Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.

Monday, February 8th, 2010

Quotation
Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador… Having initially lauded Ecuador’s legal system in an effort to have the case moved there, Chevron later changed its mind and began attacking the system when that system found the company liable for damages.
— “Chevron hires twelve public relations firms to discredit indigenous Indians in Ecuador” from Natural News.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:17 am

Sunday, February 7th, 2010

Quotation
The question is, what do the people want, lower taxes or more services? The answer is yes.
— Joe Dear, former chief of staff to Governor Gary Locke, several weeks after Locke’s reelection in January 2001 (as quoted by The Seattle Times).

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:45 pm

Quotation
I believe it ends this way: It ends the way so many Colts games have ended this year and in past years. I believe it ends with Manning leading a late scoring drive. I believe Manning walks off with his second Super Bowl MVP, and offensive line coach Howard Mudd leaves the game on top, and veteran defensive coordinator Larry Coyer finally earns a ring after a long and storied career.
— Indianapolis Star columnist Bob Kravitz, predicting the outcome of the forty fourth Super Bowl. The game went instead to the New Orleans Saints, 31-17.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 7:02 pm

Quotation
Reporters complaining about newsroom cutbacks and blaming bloggers should consider the resources used to cover the Tea Party and the former governor who will never again hold elected office.
— Eschaton’s Duncan Black, commenting on the traditional media’s obsession with covering Sarah Palin

# Posted by NPI Staff at 2:35 pm

Quotation
I joined the war when I was still in school. I witnessed a lot of repression of the poor [and] this provoked me to do something when I was still a young girl… The UN rehabilitation package is not going to make things better for me. They want to train us to weave baskets and make candles. They want to sponsor my schooling, but I am already educated. I don’t want to spend my life making baskets.
— NEPAL: Shanta Karki, “I don’t need rehabilitation” from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 10:04 am

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

Aside

Hey KOMO... it's "Democratic"

KOMO continues to allow its conservative/Republican bias to show, this time by garbling the name of the Democratic Party in a summary of a news story about I-960:

Initiative King Tim Eyman lashed out at Democrat lawmakers who are repealing the need for a two-thirds vote to raise taxes, which was approved by voters just two years ago.

What KOMO’s copy editor meant to type is Democratic lawmakers. Not “Democrat lawmakers”. Come on, guys. You make money putting this stuff on the air… can’t you get your spelling and grammar correct?

And by the way, Tim Eyman is not a “king” of anything. Democracies don’t have rulers, so your metaphor stinks. Eyman is not even figuratively a “king” of initiatives… most of the measures he has sponsored have been failures.

Also, Initiative 960 was approved in November 2007, which was more than two years ago. Since then voters have overwhelmingly rejected two Eyman initiatives.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:47 am

Quotation
In other words, looking to get approval for this merger, you sat there in my office and told me to my face that these rules would protect consumers but your lawyers had just finished arguing in front of the Commission that it would be unconstitutional to apply these rules.
— Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) to Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. From The Consumerist.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:07 am

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

Recommended Link

Reminder to the traditional media: Report on polls, don't worship them 

Cartoonist Jorge Cham humorously reminds us that the traditional media too often gets obsessed with polling, in a cartoon he says sixty three percent of Internet readers are sure to like. (Nice touch, Jorge).

# Posted by NPI Staff at 9:18 pm

Quotation
When the lawyers were offered $30 an hour their question was “Am I the kind of person who works for $30 an hour?” The answer was clearly no. But when they were asked to do it as a favor? Their new question was “Am I the kind of person who helps people in need?” And then their answer was yes.
— “A Story About Motivation” from Harvard Business Review.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:31 am

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Recommended Link

More Hondurans Protest Inauguration than Attend 

“over 200,000 Honduran teachers, small business owners, lawyers, youth, farmers, and many other employed and unemployed people march 5 kilometers across the city.  They are protesting what they see as corruption and an illegitimate government… Since the coup… thirty-two activists have been reported assassinated”

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:44 am

Monday, February 1st, 2010

Quotation
While “defense” spending does boost GDP, and preserve (politically important) jobs, it’s still a huge drag on the real economy… shifting those jobs to more productive areas, like energy and manufacturing, would have immensely positive effects on the economy.
— “Durable Goods: More Guns Than Butter” from Bearish News.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:04 am

Sunday, January 31st, 2010

Quotation
A month after changing the definition, with just 144 people dead from H1N1, the flu was given the WHO’s highest threat classification: a “stage-six pandemic alert”. By comparison, the mildest 20th Century pandemic killed a million people… One high-level, long-term WHO employee who preferred to remain anonymous for job security, described the WHO as follows: “WHO is infested by corruption. There is big corruption, like the management of H1N1, and there is small corruption; and between the big and the small corruption there is [corruption] in all imaginable forms. Unfortunately, it’s not only the WHO.
— “Swine Flu Didn’t Fly” from The Huffington Post.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 9:11 am

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Quotation
The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks… That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks… the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve… It’s as though the New York Fed was a black-ops outfit for the nation’s central bank.
— “Secret Banking Cabal Emerges From AIG Shadows” from Bloomberg.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 10:04 am

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Quotation
We have been focusing on supply-side economics for years now. You give more and more money to top wage earners and corporations, they then, according to Republicans, take that money and invest it in the economy and create new industry, employ more people and everybody is better off. In fact, in the past 20 years, what we have seen is that these people don’t invest the money in new production, they speculate with it. They speculated on high tech, they speculated on energy futures, and they speculate on mortgage-backed securities. That is why we are in the problems that we are in.
— Democratic State Senator Craig Pridemore, who is running for Congress in the 3rd District, on how the American economy got to this point.

# Posted by NPI Staff at 10:01 pm

Recommended Link

California Senate Passes Medicare for All Legislation 

“The bill would establish a single-payer system in California, modeled on the healthcare systems flourishing in virtually all other industrialized nations, where better patient outcomes are achieved at a fraction of the cost of the U.S. system.”

# Posted by NPI Staff at 11:29 am