Voters' Guides Are Now On-Line

The Director of the King County Elections Department (Sherril Huff), a position for which Mark Greene was Runner-up for in 2011, has published the General Election Voters' Guide recently, and you can now view it on-line, including the Drescher (R) vrs. Greene (Commons) Position 6 race for Newcastle City Council.  Please, let your family and friends know about the new voters' guide.  Also, the Newcastle News will be publishing a Question & Answer segment from Newcastle City Council candidates (at least those running in the contested Position 6 race) in their October edition.

Post-script: The council race is non-partisan, but N.P.R. is going to be including the known "party information" about the candidates inside the usual parentheses from now until the election.  John Drescher helped the McCain (R) '08 presidential campaign and Mark Greene is the founder of the Party of Commons: Tradition, Progress, Ecology, and hasn't voted for a major party candidate for president in a general election since McGovern in '72, though Greene has voted in most elections since the age of 18.

[revised on 9/25/13]

Please vote for I-522 this November, YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW about whether of not the food you buy is genetically modified.

Drescher (R) Vrs. Greene (Commons)

THEY ARE VERY CERTAIN

 

The Town Establishment in Newcastle, overwhelmingly Republican, is very certain that they have pulled out all the stops to ensure that their candidate, John Drescher, will win the election.  However, indications and unofficial polls, don't seem to be going along with their candidate, therefore Mark Greene is still in the running and pretty much even with Drescher. In fact, it is Drescher that is struggling to pull above even despite help from turncoat Democrats like Rodney Tom and "Blue Dog" Adam Smith.  Democrats helping Republicans is nothing new, however, as we learned from the 2009 Council Race in County District 9.  This could stem from the fact that Mark Greene is with the Party of Commons or Commons Party, a fledgling third party, and thus with neither of the major parties.  The party's motto is Tradition, Progress, Ecology.  Your vote will turn the tables on those who think they already have it in their pocket.



Please vote for I-522 this November, YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW about whether of not the food you buy is genetically modified.

Campaign Buttons

If possible, please, contribute to Mark Greene's council campaign.  For the rest of this month of September, we're aiming for ten 10 dollar donations in order to buy a hundred dollars worth of buttons (Greene for Council) that'll be handed out in Newcastle.

N.P.R. missed tonight's council meeting due to the editor's busier than usual work schedule, but this should be an anomaly and not a long term problem with N.P.R. keeping up with the latest Washington political news.

Please vote for I-522 this November, YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW about whether of not the food you buy is genetically modified.

Generalness is Popular, Specificity is Better

Remember Walter Mondale's frankness about taxes in a 1984 presidential debate with President Ronald Reagan, many said that it set the stage for Reagan's 49-state landslide that year.  Voters didn't appreciate Mondale's candor since people, generally, don't like politicians giving them negative news even if it's true, which is why it wasn't particularly politically astute for me to be the messenger of austerity in the Newcastle News interview, but matters of principle, like being specific and frank in politics, should take precedence over political ambitions, I think.  Of course, everybody wants million dollar streets to drive their vehicles on, but if at the same time people don't want their taxes raised by a single cent, then something has to give.  Newcastle can't spend two million dollars a year on streets every year unless the economy rises significantly or taxes are raised, and right now, in this period of economic stagnation, I simply told the News reporter the truth about finances, and said that the expenditures for roads may have to be cut by half (with the implied caveat: if constituents don't want their taxes raised).  That was one of several specifics in the article's portion about me.  Regarding John Drescher, however, the majority of politicians in America wouldn't mind saying the same words as him in that article, in some sense, which gives you an idea of how general his statements were.

-- Mark Greene, Newcastle City Council Candidate, Position 6  

[revised on 10/13/13]

Tricky Labels/Non-Labels

Drescher is Probably Not a (D) [as in Democrat]

In the '09 "non-partisan" King County Council primary for Council District Nine, 92% of the electorate voted for either of 2 Republicans, despite that the third candidate (Mark Greene) was an independent.  Many Democrats thought that one of the three candidates was a (D), because she made a seemingly concerted effort to cloak herself that way and received the endorsements of nonsensical so-called alternative news sources that usually support (D's), though actually she was an avid supporter of then Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R).  This tactic successfully got the Palin fan into the general election with Reagan Dunn, whom she was soundly defeated by.

The moral of that story is that voters in the Newcastle City Council election for Position 6 should be aware of the strange bedfellows-type endorsements of "Blue Dogs," like Adam Smith, and charlatan turncoats, like Rodney Tom, that happen to have (D's) after their names, because council candidate John Drescher supported Senator John McCain (R) for president and has a testimonial on the front page of his campaign site from an anti-apartments city commissioner. This is hardly "Ripley's Believe It or Not," but a little tricky to get a handle on, nonetheless.

Anti-Interventionist, Too

N.P.R.'s partial blog profile describes our Party of Commons as economically progressive, culturally traditional, by and large, and anti-interventionist re. foreign policy, by and large, but the local (Newcastle) town paper left out the very latter in the recent article about council position 6 as they pointed out the former two positions.  Why foreign policy was left out, N.P.R. has no idea, although, there's no sacrilege committed if councilmembers or candidates, from any city or town, speak out on foreign policy, although city officials generally have no direct responsibility for enacting policy. Nevertheless, foreign policy affects cities and towns almost as much as anything else, so there's no reason for the hush-hush.

[revised on 9/15/13]

Previous post: "Correction: Latin Term Mix-up"

Please vote for I-522 this November, YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW about whether of not the food you buy is genetically modified.

Correction: Latin Term Mix-up

For someone like myself who had an early familiarity with Latin as an altar boy, I'm a little surprised that I twisted up the term "quid pro quo" in N.P.R.'s recent "Green Ideas" essay (now corrected), but this was just from probable tiredness and possibly rushing, not ignorance.  Northern Pacific Report goes out of its way to have correctness in all manners, including truthfulness, general grammar, and spelling of names and terms.  If you see something that you believe is not true, please, make a note in the comments section.  All comments are modified, but only for fitness for publication, in order to keep things on subject.

-- Mark Greene, N.P.R. Editor

Please vote for I-522 this November, YOUR RIGHT TO KNOW about whether of not the food you buy is genetically modified.