Podcast appearances and mentions of Gary Locke

The White House has confirmed that a 104% tariff on goods imported from China will come into force on Wednesday. China has accused the United States of "blackmail" and Washington says that the tax levies announced were bringing many countries to the negotiating table. We hear from a former US ambassador to China, Gary Locke. Also in the programme: at least forty-four people have died after a roof collapsed at a music venue in the Dominican Republic; and a full-sized digital scan of the Titanic has given experts new insight into the ship.(Photo: White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (C) speaks to reporters during a press briefing in the Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, DC, 08 April 2025. Credit: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Well it was apparently “take a friend to work day” today at WKXL's NH Unscripted as I had the privilege of sitting with Gary Locke and Greg Gaskell. Topics covered ranged from the tv show “Severance” to a fundraiser for the Hatbox Theatre happening in April to Gary trying to convince us he was once a body double for Roger Moore. (We had a hard time believing it as well.) Greg is a crazy talented writer, especially comedic, and we talked a lot about what he's currently invested in and then he asks Gary and I what roles or types of roles we still be interested in taking on. Some other friends get honorably mentioned as well: Aaron Compagna, Alex Picard, Wayne Asbury, Emily Karel and more!

Well it was apparently "take a friend to work day” today as I had the privilege of sitting with Gary Locke and Greg Gaskell. Topics covered ranged from the tv show “Severance” to a fundraiser for the Hatbox Theatre happening in April to Gary trying to convince us he was once a body double for Roger Moore. (We had a hard time believing it as well.) Greg is a crazy talented writer, especially comedic, and we talked a lot about what he's currently invested in and then he asks Gary and I what roles or types of roles we still be interested in taking on. Some other friends get honorably mentioned as well: Aaron Compagna, Alex Picard, Wayne Asbury, Emily Karel and more!

A Hearts-mad kid had photos of the club's greatest scorer on his bedroom wall… and ended up being his captain.This podcast is part of a new, digital version of Nutmeg that will give you more of the Nutmeg stories you love, straight to your email inbox.You'll get topical columns from leading players and journalists, The Nutmeg Mysteries – uncovering strange episodes in our game's past, fascinating rummages into football finance with Sporting Intelligence's Nick Harris, and Daniel Gray's Slow Match Report.These digital dispatches will come to you via the brilliant publishing platform Substack. Just pop in your email. No apps. No faff.Subscribe for free now This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.nutmegfc.co.uk/subscribe

Laurie, Mark & Scott are joined by newly elected Foundation of Hearts directors Claire Hammond & Gary Locke, to discuss their new roles and the future of the Foundation. Sponsored […]

Gary Locke, exsecretario de Comercio de Estados Unidos, se refirió en La W al anuncio del presidente electo Donald Trump de aumentar la apuesta por los aranceles.

Been curious at all about what's happening with the Hatbox Theatre? Well wonder no more! Kinda. Gary Locke, President of the Hatbox Theatre board, drops in to bring us current on all that's happening and all that needs to happen as they look to the future. Many theater groups leaned on the Hatbox over it's time at the Steeplegate Mall and they would certainly like for that to continue, but, there are hoops that need to be gone through to make that dream come true and Gary discusses the reality of it all. Hatbox 2.0 is not far off!

Been curious at all about what's happening with the Hatbox Theatre? Well wonder no more! Kinda. Gary Locke, President of the Hatbox Theatre board, drops in to bring us current on all that's happening and all that needs to happen as they look to the future. Many theater groups leaned on the Hatbox over it's time at the Steeplegate Mall and they would certainly like for that to continue, but, there are hoops that need to be gone through to make that dream come true and Gary discusses the reality of it all. Hatbox 2.0 is not far off!

The Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative Play Festival @ Prescott Farm in Laconia is once again tackled by WKXL NH Unscripted! Today's guests, Gary Locke (one of the directors) and Chuck Fray (one of the writers) stop in to discuss the Festival in more detail. We talked about things like: Is the shortened format easier or more difficult to work with? What do they think the actors, audience and writers will take away from the event? How does writing for a shorter play impact the structure of the writing? Why even do a Play Festival with plays that are under 15-20 minutes apiece? We covered a lot in this hour so hang on!!!

The Powerhouse Theatre Collaborative Play Festival @ Prescott Farm in Laconia is once again tackled by NH Unscripted! Today's guests, Gary Locke (one of the directors) and Chuck Fray (one of the writers) stop in to discuss the Festival in more detail. We talked about things like: Is the shortened format easier or more difficult to work with? What do they think the actors, audience and writers will take away from the event? How does writing for a shorter play impact the structure of the writing? Why even do a Play Festival with plays that are under 15-20 minutes apiece? We covered a lot in this hour so hang on!!!

Got a story idea for Bloodworks 101? Send us a text message Former Washington Governor Gary Locke has a long resume and a distinguished career in public service but did you know he was also an advocate for blood donation? Recently, Locke sat down with contributor Juan Cotto for this special edition of Bloodworks 101.  

Amy Canavan is joined by Hearts legend Gary Locke and Joel Sked from A View From The Terrace to review the Jambo's season so far.

NH Unscripted and WKXL hosted Gary Locke, author, actor and friend, to talk about how the closing/moving of the Hatbox Theatre in the Steeplegate Mall affects the community as well as the groups that use the theatre to showcase their productions. We then get into upcoming projects, his production of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? and much more!

Grandpa Bill today overviews my earlier this year guest, Madonna Hanna Part 1 Original Guest Appearance on My Podcast Achieving Your Goals at ANY AGE with National Senior Games Champion Madonna Hanna -https://youtu.be/L-MiGDfXeKc Were You Bullied? The Evolution of the: “Beautiful Differences Play / Community Service Project” (First Draft: 9.19, 2002) The Beautiful Differences play was originally funded by a grant provided by the Milken Family Foundation Festival for Youth Community Service Grant Program. Madonna Hanna, the grant coordinator was a 1999 Milken Family Foundation National Educator. This original play written by Madonna, revolves around and upcoming fashion show, a mysterious stranger and three groups of children: a popular kid, special education students and outcast students. The message of the play: teasing, bullying and poking fun is not fashionable: being proud of yourself, accepting others and working together is in style! Madonna's inspiration for the play is her book Mommy, Why Are My Eyes So Big? and her award winning fashion show project Flights of Fancy. The Flights of Fancy fashion show features people with disabilities as runway models. The purpose of the play is to communicate an important message in a non-threatening manner. Children of all ages love the arts, therefore a play is a natural tool to use to deliver a powerful message. In turn, high school students have a responsibility to guide their younger peers in the right direction in this play ,they did JUST THAT. The play is about physically challenged and outcast students who discuss being excluded then included in a school fashion show. Initially they don't think they have a chance but they eventually muster the fortitude to try out. Pre and post play activities have been created to reinforce the plays message of acceptance. The Impact of the Community Service Project The community service project inspired the participation of the Bremerton School District, the Bremerton Multi-Cultural Committee, Kitsap Regional Library, Kitsap Reading Council, The Bremerton Sun, The Bremerton Parks and Recreation Department, The Olympic Education Service District, Tacoma and Seattle schools and the former Bon Marche' Department stores (Now Macy's). Washington State Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire, added the Beautiful Differences to the AG Office online publication the Anti- Bullying Toolkit. U.S Senator Patty Murray, “As a United States Senator and a former educator, education is one of my highest priorities. I applaud programs, such as yours, that teach self-esteem and mutual respect. These are invaluable lessons for today's youth.” Senator Murray's shared her Beautiful Difference: “When I was selected to the United States Senate-I was the first mom ever with kids at home and the first preschool teacher in the history of the country to be a United States Senator. As a Mom and teachers I know I bring a different but importance to all the policies decided by the United States Senate.” The project provided high school students with the opportunity to demonstrate reading, performing arts, leadership, mentoring and communication skills. Elementary students demonstrated skills in writing and verbalizing the concept of acceptance, tolerance and intervention. The Beautiful Differences Project was funded two consecutive school years (2000-2002) by the Milken Family Foundation Festival For Youth Grant. The Beautiful Differences Community Service project earned a Bronze Medal-2002 SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference, Kansas City, MO Madonna authored, Mommy Why Are My Eyes So Big? PLEASE NOTE THERE IS SOME ADDITIONAL 1500 CHARACTERS IN THIS PDF OUTLINE LISTEN IN PLEASE PAY IT FORWARD! The BD community service project was recognized by the State of Washington Office of the Governor, Gary Locke, Governor; also assisted with the support of House Bill 1444 State of Washington 57th (Signed into law March 28, 2002) #bullying,#hate --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/bhsales/message

Former Washington Governor Gary Locke joins the Chino Y Chicano to talk about the U. S. Supreme Court ruling striking down the use of race in college admissions. Locke says he benefitted from affirmative action in the late 60s when he applied to attend Yale University. Locke is a former Washington state Governor and served as Ambassador to China in the Obama Administration. He served as Bellevue College President and recently stepped down after three years in the post. Read:https://www.courts.wa.gov/appellate_trial_courts/supreme/bios/?fa=scbios.display_file&fileID=gonzalezRead: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mental-health/seattle-libraries-transit-branch-into-social-work-to-take-on-mental-health-drug-use/: Read:https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/editorials/buoyed-by-poll-seattle-mayor-harrell-should-go-big-on-public-safety/Read: https://crosscut.com/news/2023/01/two-seattle-asian-american-community-newspapers-go-out-printRead: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/leesa-manion-sworn-in-as-king-county-prosecuting-attorney/Read: The Best & Worst Awards for 2022https://i0.wp.com/nwasianweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/04-05-Matt-and-Gei-1.jpgRead Marcus Harrison Green's Seattle's Times column about Black Youth suicide. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/mental-health/more-black-kids-are-dying-by-suicide-the-reasons-unfortunately-arent-surprising/

Odyssey artist Gary Locke tells an incredible story about beginning to draw, digital art, death, life, and heaven - in that order.

