and people outside of ourselves, we lesson our
preoccupation with our personal woes.
Recommended Books –
See our list of books for
liberals
Daniel Benjamin and Steven
Simon, 2005, The Next Attack, The Failure
of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting It Right
Strongly recommend Chapter
9. See commentary
under Nation and State.
Free Member Advertising
Hire Our Lake Hills Neighbors
·
Debt Elimination
Counseling, Seminars and Workshops – price negotiable – Sherry Brandt
(206-356-8034, somerev2@comcast.net)
·
Private Piano Lessons (students must have a
piano), afternoons - Anna Khosrowian (378-7938), price negotiable
·
Housekeeper, price negotiable –
·
Psychotherapist, accepts insurance
- Sandy Mathews (462-7889, www.sandramathews.com)
·
Babysitting for infants (occasional evenings
and weekends) - $5 per hour-
·
Data Entry- $10 per 12 font, double spaced page-
·
Home Repair- prices vary, depending
on job-
·
Auto Repair, price varies depending
on job (but always fair), Jaime Speicher (AAS Auto Repair Technician)
(425-746-2353)
·
Home Repair and
Remodeling,
·
Life Support Therapies,
Volunteers and Donations Wanted
·
Healthy Start needs women volunteers
to mentor young mothers, especially Spanish speaking volunteers –
·
Head Start at Lake Hills
Elementary School needs an operational computer for parents of one of their
students. If you have one a few years
old that you no longer intend to use, call Valery Stoury at 456-5326 The low income families in the Lake Hills
Head Start program also need furniture, food, clothing, bus passes or gas
vouchers, etc. Safeway and Fred Meyer gift certificates to be used for
family emergencies would be greatly appreciated
·
Lake Hills Elementary
School
is looking for volunteers to spend one hour a week with individual students in
the classroom or as a lunch buddy. To volunteer, call our VIBES on-site
coordinator, Mary Giesen (425-456-5300) to arrange required VIBES
training. For additional information, contact Principal
·
Phantom Lake Elementary
School
needs volunteers who are willing to be trained as Reading Mentors or who are
able to spend one hour, one day a week in the school either in classrooms,
helping in the office, or being “Lunch Buddies” during our school’s lunch
time. To volunteer, call our VIBES on-site coordinator, Beth Drobny
(425-456-5600) to arrange required VIBES training. For additional
information, contact Principal
About
We began Lake
Hills Liberals in October, 2005 as an experimental demonstration of
creating neighborhoods where liberals thrive and multiply and maximizing our
vote for Democratic candidates. Many of
our community development initiatives failed.
But we have encouraged block parties and house parties to allow
neighbors to meet each other to be able to prevent crime, to assist each other
in a disaster, and to protect and assist our children. We also canvassed our 12 precincts to
increase the number of identified likely Democratic voters from 33% to 90% and
stimulated them to vote, which assisted election of our 2006 Democratic
candidates. We hope that replication
will occur in other neighborhoods.
Through our newsletter, we have now become
To get our free services, including our newsletter,
our ‘Proud Liberal, Time for a Change’ yard signs or ‘Proud Liberal’ bumper
stickers, volunteer or make a donation, contact
Submit your news to Editor Dave Thomas.
We are
seeking reporter-reviewer-editors with knowledge of particular political groups
and issues. We have asked
the following experts to help us.
Blogs –
African
Americans –
Blogs
–
Campaign
Finance – Sarajane Siegfriedt
Democratic
Party –
Drug
Policy –
Education
– Dennis Gerlitz, John Stokes
Environment
–
Gays
and Lesbians –
Health
Care –
Hispanics – needed
Immigration
- Grosvenor Anschell
Housing
and Poverty –
Labor Unions –
Law
and Justice –
State
Legislation –
Veterans
– Steve Johnston
Women’s
Issues –
Additional Resources
See our
website at www.PugetSoundLiberals.org,
with our basic training about being Liberal, our archive of all past
newsletters, resources for liberals, tools for Democratic legislative district
organizations and more. Join
Fuse to connect with to other Liberals and more.
We
recommend the Pacific NW Portal
for displaying many blogs through which Northwest Liberals exchange their
knowledge and opinions. See also Lefty Blogs. We recommend you go to Washblog to find blogs containing
information and opinions about
Learn about our State
Democratic Party. About 2008 Caucuses and Elections. Quickly and easily contact your national and
state officials. For
many Congressional Report Cards. Report Card on your congress member.
To
learn about particular issues, visit websites of advocacy and caring organizations.
Also see our list of helpful
websites.