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Smothering the American dream

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Bob Herbert - Mar. 11 (Opinion) - "Economics has been hijacked by the rich and powerful, and it has been forged into a tool that is being used against the rest of us."

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Logging site to be repaired

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Lewis Kamb - Mar. 10 (Investigative Report) - Oregon park and forestry officials, along with a local Boy Scouts council, plan to clean up logging debris and replant trees at the McCaleb Scout Ranch in southwest Oregon -- a direct response to a Hearst Newspapers' investigation that found logging at the camp next to a protected river deviated from state approved logging conditions.

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At loggerheads over camp clearcut

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Lewis Kamb - Mar. 10 (Investigative Report) - "I don't think there's a problem with the board manual," said Chris Mendoza, a conservation biologist who has reviewed hundreds of state logging plans as a private consultant and as co-chairman of a state forest practices science committee. "The board manual is pretty clear. Rather, I think it's more of a (DNR) implementation issue."

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ONWARD

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Kimberly Mills - Mar. 08 (Editorial) - If this were a just world -- no, not the "just war" world of the Seattle Times -- the Seattle Post-Intelligencer would be the one left standing. Though we're not dead yet, things aren't looking rosy for our print version. So, on what's anticipated to be the last Sunday of the P-I dead-tree edition, here's a message for our competitors at the Times: Don't blow it.

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Crime no barrier for loan sellers

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Eric Nalder - Mar. 06 (Investigative Report) - The Seattle P-I examined the histories of loan sellers, taking advantage of records made available for the first time because of the new requirement. A total of 299 loan originators with criminal records applied for licenses in 2007 when licensing and criminal background checks were first required. They applied even though they knew their fingerprints would be checked by law enforcement and that all felonies and gross misdemeanors involving dishonesty within the previous seven years would disqualify them. Half of them -- 149 -- were denied licenses because of their convictions, and the other half kept their licenses because their convictions were more than seven years old. But that's only temporary

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Federal oversight of lenders found lax compared with state

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Eric Nalder - Mar. 06 (Investigative Report) - Two Treasury Department agencies, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision, oversee federally chartered banks. Complaint records show those two federal agencies regularly handled consumer complaints by letting the banks investigate them, without interviewing complainants or the accused themselves, according to documents and interviews with dozens of complainants. The state subpoenaed witnesses, questioned complainants and took scores of enforcement actions, records show.

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Herbicide level halts Zoo Doo event

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Angela Galloway - Mar. 06 (News Report) - Herbicide is a party pooper. Woodland Park Zoo has canceled its spring sale of fecal compost, or Zoo Doo, because it contains unacceptable levels of a herbicide called clopyralid.

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Court rejects Franken's bid to be seated in Senate

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - Mar. 06 (News Report) - The Minnesota Supreme Court on Friday blocked Democrat Al Franken's petition for an election certificate that would put him in the U.S. Senate without waiting for a lawsuit to run its course.

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With United States on its knees, why are we still at war?

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Bob Herbert - Mar. 03 (Opinion) - We invaded Afghanistan more than seven years ago. We have not broken the back of al-Qaida or the Taliban. We have not captured or killed Osama bin Laden. We don't even have an escalation strategy, much less an exit strategy. An honest assessment of the situation, taking into account the woefully corrupt and ineffective Afghan government led by the hapless Hamid Karzai, would lead inexorably to such terms as fiasco and quagmire. Instead of cutting our losses, we appear to be doubling down.

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Single Shot: Health coverage might be the latest reason to wed

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Diane Mapes - Mar. 01 (Special Report) - I love working; I love earning my own keep. But what I don't love is that good health care is so out of reach for a certain segment of society that it's making people consider all sorts of wacky schemes to "get some." In 2007, for instance, 7 percent of U.S. adults got married not because they were madly in love, but because one or the other needed health insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research group.

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UW cancels contract for apparel

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Amy Rolph - Mar. 01 (News Report) - The university terminated its licensing agreement with the clothing manufacturer earlier this month after reports that Russell, owned by Omaha, Neb.-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., violated ethical standards by closing a factory in Honduras after workers started to unionize. The UW is one of several universities to recently announce a termination of the agreement with the company in accordance with ethics codes.

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Obama repeats Soviet missteps in Afghanistan

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Celestine Bohlen - Feb. 27 (Opinion) - history tells us that increasing troop levels to fight an insurgency is not a winning formula. The Soviets learned this after 10 years in Afghanistan; the French learned it in Algeria, and we had our lesson in Vietnam. The larger the foreign troop presence in wars of counterinsurgency, "the worse the outcome tends to be." That was the sweeping conclusion drawn by a 2008 study by the Rand Corp.

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New U.S. envoy, Israel's Netanyahu meet

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Aron Heller - Feb. 27 (News Report) - Mitchell and Netanyahu seem at odds on key underlying issues. Mitchell wants to press ahead with peace talks that would lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu avoids any talk of Palestinian statehood and says peace efforts should focus on building up the Palestinian economy. Mitchell has urged a freeze of Jewish West Bank settlements, while Netanyahu says existing settlements must be allowed to expand.