On this week-in-review, Crystal is joined by Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank! They start with updates on legislation covering housing, education funding, repeals of Eyman initiatives, and gender affirming care and the budget. They continue with a chat about the upcoming end of the Department of Justice consent decree with the Seattle Police Department and the context surrounding it, as well as contention between Seattle City Council members over a proposal to limit late fees to $10.  Crystal and Robert finish with a discussion of how confusion and contention within and between organizations and a mismanaged budget may lead to hundreds of people being ousted from shelter.  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 Standing Up to the Status Quo with Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson from Hacks & Wonks   “Final steps for Washington state's middle housing bill” by Joshua McNichols from KUOW   “Proposed property tax cap hike angers Washington Senate GOP” by Spencer Pauley from The Center Square   “VICTORY! Washington State House passes NPI's bill to repeal Tim Eyman's push polls” by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   “Washington lawmakers buck trend of anti-trans bills” by Melissa Santos from Axios   “Abolitionists and Reformers Agree on Something!” by Ashley Nerbovig from The Stranger   “Council Committee Waters Down Bill to Cap Late Fees at $10 for Renters” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger   “As Homeless Agencies Bicker Over Blame, Time Runs Out for Hundreds Living in Hotels” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   “No Clear Solution for Hotel Evictions After Chaotic Homelessness Board Meeting; Budget Decision Postponed” by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   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 Friday almost-live shows and our midweek 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 midweek show, I chatted with Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson about what got him engaged in public service, what issues are top of mind in Bothell, and how he approaches making meaningful change when the system is biased to keep things the same. Today, we're continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program, friend of the show, today's co-host: Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, longtime communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. [00:01:22] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you Crystal for having me back - it's always a pleasure to review the week in Seattle with you. [00:01:28] Crystal Fincher: Always a pleasure to have you on - very insightful and always on it. So we have a number of developments in the Legislature this week. We just passed another major cutoff. There are a lot of bills that survived, a lot of them that died - but we do have major news in a lot of different areas, including housing. What are the housing bill updates for the week? [00:01:50] Robert Cruickshank: I think the big news this week is the Senate passed the missing middle housing bill, HB 1110. This is the bill that notoriously died last year, thanks in large part to the work of Representative Gerry Pollet. But ahead of this year's session, a pretty big coalition came together led by Representative Jessica Bateman in the House and Senator Yasmin Trudeau over on the State Senate side. They brought together a big coalition of people - from Amazon to the State Labor council, from builders to the Sierra Club, and a lot of people in between - to get this bill done. And focusing on the missing middle bill, it made it out of both chambers - House and Senate. They're gonna have to reconcile the versions, which aren't that different. It only took a few amendments that whittled down some of the scope, but not in any dramatic way. And so getting the missing middle housing bill out, which will allow duplexes, quadplexes, even more to be built around the Puget Sound region and around the state is a huge win for housing because it'll help address the housing shortage. It also helps begin to roll back the exclusionary racist zoning policies that have been created over the decades in the state. They create a lot of residential segregation and have fueled gentrification and displacement across the state. So getting HB 1110 out of the Senate is a big deal. There's hopefulness that it will sail through the concurrence process in the House and get signed by the governor soon. So that's the good news on housing. But there's other news that is maybe less - anytime you deal with the Legislature, you get half a loaf at best, unfortunately. And Democrats started the session by talking about what they call the three S's of housing - supply, stability, and subsidy. So supply - building new housing - they've done some of that. HB 1110, like we talked about, passing out of the House and Senate is good news. But some other bills got whittled down. The House Housing Committee, for example, loaded down a transit-oriented development bill with a bunch of poison pill amendments to the point where that bill's probably not gonna pass. It might, but if it did, it would be under very weakened circumstances. But at least supply is moving forward in some degree. Stability - the ability to make sure people don't lose their housing due to rent increases - that's gone. California and Oregon in the last few years have both passed statewide caps on rent increases, but once again that bill died in Washington. And then subsidy. In order to get the most affordable housing, you have to subsidize it and you need government to do that. And Jay Inslee, the governor, came in at the beginning of the session with a bold proposal - a smart one - to have voters approve a $4 billion bond for affordable housing. Senate Democrats have said - No, we don't wanna do that. And they're left with a couple hundred million to build affordable homes, which is better than nothing, but in a era of high inflation and high land values, labor shortages - that's not gonna buy as much as $4 billion would. So while there was a lot to celebrate in this session around housing, especially the missing middle bill, there's also a lot to look at and say - It should have been even better and the promises made at the beginning of the session, especially around stability and subsidy, were broken. And that's gonna hurt a lot of people. And so we need this Legislature to do better when they come back next year. [00:04:59] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - completely agree with everything you just said. And I guess I am holding out a little bit of hope that there's still action that will be taken. You mention that $4 billion proposal, which would really accelerate the building of housing - really badly needed housing - to help us catch up on the units that we're behind to help keep housing affordable. Both kind of a housing and revenue issue with - the Real Estate Excise Tax is still up in the air, having a bit of a tough time, but they're still battling through that. So two opportunities where they can still take action, I hope. And certainly middle housing is worthy of celebrating it passing - this has been a long road bringing together big broad coalition - we've spoken with Representative Bateman on this show about this before. Your point about there being disappointment, about there not being more done - certainly missing middle housing was necessary, needed to happen, but so are these other things. And so is catching up on our housing supply, and on these protections, and on really feeling like we not only have the technical ability to build these units, but there's the funding and the resources there available to do that. That is a piece we are still missing. And if we do really consider housing to be a crisis, if we do really want to say we have taken action that matches the scale and scope of this crisis, there's gotta be more. We're not done yet. And there is the opportunity more this session that I hope they take advantage of. [00:06:41] Robert Cruickshank: I agree. And I think it's going to be interesting to see what the governor decides to do. Jay Inslee, in his 10+ years in office, has usually not been willing to confront the Legislature. He rarely vetoes anything. But I think this is a situation where he's gonna have to make a decision. Does he allow the Senate Democratic Caucus to basically abandon his $4 billion housing bond? Or does he make them do it? Does he veto a capital budget? Does he veto the operating budget? Does he say - I am the final voice here with my veto pen and I will use it if we don't get these things - we may need to see something like that. Inslee hasn't issued exactly a veto threat, but he has issued a very strongly worded public statement criticizing the Senate Democrats for rejecting his affordable housing bond. So I think you're right that that's not dead yet, but it's going to come down to a question of - what is Inslee willing to do to try to get it done? Is he willing to really put the screws to the Legislature in a way he hasn't traditionally done to try to get this through? And I think the rest of us who are advocates have to look at this overall session and ask ourselves - why did it turn out this way? We have some wins and we should celebrate those. But we also had, as you mentioned, things that didn't get through - whether it's transit oriented development, whether it's rent stabilization, and of course, a question about the affordable housing bond. This is a Legislature with strong, stable, large Democratic majorities. They don't have two-thirds majorities, but they've got pretty sizable majorities - they're not in any danger of losing those anytime soon. So this isn't a matter of having to cut deals with the Republicans. It's a matter of having divisions and dissensions within the Democratic caucus. And this is where one of the reasons we wish we had more of a journalism core in Olympia - it's all been whittled down over the last few decades - we don't have great insight as to what exactly goes on in these caucuses. We don't really know where things stand and who - we have a sense of who the power players are, we have a sense of who the movers and shakers are, but we don't have as much as we would like. We certainly don't have as much as we do, for example, insight into Congress. We don't really have it here in the Legislature. And so those of us who are the advocates and observers, we need to sit down after the session and figure out - okay, why did it turn out this way? How do we get better outcomes next time? Just as we did after 2022 - the reason why a missing middle bill looks set to pass and be signed into law is because that work was done. People evaluated where pressure needed to be put and did it. Now I think we need to do that more systematically, especially when it comes to stability and subsidy - those two legs of the housing stool. [00:09:22] Crystal Fincher: Now what's happening when it comes to education funding? [00:09:26] Robert Cruickshank: Something very interesting has happened this week and so far it's only the right wing that's noticed this - and the Republicans - it hasn't made it through anywhere else. But Senate Democrats proposed this week, SB 5770, which would eliminate one of Tim Eyman's signature initiatives, which is a 1% property tax cap. Now let's go back to the mid-2000s when Bush was president - voters approved this initiative, the Supreme Court of Washington threw it out - said it's unconstitutional - but led by Frank Chopp, a panicky Democratic majority put it into law themselves. They were afraid that if the court's ruling were to stand, Democrats would lose seats at the 2008 election - which we can look back and see that was a pretty ridiculous fear, but they did it. So Democrats put into place Tim Eyman's 1% property tax cap and that's gutted funding for schools, it's gutted funding for cities and counties. And there's been pressure ever since to try to relax that. There's also been a lot of pressure over the years - and one of the hats I wear is President of Washington's Paramount Duty - we try to advocate for education funding using new progressive revenue rather than rely on a property tax, which is regressive. And the state has a regressive system anyway - let's use a wealth tax. And we know that Senator Noel Frame and others have been pushing a wealth tax in the Legislature to fund education. This week, State Senator Jamie Pedersen and a group of Senate Democrats come out with a bill, 5770, that would help address education funding by eliminating Eyman's property tax cap. And say instead of a 1% cap, there'll be a 3% cap on annual property tax growth year-to-year. What they're essentially saying is - Yes, we recognize we aren't doing enough to fund public education. Yes, we need to do more. Yes, we need a new revenue source. But rather than tax the rich, we're gonna raise the property taxes again. And it puts education advocates in a really interesting spot because at least 50 districts across the state - large and small, urban and rural, east and west - are facing enormous budget cuts, even school closures. And these are really dire cuts that will significantly undermine the quality of public education in our state. And now we have Senate Democrats saying - Here's your funding, it's a property tax. Are you going to accept it or not? And that's a tough call. In 2017, to address the McCleary case, the Legislature passed the largest property tax increase in state history and it still wasn't enough. And coming out of that, we said - we need a capital gains tax and we need a wealth tax. Capital gains tax, of course, upheld by the Supreme Court. The wealth tax proposal would have essentially restored taxes on intangible property, which we used to have until the 1990s. So that's a pretty straightforward thing - 70% public support, widespread support in both caucuses. But this is an interesting move by some more centrist Democrats to say - Let's not do a wealth tax, let's go back to the property tax one more time for schools. [00:12:20] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and in this conversation about how regressive our state is overall when it comes to taxation, there were certainly a lot of people hoping that we would move closer to a wealth tax, especially with the bill that Representative Frame has in the Legislature ready to go. This was a great opportunity that they didn't take advantage of. And so we'll see how this turns out. But interesting to note that - we're talking about the repeal of one Tim Eyman initiative - he had a hard enough time getting them just to stand. So many of the initiatives that he passed were ultimately ruled unconstitutional. But one that did pass and that we've been living with the results of on every ballot is the Advisory Vote initiative that he ran, where we see all these votes on our ballots that don't count. And really just - if the Legislature basically authorizes any revenue, it lands on our ballots as a referendum Advisory Vote - hey, would you want this upheld or not? It's really just a poll, but a really wasteful and really poorly done poll that really makes our ballot a lot longer, more confusing. And especially with long ballots, there's a lot of people who don't flip the ballot over. So if the first page is dominated by these questions that don't have anything to do with the current election, we are actually hurting ourselves voting-wise because we know people are just going to miss votes that actually matter because we're putting votes that don't matter on the front of the ballot. So happy to see that being overturned. [00:14:07] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, that's great news that the Advisory Votes appear to be gone - that bill still needs to be signed by the governor but that's, I think, a foregone conclusion. And kudos to folks at the Northwest Progressive Institute who've been working on this for years. And what that shows me - along with the repeal of the Advisory Votes and repealing potentially 747, which is the initiative that did the 1% property tax cap - it reminds us that we blame Tim Eyman for a lot of this, but his enabler all along - his biggest enabler - has been the Democratic majority in the State Legislature. Way back in 2000 when his first initiative, the $30 car tabs, which gutted funding for transit and the ferry system - Supreme Court threw that out too. And it was a Democratic Legislature who said - No, actually we're going to put that back in ourselves. And a governor, Gary Locke, who - probably worried about reelection that year, though he didn't need to - put it back into place. Same thing with a 1% property tax cap. The Advisory Votes - the Democratic majority could have repealed that at any time, but only this year were they willing to do so. But I think the biggest way in which the Legislature has enabled Tim Eyman is by failing to fix the overall tax system. And while Eyman himself is a shady character at best and while his initiatives are appalling, he taps into a very real anger in the electorate with our regressive tax system. And that is the thing that has kept him going all this way - finally, he seems to be genuinely out of business - bankrupt, done, a spent political force. And that's partly because of his own mistakes. It's also partly because progressives in the state and in the Legislature finally have figured out how to push the caucus in a better direction on taxes. There's still a long way to go. And I think if Democrats say no to a wealth tax and yes to another property tax increase - I'm shocked that they would do that, worrying about swing seats in the 2024 election, but we'll see what they decide to do. But hopefully we see a Democratic majority start to take tax reform even more seriously and the ruling on the capital gains tax last month should give them a green light to go quite a lot further. [00:16:17] Crystal Fincher: I certainly hope so. Now there is definitely a bright spot this year in my view and a lot of people's view - especially with the backdrop in this country, with all of the hate-fueled bills, the anti-trans bills banning gender-affirming care, essentially banning gender-affirming care - there've been over a hundred bills passed in legislatures across the country that have been tearing apart, taking away rights for gender-affirming care, rights for trans people to exist basically. But we've done better here in Washington state and I'm actually proud of this. I wanna see more of this and I'm glad that we are showing that we can move in the other direction and that we're codifying protections. What did we see this year in the Legislature? [00:17:11] Robert Cruickshank: This year, the State Legislature - both houses have passed a bill SB5599, which would provide significant new protections for kids who are questioning changing their gender identity, who can do that and receive services and treatment and housing without having to notify their parents from a certain age - I believe it's 13 or 14. And this is a really important bill because what it does - it provides protections for these kids from families who may be hostile or unwelcoming to their very existence. And it's an excellent response and a necessary response to problems we see - even before the right wing decided that they're going to wage war on trans people - there's many stories that many of us know of young kids or teenagers who have questioned their gender identity, changed their gender identity, recognize that they were misassigned all along, and families either not responding well or being outright abusive. So there's been pressure for a while for the Legislature to do something about that. And now as we're seeing right wing states, red states, pass all sorts of awful bills restricting healthy care for trans people - Missouri just yesterday passed a bill making it extremely difficult to give proper care to trans kids - Washington's Legislature has gone in the right direction and withstood a barrage of awful hateful attacks coming from Republican legislators and coming from right wing media outlets. And they've stayed the course on that. One thing I notice about this Democratic majority in the Legislature - whenever it comes to finances or economics, they can be unreliable. But when it comes to our basic human rights, they're pretty strong. And I think the passage of this bill to protect trans kids is another example of when the Legislature gets it right. And they have to withstand a lot to get it right. I look forward to this bill making it out of the Legislature for good - it's pretty much there - and getting signed by the governor because I think this will be a big win. [00:19:11] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely a big win. Another big win that I just really learned about over the past year is another bill that allows trans people, or refugees, victims of intimate partner violence to be able to change their name while protecting their privacy and safety. The regulations for doing that in many places, including here before, were really onerous. Oftentimes you had to publicly publish in a paper that you intended to do that, there are lots of fees, jumping through hoops, going to court - just really unnecessary for what essentially is just some paperwork that needs to be filed. And so we did that. This is on top of a law passed a couple of years ago that requires insurers to cover gender affirming surgeries that are prescribed by a person's doctor and deemed medically necessary. You just talked about that Missouri bill - and they're not just going after kids - that law that was just signed - have a friend who is trans - trans adults who - they would not be able to get gender affirming care under that law now. They're really going after the right of trans people to exist. This is genocidal activity that we're seeing, and it's really important for everyone to speak up no matter where we are, especially in our own spheres. And when we come up against transphobia or any kind of bigotry, really, including, especially transphobia. But it's important to show that we can move in the other direction, that we're not putting up with this hate, that we don't have to go along with it, that we can hold leaders accountable, that we can hold corporations accountable. And even with Governor Inslee purchasing our own stash of mifepristone, which was a great move by the way - thank you, Governor Inslee for that. And when we talk about - hey, we wanna see some action taken in the face of this fascist march against women, against trans people, against everyone who's not a Christian straight white male almost - we have to have more of this. We have to keep doing this. And I'm glad we're doing it. I appreciate our Legislature and Governor Inslee for doing this, and I just wanna continue to see more. [00:21:34] Robert Cruickshank: Absolutely. I think Inslee's leadership on this has been significant and going out and buying a supply of the abortion pill was a huge deal. And I saw people in California asking Gavin Newsom, the governor there - Why aren't you doing the same thing? He announced that now he will. And so it's great to see Inslee leading on that. I think it comes back, also in my head, to the housing question earlier. We are recognizing that we're in a moment right now where it is becoming difficult to live in a lot of these red states - where people's rights to exist are under significant threat and we're starting to build out here on the West Coast, and especially here in Washington, a haven - where you can get the abortion pill, where your right to exist as a trans person is protected under state law. We should be inviting people to come move here, come live here, come join us - and that's hard to do if housing is hard to find and expensive. So I think it should all be connected. We are unfortunately in this place in American history right now where we need to build havens for a lot of people, and the West Coast should be a haven and we need to take every step we can - whether it's passing legislation to protect trans kids, buying up stockpiles of the abortion pill, and making it easy for people to live and afford to stay here. I think these are all connected things that we need to be doing. [00:22:52] Crystal Fincher: All right - we will continue to follow what is happening in the Legislature in these final weeks of the session. Big event happening in the City of Seattle that is going to change the status quo of things over the past 10 years - and that is the DOJ saying they're ready to move to end the consent decree with the Seattle Police Department. What's happening? What's the background and context around this? [00:23:18] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah, so 2012 is when the City of Seattle and the Department of Justice entered into a consent decree to allow a federal judge to oversee badly needed reforms to the Seattle Police Department. And so fast forward to 2023, and I think a lot of people quite understandably react to news about ending a consent decree with - Well now, wait a minute. Why would we do that? The department hasn't been reformed. And I think there's a great article in The Stranger yesterday by Ashley Nerbovig who explains why. A lot of advocates who are strong police reformers have all along understood that bringing in the Department of Justice is a double-edged sword. You bring in the Department of Justice to get reforms done that couldn't be done at the local level, but at the same time you lose community control over the department. And we saw that, I think, most clearly in 2020 when the federal judge who oversees the case came in and told the City that they could not ban the use of pepper spray or blast balls in protest management, which we saw SPD doing regularly in the Black Lives Matter protests on Capitol Hill - including City councilmembers getting pepper sprayed, people in their homes with babies getting pepper sprayed, blast balls injuring people left and right. And the City said - We don't want this anymore. We're passing an ordinance. And the judge came in and said - You can't do that. Efforts to defund the police department in 2020, which obviously have faded for political reasons, but the judge also said - You can't do that. And I think those are two examples that really brought home to people the other edge of the sword with a consent decree, which is that you lose a lot of that community control. And so what's happening now is a recognition that the legal boxes have been checked in terms of reforming SPD. This isn't to say that SPD is fixed by any means, 'cause it's not - but that the Department of Justice has done about all it can do. And that the work of lasting, substantial, and fundamental reforms to the police department have to come from us in the community. It has to be led by the community. It has to be led by the people of Seattle for it to stick and for it to work. And that's what the advocates have been saying for a while. And now there's consensus that we need to move beyond the consent decree. And what I liked about Ashley's article is she really did a good job of explaining that and quoting the advocates who talk about why we need to move beyond it. And I think what that does is hopefully shows to people that the end of the consent decree should not and cannot be the end of police reform in Seattle. I mentioned defund earlier - we're almost three years out now from the George Floyd protests, three years out from the summer of 2020, where it looked like we might actually defund the police. I think that the - while there may be still be people in Seattle who want that, I think the political momentum for that is gone. What that means now is to fix this police department, which still has many problems, we have to turn to other solutions. So they're gonna have to come from the community and we're gonna need an ordinance over how the police are managed. We're going to need a new SPOG contract. And without the Department of Justice and without a federal judge, which is the key piece involved, maybe we do better than we did in 2018. Because in 2018, the contract that the City did with SPOG was terrible. It's up to us now - and it always has been really - to make sure that we're doing the work to fix this police department. Because there's a lot of people out there and there'll be a lot of candidates running for city council who are already saying - the answer to whatever problems we have in the City is let the police off the hook, let the police off the leash, step back from reform. And that's of course what SPOG wants all along. And we have to fight that, we have to resist that. And I think not being able to rely on a federal judge means we have to do it ourselves, which hopefully makes reform more lasting. [00:27:05] Crystal Fincher: I hope so. I think the way you worded it - really this is about the DOJ has done all they can do. Does it mean that the issue is fixed? Does it mean that this is a mission accomplished moment? It means that, as you said, there were boxes checked, the list was all checked off, and they have done all they can do - which in many situations that we've seen with consent decrees across the country, ultimately doesn't really amount to much. And that is a lesson I think a lot of people are taking away from this too - this external federal oversight that is removed from the community is problematic. The Community Police Commission was meant from the outset to have much more power and authority than it currently has, than it wound up having. There were lots of people who did not want a voice from the community really impacting policing, and there were definitely moves made to neuter the CPC throughout this process. So I think that we do have to, at minimum, demand that there is a process put into place to where there is true accountability to the community and input from the community in this. And what's gonna be possible will largely depend on the council that we wind up with, but you named some really significant markers that are coming up, including this SPOG contract - that is currently being negotiated that'll have to come before the council to be approved - that's going to lay the foundation for any kind of change that's going to be able to happen in the future. There are so many times where we talk about something happening and really it boils down to - well, it's in the contract. The police chief says his hands are tied so often by the contract. The mayor - well, the contract. So we really do have to hold those leaders accountable to negotiating a good and accountable contract, and see what happens from there. But this is a definite step in the progression of public safety in Seattle. And it'll be interesting to see what happens from here. [00:29:17] Robert Cruickshank: It will. And with that SPOG contract, we have to keep in mind that the contract that was approved in 2018 - even some of the progressive folks on the city council voted for that contract and they got a lot of pressure from the County Labor Council to do it. Of course, two years later, the County Labor Council did the right thing and ejected SPOG from their membership ranks. And so hopefully a discussion about approving the contract goes differently this time. That's a reminder that even if we elect what we think are the right people to the city council, there's no guarantee that they'll do the right thing with a SPOG contract. It's gonna take a lot of public organizing, mobilization, and advocacy to make sure that City Hall knows this has to be a strong contract and that we expect City Hall to stand up to SPOG on this - to not just roll over for whatever demands they make. [00:30:02] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I also wanna talk about an issue this week at the Seattle City Council about late fees for late rent from renters. What is happening with this? [00:30:15] Robert Cruickshank: Yeah so Kshama Sawant who - champion of workers and renters - came out with an ordinance that would cap late fees on paying your rent at $10. So if you're paying your rent late, you get charged a $10 fee - no more. And people who are renting in the City will pay much more than that in late fees - we've heard stories of $100 fees, $500 fees, just absurd. And a committee that heard this at the City Council whittled that down and said - well, we'll base it on a percentage of your rent, but it could - you might be charged a minimum of $50 late fee or higher, basically to neuter the effect of what Sawant had proposed. And at a time when rent continues to be high in the City, rising inflation, and more and more people losing their jobs as maybe recession looms - it definitely seems like a moment to do all we can to ensure that we have affordable housing and to prevent people from getting evicted. And missing a rent payment and not paying a late fee are often things landlords use to evict people. So there's plenty of reasons why we should make it easy to pay your rent and make it hard to get to lose your home because of rent. And so to watch members of the City Council whittle this down was really disappointing and frustrating. Sawant isn't giving up - she's putting a lot of pressure on the rest of the City Council to go back to $10 an hour - or sorry - to go back to $10 cap on late fees. And I think it's a sensible thing to do. The Stranger article on this singled out Andrew Lewis, someone who is running for reelection, and he may be making a political calculation that he needs to keep landlords happy, but you're not gonna get reelected by keeping landlords happy. Nobody gets reelected by keeping landlords happy. You have a ton of renters in the 7th Council District. You have a ton of renters across the City. It's not only the right thing to do in terms of preventing homelessness and keeping people in their homes, it's also the right thing to do politically. There's no upside to undermining this bill for capping late fees on rent at $10. So we'll see what the council does. We'll see if they take what I think is a sensible thing to do from a policy and political perspective, or whether they are terrified of cranky landlords picketing their offices - I don't know - but we'll see what happens. [00:32:36] Crystal Fincher: We will see what happens. This is yet another issue where, really, the concerns of landlords and tenants are at odds and the council is having to make a call here. And once again, if we are really serious about calling our housing crisis a crisis, our homelessness crisis a crisis, and understanding that preventing people from getting evicted and keeping people in their homes is absolutely critical to addressing - we have to do that if we're gonna address homelessness. It is the most effective way to address homelessness - is to prevent people from becoming, from losing their housing in the first place. And so needing to intervene in these situations is there. And you have some landlords basically just making a market argument - let the market sort it - we can charge, we can charge. If they can't afford it, other people can - the law allows this, so we should be able to do it. And what the law has allowed is what has landed us in this crisis. It has created this crisis. There is too much of an imbalance and we need to bring that back into alignment. And this seems like a reasonable way to do it. And really we're here because we have endured so many fights and so much opposition towards everything else that has also been suggested, while facing limitations on what's possible overall. So there aren't that many levers that we can use. And I do think it's important to use the ones that we have. [00:34:06] Robert Cruickshank: Yep, I fully agree. I just wanna add one thing - that this is one of the things I'm gonna miss about Kshama Sawant. She has a reputation of being this dogmatic ideologue and she cares very deeply about her socialist values, as well as she should. She's also really clever and keeps coming up with different ways to achieve the goals she wants to achieve - fighting for rent control has been one of her core political values ever since she got elected in 2013. We all know that the State Legislature prevents local governments from enacting rent control, and so what she's systematically done is tried to find every possible way to limit the amount that landlords can charge renters - to limit those increases, to protect renters any way she can. And I think that that's something that not enough people understand - certainly the media's not gonna tell that story. But I think it's one thing that I'm really gonna miss when she's not on the council - is that really clever persistence that she has to find yet another way to protect renters. And you don't have to be Kshama Sawant to do that - any democratic elected official can champion renters' rights. And not only are you doing the right thing for renters and the right thing to fight homelessness, you're also doing something that's politically popular. So I would love to see more people follow that lead. [00:35:25] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And unfortunately we got some weird bad news in the realm of homelessness policy and implementation this week - in there is currently a situation with the King County Regional Homelessness Authority and other agencies bickering over a million-plus dollars shortfall to fund temporary housing for homeless people. What is going on? [00:35:57] Robert Cruickshank: So as a result of federal stimulus funds during the height of the pandemic, a group called the Lived Experience Coalition was able to get a one-year federal grant to house people who were living on the streets in hotels. Smart policy - get people off the streets and into safe, secure housing with a door that locks, with a roof over your head, with heat and running water - it's exactly what we need and what we want. But that grant is running out. There's questions about how the grant has been administered and where the money is. And if money isn't found - at least a million dollars - to keep this going, then nearly 250 people who are currently housed in these hotels will be evicted and most likely go back out on the streets. And this is something nobody should want to see happen. And yet there's a bunch of bickering and finger pointing over who's responsible for this rather than solutions. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority had a meeting earlier this week where they basically said - Well, this isn't really our thing. It's not our fault. It's not our responsibility. We don't want to spend a million dollars on this because then that takes away from other things we want to do. City council, King County Council are pointing fingers at other people saying - It's not our responsibility. And it's just sad to see that bureaucratic bickering is leaving nearly 250 people hanging in the balance who might lose their home, might get put back out on the streets again. And that's something that theoretically this authority was created to prevent from happening - the whole argument about creating a regional homelessness authority was to provide coordination at a regional level. And instead they seem to be heading down the same path of bureaucratic inertia and bureaucratic turf defense - and it's exactly what this was all designed to prevent, and yet that's right where we are again. And so it's pretty frustrating to see this happen and a lack of leadership at all levels of government to come in and ensure that these people and others can stay in the housing that's been found for them. Because I think this is one of the things that makes it hard to get people into housing in the first place is - a sense that it's temporary, a sense that it's uncertain. We want to offer people housing and many people who live on the streets want housing. They want to be housed. This right wing narrative that people are out there by choice and refusing all offers of shelter is absurd, but they want quality shelter - no one wants to live in a place that's unsafe. And so putting folks in a hotel room is a really smart thing to do, it makes a ton of sense. You'd think that would be something that we would want to continue and promote. When that becomes unstable - another form of unstable housing - when people living there are like - Well, I don't know if I'm going to be here next month. That's not great. That doesn't help anyone. That doesn't help people hold down a job. It doesn't help people stay in a treatment program. And so we need leadership, whether it's from the Regional Homelessness Authority or from the City or County Council to come in and say - No, we're going to fund this. We're going to make sure these people stay in a hotel with a roof over their head and a door that locks. [00:38:49] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think I have a meta-takeaway on this. This is such a dysfunctional situation. I think you diagnosed it correctly as a turf defense situation. There does seem to be some - and not just from the three parties named in this thing, but also from the mayor's office is involved in this and others - and each seeming to want their own kind of stake and - Hey, leave the Lived Experience Coalition alone, you worry about other stuff, they can worry about this kind of thing going on - which is weird. But the nature of a lot of service work in government is they're contracting organizations. It's not like government is standing this up themselves and these are people directly employed and paid by the City or County. They contract with a lot of nonprofit organizations, service providers who have various levels of experience and expertise, who have different - some lived experience, some professional experience - obviously lived experience is absolutely necessary to serve any population correctly, a familiarity with them in the system. But it feels like sometimes we set ourselves up for these disasters by not doing a good job in the implementation of policy to deliver on what its true and original intention was. And if we don't clearly define and help manage and implement these contracts, these arrangements, then it can get away from you like this. If you aren't paying attention to, or overseeing, or staying in contact with, or whatever the case may be - these situations - you can wind up with a million dollar plus hole in your budget because you just weren't paying attention. And we still aren't sure exactly what happened to those funds. And that is a question I think many people are working on getting answers to and really clear answers on how we wound up in this situation - 'cause it seemed like there were red flags there throughout the process and things kept getting worse. But I do think that as progressives, as Democrats, we have to pay as much attention to the implementation as we do with the passage. The victory is not in the signing of legislation, the passage of a bill or law - the victory is in it delivering on its promise and helping people in the community. And so the work really begins when a law is passed - and there's administration that needs to be built and stood up and funds that need to be dispersed - you're building little organizations, sometimes big mega-organizations. It's like a startup and you have lots of these organizations doing this at the same time. And you have to pay attention to the coordination, to the implementation, to the contracts, to the management. We have to do a better job with that across the board, so we don't have situations like this where this is a - they're actually using evidence-based practices that are best practices, but risking everything going wrong because of a lack of oversight and management. That just makes the policy look like it's not working. That gives ammunition to Republicans, to reactionaries who just say that - Oh, these policies failed, it was always gonna fail. These people are irresponsible, they don't know how to run this. We have to be responsible for this too. We have to prioritize this. And I think sometimes there is an inclination to be - Okay, we meant well. No, it's not going well. We're just gonna ignore it, cover it up. Let's not talk about that. Let's not make it look bad. And we really need to get away from it not looking bad. And really this is not delivering on what we need it to do to help the residents. This is not addressing the problem we passed this and funded this to address. We have to pay more attention, get more focused on, and demand more when it comes to implementation and management and accountability for these projects. [00:43:11] Robert Cruickshank: I agree. And I think you made a really good point about the fact that there are consequences to failure. And one of the consequences obviously is more people living out on the streets, which we don't want. These are our neighbors. We want our neighbors to be housed and taken care of. The other consequence is it just provides ammunition to reactionaries. They are out there and there are some of these people running for City Council who are saying - We need to just scoop everybody up and put them in Auburn. KOMO's idea from right before the pandemic started of Homeless Island - they want to take Anderson Island, which used to house sex offenders and house homeless people there. This is - it's what they want. They're very adamant that they think the solution is not housing. The solution is basically prison-style treatment. And if we, who are more progressive and actually care about the wellbeing of people who are unhoused, are unable to get good policy passed and implemented, then the answer isn't that folks are going to be out on the streets for awhile. The answer is a much worse solution will come from the right. And so I think that should provide a spur to action along with the desire to help our neighbors. And I think it's really important to emphasize these folks are our neighbors. I once heard the head of DESC point out that most of the people they serve were born within 10 miles of their facility in downtown Seattle. These are our neighbors. And even if they weren't, we should be helping them. But they are our neighbors and we absolutely should be helping them. [00:44:45] Crystal Fincher: Couldn't say that any better. Absolutely agree. And with that, we thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks on this Friday, April 14th, 2023. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Shannon Cheng. Our insightful co-host today is Chair of Sierra Club Seattle, long time communications and political strategist, Robert Cruickshank. You can find Robert on Twitter @cruickshank - that's C-R-U-I-C-K S-H-A-N-K. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks and find me on Twitter @finchfrii, with two I's at the end. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever else 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 almost-live week-in-review and our midweek 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.

