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.....San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee on Thursday placed a travel ban on city-funded trips to Indiana, saying, “San Francisco taxpayers will not subsidize legally-sanctioned discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people by the State of Indiana.”

Seattle Mayor Prohibits City Employees From Traveling to Indiana Mar 28, 201 By EMILY SHAPIRO The mayor of Seattle today prohibited municipal employees from traveling to Indiana on city funds, as the backlash spread against the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Seattle Mayor Ed Murray's decision comes in response to the law signed Thursday by Indiana Gov. Mike Pence that allows businesses to refuse service to gays and lesbians for religious reasons. Murray said Indiana's new law "doesn't reflect the values" of Seattle. "Seattle has been a leader in the fight to protect civil rights and ensure equality for all...

... Warren is best where she is: a valuable and influential senator who pressures the party from the left. No, it doesn’t come with a title, but it isn’t a small thing. In his eight years in the Senate, South Carolina’s former Sen. Jim DeMint was hugely powerful as an ideological leader, using his base in the conservative movement—and later, the Tea Party—to pull Republicans to the right during the 2012 presidential election. He enforced ideological discipline, and it worked. Warren doesn’t have to lead the Democrats—or run for president—to make the party more liberal. She can build power from...

Our Anti-gun foes are sneaky. From enough public outcry Olympia has had to delay their budget proposals until Monday. The Democratic Legislature was only going to allow the public a total of 90 minutes to read through hundreds of pages of the budget document. Enough people complained and they had to delay the hearings until Monday. There happens to be a secret budget proposal that corresponds with the passing of I-594 and the Dept of Licensing. Here is the letter written to us by our local Protect Our Gun Rights group.

A judge in Washington state on Friday fined a florist $1,000 after she refused to sell flower arrangements for a gay couple's wedding, officials said. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who along with the couple - Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed - sued florist Barronelle Stutzman in 2013, applauded the ruling in a statement.

Premiums are rising rapidly and the young and healthy are bailing out The Supreme Court decision in King v. Burwell, the case challenging the Obama administration’s decision to award tax credits for health insurance sold through federally established exchanges, could turn on the question of whether a ruling that ends the tax credits on federal exchanges might cause something known as a “death spiral” in health insurance markets.The good news is the answer is probably no, but the bad news is that’s only because the death spiral has probably already started.

She was asking for horror stories about health care, but Rep. Cathy Morris Rodgers, R-Wash., instead found her Facebook page filled with testimonials to the Affordable Care Act. A member of the House Republican leadership, McMorris Rodgers wanted a replenishment of anecdotes like stories of questionable accuracy she told when giving the GOP response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech. “This week marks the 5th anniversary of Obamacare being signed into law,” wrote McMorris Rodgers. “Whether it’s turning your tax filing into a nightmare, you’re facing skyrocketing premiums, or your employer had reduced your work hours, I want...

An environmental review of a proposed Washington coal port will be delayed until 2017, one year after the analysis was scheduled to be completed. The delay comes after the project's developer, SSA Marine, submitted an updated plan for the Gateway Pacific Terminal to the U.S. Corps of Army Engineers. SSA Marine acquired more land in the area of the proposed dock and reconfigured its site plan, said Bob Watters, a company executive. The move will reduce the project's overall footprint by 17 percent and its impact on wetlands by 49 percent, he said. "From an environmental standpoint, we thought it...

If you're going to circumvent HOV-lane rules, go interesting or go home. That was apparently the goal of one driver in Fife, Wash., who was pulled over by a trooper Monday afternoon after the officer noticed the guy's passenger seemed a little stiff, KOMO reports. "The trooper immediately recognized it was a prop and not a passenger," fellow trooper Guy Gill tells the New York Daily News. "As the trooper approached, the driver was actually laughing." That's because the serenely smug-looking passenger was a cardboard cutout of "The Most Interesting Man in the World," the Dos Equis mascot portrayed by...

"Why Are So Many Seattle Restaurants Closing Lately?” asks a recent Seattle magazine headline. The Scrapbook is no restaurateur, let alone knowledgeable about the local economy, but we’ll guess it has something to do with the fact that Seattle’s new $15 minimum wage starts phasing in on April 1. However, the first rule of liberals confronting the laws of basic economics is deny, deny, deny. A feature in the Seattle Times called the “Truth Needle” (we’re guessing the Times didn’t want to pony up to license PolitiFact’s logo) declares the claim that minimum wage has anything to do with the...

