Thursday, June 4, 2009

Notes from June 4 meeting

Below are notes from today's meeting, which was a good one, thanks everyone!

In attendance: Christy Nordstrom, Marshall Baker, Anne Engstrom, Anna Fahey, Dorothy Craig, Bruce Flory, Riley Morton, Catherine Carey, Yoram Bauman, Phil Mitchell.

* Anna Fahey (Communications Specialist from Sightline) shared with us public opinion research. (This material was sent out by Yoram via emai; Anna didn't want it posted on the web.) The Yale survey that Phil mentioned is here.

* Updates:
  • The op-ed is finished (!) and Todd Myers and Bruce Flory are going to submit it to the Seattle Times tomorrow; a nearly-final draft was also sent out via email to avoid putting it on the web.
  • The website is looking good but we need to work on the About Us page.
  • There hasn't been much change on the policy front, but here's an updated spreadsheet (carbonwa8.xls) that is less busy than the previous version.
  • On the legal front, Phil's got a contact who can hopefully help and Yoram is trying to set up a meeting with state constitutional law expert Hugh Spitzer.
  • On the outreach front, Yoram gave a talk at WWU and some students and faculty were supportive.
  • One piece of bad news is that signature-gathering pledges are only at 15,000; hopefully the op-ed piece &etc will help build momentum.
  • And of course there are lots of rumors and opinions about the Waxman-Markey, the WCI, etc. (Following Greg Mankiw, I recommend these pieces voting Yes by Robert Stavins and No by Martin Feldstein.) Our niche is to be ready as a "Plan C" alternative if these measures fail. (Some members of our group want them to fail and some don't, so our job as a group is to walk the fine line of what-if, and I think the op-ed does a great job of doing that.)
* Next meeting: Thursday July 2, 12-1pm, downtown.

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