Sam Stein is in for Ali Velshi and is joined by Professor at Georgetown School of Law Paul Butler, Fmr. Press Secretary to Fmr. House Speaker John Boehner Brendan Buck, White House Correspondent at Politico Eugene Daniels, Pentagon Correspondent at The New York Times Helene Cooper, Professor and Chair of the Dept. of African American Studies at Princeton University Eddie Glaude, Jr., Fmr. Homeland Security Advisor and Counterterror Advisor to VP Mike Pence Olivia Troye, Fmr. U.S Ambassador to China Amb. Gary Locke, and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ)

With Election Day looming and ballots due in a few days, this week's show is a Ballot-In-Review! Crystal is joined by perennial favorite Mike McGinn along with the rest of the Hacks & Wonks team - Bryce Cannatelli and Shannon Cheng - to discuss the recent political climate, break down the context of down-ballot races and why your vote matters. Listen in as the crew opens their ballots and thinks their way through the important choices in front of them. 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 ballot party attendees: Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, Bryce Cannatelli at @inascenttweets, and Shannon Cheng at @drbestturtle. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Time Stamps Washington State Advisory Votes - 05:57 King County Charter Amendment 1 and Proposition 1 -  08:25 Federal Races - 16:54 Washington Congressional Races - 18:00 Secretary of State - 32:00 Washington State Legislature Races - 33:13 LD26 - 33:27 LD47 - 35:30 LD42 - 36:57 LD30 - 38:09 LD44 - 38:22 LD46 - 38:55 LD36 - 39:45 LD37 - 39:56 LD34 - 41:05 King County Prosecuting Attorney - 41:32 City of Seattle Municipal Court - 52:40  City of Seattle Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B - 1:01:48   Reminders Don't forget to vote! Visit votewa.gov for voting resources.   Institute for a Democratic Future 2023 applications are live! The initial deadline is November 2nd, and the final deadline is November 13th.   Learn more about how to get involved in Seattle's budget season at this link and about King County's budget timeline here.   Student debt relief sign-ups are live! Visit this link to enroll.   Resources  Washington State Advisory Votes:  “Tim Eyman's legacy of advisory votes on taxes hits WA ballots again” by David Kroman from The Seattle Times King County Charter Amendment 1 and Proposition 1: “King County considers moving most elections to even years” by Joseph O'Sullivan from Crosscut   King County Proposition No. 1 - Conservation Futures Levy Washington Congressional Races: “Congressional candidate Joe Kent wants to rewrite history of Jan. 6 attack” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times   Straight Talk bonus round: Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and Joe Kent from KGW News   “Rep. Schrier, challenger Matt Larkin clash in debate over who's extreme” by Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times Secretary of State: Hacks & Wonks Interview - Julie Anderson, Candidate for Washington Secretary of State   Hacks & Wonks Interview - Steve Hobbs, Candidate for Washington Secretary of State   Hacks & Wonks - Secretary of State audiograms - Addressing Democratic criticism of Julie Anderson   Hacks & Wonks - Secretary of State audiograms - Thoughts on Ranked Choice Voting   Hacks & Wonks - Secretary of State audiograms - Experience to manage the broad portfolio of the SoS office Washington State Legislature Races: LD26 - “New ad highlights Washington candidate's past behavior against staffers” by Shauna Sowersby from The News Tribune   Sign up to volunteer for Emily Randall's campaign here on her website.   LD47 - Hacks & Wonks Interview - Claudia Kauffman, Candidate for 47th LD State Senator   “Boyce, Kauffman vie for WA senate in swing district with Kent, Auburn” by Daniel Beekman from The Seattle Times   LD42 - “Sefzik-Shewmake forum highlights abortion, health care” by Ralph Schwartz from Cascadia Daily News   LD44 - Hacks & Wonks Interview - April Berg, Candidate for 44th LD State Representative   LD46 - Hacks & Wonks Interview - Darya Farivar, Candidate for 46th LD State Representative   LD36 - Hacks & Wonks Interview - Jeff Manson, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative   Hacks & Wonks Interview - Julia Reed, Candidate for 36th LD State Representative   LD37 - Hacks & Wonks Interview - Emijah Smith, Candidate for 37th LD State Representative   Hacks & Wonks Interview - Chipalo Street, Candidate for 37th LD State Representative   South Seattle Emerald 37th LD Candidate Forum   LD34 - Hacks & Wonks Interview - Emily Alvarado, Candidate for 34th LD State Representative   Hacks & Wonks Interview - Leah Griffin, Candidate for 34th LD State Representative   Hacks & Wonks Elections 2022 Resource Page King County Prosecuting Attorney: "PubliCola Questions: King County Prosecuting Attorney Candidate Leesa Manion" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   "PubiCola Questions: King County Prosecuting Attorney Candidate Jim Ferrell" by Erica C. Barnett from PubliCola   "Leesa Manion, Jim Ferrell tied in the 2022 contest for King County Prosecuting Attorney" by Andrew Villeneuve from The Cascadia Advocate   "Leesa Manion Holds Razor-Thin Lead in King County Prosecutor Race, NPI Poll Finds" by Douglas Trumm from The Urbanist Washington Supreme Court: Hacks & Wonks Interview - Washington Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu   Hacks & Wonks Interview - Washington Supreme Court Justice G. Helen Whitener City of Seattle Municipal Court: Hacks & Wonks City of Seattle Municipal Court Judge Candidate Forum   "Defense Attorneys Say Harsh Sentencing Decision Reveals Judge's Bias" by Will Casey from The Stranger City of Seattle Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B: City of Seattle - Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B   Ranked Choice Voting vs. Approval Voting from FairVote   The Stranger - City of Seattle Propositions Nos. 1A and 1B   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I am Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant - a busy one - 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. Full text transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, we are continuing our Friday almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host - and we're adding a little twist. So first, we want to welcome back to the program, friend of the show and today's co-host: activist, community leader, former mayor of Seattle, and Executive Director of America Walks, the popular Mike McGinn. Welcome back. [00:01:03] Mike McGinn: Not quite popular enough - Crystal - you have to acknowledge that, but I think we need to go to the other guests on the show today. [00:01:12] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, so we're coming with you with a full Hacks & Wonks crew today. We have the incredible Bryce Cannatelli, who coordinates everything with the show and holds it down. Pleased to have her with us today. Hey, Bryce. [00:01:29] Bryce Cannatelli: Hey, Crystal. [00:01:30] Crystal Fincher: And we have Dr. Shannon Cheng, who is here to enlighten us also with her wisdom and insight, along with Bryce. Hey, Shannon. [00:01:39] Shannon Cheng: Hey, Crystal - super excited to be here. [00:01:42] Crystal Fincher: You could probably hear the sarcasm in that - but this is going to be fun. We are having a Hacks & Wonks little ballot party - we thought it may be helpful - because we talk about several things on the ballot, we talk about several races. But a lot of times we open up the ballot and there are things on there that we haven't seen, haven't heard of, and are trying to figure out. So we thought we would all just open up the ballots, go through them together - some of us in this call are later-voting people because we like receiving all of the voter communication until the last minute, so we haven't turned them in - but we encourage everyone to turn in their ballots as soon as possible. As we go through this ballot, we will add timestamps and let you know when we discuss the different areas of the ballot. So if you have a particular question about a particular area, you can just go to that portion in the show and figure out that, because we actually have taken some time to discuss what is in this ballot and on this ballot. So good luck. Make sure you get your ballot in. If you can't find it, if something happens to it, if you have questions, votewa.gov, V-O-T-E-W-A.gov is a resource. Or hey, just @ the show @HacksWonks to reply to us and we will try and chase down any answers to questions that you have. So vote, make sure everyone you know votes. This is really important and a lot is at stake locally and nationally. And what we do locally is going to dictate what happens nationally. And with that, I will give a few reminders today. And yeah, number one is vote. Don't forget to vote. The election - Election Day is Tuesday, November 8th. You can go to votewa.gov, that's V-O-T-E-W-A.gov to get all of the information about voting. If something has gone haywire, if you can't find your ballot, if you're not sure what you need to do, if you need information about accessible voting, or if you need to figure out about how to register to vote - which you still can do in person if you haven't registered to vote or changed your address or anything like that - go to votewa.gov and you can get all that figured out. Also, the Institute for a Democratic Future is accepting applications for this coming year's new class. The deadline is November 13th and so make sure to get those in there. I've talked about this before on the show, the Institute for a Democratic Future is great for people who lean left and who want to learn about making a difference in their community, who want to learn about politics and policy, or potentially even having a career - it's responsible for my career in politics. So if you want to learn more about that, feel free to hit me up or visit the website, which we'll link in the show notes. Also, it is budget season around the state - and including in Seattle - and so we're going to include resources for the Seattle budget process as well as King County in our show notes, so stay tuned with that and make sure that you get involved in making your priorities and needs known to your elected officials who are allocating money for the next year or two there. Student debt relief - signing up is happening now. Don't forget to do that. Don't wait to do that. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. And Daylight Savings Time ends this Sunday at 2 a.m. We're falling an hour back. We're moving into darkness in dismay and it's a very sad time for some of us here at Hacks & Wonks who like the extra sunshine in the evening. So here we go into the dark months of winter. [00:05:31] Mike McGinn: But Hacks & Wonks will be on every week to bring some sunshine into your life. [00:05:37] Crystal Fincher: We will try. We will try. [00:05:40] Mike McGinn: Stay tuned in on a regular basis. Yeah. [00:05:43] Crystal Fincher: So let's open up our ballots, crew. Let's see what we have here and start to talk through - for those of you who still have to vote - some things that may be useful, helpful. So the first things we see on this ballot that we've opened up are Advisory Votes. Man, these Advisory Votes on every freaking ballot. We have two Advisory Votes here. How did we get into this Advisory Vote situation, Mike? What is this going on? [00:06:15] Mike McGinn: This was part of the Tim Eyman Full Employment Act where he was trying to find yet another ballot measure to put in front of the people. So what this one does - it is passed by the people - and basically they have the opportunity to have a second opinion on every tax that's passed by the Legislature. So that's why you always have all these Advisory Votes at the top. But everybody approves to-date, the public approves the votes that are passed by the Legislature. It's why we elect people, send them to the Legislature. It's really just turned into extra space on the ballot, which costs money and makes the ballot a little longer. And so we could all save a little space on the ballot if the Legislature changed this. In the meantime, don't upset that budget that your Legislature worked to craft - just vote to approve. [00:07:08] Crystal Fincher: I completely agree with that. I cannot wait until we get to the time where we get the opportunity to repeal this. It makes our ballot longer. It confuses people. This is just anytime there is basically revenue passed, it has to appear as an Advisory Vote, which does not have any force of law. It doesn't actually do anything. It is basically a poll about something that has already happened. So yes, vote to approve. But also I would really like a movement to vote to eliminate these Advisory Votes. One thing it does is it makes the ballot longer, which is not pleasant for a lot of people. What do you think, Bryce? [00:07:49] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I wanted to hop in just to say that the choices are Repealed and Maintained. And so the suggestions to vote to approve them are to Maintain them as the maintain option. But yeah, no, I definitely agree. We've talked about it in past shows. We talk about it off the air. Getting people to vote down-ballot is always a challenge. And these Advisory Votes just get in the way of that. I think we'll have more to talk about when we get to the Proposition Nos. 1A and 1B question on the back of the ballot about what length might do to people answering those questions. [00:08:25] Crystal Fincher: All right. So we are here in King County. We all have King County ballots. The next thing I see on my ballot - I think you probably see the next thing on yours - as we travel down from the Advisory Votes, is actually King County, a County Charter Amendment. Charter Amendment No. 1 - even-numbered election years for certain county offices. Question: Shall the King County Charter be amended to move elections for the county offices of Executive, Assessor, Director of Elections, and Councilmembers from odd-numbered years to even-numbered years? Why is it important to move from odd-numbered to even-numbered years according to the advocates for this charter amendment, Mike? [00:09:10] Mike McGinn: The single most important thing you can do to improve voter turnout. When you look at election results in the state of Washington, Oregon, anywhere else around the country, so many more people turn out in an even year because you also have congressional elections or presidential elections. It's just a more momentous ballot than the odd year elections. And so if you think people should vote more, if you think democracy is a good thing, moving it to an even year is great. The county has the option to do that. Cities can't just do it on their own - they need a change in state law. Representative Mia Gregerson has been pushing for that and others have pushed for it. In addition to getting more people to vote, it also really improves the demographics of the ballot. We're getting more young people, more people of color, more immigrant refugees - who are here and can legally vote. We're just getting so many more people voting that we're getting a more representative ballot. So I've been a big proponent of this. You just get a different electorate. You get a better, more representative electorate. And if what you care about, and I do, is more affordable housing - if you get an older, more conservative electorate, they're going to oppose new housing and they're going to oppose new taxes for affordable housing. They're going to be more likely to say, keep the car lane and don't make it easier to walk or bike or use transit. So we need to get an electorate and get elections in even years where we have an electorate that more reflects where we need to go. And hearing from more people, if you believe in democracy, it's great. So big kudos to King County Council for - and Girmay Zahilay, in particular - for championing this. And hopefully we can move all the elections to even years. By the way, we'll save some money too. We'll have fewer elections that the elections offices have to step up for. [00:11:15] Crystal Fincher: I'd love to see it. What do you think about it, Dr. Cheng? [00:11:18] Shannon Cheng: I'm really excited. We talk a lot about - on this show - about how local elections really matter and that local government is really where you feel the actual changes and impacts in people's day-to-day lives. And so having some of more of our local elections in a year where more people are going to be paying attention to it, I think it will be super helpful. I know I talked to somebody recently who felt like they were in Washington state and so their vote didn't matter. And, we're going to get to these other races. And I was trying to tell them, no, we have things on our ballot that really do matter, like the King County Prosecutor and judges and all that. And I think just combining it in a way where people are going to be paying more attention to these things that really matter in their lives will be super helpful. [00:12:03] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Well said - I agree. Next up on the ballot for King County is Proposition No. 1, the Conservation Futures Levy. So the King County Council passed Ordinance 19-458 concerning funding to protect open space lands in King County. The proposition would provide funding to pay, finance, or refinance acquisition and preservation of urban green spaces, natural areas, wildlife, and some salmon habitat, trails, river corridors, farmlands, and forests. And would reauthorize restoration of the county's Conservation Futures property tax to levy a rate that will be assessed for collection in 2023 and use the dollar amount from 2023 for the purpose of computing subsequent levy collections. So should this be approved or rejected? There are some really compelling statements about this, but this is really important for protecting open space lands in King County. There have been lots of conversations just about the preservation of land, the preservation of open and undeveloped land, and how important that is. These are conversations related to sprawl, related to just air quality, related to just people having the opportunity to recreate near where they live and not selling or developing all available land and the consequences that potentially come from that. So it is important, I think, widely acknowledged as important from people all across the aisle. It's important to maintain all of this. I see a statement submitted by Sally Jewell, who I believe is a former CEO of REI and served in a presidential administration, and De'Sean Quinn, who is a Tukwila City Council member, as well as Dow Constantine. And really, we have to take this action to protect climate change, to protect these last best places throughout King County. So far, this program has safeguarded over 100,000 acres of land, including Cougar Mountain, the Duwamish Waterway Park, and Sammamish River Trail. And they can accelerate that with this proposition. Statement in opposition to it really basically says that, hey, parks are having challenges being maintained, and we've already done enough. I don't know that there's a lot of people here in King County feeling that we've done enough to address climate change or that we've done enough to protect local land. Protecting farms and fresh water, and open space seems like a priority to so many people in this area - and what makes this area so desirable to the people living here and those who visit and eventually come here. What do you think about this, Mike? [00:15:08] Mike McGinn: It's a parks levy. I'm for parks levies, generally. I actually got to run one once, and it was just great. And there's so much more in it than you might think. And if we talk about community - that to me is ultimately what this is about. There's clearly the environmental protection, but that's the quality of life and the community gathering places as well. So yeah, and it's a renewal. It's an expansion and a renewal of an existing levy. And I think every time you get to go to a great county facility, you just have to remember that the money came from somewhere, and this is where it comes from. They really have to pass these levies to make it work, given the way finances work for county and municipal governments. [00:15:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And so this will cost the average homeowner about $2 more per month. There is relief available to qualified low-income seniors and other households. And the funding recommendations are made by an independent advisory committee and subject to external audit. So it's not just, hey, willy-nilly stuff happening here. There is accountability and oversight - looks like it is endorsed by the Nature Conservancy, Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust for Public Land, the Wilderness Society, Seattle Parks Foundation, REI, Dow Constantine and council members - just a lot of support there. I find those arguments to be particularly convincing. But this is an important one that's flown under the radar for a number of people, I think. I've gotten a lot of questions from people saying, whoa, what should I do with these county amendments and this proposition? And so just wanted to make sure that we went through that. Next on my ballot are the federal races, which have gotten a ton of coverage. I think if you listen to the show, odds are you probably know if you're going to be voting for Senator Patty Murray or her challenger, Tiffany Smiley, but that is at the top of the ballot right now. Do any of you have anything to chime in with about this race? [00:17:22] Mike McGinn: It's really fascinating to watch how this race is starting to become part of a national narrative about whether or not there's a red wave - going to hit the federal elections. And then there's some counterarguments. And we could pundit all afternoon on this one. And I'm sure a lot of you, if you're politically oriented, have really been watching the national news about what will happen in Congress. Will the Senate remain Democratic or will it turn Republican? Is the House going to flip? Most pundits say it will flip to Republican control, but there are still some folks out there holding hope that it might not. So I think the real message just is - if you cared about the national scene, you have an opportunity to play locally too. There's a Senate election in the state of Washington as well. [00:18:15] Crystal Fincher: All right. And next up on people's ballots - is going to vary based on where we live. It's going to be the congressional races. So I actually live in the Ninth Congressional District. We have a very competitive Eighth Congressional District race between Kim Schrier and Matt Larkin. Kim Schrier, the Democrat, Matt Larkin, the Republican. We have other races. Who's on your ballots? What congressional districts are you in? [00:18:43] Mike McGinn: I've got Seven, which is Pramila Jayapal and Cliff Moon. [00:18:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think all three of you are in Seven there. Those races are a bit less competitive. I think two of the most competitive races here are going to be Kim Schrier versus Matt Larkin. And then down in southwest Washington, actually - in the Third Congressional District - between Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and extremist Republican, MAGA Republican Joe Kent, who is just... It's hard to do justice to him by describing him because I've tried to do it and then I've been like, okay, I can't do this. Here, watch this clip of him and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in this sit-down with a reporter, just answering questions. And it is wild. He does not think January 6th happened in the way we all saw it happened with our eyes. He thinks that it was a CIA false flag operation. He doesn't think that police officers were killed as a result of that. He's deep into conspiracy theories, deep into the election denial of the 2020 election. Just deep into so many things - eager to cut social security, eager to cut so many things, eager to defund Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia, eager to do all sorts of things at the border. This is someone who eagerly and has multiple times appeared on Tucker Carlson. This is not Jaime Herrera Beutler. This is not the type of Republican that people are used to seeing in this district, or even as people think about Republicans in this country now - even the more extreme version that people are getting familiar with. This is the tip of the spear of the most extreme. He models himself after Marjorie Taylor Greene, says he looks up to her and wants to do that, does not want to work across the aisle, doesn't see a point to it. Rarely does media outside of the conservative bubble, does not want to debate Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. This is a race where a lot is at stake. Jim Brunner just wrote an article about it this morning in The Seattle Times. Actually, he shared it - I'm not sure if he wrote it. But this is an important one for people to get engaged in. We've talked about the importance of - even if you don't live in a district, hey, why don't you adopt a district, make some phone calls, do some phone banking, get down there and canvass - do what you can. Don't let this slip away without doing everything possible. The Third Congressional District is traditionally a Republican district, but it's traditionally a Republican district that has elected Republicans like Jaime Herrera Beutler, who were nowhere near as extreme as Joe Kent. This is a closer race than we've seen there in quite some time. If enough people get involved and if enough people get engaged, who knows what could happen? Democrats seem energized down there. This is one where - don't let it go by without everyone pitching in and doing what they can to engage in that race. Any thoughts that you have on that one? [00:22:10] Mike McGinn: This race, yeah, it does highlight just where the Republican Party has been going. I think you see some of this in the Murray-Smiley race as well. I've been really impressed by the campaigning of the Democrat in the race and the way in which she's approaching the race. This is a district that is - it's a swing district, but it's a lean-R swing district, if that makes sense. It has the Portland suburbs, but it also has more rural areas as well. Yeah, maybe this - if this were on the East Coast, people would be looking at this as a bellwether of which way the trend is going in national politics. Who knows? Maybe we'll be able to tell a little bit from the East Coast about how this race might work out by the time they start announcing results from this coast. But really, I think the D in this race - she's run a really solid race, speaking directly to people's economic concerns as a small business owner as well. And there's this thing where reporters want to talk about partisanship or polarized politics or divisiveness. And yeah, I would say the electorate is polarized - there are a hell of a lot of folks nationwide who are going to pull the lever for candidates because they want to see Republicans have charge of the chamber, regardless of the shortcomings of the local candidate. It's a really fascinating phenomenon that's going on. But I'm going to make an argument that it's - the Democrats look a lot like candidates I've seen in the past running. And the Republicans don't, in my mind, in terms of the extremism that we start to see on whether or not the election was stolen. The number of election deniers that are out there for the last election - there's just no credible evidence that there was any voter fraud. It went in front of numerous, numerous courts. It went in front of judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats. There's just no evidence for this. And I don't know that the media knows how to handle this - that when you have one side that just denies reality and the other side is still operating mostly within the frame of U.S. politics, as I've seen it in the years I've been involved in U.S. politics, but they both-sides it so much. And I think this raises a great illustration of that. The Democrat is really a right down the middle-of-the-road type of politician, and the Republican here is espousing things that just aren't so, and it's one hell of a tight race down there, according to all the polls. And portraying this as Americans are divided or the politicians are polarizing doesn't capture what's going on. [00:25:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that is a good point. What do you think, Bryce? [00:25:23] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I just wanted to weave back in something that Shannon mentioned earlier, which is that there are still people who live here and who vote here, who think that they live in Washington - they live in Western Washington - they're pretty safe from things. And I think this race is an important reminder that there are people running with these extreme views. There are these people running here in the state with really far-right priorities and goals. And this is a federal race, so it's gotten a lot of media attention, but it just highlights how important it is to pay attention to local races as well - races that for the State House and for State Senate and other positions - and just pay attention to what people are running on and making sure when we see people coming with extreme and dangerous views, that that's called out, that we let people know. Election Day is still in a few days. There's still opportunities to inform voters in this district about the candidates. There are still opportunities for voters who are really worried about rhetoric like this and candidates like this to get out there and talk to voters and inform them about this race. [00:26:32] Crystal Fincher: This conversation reminds me of one other thing, and actually was having a conversation about this as we were punditing on Kiro the other day. And there are some Republicans who are going - well, they're calling everybody extreme. Yeah, they're calling Joe Kent extreme, but they're also calling Tiffany Smiley extreme. And they're not the same extreme, but they're painting them with the same brush - you're hearing that for everybody, all the Republicans. If you say it about everybody, it's meaningless. And the challenge is, and the thing that the Republican Party has set up, is that they do have these extremists who are out further than a lot of the other Republicans that are elected, at least outwardly, right? And saying things that have been openly covered as white nationalism, Christian nationalism, that have been anti-Semitic, that have been racist, that have been homophobic, anti-trans, anti-gay - just very openly blatant right? And that is absolutely extreme. And no, not every Republican is outwardly openly saying that. They leave that to the Joe Kents and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes. But what is striking to me is how they have not been reined in by the people who have previously been considered as moderate and have previously been considered as the adults in the room. Those adults in the room are doing nothing to contain that extremist element in the party, and in fact, have given them more power, more visibility. The Republican Party, all of their caucuses have pumped money into these campaigns. Their allied PACs and supporters have pumped money into these campaigns and have been apologists for them. So if you will not rebuke when you hear those things said, if you will not stand up and say, you know what, I'm standing for these principles, and that person is not doing that, and we're both carrying the same label - I don't want to carry the same label as a person who is saying that - that is not what I stand for. We're not standing shoulder to shoulder. We're hearing none of that. We're hearing silence. And there are some people who want to interpret that silence as, well, clearly they don't agree. And when I talk to them, they sound perfectly reasonable, and they've been moderate in the past. We're hearing some of the most troubling things that we have in a while. Just the open anti-Semitism, the open racism, the open homophobia and transphobia that we're seeing is alarming. They're passing laws against it. This is not theoretical language. And we're seeing political violence as a direct result. That, of course, was predicted, right? When we hear speech like that, it incites violence. We have talked about it inciting violence, and it incited violence in multiple places, in multiple ways. And we've seen that just in the past couple of weeks - from January 6th to Nancy Pelosi to the Michigan governor - we're seeing this all over the place, right? And so silence