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Saturday, June 30th, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 05:30:05 am
I've never met Lacey Crichton, 11, who lives in Spanaway and informs me her birthday is on Oct. 9. But I like her spunk. She is an aspiring writer and artist and not at all shy about looking for work. She sent me a four-page sampling, on school notebook paper, of her drawings and a short story. "I L-O-V-E to write and read!" she wrote. "I think if you like my work 20 dollars a week will be good." I do think her work is just about the best I've ever seen for an 11-year-old. But it's not quite we need in the newspaper. If Lacey keeps at it, though, she may well be the next Garry Trudeau.
Categories: How we work
• 4 comments
Friday, June 29th, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 06:06:36 pm
Saturday: Sunday: Our verdict on Charlie Milligan's handsome settlement: It's another example of poor performance by a weak school board. The latest warning on imports from China targets seafood. When is China going to learn that nothing wrecks business like allowing contaminated and crummy products to go overseas. Sunday's Insight cover features the first installment of a week-long, editorial-page series celebrating the First Amendment. Chief editorial writer Pat O'Callahan starts off with an essay on the significance of the amendment, which spells out the freedom of religion, speech, assembly, petition and the press. On Monday through Friday, we'll examine instances involving South Sound residents who exercised those rights. On Monday, editorial writer Kim Bradford focuses on freedom of religion in the case of a Muslim woman who was ordered to remove her head covering in a Tacoma courtroom.
Categories: What's coming
Posted by David Seago @ 05:49:58 pm
Some of our online readers have been unable to add comments to this blog. The reason is a software glitch that allows you to comment only if you have logged in as a registered user of The News Tribune's website. We hope to fix this eventually, but we're at the mercy of the technogeeks. You can register at www.thenewstribune.com.
Categories: How we work
Posted by David Seago @ 04:01:03 pm
The latest population stats released by the state (TNT story) show Tacoma's No. 3 again, just 1,200 souls behind Spokane. But Spokane cheated. Randy Lewis, Tacoma's loyal government relations guy (translation: lobbyist) issued a memo pointing out that Spokane edged out the City of Destiny only because it completed a large annexation in 2005. Since 2000, Spokane has added 1,469 residents by annexation; Tacoma, only three. Drop those out, and Tacoma would be No. 2 with 201,697 bodies, 1,266 ahead of Spokane. So Tacoma grew the honest way: through births and in-migration. Other notes from Randy:
Categories: Taking notice
• 5 comments
Thursday, June 28th, 2007
Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 04:02:37 pm
Speaking of Patty Murray (see Dave Seago's posting below), she or whoever writes her press releases has an interesting notion of where federal appropriations come from. Here's how her two latest releases begin:
Murray provided that $450,000? And the $90 million, too? I had no idea the woman was so wealthy. Either that, or the taxpayers actually provided the money, and the senator used her good offices to help send it our way. If so, a little more humility would be in order.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 02:40:30 pm
Here's the headline on a press release just in from U.S. Sen. Patty Murray's office: Murray Provides $800,000 to Establish a National Meth Center in Pierce County Does this make you glad? Says Murray:
Any help in beating the meth scourge is welcome. But being known as the home of the national meth center isn't exactly great buzz.
Categories: Taking notice
• 6 comments
Posted by David Seago @ 02:09:15 pm
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision against Seattle’s use of a race-based “tiebreaker” in school assignments may be colorblind, but it’s also history-blind, failing to acknowledge that race-conscious remedies are sometimes needed for generations of race-based injustice. We can understand the coolness of the iPod. But is Apple’s ballyhooed iPhone really $500 worth of cool? About our editorials:
Categories: What's coming
Posted by David Seago @ 09:50:30 am
Alicia Lawver gets a double-header today. She's part of the crew reviving First Night, downtown Tacoma's New Year's Eve festival, from near-extinction. I asked her for a First Night update.  Mini-editorial: First Night has been a great, family-friendly public event for people who want to get festive without getting boozy. Volunteers put in a lot of work planning it and raising funds so others can enjoy it. If you can give a few bucks or more, please chip in.
