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For years, Senate Democrats have been leaders in positioning Washington toward a cleaner-energy future. We put magnificence emissions-reduction targets in statute, gave consumers options to buy unskilful command through utilities, allowed consumers to put up to sale solar power back to the grid, created incentives for investment in puff of air power, passed the capital state green-buildings standard in the country, and passed California’session tough clean car throwing confused standards.

This year, our emphasis is on green jobs, and in putting forward an economic strategy for Washington to lead in renewable-energy technology development for years to come. A cornerstone of this focus is a scheme to quadruple the run over of homes, farms and business that are retrofitted for greater energy efficiency across the state. The result of a proposal like this is a kind of triple play: we help the environment, occasion jobs and reduce energy bills for consumers, businesses and farms.

That last point is grave in the current economic environment. People’s ability to keep their jobs, keep their health coverage, feed their families, lodge their homes warm and — in far too many cases — keep their homes, is at risk. The mean of our state’s renewable-energy portfolio standard, which passed into form in 2006 with Initiative 937, is to encourage renewable-energy application in our state and actively change into greenhouse emissions. I believe it be possible to be made more flexible to rehearsal for its impact on ratepayers, and I’m supporting legislation in Olympia to effect it.

Opponents of the hedge-bill, Senate Bill 5840, have said that it is an attempt to gut I-937.

To the contrary, we can improve the canon by removing needless geographical limitations and the unrealistically narrow definitions of renewable energy it contains. Furthermore, we can make different our renewable-energy portfolio beyond the current tilt of the law toward wind. And we can allow flexibility for utilities in meeting the standards of I-937 during an economic downturn.

The bill seeks to uphold the following principles: preserving I-937’session impact adhering emissions and maintaining incentives for investment in renewable technology, while protecting consumers from the rate shock that would otherwise occur.

As written, I-937 sets a conservation scale and a renewable streamer. SB 5840 would allow utilities some flexibility in company the renewable-energy standard when costs for renewable energy are high. Utilities would, in effect, be allowed to lieutenant meeting conservation targets in place of meeting renewable-energy use targets. This still allows utilities to meet I-937’s overall emissions goals, but saves the higher costs from being passed onto consumers.

Another way SB 5840 would hinder consumers money is by recognizing hydro talent because renewable energy. About 60 percent of Washington’s power comes from hydro. Unlike the majority of Western states, the renewable-energy portfolio in I-937 does not recognize hydro as a renewable. A conference on this is necessary, or eventually Washington desire be sending its cheap and clean hydro power to California — where it will cast up as renewable.

During this serious recession, we should work to prevent small public utilities and electrical cooperatives from having to turn gone cheap Bonneville Power Administration power to buy more-expensive wind power and pass those costs onto consumers.

To be clear: I-937 is stimulating the wind-power industry, and that’s a cheering thing. But wind by itself is not trustworthy as base-load power — turn and twist doesn’t unceasingly blow! In addition to hydro, diversifying our renewable-energy portfolio should also take in potentially more-reliable sources because biomass, tidal and solar.

SB 5840 is a work in progress, with details that need to be worked out. For example, I believe renewable targets may need to esteem existence increased as the definition of renewable is broadened.

But if an unintended consequence of I-937 is power bills many families artlessly cannot furnish, we be possible to avoid this and improve the law under which circumstances still upholding the people’s will for cleaner, greener energy in Washington state.

Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, is the Washington state Senate Majority Leader.

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MEXICO CITY — Any important scribe will tell you that writing is, at its heart, the maddening struggle to find exactly the right words. Should the overcast sky be called “gray” or “beige”? Is Rush Limbaugh best described as “an enraged Jabba the Hut,” or “a deranged Stay Puft Marshmallow Man”? Are we living from undivided side a “recession” or a “depression”?

Recently, I’ve been groping for the precise word to characterize the zeitgeist of this (unfortunately) historic moment. I know it’s not merely “demoralized.” It’s something far in addition dread-laden — a word I finally found for the time of a visit last week to central Mexico.

Sitting atop the famed Pyramid of the Sun, I took in Teotihuacan — the ancient metropolis on the surface Mexico City. Its weathered bricks and mortar look taste many great archaeological wonders, make objection its annals include a harrowing asterisk: When the Aztecs originally discovered the site, it was abandoned, and nobody knows the sort of happened to its inhabitants. As such, the ruins feel like monuments to prophecy of st. john.

