Week in Review: SPD, elections, and baseball

Bill Radke discusses the week’s news with political analyst and contributing columnist Joni Balter, Seattle Channel’s Brian Callanan, and KUOW’s Dyer Oxley.

On Tuesday, Seattle played host to Major League Baseball’s All-Star game, and several days of festivities leading up to it. The events were projected to generate round $50 million in revenue, although some businesses said that it ended up costing them money. Additionally, a homeless encampment sweep was conducted in an area near T-Mobile Park in the week leading up to the All-Star events, but mayor Bruce Harrell says that the timing of the sweep was unrelated to baseball. Who were the winners and losers this week?

This week it was reported that a break room at the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct contained a mock tombstone marking the death of a man who was killed in an exchange of gunfire with Seattle police. The body camera video that recoded the image of the tombstone also showed a “Trump 2020” flag hanging on the wall. In a statement, the department said it does “not know how that item ended up on storage shelving, we have no reason to believe it was placed as a ‘trophy’ or with any pejorative intent.” How does the SPD characterize this?

The Seattle Times just fired its newest editorial board member after one column. David Volodzko is new to Seattleand he wrote about seeing the Vladimir Lenin statue that's been in the Fremont neighborhood for 30 years. Volodsko wrote that his grandfather who escaped a Nazi concentration camp said that wasn't as bad as Russia under Lenin who was also a mass murderer and torturer. When some readers objected to his column, Volodsko went on Twitter and continued to compare the two dictators, writing "Hitler only targeted people he personally believed were harmful to society whereas Lenin targeted even those he himself did not believe were harmful in any way." Was the response by the Times the right one?

This week, the ballots went out for local August primary elections, ballot measures, tax levies and propositions. The Seattle City Council primary alone has more than 40 candidates. The statewide elections are not until next year, but Republican Dave Reichert announced his candidacy for Governor, likely making him the current GOP frontrunner in the race. What do we need to know about this election?

There's a new project to figure out where in Washington State are the least controversial places to build solar farms. One of the main goals is to avoid conflicts with farms or conservation lands. The initial maps didn’t include culturally sensitive information for tribes or information on tribal land. What is there to learn from past energy projects?