Categories: How we work
Posted by David Seago @ 09:14:23 am
Bremerton's population fell 3.9 percent from 2000 to 2007, according the new population stats I posted on the blog below. (today's news article here). Which prompted me to remark that this was surely a sign of a "distressed town. Tacoman Alicia Lawver, a big First Night booster and gardening advocate, rises to defend Bremerton's honor.
Categories: Taking notice, Editorial cartoons
Posted by David Seago @ 06:37:56 am
A couple weeks ago I put up for grabs here a review copy of a new sex-and-divorce book by UW sociologist Pepper Schwartz. A reader from Auburn snagged it. Here's another that came in the mail. Sorry, no sex in this one. it's "Federal Preemption: States' Powers, National Interests," edited by Richard A. Epstein and Michael S. Greve. If you want to study it, or just need a bedtime sleeping aid, email me at david.seago@thenewstribune.com. I'll mail it or deliver it. Update:Book's gone – to a reader in Tacoma.
Categories: How we work
Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 06:37:37 am
Fircrest is known far and wide as a speed trap, but we express sympathy and solidarity with it in an editorial today. Every time I drive through the town, I wonder if it's heaven. I don't mean the real heaven, but the paradise Ray Bradbury described in his great science fiction story, "Mars is Heaven." Plot: Spaceship from Earth lands on Mars. Crew looks out and is startled to see the quintessential American small town – populated by their own dead parents, brothers, sisters, friends. They think they've found heaven, and they rush out – only to be done in by the Martians who've been using their telepathic powers to play with the earthlings' minds. I'm not suggesting that Fircrest is a unearthly specter devised by aliens to lure visitors to their deaths. Just that it is so preternaturally perfect – with its parks teeming with children, its tidy green lawns, its idyllic middle-American aura, its many chain-saw bears – that it could fool the wariest spaceman.
Categories: Editorial outtakes
Posted by David Seago @ 05:22:42 am
Here at the opinionaters blog, we love to share. So here, fresh from the computer of TNT political editor Hunter George, are the latest state stats on city and county population. Sorry for the sloppy formatting, but hey, I've got work to do. The growth numbers that stand out at first glance are in Bonney Lake, DuPont, Fife and overall for Pierce County. Serious growth there. And that negative rate in Bremerton is a sign of a distressed town. City 2000 2007 Change
Categories: Taking notice
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 04:17:12 pm
Washington’s U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks can’t dish out the pork like House barons of old, but his first Interior Appropriations spending bill shows he can do much to help national parks and the environment. We haven’t figured out exactly why Fircrest seems to be the only place in the universe where where the actual speed limits exactly match the numbers on the signs. But nobody has a right to complain. We all drive constantly calculating how fast we can really go without getting nailed. Would everybody be happier if the de facto speed limits – the “cushion” – were also the legal limits – and strictly enforced? About our editorials:
Categories: What's coming
Posted by Cheryl Tucker @ 01:59:07 pm
I got a note from local gastronome Craig Miller, whom I did a story on eons ago when I was a feature writer. (Something on game cookery, as I recall.) Miller – who has a food-and-wine blog worth checking out – says this about himself:
Miller has a suggestion that incorporates Tacoma history, tourism and food.
I found the idea intriguing and told Craig I'd throw out the suggestion and see if anyone catches it. Readers?
Categories: Taking notice
• 7 comments
Posted by Cheryl Tucker @ 01:57:54 pm
 Now that the weather's getting nicer, here's some advice to anyone with a car sun roof: Close it if you're parking outside. Otherwise you might get a rude surprise when you return to your car. One of our advertising sales people learned that the hard way. When she got to her car in the TNT parking lot today, a crow was flapping around inside – getting into stuff and leaving stuff, if you know what I mean. It had flown in through her open sun roof. She got it out by opening all the doors and shooing it.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 11:24:34 am
This just in from Pierce County Councilman Calvin Goings:
One idea that often comes up is tying elected officials' pay to the cost-of-living index. Here's an opinion from the state auditor that says that is unconstitutional in Washington.
