Potential jurors refuse to come to King
County Courthouse over safety concerns
Posted By: Ron_lfp, 8/26/2021 11:52:42 AM
Safety concerns over the scene in and around the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle have increased in recent weeks. These are concerns that existed even before a dozens-strong homeless encampment took hold at City Hall Park. (snip) Beyond judges, their staff, or anyone else working at the courthouse, many others either have to come to the courthouse in person because they are filing for a protective order, or need to engage... (snip) the court is ramping up so that we can get more cases out there. But we cannot do that unless we have jurors who are willing to come to court.”
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Seattle Public Schools (SPS) withheld the religious and medical exemption forms for the COVID-19 vaccination mandate until after the first deadline to get the Moderna vaccine passed. This entire process seems rigged against using exemptions.
School staff in Washington must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18, or they will be terminated. Medical and religious exemptions are supposed to be offered for employees who wish to seek them.
But a spokesperson for SPS confirmed that the district hadn’t sent out the forms yet. They are expected to go out this week. By the time staff receive the exemptions, it may be too late to use them.
Safety concerns over the scene in and around the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle have increased in recent weeks.
These are concerns that existed even before a dozens-strong homeless encampment took hold at City Hall Park. (snip) Beyond judges, their staff, or anyone else working at the courthouse, many others either have to come to the courthouse in person because they are filing for a protective order, or need to engage... (snip) the court is ramping up so that we can get more cases out there. But we cannot do that unless we have jurors who are willing to come to court.”
Washington State's Tax Revolt
7 replies
Tax revolts are usually led by citizens, sometimes banding together into taxpayer groups. But in Washington State, the latest tax revolt is being engineered by cities and towns objecting to the Democratic-led state legislature’s attempt to impose a capital gains tax. Local officials fear that the new levy (snip) could hamper economic growth and opportunity. (snip) Five Washington communities have passed resolutions in recent weeks pledging to outlaw income taxes at the local level if the state adopts income or capital gains taxes. (snip) Over the years, voters have rejected ten attempts to amend the constitution to institute an income tax
Pete Holmes concedes Seattle city attorney
race; Thomas-Kennedy, Davison
will face off in Novembe 7 replies
race; Thomas-Kennedy, Davison
will face off in Novembe 7 replies
Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes conceded on Friday, as he fell further behind his two primary opponents in an election that will bring an end to his 12 years in office.
The result will leave Seattle with a clear-cut choice in November between a law-and-order candidate and an abolitionist who wants to halt most misdemeanor prosecutions. (snip) Davison says Holmes has been prosecuting too few misdemeanors (the city attorney does not handle felony offenses), while Thomas-Kennedy says he has been prosecuting far too many.
COVID mandates resulted in nearly 150 Seattle businesses permanently closing. But as the Seattle economy finally reopens, residents and tourists have a new retail outlet to buy clothing and alcohol.
It’s a few blocks away from Pike Place Market, occupying prime real estate near Sub Pop Records and trendy restaurants Serious Pie and Shaker + Spear.
But there’s a problem: It’s an illegal bazaar appealing mostly to homeless people. It sells what appears to be stolen goods. And the city hasn’t done anything about it yet. (snip) The Mayor’s Office ignored questions on whether or not they supported efforts to remove the bazaar from the sidewalk.
At least twice in recent years, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s administration rejected budget proposals to improve the city’s handling and preservation of text messages, shooting down detailed plans that staff said could help employees comply with state law and save the city from costly penalties for destroying public records.
Now the mayor and other high-ranking officials are embroiled in controversy over months’ worth of texts that have been deleted, including messages exchanged during the tumultuous weeks last June when Seattle police tear-gassed racial justice demonstrators and abandoned the city’s East Precinct station.
Thirty-three King County Superior Court judges and four court commissioners on Friday signed a letter to Seattle Parks and Recreation Superintendent Jesús Aguirre, requesting that he shut down City Hall Park and relocate residents of a sprawling encampment immediately south of the downtown county courthouse.
