Podcast appearances and mentions of david hyde

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Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2024 14:11

Washington state isn't the biggest player when it comes to electoral votes during presidential races.Still the primary election is coming up on March 12, and Republican voters are weighing former President Donald Trump and former South Carolina Governor Nikki HaleyKUOW's David Hyde spoke with some local Republican families to get insights into their priorities for 2024.We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenowAnd we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

Week in Review: Seattle City Council President Sara Nelson, Boeing, and Republican-backed initiatives

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2024 50:45

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with Seattle Channel's Brian Callanan, political analyst Joni Balter, and KUOW's David Hyde.

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Week in Review: Election, Starbucks, and ferries

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 10, 2023 51:32

Host Bill Radke discusses the week's news with The Stranger's Vivian McCall, Puget Sound Business Journal's Alex Halverson, and KUOW's David Hyde.

Centrists seem to be making headway in Seattle City Council races

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 9, 2023 5:46

KUOW politics reporter David Hyde talked to Kim Malcolm about what he's seeing as yesterday's election results trickle in.

The final countdown to next week's election

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 31, 2023 13:31

We're in the thick of the November election cycle. You've only got a week to hand in your ballots.So, if you're still trying to figure out HOW to vote, we've got you. KUOW's David Hyde asked candidates from each race about the big issues in each of their districts, and he's here to break it all down for us.Find our District Dashes here: https://www.kuow.org/stories/kuow-s-district-dash-a-seattle-city-council-deep-dive-for-busy-peopleCampaign Contributors: https://web6.seattle.gov/ethics/elections/campaigns.aspx?cycle=2023&type=contest&IDNum=215&leftmenu=collapsedWe can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. You have the power! Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenowAnd we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

Week in Review: Amazon, crime, and homelessness

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 29, 2023 51:48

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with political analyst and contributing columnist Joni Balter, PubliCola's Erica Barnett, and KUOW's David Hyde.

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Week in Review: fires, taxes, and elections

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 11, 2023 52:03

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with South Seattle Emerald's Lauryn Bray, political analyst and contributing columnist Joni Balter, and KUOW's David Hyde.

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Week in Review: July 7, 2023 - with Robert Cruickshank