Categories: Taking notice
• 1 comment
Posted by David Seago @ 10:02:38 am
Now for a serious topic ...  Documentary maker Michael Moore’s (pictured) latest, “Sicko,” is getting a huge amount of buzz for its look at American anxieties about health care. Even some conservative critics offered positive reviews. (It opens at Tacoma's Grand Cinema on July 3.) But a prominent British-American journalist, Clive Crook, writes that Moore’s depiction of European health care systems as superior alternatives is off the mark. There’s plenty of grumbling in European nations about their systems. Some of the articles at Foreign Policy's website are free, but Crook's is one of the subscription-only articles. But here are the highlights of Crook's assertions about Eurocare:
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 09:38:49 am
Here’s a truly bad idea: staging an election debate between Tacoma City Council candidates Julie Anderson and Will Baker. Charles “Kelly” Creso urges holding one semi-facetiously (I think) in the latest version of his e-mail newsletter headlined “Breaking Tacoma Election News.” This isn’t breaking news; it ain’t news at all if you’re making it up. Anyway, Creso, a real estate investor and art gallery owner who ran unsuccessfully against Councilman Mike Lonergan in 2005, checked around to see whether Baker is still under a court order forbidding him to come anywhere near City Council members. Turns out that at least two orders to that effect have expired, but Baker faces another court hearing July 9 at which an order could be reinstated. Baker, who calls himself “the cat who won’t cop out when there’s danger all about,” managed to get the state GOP to put him on the ballot in 2004 as the sole candidate opposing state Auditor Brian Sonntag – much to the chagrin of party officials when they learned about Baker’s – shall we say – colorful history. Baker is Anderson’s only opponent as she seeks a second term on the council. Her re-election bid is assured. Correction: Robert "The Traveler" Hill also filed against Anderson. We've been unable to contact him for an endorsement interview.
Categories: Taking notice
• 1 comment
Posted by David Seago @ 06:26:54 am
A tip of the hat to Paul Ellis at the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce for reporting that demolition has begun for construction of the new assembly hall at the University of Washington Tacoma. The building will rise in the spot now known as the Dawg Shed, the drafty open space behind a false front on Pacific Avenue. Paul has nice links and a photo on his downtown Tacoma blog. Check it out.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 05:25:39 am
Should parking meters return to downtown Tacoma? The answer is yes, according to a draft report from a downtown parking advisory committee for the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce. But only in a few places where demand for on-street parking is high. And don’t put revenue from meters – or pay stations – in the city’s general fund; instead, use it to enhance the areas near the meters. Or maybe to help fund streetcars. And the biggie: Get rid of rules requiring that off-street parking be included in new downtown construction projects. The current thinking among urban planners is that costly off-street parking requirements discourage development and limit the density that encourages the use of transit. No groans or cheering just yet: The draft is still being circulated for approval by the chamber advisory group. And it will only part of the feedback City Manager Eric Anderson is collecting as he prepares a preliminary downtown parking-and-transit proposal to give the City Council in August. Read on for what I think is the most interesting section of the draft report.