is enabling violence. Silence is not moderation. It's enabling this extremism and violence. So yes, when you hear them all being painted with the same broad brush, it's because they're doing nothing to stop this rapid descent into this cesspool that we're on the precipice of, and that some states have already fallen to, right? It's important to vocally stand up against this, against hate, whenever we see it. And that's not a partisan statement. And if a party is trying to say that when you say that you need to call out violence, that you need to call out political violence, that you need to stand up and talk against anti-Semitism and call it what it is, and somehow they're putting a partisan label on that, be very wary of a party that says that speaking against those things is speaking against their party. They're telling you what the party is about if those things they're labeling as a partisan attack. I think that's very important to be said. This is so far beyond a Democratic and Republican issue, and we have to be aware that these Republicans are caucusing together, right? They're voting together for a national agenda, and we've heard this national agenda articulated. We've heard the things that they're queuing up. We've seen the types of policies that they're passing in places like Florida and Texas. We have the preview of what's coming there, and it is ugly, right? And ugly to people who used to consider themselves Republican. So to me, this is beyond the conversation of just Democrat and Republican. This is a conversation that we have to have before we even get to issues, because if we're leading with that hateful rhetoric and we're leading with that extremism, it really doesn't matter what someone is saying about issues, because the things that they are saying about people in their community is already excluding people and already doing that. I think that's extremely important to say, that we can't say that enough, and that trying to dismiss this extremism, and dismiss criticisms of it, and dismiss the refusal to call it out for what it is - is extremism itself. All right. So next on our ballot, we have the state races, starting with Secretary of State, which is a lively race. Now, we have talked a bunch about the Secretary of State race, and have also been posting a lot about it on the Hacks & Wonks Twitter account this week. So for that, between Democrat Steve Hobbs and Non-partisan Julie Anderson, we're going to refer you to those other shows. We'll put links in the show notes. We'll put links to the little audiograms and snippets that we have of the candidates' takes on different things. Steve Hobbs was a longtime Democratic senator known as a moderate for quite some time - and Julie Anderson actually just released a new ad that talks about that and him as a moderate. And then Julie Anderson has been the Pierce County auditor in Pierce County for 12 years, I believe now, and has built relationships around that area. So that's an interesting race to follow. We'll put those links in there, but that's the next one on the ballot. And then we get into the legislative races, which are going to be different depending on which legislative district that you're in. I just wanted to mention a few of the battleground districts here in the state. So one of them is in the 26th Legislative District Senate race - very important - between Emily Randall, Senator Emily Randall, and current Representative Jesse Young, who's running for that Senate seat. Emily's a Democrat with a strong record and has been representing that community and been in the community for quite some time. Jesse Young is one of the more extreme Republicans in our legislature, has - in the mold of the Matt Sheas, who made a lot of news for his activity in domestic terrorism. And if you think that sounds like a euphemism or like a stretch of the truth, I mean literal domestic terrorism like running a camp training people for war and putting tracking devices on law enforcement vehicles, and making threats to political opponents - extremism - and advancing bills to outlaw abortion in Washington state under threat of putting doctors in prison - that kind of extremism. And Jesse Young, as we talked about last week with Pierce County Council Chair Derek Young, has actually been suspended from working with legislative staff because of his past behavior and harassment or abuse. He is no longer permitted to have legislative staff, which is certainly hobbling in one's ability to get their job done. They lean very heavily on those staff. And so not being allowed to have one and having to do or not get done all of the administrative work, preparation work, ability to meet with constituents, ability to review and prepare legislation and represent the community is absolutely hobbled by that. But that is actually a really close race. Another one where it makes sense if you can adopt a race, that 26th Legislative District is a really important one where people can get involved with and make their voices heard. Also, the 47th Legislative District is a hotbed of activity - a competitive Senate race there - open seat left by the exiting Senator Mona Das and is being competed for by former State Senator, Democrat Claudia Kauffman and Republican Bill Boyce. This has been a purple district, a swing district, has elected both Democrats and Republicans. This district has a history of extremely close races. And so we have a race here where we're seeing some of the dynamics that we see in Democrat versus Republican races. Choice is a huge issue here. Bill Boyce - being bankrolled by far-right Republicans - has been giving really mushy responses about what he thinks about a woman's right to choose. And so that is certainly on the ballot, as well as just the history of corporate giveaways, tax - as was quoted in the paper - tax breaks and sweetheart deals given to rich developers and donors. And so certainly looking at the donor rolls there, you get a different story of who those legislators would be based on the activity there. So another very important partisan race. 42nd Legislative District, a very competitive race between Sharon Shewmake and Simon Sefzik - another Democrat versus Republican race - very important here for the Senate and just a variety of things. And again, we're seeing just greater space between the two parties. Here in the state, we, I think, have seen Republicans who have considered themselves moderate and who have been less eager to engage in some of the social wedge issue rhetoric that sometimes we see on a national basis. There have been Republicans who wore it as a badge of honor previously to say, no, that's not me. I'm focused on these other issues, but stand up. And whether it's being pro-choice, whether it is standing up for marriage equality. There have been some before here who have done that, some who haven't, but some who have. We are not seeing that now. Things are following the direction of some of the national races. And so we have that there. 30th Legislative District with Claire Wilson and Linda Kochmar, as well as the race between Jamila Taylor and Casey Jones are close - and so engaging in those is important. And then the 44th Legislative District with John Lovick, the Democrat who was previously a representative, currently a representative, now running to be a Senator, against Republican Jeb Brewer. Republican Mark Hamsworth for the House seat versus Brandy Donaghy, who was appointed to that seat and is running to fill the term, this new term. And then April Berg versus her Republican opponent. So pay attention to those races. Please make sure that you're engaging in these battlegrounds. And then we also have just Seattle races and - that we've covered. So in the 46th Legislative District, we have a classic Seattle moderate versus progressive race. Even though those, when you get into it, the labels might be a little bit simplistic, but certainly someone who seems more resistant to taxation, more resistant to change in Lelach Rave versus Darya Faravar, who wants to take more of an active approach in addressing issues like homelessness, housing affordability, and public safety - and move more in the direction of things that we've seen with the history of working versus those that have not. So that's a choice that we have there. We also have previously interviewed Darya, and so we'll link that in the show notes for your information. The 36th Legislative District features a race between Democrats Julia Reed and Jeff Manson. We've also interviewed both in that race. And we'll link that in the show notes. The 37th Legislative District is one where we did a primary candidate forum, have interviewed both of those candidates there - Democrat Chipalo Street and Democrat Emijah Smith. And we also did a debate in partnership with the South Seattle Emerald and others - hosted by the South Seattle Emerald - an in-person debate, actually. And we will link those there. I think that there are some interesting issues in that race, notable differences. We will also share kind of the lightning round stuff. But also, hey let's make sure that we're recognizing the full humanity of people and that we are not treating people who are in the LGBTQ community any differently than others. And that is an issue of difference in that race. So I encourage you all to do your homework about that and make sure that any candidate that you're voting for fully stands up for the rights of all people in our community. And that you communicate with the candidates about that and make sure all of your candidates know how important that is to you. And then we have the 34th Legislative District with Democrats Leah Griffin and Emily Alvarado. We've interviewed both of them. We'll link both of those shows in the show notes. So there are contested races throughout Seattle. Encourage you to vote in those races and make your choice. If you need help, refer to our show notes or to officialhacksandwonks.com. We have an Election 2022 page there and we'll put all of the resources on there. Next, we go to the County Prosecuting Attorney's race here in King County, that is between Jim Ferrell, who is the mayor of Federal Way, and Leesa Manion, who's the current Chief of Staff in the Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Jim Ferrell has been endorsed by folks like the King County Republican Party, some mayors, King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer, like the Covington and Algona mayor. Leesa Manion has been endorsed by the King County Democratic party, former governor Gary Locke, local labor unions. So there's a little bit of a difference in the profile of their supporters that kind of indicates the approach that they're looking to take. One, being more in line with some of the data that we're seeing in the most effective approaches to addressing crime and accountability - that has yielded some results in what we've seen, especially with youth crime and youth intervention, which seems to be particularly effective with Leesa Manion and her managing this office and hundreds of staff and attorney, which is certainly in line with what the County Prosecuting Attorney needs to do. Jim Ferrell, coming from the mayor of Federal Way, has talked about more of a punitive approach to this and is talking about cracking down on some of the things that we have been seeing as successful. It's interesting in how this race is shaping up and what the candidates are talking about and what they aren't talking about with them. Certainly Leesa has been leaning into her experience, the type of coalition that she's building, whether it's people who are in support of more common sense gun reform and making sure guns don't proliferate on the streets, to those who are looking to maintain accountability but make sure that we're doing the things that give folks the best chance of reducing recidivism, or people returning, or revictimizing people who are committing further crimes. Jim Ferrell seems very focused on trying to apply longer sentences, lengthier sentences, talking about a more, again, punitive approach, prosecuting more, longer sentences - that type of stuff. So with that, what do you think? What is your take on this race, Shannon? [00:44:01] Shannon Cheng: So this race is between Leesa Manion, who's the current Chief of Staff for the outgoing King County Prosecutor, Dan Satterberg - she's been in that position for quite a time. And her opponent is Jim Ferrell, who is the current mayor of Federal Way. So when I look at this race, I see - with Leesa Manion who - it's a continuation of what King County has been doing, which I would characterize as incremental reform of the criminal legal system to be more fair and equitable. I think this can be embodied in initiatives they aspire to, such as declaring racism as a public health crisis or the goal of Zero Youth Detention. So I think with Manion, you will get a continuation of the slow work that the county is doing to try to make our criminal legal system more equitable and fair. Whereas with Ferrell, I see this as a candidate who's trying to throw us back to punitive tactics that have been proven to be ineffective. He wants to be more tough-on-crime and is riding this wave of Republicans pointing to crime as being the reason not to support the Democratic candidate. I think that Ferrell has specifically spoken about being against and wanting to roll back some of the diversion programs that King County has started to try to use, especially for youth. And I also - even if you don't - if you agree on this punitive approach, I think it's also worth considering that right now the legal system is kind of at capacity. So what Ferrell is suggesting is going to put even more strain on it. The courts are already - have backlogs coming from the pandemic and the jails are full and not functioning well and not providing people humane conditions to be in there. So I just fear that that will lead to a lot more suffering for many people across our county. And I think this is a really important race to look at and think about. [00:46:12] Crystal Fincher: So Mike, what's your take on this? [00:46:14] Mike McGinn: It's interesting to see the contrast here. It's a local version of this national debate that we have now seen - that the proper response to crime is to crack down harder. And we're seeing this here as well. I worked with Dan Satterberg and he was a really interesting elected official. And honestly, to me, I may not have agreed with him on every decision - I know I didn't agree with him on every decision he made. But he was a civil servant first and foremost. He was trying to figure out what was the right path forward. He was engaged in the discussion. He led on things like Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, people returning to the community from jail - getting their records cleared and restoration of rights. So he was really, and it's interesting, he was elected as a Republican, moved the race to a nonpartisan race and then was elected as a Democrat. So he clearly was somebody who was willing to go where the evidence led and not go based on ideology. So that's the experience we've had from that office, which is, I think, what you want in a prosecutor's office. It's a pretty important position. The effect it has on people's lives is immense. I think that really says something that we see someone looking to continue that tradition. And then we see someone coming in with - if only we punished people more. How's that been working? Really? We have some information on that, which is it doesn't really work. It takes a combination of the judicial system and community systems to really try to deal with root causes of crime, to deal with recidivism, to deal with the issues here. And I think that this is a little bit of a bellwether here. Are we going to try to be a progressive place, a progressive county that adopts and looks at new approaches? Or are we going to go to a more regressive approach to this? Because, yeah, that's worked so well in solving crime over the decades. [00:48:34] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think so. What's your take, Bryce? [00:48:37] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I don't know how much more I have to add to this other than just the importance of this race and the importance of making sure we have somebody who's really thinking about the - not just people's emotional concerns about crime, but the actions and the strategies and the programs that have been proven to address the things that actually lower crime. We've talked on a number of different episodes throughout this year about programs that have successfully reduced recidivism. And those are programs that often get criticized by people who claim to be tough on crime. And I just think that's something to interrogate our candidates about for this position, because the county prosecutor has a lot of influence in terms of how the county addresses crime in a way that's going to impact real people in big ways. [00:49:29] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I agree. I will chime in and say that we just got a new public poll here that was just reported on, I think yesterday, showing that this race is basically statistically tied. So turnout is going to be really important. Lots of people talk about - they look at the federal races - they wonder if their vote matters. They're going, okay millions of people are voting. Why does mine make a difference? Really what makes a difference are these down-ballot races, are these local races. If you care about the issues of homelessness, justice, equity, affordability, what our community looks like, who it serves - our criminal legal system is an essential part of that equation. And we're talking about, in so many of these conversations, how we intervene and address victims. And most people who have perpetrated crimes have been victims of them. And how we intervene when people are victims, especially early, and especially when they're young, dictates how their future goes and whether they end up on the path to criminalization and poverty or a better path. So the way we intervene in that makes a difference. The way we treat and handle these cases that come through and how we address accountability depends on whether our streets are made safer, whether our tax dollars are used in a way that makes it less likely that people are going to commit crime and less likely that people are victimized or more, right? And we're seeing the impacts of the status quo of a more punitive approach. And either we choose to keep doing the same thing, and polls keep showing that no one is satisfied with the condition of things today. And so we do need to consider that when we are making these choices. And I hope you take a long, hard look at that. And most of all, get engaged and vote, make sure other people vote. And talk about these races, talk about the county attorney races, talk about the judicial races that we're going to talk about in just a moment, right? These are very important. Turnout is not where we would love it to be. It's lagging behind some previous years here locally, especially among younger people. And I know that is concerning to some. So the more that people can do to make sure that everyone can - and the most impactful thing you can do is just text those close to you, call those close to you, talk to them. Hey, coworker - hey, did you get that ballot in? What are you doing for this race? Remember, this is important. Hey, cousin, hey, brother, sister, mom - it's those connections close to you and those personal contacts that actually make it more likely for those people to vote. External organizations can try and do all the voter mobilization that they can and that work is valuable and good and should happen. But hearing from someone who you care about and who cares about you saying, hey, make sure you do this, you have any questions, you need help - is one of the best things you can do to make sure that people actually turn out to vote. So with that, we can talk about a couple of these judicial races, which are next on the ballot. Now we see the state Supreme Court races and we see Justice Mary Yu, who - you probably hear affection and admiration in my voice because I have affection and admiration for Justice Mary Yu. We also have a great interview with her from a few months back that we will post in the episode notes. Justice Barbara Madsen, also wonderful. Justice Helen Whitener, who is just - look, I'm going to just go ahead and get personal. Justice Helen Whitener is everything. I just need everyone to know that Justice Whitener is everything from - just everything. Her experience - vast, broad experience - in so many elements and areas of the law. The thoughtfulness, the lived experience, the outreach into the community - just a beautiful human being and an effective and intelligent justice. I am a fan of Justice Helen Whitener and we've done a couple interviews with Justice Whitener. And fortunately this time she isn't being challenged by anyone mediocre like she was last time, so this is an uncontested race. And when I say mediocre - I mean just got his license to practice law in order to run against someone with a resume as vast and deep as Justice Whitener's. And so now we'll talk about the contested municipal judge races in the City of Seattle between Damon Shadid, who is the incumbent in that one seat - has been endorsed by a number of Democratic organizations, received Exceptionally Well Qualified by a number of organizations, and is standing on his record. And a new challenger from the City Attorney's Office, Nyjat Rose-Akins, who is endorsed by the King County Republican Party and Jenny Durkan, and is wanting to make changes to some things and talking about the record of Community Court and changes that she wants to make there. In the other race, we have judge Adam Eisenberg, who has been rated Exceptionally Well Qualified by a number of the local and ethnic bar associations, but also has received a high number of negative feedback and surveys from the King County Bar Association and concerns about management and whether women are treated fairly under his management. And then Pooja Vaddadi, who is a newcomer and a new challenger, who has been - received a number of Democratic endorsements, but also has not received any ratings from local judicial bar associations because she has chosen not to stand in front of them for ratings. Bryce, how would you characterize those races? [00:55:42] Bryce Cannatelli: Like Crystal said, we got to hear from all of these candidates in a forum. I'll start with the Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins portion of it - they're running for Position 7. Damon Shadid has been a judge in this position for quite a while. And the main point of difference between the two is Nyjat Rose-Akins often talked about during the forum criticisms of Community Court and her interest in making a lot of changes to the Community Court system, whereas Judge Shadid has defended what that court has been able to do and hopes to see it continue in its current direction. As far as Pooja Vaddadi and Judge Eisenberg, that's another kind of longtime incumbent in the position - I can't remember how long he's been in that role - and a newcomer. And Pooja Vaddadi brought up concerns about the way that Judge Eisenberg has handled himself in the courtroom. You can hear her talk about that in our forum specifically at the end - is something that her campaign has been highlighting as of late, but also just the need that she claims there is in the municipal court for some changes. [00:56:52] Crystal Fincher: What's your take on those races, Shannon? [00:56:55] Shannon Cheng: So I think - so for the Judge Eisenberg and Pooja Vaddadi race - Pooja Vaddadi is a practicing public defender. And I think her experience in being in the court with somebody such as Judge Eisenberg presiding - it was a maybe not great experience for her. And so she saw a lot of injustice there and felt called to try to step up and bear witness and call out what was happening and how she has a different vision for how that court could be run. I personally appreciate that because I think judicial races are just very low information. It's really hard - as Crystal just went through, there was a long list of uncontested judges on the ballot - and I often look at those names and I have no idea who those people are. And so it has been interesting in this race to get a window into how courts work. And I know for me, it's been very educational. And I continue to aspire to learn more about how courts are run and what matters. And yeah, so for the Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins - as Bryce said, I think it comes down to the vision of how Community Court will be run in the future in Seattle. Whether you want somebody from the City Attorney's Office driving the vision of how to handle low-level offenses in the city versus the path that we had been on to to try to support people in need and not further entangle them in a system that kind of - a system that can snowball on people's lives. [00:58:41] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's right on. And I think in these races, we are seeing a little bit of a difference. There has been a lot called out by Pooja Vaddadi's campaign. But in fairness, I think you referred to Pooja talking about how she was partly moved to run for this position based on some of the injustices she saw. But one of the issues in this race that has been brought up is that Judge Eisenberg was the recipient of the highest number of - basically highest amount of negative feedback. King County Bar Association does an anonymous poll of its member attorneys for judges and the highest percentage of attorneys returned negative responses for Judge Eisenberg - higher than all of the other judges and gave that feedback. Judge Eisenberg didn't seem to feel that that had any validity. And he talked about how he had been rated Exceptionally Well Qualified, which is the highest rating given by a number of different bar associations. And it being pretty standard that judges go before different bar associations and get interviewed and they evaluate their fitness for judicial office and provide a rating from Exceptionally Well Qualified, I think Very Well Qualified, just on there. And so he had a number of highest ratings. And Pooja Vaddadi decided not to sit in front of those. And she said it was because she felt that it was biased or tilted or they would automatically give high ratings to incumbents, but not give high ratings to people who weren't incumbents. So she didn't feel the need to sit before them, which is a bit different. A lot of first-time candidates do go before those bodies and are evaluated and come out with decent ratings. I'm trying to think if I recall first-time candidates getting Exceptionally Well Qualified - I think I recall a couple, but also some who haven't. So I don't know, there very well may be a role that incumbency plays in that, but that was an element in that race that came through. As well as prior coverage about whether Judge Eisenberg potentially gave someone a harsher sentence for exercising their right to a jury trial instead of accepting a plea deal. And that being a wrong thing - that is a right that people have to exercise. And whether someone pleads guilty to a charge on a deal or is found guilty on that charge, penalizing someone simply for choosing to go to trial is not something that should happen and is certainly frowned upon. And so there was some coverage in question about that. We can also link that in the show notes. So those are certainly interesting races. And I think Shannon summed up really well just what's at stake moving forward in the Damon Shadid and Nyjat Rose-Akins race. So now let's get into the meat of a Seattle big-time initiative - Propositions 1A and 1B, which are on the City of Seattle ballot. They are not on my ballot, but we've got ballots waving with Shannon and Bryce and Mike over here talking about this question. [01:02:10] Mike McGinn: Do you want me to take a shot at it? [01:02:11] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, go ahead. Take a shot at it, Mike McGinn. [01:02:16] Mike McGinn: Okay. We all know how ballots work - you get a choice between - in the primary, you normally get a whole lot of candidates to vote for and you pick one. And what this is proposing is that in the City of Seattle, whether you want a different way to vote that will give you more choices. So the first question is, and let me tell you what the two choices are. One is called approval voting. So you'd look at your ballot and you'd have multiple people on the ballot and anyone that you approved of, you'd vote for. So you could vote for one, two, three, four, to approve as many as you want. And the idea there is that you don't want to have to restrict your vote to one candidate. And I have to say there have been times when I've had multiple friends on the ballot - I just want to be able to say I voted for all of them. But there are other good reasons to want to maybe approve multiple candidates. The other style is something called ranked choice voting. So in that case, you'd rank the candidates - one, two, three, four, five. And they'd add up the votes, and whoever the lowest vote getter was would get dropped off. And so let's say - I'm standing here with Bryce and Shannon and Crystal - let's say I had ranked them Crystal first, and then Bryce, and then Shannon. If Crystal was the lowest vote getter, she'd be off the list. And my vote would now go to Bryce - my second vote would be counted. And you do this by a process of eliminating the lowest-ranked candidate until you get to a winner. And we'll probably get more into why - what are the differences between the two systems and why they're better. And there's a whole world of election nerddom, which is substantial - what is the best way to represent what the voters really want, but you're going to get to choose here. So the real question is, do you want to keep the existing system - and that's the first question on the ballot - or do you want a new system? And if you vote Yes, I want a new system, you'll also be asked - well, actually, no matter how you vote on whether you want a new system - you're then asked, which one do you like more, approval voting or ranked choice voting? So yeah, it is pretty dense and complicated. You probably want to sit down and look at this. But if I could break it down for you - if you think you want more ways to have your vote count and have more discretion in how to award it to people, you'll want to vote Yes on the initial question. And then you'll get to weigh in and decide which one of those two - approval or ranked choice voting - you like more. And that'll tee it up for people to offer their opinions on what they like more on the rest of the podcast. How was that? Did I do okay, guys, in getting the description out? [01:05:13] Crystal Fincher: You did! You did, in fact, do okay of getting the description out. And I think also just the - functionally on the ballot - what you said was really important and I just want to reiterate. So this - we're talking about - okay, there are two choices there, approval voting and ranked choice voting. But when you get your ballot, you're going to see that it is constructed in a way that's not just that simple choice. There really is an initial question and then a secondary question. The initial question - why don't you just read what's on the ballot? [01:05:47] Bryce Cannatelli: Yeah, I could do that. I can also hold it up to you, so you can see the wall of text that happens beforehand. Shannon is shaking her head on the video feed, because - Seattle voters will know it if they've opened their ballots - there's a lot of text that goes before you can actually answer the question. So please read your ballot from top to bottom to make sure that you vote for everything. But the way that it's formatted is we get an explanation of both of the individual propositions. So it says Proposition 1A, submitted by initiative petition number 134, and Proposition 1B, alternative proposed by the city council and mayor, concern allowing voters to select multiple candidates in city primary elections. Proposition 1A would allow voters in primary elections for mayor, city attorney and city council to select on the ballot as many candidates as they approve of for each office. The two candidates receiving the most votes for each office would advance to the general election consistent with state law. The city would consult with King County to include instructions on the primary ballot, such as vote for as many as you approve of for each office. As an alternative, the city council and mayor have proposed Proposition 1B, which would allow primary election voters for mayor, city attorney and