Reminder, The City Is Also Home To Boeing, The World's Largest Jet Maker If a plane flies over Seattle, does anyone hear it? Probably not, because they’re all down at the docks protesting the parking of drilling rigs used in the Arctic. When the port of Seattle agreed to allow Shell to park drill ships on the city’s waterfront, a “kind of civic call to arms” erupted, according to the New York Times. “A unanimous City Council lined up alongside the mayor to question the legality of the agreement with the Port of Seattle, a court challenge was filed by...

A grand jury subpoena released late Friday by the state Auditor’s Office shows that the U.S. Department of Justice sought documents about a part-time technical writer who used to work with state Auditor Troy Kelley in a business that tracked loan and real estate documents. The federal subpoena requested email conversations between Jason Jerue and other auditor’s office employees relating to Jerue’s past employment at Post Closing Department, Kelley’s company that became embroiled in a lawsuit with a former client, Old Republic Title. The subpoena, which was served on the Auditor’s Office March 6, also requested emails between Jerue and...

Early indicators suggest the $15 minimum wage will not be as positive as City Hall intendedIn a few weeks, Seattle’s new, highest in the country, $15 per hour minimum wage will go into effect. Like many liberal policies, it was passed by City Hall with the best of intentions. The only problem is, in the end, it may do more harm than good for many. Private businesses, unlike government entities (which, in theory, can always raise taxes or borrow), must make more than they spend in order to pay the rent, make payroll, keep the lights on, pay their business...

Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurants across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that “closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.” Of course, restaurants close for a variety of reasons. But, according to Seattle Magazine, the “impending minimum wage hike to $15 per hour” is playing a “major factor.” That’s not surprising, considering “about...

Last summer we talked about the rather faint hopes that some Seattle businesses were clinging to as the city moved toward jacking up their minimum wage (for some jobs) to $15.00 per hour. Employers – particularly in the restaurant industry – were asking the city council to reconsider as they evaluated their options in the face of labor costs which were about to rise to between 42 and 47 percent of their operating expenses. It all fell on deaf ears, unfortunately, and the plan is moving forward. And rather than waiting for the roof to come crashing down, some...

Despite port owners and union officials reaching a deal last month, businesses are still suffering from the aftereffects of a nine month long labor dispute that devastated the west coast. The dispute began in May when the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) were unable to agree on a new labor contract. The inability to come to a deal and the resulting port congestion prompted economic problems in many industries. It wasn’t until pressure from the president and a visit from Labor Secretary Tom Perez on Feb. 20 that the two sides were able...

Seattle is about to embark on a civic experiment that most experts predict will be an economic disaster; a $15 an hour minimum wage is set to go into effect on April 1st. And some restuarants in the city have already shuttered their doors and are either going out of business or moving to friendlier climes. This was entirely predictable - and was predicted when the measure passed the Seattle city council. Restuarants are particularly sensitive to this sort of increase in wages since most of their employees are paid at the minimum, and such a large percentage of their...

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange call center in Spokane is so busy that staffing has been quadrupled, with the center receiving up to 10,000 calls a day. The problem is not enough of those callers are actually signing up for insurance. The state has enrolled 160,000 paying customers in ObamaCare exchange health plans but that's more than 50,000 short of goal, which has led to an extension of the enrollment deadline and a request that the Washington State Legislature fork over $125 million to fund the exchange. Republicans are angry because they were told the exchange would be self-sufficient by...

On Tuesday, March 10, Washington State’s Employee Rights Political Action Committee (erpac.org), announced a grassroots initiative to replace restrictive employee laws with personal choice that both allows employees to keep their hard earned money in their pockets, and assists business in growing jobs. Called the “Employee Rights Act,” (I-1395) this new ballot initiative, if passed, will end compulsory union membership, ensuring an employee’s ability to find and keep gainful employment regardless of membership status and allow employers to hire without regard to a prospective employee's union participation. It will also allow employees to opt out of automatic union dues deduction....

King County Metro Transit has announced it's hiring a "comfort station coordinator," after it was learned that drivers were wetting themselves on the job.