This Washington
Inslee (and Kucinich) at Progressive Confab
Today's Fizz explained—in comparison to US Rep. Dennis Kucinich's fiery afternoon speech—how Democratic US Rep. and now-gubernatorial candidate Jay Inslee failed to energize the sample section of his progressive base on Saturday morning at the Northwest Progressive Institute's NWroots conference. For what it's worth, that base included a folk-singing "arts-based environmental education" duo called the Irthlingz who played a number called "The Solar Power Shout," but also Washington State Labor Council President Jeff Johnson.
NPI, which spends most of its time fighting Tim Eyman initiatives, held the conference at the Comedy Underground club in Pioneer Square. The club was packed with activists who were in a particularly cranky mood this weekend, exercised about President Obama's pending debt limit deal with the Republicans. One audience member told US Rep. Jim McDermott, who also spoke, that "this guy [Obama] has sold out and has got to go."
Another audience member pleaded with Dennis "We have let private banking run the economy for their own interests" Kucinich to run for president in 2012. He said he's not. But sounding like a cross between a Greenback Party candidate from the late 19th Century, Huey Long, and a Tea Party activist, Kucinich lamented the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, cited Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution (giving Congress the power to tax, regulate commerce, and "coin money"), and demanded that the US Treasury Dept. take over the Fed.
Interesting stuff—along with his lecture on "heart-centered intelligence." But back to reality: The governor's race.
Dressed in jeans and a blazer, Inslee gave his standard speech—how his father may have taught Jimi Hendrix at Garfield, how he married his high school sweetheart, how he drove a bulldozer in Bellevue, waited tables in Edmonds, prosecuted criminals in Yakima, "knows what alfalfa smells like," (meaning he can "look East and West and see the value on both sides of the mountains"), and most of all, how he wants to invest in alternative energy like lithium batteries and green companies. He name-checked biofeul companies such as Seattle's Targeted Growth (whose lobbyists have contributed to Inslee, by the way) and Vancouver's Rex Plastics, Inc. which makes blades to harness tidal power.
After his speech, I got a chance to ask Inslee two questions. First, what's his plan to deal with the battered state budget? Inslee said: "We've been taking money out of education to pay for rising health care costs. We need a governor who can lower health care costs."
I also asked him about the idea he floated to invest state pension fund money in tech startups. The idea got a chilly response from the Washington State Investment Board, which told the Seattle Times they're not a venture capitalist firm.
Inslee explained that he was only talking about the private equity portion of the pension fund—about eight percent of the $61 billion fund. Of that, Inslee says, 98.6 percent gets invested in out-of-state companies. He wants to bump the 1.4 percent that's invested locally to two percent, he says. "We already do this," he said. "I just want to do a little more of it."
NPI, which spends most of its time fighting Tim Eyman initiatives, held the conference at the Comedy Underground club in Pioneer Square. The club was packed with activists who were in a particularly cranky mood this weekend, exercised about President Obama's pending debt limit deal with the Republicans. One audience member told US Rep. Jim McDermott, who also spoke, that "this guy [Obama] has sold out and has got to go."
Another audience member pleaded with Dennis "We have let private banking run the economy for their own interests" Kucinich to run for president in 2012. He said he's not. But sounding like a cross between a Greenback Party candidate from the late 19th Century, Huey Long, and a Tea Party activist, Kucinich lamented the creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913, cited Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution (giving Congress the power to tax, regulate commerce, and "coin money"), and demanded that the US Treasury Dept. take over the Fed.
Interesting stuff—along with his lecture on "heart-centered intelligence." But back to reality: The governor's race.
Dressed in jeans and a blazer, Inslee gave his standard speech—how his father may have taught Jimi Hendrix at Garfield, how he married his high school sweetheart, how he drove a bulldozer in Bellevue, waited tables in Edmonds, prosecuted criminals in Yakima, "knows what alfalfa smells like," (meaning he can "look East and West and see the value on both sides of the mountains"), and most of all, how he wants to invest in alternative energy like lithium batteries and green companies. He name-checked biofeul companies such as Seattle's Targeted Growth (whose lobbyists have contributed to Inslee, by the way) and Vancouver's Rex Plastics, Inc. which makes blades to harness tidal power.
After his speech, I got a chance to ask Inslee two questions. First, what's his plan to deal with the battered state budget? Inslee said: "We've been taking money out of education to pay for rising health care costs. We need a governor who can lower health care costs."
I also asked him about the idea he floated to invest state pension fund money in tech startups. The idea got a chilly response from the Washington State Investment Board, which told the Seattle Times they're not a venture capitalist firm.
Inslee explained that he was only talking about the private equity portion of the pension fund—about eight percent of the $61 billion fund. Of that, Inslee says, 98.6 percent gets invested in out-of-state companies. He wants to bump the 1.4 percent that's invested locally to two percent, he says. "We already do this," he said. "I just want to do a little more of it."