Hacks & Wonks

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 7, 2023 51:28

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They discuss Dave Reichert's entry into the Washington gubernatorial race, whether fireworks are worth their consequences, observations about the motivation for and role of endorsements in local elections by powerful media outlets, a school governance model that renders school boards powerless, and Seattle Times poll results that challenge their usual narratives on homelessness and public safety. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Robert Cruickshank, at @cruickshank. Resources “Former Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Reichert files paperwork to run for WA governor” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times “Fireworks cause at least 2 building fires in Seattle, dozens of brush fires” by David Hyde from KUOW @waDNR on Twitter: “(deep sigh) All six wildfires in the Pacific Cascade Region this weekend were caused by fireworks.” “Seattle's School Board Should Move Away from Student Outcomes Focused Governance” by Robert Cruickshank for The Stranger “1 in 3 Seattle residents is considering leaving. Costs, crime are to blame” by Alison Saldanha from The Seattle Times “Seattle police rated as ‘fair' or ‘poor' by most residents, poll finds” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today we're continuing our Friday week-in-review shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. Welcome. [00:01:11] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you for having me back on, Crystal. [00:01:14] Crystal Fincher: Very, very excited to have you back on. And as we start our news of the week, we see a new entry into the race for governor - Dave Reichert. What do you make of this? [00:01:27] Robert Cruickshank: It's not that surprising, given that he had been apparently poking around the 2016 governor's race, the 2020 governor's race - Republicans didn't really have a leading candidate yet. I think corporate Democrat Mark Mullet was hoping he could de facto become the mainstream Republican candidate. But Reichert, I think, saw an opportunity here, realizing that the Republican candidates who have announced - people like Semi Bird or Raul Garcia - are much further to the right. Reichert himself has a very right wing record in Congress, of course, but he has 20+ years of presenting himself to the people of Western Washington, in particular, as someone who's more mainstream. And I think he saw his opportunity with Inslee retiring, an open seat. And open seat elections for governor in Washington - they're pretty rare these days - we've only had two this century. The first in 2004 was decided by 130 votes. And then in 2012, Inslee beat Rob McKenna, but it was pretty close - I think 51-49%. So Reichert saw his moment - I'm sure he had Republican leaders in the Legislature, corporate backers whispering in his ear, saying - Dude, we need you - there's no way we win otherwise. And even with Reichert in the race, it's still a pretty uphill climb for him, but he's going to have a ton of money and backing behind him for this. [00:02:39] Crystal Fincher: He is going to have a ton of money and backing behind him, and I do think that it was really an opening. And I think the opening came because of how extreme the Republican candidates are. The leading candidate right now is endorsed by Joe Kent, notoriously so extreme that he lost a traditionally Republican district to a Democrat in Congress - one of the biggest upsets in the country - because he is unhinged. And we're seeing candidates like that bubble up - now it's a reflection of how extreme the base has actually become. So I'm very curious to see what the reaction from the base to Dave Reichert is, because what - the people who were certainly encouraging him to run are looking for a more moderate presence, someone who is not presenting themselves as extremely as some of the other candidates are. But are they going to get any traction in a crowded primary where there are other alternatives that seem closer to that base? While at the same time, on the other side, I think Mark Mullet was really hoping to be able to capture moderate Republican votes - and has basically legislated as a moderate Republican, but still calls himself a Democrat because Republicans as a party have moved further to the right. But his policy certainly has not been consistent with Democrats in the Legislature or in the base. And so the concerning thing about him, from more progressive people, was that - Okay, if he makes it through against Bob Ferguson to the general election or against Hilary Franz in the general election, that he could siphon some Democratic votes for sure. But also pick up a ton of Republican votes, if Republicans don't feel like - Hey, we don't have one of our people in the general, but this guy is not as much of a Democrat as these other ones. That's a scary proposition in that situation. This really flips that and adds a whole new dimension to this race. So I'm curious - imagining what conversations are like in his camp - and what they're really considering as the impact on their campaigns and the path forward for each of them. [00:04:43] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, Mullet's team is, I think, trying to win over that sort of centrist Democratic vote. The thing is - it's just not that extensive - there's not very many of them. If you're a Democrat who is somewhat cranky with the status quo, you're not that numerous. Ferguson has won three statewide elections, he's got a strong base of support in King County, and will do well outside of King County as well. Mullet has, I think, really no path at this point. Especially as Reichert left Congress in 2018, so that means he avoided having to be there during both of Trump's impeachments. He avoided having to be there on the insurrection on January 6, 2021. So he is a bit of a relic from the past in many respects. But one of the things is he didn't have to go on record around some of these things and he'll try to play that up. But I think Bob Ferguson, who has not been running the greatest campaign - we should say, so far - running a front runner campaign, but really light on issues. He did hit pretty hard at Reichert - and correctly so - when he pointed out Reichert is a really right wing voting record on abortion rights in particular. And that matters here in Washington state, because the governor appoints Supreme Court justices in Washington state. And if you have a right wing governor who's trying to prove his anti-abortion cred to a suspicious base - he gets into office somehow - then I think we're going to have a real problem on the Washington Supreme Court. And we've seen what happens when you don't take Supreme Court nominations seriously. A lot of people, 2016, thought - Oh, they will never actually overturn Roe vs. Wade. Well, they did it. And you'll hear conversations here in Washington in 2024 saying - Oh, Reichert may be anti-abortion, he's got an anti-abortion record, but it's so safe here in Washington state, nothing could happen to it. I think we should know by now that anyone saying that is just deluded and has no real conception of the risk that a right wing anti-abortion candidate poses to abortion rights. [00:06:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and that's such an important point. And lots of people think it's safe - it is only safe to the degree that we actively protect it. It is only safe because there have been appointments of our State Supreme Court justices - that follow the law, follow the precedent, and understand that that's critical for personal freedom and autonomy. And the blueprint for how this works, we saw with Trump. Yeah, parrot that - Oh, I'll protect women's rights. Oh, it's settled law. We're not going to mess with it. Meanwhile, just appoint all the judges to do that work for you. The base knows that's how it works on that side - they play along - Yeah, he'll say whatever he needs to say to get elected. Don't worry about it. We know he's going to appoint these judges. That's where really the fight for rights gets usurped, where things that are not publicly popular get entrenched, and get implemented. So it just is a big concern in terms of that. And he gets credit for being a moderate Republican based off of really him not being there while more extreme Republicans were acting more extreme. I don't know that it's a given that he's not that extreme. I'm going to be really curious, especially through campaign stops as he hears the base demand more from him. Does his rhetoric change? Does it become more extreme for that party's base of today, which is different? I'm really curious to see how that race unfolds. [00:08:05] Robert Cruickshank: Reichert will have to campaign with Trump, either literally or figuratively. Trump will be on the same ballot and his rabid fan base, which is of course now the base of the entire Republican party, will be eager for restoration to power of Trump. And they're going to want to know where Reichert stands on that. And there's no way he actually gets around that. Now this is where - again, Ferguson has, I think, a gift here. He can run against an actual right wing Republican. But Ferguson's also going to have to learn the lessons of 2016, which is that you don't win solely by running against a right wing Republican. You have to have your own agenda that says - here's what I'm going to do differently as governor. Here's what I'm going to do to solve your problems. We haven't seen that from Ferguson so far. He seems content to run a traditional front runner campaign - where he has a poll lead, he touts his endorsements - but no real bold narrative to try to inspire people. He's going to have to do that. Because the lesson we learned in 2016 from Hillary's campaign was she didn't have that at all - she also ran a classic front runner campaign and narrowly lost. You have to have something that excites people about you yourself. Democrats have, for as long as I've been alive, tried to defeat the far right by pointing out how awful they are - sometimes works, but more often than not, it fails. Because the voters need to see from Democratic candidates those solutions to what they want. [00:09:27] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, could not agree more - and we will keep our eye on that race. Also this week, we had the July 4th Independence Day holiday. With that came fireworks celebrations - big publicly-funded fireworks celebrations from cities and counties. But also, just a ton of personal firework activity, although it is banned in several cities and counties around the state - that really doesn't seem to be consequential at all. What do you think about the use of fireworks, and is it worth the risk that they present now? [00:10:02] Robert Cruickshank: I don't know about you, but I remember - as a kid in Southern California - looking forward to the Fourth and lighting up the fireworks in the street and you think not much of it. You think about personal safety - Don't blow off your hand, kid. But I think what we're seeing here is there's a much larger policy problem with these personal fireworks. People talk about the way in which they cause post-traumatic stress revival in combat veterans, people worried about their kids and pets - that all matters. There's an even bigger problem though with the effect on our climate and on air. I think it was the Washington Department of Natural Resources pointed out that all six of the wildfires currently burning in Washington state were caused by fireworks. And Crystal, you've posted in the last couple of days on social media great before-and-after shots from downtown Tacoma - crystal clear blue sky shot of Mount Rainier, and then the day after the Fourth obscured by all the smoke. And we all woke up yesterday to all this smoke, which was caused in one part or another by people lighting off fireworks - whether it's just the actual smoke from the fireworks themselves or the wildfire smoke that it caused. And I think we have to look really seriously at whether, especially in a climate crisis, we want to be doing this. Our forests in Western Washington are especially dry this year. You go to campgrounds and they will soon, if they're not already, be under a burn ban - and rangers will come and enforce that. But a lot of cities like Seattle have fireworks bans - they're unenforced. And I remember - I think it was in 2011, I was working with Mike McGinn when he was mayor - I used to sit in occasionally on the meetings he had with SPD command staff. And I remember - I think it was July 4th, 2011 - when just fireworks went off all night and we just got flooded in the mayor's office with complaints - This is illegal, mayor, you should be enforcing it. And so the next day happened to be a command staff. And so I went in to help compose our response from the mayor's office and McGinn asked the commanders - What do we do about this? And the SPD brass all said - Yeah, it's illegal, but we have so many other things we're dealing with on the Fourth. We have to make sure that people aren't driving drunk, we're worried about people congregating in big crowds and causing problems, worried about gun violence. And Mr. Mayor, we can't respond to all of these calls. And people know that. Everyone knows that the prohibition on fireworks is never enforced. So we have to figure out what we're going to do about this. I don't think we want cops rolling up and down every street on the night of the Fourth. But is there some way we can more effectively limit the sale and use of fireworks? Because I think this is a clear climate problem. And it's not just the risk of someone blowing off a hand, which is bad enough. Now it's a risk to all of us and our air quality and our lungs. We don't want yet another smoke-filled summer just because people shot off fireworks unsafely. [00:12:44] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I'm someone like you - especially growing up, when I was young in Southern California - loved fireworks. I loved fireworks here, I loved fireworks displays. There was - probably about 10 years ago, now 15 years ago - where it was similar kind of to the Blue Angels conversation - Yeah, I may enjoy it, but it does have negative impacts on others. Pets are freaked out, it's a nightmare to manage pets with the things. And people - because we have sent so many people to war, there are a lot of people dealing with PTSD and complex issues surrounding things that sound like very large explosions, especially when they're unplanned. And I don't know what things are like where you're at, but where I'm at in South King County, fireworks start long before the Fourth and they last long after the Fourth. And they're random. It just can sound like a random - six o'clock this morning - sounded like a random explosion happening - Did a bomb just go off? No, it's fireworks. And so they do just, themselves, have a lot of challenges. But they're compounding other huge problems that we're dealing with. You talked about the wildfire smoke that we're already dealing with - we're adding smoke on top of smoke in this situation, when we've learned so much more about how important air quality is to health. We're adding fires on top of fires, when we have our fire departments and our state fire officials trying to fight so many fires already. Skamania County residents were dealing with a water shortage because so much water was being used to fight fires. Is it really worth jeopardizing people's access to water here in Washington state? Is it really worth the days - plural - of horrible air quality directly attributed to that? And on days like today, and this week, when it's really hot out - Okay, we are a state that has very low rates of air conditioning inside, people have to go outside to keep from baking while they're in the house inside and now they've got to breathe dangerous air. I don't know that the cost is worth it. But also - one, you'd be surprised how many people who are progressive in many ways would like cops driving down every street enforcing fireworks bans. But I think what we've learned from all of these bans is that if the supply issue isn't addressed, I don't know that we get beyond this problem. And we've got to figure out a better way, just community-wise, to work on this. It feels like the cat is so far out of the bag. It feels like, whether it's cars or guns or other things that people just feel such an emotional attachment, and some ties to patriotism - which, if your patriotism relies on fireworks, it's not patriotism. But it's just a big challenge. I certainly am so tired of fireworks at this point in time, but I'm not sure what an effective path forward is. [00:15:39] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, and one thing to note is that the sale of fireworks is banned in much of Western Washington, but one notable exception is tribal lands. And I think people have the experience of driving through tribal lands and seeing these enormous stands where fireworks go on sale two weeks before the Fourth. And Native Americans have, as we all know, been denied their rights for so long, you don't want to come in and try to pass some ban. At the same time, I think it's worth having some conversation with those communities and say - What can we do about this? How can we find a way to bring down the number that are being sold and really try to crack down on the abuse of privately owned fireworks? [00:16:18] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. You will not find me advocating for telling tribal communities what to do, sovereign governments what to do. But I do think there is a place for conversation among everyone to try and figure out how can we better manage this, at least. Also want to talk about some races going on right now. We are coming up on the primary election, which will be on August 1st. We're seeing some endorsements begin to trickle out from a number of outlets. Are there any endorsements that have caught your eye to this point? [00:16:54] Robert Cruickshank: There's one that came out yesterday, which was completely unsurprising - but still notable, I think - which is The Seattle Times not really endorsing Sofia Aragon for King County Council, but really endorsing against Teresa Mosqueda, who they just seem to loathe. And reading their editorial yesterday, the thing to know is that they don't tell you precisely why they loathe Teresa. They talk about - Oh, defunding police, she doesn't take public safety seriously - none of which is true. The real reason they don't like her is because she's incredibly effective at standing up for working people, standing up for their unions, and especially taxing big corporations. JumpStart, the tax on big corporations here in Seattle, would not have happened without Teresa Mosqueda's leadership. The Times is so anti-tax and wants to cut taxes on big corporations - that's what they really care about. And one of the reasons why this endorsement matters is because it's a tell - it shows what's really going on when The Times makes their endorsements this year. And you see the pattern across these races in Seattle City Council, they'll say - Oh, we're endorsing this person because they sound good and they have experience, and they're going to crack down on public safety, and they're going to outlaw drug use, and resume the War on Drugs - that's their surface level messaging, because they know that's what resonates with their section of the electorate. But the truth here is they want a city council that will repeal the JumpStart Tax. They want a city council that will either slow walk, or undermine, or not even do a capital gains tax - that is what the Blethen family's cared about, above all else - is taxes. And they're furious that someone like Teresa Mosqueda was able to finally get the JumpStart Tax through, and they want to see her defeated because they don't want her going on the King County Council and continuing her successful advocacy for taxing the rich and big corporations. So I think it's important to read Times endorsements with that lens in mind. [00:18:44] Crystal Fincher: The corporate money in Seattle politics, I think, is pretty safe to say that it's primarily motivated by anti-tax sentiments. We have talked for years and years about Washington state, Seattle included, having the most regressive tax system in the country - meaning that the people at the bottom spend much more of their money on taxes than the people at the top. We have no income tax, and we're light on a lot of other taxes for the most wealthy individuals and businesses here in the state. They want to maintain that. They love the status quo. Now everyone else is suffering under it - we've seen how that impacts homelessness, poverty, education, other services, seniors - everything else is starved because these people want to maintain their wealth and profits to the detriment of the rest of the community. So when we hear these things and when you hear these wedge issues, the cruelty sometimes that comes to those conversations is absolutely there - but that corporate money really is motivated by who's going to ensure that we're not going to pay more taxes. And so what I think we've increasingly seen, and I'm definitely noticing this cycle, is that these candidates really are not on record about much. And when you read this endorsements, they don't point to - hardly any specifics - you see things like, They seem like they can bring people together. They have a perspective that can reach lots of people. But what are the details? What have they done? And usually that's not included in these endorsements. And so what is it really about? Not what they're talking about in that article - it's about the taxes. And Teresa Mosqueda has been so extremely effective at figuring out what the community needs, responding to what the community actually desires, and putting together a coalition and a revenue package that addresses the most critical needs that we have in the City. It was extremely popular - so popular that it passed and has been really resilient. People not only liked it before passage, they love it now. And on top of that, it was put together so well and so soundly that the JumpStart Tax bailed us out of an economic shortfall. The JumpStart Tax prevented austerity in the City of Seattle. Bruce Harrell used JumpStart money to help stabilize a lot of his priorities. This has been very helpful to everyone with all interests, because it was there to backstop the volatility that comes with not having more stable progressive revenue. So it is really disappointing to see that. And it feels like they're talking out of two sides of their mouth because they have benefited from that tax. But it's a tax, so it must be bad. And Teresa Mosqueda understands budgets - she understands where to find money, where money needs to be invested to get the biggest benefit - and is looking to take that to the King County Council, which it's desperately needed there. I don't know if many people pay attention to how opaque the King County budget is, but it is really hard for - even legislators - coming out there to understand. And for the public to engage with, it's really difficult. And Teresa Mosqueda has proven that that's her forte, that she can bring more transparency and accountability to the tax money that's being spent - because I do think there are legitimate questions about - Where is this money being spent? How is it being spent? How does this compare to other times? And I think she's in a unique position to do that. It's just wild to see someone do something that a lot of people thought was impossible, and do it so successfully that it's literally benefited everyone in the City, and have that just not be acknowledged. [00:22:31] Robert Cruickshank: Your point about what corporate money really wants is anti-tax policy - I know that the Seattle Chamber of Commerce was asking city council candidates this year a question that basically went - Do you agree that we should be wisely spending City money and look to cut spending before we raise taxes elsewhere? It's a very leading question that clearly states their goal. They want to roll back as much of JumpStart as they can. And what they're seeing with JumpStart, as well is the state capital gains tax - it's popular. Not only is it effective at raising money, it raises more money than people thought it would. There's a lot of money to be gained through taxing corporations, through taxing the capital gains of wealthy people. It's popular, it works. Teresa Mosqueda could bring that to King County, where there's a huge crisis with transit - we're losing routes, having a hard time retaining operators, need to pay them better, give them better benefits, put more buses out there. That all costs money. And King County usually goes to property taxes or sales taxes to fund transit. Well, put Teresa Mosqueda on that council and you could see something much more progressive in terms of revenue for our transit system - that sends shivers down the spines of every Seattle Times editorial board member, and that's why you saw this absurd attack on Mosqueda in their editorial yesterday. [00:23:51] Crystal Fincher: What do you think about the role of endorsements - in Seattle, particularly - so far? [00:23:58] Robert Cruickshank: It's interesting - I've been talking to a few candidates about this. And a couple candidates - some who have just not really done the political thing before, but who have paid attention to politics. Like most of us who are progressive - we don't know much about a candidate or a race - we open The Stranger and look at their endorsements. I first moved here in 2001. I had no idea about anything related to local politics, but I read The Stranger and I'm - Okay, yeah, this makes sense. And ever since, that's usually how I voted until I started paying close attention to things myself. But talking to candidates, and some of these folks are - Gosh, you know, if I don't get a Stranger endorsement, I'm sunk. My campaign's over. And I try and say - No, that's not true at all - I've worked with candidates, local, state, federal candidates around the country who lose a key endorsement and go on to win anyway because they run a great campaign that gets their message out to voters and talks about things that people really care about. But I think here in Seattle, we've gotten to a place where - even though I strongly agree with The Stranger endorsements 9 times out of 10 - I think these newspaper endorsements - The Stranger, The Times, in particular - have become too influential. And I don't think this is necessarily the fault of the papers themselves. Newspapers do endorsements all the time around the country. And there are other media outlets here in Seattle that do endorsements - South Seattle Emerald does, PubliCola, Urbanist. But it's these two in particular, Stranger and Times, have outsized influence. And I think we, who are progressive activists, voters, people who - I don't know about you, but I'm the type where family and friends say - Robert, I don't know how to vote on this. What should I do? We need to start doing a better job steering people towards other sources of information, in addition to these newspaper endorsements. One of the reasons being they're small-d undemocratic - you can have candidates that have done great work in their community, who've built up a strong network of support, who've really gone out there and hustled to build grassroots backing, who are running a progressive campaign. And if they don't have a great day in an interview, or they aren't buddies with the