“We are writing out of deep concern for the safety of jurors, Courthouse employees, the general public and those who find themselves unhoused and sheltering in and around City Hall Park,” the judges and commissioners wrote.
“As you know, conditions in and around the King County Courthouse vicinity, including City Hall Park, have been in a critical, unsafe and unhealthy stage for years.
OLYMPIA, Wash. - With the state expected as of Wednesday to fully reopen June 30th, most parents are also wondering what schools will look like in the fall.
It's an important question to single dad Christopher Neugebauer who has an 11-year-old daughter.
(snip) That’s where the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction stands but how do the unions representing teachers feel about it? It will boil down to union negotiations with district administrators.
"I can’t promise that fully we just don’t know what the health and safety requirements will be for next year," said Jared Kink with Everett Education Association.
This month, youth homelessness was supposed to be solved.
Two years ago, members of Pearl Jam joined Seattle’s mayor, the county executive and philanthropy leaders representing the wealth of the region to promise that by June 2021, any young person who showed up at a shelter would get permanent housing in 30 days or less. (snip) The percentage of homeless youth housed in 2020 remained unchanged from before the campaign — 31%, making up less than a thousand people, more than 10% of whom will likely become homeless again in six months if past trends hold.
Seattle Times sues city of Seattle over
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s missing text messages
during protests 5 replies
Mayor Jenny Durkan’s missing text messages
during protests 5 replies
The Seattle Times filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging that the city of Seattle mishandled requests from reporters for officials’ text messages during a tumultuous period last summer when police abandoned the East Precinct and used tear gas on protesters.
The complaint, filed in King County Superior Court, follows a whistleblower investigation that found Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan’s office violated state public records laws in its handling of requests after discovering the mayor’s texts were missing for a 10-month period. (snip) The missing text messages may also play a role in other lawsuits the city faces over its response to Black Lives Matter protests last summer
Seattle Police expected to lose 300 officers
by the end of the month, 'that's a third of the
agency' 35 replies
by the end of the month, 'that's a third of the
agency' 35 replies
In a heartbreaking and revealing interview on The Ari Hoffman Show on Talk Radio 570 KVI, President of the Seattle Police Officer’s Guild Mike Solan said regarding police officers leaving the department, "At the end of this month [May]…we will be close to 300 officers (leaving), that’s a third of the agency." (snip) In August, the Seattle City Council defunded the department in response to the riots following the death of George Floyd.
An activist plans a block party to celebrate the deadly Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP). How utterly disgusting. What is there to celebrate?
CHOP, also known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), came from a violent conflict with the police. It directly caused the violent murders of two Black teenagers, the shootings of two others, attempted rape of a deaf woman, multiple assaults, vandalism, a riot, and more.
Celebrate CHOP? It is a stain on our city.
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President Biden will travel to all three sites of the 9/11 terror attacks on their 20th anniversary next Saturday — despite last month’s call from grieving families asking him not to come.“The President and the First Lady will honor and memorialize the lives lost 20 years ago with travel to all three sites of the 9/11 attacks: New York City, New York, Shanksville, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia,” the White House said in a Saturday press release.But last month, a group calling itself “Members of the 9/11 Community” called on Biden to stay away from this year’s solemn commemorations
The federal minimum wage in the U.S. has remained glued at $7.25 an hour for the last 12 years, the longest stretch without a boost since it was first adopted in 1938. Yet there's another revealing figure that underscores how the minimum wage — created by Congress after the Great Depression as a way to ensure that Americans were fairly paid for their labor — has failed to keep up with the times. Even as workers have been more industrious — helping drive corporate profits, the stock market and CEO compensation to record heights — their pay has flatlined, or even declined when factoring
Daily coronavirus infections are more than four times what the U.S. was seeing on Labor Day last year, or a 316% increase, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. And daily deaths are almost twice as high. Blame the highly contagious delta variant and a swath of Americans refusing easily accessible vaccines that most of the developing world is furiously scrambling to obtain. Hospitalizations are up 158% from a year ago, U.S. Health and Human Services data shows. The result: Some U.S. hospitals are getting so crowded with COVID-19 patients that physicians may soon be compelled to make life-or-death decisions
President Joe Biden celebrated Labor Day by delivering deli sandwiches to union workers in his home state of Delaware.According to the Associated Press, the president visited an event orchestrated by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 313 in New Castle, Delaware, where he served sandwiches from Capriotti’s, a Delaware restaurant chain founded in 1976.“He shook hands and chatted with the group of mostly men, who were clad in jeans and union T-shirts,” reported the AP. “Biden spent several minutes chatting with the union members in groups before telling them, ‘C’mon, let’s go get something to eat.'”