Categories: Taking notice
• 1 comment
Tuesday, June 26th, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 06:17:10 pm
Here you get news before it becomes news. If you're a builder in Pierce County, going to get a county building permit is worse than going for a root canal. The lobby at the county's development center is where builders go to wait ... and wait....and wait. Which is why there's a lot of heat on the Planning and Land Use department to cut down the interminable wait time at its permit counter. It's already been the subject of three performance audit reports. The latest "Lobby Wait Study" just arrived – mailed to me anonymously from the County Council offfice. It says PALS is doing much better, but it's still short of meeting its goal of serving 95 percent of its customers within 20 minutes. That target for information requests is met only 18 percent of the time. For taking permit applications, the 20-minute target is met only 67 percent of the time. One problem: The study says PALS staff is now focusing on speed at the expense of good customer service. About what you might expect under the cirumstances. The wait-time issue is significant because, among other things, Councilman Calvin Goings, running for the executive's office in 2008, has vowed to fire PALS Director Chuck Kleeberg if he's elected.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by Cheryl Tucker @ 01:19:53 pm
With all the hoopla over the opening of Chambers Bay Golf Course, another golf course just down the way is opening this week. I only learned about it overhearing my dad and a friend of his talking about wanting to play it. The Home Course, built by Weyerhaeuser in its planned community in DuPont, is not a links-style course like Chambers Bay. But from looking at the Web site photo gallery, it has some great Puget Sound views – and much cheaper greens fees. It's owned by the Washington State Golf Association and Pacific Northwest Golf Association. It will eventually house the offices of the WSGA, PNGA and other golf organization activities in the Northwest. The Home Course is giving away a foursome of golf every month. Click here to enter. Good luck trying to make a reservation. I called the phone numbers listed on the Web site several times and only got busy signals. Compare that to Chambers Bay, which has an easy, online way to reserve tee times.
Categories: Taking notice
• 1 comment
Posted by David Seago @ 11:36:44 am
The future of Tacoma’s Broadway Center looks hugely better than it did two years ago. The difference: a city financial commitment, a successful fund drive, a reorganization of Broadway Center management, and last but not least, the hiring of a responsive and energetic executive director, David Fischer. The richer and broader selection of shows for the upcoming seasons reflects the center’s new direction. An investigative report obtained by The News Tribune shows more clearly that a Gig High School dean of students acted inappropriately when he copied a school security tape of two girls kissing and took it to his home, where he showed it to his neighbors, parents of one of the girls. The Peninsula district does need a clear policy on the purpose and use of security cameras, but the dean showed poor judgment in any case. About our editorials:
Categories: What's coming
• 2 comments
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 06:02:02 pm
Cheryl Stephani - the very nice woman who runs the Children's Administration of the Department of Social and Health Services – called today to set me straight. The Children's Administration DOES train its social workers to recognize child abuse, she said. We'd done an editorial Sunday on DSHS' failure to spot the torture a young girl had endured for years at the hands of her foster mother; Stephani was reacting to an admittedly sarcastic remark at the end of it: "Silly us. For some reason, we imagined that the professionals charged with stopping child abuse might already know what it looks like." One of the things that mystified us about this awful case – reported Sunday by Sean Robinson – was the lack of any discipline for any of the social workers responsible for dismissing years of complaints from the girl's teachers, neighbors, etc. "Some of this was so old, people had retired from service," said Stephani. While no one got fired, "Some were retrained. Two were moved to positions in which they were going to have much better oversight and supervision. Some went back to academy [a sort of basic training for social workers]." The Children's Administration is now adopting one practice that might have helped, she said. Caseworkers have been visiting the homes of foster children once every 90 days; with new staffing funded by the Legislature, the oversight of these homes will be stepped up to once every 30 days. Even on a 30-day schedule, of course, caseworkers would still have to be able to see through the evasions of a child abuser – including a woman who might be facing an international tribunal if she'd done in Bosnia what she did in South King County.