Blethens - they don't get an endorsement and their campaign's sunk. You can get around that. And I think we, who are the progressive activists, need to do a bit better job of helping campaigns and helping inform voters how to run smart campaigns, how to get messages out there, and what those messages are. Because there are great candidates who are going to be overlooked in some of these endorsements. And though, again, I'm assuming I'll agree with 9 out of the 10 endorsements that we see in The Stranger when they come out later this month, I still want to see voters look to other sources as well. And I want campaigns to know that they can still win, even if they don't get this or that endorsement. We're finishing up our endorsement process at the Sierra Club - I want people to look at Sierra Club endorsements and think that they matter, and I think they do. But I also want to be part of a campaign - I wouldn't want anyone to look at the endorsements we're doing and have that be the final word. It all needs to be part of building a movement that's grassroots in nature behind campaigns, rather than having people who we might agree with - or not agree with, in the case of The Times - anointing winners and losers. I don't think that's healthy for a progressive movement. [00:26:58] Crystal Fincher: I agree with that. And I think endorsements are useful as a piece of information as a data point, not as the determining factor. And it is bad for small-d democracy. To your point, it's not necessarily the fault of the papers. But like with The Stranger - The Stranger is batting a thousand in its endorsed candidates getting through the primary. So basically, if you're a progressive candidate and you don't get The Stranger endorsement in your primary, it's bleak. It is that bleak at this point in time. I think part of it is due to us losing so many reporters at so many other outlets, the decline of local media. We used to have a ton of papers in South King County - now we have a few, and those few are dramatically understaffed. And that's the case throughout the City. We used to have more hyperlocal blogs even in the City than we do today - even that is hard. The revenue needs, it's harder to support yourself as an independent journalist, it's harder for newsrooms to afford to put the amount of reporters on things. And I think what I've seen is there's been a decline in the amount of political reporters. There's been a decline in the amount of coverage overall. And that coverage used to do a better job of informing the editorial policies and the endorsements. Hard to ignore something that was covered on the hard side of your paper that was reported and just not address it, or gloss over it, or not acknowledge it's a problem. That's much easier to do when you just aren't able to cover the things, but the coverage isn't happening. So you get these really ideologically focused endorsements - it's not like they weren't ideological before, but now there's not even reporting to back that up in so many situations. And really one of the reasons why I started moderating debates was because I just want those endorsements to reflect who those candidates really are. I want voters to understand what the candidates really believe, what they're on record voting for, what they're on record doing. Because so many times these days, these endorsements happen that don't talk about anything that is on the record. People read that, they believe it because it's coming from a trusted paper. Then they get into office and govern consistently with their record and people have the surprise Pikachu face like - I never knew this was going to happen. When it's just like - if endorsements and editorial boards would have done a better job of making sure that endorsement reflected who that candidate was, we wouldn't be in this situation. And so I just think it's a disservice, really, to voters to not have who a candidate is and what they've actually done - good and bad, wherever that falls. Just have it be based in reality, and be based on what they've said and what they've done. And that just seems to be playing less of a role in some of these major endorsements, understandably, because there isn't a lot of coverage there. You have people doing their best to interview people in these situations, but it's a big challenge. [00:29:56] Robert Cruickshank: We also need to draw distinctions between The Stranger and The Times - not just on ideology, but an approach. Like at least at The Stranger, you've got the reporters themselves, comprising their Election Control Board, doing the interviews themselves. And those interviews are tough - tough in a good way. They ask really good hard-hitting, probing questions and they follow up with hard-hitting probing responses - they don't let people wiggle out of something. They're coming in there with some background, they've done research there, and they're coming at it trying to get a sense of who's going to be the most progressive, who's going to fight for us, who's going to be a champion. I like that and I respect that - that's good. The Times is coming in there with a clear bent and an agenda - 9 times out of 10, they know who their candidate is going to be well in advance. And they're just looking for things in the endorsement interview at The Times that they can quote in the editorial, or they want to get the candidate they really don't like and oppose to say something in the interview they can quote from and bash them over the head with it in the editorial of the other person. So I think those are fundamental differences there. But I think you said, as usual, a lot of really good things here - one of which is the lack of reporting. And I think we've seen local reporting just fall apart, not just in Seattle, but it's even worse once you get outside Seattle. These smaller towns like Burien or Bothell or Kent or Federal Way or whatever it is, the local coverage is almost non-existent. Or when it does exist, it comes from the right wing. And that's not helpful either when there are huge populations in these cities that are progressive and want a progressive solution. And so I think the lack of reporting on a day-to-day basis really just undermines a lot of our ability to run the democracy the way we want to. I also want to close by saying I think it's a little bit incumbent on candidates and campaigns and consultants themselves to do a better job running smart campaigns. I think here in Seattle, in particular, some folks have become a little too reliant on getting a Stranger endorsement - counting on that to get them through the primary, counting on that to get them through a general election. Yeah, if you get that endorsement, clearly it's worth a lot. It's valuable. I don't know that Mike McGinn would have been mayor without getting The Stranger in 2009, so that worked out. But I think at the same time, you have to run a smart campaign - McGinn ran a really good campaign in 2009. Stranger endorsement might get you through the primary - doesn't always get you through the general election. You have to have a really sharp ability to get your message out there, mobilize your voters, and talk about things that voters care about in a progressive way. I worry that with the dominance of just a couple endorsement sources, that people aren't running as insightful or smart campaigns as they might in other parts of the country. [00:32:25] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. I also want to talk about a piece about Seattle Public Schools in The Stranger this week by none other than Robert Cruickshank. [00:32:38] Robert Cruickshank: It comes back to this question of local reporting. And I was looking at some articles a few months ago about the strike that happened at Seattle Public Schools in 2015 - and just the amount of coverage from so many different reporters and so many different outlets, compared to what we have today, was striking. There's very little coverage now happening in the media about what's going on at Seattle Public Schools. The Times will cover it occasionally, but there's a bent to it. The Stranger rarely - and again, they don't have the resources they need to cover everything they want to cover. It's not their fault. It's - the ecosystem is eroded by corporations and private equity and all of that. But what I wanted to draw attention to is this issue around how the schools are governed. And there is an effort out there, funded by the Gates Foundation through something called the Council for Great City Schools, to impose a model of governance on the school board and the school district that is rooted in corporations and nonprofit governance - where a school board is really the school district's version of the city council, or the legislature, or Congress, right? That's how it works today and how it should work - they're the elected representatives of the democracy to make sure that everything's going properly, that if there's a problem the board can step in and fix it, to hold the bureaucracy accountable. Bureaucrats hate that, and so do the corporate education reformers at the Gates Foundation - they've always been trying to find ways to limit or eliminate the public's oversight and influence in operations of the school district. And so what they've come up with lately is this thing called Student Outcome Focused Governance, which sounds great - we all want good student outcomes. But in practice, what it means is this tendency - which already existed - to have the board do less and less work and have less and less oversight over district operations. It now locks the board into a really rigid system where the board essentially becomes rubber stamps. The idea is that they give goals to the superintendent - we want a certain amount of third graders to score well on a test. And guardrails - Oh well, you agree you're not going to violate community norms by doing this. It's all really vague stuff, but there's no enforcement mechanism. And ultimately, what happens is that when a school community comes to the board saying - We have a problem here. You're cutting our jazz program at Washington Middle School - which is nearly a third Black students at Washington Middle School. Franklin High School - You're eliminating our mock trial program - the student body at Franklin, about a third Black. A year ago, the district fired the principal at Cleveland High School, who had done a great job hiring a faculty that looked like the diverse community that attends Cleveland, that had done a great job raising graduation rates, especially among Black students. And they fired her because she violated a district mandate to hide the stats on COVID cases. And so the community - again, a lot of Black families show up at the school board saying - Oh my God, this is terrible, you need to intervene. And the board in all these cases says - No, we're not going to do anything. And part of the reason they say no is they say - Well, we've decided we're stepping back from operations. We're not going to interfere with what the superintendent is doing. And this new model of Student Outcome Focused Governance, where we hand over more and more power and policy to the superintendent, is part of that push. And so it's just adopting this corporate mindset where your board of directors just rubber stamps everything and lets the CEO do what they want - that's not how a school district is supposed to operate. And the nice thing about Seattle is we're not a place where we have Moms for Liberty showing up at the school board meetings wanting to ban books. Now, that is a problem in Kent and a problem in other places - you have to figure out how you manage that democratically. But here in Seattle, we need a board that is engaged - especially with $130 million budget deficit, especially with closing schools. And we're going to see at tonight's board meeting, some of this play out - where they're reviewing their goals and seeing that actually these goals they set out - of third graders achieving certain test score proficiency - aren't being met. In fact, they're pretty far from being met. And so the question is - All right, what are you going to do, board? Are you actually going to intervene on any of this, or are you just going to let it go? And the last thing I want to mention on this front is the board is looking at, the district really, is looking at closing schools. They might announce this fall maybe as many as 20 schools they want to close, which will be a huge story, a bomb going off in communities when their core of their neighborhood, their school is closed. And people have been asking - Well, what's the board going to do to have public input? The superintendent's plan is to have a couple of public meetings in August, when people are either physically not here or are checked out for other reasons - they're not engaged in their school community - to have this conversation. And is the board going to do anything about that? Are they going to actually bring in the voices of the communities that are going to be most affected and impacted? Or are they just going to say - Eh, we've ceded all that power. We don't really want to do that work. We're just going to sit here and rubber stamp what the administration says. These are fundamental questions about community involvement and governance, small-d democracy - and the board is going off in the wrong direction with very little oversight from the public and certainly not from the media. [00:37:30] Crystal Fincher: I'm really glad you wrote that because it's such a big problem. And what was striking to me was a couple of things - as you mentioned, just how frequently the voices of parents and students have just been ignored. Where problems - yes, they exist, yes, it's bad, but it's not our place to intervene, basically. And if it's not their place, then what are they doing? It just doesn't seem to make much sense. And in the context of this current election, where we have school board candidates talking about what they want to do, what their goals are, how things would change - that seems like that would be hard to do under this current structure. It seems like - in order to make any kind of progress, to have anything that they're talking about land in the realm of possibility - we have to change this way of doing things first. So it's a bleak situation currently, but it can be changed. And there just needs to be a focus. And I thank you for writing that to help provide that focus - on everyone saying - Wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. And really just another thing that is bad for public governance. [00:38:36] Robert Cruickshank: One of the reasons I wrote it is these are conversations happening among a lot of different parents in Seattle that - there's a whole network of people who are engaged and talking with each other about these concerns and growing increasingly frustrated that they're just not getting media coverage. And this is where I point out - yeah, there's so fewer reporters covering the schools these days. As we said, even earlier in this podcast, while we think it's bad in Seattle, it's so much worse once you get just a couple of miles outside of the City, where there are Moms for Liberty people out there pushing really hard to ban books, to attack trans kids, take down Pride flags. And that occasionally gets covered when it gets bad enough, but the constant drumbeat going on in some of these smaller school districts is just not getting the attention it needs to and it's a problem. [00:39:26] Crystal Fincher: It's a big problem - in Kent, in Highline School District, in Tacoma. It is in our suburbs. And because it isn't getting much pressure and because information is so siloed, we're seeing alliances form - some people who endorse Democratic candidates falling into this trap and then just spiraling from there. And it's a big challenge, but we won't be able to get on top of it without taking action here. And by having those districts that aren't being afflicted with that set an example, policy-wise, for other districts. Seattle is in such a unique position, as a larger city with a progressive population, to be able to do that. And policies like this - you could almost say they were designed to prevent that, that's how it works on the ground. But it absolutely needs to be changed. Now I also want to talk about some polling that we saw reported in The Seattle Times this week, that may have been surprising to some Seattle Times readers if they read past the headline. What did you see here? [00:40:32] Robert Cruickshank: There's some fascinating results, including even in today's Times, where - just starting with the one that appeared today - the headline, "1 in 3 Seattle residents thinking about leaving the City." Okay - another "Seattle is Dying" narrative? Well, you read the actual article and look at the polling results - you see that about 30% of those people saying they want to leave are worried about housing costs - turns out they're renters who love Seattle, they feel safe here, they like the City a lot and they don't want to leave. But they feel like they're being priced out, so they're looking - Maybe I move to Tacoma, maybe I move to Montana, maybe I move to Texas - but they don't want to. Then there's another third of those people who are looking at leaving Seattle, who are the ones who say they're concerned about public safety - turns out, overwhelmingly, homeowners making more than $250,000 a year as a household - these are people who have no actual public safety worries. We have issues in Seattle, but this is a very, very safe city by any stretch of the imagination. And yet these are the people who have the most privilege, the most money and wealth in the City, who are being spooked by the coverage they're reading in The Times and thinking - Oh gosh, maybe I need to move out of here, it's become unsafe. No, it's not. But it's interesting to see who gets attention and who doesn't. The Times caters to that wealthy homeowner and stokes their fears about public safety. While the renter - usually younger, usually more progressive - The Times actually attacks what they need. The Times is notorious for opposing housing bills. The missing middle bill, the Times tried to kill earlier this year from the editorial side. So it's interesting to see these results even pop up in The Times' own reporting. Earlier this week, they had something on public safety and police - shouldn't surprise any progressive that "defund the police" is now unpopular with pretty much most of the electorate. But what remains highly popular across the board - and this shows up in the Chamber's own polling as well - is standing up alternatives to police. That has huge support. People get it - that we need an alternative to sending an officer with a gun to a lot of these calls. We need to preserve that for violent crime or theft in progress - the things that you might want a cop for. Someone in mental health crisis needs a mental health counselor, not a cop. Suspicious person walking down the street - come on, someone else can respond to that who's not going to escalate that with a gun. And the public gets that. And yet that's not reflected in The Times editorializing. And as we know, City Hall, especially the mayor's office, really dragged its feet on setting up alternatives to policing, even though the public is making it clear in these polls that they want that. [00:43:07] Crystal Fincher: And notable that - even on this program before - Monisha Harrell, former Senior Deputy Mayor, really wanted to stand those up. And unfortunately, she's not going to be with the administration much longer. And even in this and this public safety poll - it is so interesting how people view polls, approach polls, and how media entities are now using polls. One - now, you want to view the entire poll. And what we've seen increasingly from outlets, including The Seattle Times, is the kind of dripping of information. And okay, you drip information - still talk about your methodology, but they seem to be like - Oh, it's all about talking about this - so that's definitely one thing to note. I'm looking at the headlines on some of these things, which are curious. But when you look at the actual results - my goodness, when asked the question - How would you rate the job the Seattle police are doing in the City? - 60% of residents say it's not good. The choices are excellent, good, fair, and poor - 40% say fair, 20% say poor. If you have 60% of residents in your city saying you're not doing a good job - for everyone else, that gets breathless headlines from The Times saying that they're in trouble, maybe they're on their way out, but here it just seems to not factor into the narrative. And not that The Times is going to say - Okay well, disband - that's not going to happen. But it can inform questions - like in the last municipal elections, we had a number of candidates running on police reform. Now, some with a more cynical view - myself included - when they saw, say, mailers from Sara Nelson saying that she was going to focus on police reform, didn't really believe that. But hey, everyone gets elected, they have a chance. Now, I don't know what Sara Nelson has done in this time on the council about police reform, but that seems to be the thing - just promise it and never get to it. Or that's basically the - You know, hey, we don't need to do any extreme stuff, but things do need to get better. Once again, if you don't talk about what those things are, what your actual plans are, it really commits you to nothing. And surprise, what we have gotten there is nothing - when the public is really saying - Please do something and we're getting increasingly dissatisfied by not doing something. You talked about how people desperately want alternatives to policing. There are few policy proposals in any issue area that are as popular as that. And so my goodness, stand that up, get the job done. And what this could really spur is an examination of why, when it's so popular, it's not happening and the mayor's office is dragging its feet. It's funded by the Seattle City Council, this is really in the mayor's lap. Why isn't this happening? But there just seems to be no curiosity here. And this, to me, is interesting in just how campaigns use polling. A lot of times it's not for horse race stuff - it's to inform where people are at on issues, how to bridge the gap between where people are at and where you are as a candidate, and where you'd like them to be. It's not a - Well, this is where people are at and this is all we can do about it. It's a piece of information, it's not a determining factor for what will happen. And we see that all the time, because polls move and polls change. And the more you talk about an issue, you see the numbers move on it. So it's not set in stone, but it is a piece of information and it just feels like we aren't using that information effectively. [00:46:30] Robert Cruickshank: I think you can look at some of the progressive campaigns in Seattle that are being run this year, and I'm not sure in some cases what their overall strategy is. Because there's a clear path here - tax the rich, stand up alternatives to policing. And quickly get people housed without sweeping them, without being violent and destructive, but get our homeless neighbors into housing that is good and housing they want to be in - with a door that locks, for example. That's popular. All those things are super popular and they probably can run on that. And then The Seattle Times candidates are going to have a hard time saying - Oh yeah, me too - because their backers don't want that. But these polls are really fascinating because of what they show, and how they not just complicate but openly challenge the narrative that we're seeing from The Times, from the Chamber, and from some of these candidates, people like Sara Nelson and others. This is not a right-wing city. This is a city that sees some problems out there and wants them solved. And wants progressive solutions to them, as long as progressives are able to truly offer them. [00:47:33] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. And shows that everyone across the board is concerned about these problems. There's this narrative that progressives just don't care about crime. Statistically, we're victims more than anyone else. We're victims of this stuff. We are suffering from it - we don't want it, it's unacceptable. What is infuriating is seeing so much money and time devoted to things that have proven not to solve this and being told - But we don't have the money or resources to actually do the things that will. Well, if you would just stop wasting them on the things that won't - how many headlines do we have to see that community is upset because following this sweep, people came back to next door, right across town. Clearly, and literally I've seen four of those headlines in the past two weeks for our region. And yeah, it's so obvious that just saying - Go somewhere else - and violently imposing that and destroying people's property while telling them - Go somewhere else - just doesn't work. The problem is that they don't have homes. If we aren't doing anything to get them in homes, we are just perpetuating the problem and spending a lot of money to do it - it's just so incredibly wasteful, it's so fiscally irresponsible. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: What this shows is that candidates on the right, Seattle Times, Chamber of Commerce - people like that - are not actually interested in solving these problems. They're not really interested in housing the homeless. They're not really interested in dealing with people who are abusing drugs, addicted to drugs, and doing so in public. They're not really interested in solving the crime problem. What they're really interested in is taking those problems - blowing them up out of proportion, scaring people about them, and then using that fear to turn people against progressive elected officials and progressive candidates. Because as we talked about earlier in the show, what they really care about is cutting taxes for the wealthy and for big corporations. They know that those taxes are extremely popular, but if they can elect candidates who will roll those taxes back and elect them on other issues by stoking those fears - that's a winning political strategy. And it's worked. It's a strategy that exists for a reason - it's often successful. And so we, who are progressive, have to understand that. And we not only need to just point out that that's what the playbook the other team is using, we have to counter that with having the solutions that people really want. And fight hard and effectively get them. This is where Teresa Mosqueda, again, has been very, very good at this. She had, with the JumpStart Tax, tried to fund affordable housing. The council in 2020 had great efforts - great programs funded and approved to solve visible homelessness. And Jenny Durkan just undermined all of them for political reasons. And so that's the challenge that we face - is often progressives are going to get the blame for things that corporate Democrats and right wingers have blocked them from doing. [00:50:24] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, could not agree more. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, July 7th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, one of the best political minds on the West Coast, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on one of the 11 platforms that people are on, probably, @cruickshank. You can follow Hacks & Wonks and me @finchfrii on all platforms. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