Laurie, Mark and Ryan are joined by Gary Locke for the second part of this episode with the former Hearts captain, as the lads discuss Lockie's career after he left […]

Laurie, Mark and Ryan are joined by Hearts Principal Ambassador, and former player and manager, Gary Locke. In the first episode the lads chat about Lockie's time at the club as […]

Tonight on the Last Word: Vladimir Putin's military is facing fierce resistance in Ukraine. Also, Russia is more isolated as Putin's war enters its fourth week. And Ukrainian civilians are under heavy fire in multiple cities. Cal Perry, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, Amb. Gary Locke, Jack Barsky, Fintan O'Toole and Sudarsan Raghavan join Lawrence O'Donnell.

FROM GREGMEAKIN.COM:Born in Portsmouth NH, Greg Meakin, 63, was raised in Montreal and lived in the Seattle area for thirty years. He is now living in Arizona City, Arizona with his wife Deborah, and their Belgian Sheepdog Jessie. A dual-citizen, Meakin married his wife Deborah in 1987 and has raised three sons – Tanner, 42, and twins Carson and Colton, 32. He is a published author, car guy, real estate developer, and fanatical sports junkie. His pet project is managing his online eMagazine, GregMeakin.com Life stops for Meakin when discussing his Montreal Canadiens or Seattle Seahawks.Through his forty-year, award-winning business career Greg Meakin spent the bulk of his time in the auto industry, starting as a car jockey in the 1970s with Budget Rent-A-Car in Montreal, then climbing the corporate ladder at the dealership level in the early 80s. Although a Finance Manager by specialty, over the years he has worked key stints as Sales Manager, General Sales Manager, Business Development Manager, and Internet Sales Director. He has owned a number of his own companies, and has been sought out by business owners to share his automotive industry knowledge, business management expertise, and cutting-edge vision.A literary agent once described him as “The Nostradamus of the car business.”Although he has hands-on experience with most automobile brands over the years, including the RV world, he credits his years with Saturn, Honda and Toyota as having influenced his philosophy and approach towards his automotive career, his other business interests, and his personal life.In addition to the car business and real estate, Meakin loves anything in life that is fun or exciting. He has literally played hockey with Wayne Gretzky, contributed to an Ann Rule crime book, been courted by CEOs, and received accolades from business leaders and politicians – including Gary Locke, former Governor of Washington State, and most recently U.S. Ambassador to China during the Obama administration. He has owned $10-million of real estate in his lifetime, and has finalized some 25,000 auto transactions. In 1991 and 1992 he published two auto industry books, Secrets from the Inside and The Insider Access Workbook respectively. In 2004 Meakin was published in RINK Magazine, an ice industry trade journal. Rink of Dreams...and other small town nightmares discussed the building and opening of his then $5-million community ice arena from scratch in Bremerton, Washington. Originally launched under the name Bremerton Ice Arena, the beautiful facility continues to serve thousands of skaters and hockey players under the name Bremerton Ice Center. In 2003, Greg Meakin was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for community leadership by House Leader Tom Delay, during the George W. Bush administration. Also in 2003, the Kitsap Athletic Roundtable in Bremerton WA created an award for Meakin, Sportsman of the Year. This award recognized his one-man effort since 1998 to bring hockey and other ice sports to the region. Greg Meakin just released his third book,Why I Came To America...and what I think now. The book is only available on his website, gregmeakin.com. In 2022, he is focusing on Freedom Convoy issues, Alberta becoming the 51st US state, and Arizona serving as Sister State to Alberta.

