⢠"Isn't it weird," Erica C. Barnett coyly asked on October 9 on local blog PubliCola, that socialist city council candidate Kshama Sawant claims to fight for the 99 percent, yet has a husband who earns "$100,000 or more" as an engineer at Microsoft? Except it wouldn't be weird for somebody to advocate for the less advantaged, $100,000 a year would still place Sawant squarely in the 99 percent, and Sawant has been separated from her husband for six years and doesn't share in his income. It's an inept smear.
⢠Another week, another poll showing state senator Ed Murray creaming incumbent Mike McGinn in the mayoral polls. A SurveyUSA poll released Monday, October 14, showed that if the election were held that day, 52 percent said they'd vote for Murray, while only 32 percent would vote for McGinn (and 15 percent were undecided). Apparently, those 52 percent haven't seen either of the recently televised mayoral debates, during which McGinn calmly, handily spanked Murray.
⢠At least 15 different organizations have been preparing all year to apply for the FCC's new urban low-power radio station licenses, and that application window was set to open this week, but damn if the government shutdown hasn't struck again. The diverse applicantsâfrom Hollow Earth Radio to OneAmerica to DASH Center for the Artsâmust now wait for the federal government to start functioning again so they can send in their paperwork and get the long-ass bureaucratic process of licensing started.
⢠Washington State's conservative, Koch-funded fauxâthink tank the Freedom Foundation released a report accusing the unions backing SeaTac's $15-an-hour minimum wage initiative of paying many of their own employees less than the existing state-mandated $9.19-an-hour minimum wage. How is that even possible? It's not. The report's author merely looked at annual income of union staff, failing to account for the fact that some employees only worked part time or part of the year. Because the "freedom" in "Freedom Foundation" apparently stands for "freedom from math."
⢠In a display of buyer's remorse, the Seattle Times endorsed Democrat Nathan Schlicher over Republican Jan Angel in the special election to fill the 26th Legislative District state senate seat, which was vacated by US Representative Derek Kilmer. Isn't it weird that after years of warning about the dangers of Democratic hegemony in Olympia, our region's paper of record now frets that "If elected, Angel's conservative ideology might empower the unhelpful, far-right fringe of the Senate Republican caucus." Well, duh. 