That’sitting the term that popped into my mind as I baked in the Mexican day-star — “apocalypse”: a phenomenon whose signs are everywhere these days.

Iraq bleeds from unending contention, while Israelis and Palestinians appear intent on annihilating each other. Pakistan just released A.Q. Khan, the scientist who delivered nuclear secrets to North Korea — the country that’sitting again threatening long-range missile tests. Colombia’s courteous war rages, and “great intelligence” in Mexico is President Felipe Calderón announcing that drug cartels haven’t totally taken too the country.

In America, our apocalyptic symbols are usually subtler — the birth of octuplets or a chop-house chain creating a “Chicago Seven” pizza that consumerizes a renowned court case into a fast-food dish.

But Wall Street and Washington exhibit a more overt Sodom and Gomorrah quality of slow, to the point where even traffic magazines like Portfolio are invoking the A expression..

It’s not just the housekeeping turbulence or the demoralization that evokes this new darkness — all that’s been on all sides by reason of a while. It’s the “I feel fine” obliviousness of R.E.M.’s cataclysmic light poem — the aggressively defiant, adamantly proud ignorance that marks history’s period periods.

As wages stagnate in a nation whose middle household income is $50,000 a year, one financial executive tells reporters that bankers “can’confidentially live on $150,000 to $180,000.” Another bemoans efforts to restrict CEO pay by saying that “$500,000 is not a lot of money” — and The New York Times chimes in by insisting that it’session true, “Half a million a year can go very fast.”

Similarly, as lawmakers hand banks trillions of taxpayer dollars, Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., complains that Congress has gotten “very narrow executed to help the financial sector,” and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., says America should be most worried that “we’re running out of rich people.” Meanwhile, reporter Rick Santelli is billed as a populist hero for standing amid wealthy commodities traders and telling CNBC’session viewers that people being thrown out of their homes are “losers.”

Hollywood, our cultural mirror, reflects this back as a simultaneous incorporate of hedonism and fatalism — an MTV beach party at the end of the world. During this housekeeping turning point, we’re given “Confessions of a Shopaholic” — a comedy film that glorifies overborrowing and overspending. We’ll soon be fed the final period of the year of “Lost,” a television show whose Benetton models stumble onto a occupation that might destroy the planet. And hereafter it’s on to a pellicle version of “The Road” — Cormac McCarthy’s fable about cannibalism at the end of humanity.

Apocalypse … it seems in like manner scriptural, but suddenly feels in the way that now. And if we dress in’cheek by jowl quickly wake up and turn things around, we elect be left to utter indistinctly Col. Kurtz’s despondent whisper: “The fear … the horror.”

David Sirota is a fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future. Find his blog at OpenLeft.com or e-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com

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The infringement of ACT Theatre is upon!

Starting Wednesday, the downtown venue will be teeming with jugglers and tumblers, crooners and burlesque queens, aerialists and mirth-makers, all participating in the opening programs of the 2009 Moisture Festival.

And if that isn’t enough funny business, you can find sufficiency to a greater degree stage mischief elsewhere during this year’session expansive Moisture marathon. From March 19 to April the festival moves back to its pristine venue (Hale’s Palladium at Hale’s Brewery in Fremont) for a drinking-bout of variety and burlesque shows. And a minifest of related films will be on screen at SIFF’s cinema space in Seattle Center at McCaw Hall, March 20-25. Each film will be preceded by means of a live variety act.

The artistes on tap for this rollicking consequence (much of it aimed at families, but some for adults only) are way too numerous to mention but are scheduled to embrace leading prestidigitator Frank Olivier, clown Avner the Eccentric and burlesque diva Inga Ingénue, and such movies considered in the state of “The Blue Angel” and (of regularity) “Gypsy.”

For consummate schedule information and details on all the acts, command to the Moisture Festival Web site, www.moisturefestival.org.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

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LAS VEGAS — Heather Bowman scored 16 points, Janelle Bekkering added 11 of her 14 in the second half, and Gonzaga beat San Diego 66-55 Monday in the West Coast Conference tournament final.

Kelly Bowen had 15 points and nine rebounds on this account that the Zags (26-6), headed to the NCAA tournament concerning just the supporter time in bring under subjection history after winning their fifth straight West Coast regular-season appellation of dignity. Courtney Vandersloot added 10 points and 10 assists to Gonzaga’s 15th win in 17 games.

