Support NoInitiative645

I-645 would repeal the Millionaires Tax, a historic new law that will modestly increase taxes on just the top half of one percent of Washingtonians – while cutting taxes for the other 99.5% of us. And the facts are clear: the Millionaires Tax is a tax only on millionaires and income over one million dollars.

The governor has promised to veto any expansion of the tax, and any attempt to expand the tax would inevitably end up in front of the voters as an initiative. In the end, voters will always have the final say about who pays this tax and can reject any efforts to expand it.

Despite what Brian Heywood says, the Millionaires Tax bill that was signed into law was a package, with tax cuts for 99.5% of Washingtonians paid for by a tax on millionaires. Passing the initiative would put these critical tax breaks for Washingtonians in jeopardy, tax breaks that are only paid for by the Millionaires Tax.

Learn MORE … no645.com

So, while we do experience and celebrate Heritage Months… Celebrate your Heritage every day!

-Nativegrl77

I went through old posts and found hints of an increase in data centers, at least in the early 2000s. One company tried to tell a story of why we need them and created a mural project; they also bought a 1960s power plant.

In 2010, Greenpeace posted a warning and petition re:

The Internet is how we connect, learn new things, and share what we love. But right now, much of our Internet is also dirty, no matter how we use it.

Data centers are where Internet companies store our photos, messages, and music, and many are powered by coal and dirty energy sources that pollute our environment and harm our climate.

What’s worse — the Internet’s demand for energy is only growing. If the Internet were a country, its electricity use would already rank sixth in the world.

Source: Greenpeace petition

I use the Internet daily for research and other purposes, like blogging or sharing information that might help someone. It’s truly embarrassing to realize that warnings about Data Centers were in the news years ago! Clearly, in the early 90s and 2000s, they were not given enough airtime or a proper platform to inform the public. Now, it is 2026; some parts of our country are suffering from droughts, while others have seen their land devastated not only by historic floods, but also by the fact that building data centers requires not only a lot of land but also an enormous amount of energy and water.

~ Nativegrly77

Birthday – The first African American on the U.S. Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was born in Baltimore, Maryland. Nominated by President Johnson, he began his 24-year career on the High Court in 1967.

Chief Justice Earl Warren swears in Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. As chief counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in the 1940s and ’50s, Marshall was the architect and executor of the legal strategy that ended the era of official racial segregation.

The great-grandson of a slave, Marshall was born in Baltimore,  July 2,  Maryland, in 1908. After being rejected from the University of Maryland Law School on account of his race, he was accepted at all-black Howard University in Washington, D.C. At Howard, he studied under the tutelage of civil liberties lawyer Charles H. Houston and in 1933 graduated first in his class. In 1936, he joined the legal division of the NAACP, of which Houston was director, and two years later succeeded his mentor in the organization’s top legal post.

As the NAACP’s chief counsel from 1938 to 1961, he argued more than a dozen cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, successfully challenging racial segregation, most notably in public education. He won nearly all of these cases, including a groundbreaking victory in 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregation violated the equal rights clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and was thus illegal. The decision served as a great impetus for the civil rights movement and ultimately led to the abolishment of segregation in all public facilities and accommodations.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Marshall to the U.S. Court of Appeals, but his nomination was opposed by many Southern senators, and he was not confirmed until the following year. In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson appointed Marshall to be solicitor general of the United States. In this position, he again successfully argued cases before the Supreme Court, this time on behalf of the U.S. government.

On June 13, 1967, Johnson nominated Marshall to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark. Of his decision to appoint Marshall, Johnson said it was “the right thing to do, the right time to do it, the right man, and the right place.” After a heated debate, the Senate confirmed Marshall’s nomination by a vote of 69 to 11 on August 30. Marshall was officially sworn in to the nation’s highest court at the opening ceremony of the Supreme Court term on October 2.

During his 24 years on the high court, Associate Justice Marshall consistently challenged discrimination based on race or sex, opposed the death penalty, and vehemently defended affirmative action. He supported the rights of criminal defendants and defended the right to privacy. As appointments by a largely Republican White House changed the ideology of the Supreme Court, Marshall found his liberal views increasingly in the minority. He retired in 1991 because of declining health and died in 1993.

resource: history.com