Episode 81: The Power of Artificial Intelligence with David Hyde-Volpe

Noob School

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 23, 2023 49:27

Today on Noob School, John is joined by David Hyde-Volpe, Principal Security Engineer and CTO at The Vizius Group. David speaks on the power of AI all across the board, from logistics to cybersecurity, and discusses with John how he and his team implement it to help businesses in many different manners. Tune in for interesting insight on a new age of technology, and much more. Check out what Noob School has to offer here: https://www.schoolfornoobs.com/ I'm going to be sharing my secrets on all my social channels, but if you want them all at your fingertips, start with my book, Sales for Noobs: https://amzn.to/3tiaxsL Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://bit.ly/3Ned5kL #noobschool #salestraining #sales #training #entrepreneur #salestips #salesadvice

ai technology sales artificial intelligence careers cto volpe noobs john sterling sales advice david hyde

B.R's M.V.B - Minority Veteran Business

It's Baton Rouge: Out to Lunch

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2023 27:00

While the men and women who serve in the military make untold sacrifices to serve their country, when they come home they face a unique set of challenges – especially when it comes tt starting a business. According to the most recent statistics, in the United States today, fewer than six percent of all businesses are owned by military veterans. And of those roughly 338-thousand veteran-owned businesses, only 10% are owned by Black veterans. A handful of them are in Baton Rouge. Craig Stevens is President of Genesis 360, a Baton Rouge based company that acts like a one-stop shop providing services related to building maintenance, grounds maintenance and construction and even IT services. Craig started the company in 2011 as a parking lot-striping company so its scope of services was limited but quickly grew as Craig began offering more and more services to a clientele that now span the country and include commercial business and the federal government. Craig, a native of Opelousas, who now lives in Baton Rouge, is a retired Air Force officer, who served for 25 years in the U.S., Europe and Asia before retiring as captain of the 93rd bomb squadron. From there he went to serve as Director of Operations for Circle K before founding Genesis 360 in 2011. Xavier Hoskins is Managing Partner of DXI Health Solutions, a Baton Rouge-based company that specializes in orthotics, joint replacement implants, spinal hardware bone growth hardware and disposable medical equipment. Xavier and his partner David Hyde founded the company in 2011, after Xavier spent a dozen years in the pharmaceutical industry. Xavier also is a veteran. He served in the U.S. Army after graduating from Ole Miss. Xavier and Craig also know each other because they were both members of the first class in the Baton Rouge Area Chamber's Drive Minority Business Accelerator program, which was held during the fall of 2022 and spring of 2023. Out to Lunch is recorded over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. You can find more information including photos from this show at itsbatonrouge.la.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

united states director black president europe army veterans operations air force managing partners lunch minority baton rouge ole miss boulevard circle k opelousas david hyde