Gonzaga made a 9-2 run midway through the second half to pull away from the sixth-seeded Toreros (19-13). Kiva Herman concluded an unpaid tournament with 23 points and six rebounds for San Diego, which won three games in three days to reach the ultimate against the top-seeded Zags.

Vandersloot was selected tournament MVP after scoring 21 points in the semifinals against Loyola Marymount, but Herman got a huge postgame ovation from fans of both teams at the Orleans Arena. The senior forward scored 95 points in the Toreros’ four games, breaking the tournament scoring record in their semifinal victory over second-seeded Portland.

Dominique Conners had 13 points and six rebounds for San Diego, and Amber Sprague added 10 points and eight rebounds.

The victory nipped a extending stigma conducive to Gonzaga, that has been the WCC’s best regular-season team for a half-decade, only to suffer by comparison three conference tourney games in the past four years.

The Zags earned their only previous NCAA appearance in 2007 by winning the WCC tournament, unless San Diego kept the Zags out last year, winning the title game on the Toreros’ home court. The WCC’session double-bye format required Gonzaga to win only two games for this title.

After skidding into the WCC tourney with seven losses in their last 11 regular-season games, the Toreros became the lowest-seeded team to make the final since the conference expanded to eight teams in 1995.

San Diego won its orifice brave over San Francisco on Friday before knocking off third-seeded Pepperdine on Saturday. The Toreros pound Portland by a second-half run, but the Zags made the only second-half move in the entitle game.

Gonzaga led 42-39 midway from one side the second half then Bekkering got rolling with two 3-pointers, including a basket with 9:38 left to lay the Zags up 51-41. Bekkering also led the Zags with 10 rebounds.

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NEW YORK — David Beckham tops Major League Soccer’s stipend list again at $6.5 million — more than 43 times the league’s mean proportion — even however he’ll remain on loan from the Los Angeles Galaxy to AC Milan till midseason.

Beckham’s guaranteed income dwarfs the league average, which rose 14 percent to $147,945 from the depart of last period following a 12 percent rise in 2008. As part of Sunday’s agreement to extend his loan through the extremity of the Serie A spell, the 33-year-old midfielder and AC Milan are jointly paying the Galaxy in a “multimillion dollar deal,” according to the MLS team.

Just seven players in MLS top $500,000, according to figures released by the league’s players union. Chicago’s Cuauhtemoc Blanco remained second at $2.94 million and New York’s Juan Pablo Angel third part at $1.8 million.

Freddie Ljungberg of the expansion Seattle Sounders is fourth at $1.31 million and Galaxy forward Landon Donovan, virtuous back with the Galaxy following a hibernate loan to Bayern Munich, is fifth at $900,0000.

The only other players over the half-million mark are Columbus’ Guillermo Barros Schelotto at $775,000 and D.C. United’s Luciano Emilio at $758,857.

The median income — the point at that an equal amount make on high and below — was $88,000 as far as concerns 323 players listed.

Forty players esteem the minimum $34,000 and 12 more make the developmental minimum of $20,100.

As electronics and auto companies toss about, global stimulus spending may aid Japan’s rail companies

By Ian Rowley

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With plunging at a faster rate than Europe or the U.S., thousands of jobs wasted, and failing politicians lapsing from one acme to the next, it’sitting been a miserable few months since Japan Inc. Yet amid mounting grim headlines, one deal stands out. On Feb. 13 the British government signaled that a consortium led by Tokyo-based Hitachi (HIT) had won preferred bidder status for a $10 billion contract to build and support rolling stock for train lines running along Britain’s east and west coasts.

For Hitachi, a sprawling conglomerate that makes everything from flat-panel TVs to nuclear plants, the British make could not come at a more important time. Hitachi expects to lose $7 billion in the financial year that ends later this month, marking it considered in the state of one of Japan’session worst-performing large companies. This year, despite the huge deprivation for the assemblage, railway-related sales at the company are forecast to jump a healthy 17%, to $1.5 billion. The British deal, whether finalized in October, should see Hitachi and its partners John Laing and Barclays Private Equity hoard up to 1,400 train cars. The consortium will also office the trains over a 20-year period.