On this week-in-review, Crosscut reporter covering state politics and the Legislature, Melissa Santos, joins Crystal to discuss Governor Inslee attempting to make it illegal for politicians to lie about election fraud and ending the ban on affirmative action, bills to watch this legislative session, Seattle and Burien extending their eviction moratoriums, Kent's mayor saying that she didn't think the public would get upset about a Nazi cop, and parents and schools struggling though COVID.  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, Melissa Santos, at @MelissaSantos1. More info is available at officialhacksandwonks.com.   Resources “Inslee will support bill to make lying by elected officials, candidates about election results punishable by law” by Joseph O'Sullivan and Jim Brunner from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/gov-jay-inslee-to-support-bill-to-make-lies-by-elected-officials-candidates-about-election-results-a-gross-misdemeanor/   “Inslee rescinds directive banning affirmative action in Washington state government” by Joseph O'Sullivan, Jim Brunner and Heidi Groover from The Seattle Times:  https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/gov-inslee-to-rescind-20-year-old-directive-banning-affirmative-action-in-washington-state-government/    “7 things WA Legislature is expected to address in 2022” by Melissa Santos from Crosscut:  https://crosscut.com/politics/2022/01/7-things-wa-legislature-expected-address-2022    “Bills to Watch in the 2022 Washington State Legislative Session” by Stephen Fesler, Doug Trumm, Ryan Packer and Natalie Bicknell Argerious from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/11/bills-to-watch-in-the-2022-washington-state-legislative-session/     Burien City Council extends eviction moratorium through COVID-19 state of emergency by Nicholas Johnson from The B-Town (Burien) Blog: https://b-townblog.com/2022/01/13/burien-city-council-extends-eviction-moratorium-through-covid-19-state-of-emergency/    “Mayor Harrell Extends Seattle's Eviction Moratorium until February 14th” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/12/mayor-harrell-extends-seattles-eviction-moratorium-until-february-14th/    “As Harrell Extends Seattle's Eviction Moratorium, Cracks Begin to Show in the Statewide Eviction Prevention Programs” by Hannah Krieg from The Stranger:  https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2022/01/12/64855920/as-harrell-extends-seattles-eviction-moratorium-cracks-begin-to-show-in-the-statewide-eviction-program   “Email Reveals Even City Officials Fell Victim to 2020 Proud Boys Hoax” by Carolyn Bick from South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2022/01/12/breaking-email-reveals-even-city-officials-fell-victim-to-2020-proud-boys-hoax/    “Kent badly underestimated outrage over assistant police chief's Nazi insignia, mayor says” by Mike Carter from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/kent-mayor-city-badly-underestimated-outrage-over-assistant-police-chief-who-embraced-nazi-rank-insignia/    “Facing dire staff shortages, some schools are asking parents to step in” by Marisa Iati from The Washington Post for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/facing-dire-staff-shortages-some-u-s-schools-are-asking-parents-to-step-in/    “Teachers confront half-empty classrooms as virus surges” by Carolyn Thompson from The Associated Press for The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation/teachers-confront-half-empty-classrooms-as-virus-surges/   “Seattle students plan sickout, demand COVID tests and masks as school closures climb” by Monica Velez from The Seattle Times: https://www.seattletimes.com/education-lab/seattle-students-demand-masks-and-tests-plan-sickout-as-school-closures-climb/    “What Seattle Public Schools Needs to Say Right Now” by Ray Dubicki from The Urbanist: https://www.theurbanist.org/2022/01/13/sps-letter-to-families/     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. 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 almost-live shows where we review the news of the week with a co-host. Welcome back to the program today's co-host, Crosscut staff reporter covering state politics and the legislature, Melissa Santos. [00:00:54] Melissa Santos: Hi Crystal. [00:00:55] Crystal Fincher: Hey, welcome back. How are you? [00:00:58] Melissa Santos: Doing as well as anyone can be doing at this moment in time and history probably. [00:01:03] Crystal Fincher: I feel that. Well, I guess we should start off by talking about a couple of actions that Inslee took over the past week. One is a move that he's trying to make to make it illegal for politicians to lie about election fraud. What is he doing there? [00:01:23] Melissa Santos: Well, it's hard to say precisely because I still haven't seen the text of a bill and a lot is dependent on that, but basically the Governor said he wants it to make it a gross misdemeanor for politicians to lie about election fraud. The part that some reporters immediately went, "Wait, wait, wait - we know in our state that our Supreme Court has said that basically lying as a politician is okay. There was a ruling almost 15 years ago now that said lying about your opponent is free speech essentially, for the most part, so we're wondering how can you make this work?" The Governor's argument is that this is speech lying about election fraud, and lying about the results of elections can lead to violence, and that's like calling "Fire" in a crowded theater. So that is something he believes can be regulated. I'm waiting to see how the text of that actually falls into place. Some other legislators that happen to be lawyers, including House Speaker Laurie Jinkins, said to me, "It really depends on how it's written, if it's constitutional," but the Governor made this announcement on January 6, the anniversary of the insurrection at the US Capitol and the anniversary of people actually storming the grounds of his, the governor's mansion in Olympia, over some of these claims of election fraud. I'm just interested to see how it plays out, and whether it could actually be passed, and whether it can actually uphold or be upheld in court. [00:02:53] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and that seems to be the stance of a lot of people - just waiting to see what the text is. But frankly, not just lawyers in the legislature, but also other constitutional lawyers who, with both conservative and progressive backgrounds, have said that this can be really dicey and whether or not this can be constitutionally constructed is a big question. I think Inslee - his response to that was, "Yes, this may draw some legal attention and challenge," but he's feeling that the rhetoric has gotten so inflamed that the truth - that misinformation and disinformation is actually damaging to our democracy and society - and we're paying a price. And he feels compelled to act to try to do something. And is ready for the fight. And I think he has almost acknowledged that he's not sure how it will ultimately turn out. He's going to do his best to craft it constitutionally, but he doesn't know. He just feels that this is worth the fight. [00:03:57] Melissa Santos: And I guess for me, I'm wondering if it just depends on whether you have to have violence result and then can go back and prosecute, because that might be a situation in which I think - I'm not a lawyer - and I haven't talked to as many people about this as I want to to make this claim. But I think potentially if you actually see violence that erupts that could be traced to someone's statements, maybe that's more legally defensible to have a penalty against a speech, than if it's just speculative, like this could lead to violence. So, I guess that's one of the things I'm wondering - if that will be specified clearly in what he puts out. [00:04:32] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I mean the impression I got is that it wasn't going to be tied to violence - just the act of lying and knowingly spreading misinformation would be illegal and punishable by law. But again as you said, we haven't seen the text of this. So, this is a big stay tuned, but a big announcement and that has a lot of people interested in what the next steps are going to be. And then the other action that he took this week was ending the ban on affirmative action. What happened here? [00:05:05] Melissa Santos: Well, essentially this is something that, as you know, has come up at the ballot box a few times in, oh 2019, which seems like a very long time ago somehow now. The legislature did rescind Initiative 200, a 20-plus now year old ban on affirmative action that voters approved in our state. And then voters reinstated the ban essentially in the fall of that year. Yes, that's essentially how it played out. You can get talking about referendums in a way that are very confusing, but that's essentially what happened. But what was interesting and during that campaign, I remember people - even Gary Locke, the former governor - saying a lot of the stuff we actually think we can do under current law - things like targeting, hiring of people from minority groups for state contracting roles and state contracts, and some recruiting - targeted recruiting - of people who are people of color for certain jobs and focusing on those efforts. Those things actually - there's a disagreement even at the time whether you could do that already, even with the ban in place. Because essentially boiling down, you're not hiring someone just based on your race - you're hiring people that are perfectly qualified for these, well, for these jobs, right? I mean that was always what the idea was, and that was said to be possibly allowed already. And then the State Attorney General put out something saying, "Yeah, you can do this. It's legal," and that was different advice than Governor Locke 20 years ago received. So this has opened the door for the Governor, now Inslee, to basically change this just by executive order, or changing it through his own practices at state agencies without a change of law. I know this will be somewhat controversial for those who were like, "Wait, wait, didn't we just vote this down, et cetera," but I really recall - it was really such a healthy debate about, honestly even among supporters of rescinding the affirmative action ban - do we even need to do this, or can we just do it without any of this legal back and forth? And so that dates back a few years. And so the Governor, with advice from the Attorney General of our state, basically said, "Yeah, no, we can try to proactively recruit and hire people for state positions and state contracts that are from underrepresented groups." That's what he did just through his own authority without the action of the legislature, or vote of the people. The one thing I'm not totally clear on - I'm not sure it extends to university admissions. I think it's more within the Governor's purview of hiring, but I'm not 100% sure on how this applies to university admissions and whether universities can give extra weight between two equally qualified candidates - to someone who is from an underrepresented group when they're doing admissions, admitting students. I'm not sure how the Governor extends to that. I'm not sure if you know, Crystal, if it extends that far. [00:08:10] Crystal Fincher: I don't know, and I actually read an article by Joseph O'Sullivan, Jim Brunner and Heidi Groover about this and I don't think that's addressed in the article. I don't recall that being addressed in the article. They basically described exactly what you said - that there was a 2017 opinion by our current Attorney General Bob Ferguson that was different than prior attorney general saying that, "Hey, actually at the moment, race and sex conscious measures are not prohibited. You can do more. This isn't a blanket ban." And so, Inslee's executive order is instructing, within the next 10 days for that specifically, he'll issue a replacement executive order replacing the one Gary Locke put in place - to move forward "with achieving equity while still complying with essentially the law," which is restrictive. So, it's going to be interesting to see how he threads this needle and what results of it are going to be. I don't see that it impacts admissions, but I'm sure we're going to be hearing more about that. [00:09:27] Melissa Santos: Yeah, and - [00:09:27] Crystal Fincher: But it's really interesting. [00:09:28] Melissa Santos: Yeah and I will say that when I looked at this and when other reporters have looked at this, there was a really stark decline in the percentage of state contracts going toward businesses and firms owned by women and people of color after the passage of I-200, which passed in 1998. There really was - I mean going back to one my old stories right now - in 1998, when race conscious measures weren't expressly prohibited by I-200 that had not yet passed, more than 13% of the money spent by state agencies and/or state educational institutions went towards certified minority and women-owned businesses. But in 2017, that was below 3%. So, we saw a more than 10 percentage point decline after I-200 passed in hiring and contracts going to minority-owned businesses. There's some dispute about whether women-owned businesses should be all grouped in the same way, but you saw a clear decline there, at least in that form of measure. There was an effect, I guess, of I-200 passing and whether it can be reversed by what the Governor has just done, I guess remains to be seen. [00:10:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and I think the effect is going to be - I don't know that we're going to see immediate action by a lot of places, but my goodness, I used to do economic development work in this area - increasing minority business, contracting and relationships - and the amount of people who were like, "Yeah, we want to do that, but the law prohibits it." And sometimes people say that - it's not in good faith - but there were people who were doing it before, who specifically felt handcuffed and they would get in trouble if they attempted to do anything in that realm and felt like they would be scrutinized for choosing to work with companies of color, being accused of giving preferential treatment. There are certainly those who lob that accusation, no matter what the qualifications or reputation of the firm is. So it definitely had a chilling effect, and what this does is it really frees up those types of localities who had an interest in it, and people who do have an interest to act immediately. And others, it may take more external pressure, lobbying, and accountability measures to make sure that something that is prioritized, but this is an area where the law had an impact. This ban had an impact and a negative one. Especially given everything we're looking at now, as much as possible needs to be happening to make sure that everyone can participate in our economy, to make sure everyone is given a fair shot with public contracts. All of our dollars are going into this, and it needs to be flowing in an equitable way to all of us. [00:12:24] Melissa Santos: Yeah. And one other thing that I think is interesting about this, the Governor's budget proposal and I don't know if - he actually has a small amount of money for giving extra money to people who are of underrepresented backgrounds, or specifically I guess it says low income, to serve on state boards and commissions - recognizing that there maybe is an opportunity cost, or that people who are not rich basically can't participate in state government and have their perspective valued and incorporated into state policy making. So, he's pursuing different avenues of trying to get people who maybe haven't traditionally been involved in state government to have their perspectives. And the language is interesting because it's really saying people who basically are not wealthy, people who have lots of spare time to do this out of the goodness of their hearts - have a lot of valuable perspective they can add, and we need that perspective and we should pay for it. There's some interesting things happening with this across Inslee's administration. [00:13:24] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. We'll keep an eye on how that plays out. You have been doing a fantastic job over several years covering the legislature. We just had this legislative session start last week. So, what is on tap? What are the top bills that they're working on, or things that we should be keeping our eyes on? [00:13:48] Melissa Santos: I mean one of the things that they're moving really quick on which I think you've discussed a lot on your show, so I don't think we need to go deep into it, but changes to this Long-term Care Act, which is this program that was passed a couple years ago to provide people help with paying for nursing care and other things that could help them even age in place in their homes. It looks like the State House is going to vote to delay the payroll tax that pays for this program and delay it a little bit, and make some tweaks. And so that's moving through quickly. The other things that they're really focused on are some changes to the police accountability measures they passed - wow, I guess it was just last year. It feels like it was two years ago now, but at 20, 20 - [00:14:31] Crystal Fincher: 2021 session, yeah. [00:14:32] Melissa Santos: Wow, okay. Yeah, so there's going to be some tweaks - there's some bills introduced essentially, mostly focused on the changes that were made last year to use of force standards for police. The bill they passed last year set a higher standard for when police can use force. It's pretty detailed and nuanced, but essentially requiring more use of de-escalation and limits on when you can use force when in situations that aren't a dire danger kind of thing. And there was some concern that, "Hey, does this ban us from using less..." Okay, that's a different bill, but there were some concern that they cannot transport people who are suffering mental health crisis - that there were police who raised the concern like, "Hey, we don't know if under this, if someone's not an imminent danger to hurting us, or killing us, or killing themselves. Can we still transport them to the hospital when they need mental health treatment?" And the legislator says, "Yeah, you can, you absolutely can," but there seem to be enough confusion about that aspect that they'll have a bill that would clarify - yeah, you can still help with mental health issues if you're police, even under this use of force bill that we passed last year. So, that's one thing. And there's also some other changes. There were limits to police tactics passed in a wide-ranging bill last year and the concern that arose was, "Hey, can we still use less-lethal weapons - bean bag launchers and stuff - if we got those through military surplus programs," which there's some contradictory stuff potentially saying no military weapons will be used by police. I'm oversimplifying it, but then sometimes they use military grade launchers and stuff for less-lethal weapons. So, just making it clear you can still do things short of killing people that use launchers and things like that to launch bean bags and things like that. So, there's some tweaks like that. There's Republicans wanting more bigger repeals, but I just don't see the Democratic legislature doing - completely rolling back what they did last year. [00:16:36] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean, and I want to talk a little bit more about you say, "There were concerns raised." Certainly throughout the legislative process, there were concerns raised. To that point, legislators attempted and felt they had addressed those concerns in the legislation and gave clear guidance that, Yes, you can still intervene. This is just limiting when you can use force, which was responsive to what protests were demanding, what voters across King County voted for with the King County Charter Amendments, an action that was taken by elected leadership in Seattle and around the county - moving towards mental health officers, non-armed officers to respond to a variety of these other things - recognizing that focus on de-escalation, focus on trying to actually address the problem without introducing a big risk of violence is beneficial to everyone. Police revolted in some situations - refused to respond to some calls, refused to intervene in mental health crisis calls. This went far beyond just a, "Hey we're concerned, we're not sure how to do this." They said, "Hey, we can't do this. We can't do our jobs," in a way that seemed that they were very unhappy with the fact that there was any legislation passed at all, and basically said it was all hindering their ability to do the job. And so some of this legislation is aimed at saying, "Fine. If this is really about a concern about responding to a mental health call, sure, we'll clarify that." And there are some clarifying bills, but obviously you've reported on this and this is me editorializing, but it seems like not all of those concerns have been raised in good faith and certainly the way that they were raised has been very contentious. [00:18:41] Melissa Santos: I think there was some exaggeration in the first weeks that these new laws went to effect, which was in July of 2021. I feel like there might have been some genuine confusion about some of the smaller points like, "Oh, wait what about these..." Maybe the less-lethal weapons thing - I think that maybe there was some genuine like, "Oh, we want to make sure we don't get in trouble for using our rocket launchers for something that maybe wasn't considered, or clearly outlined in this bill. You know - that we aren't trying to kill people with rocket launchers, we're trying to not kill people with rocket launchers." Fine, okay. But I do think there was some exaggeration and there were police chiefs that came out and said this is ridiculous, including Adrian Diaz from the Seattle Police saying, "The idea that..." - I think he called it ridiculous or something like that - the idea that you couldn't respond to mental health calls, because the assumption being that you're going to have to use physical force whenever you respond is where Adrian Diaz said, "I don't really see with the logic there." And also to be clear, you can use force when you see a crime happening or something. Police always, even under these laws, could pursue people, and they could pursue people. There was a lot of dispute about that, and I talked to a lot of chiefs who said, "I would definitely pursue someone in that situation if I saw them running away after I saw them under a car stealing a catalytic converter, and they ran off. I would not feel hamstrung by these laws. I think that's bunk." So, there was some, definitely even people within the law enforcement community saying, "I don't actually think that's how this works at all." That led me to think - Aaaahhh, I mean, is there genuine confusion in all cases, or is it also just resistance? And I think there was a mixture certainly of political resistance a little bit to some of the reforms. I think that was certainly true, and that might have caused people to interpret some aspects as being - people being - the police agencies to say I don't want to mess with this more than maybe what was necessary in certain cases. Yeah. I mean I talked to the Director of the state Criminal Justice Training Commission who also said some of these claims that were being made by police were overwrought. "People seem to be in a panic that maybe was unnecessary," is what she said, and I put in my story. That made me think, Okay, this isn't a clear cut, we can no longer do our jobs as police. Anyway, that's a discussion that the legislature is now having about - sorting through what is a legitimate concern, what is more just we don't want the legislature telling us how to do our jobs as police. And that's something the legislators are sorting through now. And I did personally have questions about the idea you can pursue certain people who are suspected of violent crimes, or people that you - one thing that someone from King County actually told me is that some police maybe have not had to distinguish that clearly between probable cause and reasonable suspicion, which are these thresholds for which you can do - super technical, but by which the standards you can do stuff under these bills basically. And there was a change in threshold, but to be honest, probable cause, some of the cops have told me, is not that high of a standard. If it sometimes - [00:22:00] Crystal Fincher: It clearly is not. [00:22:02] Melissa Santos: Some of the cops are saying, "Well, we have to do a full investigation of everything before we can even detain anyone," or say, "Hey, can you stop right there because we're investigating this and you're suspicious basically," but some police have said, "Actually, you know, probable cause is pretty low evidentiary standards. Even if you need probable cause to tackle someone to the ground and beat them, which is what some of these new laws do - it used to be reasonable suspicion which is lower - that's not that high of a threshold." I'm not saying police should be going straight to beating people, but the idea that they couldn't stop people ever, even when they saw someone fleeing the scene of a murder or something, was something that other police also questioned as being like, "Hmm, I don't know if that -." [00:22:46] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, there were plenty in the law enforcement community who said that this did not prohibit them from doing the job that they thought they should be doing. And even, I want to say it was the Renton Police Department, but I'm not precisely sure. There was a chase that they said - that they couldn't pursue someone who had fled because of this new law, which was just absolutely ridiculous, and that was their way of protesting that. But I mean we'll keep an eye on that legislation. We'll see how it proceeds, and I'm wondering if there is ever anything short of no action that they will find acceptable. And I think as you mentioned before, there are some Republicans who just want to repeal everything. But I think most people, the majority of people - and polling back that up and elections have backed that up - feel that changes do need to fundamentally happen to add protections and, at minimum, reforms. Now, how much those reforms need to be - it is another subject, but there's broad popular agreement that changes need to happen. And also, I just need to say, I don't see any situation in which I feel a police entity needs to have a rocket launcher, but evidently they do for some reason. But I do want to shift and talk about some local stuff. And Seattle and Burien extending their eviction moratoriums, which was something that a lot of people have been lobbying for. I certainly have - we've talked about this on this program, but especially with the rise with Omicron - the Omicron variant - people being unsure, not wanting to be exposed, or being sick with other folks. It was unthinkable and obviously extremely stressful for a lot of people to think, "Hey, just when this virus is once again surging, which is the reason why we had an eviction moratorium in the first place, why would we end it when we are basically hitting pandemic-high numbers for infections, hospitalizations? Putting someone out on the street during this time seems to just go against all of the reasoning for why it is currently in place." Bruce Harrell - this is one of the first decisions that he's made policy-wise since he's been mayor - decided to extend the moratorium for 30 days. Burien decided to extend their moratorium for as long as Governor Inslee has his COVID-19 emergency designation established, although they will revisit it for 90 days. In Seattle, lots of people are thinking, "Oh, 