084 - "Dream On" Showrunner Stephen Engel

Screenwriters Need To Hear This with Michael Jamin

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2023 64:54

Stephen Engel is an Emmy Nominated Showrunner of Dream On. He's known for The Big Bang Theory, A.N.T. Farm, Mad About You, and Just Shoot Me! Join Michael and Stephen as they discuss how Stephen broke in, what it takes to make it in Hollywood, and how he approaches story.Show NotesStephen Engel on IMDB - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0257145/Stephen Engel on Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_EngelFree Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAuto-Generated TranscriptsMichael Jamin:You're listening to Screenwriters Need to hear this with Michael Jamin.Hey everyone, this is Michael Jamin. Welcome back to another episode of Screenwriters. Need to hear this. My next guest is a great dude and one of the first dudes I've ever worked with in Hollywood as a TV writer, Mr. Stephen Engel. And his credits are, well, geez man. These guys come fantastic credits. Dream on which you ran. He was the showrunner of Dream on. I did. We're going to talk about that because that was one of my favorite shows. Mad about You. All right. Already. Which you created. You co right? You co-created it orStephen Engel:You created I didn't create it. I ran it though. You ran it? Executive. I supervised an executive who the pilot and then ran the series. Co-ran the series.Michael Jamin:All right. Okay. Just shoot me, which we worked on together. Work With Me. Which that were you cr Wait,Stephen Engel:Did you create That? I created, that I createdMichael Jamin:Now was it work with Me or Work With Me? ItStephen Engel:Was work with me. It was work with me. It was Work with meMichael Jamin:Inside Schwartz, which I know you created and I, yes. Remember I helped out for a day or a day and a half. Yeah. I think I gave you a three hours worth of work in a day and a half.Stephen Engel:It was very appreciated.Michael Jamin:The big house. Yeah. Quintuplets, the war at Home, big Bang Theory. Ant Farm, mighty Med Sigman and the Sea Monsters. Yeah. Yeah. You got a lot of credits, dude. Now I,Stephen Engel:I've been around. I've been around. You'veMichael Jamin:Been around. Tell me, well, let's first begin with the beginning. Okay. Because I know you started as a lawyer.Stephen Engel:That is correct.Michael Jamin:And how long were you lawyering?Stephen Engel:It felt like forever, but it was really only three years maybe. AndMichael Jamin:This is in New York, right out of law school.Stephen Engel:I went to law school, which was a very big mistake. I knew within a month that I'd made a terrible mistake, maybe sooner.Michael Jamin:But why?Stephen Engel:I just got there. I went straight from college. Really? Cause I didn't know what else to do. And back then I didn't know I lived in New York. I grew up in a town away from you. And I didn't know what the TV was. I didn't know anything about. And so I was good at going to school. So I went to law school, I applied, I got into a good law school. I went and I just got there and it was like just stultifying, if that's the word it was. ButMichael Jamin:I thought, what I've heard is that law school is interesting. It's being a lawyer. That's not fun.Stephen Engel:No, I had all through college, I wasn't really do a lot of creative writing. I didn't take creative writing courses. But I was actually looking back at some, I found some of my old economics papers and I reread them and I wrote them as if they were Woody Allen vignettes for the new they, they had these big tee ups that were comedic. And then I would get into the substance, but it was with examples that were funny. And then I would sort of sum them up at the end and my professor would always be like, thank you. After reading 25 papers, there's a pleasure to read something that was entertaining. Oh,Michael Jamin:That's nice. SoStephen Engel:When you get to law school, there was no leeway for that. It was, everything was just completely dry. So intellectually it was kind of interesting, but it was very creatively stifling.Michael Jamin:But as a kid you didn't do any creative. No. You were in the theater, you weren't doing anything like that?Stephen Engel:No, not really. I mean, I was interested in comedy. If I look backwards, I could see all of these things that I did. I did a TV show in college, a game show that I wrote and hosted. I taught a class on 20th century humor and satire. So all of the things were there. In retrospect, you could see a path that was leading to writing comedy. But I didn't know that it was a job. And it wasn't really until law school that I started exploring doing comedy. I started doing standup a little bit. Really?Michael Jamin:I didn't know that.Stephen Engel:Yeah.Michael Jamin:But then how did you realize it was a job? At what point?Stephen Engel:At the time, I had a friend who was doing from college who was doing standup also. We, our girlfriends were best friends and he was a year behind me. He was applied to law school, didn't go and decided he wanted to try to break into writing. And we were both doing standup. And then we said, we just started talking and said we should write a movie. We're like, okay. So we kind of got together one weekend. He was living in la I was in NYU law school. I interviewed for law at law firms in California. So they would fly me out so that we could get together and talk about movie ideas.Michael Jamin:OhStephen Engel:Wow. Yeah. So we came up with an idea. We started writing separately and we knew nothing. We literally knew nothing about writing screenplays. We just had seen movies and you knows. And so we were like started writing this idea that we thought it was really great. We had about 50 pages that we thought were fantastic. So we ended up through, a friend of a friend had lunch with a guy who was a professional screenwriter and he told us, you know, should read this book screenplay by Sid Field, which everyone should read. They're trying to write. So we read this book and we're like, oh no, you're doing it wrong. We dunno anything. And we realized that the 50 pages that we wrote that we thought were gold should have been five pages. Nothing was happening. It was just character development, character development, joke, joke, joke, joke, joke, funny scenes. So we took those 50 pages, compressed them down to five pages and came up with a proper structure. And then we were writing this whole movie. Well, he was pursuing his career and I was a lawyer guy guy's name by the way is Rob Burnett, who we were writing partners. And he went on to great success at David Letterman. And he was executiveMichael Jamin:Producer of le. But was he the head writer or executiveStephen Engel:Producer? Head writer, executive producer. And basically president of Worldwide Pants. And we wrote five movies together for studios, various studios. And ultimately I got a job on Dream On and moved out to LA to write by myself because he was writing a Letterman by himself. And at that point we didn't need to collaborate because we both had individual careers.Michael Jamin:You skipped a step. How did you get hired on Dream On?Stephen Engel:Okay. He and I were writing this movie. I got a law job when I graduated. They, I'd worked there for the summer. They offered me a job when I graduated. And I did the first risky thing I'd ever done in my life. I had never done anything remotely rebellious. And I decided that I was going to take probably the first gap year that anyone ever took. Oh wow. I asked the firm if I could defer my job for a year because I was trying to write. They're like, okay, yeah, no problem. You'll have a job waiting for you in a year. So during that year we kept working on this screenplay and trying to finish it and hone it. And he was still working at Letterman and he at that point had had risen from an intern to work in the talent department to being a writer.So he worked with a woman, we finished a screenplay and he worked with a woman. He shared an office in the talent department with a woman who had been there a long time and decided to leave to become a manager. And her only client at that point was I think Chris Elliot who had been on Letterman. So he knew, she knew that we had this movie because Rob had mentioned, she's like, let me see it when you're done. I'll see if I could do anything with it. So she read it and she sent it out and got us hired to write a movie for 20th Century Fox. Oh wow. A week before I started my law job. And I didn't want to not start the law job because we were a writing team. It was like guild minimum. I thought this may be the only writing job I ever have and I have a pretty high paying law job. Let me try to do both and keep both paths open as long as I can. So I did that essentially for three years. I practiced law while I was writing the entire time writing movies for studios.Michael Jamin:And Wait, and you were practicing law out here in la?Stephen Engel:I was in New York. YouMichael Jamin:Were still in New York?Stephen Engel:I was still in New York. And essentially the law didn't know what I was doing. So I had this double life where I was treating my law job, this very prestigious law job. I was a bartender gig writing movies at the same time. And eventually I couldn't keep all the balls up in the air. The law firm said, you know what? We want you to go, we got a great treat for you. We're going to send you back to law school at night to get your master's in tax law. I'm like, that's fantastic. And I didn't tell them was, now I had two jobs and I was going to school at nightMichael Jamin:And you couldn't turn down. You couldn't turn on their offer.Stephen Engel:I couldn't tell them. And eventually I couldn't do it anymore. I was getting too much work at the law firm. I had school screenplays, deadlines. I just finally kind of went into work one day and just kind of said, I no moss.Michael Jamin:How'd that go over?Stephen Engel:They were like, you know what, this makes so much sense because we were all, you seem really smart and you're really good at what you do, but it just didn't feel like your heart was in it. Yeah, right. So they could tell and it answered a lot of questions for them. So then I quit and decided to write full time panicked that I had just thrown my entire life away. So we ended up getting, because by the way, that manager was Lori David. She went out to marry Lori Leonard who went out to marry Larry David and divorce Larry. David and then produce an Inconvenient Truth as she won an Oscar for that.Michael Jamin:But then she submit you to get, how did you your Hands fund forStephen Engel:Dream On? For Dream on. So I had, eventually what happened was we got a second screenplay deal to write another movie and she said, by the way, I am not allowed to negotiate your deal cause I'm a manager, so I'm going to bring an agent in to negotiate your deal. And we kind of said, well then I guess maybe we should look for an agent rather than just have this guy come in and do the deal and I'm not sure we really need a manager and an agent. Back then you didn't. We ended up getting an agent at icm. Right. A feature agent. And we then did a couple of other projects and eventually I started between drafts of a movie I was writing. Rob by the way, was at this point a writer at Letterman and I quit my law job. So I was like, well if he has a day job while we're writing movies at night, I need my own career as an individual.So I wrote a movie by myself, gave it to my agent, he shopped it around. I got a lot of meetings and stuff. And then I wrote a just a TV spec on the whim between drafts of this movie because I felt like taking a break from it. And I gave that to my feature agent. He gave it to a TV agent at ICM who loved it and started submitting me around. And I ended up meeting with Kaufman and Crane for a show, not Dream On, they had Dream on. And they had another pilot that was going to series on nbc.Michael Jamin:What show was that? AndStephen Engel:It was a show called The Powers that nobody saw. It was with John Forsyth and Right. David Hyde had an amazing cast. So I go to meet with them and my agent had sent me episodes of Dream On and had sent me the pilot of the show. So they come in and they go, what'd you think of the pilot? I go, yeah, it was pretty good, but I really like Dream on. I'd never seen it before. And I kept talking about Dream On and how much I loved it. And we had a really good meeting. And then when I get back, my agent calls me and says, just so you know, when you go up for a show and someone says, how'd you like the pilot? And that's the show you're up for. Yeah. You loved the pilot and it gets the show you want to work on. Right. They're not hiring for Dream on right now and they don't want to hire you on this pilot cause you didn't seem interested, interested. I'm like, okay. Yeah. And then a month later they were hiring for Dream On and they remembered me and they hired me for that instead. So I did. And in fact, I ended up back backing into this job that I much preferred.Michael Jamin:How, but how many years were you dream on before they bumped you to showrunner? Okay,Stephen Engel:So I was a stor. I went as staff writer, not had not worked a day in television. Really? Andy Gordon was Andy and Eileen. It was their first day right writer named Howard Morris. It was his first day. We were all three staff writers, but I had written five movies. So I had a pretty good understanding of story structure and if you can write a movie, you can write a tv. So I did the first season Astor as staff writer. The next season I was a story editor and then the showrunners left and they needed to find a new showrunner and they couldn't find anyone they liked. And eventually they just said, I think Stephen can do it. So I literally went from being my second year, I was a story editor or executive story editor, maybe I got a bump at the end to showrunner.Michael Jamin:That's crazy.Stephen Engel:So I was, I didn't know if I was ready at all. I was just, the only reason to say no would've been out of fear. And I realized worst case scenario, if I completely flame out then so they bring someone in over me and I'm still in the same position.Michael Jamin:And then what were they? Or they fire you, but they getStephen Engel:Rid of you. Well, I don't think they probably would've just kept me around because I was the only one who knew the show.Michael Jamin:And how many years did you run it for?Stephen Engel:I ran for the next two seasons, the last and then the show ended.Michael Jamin:And why do you think they left? Why did they leave the show? Their own show. They had a deal somewhere.Stephen Engel:Har and Crane created the show, ran it for three seasons. They were getting paid like a dollar to do this. They had never done anything. It was insane how little money they were making. And they got a deal at Warner Brothers. So between season two and three, they had created a show before Friends called Family Album. And I went and worked on that between Seasons of Friends, between Seasons of Dream On. And then I went back to Dream on as the showrunner. So the season, the second season, two other writers who had been on, who had been producers, Jeff Greens son and Jeff Straus rose to showrunner, then they left and took a deal at Universal. So there was nobody, because they weren't paying a lot, so people were going to more lucrative jobs. So they needed a showrunner and nobody had else had worked on the show. And they were like, we could bring in someone else who doesn't know the show or we could let Steven try.Michael Jamin:And I mean, you were not intimidated by, I mean, IStephen Engel:Was scared shitless.Michael Jamin:Right. I mean,Stephen Engel:I didn't know what I was doing. I had no idea. I learned, fortunately I learned from really good people,Michael Jamin:But I remember when we worked together and just shoot me the first six episodes. First season, yeah. I was, was useless. And I didn't know what to say. And I would look at you guys, the more senior writers. I'm like, how did they know what to say? How did they know? I mean it was real. I was so lost. Yeah.Stephen Engel:I think part of it had been that I was a little older than you were. I had already been a lawyer for, so I was like 30 when I had my staff writer job. So maybe I was a little bit more confident just in Gen general. You were like 25, 23.Michael Jamin:I was 26. I was 26. Ok. But ok.Stephen Engel:So I had gotten my first writing job when I was 26 writing a movie. And I, so I done a bunch of movies, I understood structure, I had a confidence in that I knew how to tell a story. So I guess I kind of, the first day of Dream On, I remember pitching something where they were telling a story that had a fairly conventional ending where everything worked out really well. And I pitched this subversive twist on it where the character looks like the character was going to win. And then at the end it all got pulled out from under him. And they were all, I think that's better because I had just not really been around network television or even any kind of television. So I was pitching kind of a lot of, I don't know, movie, more movie-like ideas I guess.Michael Jamin:That's so interesting because I really remember, I remember on jhu Me, you would stand at the board a lot. I remember, to be honest, we often disagree with Levitan. And you made such a compelling case and you're always at the board. You had immaculate handwriting and you're always standing at the board breaking the story and you'd make an argument. And it was so compelling. I'm like, maybe we should be listening to this guy. It was dooms. If we don't what's going to happen, of course there's many ways you could do it, but of course I was like, of course. I was like, wow, what's going to happen if we don't do it that way?Stephen Engel:It's very funny. I remember the first season of Dream on Howard Morris who I love. He's a great guy, very emotional guy. And I was very logical in a lot of ways. And he had written a script and he had this whole run that he really was in love with. And the script was long. We needed cuts. And I was like, I think we can cut from here to two pages later. And you really, the story actually, not only would you not miss it, but the story would actually be working better and be more tight. And he was like, you can't do that. You can't possibly do that. This is the greatest thing that's ever been written. It is really good. But I think we need cuts. And I don't think it's actually, and one by one, everybody in the room was like, I think he's right. And he was losing his mind. He was like, right, don't listen to him using his logic on you. He's a magician. And we ended up cutting it and it ended up working better. So it's funny that I guess the legal training came in, I guess to some useMichael Jamin:Well, yeah, I, but I also remember you saying, I quote you as this saying this, that I have to get this right. Your worst day as a writer was still better than your best day as a lawyer.Stephen Engel:It was probably, I'm not sure that's true anymore.Michael Jamin:I believe thatStephen Engel:For a long time that was true. I would say there have been some dark days. But whatMichael Jamin:Do dark days look like then for you? Yeah. What isStephen Engel:It? Well, the day your show gets canceled, right? There were days, there was a, one show got canceled where I was like, oh, thank God. Right? Because I had a deal behind it and it was like a nightmare. And I hated going there every minute. And I was like, I had to go into the room and pretend like I got really bad news. Everyone, the show's been canceled. I was like, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me. There are sometimes when it's so bad you're like, just end it. Just fucking euthanize me. So that there are days where it show you isn't going badly, gets canceled and then it's kind of heartbreaking.Michael Jamin:Now do you have a preference? Cause you've done a lot. Do you have a preference between working single camera R? Right. Writing.Stephen Engel:I prefer single camera. Why? I think it comes from my feature writing career. It was funny, I made such a conversion when I worked on that show family album with Kauffman and Crane. We went in and there was some joke in my script and it was a good joke I thought. And we go to the table read and it doesn't do great at the table. This is my first time I've ever had been to a multi cam table read ever my first multi cam script. And everyone in the room is kind of like, yeah, I think we maybe want to punch this joke. And David Crane to his credit was like, no, I believe in this joke. And there's a really good smart joke. So we go to the run through first run through, it dies. And again, everyone's like, maybe we want to pitch on this. And David's like, no, no, I really, let's give it one more day. I don't think, I feel like they didn't do a great job on it. Let's give it one more day. By the third day it dies again. And same thing. And David's like, let's give it another day. He goes, I think it's rye. I'm at this point I'm completely converted. I'm like, fuck rye. Rye is fucking crickets.We could pitch 20 more jokes. It took me three days to realize that, you know, can't get away with clever. You need to get real laughs.Michael Jamin:Right.Stephen Engel:And I'd like, I like it. I just like the storytelling in Multicam a little bit better. OrMichael Jamin:Just you, the storytelling multicam better.Stephen Engel:No, no. In single Camm a bit better. Yeah. Frankly, I used to think a perfect job for me would be you write the scripts and then you send them out magazines. You don't actually have to produce them. Oh yeah. That was always where the hard,Michael Jamin:It's never as funny as it is. It's never asStephen Engel:Funny. Sometimes it is. It depends on your cast. But other times it's the rewriting and the endless rewriting. It's just have them read it and let them imagine what it might look like.Michael Jamin:It's called a book.Stephen Engel:It's called a book. Yeah.Michael Jamin:There was a episode, I think it was, not sure if you were there then, but I, I was fighting, I fought with Sievert, my partner about a joke that I wanted in the script. I go, this joke is going to kill. And he's like, this joke is terrible. I'm like, it's going in, it's going. And we got blows over it. We put it in the script, we go to the table and the joke just dies. It gets nothing. And then I start laughing hysterically. He goes like, cause how could I have been so wrong and so arrogant? And I'm laughing hysterically Now everyone's looking at seabird because they're like, it's his joke. You're laughing atStephen Engel:Him. And now I'mMichael Jamin:Laughing even more. I'm like, yeah, it's his fucking trouble.Stephen Engel:There's nothing more humbling than watching your jokes die on a stage. Like after a while you get used to it. But the great thing about single cam on, dream on, we'd write it, we'd go out and film it. And if no one's laughing, you never know.Michael Jamin:You never know. Right. But did you can't believe in it. But you did table reads for Dream on, I'm sure, right? DidStephen Engel:Not do table reads.Michael Jamin:That's so interesting. How did you get away away with that?Stephen Engel:They had no, they didn't. They gave no notes. H B O gave no notes. I remember getting one note one time and being like, I can't work like this. This joke is, I'm not changing this joke. And I was like, indignant a playwright. Eugene O'Neal had beenMichael Jamin:MarriedStephen Engel:To change a stage direction. And then I got to network and it was like, oh, okay.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Now these are notes. This is how it works. When you were, now you've done also a lot of kit shows. I mean, you get a lot of notes on Kit shows more or less. Oh myStephen Engel:God. Yeah. You'd get tons of notesMichael Jamin:More than networks.Stephen Engel:I did. Oftentimes you get a note, it's like, I please take some of these jokes out. I we doesn't need to be this funny,Michael Jamin:Real, what's the problem with, all right,Stephen Engel:I can get you the best punch down. Writers in. Yeah,Michael Jamin:Bring them in. But really they don't want fun. Is that what kind of notes they give you in these show? I did aStephen Engel:Show, did a show this, show this Sigma and the Sea Monsters reboot, which wasMichael Jamin:Very scaryStephen Engel:For Amazon. And the first thing we turned in there, it was very funny. And they were like, we don't really do this. It's like, we don't want this to be funny. As nearly as funny as this script is, it's just don't feel compelled to put a joke on every page. I'm like a joke. You don't want one joke on it on every page. And they're like, no, if it's warm and fuzzy and they just were afraid that it was going to feel too Disney or tooMichael Jamin:NoStephen Engel:Jokey networky or jokey or whatever.Michael Jamin:Because when you look back at sitcoms from the sixties and seventies family affair, there weren't a lot of jokes in Family Affair. I mean,Stephen Engel:No, I think that's what they were going for. They were going for just kind of poignant and sort of warm. They, I feel they felt like jokes would alienate people and be too controversial. Or they kept referring to their viewers as customers,Michael Jamin:Buyers. TheyStephen Engel:Want buyers.Michael Jamin:Buyers,Stephen Engel:Our buyers, our customers don't really want that. I'm like, okay, all right.Michael Jamin:That's so good. I wonder if that's, that's really how they saw them is like, yeah, what else were they going to about?Stephen Engel:Yeah, yeah. It was,Michael Jamin:Oh my God. Did that make the hours easier since you didn't have to punch upStephen Engel:Or doing a sort of family shows?Michael Jamin:Are you getting out earlier?Stephen Engel:Yeah. Yeah. I think so. For the most part. We never phoned it in. We were always trying to do, and we never wrote down the shows that I worked on. We made them as funny as we could and as bendy and weird as we could, oftentimes we would get notes saying, this is too, I think you're, you kids aren't going to get this. But what they don't get, they'll ask their parents or their older siblings and let's not underestimate the audience watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. You're going to still laugh and you may not get every level. So we were kind of writing it for the adults.Michael Jamin:You were able to push back on that.Stephen Engel:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I guess their recourse was ultimately to cancel you if you weren't doing what they wanted you to do.Michael Jamin:Well, do they have different ways of I they must, different ways of measuring. We haven't done too many streaming shows, but measuring when people are dropping off, what kind of stuff they like more statistics. Do they share that with you?Stephen Engel:No,Michael Jamin:No, never.Stephen Engel:I only did mean the Amazon was the only streaming show and they never really wanted this show. I don't think to begin with. I think it was inherited from the previous regime or something. It was like the whole thing was driven by puppets and they were, if we had our druthers, we wouldn't even have the puppets in it. Well, well the main character is a puppet, so you're kind of stuck.Michael Jamin:So, oh man, that's Hollywood man. Yeah. Now do you, but you must get more obviously opportunities in the children's businesses.Stephen Engel:I don't. I don't. Don't. And I don't pursue them. I didn't really want to do it. Right. I basically did it. I only did it because it was a show writing opportunity and I didn't want work on someone else's show at that point. And I also leveraged it into, I wanted, I said, I'll do it if I can direct.Michael Jamin:Okay.Stephen Engel:So I ended up getting in the DGA and directing a handful of episodes.Michael Jamin:And they were single camera?Stephen Engel:No, they were multiMichael Jamin:Camera, multi and so interesting.Stephen Engel:And it was kind of fun. I mean, I had just sort of aged out of coaching my kids little league and basketball teams and stuff. So they were now just had just more or less finished that. So working on a show, that was almost like being a coach or a camp counselor in a weird way. You'd go to the stage, the kids would be thrilled to see you, you'd get down on one knee and get eye level with them and give them a compliment sandwich. Do you know that from coaching?Michael Jamin:No. What is that?Stephen Engel:A compliment sandwich is basically in baseball you would literally get down on a knee and you'd say you're doing tee-ball. And in tee-ball what happens invariably is a kid hits the ball to left field and every kid on the field runs to get the ball from every position, or at least a handful of them do. So you get down on the knee and you go, I love your hustle and great enthusiasm. Then you put the criticism in the middle and you're like, but you know, need to stay where your position is so that everybody has their own spot. And if the balls it to you, the ball, you know, field it. If the balls it to left field, they field it. But again, great energy and keep up that enthusiasm. So you put the constructive criticism in between two compliments. IMichael Jamin:Would think that they would remember the first thing and the last thing they heard.Stephen Engel:Well, that's great job. We did a joke like that. We did a joke like that where a character on an forum was giving a note to somebody. They were doing a musical performance or something, and the main character said to this other character, I really like your enthusiasm. Try to hit at least any of the notes if possible because your singing's not good at all. But again, great energy. And the character goes, thanks. Hey, thanks.Michael Jamin:Yeah, that's what I would, so that's so interesting. And were you dealing with a lot of parents on adult momager orStephen Engel:Whatever? Yeah, there was a lot of that. It was fun, but creatively it was like, I'm done. This I just want to do, I'd rather not work and just write stuff I want to write than write on a kid show at this point. Because I also felt like they weren't really looking for you to do anything smart and that smart or that funny. It's changed. I think they're trying to be more creative and more inventive now, but at the time it just felt like, I don't really feel like doing this anymore. It's just not like someone would say, what are you working on? I'm like, it's not important. Don't worry about it. You're not going to watch it. It's fine.Michael Jamin:WellStephen Engel:Fine for what? But I don't watch it. You're not going to watch it.Michael Jamin:But when you say working on your own stuff now, so whatever, you'll just write stuff on spec and hope toStephen Engel:Sell. Yeah, I'll pitch stuff. I'll write stuff on spec. I've written a bunch of specs recently where I've tried every possible way to skin a cat in this business. I'm like, it's all I'm going to write spec scripts. That way they'll totally see what the show is. And then I would have a bible behind it to pitch all of