Categories: Editorial outtakes
• 4 comments
Posted by David Seago @ 04:07:38 pm
 I bet I'm not the only one who saw that TNT photo of Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg doing a Ben Hogan imitation at the new Chambers Bay Golf Course and wondered: Where the heck did he get those duds? Ladenburg was outfitted in a nifty argyle sweater and plus-fours when he took the ceremonial first shot for the county-owned course's official opening Saturday. It was all in keeping with the course's links-style design, inspired by the great links courses like Scotland's St. Andrews Links. I pestered county spokesman Ron Klein today for the skinny:
Sunday's news story made much of the fact that Ladenburg smashed an impressive 300-foot drive on that ceremonial shot. (It didn't say which fairway it landed on.) Professional skepticism prompted me to grill Klein further. Did Ladenburg use one of those testosterone-laden, high-tech drivers that allow duffers to hit moon shots? I demanded to know. "Just a driver. No steroids," Klein insisted. Read on for more opening-day buzz:
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 03:15:14 pm
Aside from the illegal immigration issue, legislators Joe Zarelli and Darlene Fairley are asking important questions about the recent expansion of subsidized health care in Washington to families making as much as $62,000 a year. The expansion lures families from private coverage and ails to address a real problem for the genuinely poor: access to doctors. During the Ken Griffey Jr. lovefest last weekend at Safeco Field, he smashed two homers and moved into seventh on major-league baseball’s all-time home run list. Unlike Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds, Griffey’s accomplishment so far (knock on wood) has not been tainted by reports of steroid use. About our editorials:
Categories: What's coming
Saturday, June 23rd, 2007Friday, June 22nd, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 11:11:57 am
Saturday: The Chambers Bay Golf Course opens Saturday with a lot of buzz in the golfing world, a booked-up schedule of reservations and some public skepticism about its chances of financial success. As we’ve said before, this project is about more than a golf course, and the benefits of public recreational use of this spectacular site make County Executive John Ladenburg’s gamble worth taking. Sunday: Charlie Milligan’s brief tenure as Tacoma school superintendent is ending because the school board finally stopped making excuses for him and started facing up to his shortcomings as a leader – shortcomings that had to be discussed in any honest evaluation process. The News Tribune’s investigation of a horrific child-abuse case shows that state foster-care workers and officials utterly failed over several years to notice and act on obvious signs of abuse. The worst part is that the system seems to have held no one truly accountable. About our editorials:
Categories: What's coming, Editorial cartoons
Posted by Cheryl Tucker @ 08:14:15 am
 A brush with death while riding his motorcycle helped convince Lakewood City Councilman and Deputy Mayor John Arbeeny not to run for re-election this year. Arbeeny explains his decision in a letter he sent out recently. Having dealt with so-called "entrenched incumbents" for 20 years now, I find his attitude toward elective office refreshing.
Here's the entire text of his letter.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by Cheryl Tucker @ 05:44:35 am
 Reader Bill Barker in Shelton noticed something peculiar in the front-page story Thursday on the "Walking With Dinosaurs" show coming to the Tacoma Dome July 11-12.
Reporter Bill Hutchens got the answer by checking with Dome management, who referred him to the show's management. Here's what Bill learned: Dave Thomas is general manager of Immersion Edutainment North America, the corporation behind the “Walking with Dinosaurs” tour in the states and Canada. He said:
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 05:22:09 am
A Gig Harbor-based consortium hopes to strike gold, in a manner of speaking, by burning coal. If their plan works, it will – no kidding – be a boon for the planet. Pierce County resident Robert Divers heads the project, which was reported Monday in the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin but hasn't attracted much notice yet on this side of the mountains. The consortium, Wallula Resource Recovery LLC, wants to build a $2 billion coal-fired power plant in Eastern Washington that would "capture" carbon dioxide emissions and inject the CO2 thousands of feet down in a basalt formation. News story here, and a more informative report here. The WRR plant, which would be built on Port of Walla Walla land near Wallula, on the Columbia River, would use so-called IGCC (integrated gasification combine cycle) technolgy. The Union-Bulletin explains:
Categories: Taking notice
• 2 comments
Thursday, June 21st, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 02:54:38 pm
I think I got prematurely excited about the City of Tacoma's moves enforce removal of non-conforming billboards beginning Aug. 1. The billboard owners may hold the upper hand, legally speaking. Last August TNT biz columnist Dan Voepel noted that other cities that have tried Tacoma's approach – giving billboard owners 10 years to remove signs that don't conform to new regulations – haven't enforced their bans. That's because a court ruled that Federal Way would still have compensate billboard owners even if they were given years to amortize their investments. I'm sure Tacoma officials are fully aware of that. City spokesman Rob McNair-Huff says city attorneys are writing a legal memo. Maybe the city's legal beagles think there's a away to get around the compensation requirement. I've been promised a copy of the memo when it's done. McNair-Huff says all 155 non-conforming billboards in the city – except the ones owned by Puyallup tribal members or the tribe – are owned by Clear Channel Outdoor.