30 days, it could be longer." It is a good thing that the eviction moratorium was extended, and I'm very glad Mayor Harrell did that, and that the City of Burien is following, I know other cities are doing that. But it's absolutely necessary. And I hope during this time, all government agencies and entities really focus on getting the available financial help to renters, to landlords, just following through with that process and making sure all of the help that's available for people to get is made available and accessible, and it actually gets to people. There's a report that there are a backlog of 10,000 rental assistance applications at King County - that King County can't get to because they've run out of money. That's another element in the backdrop of this moratorium extension, in that help that was supposed to be available for people has not materialized. So, hopefully everyone at all levels of government gets their acts together to get help to people who need it on the ground. Otherwise, a lot of this COVID mitigation stuff feels like, "Hey, we're trying to get over the hump." Money to get people through this thing, and it seems like some folks are giving up when it is the hardest and the worst. And a lot of the outcomes that we've been trying to avoid look like they're more pressing than ever, so I just hope people coordinate and get money to the people who need it. [00:27:20] Melissa Santos: Well, I'm wondering, I'll have to look back at the Governor's proposal budget, but there is $1.3 billion in unspent COVID relief money at the state level, that's from the federal government, that still is sitting around. So, I'm wondering if maybe the legislature sends more money to some of the counties to help with this - even though the state eviction moratorium already expired - but I mean at least rental assistance is still something that many people need. Especially with Omicron, people - I mean again the economy, I think - restaurant workers and a lot of people in service industry jobs are underemployed or not employed. And that's still a huge issue and it's easy for people who are able to work remotely successfully and without a huge impact to their job, which is a lot of my colleagues and such. I mean to be honest, it's easy to underestimate how bad these surges create problems for people who are in other positions - when businesses have to downsize their staffs again because they just don't have people coming through the door. So that's something - I think I do wonder if maybe the legislature will send more money out to some of the counties to assist, relaying more of those unspent federal dollars. I'm not sure if they will. I think they probably will do some. [00:28:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean it seems like that certainly should be an urgent priority for them to do, hopefully doing it as quickly as possible to enable help to get to people who need it the most, but I mean certainly people are sounding the alarm that more help is needed to keep people in their homes. And as lots of people have concerns about just general affordability - not just inflation, but housing prices - as people are trying to figure out, especially with a number of the reductions and COVID protections and isolation and mitigation, just what kind of effect that is having on people and their families, that that help is needed now and the legislature can certainly, excuse me, impact that. Again, this is another one to keep their eye on, but also one to talk to your legislator about and say, "Hey, people still need help. The number one way to address homelessness is to make sure people don't wind up homeless in the first place." That is actually the least expensive, most effective way to address it. Don't let people get out on the street - every problem becomes much harder to address once they do. I mean I was happy to hear Bruce Harrell talking about looking at also preventing utility shutoffs, looking at people who are behind, and trying to connect them with services intentionally because that's a leading indicator of a risk for eviction. There's still a big issue brewing here that we're going to feel the effects of in very painful and negative ways if more help isn't provided. [00:30:28] Melissa Santos: And this really is a statewide issue now. I mean, if you looked at the housing prices in Chelan County, they've gone up 20% year-over-year for instance. So, this is something that even though King County has a high concentration and super high housing prices that really compound it, here as an issue for folks, but I mean it really is something that other counties and other places in our state are experiencing acutely as well. [00:30:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and let's go ahead and revisit Kent's Nazi cop, which - wow, wouldn't it be amazing if that was hyperbole, but it's not, that's a literal statement. We talked about this a bit last week. An assistant police chief in the City of Kent made Holocaust jokes, shaved a Hitler mustache - and this is over time - and posted Nazi insignias, literal Nazi insignias, on his door at work above his nameplate. A detective thankfully after four days of that happening - one detective who saw that out of everybody passing by - reported, filed a complaint, reported it. It was investigated - he, after the fact, said, "Hey, he didn't know that those were actual Nazi insignias. And the Hitler mustache was a joke. And the other joke was just unfortunate and poor taste, but he doesn't have a racist, anti-Semitic bone in his body, la-di-da-di-dah." Clearly highly unacceptable. The investigation found that he did knowingly post it, even though they technically said that they didn't sustain a finding of officially lying. They said that his version of events is not what happened. He did knowingly post, that he did make those jokes, he did shave a Hitler mustache - that all happened, that's not in dispute. And the punishment that they came up with was two weeks suspension. And during this entire time, while he was under investigation, he wasn't suspended. He was still working. He was participating in personnel decisions, policy decisions. It's just beyond. So now he's on paid administrative leave and the mayor has - initially went along with the 2-week finding. Then after public outcry, because a group thankfully, called No Secret Police, put in public disclosure requests, found all of this information, and they're the ones who actually broke the story that we have a Nazi cop. The Seattle Times has been writing about it. But two weeks suspended after public outcry and revulsion. In response to that, the mayor, Mayor Dana Ralph, announced that she will be asking the union for that officer's resignation - not firing him, not doing any of that, but asking for his resignation. And then, while everybody's saying, "Okay, so why are we even here? Why does it take public outcry for you to reconsider that maybe two weeks suspension for a Nazi cop isn't appropriate, or it just really spits in the face of all of your residents?" And her response to that is she said her administration and that - I'm reading an article by Mike Carter in the Times - her administration badly underestimated the public outrage that would spring from the decision not to fire an assistant police chief who posted a Nazi insignia on his door, embraced the rank of an officer in Adolf Hitler's murderous - what, Schutzstaffel or SS - joked about the Holocaust. So, where is your mind at that this is not a big deal? Where is your mind at that you can't picture people getting upset? This is very concerning to me. How are you looking at this? [00:34:50] Melissa Santos: Well, and I mean the thing that does hit me a little is Kent is such a diverse community with - I mean, it's majority people of color - I'm trying to look at the actual population, but I think - I mean you know better than I, Crystal, because I believe you actually live in Kent, I think- [00:35:03] Crystal Fincher: I do live in Kent. [00:35:04] Melissa Santos: - but it's 60% people of color I think. The police department, I don't know how their demographics match up with the actual city - I've not looked into this - but it strikes me as the only way you could underestimate that this would be offensive and highly offensive is if you have a large number of people that are not from groups that would be personally hurt or offended by this. I'm really at a little bit of a loss for how exactly that happened. This all was happening in the summer and I'm not sure if the election was on people's minds a little bit like, "Okay, we don't want..." If you fire a cop, it's more likely to make news. There is that too. I mean people will be like, "Hey, well if the assistant chief got fired, what happened there?" So I don't know if they just didn't want to draw attention to it. There were elections happening last year, municipal elections. I don't know if that's a factor or not. If there was ignorance - [00:36:05] Crystal Fincher: Clearly they didn't want to draw attention to it. Yeah, clearly they did not. [00:36:07] Melissa Santos: Yeah, I mean if there really was some element of ignorance - that I think speaks to the police department being a little out of touch with a community that they serve potentially. [00:36:15] Crystal Fincher: Massively out of touch and a threat and a danger too, yes. [00:36:20] Melissa Santos: And looking through lots and lots of police disciplinary records, I've been a little bit surprised over the last couple years that a 2-week suspension to an average person may not seem that big of - I mean, I would be unhappy if I got two weeks unpaid leave from work, but I go back to work and it's not the biggest of deals. But it's pretty rare for police to actually issue those kind of punishments is what I have seen. So, possibly just because police discipline is structured the way [Crystal: The bar is on the floor.] that they considered it to be a bigger penalty than the public does, because I do see a lot of - the idea that police cannot - they have to start with progressive discipline. I mean they start with something small. So maybe in some cases - I mean there are cities where I've written about, where they've given someone a written reprimand as the only penalty for punching someone - a citizen in the face without real provocation - and things like that. If that's a written reprimand in some communities, a 2-week suspension would be pretty significant by comparison, right? I don't want to say they thought it was significant, but they're just out of touch with what the public expectation would be about what a punishment for this would look like. [00:37:42] Crystal Fincher: Yes, in my opinion, this is disqualifyingly out of touch. If the only thing that is in your mind and the justification that makes sense to you - and again, this is me editorializing, this is not reporting or anything - but if the only thing that makes sense is, Well, we barely punish cops anyway and for this Nazi behavior, got two weeks, that's a disciplinary finding, it'll be on his record, that's fine - is so far removed from understanding that this speaks a lot to the culture of the entire department. How this behavior - this behavior only stopped because a detective - one, finally, after this had endured for years evidently - said something because something was so blatant and actionable. But to have - what you hear in the background is a Kent police siren right now in my house - you have to be so detached from the community that you're serving to think that - that at the minimum gives the appearance of a police force that is racist, anti-Semitic, biased, uses extremely poor judgment, is not connected to the community at all. And if you're talking about needing to rebuild trust, needing to maintain and rebuild trust - which Dana Ralph tried to give some of that rhetoric during last year, while she was campaigning - then wow, this flies in the face of that. This spits in the face of all of the residents of the city. And to think that when someone is in total control of someone's civil rights, if someone has the power to detain you, if someone has the power to beat you and jail you and give you consequences that are going to last potentially for the remainder of your life - can impact whether or not you can hold a job, or have a job, get housing - that that standard should be higher than the average employee who may get paid for two weeks with discipline. But also, we hold average employees to such higher standards of conduct than we do our police. We require more de-escalation from our service workers when someone is yelling at them for not wanting to wear a mask than we do from police. We require people who are in the right, who have been detained by police, to conduct themselves with more decorum than the police are for fear of getting beat or detained unjustly. This is just so far, so unacceptable, so ridiculous, so absurd - a literal Nazi cop is just - obviously, you can hear that this is very frustrating to me. And the complicity of the mayor and the other one just really speaks to the culture, and it really says to the community that we don't care about you, we don't consider you, we don't think about, you're on your own, this is not a city where - to serve everyone. This is a city that is looking out for its own interests and putting the feelings of Nazi cops, and using tax dollars to support Nazi cops ahead of residents here in the city. And it's appalling. [00:41:25] Melissa Santos: Well, your point about one officer bringing it up, or a detective raising the issue makes me think a little bit about - our state just passed a law last year. One of - another police law they passed was about establishing a duty to intervene, and most departments have this on the books already. A lot of departments saying that if you witness misconduct as a cop, you're obligated to report it, but what if cops don't? What if a bunch of cops don't view this as reportable misconduct? That's what this brings to mind to me. I'm assuming there are other people who were offended and had misgivings about it, but maybe didn't say anything about the Nazi insignia on the door, but then only one person did. So, there are some established things that under our state's new law - if you've witnessed successive force, you have to report it, or else you can be punished kind of thing, but this - [00:42:10] Crystal Fincher: It's limited to force because that's what I was thinking. I'm like, "How does this not fall under that new law?" Went back and looked at the text of the new law, and it must involve force. So, just general misconduct, they still don't have a duty to report which clearly needs to change, but yeah. [00:42:29] Melissa Santos: Yeah. I mean what if that officer, that detective had not reported it, would it... I mean - [00:42:35] Crystal Fincher: If that detective hadn't reported it, if we didn't have No Secret Police - that organization in Kent doing these PDR requests - they couldn't do that. If we didn't have those, we wouldn't know about this. We straight up would not know. [00:42:54] Melissa Santos: Yeah, I mean I think that - [00:42:55] Crystal Fincher: Which is appalling. [00:42:55] Melissa Santos: So I mean that's the thing - I'm actually looking at that law too - they have to report wrongdoing, but wrongdoing is defined as contact that is contrary to law, or contrary to the policies of the witnessing officer's agency. I mean there's still a lot dependent on police recognizing that this is a violation, right? And if people did not recognize that, or thought it was a gray area of some sort for whatever reason, which I think that most people who read the stories about this do not think it's a gray area in any way, shape, or form. But I mean that's still the cultural issue. This brings that to light to me a little bit about what if other cops don't see this as big of a deal as everyone else does, and that's what gives me pause. [00:43:38] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. It gives me huge pause. Clearly. If the Holocaust jokes didn't do it, the Hitler stache didn't do it - this is an assistant chief, this is someone who is dictating the culture, setting the policy, hiring, training, disciplining, guiding the department. People are following his example. He is there for that purpose, and he's a Nazi. [00:44:05] Melissa Santos: That also actually brings - I shouldn't assume what the motivations of the cops - but is it more, are our forces structured so it's very difficult for underlings to report the misconduct of a superior? I don't know if we've addressed that in law and policy. This is me assuming that there were people who wanted to report it and did not, because I have to in my mind, but anyway. [00:44:28] Crystal Fincher: Well, I mean, also we've heard about the - what is it, what a blue line of silence, whatever they call it - or issues in any general workplace where, "Hey, are you going to report your boss for misconduct?" That comes with the threat of physical force retaliation, maybe we're not going to back you up in police contexts, and just what a tainted and spoiled culture that must be. There was a statement made that, Clearly this is the action of a cop, we still have confidence in the department. I don't. How can you? I question you if you have confidence in this department. I question how you can see literal Nazi behavior tolerated and think that that's okay. [00:45:22] Melissa Santos: We probably could talk about this forever, but again, it would have been very different if in July of last year, the chief and the mayor come out saying, "Someone reported this. We've looked into it and we think it's horrendous. And we're going to demote, fire this police assistant chief." That did not happen - coming out by the work of an advocacy group, by a group who's making records requests and not the police department itself - it does not look good. [00:45:54] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it does not look good. There's a lot to talk about including how - there's a lot to talk about with this. We could talk forever, but we will leave it here actually for the day. We have time coming up, but also I just want to speak quickly about schools, just being - parents are just trying to figure out - I have talked to a number of parents and they're like, "I don't even know at this point whether it's better to send the kids to school or send them at home, but I don't feel like they're safe anywhere. I feel like every situation is suboptimal. I feel like the communication from the school districts is confusing and contradictory and late." And even for people with privilege who can stay home, they're trying to figure out how to navigate around this. And to have two parents who are working outside the home, who can't stay home and deal with all of this, or who may not be very online to get all of this information that's dictated for the next day at 10 p.m. sometimes. It's just a lot to deal with. People are afraid for the safety and health of their kids. Quarantining rules are changing and different. And just no one knows what's going on. Lots of calls for "schools to stay open." And I don't think there's anyone who disagrees that in a perfect world, yes, having people in school is ideal, but with the mitigating factors is that the case and they need to be socialized. And it's about the quality of education. But now so many people are out with COVID that they're asking parents to staff classrooms, they're asking lunch workers to staff classrooms, just any adult over 18. Some districts are changing qualifications to remove any qualification, but being an adult over 18 who can pass a background check. Clearly, we're out of the realm of talking about the quality of education and what's ideally best for the kids. And you've got to wonder just what is going into these decisions. It just doesn't seem like the health of the students is the guiding factor. I think a lot of people feel like, with the CDC, the health of Americans isn't the guiding factor. There seems to be a lot of profit motives at stake, and just people trying to force this to work in a way that makes people real uncomfortable about the health impacts. [00:48:32] Melissa Santos: So, I don't have a kid that's school age. I have a kid in daycare and whenever there is a COVID closure, it's very disruptive. And I understand that for parents and this is even when I - I mean, you can't really get work done at home with a toddler, it's very difficult. So, I understand, and even if you have the ability to work from home. So, I understand that's a huge stress around parents. At the same time, I mean it seems like there should have been a backup plan. There's been remote learning for a long time now, and no one thinks that's ideal for most kids. Although in some cases, I know some students thrive with it more than others, and they can avoid other issues they run into school through remote learning. But it seems like there should have been a backup plan a little bit saying, "Okay, we will go remote if we have reached this threshold." And then again - because it's not like we don't have experience with this now, and it just seems like this patchwork closures of school here and there creates problems and confusion for parents that are dealing with that right now. [00:49:37] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, and just the level of anxiety and confusion and just feeling abandoned by the people who were supposed to be responsible for this, who were supposed to plan, is unfortunate. A lot of anger from a lot of corners coming to teachers who are just in the middle of this whole thing, not in control of any of the district decisions, not in control of this pandemic - trying to stay healthy, trying to help their kids, and navigate through this whole thing. I think lots of people are choosing from a menu of bad choices. I think that's where people are at. It does not feel good, but we need better from leadership, we need better from elected leaders, we need at least better communication, right? Communicate clearly with notice, frequently understand that people's lives are upended day-by-day when this is happening. And it's just a lot, and I think that people are frustrated at levels that we haven't seen before, period. [00:50:54] Melissa Santos: Yeah. I mean and I will say I guess for Seattle, they do have a threshold, but it's very high. It says in this one Seattle Times story the district will consider shifting to remote learning for 10 days if the student absence rate is approaching 50% at elementary schools. That's very high and it does seem like there's individual schools that are getting announced that they're closing. And then what does that mean for those students at one school over? That's a confusing situation that's developed, where last minute notifications that one school is closed, but then district-wide, it's not uniform. I think that makes it hard for people, and I don't think it's easy for the district. I don't think it's easy for the teachers. I don't think it's easy for the parents or the kids. It's all very bad. I mean every choice is not great. Okay, that's not much of an observation. Everyone knows this, but - [00:51:47] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. I mean it's a thing, but I also think that while leaders better get to addressing this, people are feeling this in an acute way on a daily basis right now, and to ignore that is not wise. And understanding that speaking to it, trying to do anything possible to let people know that you actually are trying to help them, and not that you've just moved on, is necessary. [00:52:20] Melissa Santos: And I noticed the Governor - this is the state level and that's something the districts say is - we're required to stay open as much as we can right now under state policy. And I don't know at what point the state changes its view, and I don't know - I haven't been keeping up as closely with what the specific requirements down from the state are now, but that's something that districts have said, is that they're hamstrung a little bit by the state. The governor as recently as last week, this week probably, has said we need to do whatever we can to keep schools open. But we have State Senators, it seems like a couple a day practically, or at least - testing positive for COVID. I mean at one point on Monday, it seemed like almost 10% of the State Senate had contracted COVID, and that was just on the first day of legislative session. [00:53:01] Crystal Fincher: And one State Senator died of COVID. [00:53:04] Melissa Santos: And one State Senator died of COVID. Oh well, technically his family will not confirm it was of COVID, but he died after contracting COVID. And he was in the hospital, where he had been airlifted with COVID, so that seems to be the logical conclusion that he died of COVID last month. I don't think anyone disagrees in person is better - [00:53:25] Crystal Fincher: Well, there's some legislators saying, "No, we absolutely should be in person." It's just like, "Well, there might be..." Of course, ideally, people want it in person and I always get this sense, sometimes get this sense from some people, where they think that people are enjoying these mitigation factors, or enjoying being at home, or enjoying schools being shut down, and this is just all a big obviously conspiracy ploy and this is a joyful thing. This is painful for everyone. These are all bad choices that people are faced with. But the bottom line is - if we try and be careful today that minimizes the irreversible damage for a lot of people. I mean, people have died, people are dying, people have long COVID, people are becoming disabled with chronic illness because of this. And if that can be avoided, that is a factor in this. We can't ignore that that is a thing that is happening. [00:54:33] Melissa Santos: And I see the research about how - I mean, especially kids - a year or two years is so long of their life, that the damage of their effects on their socialization and education, I completely get that. I think about it with my kid, but he's also in a class of 6, and not 30 in school. I mean so I don't know. I worry about my kid's language development as well, even though he's mostly in school. And I understand that these are all things that have to be weighed, but I also think that we're peaking with Omicron apparently. Maybe this would really - would be just a month of doing what we've been doing for another... All right. You know what, I don't even know. I don't envy anyone who has to make these choices. [00:55:19] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, I think that's where everybody's at. I think that's where everybody's at, but it's rough. I feel for all of you dealing with all of this, and I just beg people who are making policy, influence policy, that you really connect with what people are going through on the ground every day, and just try to help that. If we help that, we help everyone. If we ignore that, a lot of bad things happen. With that, I appreciate all of you listening to Hacks & Wonks today, January 14th - Friday, January 14, 2022. These dates are so weird. My goodness - [00:56:05] Melissa Santos: 2022... [00:56:06] Crystal Fincher: - it's January of 2022. This is wild. Anyway, that's because I'm old. The producer of Hacks & Wonks is Lisl Stadler with assistance from Shannon Cheng. And our wonderful co-host today is Crosscut staff reporter covering state politics and the legislature, Melissa Santos. You can find Melissa on Twitter @Melissasantos1. You can find me on Twitter @finchfrii. Now, you can follow Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. Just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar, be sure to subscribe to get our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced within a couple days of the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in, talk to you next time.