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Mexico tells U.S. to fight weapons trade

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Traci Carl - Feb. 27 (News Report) - President Felipe Calderon told The Associated Press that his police and soldiers are dangerously outgunned because U.S. authorities are failing to stop the smuggling of high-powered weapons into Mexico. His attorney general called for more aggressive prosecutions of gun smugglers, saying that the U.S. constitutional right to bear arms doesn't protect them.

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Beating caught on police video

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Scott Gutierrez - Feb. 27 (News Report) - A video showing a King County Sheriff's deputy pummeling a 15-year-old girl in a holding cell was released Friday over the strenuous objections of the officer's attorney.

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The toxins you're wearing

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Amy Goodman - Feb. 26 (Investigative Report) - "Whether it is your nail polish, eye shadow, shampoo, essentially personal-care products, is not regulated by the (Food and Drug Administration) ... numerous times in the Senate, over the last 50 years, there have been efforts to expand the purview of the FDA, and it's been repeatedly beaten back by the cosmetics industry." Details on the toxins are hard to come by. Schapiro continued, "The reason I even know what kind of material is in cosmetics is not because the FDA has told us; it's actually because the European Union has taken the action to remove that stuff, and they have a list."

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Britain in fresh row over U.S. renditions

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Paisley Dodds - Feb. 26 (News Report) - Defense Secretary John Hutton told lawmakers the information was discovered after a thorough review of detentions in Iraq and Afghanistan -- an acknowledgment that seemingly contradicted previous government denials of facilitating renditions. Hutton said some British officials knew of the transfer in 2004 and that former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw -- now the Justice Secretary -- knew since 2006. Straw's office offered no comment Thursday.

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For Obama, 'change' doesn't come so easily

Thu, 26 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Robert L. Jamieson Jr. - Feb. 26 (Opinion) - as the president's oratory filled televisions across the country, the words of another crossed my mind. Reflecting on the state of modern electoral democracy, the political writer and activist Arundhati Roy once suggested that it really doesn't matter which party leads America. "It's not a real choice," Roy said. "It's an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they're both owned by Procter & Gamble." Yes, Democrats and Republicans are vulnerable to pressure from lobbyists. Both kowtow to the rarified segment of political, economic and military brokers -- a posse the sociologist C. Wright Mills called the Power Elite. And both campaign in poetry to seduce the masses but switch to sobering prose when tough realities dawn and temper hope.

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Loss of satellite major setback for Earth-watching scientists

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Seth Borenstein - Feb. 24 (News Report) - The $280 million mission was designed to answer one of the biggest question marks of global warming: What happens to the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide spewed by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas? How much of it is sucked up and stored by plants, soil and oceans and how much is left to trap heat on Earth, worsening global warming? "It's definitely a setback. We were already well behind," said Neal Lane, science adviser during former President Bill Clinton's administration. "The program was weak and now it's really weak."

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Obama follows some of Bush's footsteps

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Helen Thomas - Feb. 22 (Opinion) - One judge asked the Justice Department lawyer if the change in administrations had any bearing on the case. "No, your honor," came the reply. According to The New York Times, "even the judges on the panel seemed surprised by the administration's decision to go forward" with the same argument.

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Trusted voice of newspapers needed

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Eric Bowman - Feb. 19 (Opinion) - Our institutions have failed us. Not just with faulty presidential intelligence reports, companies knowingly selling tainted products and billion-dollar Ponzi schemes. But with the contraction of our newspaper industry at a critical juncture in American history. The foundation of our democracy rests on free access to accurate information and the factual events of our world.

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Starbucks spars over union

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Andrea James - Feb. 18 (News Report) - The union says that the Starbucks reality has never been as shiny as its image. "It's always been a difficult place for baristas to make ends meet at Starbucks with the insecure work hours and low wages," said Daniel Gross, a founder of the union organizing efforts who was fired in 2006. (A judge found his termination was unfair.) "The American people were deceived by Starbucks and Howard Schultz."

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President's trip to Canada defines critical carbon moment

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By James E. Hansen - Feb. 17 (Opinion) - The Canadian media are full of speculation that the Canadian government will push for special treatment and protections from global warming regulation of its fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions -- the tar sands oil development in Alberta, where much of Canada's oil is derived. Such protection would be disastrous for life on our planet. The tar sands of Canada constitute one of our planet's greatest threats. They are a double-barreled threat. First, producing oil from tar sands emits two to three times the global warming pollution of conventional oil. But the process also diminishes one of the best carbon reduction tools on the planet -- Canada's Boreal Forest.

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It will be a long, painful slump

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Paul Krugman - Feb. 16 (Opinion) - Last week the Federal Reserve released the results of the latest Survey of Consumer Finances, a triennial report on the assets and liabilities of American households. The bottom line is that there has been basically no wealth creation at all since the turn of the millennium: the net worth of the average American household, adjusted for inflation, is lower now than it was in 2001.

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California on fiscal cliff

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0800

Seattle Post Intelligencer - By Jennifer Steinhauer - Feb. 16 (News Report) - By Monday night, Senate leader Darrell Steinberg announced that lawmakers had failed to find the final vote needed in his chamber as Republicans refused to support more than $14 billion in tax increases. He called a session for Tuesday morning and said he would put the tax provisions of the budget proposal up for a vote, even if they would not pass.

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