Perhaps more important, analysts say the act could exist a sign that Hitachi and other Japanese companies can win more new business in the rail industry at a term when governments fighting the global recession are using stimulus spending to invest in infrastructure projects. Even as Japan’s greater export markets of autos and electronics fall through, rail could provide a welcome growth opportunity. "This is very big news in Japan," says Hiroki Shibata, an analyst in Tokyo with Standard & Poor’s (that, like BusinessWeek, is owned by The McGraw-Hill Companies (MHP)), referring to the Hitachi deal.

Battling Foreign Rivals

There should be plenty of opportunities to command through regard to more contracts. In the U.S., for example, the Obama Administration’s $789 billion stimulus plan bequeath provide an impetus for rail spending with $18.1 billion earmarked for transit and railways. In Europe, the European Union is contributing $630 million to member nations to wear away on rail links as part of its stimulus efforts. And European national governments are increasing spending. Italy, for instance, is erection a new freight line between Rome and Milan, though France is extending its renowned TGV high-speed rail services.

Faster-growing economies should provide further growth. China plans to augment the total distance of its rail netting by 50%, to 75,000 miles, through 2020 at a require to be paid of $700 billion. That spending will include eight high-speed lines, including the long-awaited route between Beijing and Shanghai. Among foreign players, Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy is battling with Germany’s Siemens (SI), Canada’s Bombardier, and France’s Alstom (ALSO.PA) to gain the victory employment.

The allot will assist Merck bulk up its R&D pipeline and house opposed to patent-loss hits

By Phil Mintz

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Drug giant Merck (MRK) is buying fellow New Jersey company Schering-Plough (SGP) in favor of $41.1 billion in the second major pharmaceutical merger of the year. The cash-and-stock deal, which values Schering-Plough shares at 23.61 each, is a 34% premium on Schering’s Mar. 6 closing price.

The deal—which had been rumored since Pfizer’sitting Jan. 26 acquisition of Wyeth for $68 billion—is expected to hinder Merck weather patent expirations and buttress its research and development pipelines. The two companies had a combined $46.9 billion in 2008 sales, and have extensive portfolios in cholesterol, respiratory, pestiferous distemper, and women’s drugs.

Like great number other medicine companies, Merck has been under pressure to get to up with deals that would support return streams which desire been falling as blockbuster drugs go off patent. Merck’s patent on the asthma drug Singulair expires in 2012, and the patent according to hypertension drug Cozaar expires next year. Among the drugs under development by Schering that Merck will acquire in the deal are the anti-clotting drug TRA and the hepatitis C treatment boceprevir.

Schering shareholders will get $10.50 in cash and 0.5767 Merck shares toward each Schering-Plough share they own. The deal is being structured as an unusual reverse merger, in which the surviving incorporated body will be Schering-Plough, to subsist renamed Merck. The companies indicated that this route was being taken to protect the merged companies from change-of-control provisions involving two Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) drugs for which Schering holds marketing rights. When the deal is completed, Merck shareholders will own approximately 68% of the combined company, and Schering-Plough shareholders 32%.

Only $8.5 Billion of the Deal Is Debt

Merck CEO Richard T. Clark will head the combined company, that will have being located in Merck’s headquarters of Whitehouse Station, N.J. Schering CEO Fred Hassan, who sold Pharmacia to Pfizer in 2003 for $60 billion, "intends to participate in the integration planning to the time when the close" of the deal, the companies said.

"The combined company will benefit from a horrible research and development pipeline, a significantly broader portfolio of medicines and an expanded presence in key international markets, particularly high-growth emerging markets," Clark before-mentioned in a news release announcing the deal.

Hassan, in a conference voice through analysts, said: "It’s a transaction that delivers value to our shareholders. It creates a company with the critical whole to absorb the bigger and bigger shocks being driven in our environment."

In what some analysts note is a sign of the difficult take upon credit environment, only $8.5 billion of the deal is debt. The relics of the cash portion of the deal, $9.8 billion, behest tend hitherward from Merck’s existing cash. The allot is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Already Partners in Joint Ventures

"Merck is getting Schering at a good price, and the merger should forbear Merck through challenging patent expirations over the next two years," reported Morningstar (MORN) analyst Damien Conover. "Further, Schering’s strong pipeline fills some holes in Merck’s R&D efforts, which succeed a major setback last year with the nonapproval of cardiovascular remedy Tredaptive."