Categories: Taking notice
• 3 comments
Posted by Cheryl Tucker @ 11:54:46 am
Pulitzer Prize-winner Leonard Pitts Jr., a Miami Herald writer whose column appears regularly on The News Tribune opinion pages, has gotten several death threats in recent days. The FBI is investigating. After his column about white-on-black crime (which ran June 4 in the TNT), a white supremacist Web site gave out Pitts' home address and telephone number. The site is so vile I refuse to post a link to it. UPDATE: Not long after posting this, I received a really nasty e-mail, using words I'm not free to print here. The writer said I should be ashamed of myself for defending Pitts, whom he never referred to by name, only as the N-word. Of course, in the grand tradition of other racists who hide behind white hoods, the writer was anonymous. He signed the e-mail "Legba Scratch."  Here's Pitts' column. It's one of his stronger pieces, and it does take white people to task. But Pitts also often writes critically of his own race. On Monday, for instance, his column ("Black students analyze black failure") gave a forum to young black people, one of whom said: "We need to stop blaming other people for our faults." Whites don't wear oppressed hat well
Categories: Taking notice
• 8 comments
Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 06:38:11 am
 People in this corner of the United States may be little aware of the Mexican tortilla crisis (no, this isn't a setup for joke). Tortillas are the staple of poor Mexicans' diets; the sharply rising prices scared Felipe Calderon's government enough that it imposed price controls. The crisis is blamed in part on the diversion of U.S. corn to ethanol production. See our editorial. Defenders of the ethanol industry argue that Mexico grows most of its own corn for tortillas – white corn, as opposed to the yellow corn being brewed into moonshine whiskey for cars here in the States. But as the Washington Post story points out, the price of Mexico's white corn is indexed to the price of yellow corn. A truly arcane little detail, but I thought you ought to know.
Categories: Editorial outtakes
Posted by David Seago @ 05:57:33 am
I sent Lakewood City Manager Andrew Neiditz a message thanking him for the lively letters to the editor generated by the city's crackdown on school-zone speeding.(Story, editorial). I asked for an update.
Posted by David Seago @ 05:05:12 am
Tacoma Goodwill’s effort to help more young people find work in Pierce County just got a big boost from Tacoma Rotary 8. The club decided to give its $100,000 Centennial Fund grant to Goodwill for its new Youth Career Development Center, which will be part of an $18 million facility to be built at Tacoma Avenue South and 27th Street. Ten non-profit agencies will provide counseling and job-placement help to at-risk youth at the center. We previouisly noted the value of this project in an editorial. The links between Rotary and Goodwill are strong. Club President Pete Taylor says 21 Rotarians are currently board members of Goodwill, members of Goodwill’s senior management team or special friends of the organization, and have already pledged $440,000 toward the project. We’re happy to send Rotary 8 an online pat on the back. The club does much good for the community in many, many ways. Update Taylor tells me the Goodwill grant is the largest the club has ever made to a single project. Last year the club's monetary contributions to various community causess totalled $85,000.
