ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail editorial@eatthestate.org.

ETS! for President!

I just want to say that I love this publication. Your 8 small pages are more informative than the Seattle Weekly's 100 or more or the Stranger's 100 or so! Maybe they are not trying to be informative. I love the fact that you and other small alternative publications (can I mention Widdershins) write and publish for the pure value of informing. Dare I say, that it is true and obvious, the biases that flavor the articles. That's part of what I love. Is it wrong to want to read a publication that one feels is sincere? When did truth become biased? Oh yeah... at the point where humans decided what to observe and what to write!!! I appreciate your blunt handling of local and national politics. Thanks for explaining why the Seattle Weekly was becoming so disappointing to open... I didn't realize what had happened to it.

I try to get my news from a variety of sources. No-news publications are plentiful with their generic, white bread, bland safe oatmeal approach. I do appreciate real news... true objective reporting... But is there any? Why do readers have to dig so hard to find that? Publications like Eat the State! are a treasure.

I tried to send you money online but the system wouldn't take my debit card. I will have to send a paper check to you. I want to support your continued publication. Thanks for your work.

--Melanie, via e-mail

This Town Ain't Big Enough For Two Strangers

I just read Geov Parrish's description of meltdown at the Seattle Weakly and agree whole-heartedly with him. Media consolidation by greedy business-suits, and its evil twin, corporate assault on net neutrality, are rapidly polluting our noosphere. I concluded during the "Stripper-gate" fiasco that the Weakly was no longer worth my attention. (Given the number of exotic dancer ads in SW, it's hard to figure why they got so exercised about strip club owners exercising the same "free speech" rights as Safeco, Weyerhauser and Boeing.) For now, I'll continue with E-T-S and The Stranger. But I would also propose that all progressives boycott SW and further, request that the businesses we support discontinue its distribution, thus expanding the market for good local journalism.

--Michael Epton, Seattle

Greenbacks vs. the Green Party

At the beginning of Geov Parrish's Oct. 21 appearance on Mind over Matters, he urged people to show up at the Seattle FCC hearings on Nov. 30, 2006.

Thinking it was an oversight, my partner and I sent an e-mail to Mike McCormick, the host of the show, about Aaron Dixon getting arrested for trying to be included in the senatorial debate at KING 5 television earlier in the week. After all, isn't the barring from a debate of a local good faith candidate of a recognized political party (the Greens) relevant to the monopolization of our communications channels? Dixon was not included in the debate because he did not meet "criteria," the main element of which was acknowledged by even the mainstream press to be the possession of one million dollars in his campaign chest.

When Mike read the e-mail on air, Geov's response was that he avoided talking about the Dixon incident for a reason. He said that Dixon's arrest was a "publicity stunt."

This dismissive labeling of an act that took some courage on Dixon's part and graphically pointed to the problems that the FCC hearings are all about, tells us a lot about Geov Parrish's view of things.

It is okay to go to a government-sponsored hearing and object in the abstract to corporate monopoly of our airwaves and print media. It is not okay to actually challenge the dangerous practices that this monopolization results in.

I guess the Selma-to-Montgomery march could have been looked at as a publicity stunt, too.

Maybe Geov should change the name of his publication to "Gum the State."

Linda Jansen, via e-mail

P.S. As more evidence that money played a huge role in Dixon's barring, here is part of a letter from Bill Moyer of The Backbone Campaign:

Democracy Through Exclusion? The Barring of Candidate Aaron Dixon from Millionaire Debates Brings Attention to Broken System

I watched the news tonight and saw the piece on the taping of the Senatorial debate, including Green Party candidate Aaron Dixon's forced exclusion and arrest. I do not know who sets the rules, but it strikes me as obscene that access to the debates is not relative to whether one is on the ballot, but whether one's campaign has a million dollars in the bank.