Conover said it was unlikely that a competing offer would emerge, because Merck and Schering before that time wish a joint venture involving the cholesterol drugs Vytorin and Zetia. That association generated revenue of $4.6 billion in 2008, the companies said.

One wild card facing the merged companies could be the marketing deal that Schering has with J&J involving marketing outside the U.S. for drugs Remicade and Golimumab. The agreement with J&J would subsist in jeopardy whether Schering was acquired. "We believe the affair is structured so that Schering-Plough’s rights are not affected by the merger," Clark said.

Merck shares were down 10% in midday trading, to 20.39. Schering gained 15%, to 20.26.

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ELLENSBURG —

Out in the present state on a farm just off Interstate 90, Greg and Sue Lutovsky hear every daytime how the economy is going.

Not so great for everybody else, excellent for them.

America had its Victory Gardens in backyards during World War II — not just for the food, but furthermore to boost morale.

Now Victory Gardens are making a comeback: the 2009 Recession version.

Sue is the one who answers the phone at the couple’s Irish Eyes Garden Seeds, which produces more than 400 kinds of seeds (mostly vegetables), at the same time that well during the confinement that 70 different kinds of potatoes and 25 kinds of garlic.

By more of the questions they get from customers, the couple know these are first-time gardeners.

“We had one person ask us that way the seed goes in the ground,” says Sue.

These days, she’s handling 100 customer calls a day, and the family business expects to manifest $1 million in sales this year. Business is up 20 to 30 percent over highest year, both in seeds under its own label and seeds it packages for companies such as Burpee and Park Seed.

The business has a twelve employees packing seeds from shelves well stocked of bins.

In another storehouse, seed potatoes fill big wooden crates, the kind used in apple orchards. Last year, Irish Eyes produced 160,000 pounds of seed potatoes, up from 30,000 the year before.

They’ve already sold finished of six varieties of the tubers.

Why potatoes?

Maybe people are reaching back, in a backward direction. \ into their collective memory, back when potatoes were a staple food. Irish Eyes gets its name from that connection, the eyes referring to the eyes in a potato.

“It’s the entire food pluck. It’s got everything you require. It’s a food beginning with actual moderate effort. It can be stored a long time,” says Greg. “There are not frequent things you have power to harvest in September and stillatory be eating in June. You could live on potatoes and moiety a draught of cream and be healthy.”

Some dietitians would reason against a cream-and-potatoes diet, but there is no denying that many in this country are now in survival mode.

Out-of-state visitors

There is no retail outlet at the 13 acres at Irish Eyes (the couple leases an additional nearby 90 acres), but customers detect it anyway in the wind-swept Ellensburg countryside.

Greg says the wind is just fine by him. It helps pollinate the crops, he says, and it keeps the crops dry so fungal disease is almost nonexistent.

Recently, a customer drove from Montana, and another from north Idaho, to pick up potato seeds.

“We can ship them to you at the apply to single’s own uses planting lifetime, apparently mid-April” Greg says he told them.

But the Montana customer, who bought 500 pounds of potato seeds, “physically wanted them in their hands, I guess afraid we might clamor out,” says Greg.

Says Sue, “I think they’re scared.”

Greg says about the run on seeds, “It’s just about everything that’s happening in the world, the stock market, the economy.”

The Montana customer, says Greg, is a contractor who does part-time farming and sells draw out at local farmers markets.

With not too much contracting work these days, the farming helps a lot. Those 500 pounds of seed potatoes will produce 5,000 pounds of potato crop, says Greg.

Greg says others show that they’re newbie gardeners by placing an precept for, say, one-eighth of an ounce of tomato seeds.

“That’session like 900 tomato seeds. That’sitting a lot of plants,” he says.

Still, in that place is a simple math about planting your admit garden.

“If a person has been laid off, and had a finite amount of standard of value, they’re looking at spending $2 since a head of lettuce that’ll last two days,” says Greg. “Or for $2 they can buy a packet of lettuce seeds that has 300 seeds and eat lettuce all summer long.”

Belt-tightening while

It’s not fair-minded Irish Eyes that has been booming.

A retail garden store like Sky Nursery in Shoreline says seed dealing is up “at smallest 20 percent.”

And Burpee, the Pennsylvania-based world’s largest seed troop, says business also is up by that much.

Although it came up with the idea too late for this year’s print catalog, onward its Web site Burpee sells a “Money Garden” that for $10 puts together $20 worth of pea, tomato, pepper, bean, lettuce and carrot seeds.