Children’s Author Annie Winston knows full well what it’s like to be continuously harassed. During her high school years, she dreaded going to lunch. Name calling was just the beginning. Today, she’s using her past horrendous bullying experience to create a series of books tackling the bully debacle head-on. Joining forces with Adventures in Odyssey’s illustrator Gary Locke, together they created the Bully Buster series encouraging youth to base their identity in Christ. Annie gives parents the red flags to look for to determine if their child is the victim of bullying and the importance of having a close parent-child relationship. TAKEAWAYS How Annie’s past bully trauma helps create the characters in her books The Bully Busters Journal book series empowers bullied children Biblically inspired stories provide a firm foundation for kids of all ages Where can you go to find refuge in the midst of being bullied

Club Pro Chatter team discuss a recap of the Tapemark Minnesota PGA Pro-Am and the US Open Championship, and highlight the Luther Pro-Series #2. EDIT: The team of Jeff Sorenson, Bob Gorg, Gary Locke & John Daniels won the 2020 Tapemark Minnesota PGA Pro-Am.

In this episode we are excited to share a podcast to celebrate AAPI Heritage Month. This podcast allows our guests to talk about the spike in AAPI hate crimes, the ways we felt we belong and were othered due to our ethnicity, and the things that makes us proud in terms of our racialized identities. We are grateful to be joined by Mari Horita, Vice President Community Engagement and Philanthropy - Seattle Kraken and Brian Surratt, Vice President Real Estate Development and Community Relations - Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. Our guests' stories range from Mari's history as a sansei (third generation Japanese-American) and the impacts of the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II to Brian's experience as a bi-racial Korean-American and African-American man. Listen to our guests as they explore their identities, historical moments, anti-Blackness, the falsehood of zero-sum, and raising bi-racial children in Seattle. Also please take time to visit the Our Stories are Your Stories website to listen to local AAPI folks like Hollis Wong-Wear, Yuji Okumoto, Gary Locke, Lana Condor, and Doug Baldwin tell their own stories and add your own AAPI story to their platform. Thank you again to the Big Phony, a Korean-American singer/songwriter living in Seoul, South Korea for allowing us to his music in our intro and outro, all royalty-free!

His beginnings and his craft.

The last year has seen a rise in AAPI (Asian American Pacific Islander) violence. Today's conversation explores the long history of this discrimination, and what we can each do individually and in our communities to help put an end to it.You'll hear from former governor of Washington State, Gary Locke, CEO of Rise, Amanda Nguyen, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate, Dr. Russell Jeung, and Emmy award-winning TV news anchor, Dion Lim. They discuss the negative impacts of the “model minority” and “perpetual foreigner” stereotypes, why education of Asian American history is vital to changing the narrative, and how we can help amplify Asian American voices and stories.

This week gave us some insight into where the Seattle mayor's race might be heading. In addition to two high profile candidates who joined the race last week - former Council President Bruce Harrell and former state lawmaker Jessyn Farrell - speculation grew about former Washington Gov. Gary Locke jumping into the mix.

U.S. and Chinese officials are meeting in Anchorage for the first time since Joe Biden became U.S. president. So how will they move forward on critical issues from trade to human rights? Former U.S. Ambassador to China, Gary Locke had some thoughts.

Shuffling into your downloads light on football matches to talk about but heavy on top Caley Thistle content! This episode we're joined by Scott Allardice to discuss his new deal, Gary Locke talks about the recent ICT and Hearts love in, we recap the few games we have played and predict what's likely to happen in the congested fixture list ahead, offer up some top telly recommendations for when our next game is called off and we've got a new signing joining us on the pod for the first time. Let's shuffle! We review the headlines of recent weeks in Scottish football (01:43) What's gone right and wrong with the season so far? (05:15) It's the "hot" topic of the moment - what's happened to the ICT pitch? (15:00) Morton and Arbroath performances reviewed (21:27) Hear from recent signing Anthony McDonald on his return to the Highlands (34:07) Caley off, Telly on! (38:42) Previewing the upcoming fixtures (44:00) Hear from Hearts hero Gary Locke on the recent goodwill between our sides (52:10) Potential Player of the Year Scott Allardice drops by to chat about signing a new deal (01:07:20) Mailbag - extra small edition (01:17:51) We pay tribute to club historian Ian Broadfoot (01:22:25) 

One of the biggest challenges for U.S. President Joe Biden is how to repair ties with China. What are the key areas of cooperation and conflict? On the latest episode of The Heat podcast, we spoke with former U.S. ambassador to China, Gary Locke.

In the 6th Episode of The Interview Show on SM Media. Kilmarnock winger Rory McKenzie is the latest guest on The Sit Down with Scott McPike. In this episode Rory talks about Early Years Breaking Into Kilmarnock's 1st Team Loan At Brechin City Run In The 1st Team Under Kenny Shiels Managerial Reigns of Allan Johnston, Gary Locke & Lee McCulloch Lee Clark Stories Steve Clarke Resurgence Europa League Defeat & Angelo Alessio Alex Dyer & 2020 -21 Season Trinidad & Tobago

"Virtual-Classes Trend Alarms Professors." That was the headline on a 1998 New York Times story about an open letter to then-Gov. Gary Locke from University of Washington professors “worried about the enthusiasm he and one of his advisers are showing for instruction via CD-ROM's and the Internet.” More than 20 years later, with the pandemic making distance education an unavoidable reality, we revisit the topic with Locke and one of those professors on this special episode.

Draught Beer Takeaways, Virtual Stag Do's & Manchester United Hospitality. PLUS Gary Locke talks all things hearts, his celebrity stag do and confirms hes coming on Rhys' when it happens!

Washington state cracks the door on its economy giving some businesses a boost. But the Director of the state's COVID-19 Health System Response Raquel Bono tells host Joni Balter it will clamp down if the number of coronavirus cases spikes in the weeks ahead. Bono emphasizes, "we want to avoid increasing risk to others who may not be as capable of fighting this off." She also explains the current challenge regarding testing. Speaking as a former Navy surgeon, she answers the question about whether six feet of social separation really enough? And, as the coronavirus first emerged, former Washington Governor Gary Locke says the Trump administration was slow to act, "the W.H.O. sounded the alarm, many other countries around the world responded, the United States did not." Locke also comments on his puzzling appearance in an anti-Joe Biden ad and what it reveals about longstanding stereotypes. Plus, he updates Washington's participation in the current U.S. census.

0:37 - Introducing the Life On The Margins Podcast3:43 - Jini Palmer's personal experience with Coronavirus8:05 - Interview with former Washington Governor Gary Locke21:05 - Interview with Ijeoma Oluo36:56 - Episode Recap____________________________________________________________Gary Locke graduated from Seattle's Franklin High School.  He achieved the rank of Eagle Scout and is a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award from the Boy Scouts of America.  He attended Yale University, graduating with a Bachelor degree in political science and received his law degree from Boston University. As Governor of Washington State (the first Chinese American to be elected governor in United States history and the first Asian American governor on the mainland), U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and most recently as America's envoy to China, Gary Locke has been a leader in the areas of education, employment, trade, health care, human rights, immigration reform, privacy, and the environment.Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based writer, speaker, and Internet Yeller.  She's the author of the New York Times Best-Seller So You Want to Talk about Race, published in January by Seal Press. Named one of the The Root's 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2017, one of the Most Influential People in Seattle by Seattle Magazine, one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Seattle by Seattle Met, and winner of the of the 2018 Feminist Humanist Award by the American Humanist Society, Oluo's work focuses primarily on issues of race and identity, feminism, social and mental health, social justice, the arts, and personal essay. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, NBC News, Elle Magazine, TIME, The Stranger, and the Guardian, among other outlets. ____________________________________________________________Produced In Partnership With :Town Hall Seattle  (https://townhallseattle.org/)The South Seattle Emerald  (https://southseattleemerald.com/)_____________________________________________________________Executive Producer + Host  // Marcus Harrison GreenExecutive Producer + Host // Enrique CernaExecutive Producer + Host // Jini PalmerAdditional Production Support Provided By // Hans Anderson & JEFFSCOTTSHAWMusic Provided By // Draze "The Hood Ain't The Same" // http://www.thedrazeexperience.com/about-draze/    

In this week's interview, former WA Governor Gary Locke spoke with correspondent Rick Smith about the history and importance of the US Census. He traces the origins of the Census back to 1790, to the Constitution itself, and identifies ways the Census affects our nation—such as granting Washington a new congressional seat in 2010, as well as impacting distribution of federal funds. Smith addresses modern factors discouraging Americans from participating in the Census and underscores the protections and privacy measures in place to keep respondents safe. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

In this week's interview, former WA Governor Gary Locke spoke with correspondent Rick Smith about the history and importance of the US Census. He traces the origins of the Census back to 1790, to the Constitution itself, and identifies ways the Census affects our nation—such as granting Washington a new congressional seat in 2010, as well as impacting distribution of federal funds. Smith addresses modern factors discouraging Americans from participating in the Census and underscores the protections and privacy measures in place to keep respondents safe. Get an insider's look and stay in the know about what's going on in this moment at Town Hall Seattle.

Gary Locke served as the U.S. ambassador to China from 2011 to 2014. Locke was not only the first Chinese-American ambassador to China, but also the first Chinese-American state governor and secretary of commerce. This week on Sinica, he joins Kaiser in a show taped in Seattle, Washington, to talk about his early visits to his ancestral village in China's Guangdong Province, the attempted defection of Chongqing police chief and erstwhile Bó Xīlái 薄熙来 underling Wáng Lìjūn 王立军 to the U.S. consulate in Chengdu, and rare details about the flight of blind dissident lawyer Chén Guāngchéng 陈光诚 to the U.S. embassy in Beijing.7:58: State-level interactions with China17:54: Working as the secretary of commerce under President Obama33:32: Wang Lijun’s attempted defection 41:55: A look back at the Chen Guangcheng debacle 1:01:09: Xi Jinping, and how he changedRecommendations:Gary: Knives Out, written and directed by Rian Johnson, and the movie Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho. Kaiser: The blog Reading the China Dream, which contains a collection of translated works of Chinese intellectuals.

While the Hong Kong protests and Chinese censorship dominate the headlines, the U.S.-China trade war continues to send shockwaves through the global economy and is hitting Washingtonians particularly hard. On a special episode of DISCOVERY, Gov. Gary Locke joins to share his insights as 10th U.S. Ambassador to China in the Obama Administration. He discusses his experience working with the Chinese government, opportunities for deescalation, and what a prolonged conflict could mean for Washington state.

Hanna Scott on what's in Mayor Jenny Durkan's $6.5 Billion budget // Gary Locke, former WA Governor, on the trade war with China // Dose of Kindness -- helping out a stranger who needed a shave // Sports Insider Danny O'Neil on the huge WSU loss to UCLA // WA Secretary of State Kim Wyman live on Voter Registration Day // David Fahrenthold live on the Trump-Biden-Ukraine situation

In a special episode recorded live at our 2019 Annual Meeting, Gary Locke, former Washington State Governor, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and U.S. Ambassador to China, discusses leadership and making enduring, positive impact, with our CEO Marilyn Strickland.

Governor Gary Locke explains to U.S.-China Dialogue Podcast host James Green about dealing with Chinese officials high and low on pollution, market barriers, and human dignity as commerce secretary, then as U.S. ambassador.

On this episode we talk with Maj. Keith Kosik, the state partnership program director and three members of the Washington National Guard on their experience with the program. The National Guard State Partnership Programs (SPP) are designed to establish long term relationships in which U.S. States and their partnered nations share best practices and expert knowledge in a range of areas. The SPP is a Department of Defense joint security cooperation program administered by the National Guard Bureau that links a state's National Guard with the armed forces of a partner country in order to build long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with U.S. allies around the world. The Washington Military Department and our partner countries share best practices for military support to civilian authorities, emergency management, disaster planning, port security, HAZMAT/WMD response initiatives and airport security, among others. The SPP also facilitates economic, commercial, social and cultural government interactions in addition to military-to-military expert exchanges. Multi-level Army and Air Force familiarization exercises provide yet another platform to share effective practices and techniques. In 2002, Washington Gov. Gary Locke and The Adjutant General, Major General Tim Lowenberg, established Washington State’s SPP to establish a long-term relationship between the Washington Military Department and the Kingdom of Thailand. In 2017, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and The Adjutant General, Major General Bret Daugherty, signed the agreement with the country of Malaysia, pledging each other’s commitment to build enduring relationships through sustained cooperation on areas of mutual interest. If you have an idea for a future episode of the podcast or something you would be interested to hear please contact us at: sara.m.morris7.civ@mail.mil

Gary chats on about his early days as a young adult working at the Gilford Playhouse and some of the stars that performed there (William Shatner, John Raitt, David McCallum,etc.). He talks about his time with Streetcar, The Players Ring (16yrs!) and the company he started called Phylloxera Productions. And about his desire to produce Nicholas Nickleby and why it would be so difficult to do it. Then we dig into his latest production, BO-NITA, a one woman show starring the incredibly talented Deidre Hickock Bridge. We break down the process of one person creating multiple characters with different accents that have to interact with each other.

We’ve got a dyed in the wool Hearts fan and Jambo legend sitting down with Si this week as he talks us through living the dream with his boyhood club at Tynecastle as player, coach and Manager. As well as touching on his time with Killie and Bradford, Lockey is on brilliant form as he recites some of the most hilarious and insightful anecdotes we’ve had on the show from a career which has seen many highs and lows throughout.

We’ve got a dyed in the wool Hearts fan and Jambo legend sitting down with Si this week as he talks us through living the dream with his boyhood club at Tynecastle as player, coach and Manager. As well as touching on his time with Killie and Bradford, Lockey is on brilliant form as he recites some of the most hilarious and insightful anecdotes we’ve had on the show from a career which has seen many highs and lows throughout.

The UTLA: Special Report is dedicated with love and respect for the 30,000+ teachers on strike and the community that supports them. We want to give a special thanks to David Goldberg, Erika Jones, Christina Quimiro, Jose Andrade and Gary Locke. Your time and sacrifice makes this strike so real to our listeners and we’re honored to be a small part of this struggle with you. The world is watching this fight for public education. We are with you all! In Solidarity,The Educated Guess PodcastTwitter: @teachergoldberg | @erika78jones | @Andradeteach |@edguesspodcast | @czareff | @mr_ayyy |@resist_eduInstagram: @teacher_goldberg | @xrisq | @educatedguesspodcast |@czareff | @mr_ayyyy | @resist_edu

Gary Locke, former US Ambassador to China, Secretary of Commerce and Governor of Washington has experienced trade issues from all angles. He sees threatening tariffs more as a political gesture, than a well thought out strategy. Tariffs on steel for example would hurt Canada more than it would China. He asks, “Why would we want to anger our allies?” Locke brings insight to questions ranging from tariffs and technology transfers, to strategic exemptions and North Korea. Interviewed by Dick Drobnick, Director of the USC IBEAR MBA Program.

This week we look at the history of on U.S.-China relations from President Nixon's historic visit in 1972 through today. We get the perspective of Ambassador Gary Locke, who served as the United States' envoy to China from 2011 to 2014. President Trump visits the country this week as part of a five-nation Asian tour. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gary Locke, former Governor of Washington, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, and U.S. Ambassador to China, joins the podcast to cap off our final episode of Asian-American & Pacific Islanders Heritage Month and shares stories from...

The Burst Baw returns to look over the weekend that was in Scottish Football. Gamba, Lewis sat down in Ayr and Matt and Tom phoned in to chat about the biggest Lanarkshire derby ever. In history. Ever. Full stop. Hearts being crap and decent at the same time against Rangers. Celtic's quest for an undefeated season passing its biggest challenge in their 3-1 win at Aberdeen. Attention then turns to the lower leagues where Brechin and Alloa will be playing for a place in the Championship at the expense of Raith Rovers and Airdrieonians. Things are then rounded off with more Gary Locke chat and answering your questions and comments. Enjoy, and let us know what you thought of the show by tweeting @burstbawpodcast or by commenting below.

Gary Locke, a former U.S. ambassador to China, says a border tax would affect China and raise the price of imported goods. Prior to that, Stephen Roach, a professor at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, says China isn't manipulating its currency. Jerome Schneider, PIMCO's head of short-term and funding desk, says the Fed is in the process of a "hand off" to fiscal policy. Finally, Diane Swonk, founder of DS Economics, says the labor market is healing. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

Gary Locke, a former U.S. ambassador to China, says a border tax would affect China and raise the price of imported goods. Prior to that, Stephen Roach, a professor at Yale University and former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia, says China isn't manipulating its currency. Jerome Schneider, PIMCO's head of short-term and funding desk, says the Fed is in the process of a "hand off" to fiscal policy. Finally, Diane Swonk, founder of DS Economics, says the labor market is healing.

Cameron, Harry and Rory are back with your weekly fix of Scottish Football. Cameron actually manages to save this Monday's episode so you kudos to him, he's worked hard with it. The trio make their way through the weekend's games as Zak Jules gets his weekly scudding from Rory. The chat is rounded off with a quick look at the Scotland games and trying to figure out if anyone actually cares. Cheers!

Gamba, Matt, Connor, Lewis and Calum are all confined to a cupboard in a basement to preview this weekend's upcoming action. Before looking forward they look back to assess Raith Rovers victory over St Mirren and what that means for the Championship relegation fight, gasp in awe at Cowdenbeath appointing Gary Locke as their new gaffer and figure out when the new Rangers manager will take over. They preview all the weekends action from all the top 4 leagues before talking about why we love Scottish football so much including such answers as "Not really". Enjoy, and let us know what you thought of the show by leaving a review on iTunes or tweeting @burstbawpodcast.

The biggest panel yet, a magnificent eight, convene to talk about another intriguing weekend of league and cup action. First on the agenda is the weekend's League Cup action with semi-final victories for both Ross County and Hibernian discussed along with the failures of Celtic and future of manager Ronny Deila. Attention then turns to the weekend's league matches with wins for Hamilton and Rangers among others. Callum Scott also joins the guys to give his thoughts on the resignation of Gary Locke as Kilmarnock manager. The bottom two leagues are also covered along with all the latest transfer news on deadline day, with lots of deals in the pipeline. Enjoy, and please send your thoughts to @burstbawpodcast on Twitter.

Hamish is surrounded by footballing knowledge in the shape of Lewis, Jonny, Ross and the returning Matt to cast aspersions, discuss recent controversies and eh, talk up the Scottish game. The quintet look back on an engrossing weekend of SPFL fixtures and try to look past the substantial number of goalless draws, choosing instead to discuss a credible Aberdeen title bid, a massive win for Dundee United and dropped points for Falkirk, among other things. The guys then turn their attention to questions sent in by you. Subjects range from the failure of Sportscene, to the League Cup and the future of Gary Locke at Kilmarnock. Enjoy, and please let us know what you thought of this episode by tweeting @burstbawpodcast.

Gary Locke shows how to draw faces, eyes, hands, perspective, and more in this special video podcast.

U.S. Ambassador to China Gary Locke assesses China's just-completed leadership transition with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and Orville Schell, Director of Asia Society's Center on U.S.-China Relations. (1 hr., 23 min.)

This month, ListenUP: The Pilot Podcast welcomes Fr. Claude Pomerleau of the Political Science department to discuss international politics: from his recent trip to China and discussions with Chinese Ambassador Gary Locke about North Korea, to trade agreements with Latin America and the developing trend of peace over violence.

2011年10月13日上午，高明电台受美国驻上海总领事馆邀请，前往美领馆新闻文化处参加美国新任驻华大使骆家辉先生的媒体博客圆桌会议。骆否认刻意设计公众形象。今天的节目播出采访录音。 附《环球时报》社评：希望骆家辉好好做“驻华大使” （由于环球时报版权声明表示严禁转载，请点击下面的链接） http://opinion.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-09/2025092.html

Gary Locke, who's illustrated over 50 works of 'Adventures in Odyssey' art, tells us about how he got started, his inspiration... plus details on he and Jesse's new book 'Growing Up Super Average'. We also have news on the all-new 2008 'Odyssey' Calendar!