these things. And I've had a couple of things where I had studios say, let's go out with this, but let's pitch it. You didn't write itMichael Jamin:Right yet.Stephen Engel:I'm like, well, why would you do that? Because I've got it right here. AndMichael Jamin:Because they want to put their thumbprints on, theyStephen Engel:Want to put their imprimatur on it. So the way I put it is, if you give, give someone a baked fully baked cake, they'll be like, this is a, it's a good cake, but I've got this recipe for a cake. Yeah, that's going to be the best cake that's ever been made and we're going to put in all these different ingredients and make it even better. And then that gets turned in and they're like, it's a cake. There's always that unknown potential of what a pitch is going to be. Whereas a spec, they'll go, well, there's this one thing I'm not sure about or this other thing and they want to get involved.Michael Jamin:But have you ever sold anything on spec? BecauseStephen Engel:When you, honestly, I don't think I have. IMichael Jamin:Know haven't written a few.Stephen Engel:I have a project, I have a project right now that it, we're going back and forth on negotiations, negotiating an option for them to, to option the script. And they're trying to decide whether we should go out with the script or go out or whether I should reverse engineer the pitch.Michael Jamin:ButStephen Engel:We have an option. They have an option for a year within a purchase with a purchase price to buy the script. What would happen is if we pitch it, they would basically go, okay, just wait three months and then turn in the script that you've already written because we left the script. But again, it's unclear as to what my feeling is. We should send out the script because the idea and it's in and of itself is not necessarily that unique. It's the execution of the idea. That's unique. Of course. And I think that's what got you interested. If I had just pitched you this idea, you probably would've said, well, I don't know. It seems like there's stuff out there like that. But it was my script that got you excited.Michael Jamin:Right, right. I remember early on, I wonder if you still feel this way. I remember I just shoot me, you telling me, yeah, because you were ready to leave, move on. And you're like, yeah, I want to go back to running a show. And then you did couple many shows. Yeah. But do you still feel that way? Do you care so much whether you're running it or,Stephen Engel:No, I've had good experiences and bad experiences doing both for a while after the big house, which was a good experience. My kids were at that point, maybe, how old were they? Eight and six. And I was running a show was very all consuming. And you, yeah, you never go home. I mean, yeah, even when you're home, you're like, you've got outlines to read, you've got cuts to watch, you've got the weight of the show on your shoulders at all times. You can't get away from it. And I was like, I really want to be more present. I want to be able to go to my kids' games. I want to be come home and be able to relax. So I'm like, I want to go on be someone else's, like consigliere, I'll be the number two. Yeah. I'll go, here's what I would do. Do it. Don't do it whatever you want. And then go home and be like, I'm done for the day. And I did that for a while. And I think in retrospect it sort of took me off of the showrunner showrunner's list for doing that for three or four years. I think people were necessarily remembering or thinking me necessarily when they were looking for showrunners because I was all of a sudden now someone's number two. But I don't regret it because I got to spend the time with my family.Michael Jamin:But now I now want to go back to running. I mean, it is a lot of work,Stephen Engel:My kid, well, right now, honestly, nobody, you know me, but anyone under the age of 40 doesn't, has never worked with me and doesn't know who I am. So for me to get a job on another show, because I, it's been a while since I've worked on a show where with people who would be young enough to go, oh, we need to work with this guy. He's really smart and good and funny. If I'm going to get a job, it's because I'm going to create a show myself and run it. And that's the job I'll have. I don't even know if my agent even submits me. I have no idea. So I'm back to just pitching and writing my own stuff and if it sells, of course I'll run it. So look, they both have their perils. I missed my kind of adolescence as a TV writer. I went from being right a second grader to a college student. I never had that. So I got to go and be on someone else's show. And sometimes it was good and sometimes it was bad. I worked in the Big Bang theory and it was not funMichael Jamin:From a lot of people. TheStephen Engel:Most fun place to work, it was delightful show. But I used to not going to work every day. Right. Cause I didn't take the tone of the show, the work environment, I mean the tone of the show, I was fine not dictating the tone of the show, but I was not enjoying the tone of the work environment.Michael Jamin:I got you. I know what you'reStephen Engel:Saying. So it was not a good experience. I dreaded going every day. It was a job. It, I might as well have been a lawyer again.Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Yeah. You've had many experiences like that though. Were you like you pitting your stomach every morning?Stephen Engel:Not that many once on my own show, just because I had a difficult situation with one of the stars who it's not worth going into, butMichael Jamin:At least on the air.Stephen Engel:What'sMichael Jamin:That? At least? At least not on the air. NotStephen Engel:On the air. But most shows have been, some are better than others. I worked on a show that it was very dysfunctional and I've gone into work on shows where, where I had a deal where they were like, we need you to go help on this show. And it's kind of in shambles. I'm like, I'll go in and help, but I'm going in between the hours of 10 and seven. And if they start at five, I'll be there from five to seven.Michael Jamin:But okay, you can make that deal with the studio. But then the minute the showrunner finds out about that, during I made itStephen Engel:With the show, I made the deal with the showrunner.Michael Jamin:Oh, okay.Stephen Engel:Because they needed the help. And I was like, I'm not going down this sinkhole. I've already, I'm in a deal. I don't, I'm doing this. I'm helping out because I want to be a team player, but I'm going to help out within the hours that are reasonable hours. And it was so dysfunctional, people would show up and play guitars for four hours and play ping pong. And I'm like, are we going to work or not work? So I'm like, let me know when we're starting and I'll be there.Michael Jamin:Yeah, I know. I wonder, I don't know if that happens so much anymore. I think that's something that's been cleaned up a little bit.Stephen Engel:I don't know. I don't know mean, look, some shows, some showrunners are not, some creators become writers, become creators are not prepared to be a showrunner. They don't know how to manage a business. That'sMichael Jamin:Exactly right.Stephen Engel:And it's a different skillset being a talented writer and being a manager or a C E o or different skillsets. And some people are lucky enough to have both skills. Some people are good CEOs but not great writers and they need a better team. And some people are great writers and need someone to help them literally get through the day. AndMichael Jamin:People don't realize that because no one goes into comedy writing to become a manager of people. No.Stephen Engel:And if you have the talent, you eventually rise to a level where you're expected to all of a sudden be in charge of 150 people and to show up every day on time and to try to be responsible and actually conduct yourself in a way that's professional. And not everyone can do that.Michael Jamin:And always the trickiest thing. I think as a show runners, no one went to push knowing how far you can push back against a network note or even a difficult actor. Yeah. And what's your thought on that?Stephen Engel:Well, what I used to do is they never would give me a note. The trick to getting and addressing notes is to get them to realize that they're being heard. And you'll say, we're not going to figure this out right now together. I hear you. I know what, I know exactly what to do. And then go off and change it enough that they feel like you've taken their, at least into consideration their thought, their thoughts into consideration. But oftentimes what I would sometimes do is they'd give a note. I'm like, we can do that. But just so you know, here's the ripple effect. If we do that, then this scene here no longer makes sense because this scene that you really love won't make sense because we've already revealed this information. So this scene doesn't play and then this scene doesn't work because whatever this and this and this, we can do it. And I'm have to change those scenes and I'm willing to, but just realize that it's not as simple as making this one change here. There are ripple effects throughout the rest of the script. And they're like, you know what? You're right. Stuff's working great. Don't worry about it.So they don't know. They don't necessarily always see the big picture and understand how pulling one thread could unravel the entire sweater. So I just present it to them and go, would you like me to do that? We can do that. And then they go, no, no. Like I, I hear what you want and I'll massage it without having to do those things. But I hear what you're saying and I'll try to adjust it as best I can without unraveling the whole scriptMichael Jamin:And then working. What about working with difficult actors?Stephen Engel:That's harder. That's harder because you can'tMichael Jamin:Put the words in their mouth. You can't make mistake, you can'tStephen Engel:Make them do it. I mean, had an actor who literally was so he just wanted to take over the show and was, he never should have done it. They backed up a money truck to get him to do it and he didn't want to do it. And he did it reluctantly and didn't wanted it to be his show and not my show. So I think wanted tried to get rid of me and came to table reads with sunglasses on and just looked down the whole time. And which was the best thing that ever happened because the network saw that he was not doing his job. He was doing my job, but he wasn't doing his. But they'reMichael Jamin:Still going to take his side. TheStephen Engel:Show went down, but I didn't get, they were like, you handed yourself really professionally. And that person,Michael Jamin:Were you worried so much about that? Are you worried so much about protecting your reputa reputation like that within the industry? I mean,Stephen Engel:You always have to be a little bit worried. I, I would probably think that just given my, I don't know, I guess I have a, it's maybe it's coming from being a lawyer. I can see, if you tell me, like I mentioned, if we should change this joke or this line or this, do we need this? I can see all of the ramifications all at once. So sometimes I will, by pointing out the flaws in the note, some executives don't want to hear that. They don't want to know. They just want to think that they're right. Or they also want you to basically, I remember in one situation on a show where they were like, we've got great news. The network wants to do a mini room. I'm like, great.Michael Jamin:How's that? Great news? The news?Stephen Engel:I thought the deal was they're either going to pick up the show or not. That's why we went there. It'sMichael Jamin:Great news for us.Stephen Engel:They're like, well, why wouldn't you want to delve into the characters more? And I do, but that's not the deal we negotiated and now you're basically, I have to do all the same work for one 10th of the money. And they didn't want to hear that. So I think sometimes it's just best to be like, and I would also maybe sometimes have a tendency if somebody is lying blatantly to me and I say, wait, I don't understand last, yesterday you said X, Y, and Z, but now you're saying A, B, and C. So I'm confused. And they just want to go. They don't want to be called out on that.Michael Jamin:Right?Stephen Engel:So they're like, look, why are you being difficult? I'm like, I'm not, I'm just asking for clarification. Cause it seems like you're telling me two different things and I don't understand as opposed to just going, okay, I hear you. We'll do it without any. So I think sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and just eat shit and not speak up about it.Michael Jamin:The problem is you're saying, I feel like most of those fights are not winnable.Stephen Engel:They're not winnable. So there's no point in pointing it out. But sometimes I'm just, I don't, don't understand. Just tell me what, what's going on and then we can move forward. But they sometimes they don't even remember what's what they're spinning.Michael Jamin:I don't think I've ever convinced an studio or network executive that I was and they were wrong. I don't think I'veStephen Engel:Ever, it may have been a per victory, but I have.Michael Jamin:You were fired shortly afterwards.Stephen Engel:No, I mean it just may be whatever. Yeah, you're right if you're doing it this way. But in the long run, they just maybe weren't that happy with the direction, generalMichael Jamin:Direction. Right.Stephen Engel:I did the show where this kid show, and it was about a superhero hospital and there were villains and there were heroes and superheroes and super villains. And we wanted the villains and the heroes to have distinct personalities and flaws and be funny. They could be a villain and be funny at the same time. They're like, look, just have them villains. Just be scary and don't give them, they don't have to be funny. But we're writing a comedy and eventually we took a lot of the jokes out, but we didn't want to deliver a show that we didn't believe in. And then ultimately they were like, we did two seasons. And they were like, this is not really what we want to do. So they didn't do a third season. So you either go down with your ship and what you do, the show you want to do and have it not get picked up for another season or do a show for four seasons that you don't believe in.Michael Jamin:Though a lot of people on social media, they say, well, they don't understand. I think all the writers in Hollywood terrible, because if all the shows I'm like, you don't understand how shows are made. It's like, no, no. Sometimes the system is designed to make a show bad and there's really nothing you can do about it other than either,Stephen Engel:I mean, no one's looking to make a show bad. It's just what the creator thinks is good and what the network thinks is good may not be the same thing. There's that famous story about what those guys who did that Stephen Weber show called Cursed,Michael Jamin:I dunno if I know this story. Okay.Stephen Engel:Steven Webber did a show, there was a show starring Stephen Webber, it was called Cursed. It was for n b NBC back in the nineties. And the premise was, Stephen Webber is like this kind of womanizing dating machine who goes on this date and with a I, you shouldn't even say Gypsy, I guess, I dunno if it's derogatory, but a woman who puts a spell on it, he basically ghosts her or doesn't call her or is not nice to her on a date. And turns out she puts a curse on him that he's never going to find love and oh, his romantic life is going to be a disaster. Okay. So the cast, Steven Weber, he's super charming and funny. They decide to pick up the show and they go, we're picking up the show, but we have one elemental change if we'd like to pick. It's a small note. They're like, okay, what is it? He goes, we don't want him to be cursed. They're like all cursed. They're like, well, we can change it. We'll like so. Well, well, the Steven Weber show.Michael Jamin:Okay,Stephen Engel:So now what's the premise about Steven Weber dating?Michael Jamin:Oh, okay. But he is not having a hard time dating. He'sStephen Engel:Just, he either is but there's no curse.Michael Jamin:There's no curse.Stephen Engel:Yeah. Okay. Nig did a show called Inside Schwartz, and the whole idea of it was that you're inside the main character's head. Right. So the idea is that, you know, get to see his internal and hear his internal dialogue with characters he's talking to that only he can see. All right. And at one point about halfway through the series, the president of the network came to run, came to talk to me after a run through and said, look, we really like the main character. He's a great actor, but he's like, we want it to be more of a Michael J. Fox character dives into things without thinking. I'm like, well, the character is written is an overthinker and he's thinking about everything. And we dramatize those in the forms of him talking to these people who only he sees. He goes, well we, no, we don't. We want him to not be an overthinker. We want him to be just to jump into stuff. I'm like, so I'm writing inside Schwartz and you want outside Schwartz, right? And they went exactly perfect. I said, all right, I guess. But at that point it's like, how do you turn a aircraft carrier aroundThrough, and you've got four or five scripts that are ready to go that are all, hold on, I'mMichael Jamin:HollywoodStephen Engel:That are written inside Schwartz, and you want outside Schwartz. And they're like, well come up with new scripts, you know, can take an extra week, a hiatus and change. So we had to basically change course and make an adjustment. So just because they think, what if they changed their minds? They love something when they saw it and then they start to panic that they think it should be this, and they the next day have a completely different idea. But it, it's just, that's the idea they woke up with.Michael Jamin:Or often it's whatever was a hit over the weekend, that's what they want and make it more like that.Stephen Engel:Exactly. Exactly. So that has ramifications and real life ramifications that you've then got to make work. And it's your job, unfortunately sometimes is to try to turn a cat into a monkey. It's just like, all right, that's what I'm going to have to try to do.Michael Jamin:And are you able to do this with a good attitude?Stephen Engel:I to, I think I have probably, I have a better attitude about it now. I'm just more mature and it's like, all right, it is what it is. I understand it. Back then, I think I took everything much more personally and I was agonized more about it. Now I'm just like, I come, it's coming and you just have to deal with it or not deal with it or whatever. I, I've walked away from it. I've walked away from a deal on a show where I was like, I didn't feel right about it.Michael Jamin:What do you mean you didn't feel right about it?Stephen Engel:I just didn't, I don't know, I just wasn't comfortable ultimately with the people I was going to be working with. As I got to know them better, the deal wasn't the greatest deal and I was like, I don't think this is worth it. I think this is going to be a nightmare. And I just said, I turned wouldn't, they didn't come up. I just said, you know what, no mean, at the time I was running a different show, so this was development behind it, so I didn't need the job, but I was like, I see the writing on the wall here and if I can't, you can't meet my numbers and this is going to be unpleasant. And I can already tell. AndMichael Jamin:How do you think they took it when you did that? No one likes to hear thatStephen Engel:They were really not happy. I mean, yeah, really. I said, look, I'm just not comfortable with it. And I just, things had changed. It was an idea that it's not worth going into. It was easier to just say, forget, don't rather not do it than go into what I know is going to be a shit stormMichael Jamin:Right now. Not enough money. The industry has changed so much even in the past maybe 10 years or so. But I dunno, what are your thoughts on it? What are your thoughts on where it's going? Look,Stephen Engel:I'm one of those people who, whatever, everyone who's not in the industry says, oh, must be so great now, all these different streaming networks and some to sell shows. I'm like, it's not great. First of all, these places are, you know, do all the same work and you're doing six episodes or eight episodes or 10 episodes, and that's exactly when the curve starts to get, there's a very steep curve getting a show off the ground. And then it's like, now I get the show and now it's sort of the, it's heavy lifting at the beginning and then it sort of tapers off and it's always heavy lifting, but you start to figure it out. And then for the back nine it's like, it's not as hard if you stay on top of it and you get stories broken on time. So you're doing all of the heavy lifting without any of the economies of scale and you're only getting paid by the episode and you're working 40 weeks to do seven episodes or eight episodes instead of 40 weeks to do 22 episodes.Michael Jamin:Okay. So in, cause they make, that's not the case on many of the shows we're doing. Maybe they're lower budget, they just usually bring you on thete, the writing staff in pre-production. And so then you're the showStephen Engel:Runners. But as a showrunner, you've got to do, you're there for whatever the eight saying you're doing eight episodes, you're going to do eight weeks of pre-production and writing. You're going to do eight weeks or more of production, then you're going to do eight to 10 weeks of post. And yeah, you're working 35 weeks to do those eight episodes. Whereas if you're working on a network show for 22 episodes, you work 40 weeks and you do, you get 22 fees. So the writers who come in and do their six or 12 weeks get paid for their eight episodes and not, that said they work there eight weeks and they do their 12, their eight episodes. Do youMichael Jamin:Feel this affects the quality of writers that you're able to hire now because they have less training?Stephen Engel:I think so. They're not around production. They don't understand or understand production as well. It, it's tricky. I also think that to some extent, I may be alone in this. I think that some of the storytelling and streaming, it feels like a lot of shows feel like they, someone took a movie and they probably didn't sell this movie, and they said, I got an idea for a series and it would be a great movie. But what they end up doing is they, it's those chest spreaders if you were to have a heart bypass or something, it's like they put a chest spreader into the screenplay and they open it up and they jam six episodes of filler in the middle. And the beginning is the first half of a good movie. And the last two episodes, this is the second half of a pretty good movie, and the middle is just treading water. And you're just like, yeah, each episode becomes a chapter in a book. So a lot of writers are not learning how to tell an episode that has a beginning, middle, and end because it's all middle.Michael Jamin:Right?Stephen Engel:Episode one is a beginning, episode eight is the ending, and everything in the middle is middle. No. Those episodes don't have a beginning, middle, and end. They're picking up from the middle and ending somewhere else in the middle. They're moving the ball down the field. But you don't have a kickoff and you don't, I think a lot of writers maybe don't know how to tell a complete story anymore because there aren't any freestanding episodes.Michael Jamin:How do you think these new writers are breaking in today? It's very different than when we were breaking in. How are they getting in?Stephen Engel:I teach a course at UCLA and I always, they always ask the same question. How do you get an agent? How do you break in? I guess it's not that different other than the fact that there are maybe fewer barriers to entry. You want to write a web series and shoot it on your phone and send it out to a million people on. Now the trick is it's getting people to see it, but no one was going to read your screenplay. If you're a new writer and you say, Hey, will you read my script and you're in my class? They're like, Hey, can I send you a new script I just wrote? I'm like, no. Yeah, I'm not going to read that. But if they send me, Hey, I wrote a one minute episode, you want to, would you watch it? I'm like, okay. I mean, I could watch a one minute episode of something.Right? And if it's interesting, then you could go, that's really kind of interesting. Let's talk about it. So there are ways to get in. I hired a writer on an farm I was writing with a guy named Dan Sinner. Sinner, great guy, funny writer. And we were looking for an assistant. So we met this woman and she came in and she had no experience as an assistant, but she had just graduated from Harvard six months earlier. But she mentioned she had a Twitter feed and that she had written a couple of jokes that somehow Maude Aow had found. And she was like 12. And she tweeted it, retweeted it, and then because Judd Aow followed her and saw the jokes, he started following her and retweeted it. And then a lot of his followers were started following her. So all of a sudden I had 10,000 followers.So anyway, we finished interviewing her. I really liked her. And I'm like, what's the feed? What's the Twitter feed? She told me And I went and I read it and there were, I read the first 10 jokes. Eight of them were a plus jokes. And I said to Dan, I'm like, let's hire her as our assistant. If we need jokes, we, she's really good at joke writing and we're still looking for a last staff writer. And she was our assistant for a day. I'm like, do you have a spec? You've written? Like, I wrote a 30 Rock. So I read it and it was green, but first five pages, five great jokes. So finally Dan and I were like, let's hire her today because in three years we're going to be looking for her to hire us because she was that talented.Michael Jamin:Have had three years passed.Stephen Engel:She very quickly became very successful and has over a million Twitter, Twitter dollars.Michael Jamin:But is she working as a writer?Stephen Engel:She ended up working on Silicon Valley and Oh wow. Parks and Rec and she ended up working on The Simpsons. And soMichael Jamin:You were right. The good place.Stephen Engel:Yeah. I mean she was really talent. It was undeniable. So I always tell writers, write Jo, if you could write jokes, you'll work to, you're 90. To the extent shows like to have jokes anymore, which a lot of them don't. Right. I always think about that joke. I dunno if you remember this from the Emmys, maybe like four or five, six years ago, Michael Chay and Colin Jost hosted the Emmys. And I always tell this to my class, Colin, Joe says that the opening monologue, he says, tonight we give awards for the best comedies and dramas in television. And for those of you who don't know, a drama, a comedy is a drama that's 30 minutes long.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Stephen Engel:There's just so many shows now that are not really that funnyMichael Jamin:That I ain't going for it. What is this club, what's the class called that you're teaching at U ucla?Stephen Engel:It's in the professional program through the school of the Film School write writing a half hour pilot.Michael Jamin:So a graduate. So they have a grad, graduateStephen Engel:Program. It's not a M ffa and it's not undergrad. It's like a professional program where you can apply, it's a one year program. You take three quarters, 10 weeks each, and you go from basically Idea to finish script in 10 weeks.Michael Jamin:And it's at, you say, so it's not used to extension, it's something else.Stephen Engel:No, it's not Extension. It's a, it's through the School of Television, film and theater. Wow. That's theater, film and television, I guess it's called. Yeah. So eight to 10 people. And you're kind of, wow. I kind of act as the showrunner, but I want to hear, get everybody's input. Everyone gets input from each other about their ideas. So it's like a writing class group.Michael Jamin:They'd be lucky to get in your class. For sure.Stephen Engel:Yeah. I tend to give them a lot of, I think, very thorough notes and hopefully it's helpful. And I don't mince words. I mean, I'm gentle with it. I'll always, I'll do my notes and then I'll go back and soften them. I'll be like, instead of this, I don't think this is working. I would say, I wonder if some readers might think this is a bit confusing as opposed to, this is confusing. Or I remember confusing.Michael Jamin:I remember. And just shouldn't be turning to you. I can't remember. It was a script. Levi 10 was running the show, and I think we had a problem with the scene. And I seem to remember you helping us. You pulled you aside, Hey, how do you think this scene should work? Because we were lost and you were very helpful.Stephen Engel:Well, I had at that point already run Dreman for several years and and had some showing experience. And look, Ste, Steve was a great showrunner and one of his, he's smart enough and secure enough to know that I will benefit by having other experienced showrunners on working with me and other very experienced writers. Cause I may not have the answer all the time.Michael Jamin:Oh, I also remember thinking that I don't want to bother the boss. I'll bother someone who's not the boss.Stephen Engel:Yeah. But again, was you were your first job and you're want to make sure you don't do any. I've worked on shows where staff writers are told, don't even say a word.Michael Jamin:Oh, really?Stephen Engel:More or less. It's just you're there to generate jokes on your own and just keep quiet. Which is to me is if I can get a joke from a pa, I'll take it. I don't care where the joke comes from. If it helps make the script better. If a PA comes in and delivers a pizza and goes, what'd be funny? I'm like, that is funny. Right. I'll put that in.Michael Jamin:Right. Yeah. You whatever gets you home earlier. Yeah. Yeah.Stephen Engel:And makes the script better. And hopefully makes the script better. It's all going to make you look better as a showrunner.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it was. And you're right, dude. I mean that show that it was really top heavy, just shoot me. It's top heavy. And it was, that's probably what was so intimidating to me was everyone was so funny. And I remember even turning to Marsh after several weeks. It was like, Marsha, I, I'm laughing too much. I'm not pitching enough. I'm enjoying myself too much. Right. What do I do? Because I'm not here to observe.Stephen Engel:I can see how it would be intimidating. I was lucky enough that on my first job it was Kauffman and Crane were the showrunners. Greenstone and Strass were like the producer, co-producer, exec producer, kind of supervising producer level. And then we had three staff writers who were all pretty new. So it felt democratic. But you come into a Topheavy show and you're, you were the only staff writers. Yeah. There.Michael Jamin:And there's Tom Martin. There's Tom Martin. Oh,Stephen Engel:Tom. Right