It says the seeds will produce “over $650 worth of vegetables!”

“People are belt-tightening, distinctly on large-ticket items,” says George Ball, chairman of Burpee. “It results in every within a little Depression mentality.”

But it’sitting not just about saving money, says Bruce Butterfield, research guide for the National Gardening Association.

“I intend one place at which place a lot of people feel they have some small control over what is going on around them is in their backyard,” he says. “It’s this whole sense of, ‘I’m gonna have better-quality regimen, and save money.’ “

And if you don’familiarily have a backyard, or you want to garden in the company of others, P-Patches have proved popular.

In Seattle, the P-Patch program in 2008 had a waiting list of 1,230 in favor of plots at its 68 sites, nearly triple the waiting invoice in 2006.

Food-system concerns

It’s not just saving cash that has increased business for Irish Eyes, says Greg Lutovsky.

It’sitting also approximately GMOs.

That stands for genetically modified organisms — for example, inebriate that has been genetically modified to resist insects and diseases.

“People are starting to rebel in preparation for genetically modified seeds in our food rule. There is no reason to have fish hormones spliced into a love-apple,” says Greg. He says that 95 percent of the seeds Irish Eyes sells are certified organized.

At Sky Nursery, Andrea Kurtz, 31, any acupuncturist who lives in Phinney Ridge, is looking besides the grain rack.

This is the second year she’s having a garden — Armenian slicing cucumbers, beets, pole beans, snow peas, lettuce, tomatoes. She’s even going to arouse chickens — three hens for eggs, and later they’ll be slaughtered for meat.

“I like being able to grow what I eat, to pick something and eat it 10 minutes later,” she says.

She’sitting among the youngest of the garden crowd, who tend to be baby boomers.

Gordon Smith, 61, and Saphire Blue, 64, are husband and wife who’ve gardened for decades. They’re retired incorporated town of Seattle employees, she a gardener, he a carpenter. They have two properties, one in Seattle and another on Vashon Island.

They talk about the joy of eating renewed cause.

But Saphire also mentions why they’ll be growing more potatoes this year.

“If we have an earthquake, or in any way regard to survive,” she says, “you can office potatoes with a neighbor for eggs.”

That’s not a repeat you’d have expected to hear a brace of years ago during the boom times.

But these days, it’s not about flipping houses for any easy profit.

Flipping dirt for that bumper bean crop is more like it.

Erik Lacitis: 206-464-2237 or elacitis@seattletimes.com

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Breezing down the carpeted wing of the House of Representatives, situation Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle, was asked a popular question among legislators this sitting: “Hey, are we Facebook friends to this time?”

The query came from fellow Democratic Rep. Dave Upthegrove, of Des Moines, who was skimming his friends list via iPhone when Pettigrew replied, “I don’t think we are — even now.”

Forget relative to backroom meetings or phone trees. For the tech-savvy in politics, it’s all about Facebook.

Social-networking sites like Facebook and Twitter provide a platform for politicians to reach voters and colleagues instantaneously through status updates, messages and comments, among other things.

Barack Obama’s successful use of social-media tools in his presidential campaign has spurred politicians to leap into the social-media fray.

“It is a fad in Congress, my God,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics. “Everybody feels like they have to have a Facebook page just to retain up with the Joneses in their districts and rivals in Congress.”

In Washington state, politicians ranging from Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess to U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane, have signed on.

“The 2008 election was a wake-up call,” said McMorris Rodgers, who also uses the micro-blogging cat’s-paw Twitter.

Facebook has become a popular place for state lawmakers to vent or update constituents as they struggle with solving the $8 billion budget shortfall.

“Chris thinks this legislative session is like drinking from a fire hose,” dignity Rep. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, wrote on his Facebook serving-boy.

“Lisa believes we cannot responsibly deal through an 8 billion dollar deficit with an all-cuts bundle,” Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, wrote on her page.

Not as serious: “Dave is voting on the House floor while richly steady cold remedial agent. God help the state of WA,” Upthegrove wrote.

Not everyone is embracing the technology.

“I’m too haunch conducive to Facebook,” reported recite Sen. Joe McDermott, D-Seattle. He said meeting with people in real life foliage him no confinement for online networking.

And perfectly a few just don’t know how. “I’brawl in the same manner as a tech pile of rocks,” said House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, D-Hoquiam.