This Saturday is the 20th anniversary of 9/11, one of the darkest days in American history.To mark the occasion, President Biden will travel to Ground Zero in New York where the Twin Towers were destroyed, to Virginia where a plane was flown into the Pentagon, and to a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania where Flight United 93 also crashed after an on-air battle between terrorists and hero passengers.This would be a sombre enough experience for any American President given that nearly 3,000 people were killed on that infamous day back in 2001 which represented a terrible failure of US intelligence.
Attorney General Merrick Garland released a statement on actions the Department of Justice will take in response to Texas' pro-life "Heartbeat Act" that restricts abortions after a heartbeat is detected, usually around six weeks after conception. Garland said that the DOJ would "provide support from federal law enforcement when an abortion clinic or reproductive health center is under attack." "We have reached out to US attorneys' offices and FBI field offices in Texas and across the country to discuss our enforcement authorities," he said.
Is Joe Biden Senile or Just Dumb?
31 replies
Sometimes it is difficult to know whether or not Joe Biden is senile or just dumb. I know it’s tempting to ascribe everything he does to his dementia, but he’s been stupid for his whole life. Even people suffering from dementia have moments of lucidity, so it’s really impossible to know what is the true motivation behind the President’s asininity. The effects and the facts of it, however, are easy and important to dissect, because whether it’s due to him losing his grip on reality, that he’s just a very simple and dumb man, or a combination of both doesn’t really matter, what matters is the end result.
WSJ: Men appear to be giving up on college
30 replies
There’s an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today about the declining enrollment of men in 2 and 4-year colleges. This gender enrollment disparity is a trend that has been happening for a while now, but at this point the divergence between men and women is becoming pretty dramatic.
At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men
Sometimes, things are magical. And in Tennessee, a school’s come upon a recipe for just such a thing.
The University of Tennessee-Knoxville’s College of Social Work is offering “antiracism” workshops this month, and officials have made clear just how some may find an Abracadabra kind of wondrous state: the absence of white people.
WASHINGTON — In the hours before Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, 20, was killed by a terrorist’s bomb in Afghanistan, he posed for a photograph taken by a bunkmate. In the image, the Marine’s brow was furrowed. He flashed a peace sign. (Snip) But Mark Schmitz was confused by what happened next: Biden turned the conversation to his oldest son, Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015. Referring to him has become a reliable constant of Biden’s presidency. In speeches, Oval Office discussions and personal asides, Biden tends to find a common thread back to his son, no matter the
Knuckling under to pressure by Democrat activist Stacey Abrams, Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger and the State Election Board passed an emergency rule to allow the widespread use of unsupervised ballot drop boxes for the 2020 election.
Under Georgia law, only the voter or his or her legal representative is allowed to deposit ballots in drop boxes. Part of the emergency rule allowing drop boxes required 24/7 video surveillance of each drop box location.
Physicians spreading medical misinformation, particularly about COVID, “are risking disciplinary action by state medical boards” due to their “high degree of public trust” and their “powerful platform in society.” One could say this applies more so to the president of the United States, the CDC director, and to major newspapers and media organizations (snip) A popular catchphrase this past summer is that COVID is, “a pandemic among the unvaccinated.” (snip) By simply perusing the news, one can draw a far different conclusion, that we are instead seeing a “pandemic of the vaccinated.”
Comments:
I was summoned for jury duty about 3 months ago. I responded "I will not go downtown until Seattle hires and gets more police on the streets. It is not safe." I was excused. (But I am older and they might excuse a younger person.)