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Week in Review: Amazon, politics, and mosquitos

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 2, 2023 50:54

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with political analyst Joni Balter, Puget Sound Business Journal's Alex Halverson, and KUOW's David Hyde.

amazon politics mosquitos kuow puget sound business journal david hyde bill radke joni balter

Exploring Europe? What you need to know before you go!

Play Episode Listen Later May 13, 2023 15:30

If you are planning on exploring Europe this summer or in 2023, you need to listen to this TODAY! I'm just returning from my six-week jaunt around Europe and I have a ton to share. From what to pack to passports, to credit cards to making reservations, etc. You gotta know this before you go!⏱TIMELINE⏱1:00 A bit crowded2:00 Making reservations2:21 Packing3:10 Backpack - RFID safe bags4:01 What about money?4:29 Do NOT DO THIS!!5:00 DO THIS ✅6:00 How much € £ do I need?6:42 What about credit cards?7:50 Not COVID, Flu... what is it?8:54 Travel Insurance?9:50 Passport info10:15 PRO TIP!! Passports11:30 Some Good NEWS!12:00 What if we miss out?13:07 Local scene tips...This podcast and blog are based on my personal opinions and thoughts as well as research conducted while in country/the European continent.LINKS:

Week in Review: May 5, 2023 - with Brittney Bush Bollay

Hacks & Wonks

Play Episode Listen Later May 5, 2023 48:32

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by King Conservation District Supervisor and Seattle sportswriter and enthusiast Brittney Bush Bollay! They talk about several developments this week including Governor Jay Inslee and Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler announcing that they do not plan for reelection and the candidates that are vying to replace them, Gov. Inslee calling for a May 16th special session to address personal possession of controlled substances, a potential trafficking victim found in the Seattle hotel room of a Colorado Avalanche player, interests aligned with the Seattle Chamber fielding a message testing poll to raid the JumpStart Tax, and the King County Council shortchanging the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy on a 5-4 vote. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Brittney Bush Bollay at @BrittneyBush. Brittney Bush Bollay Brittney is a King Conservation District Supervisor and climate activist who is passionate about the role cities play in preserving the environment. They serve on the city and state boards of the Sierra Club and helped write the organization's national Urban Infill Policy Guidance. In their spare time, they're almost certainly yelling at sports. Resources Governing as an Eastern WA Democrat with Spokane City Council Member Zack Zappone from Hacks & Wonks “WA Gov. Jay Inslee won't seek reelection for fourth term” by Jim Brunner, David Gutman, and Paige Cornwell from The Seattle Times “Early WA governor's race skirmish? Campaign finance loophole scrutinized” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times “Washington Republicans believe governor's race is winnable” by David Hyde from KUOW “Longtime WA Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler will not seek reelection” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times “Inslee calls WA Legislature special session to address drug possession” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times “Progressive Democrats Want to Compromise on a New Drug Law” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger “Proposal to Make Public Drug Use a Misdemeanor Unlikely to Have Much Visible Impact” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola “New Drug Law Negotiations Still Messy” by Amy Sundberg from Notes from the Emerald City “Colorado Avalanche player involved in incident at Seattle hotel” by Matt Markovich from KIRO 7 “Seattle Cop Mocks Trans People, Blames Jan. 6 Riots on Pelosi; County Council Plays It Safe by Proposing Flat Levy Renewal” from PubliCola Find stories that Crystal is reading here Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Tuesday topical show and our Friday week-in-review show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. If you missed our Tuesday topical show, I chatted with Spokane City Council Member, Zack Zappone, about his approach to politics and policy as a Democrat in a more conservative area of Washington state. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: King Conservation District Supervisor, Seattle writer and enthusiast, Brittney Bush Bollay. Hey. [00:01:20] Brittney Bush Bollay: Hello, how are you? [00:01:21] Crystal Fincher: I am excellent. I'm so thrilled to have you on the show. You are basically a Seattle celebrity when it comes to all things politics and sports, and bring the analysis and the fun to all of our favorite Seattle sports and sports stars. So I am so excited to have you on the show today. [00:01:39] Brittney Bush Bollay: Well, thank you. I'm excited to spend my Friday doing what I do anyway, which is hanging out with my friends talking about politics and sports. [00:01:46] Crystal Fincher: That's right. And one big topic that everybody has been talking about this week is that Governor Jay Inslee has announced that he will not be running for reelection. So as you think about Inslee's - I don't know - legacy, what he's known for, and what this election presents, what are your thoughts on what's going on with Inslee? [00:02:07] Brittney Bush Bollay: It's funny - I actually got polled a few months ago on the idea of him running again. And I was really surprised that he would even consider it. Not because I think he's been a bad governor or ineffective or anything like that, but precedent - really, honestly - three terms is a lot. Four would be kind of gauche. Don't you think? It's a lot, it's time - it's time for someone else to have a go. So I think that he's had a solid legacy as a governor. And I think he's also, for the left wing of the Democrats, not gone as far as we would like on a regular basis. And I'm interested to see what the new candidates - what their angle is, what's their new message? What's their - are they gonna be running on a voice of change? I'm the new Inslee. It's exciting to see a fresh race shaping up with some good candidates and also some terrifying candidates. [00:03:06] Crystal Fincher: You nailed it right there. Good and terrifying, as far as the candidates go. For the left wing of the party, certainly - and coming out of Seattle, where Seattle's no stranger to kind of nation leading or early legislation pushing for progressive solutions, certainly compared to the rest of the state and country. I do think that he has shepherded the state through - we just, through the pandemic that we had - an unprecedented crisis and against some really vitriolic pushback as one of the first states in feeling the impacts of COVID in the country, taking decisive action in pursuit of keeping people safe and following the CDC guidance. That was certainly there. Trying to navigate through the situation with schools and students - while certainly there's a lot to learn and a lot that can be done better, I think people were trying to do the best that they could at that time. We've seen some recent - kind of, I think - what he would call crowning achievements. Certainly the Climate Commitment Act, which is a huge piece of environmental legislation that will be creating hundreds of millions and beyond dollars that hopefully will be reinvested in ways that spur a green economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and impacts. And we just saw him standing up for reproductive rights and purchasing our state supply of mifepristone. There've been a number of issues - certainly we're leading the nation in gun safety. So he has certainly worked in conjunction with the Legislature, our state's elected leaders, to get a lot of this done. He had a run for president. He does have some crowning achievements there, and some things that I think he can walk away and be proud of. And also there's the opportunity to do so much more. And we'll see that from these candidates that we have coming up - some exciting, some intriguing, some terrifying. So we have Bob Ferguson, who's already announced. We have Hilary Franz, who's announced an announcement. And we have, evidently, Mark Mullet - moderate to conservative Democratic Senator, who said he's considering a run. And then some GOP candidates - one already announced, Semi Bird. I know there has been questioning about Jim Walsh, JT Wilcox. We'll see how this turns out. How do you see this race shaping up? Or what do you think are going to be the dividing lines in it? [00:05:31] Brittney Bush Bollay: Honestly, I think Bob Ferguson's gonna run away with it. But I don't know - it'll be interesting to see who the second candidate is who comes through. I think the GOP candidates probably will just fight amongst themselves and get - if they can't work it out, then get little pieces of the various sort of right-wing voter bloc. I think Ferguson has a lot of respect. He has a lot of name recognition. He got a lot of fans for his standing up to Trump, and his helping the state navigate and protect people during that really scary four years. I think it's funny that he announced an exploratory committee, and then the next day was announcing endorsements. That was a little transparent - everybody knew, everybody knew. Hilary Franz has been pretty good in her role, but I'm interested to see what she - how she translates her more niche work that she's been doing with state lands, and what that looks like as she has to expand her platform into governor. [00:06:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Also news this week that our Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler is also stepping down. This is another statewide elected position. Now, Mike Kreidler has made a lot of unfortunate news for racist, sexist, other very problematic statements. He has been asked to resign by the governor, leaders on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers. He refused to do so, but has announced that he's not running for reelection. Patty Kuderer has announced that she is running for that seat. We'll probably - gonna see some others coming up before the filing deadline for candidates on May 19th, but it'll be interesting to see what this is. And it'll be interesting to see, in both of these races, in my opinion - looking at now versus - what was it 2012 - the last time these races were competitive, 2008 - somewhere around there. It's been a while. [00:07:29] Brittney Bush Bollay: It's been a while. [00:07:30] Crystal Fincher: I feel like 2012. But time is a unique construct for me at this point in time. But the world is very different than it was the last time these races were competitive for governor and for insurance commissioner. In that time, we've had a pandemic that has reshaped the way a lot of people think about and live their lives. We have increasing threats to democracy, attacks on people's personhood, attacks on just whether people should be able to freely live their lives as who they are. And a lot of troubling things happen. And I think there's gonna be much more of a conversation this time about how people use their power. And I think from both sides - both Republican and Democratic - if you're looking at the party's bases now, both sides have an expectation that leaders use their power in more definite and comprehensive ways than they did before. That some precedents may be limiting - following tradition and rules - we're seeing tradition thrown in the trash and rules broken right and left. And some people's literal survival may depend on really taking an affirmative stance and standing against hateful rhetoric, hateful policy - policy that is restricting, stripping rights, first and foremost, but also when it comes to the biggest challenges that we're facing. If it's poverty, if it's homelessness, if it's inequality - the insurance commissioner taking on issues like barring the use of credit scores for insurance pricing, which doesn't reliably predict what your insurance risk is gonna be. Or the governor taking steps to make sure we have access to abortion pills here in the state, if that is restricted on a nationwide basis. That those are things that maybe would have been viewed as extreme actions 10, 12 years ago, but today are viewed as necessary and welcome, certainly by this side of the base. If you're talking about Republicans, they are especially riled up that perceived overreach and all of the stuff that they say about the liberal stuff - we don't need to go into all of that - but it's gonna be interesting just to see what the fault lines of this are and how what sometimes used to be more narrow and targeted policy intersects with other policy and all of the issues that most people are dealing with now. [00:09:55] Brittney Bush Bollay: And it's funny 'cause of course, the Republicans were the first ones to start to use and leverage the state legislatures for things that previously had been considered overreach. And now Democrats are doing it as a defensive measure, against those policies. Again, it's always every accusation is a confession. But it's really interesting to me - we're in a time where we're really re-examining sort of the idea of a state and the role of the state government, and sort of the concept of individual states and their relationships to each other has gotten very different as these policies - some states, for example, or one of the most conservative states in the country, in Idaho. And not only do we have to affirmatively protect our people here in Washington, but we have to think about the neighbors in the states around us and the people who are gonna need the help that they can't get in their locations. And how to welcome them, how to make sure that we're prepared to help them and make them feel safe. And that's something that I do think that Inslee has done a good job about. And the Legislature has, seems to have really been thinking about making sure that people who do need reproductive care, abortion access, gender affirming care, and things like that - that they can come to Washington, that they can be safe, they can get what they need. And I think that that's some creative governing - that I think is great. I think that's what we need to do in unprecedented times - is you have to use the office in unprecedented ways. Because at the end of the day, the role of the government - in my opinion - is to help people out where they can't help themselves. [00:11:36] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Think you nailed It. And Inslee is still at work. And even looking at the work that they're doing - and it actually seems to be going well - they seem to be working well with partners in terms of right now, they're working on the freeway encampments and trying to move people into housing. Looking at updates from at least the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and the work that they're doing in partnership with the state, that seems to be actually going pretty well and getting good results - in working with the people at these sites to move them into shelter or temporary housing on the way to trying to find permanent housing. So Inslee is still at work, and he also called a special session for May 16th? [00:12:23] Brittney Bush Bollay: I believe it was May 16th, yeah. [00:12:25] Crystal Fincher: Yep, so coming up here - a special session to deal with the Blake fix, or what to do about the - once again, pending potential of not having any statewide drug law to address simple possession of substances. Now, certainly we've talked about many times before, lots of evidence points towards - one, the War on Drugs that we've undertaken is a failure. We've spent billions upon billions, if not trillions, of dollars worldwide, trying to eradicate drugs and drug use and have failed spectacularly to do that after all of the expenditures. And many places concluded - You know what? Treating drug use as a crime actually seems to be counterproductive, really expensive, really derails a lot of people, destabilizes lives. And what people really need is treatment for substance use disorder, not this punitive lock-them-up that doesn't address the root cause that landed them there. So they're gonna take this up. They had previously considered a bill that would have made substance use personal possession a gross misdemeanor, which is different than a simple misdemeanor. It can carry penalties actually worse than a low-level felony, but we'll see. They're saying that they're trying to work out a compromise, an agreement - what that is going to be, I don't know. Certain localities have said that they plan to move forward on recriminalizing if the State Legislature doesn't. And what they're saying is they want to avoid a patchwork of different laws and policies across the state. So it'll be curious to see what happens here. How do you see this? [00:14:09] Brittney Bush Bollay: It's wild, isn't it - that when you take someone who's using substances, generally, to cope with trauma and then throw them in jail and further traumatize them, it's wild that doesn't solve the problem, isn't it? It's frustrating to me to see what I feel like is a rush to recriminalize a behavior that I don't think should be criminal in the first place. And especially when you consider - you've talked about this on here before - we all know it's not all drugs there's a war on, and it's not the same war on all drugs. And there's no war on alcohol. There's not really a war on marijuana anymore. It's the drugs that we've just decided are the bad ones. And it gets so tangled up - I think that people have a real morality ingrained in them around drugs. And again, around certain drugs, that I think it's really hard for people to escape, to analyze, to pull back from. Like I went through DARE, all of that, and we're taught - drugs are bad. And again, some drugs are worse than others clearly, because for a variety of reasons, we've just decided that. So I think it frustrates me that - I don't think we're seeing evidence-based policy proposals from a lot of people around this. And a lot of people seem really hung up on the idea - drugs are bad, we must punish them. And it doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything except waste money and make more people sad. [00:15:37] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And I've been particularly disheartened to see several legislators from King County - from areas where their population is ahead of where they are, their residents are ahead of where they are in terms of this policy. Their residents recognize that people need help and treatment over being thrown in jail. And lots of people are recognizing, who don't want to see people struggling with substance use disorder and all the consequences that that causes, and we're seeing more and more of that. And people going - Yeah, I don't want to see the consequences, whether it is losing property, losing a home, financial instability, criminal behavior, right? No one wants to see that, but looking at locking someone up - they're just going to get out. It's not like we're locking them up for life and - nor should we be. And then they get out, and if we want them to be able to build a life where they can sustain and thrive however they choose to, doing things like doing something that will lose them their job, that will cost them money that they don't have, that requires them to adhere to things that may not do anything to help their current situation, but could further destabilize them - is just not helpful to anyone. And it's really expensive to take care of from a societal perspective. It is actually less expensive to provide someone housing or to provide someone with treatment, than to jail them and then have them come out not healed and too many times wind up back in jail where it's really expensive yet again. So we just have to figure out a different approach. The current approach has failed, and we keep on trying to double down and triple down on that. And I'm particularly disappointed in some Seattle and King County representatives who are eager to double and triple down on seriously recriminalizing this possession - just doesn't make sense. But we will see what comes out of this special session. [00:17:33] Brittney Bush Bollay: It's just so frustrating to me, 'cause it's just based on such a complete misunderstanding of why people are using substances in the first place. And when they get out of jail - like you said - nothing's changed, except that now they have more instability in their life and a harder time getting a job and finding somewhere to live and are probably further in debt. [00:17:52] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now this next item that we're gonna talk about is - I think people are still struggling to put together the pieces, but we just got some updates this week that have added a couple other elements. But it's really troubling. So - super exciting - the Seattle Kraken have started off playing the Colorado Avalanche in the playoffs, dominated that series. [00:18:19] Brittney Bush Bollay: That part was fun. [00:18:21] Crystal Fincher: Yes - won in seven - super exciting time for hockey fans in this town. But sometimes what comes along with major sporting events, especially during playoffs, are troubling activities surrounding that. And there was an incident related to one of the Avalanche players that happened in a Seattle hotel while they were here in town. Evidently as this happened - for some reason that we don't know - the Avalanche were looking for one of their players, they went into his room, did not find him in his room, but found a woman in the room that was under the influence of something - don't know, has not been determined, at least from the information here. Speculation has ranged from - was it close to an OD situation? Was she given a substance that she did not consent to? Those were all possibilities and called out. But in this - she was alone, she was heavily intoxicated - by the reports, very extremely intoxicated to a degree where she pretty much did not appear okay to go anywhere, do anything on her own for her own safety. But in talking to this person, she said she was from, came over from - she was Russian, but came from Ukraine - came here and someone, a bad man, took away her passport. Now for people who pay attention to trafficking, this is a huge red flag of - something isn't right here. This is something that we see often in human trafficking and oftentimes people forced into - whether it's in servitude, whether it's sex work - they're forced into these things, right? And so she was combative, she was not happy - which is not odd for someone who is a victim of this and talking to other unfamiliar men and heavily intoxicated. Turns out part of the Avalanche's security detail is actually Denver police officers who were involved in this. Call was placed to 911. They said, You can find her at the door. So I guess they just moved her to the door. Paramedics came and she was combative. Unfortunately it looks like they considered, according to KIRO 7 reporting, institutionalizing her in mental health hold in the hospital - paramedics inquired about doing that. And it is just really concerning to me that there is a situation where it looks like Denver police, who may have been off duty - but they're still police - were involved in, Seattle police were involved in, this woman who exhibited signs of being trafficked and who said that was just shoved out of a hotel and said come pick her up. And they seem to more seriously consider institutionalizing her than providing her the help and services she needed as someone who really looked like a victim of trafficking. How did you see this? [00:21:21] Brittney Bush Bollay: It's weird. It's very weird. There's a lot of big holes in this story, aren't there? The team doctor made the call, but he said that someone else told him to make the call, but we don't know who. We don't know where they found the player. We don't know where the woman is now. It was like the middle of the afternoon, so it's not like they had probably been out partying late at night. Yeah, it's all very strange. And if you know anything about the NHL, you know that they're not good at this type of situation. There's been many a coverup and a bungled scandal in the NHL's history. There's not a lot of people to trust here either to handle this well or appropriately. [00:22:10] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it looks like there was - if, again, there's a lot of information missing - but also what we know is this player was rushed out of town that day. They now say that he's suspended or gone for personal reasons. [00:22:24] Brittney Bush Bollay: Personal reasons. [00:22:25] Crystal Fincher: No other information attached to that. No follow-up on what happened to this woman. I hope she's okay. I hope someone followed up to try and figure out - who is the person who took your passport, how did you arrive here? Is this part of a trafficking? It seems like this should be ripe for investigation. Nothing reported so far suggests that that's the case. So I hope we just didn't basically return this woman to her trafficker. But all of this is open and no comment about this has come from the Colorado Avalanche. It looks like they're just hoping to get away with not saying anything about this, particularly since their season is now over. But this is really, really troubling. And lots of people have heard many stories about how - even police - and it was a major detail that Denver police officers are here traveling with the team, and how often they fail people in these situations, how often they fail to recognize when someone is in need of help and not just a burden. And certainly this woman had been reported - she'd been combative - and it just seemed like they viewed her as a problem, whether it was a PR problem, or that they were just trying to get rid of her and get her out. And that was the exact wrong thing to be doing. If you're getting out, are you following up at the hospital? Are you investigating why she doesn't have her passport? Who is this bad man that took it? What is the connection to the Avalanche player? Is this a trafficking ring happening that they're ignoring, while saying that they're taking public safety seriously here? And as we all know in Seattle, the Seattle Police Department was caught not investigating sexual assaults of adults - what, last year, year before last - just made the decision on their own to stop investigating those crimes because they said they were short-staffed. Seems like if you were to prioritize any crime, it would be that. [00:24:27] Brittney Bush Bollay: Especially 'cause that's the one that they like to dangle out a lot of the time when they're looking for more funding. They're like - well, what about the rapists, right? [00:24:35] Crystal Fincher: While they're insisting on going to every overdose call, evidently, where - in most other cities - they're not needed for that at all, something that paramedics usually handle on their own. So it's curious how they prioritize spending their time, and who they're prioritizing spending that protecting and not protecting. I just am very troubled by this. And it just seems to be another coverup where - did we just, did we as a society really just fail this woman and however many more that are like her? [00:25:10] Brittney Bush Bollay: And you would want to think that there would be procedures in place for this. And you would want to think that they would be followed by - procedures from the Seattle Police Department, procedures for the Denver Police Department, procedures probably in high-end hotels. They should be prepared for this sort of thing. And I know that they're private business and their personal interest is gonna be in making it go away, just like the NHL's interest is. So again, like you said, who's gonna protect this woman? No one seems like they're looking out for her right now. And yeah, I just really - I hope that she's not just falling through the cracks. [00:25:44] Crystal Fincher: I hope so. And this happened a week ago - about a week ago, I think. So hopefully she's not lost at this point in time, but I hope this is followed up on. I hope - I have seen some Denver media demanding answers from the Avalanche. I hope that they continue to press that, and national media continues to press that. This is a big issue, especially because this is unfortunately common around playoffs, around big sporting events. We have a number of big marquee events coming to Seattle. So being very interested in making sure that this doesn't happen. If it is found, that it is investigated and figured out and broken up is really key and critical. And I hope they are paying attention to this. And that this is just another reason why it is critical to have people responding who are appropriate to the situation that's happening. I have to think that if there was someone more familiar, or whose job it was not to enforce or contain, but to help - but to recognize this and is there for potential victims of trafficking, to help them understand how they can get out, to help them with resources. Because people in this situation - notable they take the passport because you can't go anywhere, you can't do anything without that. You don't have ID. And usually people - she said that she came over from overseas - don't have a driver's license, don't have anything. So they are completely dependent on the person who is trafficking them, who is forcing them into situations that they have not consented to, that they do not want to be in, that they have to be in just to stay. And so if this person doesn't have their own money - usually no accounts, no money, everything is coming from that person - it wouldn't be surprising at all to see that this person wound up right back in a potential trafficker's hands. We'll continue to follow this if any other information comes out, but this is something that I just don't want to disappear and go away. Other news this week is - so the Seattle Chamber is really actively message testing a plan to raid the JumpStart Tax. They are polling right now. And they've said that this is their intention, basically - a plan to revitalize downtown. And it's so curious because they were not supporters of this tax. They opposed this tax when it was being put together and being passed, but now they want it for themselves. How, what do you think about this? [00:28:27] Brittney Bush Bollay: It's so - it's not even subtle. It just makes me laugh honestly, in a way, because like you said, they've tried so hard - everything they could to keep this tax from existing in the first place. And now that it's here, they're like - Oh well, since it's here, since you have this nice little tax file, what if I just take some of it? What if - and you showed me the questions on the poll and it's hilarious. What if we told you that Amazon and Starbucks are sweet baby angels and the Seattle Council is populated entirely with demons - would that make you oppose or support our position? They can't have it. Not that I am the only one who gets to say, but no. We've - this is a tax that was organized and pushed for by the community for very specific needs in the community. And I don't think that the Chamber can just waltz in and just take it for their own very specific ends that are different from the very specific ends that we already decided it was for. [00:29:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. [00:29:35] Brittney Bush Bollay: And what are they going to do? Are they going to reopen Gap? I don't know. [00:29:40] Crystal Fincher: It is - it's interesting, but you can see some of the messages that they're testing. Some of the questions in this survey - I'll read them. This is one. Currently, officials claim that the City of Seattle is facing a budget shortfall of $225 million. Which of the following approaches to addressing the issue do you prefer? Some say the budget shortfall is driven by things beyond the City's control: declining tax revenues, inflationary pressures, dramatic increase in demand for city services. They need to say we need to find additional progressive tax revenue to maintain the current level of city services so our city's most vulnerable don't suffer. Others say tax revenues have been increasing, but the City is increased, but City spending has increased even faster and the Council still doesn't have an effective plan to address critical issues like homelessness and public safety. They say instead of taxing residents and businesses further, the City Council needs to be held accountable and deliver better results with the money they already have. Now one, we've heard this used by some prior City Council candidates who are definitely anti-tax. It looks like they're testing that to do. They - I'm trying to find ones where they are like - Oh, businesses already pay so much. Microsoft and Amazon pay so many taxes. They're paying the majority of taxes and why would you want them to pay anymore? Now, obviously when you consider that those are among the richest businesses in the entire world - yeah, it makes sense that they would pay a significant amount of tax and that represents a tiny percentage. But you see them stressing the percentage of the City budget, the percentage of - that the flat dollar tax. So right now - Seattle businesses, large and small, already pay 64% of Seattle taxes, including JumpStart which brings more than a quarter of a billion dollars of new money each year and is the largest tax increase in the city's history. Further increasing taxes on businesses will push them to leave, creating an even bigger budget gap and shifting the tax burden to Seattle households. Then asking how convincing is this statement as a reason to oppose a further increase in local business taxes? Right? So you can hear them basically say - Well, they're paying most of the taxes anyway, so they should get to decide how to use it and not the residents of Seattle. In fact, they shouldn't just get to decide, we should basically just hand it over to them to let them spend it. A rebate, in effect - they're asking for. Obviously this came into place because while those companies were becoming the richest in the world, the impacts of that in this community were felt - and they're both positive and negative impacts, right? It's not like people are saying there's never been any positive impact, but it is true that - wow, a lot of people, hundreds of thousands of people moved to the region. Because of them, that puts a strain on local resources, especially without - for so long, without them contributing to this tax. After the repeal of the Head Tax, they weren't paying hardly any taxes to the city that was enabling their meteoric rise - the talent provided by public education, public universities here, our infrastructure. They're finding talent here to the degree that they aren't finding it in other places, which is why they're coming here and relocating here. And I always laugh at the suggestion that raising taxes or more revenue will force businesses to flee because we have literally heard that for decades - with every increase in the minimum wage, with every single business tax, B&O tax - we've heard, Well, this is going to scare businesses away. This is going to really make the town go bankrupt. And all that's happened is that more businesses have come, and the businesses that have been here have become more successful to a large degree if we're looking at large businesses. So there is a conversation to be had on - should we all sacrifice and continue to pay a disproportionate price societally compared to how much wealth we have or what income we make in comparison to literally the richest people and the richest companies in the world? Of course they're going to be paying a dollar amount that looks large, but what percentage of almost trillion dollar companies, hundreds of billions of dollar companies relying on our infrastructure, relying on our roads, relying on our utilities, relying on our education system and talent. Seattle said - absolutely yes, 100%. They are not currently paying their fair share and this represents it. And they're trying really hard to message against that and paying quite a lot of money to test this poll, to test their messaging, and really trying to hone in on what they feel will be most persuasive here. [00:34:25] Brittney Bush Bollay: Yeah, and that right there tells you that they think it's a good investment for them. I feel sometimes like Amazon is this shadow extra branch of our government because of the gravity that they have in the City. And just - all you have to do for a certain portion of the voting population is say, Oh, Amazon's going to leave. And everyone's - Oh no, that can never, we can't do anything that will make Amazon mad. And it's frustrating, and it's inaccurate, and it creeps me out. I mentioned to you earlier - when I see Amazon ads now on TV, it's starting to feel like propaganda because they have so much sway. The other thing that these polls and these narratives never mention is that there's a mayor and a whole executive branch in this town. And the City Council actually does not run the City by themselves. They don't even put the budget together by themselves. Obviously they do the final passage. They do a lot of editing. The mayor also has to sign it. And then the mayor and the executive branch have to take that money and they have to execute. They have to use it. And so it's not just these seven people's responsibility for everything that's going on. But somehow they're the only ones that ever get their fingers pointed - that get fingers pointed at them. [00:35:46] Crystal Fincher: Oh yeah, and that's very intentional. Fingers pointed at them by the same parties that coincidentally are interested in dramatically reducing taxation for the richest companies in the world. It's all very curious. Also curious in this to me continues to be the representation that this is both big businesses and small businesses that are in favor of this. Usually in the case with these things, and especially for taxes like this, they're - like the GSBA, the Greater Seattle Business Association, was in favor of the JumpStart Tax - which is a chamber made up of mostly smaller businesses, right? The biggest businesses are part of the Seattle Chamber and driving that Chamber activity. You see other smaller chambers that are predominantly small businesses supporting this because it does include a lot of help for small businesses. But it's these gigantic corporations that are trying to steer the money away. And so this JumpStart Tax is popular in part because it actually is really going to the people who need it most in our community. It is going to small business owners who do need the help, who aren't able to just decide not to pay a lease without consequences, who can decide just not to pay their vendors without consequences, and wield their influence, and bully other people for lack of a better word. They're more at the whims of just rules and laws and the market. And they need help and they appreciate the help. They're suffering from rising rents and income inequality in the business world in a similar way that we're seeing it among individuals. So it's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. I just think a lot of people are not prepared for the effort that's going to come to divert this JumpStart Tax revenue to downtown and, for a tax that the full city voted on and that really the full city needs to benefit from, and that several neighborhoods in Seattle need help. Are we once again focusing on downtown to the exclusion of other neighborhoods? Are we giving money to downtown to the exclusion of other neighborhoods? And certainly downtown is a vital economic engine. I don't think anyone is disputing that, and we need to do things to make sure that we are fostering business as well as - the end to that is part of that bargain is we want to foster business so that people can have good living wage jobs so that they can have a house and a home and build a life that they can. In the absence of that second part happening - it's not just we want a big business just to say that it's big, it's for the benefits that it brings to the community. Those benefits were not coming. And so this is the correction that Seattle residents felt was appropriate. And so that is - there's a target on it. They're going after it, and people better be prepared. Also this week, we got news that the County, King County, voted to maintain the same level of the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy. In a vote - they had a choice to say, Okay, we're going to maintain the same levy amount. Basically they put together a package and said - you're gonna get this housing help - all of this for Veterans, Seniors and Human Services - a lot of very crucial services for the community - helping people avoid homelessness, special services and providers that are crucial and necessary. I think most people agree with that. Unfortunately, because of inflation, because of all of these costs - what this money buys now, it buys so much less than it did before. And so we're looking at not getting as much as most people would have hoped. And so they were also considering raising, really by a couple cents, per value assessed. I think total, they estimated it would cost the average person $17 per year to say that would actually provide the level of services that we feel is necessary to help in this situation and not the trim-back-austerity light. And this is yet another example, in my opinion, of a short-sighted decision. One - just politically - people don't make decisions on taxes and going, Okay, this is 0.012 of my assessed value property, but this is 0.014. And man, that difference between 0.012 and 0.014 is untenable. People don't vote like that. They don't vote like that. They vote on the tax overall, and do they feel they're gonna get their money's worth? And so just putting the tax on is the big thing. Unless you're doubling or tripling - that's gonna cause a conversation - but modest increases are, people just flatly do not make decisions like that. We can say that confidently with tons of evidence. But what does happen, unfortunately, in situations like this - especially with the renewal - people pay for something. People are fine paying taxes if they feel that they're getting value for their dollar. The problem becomes when they feel like they're getting short-changed or they're not getting value for it. And so right now, for the same price, you're saying - and again, a price that they aren't very sensitive to - you're saying, Okay, you're gonna get less. It's not gonna do as much. And so then the next time that we go to renew this, people are gonna have gotten less. People are gonna see less help, less change, and they're gonna feel like this tax is less justified. So it actually makes it harder to pass next time. And then when you shortchange this, or when you know you're going in with less funding than it really needs and that you can get - when you leave money on the table, you also leave helping people on the table. And you build the case by helping lots of people in your community. That is your case for reelection. Fewer people are going to be helped. There are people attacking - Hey, you're spending this money and we aren't really seeing the difference. You can spend large sums of money because if it's going to help people, that is the justification, that is the value, and people feel that value. But without doing that, then the tax starts to feel burdensome to more people. And the people fighting against that, who would fight against any tax - the people who are most opposed to this, generally are opposed to all taxes - and it's not an issue of two tenths of a percent or whatever, or cent. It's just different. So I'm frustrated to see members that voted for this lower amount. It ended up being a 5-4 vote. It looks like Dave Upthegrove was actually the deciding vote against going for the full amount needed in this levy. And he and some other suburban members said that they - think he said - I don't have any problem with this politically, I just don't know that with some of the pressures that this could pass, that people would pay for it. And that is just not consistent with all available data. And it's just a shame to see money left on the table that could help people, and that could provide value for the money that we're spending. When we have a constrained ability to raise revenue - and especially when some of the options aren't that great - we have limited options for progressive revenue, few options. In those situations and even across the board, it's - yeah, we are asking more from some people, but hopefully the people who need it most are the ones getting helped. And the value is delivered to them first, and we don't burden people who can't absorb it comfortably. But we'll see. How did you feel about this? [00:43:20] Brittney Bush Bollay: You know, it's - going back to these messages that we hear over and over again - that every time there's a levy, and there's always a levy, we hear - Oh well, people are getting levy fatigue. They're getting taxation fatigue. If we keep raising the property taxes, people are gonna stop voting for it because they just, they're tired of it. Which is, as you just said, it completely contradicts the actual messaging or the evidence about why people vote the way they do. And so it's, again, it's just tiring to see us shoot ourselves in the foot, on the basis of a non-evidentiary-based supposition. And so not only are we - we're quitting before we even have a chance to lose is what it feels like. It feels like they're not even gonna try to do the full amount 'cause they've just decided that they can't. And so not only are we denying ourselves that potential opportunity, but then we're locking ourselves in to this lower rate as well. It's not like this is something that we can re-examine every day. So I guess frustrated too - for one word, frustrated - yeah, let's do more. Who doesn't wanna help veterans and seniors? Come on, man. And I think that Seattle and King County - we really like to think of ourselves as the kind of place where we help each other out. And I think people - you said people do vote for that. When I was, when we were working on the Transit Levy a couple of years ago, we found people really were compelled to help people who couldn't afford transit get transit - because they understood - it gets them to work, it gets them to the doctor. It makes people feel good. They wanna do that. [00:45:04] Crystal Fincher: It reduces my traffic. [00:45:06] Brittney Bush Bollay: Right - let people do that. Let people help each other, man. [00:45:12] Crystal Fincher: I wish, I just wish more people understood the value proposition of taxation and how important it is to provide value. And that when you cut back on what you're going to provide - and this is applicable to Sound Transit, this is applicable to school levies and things, we've talked about this before. One time I wound up chairing a school levy because of this issue here - of the higher versus lower amount thing. Again, the issue here isn't tax versus no tax. It's tax at one amount, tax at a tiny bit above that other amount. And people just don't differentiate between that amount. So go for what you know is going to deliver the value necessary and the value intended, instead of saying - Sorry, we're just gonna have to do a lot less. When people look at their own personal finances, they make these judgments all the time, right? And if they feel like - Okay, yeah, I think that's good. I think that'll help. Okay, that's fine. But if it's - This isn't helping much, I don't know that this is gonna do much - then no, they're not as inclined to do it. And making these decisions repeatedly, as you said, just locks us into lower rates and into funding that we know is not going to provide the relief that it's intended to. And when people feel like they've been bamboozled - like we do with the Waterfront, like we do - Hey, I thought I bought this other thing and you delivered something completely different. Hey, I thought I was buying the same amount of things that I did before for the same price, but turns out you cut back. People notice that - that they will notice and feel that more than they will notice and feel the incremental difference in the tax amount. And I just wish more electeds understood this. We would save ourselves a lot of peril. [00:46:59] Brittney Bush Bollay: And I think that a long term degradation of trust in government has very, very serious consequences that add up over time far more than incremental taxation increases do. [00:47:11] Crystal Fincher: I agree. Delivering what people expect, also the implementation of stuff - we've talked about before - getting the implementation right are absolutely critical, especially for the advancement of progressive policy. With that, I will thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, May 5th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today was King Conservation Supervisor, Seattle sports writer and enthusiast, fashion maven, Brittney Bush Bollay. You can find Brittney @BrittneyBush, that's two T's in the middle. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can find me on Twitter and Blue Sky and Mastodon - finchfrii everywhere. You can catch Hacks & Wonks wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, please leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - we'll talk to you next time.