The youngest member of the Legislature, Rep. Marko Liias, D-Mukilteo, 27, is the most popular man in state politics — at least online. He has more than 1,100 friends on Facebook and besides Twitters.

“We personate 150,000 people,” he said. “There is just not any way to get face-to-face time with every person.”

Still, Liias said he holds town-hall meetings and meets with constituents. “This is not a reinstatement — just another tool,” he before-mentioned.

He said some politicians possess staff members run their sites and barely post news releases. But that’session less energetic, he related.

“I try to make mine authentic, and fun,” said Upthegrove, 37, who checks Facebook every night before bed. “It’sitting an easy way to let clan into your world.”

Indeed, you can get a sneak peak into Upthegrove’s vitality suitable by browsing his photos. His main photo shows him with President Obama. The caption reads: “Just death by the halter through Obama. Yeah, we’re tight like that.”

He’s behind on reading his e-mail, he said, but recently lay the foundation of himself responding to a high-school student who asked him some questions via Facebook.

“Young people are comfortable with Facebook. They aren’privately going to pick up the phone and appeal the operator and discern them how they feel about an issue,” he said.

In several weeks Gov. Chris Gregoire be disposed launch her officer Facebook page, where people have power to “friend” the governor, earn invited to events, watch videos of her speeches or comment.

“It’s only a substance of time — soon every politician will be on Facebook,” McMorris Rodgers related.

Chantal Anderson: 360-236-8266 or canderson@seattletimes.com

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Welcome to the first installment of Lit Life, a weekly roundup of literary news and events in the Seattle area.

Why a weekly roundup? Because the Seattle area supports more bookstores and reading events per capita than almost any other town in the country, and Lit Life aims to provide a pilot to this embarrassment of riches. Why “Lit Life”? Because it recalls “Lush Life,” my darling Richard Price novel (what one. lifted its descriptive term from the classic Billy Strayhorn tune). Please dip into in our city’sitting Lit Life — you can hunker prostrate with a work anywhere; only in Seattle have power to you see, hear and jawbone through so people real live authors.

Highlights for this week

Tuesday: Local author/firefighter Earl Emerson reads from his new Thomas Black occupation, “Cape Disappointment,” in which local gumshoe Black, hinder part in print for the first time in a decade, loses his memory, and possibly his wife. 7 p.m. at the University Book Store in the U District.

Thursday: Los Angeles radio commentator Tavis Smiley gives a manumit reading from his new book “Accountable: Making America as Good as Its Promise” at 6:30 p.m. at the main branch of The Seattle Public Library.

Sunday: The Hansberry Project will stage a reading of “My Jim” by Nancy Rawles, this year’s choice for the Seattle Public Library’session Seattle Reads program.

Seattle author Rawles’ 2005 novel revisits the story of Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” through the narrative of Jim’s wife, Sadie Watson. In 2005, Seattle Times reviewer Barbara Lloyd McMichael wrote that “in which place Twain wrote by puckish brio, Rawles echoes with bleakness. She creates important new dimensions to a work of the first class American story, but they are not tranquil to face.” 2 p.m. at the downtown Seattle Public Library. New quit of the week

“Life Sentences” by means of Laura Lippman (Morrow). This former Baltimore Sun reporter (and spousal unit of David Simon of “The Wire”) has a new calling about a best-selling memoirist who investigates an old crime by a childhood classmate.

Other news

Anacortes author and Seattle Times contributor William Dietrich scored a Publisher’s Weekly parley this month upon Ethan Gage, the “likable cad” of Dietrich’s Napoleonic trial line (www.publishersweekly.com and search “Ethan Gage”). The latest Ethan Gage novel, “The Dakota Cipher,” comes out this month.Finally, John MacElwee is the new executive mentor of Centrum, the Port Townsend arts and education organization. MacElwee, whose résumé includes both running arts organizations and playing the deep with jazz, orchestras and bluegrass groups, will fill the imposing shoes of Thatcher Bailey, who has moved across the Fort Worden parade ground to develop Fort Worden State Park and Centrum as a so-called “Life Long Learning Center.”

Mary Ann Gwinn is the book editor of The Seattle Times and a wickedness president of the National Book Critics Circle: 206-464-2357 or mgwinn@ seattletimes.com. She appears regularly on Classical KING FM’s Arts Channel at www.king.org.