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Microsoft 50th Anniversary
I thought it would be fun to open the scary box in the garage marked “Microsoft Memorabilia” on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the mother ship. I’ll post interesting things I find as I go through it. I have no memory of when these pins came out, but there was some big corporate…
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Be Grateful
We should all be grateful we get to live in the amazing corner of the world.
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Eliminate Nasty Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers in Kirkland!
Gas powered leaf blowers are a plague. Their two-stroke engines produce more climate changing gases than a fleet of cars and their noise is damaging to the ears of both residents and the people that operate them. For the best-selling commercial leaf blower, one hour of operation emits smog-forming pollution comparable to driving a 2017…
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Update on nondiscrimination protections for children and youth in Washington
On February 2nd I wrote about the former president’s HHS agency leaders filing a rule that removed protections for LGBTQ children and youth and how Washington was not affected, as we had strong state protections. The order has now been blocked by both the Biden administration and the courts. From the American Public Human Services…
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Every Silver Lining Has a Cloud
I get regular emails from the Children’s Bureau with a collection of news clips about child welfare across the country. Some are helpful, some random, some totally uninteresting. At the top of the email today is a story out of Florida about the difficulty people have in adopting newborns. (Full disclosure – I didn’t watch…
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WA Won’t Discriminate
Right before the change in administration earlier this month the federal Health and Human Services agency repealed a rule that prohibited government contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, (SOGIE) or on religion. Washington does not allow this kind of discrimination today, and won’t allow it in the future.…
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The Murder of George Floyd
I sent the following message out to DCYF staff earlier this week. Our equity and diversity team helped me avoid blind spots I may have, but any errors are mine. We have work to do as an agency and as a society. I want to begin by acknowledging the range of emotions you may be…
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Take Me Home: Protecting America’s Vulnerable Children and Families
Take Me Home: Protecting America’s Vulnerable Children and Families by Jill Duerr Berrick My rating: 4 of 5 stars I thought this was super-interesting. Her view is that while it makes some sense to invest resources in “upstream prevention,” we can’t fix the entire problem that way and will still need a robust child welfare…
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Children’s Alliance Hiring Early Learning Policy Staff
I just got the following mail from Jon Gould, the Deputy Director at the Children’s Alliance about positions there. Children’s Alliance is hiring an Early Learning Policy Director and a Pre-K Policy Associate. Our early learning policy advocacy focuses on expanding access to high-quality, affordable, culturally responsive early learning and care for Washington’s youngest kids,…
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Town Hall Meetings Are Hard – But Politicians Should Do Them
In my 13 years in the Legislature I probably hosted over a hundred town hall meetings all over the 48th district. Sometimes they were cavernously empty. Sometimes they were like what former Rep. Israel describes below – raucous. Sometimes this was organic, like the time my Republican seatmate Rodney Tom and I hosted a joint…