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What will Jay Inslee's legacy be after 12 years as governor?

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Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2023 10:03

KUOW Politics reporter David Hyde joins Soundside host Libby Denkmann to talk about Governor Inslee's announcement that he will NOT be seeking a 4th term.We can only make Soundside because listeners support us. Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/soundside

Week in Review: drugs, guns, and housing

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 28, 2023 50:28

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with PubliCola's Erica Barnett, Seattle Channel's Brian Callanan, and KUOW's David Hyde.

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'Sustainable Blue' wants to raise salmon on public lands in saltwater tanks

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Play Episode Listen Later Apr 12, 2023 1:00

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

When NOT to visit Hawaii

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2023 13:23

When NOT to visit Hawaii? This was such hard content to write. My Mama always said, "If you don't have anything nice to say..." but I feel like I have to share my experience because I certainly don't want my listeners to think it's all rainbows and unicorns when I travel. I'm a real travel writer and a huge sharer. So here are my ten days in Hawaii on the Big Island, good eats, the activities I loved, and what we did discover. I share why I definitely know when NOT to visit Hawaii now and why.⏱TIMELINE⏱1:00 Why I had to record this1:49 Didn't expect the expense2:31 TRAVEL TIP: When visiting expensive destinations...do this!3:06 Where we stayed3:27 Volcano National Park, Kilauea Military Camp and more4 :57 Good Eats5:08 Big Island Gourmet Market5:37 Island Greens5:56 A'Bays Island Grill6:18 Foster's Kitchen7:08 Hilo Bay Club7:41 Kula Shaved Ice8:27 Swimming with the Manta Rays9:20 Sea Bands9:35 Black Sand Beach10:35 Rainbow Falls11:27 So this is why...when NOT to visit Hawaii11:49 And the hits keep coming...

Mayor Harrell says he has a new plan to address Seattle's fentanyl crisis

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2023 0:47

KUOW politics reporter David Hyde has more.

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What are these democracy coupons?

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 21, 2023 12:23

Seattle residents keep an eye out… democracy vouchers will be showing up your mailboxes starting this week. Sure they may look like Valpak coupons, but they're actually a way for you to financially support candidates in the city council election.KUOW's David Hyde is here to tell us about democracy vouchers why you might not want to recycle them with your junk mail.We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: https://www.kuow.org/donate/seattlenowAnd we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

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Christmas Markets along the Rhine - GERMANY

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2023 14:47

This past holiday season I was thrilled to enjoy a few more #christmas #markets along the #rhine - well first I visited the Mosel for a few weeks and then I made my way to #cologne #germany for a #european #rivercruise. We began in the majestic city of Cologne and made our way to the enchanting cities of Rüdesheim, Bonn and Koblenz. Today's podcast introduces you to this #holiday #adventure I am pretty sure I'm going to make a tradition.Awesome service, wonderful surroundings, and snow on the river as we glide past castle after castle on hillsides next to vineyards. A truly magical experience. ⏱TIMELINE⏱:50 About Cologne1:24 Cologne Dom Market2:02 Heinzel Winter FairyTale2:49 NeuMarkt3:20 Harbor Market4:30 Set Sail5:02 Rüdesheim6:19 Koblenz7:30 Bonn8:42 Christmas Market Travel Tips10:36 The River Boat and more!13:07 Upcoming River AdventuresInterested in the BLUE DANUBE RIVER CRUISE - 1 CABIN LEFT!!For RESERVATIONS TASTE OF ITALY TOURhttps://travelwithwendy.net/taste-of-...

WA lawmakers consider a bill to restrict 'deep fake' videos in elections

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 27, 2023 1:00

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

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Transit activist Alex Hudson throws her hat in for Sawant's council seat

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 26, 2023 1:00

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

Sawant hasn't said if she's running yet, but she already has challengers

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2023 1:02

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

State Rep.Tarra Simmons sponsors bill to make sure people in WA jails can vote

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Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2023 1:01

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

MAGA Republican Joe Kent plans to pay for a recount in 3rd District race

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Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2022 0:55

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

Varenna - Lake Como - Italy

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 25, 2022 14:43

#LakeComo #Italy is filled with quaint little towns that sit in alcoves or jut out into the lake with prominent early 19th-century Italian villas and architecture from a time gone by. Last week, I highlighted Menaggio, and just across the lake is another fantastic town, #Varenna.⏱TIMELINE⏱1:00 Recent trip to Varenna1:11 How to there?1:45 Travel Tip: The right Varenna

Week in Review: Midterm Elections

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2022 51:22

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with Seattle Channel's Brian Callanan, political analyst and contributing columnist Joni Balter, and KUOW's David Hyde.

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Villa Balbianello - Lake Como, Italy

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2022 7:48

Gorgeous estate, incredible views, movie set, weddings, and more #Villa Balbianello is a “MUST-SEE” while visiting #Lake #Como #Italy September 2022 I had the privilege of visiting Menaggio just down the road from the villa. This villa makes for a great day trip either by boat or by car.Here is today's quick podcast to help you plan your next Como itinerary!⏱TIMELINE⏱:45 How to get there1:50 Parking information and entrances2:30 Tour Information by car, by boat AND Summer nights3:07 Group Tours by Travel with Wendy4:28 Movie set Magnet - BLOG5:54 FAI Management - Historical Preservations6:34 Continuing the day trip, next up Bellagio

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Battle for the 8th

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2022 13:54

Just outside Seattle in Washington's 8th district, there's a tight race playing out in the midterms.Democratic incumbent Kim Schrier is up against Republican Matt Larkin for a seat that could shift control of Congress.Historically the 8th has voted red, but that changed in 2018 with Schrier's win, and now it looks like it's up for grabs again.KUOW political reporter David Hyde is here to bring us up to speed on this race.We can only make Seattle Now because listeners support us. Make the show happen by making a gift to KUOW: http://bit.ly/seattlenowAnd we want to hear from you! Follow us on Instagram at SeattleNowPod, or leave us feedback online: https://www.kuow.org/feedback

A Northwest politics roundup as the 2022 election draws near

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 2, 2022 21:57

We're just under a week out from the 2022 midterm election on Nov. 8. You've got until Tuesday at 8 p.m. to get that ballot into a drop box, or postmarked and in the mail. And if you're wading through debates, political mailers, and some pretty scary attack ads, don't panic. KUOW politics reporter David Hyde is here to help.

A week away from election day, among the choices: ballot measures

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Play Episode Listen Later Nov 1, 2022 7:35

KUOW's David Hyde reports on some substantial implications for voters.

Wading through this week's pre-election politics

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 27, 2022 19:48

By now, if you're a registered voter in Washington State -- you should have received your November 8th ballot in the mail. And you're probably wading through the tangle of headlines in this final sprint to election day. KUOW reporter David Hyde is here to help.

LAKE COMO - Menaggio

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 22, 2022 13:37

#Menaggio #Lake Como. Definitely one of my TOP favorite towns on this alpine mountain lake in #Italy - I have visited Menaggio so many times, I've lost count. Today I am going to share why I love it, where you can stay, what you can do, and GREAT EATS! I know there are so many choices when you visit Como, but for me it is Menaggio.⏱TIMELINE⏱How to get there?1:10 Where to stay? My favorite - Hotel Garni Corona1:32 Hotel Villa Hadeel1:49 Albergo il Vapore2:19 Grand Hotel Victoria2:49 Where to Eat?3:03 Aperitivo Time3:34 Cafe del Pess4:10 Bar Al Paladar De La Memoria4:43 Enoteca Re Di Quadri5:30 Make DINNER RESERVATIONS

48 hours in Philadelphia - Touring America

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2022 9:13

48 hours in #Philadelphia, PA, the city of brotherly love, Rocky and so much more. Here are a few #traveltips if you are #visiting for a #weekend or a few days. My friend Heather took me around her old stomping ground and gave me the full tour. From where we stayed, and what we ate, discovered, and explored, today I will share our quick trip to Philly.⏱TIMELINE⏱1:00 Where to stay?1:18 Exploring Philadelphia2:00 Visiting Independence Hall2:36 Betsy Ross House & Travel Tips3:44 Chinatown4:22 History around every corner5:00 Good Eats, Cheesesteaks, Reading Terminal Market6:23 Barbuzzo7:10 Irish Pubs7:40 Neighborhood CityFor more information on visiting AMERICA visit my YouTube channelX-Country Adventure

The Fight for Washington's Latino Voters

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Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2022 11:43

Donald Trump performed better than expected nationally with Latino voters in 2020. Now, Republicans in Washington are trying to build on that success for November's primary, while Democrats are fighting to reverse a potential shift to the right. KUOW politics reporter David Hyde has been covering this, and he's here to tell us more.

Week in Review: Teacher strike, park taxes, and Mt. Rainier

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2022 50:38

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with Publicola's Erica Barnett, Puget Sound Business Journal's Ryan Lambert and KUOW's David Hyde.

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Teachers will strike for 3rd day on Friday as district forecasts budget shortfalls

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Play Episode Listen Later Sep 9, 2022 0:57

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

DJT's plan to avenge an impeachment vote may still backfire in WA

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Play Episode Listen Later Aug 12, 2022 0:55

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

Week in Review: August 5, 2022

Hacks & Wonks

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 5, 2022 37:42

Follow us on our new Twitter account at @HacksWonks! Today on the show, Seattle Times politics and communities reporter Daniel Beekman joins Crystal to talk through results from this week's primary election! They discuss how the often-predicted “red wave” failed to materialize and the various possible factors that might have caused that, as well as results in several legislative districts that were anticipated to be competitive battlegrounds that could potentially flip from Democrats to Republicans. They discuss the race for U.S. Representative in the 3rd Congressional District, where Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez finished in first place, while Republican incumbent Jamie Herrera Beutler and Trump-endorsed Republican Joe Kent are in a close battle to determine which one will advance to face Gluesenkamp Perez in the general election. They review the Secretary of State race, where Republicans might end up being absent during the general election this November thanks to nonpartisan candidate Julie Anderson. They spend some time looking at the 8th Congressional District race, then Dan discusses where he's seen a lot of independent money getting spent this election. They end the discussion by going over ballot initiatives that voters may get a chance to vote on this November. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find today's co-host, Daniel Beekman, at @DBeekman. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com. Resources “Larkin to face Schrier in WA congressional race, as Dunn concedes; Kent closes in on Herrera Beutler” by Jim Brunner from the Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/larkin-will-face-schrier-in-wa-house-race-as-dunn-concedes/ “How WA's ‘jungle' primary may have saved Herrera Beutler” by David Gutman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/how-was-jungle-primary-may-have-saved-herrera-beutler/ “Republicans could get shut out of secretary of state race” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/03/democrat-steve-hobbs-washington-secretary-state “No red wave in sight after early returns in key legislative race” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut: https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/08/no-red-wave-sight-after-early-returns-key-legislative-race “Red wave or blue wall in WA? InSeattle suburbs, this race could be ‘real bellwether'” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/red-wave-or-blue-wall-in-wa-in-seattle-suburbs-this-race-could-be-real-bellwether/ “These are the issues that matter most to Washington state voters, new poll indicates” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/these-are-the-issues-that-matter-most-to-washington-state-voters-new-poll-indicates/ “Larkin advances, Dunn concedes in 8th Congressional District” by David Hyde from KUOW: https://kuow.org/stories/larkin-advances-dunn-concedes-in-8th-congressional-district “Key results from WA primaries as control of the Legislature hangs in the balance” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/wa-legislative-election-results-key-outcomes-for-the-2022-primary/ “This is where big money is flowing and ads are attacking in the battle for control of WA's Legislature” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/this-is-where-big-money-is-flowing-and-ads-are-attacking-in-the-battle-for-control-of-was-legislature/ “Democrats declare ‘no red wave' in legislative swing districts” by Melissa Santos from Axios: https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2022/08/03/washington-democrats-red-wave-legislative-districts “With November Ballot in Question, Seattle's Social Housing Campaign Soldiers On” by Ben Adlin from South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/08/02/with-november-ballot-in-question-seattles-social-housing-campaign-soldiers-on/ “Seattle City Council Puts Ranked Choice Voting on the Ballot” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger: https://www.thestranger.com/news/2022/07/15/76479670/seattle-city-council-puts-ranked-choice-voting-on-ballot Transcript Transcript will be uploaded as soon as possible.

Taking the temperature as Washington's primary races heat up

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2022 13:02

Washington's primary election is happening right now. This vote will whittle down a big field of candidates for important jobs like – Secretary of State, all state House spots and half of the state Senate positions, congressional seats and a spot in the U.S. Senate. KUOW's David Hyde is here to walk us through what's going on.

Week in Review: Seattle politics, policing, and Starbucks

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2022 50:35

Bill Radke discusses the week's news with contributing columnist Joni Balter, Geekwire's Mike Lewis and KUOW's David Hyde.

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WA Dem. Congresswoman Kim Schrier wants Biden administration to ease certain tariffs

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Play Episode Listen Later Jul 8, 2022 0:52

The goal is to tackle inflation, but KUOW's David Hyde says it's also about politics.

Ballot campaign to decriminalize drug use in WA has ended

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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2022 1:02

KUOW's David Hyde has more.

Travel TIPS you need to know - RIGHT NOW!

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2022 9:40

Today I am sharing some much-needed #travel #tips with my friend Vicky Turbak (TravelbyVicky) with you because we have learning baptism by fire during this crazy 0 to 100 travel planning season.We produced this LIVE on our FACEBOOK groups and Travel Planning with Wendy if you would like to see the whole video, be sure to subscribe. I will also post this on YouTube. Hope it helps as you navigate your new exciting #plans, post-COVID! #Traveling the world can be a complicated task right now, that's why we want to help!⏱TIMELINE⏱1:06 Plan AHEAD1:36 Airline updates2:16 Try someplace new2:56 Consider driving3:22 Think outside the box - destination ideas4:08 Travel Insurance4:48 Forget about a "deal"6:00 Overnight baggage, packing7:11 Be patient, be kind8:01 Use a travel advisor, if not us, choose someone you trust!More CONTENT:

Abortion might swing WA's 8th congressional race

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Play Episode Listen Later May 17, 2022 11:11

Republicans are hoping to regain control of the House of Representatives this November.And there's only one district in Washington state that's up for grabs.Democrat Kim Shrier's in the 8th.There's now a new wrinkle in the race with the leaked Supreme Court opinion on abortion.KUOW political reporter David Hyde explains.

Week in Review: Abortion, COVID-19, and drug decriminalization