This week on “The Impact”:
Amid fears of a possible nuclear conflict involving the U.S. and North Korea we look at the implications for Seattle and other potential targets in Washington State.
“With every test Kim Jong Un moves closer to his stated goal of a preemptive nuclear strike capability against American cities,” – Admiral Harry Harris, Commander, U.S. Pacific Command.
We’ll also examine a state law that prevents emergency management agencies from developing evacuation or relocation plans for a potential nuclear strike.
State Emergency Management Director Robert Ezelle joins us to answer questions about the situation.
Next we cover the May Day destruction in Olympia from a protest turned violent. Find out how many people were arrested, and witness the shocking video of store windows being smashed and homeless residents squaring off against protestors hurling rocks & full cans at each other.
For our third segment we highlight the role of social media in state politics and the rules for state lawmakers.
“Social media has been an incredibly important tool to be able to communicate directly with my constituents,” – Sen. Joe Fain, R-Auburn. “It does create a number of ethical concerns based upon the way we have interpreted years and years of ethics law here at state government, particularly in the legislature. Whether or not you can have hashtags which are really interpreted as being links and hyperlinks by our ethics board and what types of hashtags can you have, which ones are too political and so it’s the whole mix of ethics and political law and all while we’re just trying to find a better way to communicate with the public.”
“I think this is a good step forward for us to know that legislators can have a legislative (Facebook) page, be clear about what can be posted on it, same with Twitter and then you know over the next 3 to 5 years we’ll all develop skills about how to do that in the right sort of way and get more effective at it.” – Rep. Laurie Jinkins, D-Tacoma. “Sometimes I just post questions and look at what the feedback is and that does help me to have a sense of what’s happening. I think on Twitter in particular you also get Twitter stalkers who just every time you post something, want to send back something very hostile and that’s frustrating, but you know that’s the way social media works now.”
Click here to watch “The Impact” – May 3rd, 2017