Gerrymandering aside, I actually was able to speak with Kristine Lytton almost 2 years ago when I first started working on Publicly Owned Broadband in Bellingham. She also backed up every net-neutrality bill, and other bill to try and give the people back control of their information I can think of in that period. When I told her how resistant our administration (aka the mayor, Ted Carlson and others) were to the idea, she asked me why? When I told here at the time I wasn’t sure, I am now, but they were having lots of meetings with CenturyLink and I think that had something to do with it. Her response was, “oh God, you’re kidding!” Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is out of our current elected officials, I think she was one of the good ones. I doubt, for example, that she would have gone out of her way to violate her constituents’ first amendment rights on behalf of Verizon like Roxanne Murphy, and countless other politicians nationwide, have recently. I hope her replacement is at least half as reputable, but I doubt it. Still, creating territories in politics is just as bad as the territories that have been mapped out by the big telecoms. 

She did vote for the secrecy act a couple weeks ago to permanently lock away state legislature public records from citizens and the press.  When I wrote here asking why she responded with the same canned reply that all the others legislators  did, with the lie that they had actually opened more records.  She then caved two days later and signed the group letter that apologized and promised to work for genuine open public records in the legislature.  

She chastised me for my attitude of disgust with her vote, telling me I was not being constructive.   Of course it is not possible to be constructive about a 24 hour illegal process that can be described as an attempted coup of the sovereignty of Washington state citizens.  So her desire to protect our 1st Amendment rights had its limits.  She wanted to exempt herself from our scrutiny.

Well John, the overall problem is that I’m sure that no one is surprised by either of our statements. Politicians have been attacking our rights for a very long time. I am not even sure I can put a number on it. In my lifetime the politicians that stereotypically run as Republican have done it more covertly by doign things like attacking net-neutrality and partnering with corporations that don’t have a problem with censoring data like the big telecoms. The Democrats, in some cases have been compliant with the Republicans in this, but have attacked the first Amendment even more overtly. I recall, for example, the Clinton administration allowing the Gores to censor songs about police brutality, forcing at least one group (headed by Ice-T called Body Count) to have to pull and re-release their albums. They also started a commission on video games, etc. The games they used to make their arguments with are laughable by today’s super high tech standards. Anyway, I think it comes down to this as my friend Nathan often says. “You go too far right, you end up with oligarchy and serfdom, you go too far left, you end up with  the Thought Police.” Both parties pretend that their intervention is done on the side of freedom, but nothing guarantees our rights more than the 1st Amendment, so why do we keep electing officials that don’t care about it?   

Why don’t you ask the candidate (s) that have filed for Kris’ seat if they support Gov. Inslee’ s veto of ESB 6617?