Categories: Taking notice
Wednesday, June 20th, 2007
Posted by David Seago @ 02:40:34 pm
My colleague Kim Bradford mentioned here last week that the Pierce County Council will consider a proposal to make the county's top planner an elected official. That's probably dead, I hear. Here's a roundup on the charter amendment proposals currently in the hopper. The council has already voted to let voters decide whether to make elected sheriff a non-partisan position. Voters decided to make in an elected position last year. The council will hear three other charter proposals July 10. One would make County Auditor Pat McCarthy last week asked the council to consider two other amendments related to ranked-choice voting in 2008. She's also proposing the county switch to all-mail voting, but that won't require a charter amendment. Councilman Dick Muri, the main supporter of the amendment regarding the planning chief, concedes that one will go nowhere. He comments:
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 11:01:53 am
Nostalgia may be the part of the reason for Tacoma streetcar proposals, but if there’s any chance they could play a part in meeting the city’s transportation needs even a half-century from now, the time to start planning is now. The latest congressional proposal to artificially expand demand for corn ethanol is outrageous. Not only is it abysmal energy policy, it is driving up the cost of food for Americans – and for poor Mexicans who can’t so easily adjust. About our editorials:
Categories: What's coming
Posted by David Seago @ 10:58:32 am
The editorial writers had a lively argument this morning about Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg's proposal to extend health coverage and other job benefits to domestic partners. Here's the summary I sent to the full ed board:
This is one of those instances when we need draw the full ed board into the discussion to determine our stance. So we'll hold off on this topic for a bit. Update: Read on for a few questions we sent to the county executive and his top spokesperson, Ron Klein.
Categories: What's coming
Posted by David Seago @ 10:20:58 am
A good citizen I've come to know over the years is Phyllis Bjorkman, a leader in the Tacoma RESULTS chapter. Here's the official description of RESULTS:
One of the things Phyllis does (as do other RESULTS members) is gently but persistently suggest that we do editorials supporting congressional legislation aimed at Third World poverty and disease. We can't always oblige, but we respect the group's sincerity and concern. Anyhow, Phyllis just got back from a RESULTS lobbying trip to Congress. Her report, posted below, strikes me as a fine example of grassroots humanitarian work and concern. I particularly liked her description of Sen. Patty Murray's weekly coffee sessions with constituents. It's cool that Murray does this.
Categories: How we work, Taking notice
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007
Posted by Patrick O'Callahan @ 04:49:19 pm
Does the Washington State Patrol have a mole in the Vatican? Cardinal Renato Martino, who heads the Vatican's office for migrants and itinerant people, has just issued Ten Commandments for Drivers. The accompanying document inveighs against such "primitive" behavior as "impoliteness, rude gestures, cursing, blasphemy, loss of sense of responsibility or deliberate infringement of the highway code."  Cars, it notes, can be "an occasion of sin." No argument there. The Vatican's advice would come in handy on I-5 during rush hour. Particularly the recommendation to pray while driving.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 03:22:49 pm
I never thought anyone would find fault with Bill Gates for urging Harvard graduates to devote time and talent to alleviating Third World poverty and disease. (A reprint of Gates' speech led off our Insight section on Sunday.) On today's Wall Street Journal oped page, Harvard economics professor Robert Barro does just that. (Subscription required to see article; email me if you want a copy). Barros first argues that the increases in work productivity allowed by Microsoft's software have benefited mankind to the tune of $1 trillion, 10 times what Gates plans to give away in philanthropy. Because the track record of aid to Third World nations is poor and their governments are often corrupt, Gates would be smarter just to cut a $300 check for every man, woman and child in the United States. He concludes:
Geez.
Categories: Taking notice
Posted by David Seago @ 02:35:29 pm
Increasing federal fuel-economy standards is the best thing congress could do right now to improve U.S. energy policy. House is punting on the question, at least for now. That’s shameful. We wonder why the records on Narrows Bridge transponder users need to be kept as long as eight years. But otherwise, we don’t see any reason to get bent out of shape about it. The records can be accessed only by court order, and drivers who don’t want any record of their bridge use can get an “unregistered” transponder and pay their bills in cash. About our editorials: |
