One of our oped contributors has snagged a nice honor for his scholarly work on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Michael Honey, a UWT history professor who has contributed several articles on Martin Luther King Jr. for our opinion pages, has received the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award from the Organization of American Historians.

The award is given annually for "the best book on any aspect of of the struggle for civl rights in the United States." Honey was recognized for "Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign."

Chuck Kleeberg has two missions: One is running Pierce County's planning department; the other is chairing the board of his church's free neighborhood health clinic.

Our earlier posting about the difficulties facing Community Health Care prompted this note from Kleeberg. Trinity Presbyterian is located near Sixth and Division near Tacoma's Hilltop community.

There are two volunteer-staffed, free medical clinics that operate in Tacoma. Neighborhood Clinic is affiliated with St. Leo's and sees about 2,000 patients per year (2 nights a week with 2 docs). Trinity Neighborhood Clinic is affiliated with Trinity Presbyterian and sees about 500 per year (one night a week with 1 doc) .

I have been the board chair of the latter for the last few years. We consider ourselves the carpet under the safety net that Community Health Care (and other low income providers) provides to their 35,000 patients. Trinity also has a free mobile dental clinic affiliated with the church. Carpet, underneath.

We're feeling the pinch this year. We have turned away patients, especially kids who needed school physicals, so we could treat ill patients. Since the medical staff at our clinics are volunteers, our costs are low. Most of our budget goes to prescriptions. Other costs are for maintenance services, board insurance, and a part-time staffer to make sure we have volunteers. Our funding comes from other churches and grants. We average $30 per patient visit.

Think what that average will be when our sick overflow visit emergency rooms in the city. We will all have to bear those costs eventually.

We like to think that we are different from those who visit these clinics. I am sure that Community Health sees the retired school teachers, the waitresses, the self employed contractors and the fresh-faced kids we see. They are our neighbors. They have made no more poor choices than we have; they just happened to be a little closer to the line than we are.

That's the headline on an interesting article in today's Christian Science Monitor that looks at the new breed of school superintendents and what lengths some struggling school districts are willing to go to in order to hire them.

The article cited an astonishing number – that 20 percent of school districts are actively looking for a superintendent. That seems really high to me; if true, maybe it's partly a reflection of the baby boomer retirement wave we're seeing in other public sector jobs like police and state government.

One of the most successful "rock star" superintendents cited in the article has a familiar name: former Tacoma superintendent Rudy Crew, now head of Miami-Dade in Florida. Crew was named superintendent of the year in 2007 by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.

You may have seen this story, headlined "Food stamps' use soars," from The New York Times in the TNT today, or spotted it elsewhere.

Unless you saw the chart that accompanied the article in the print version of the Times, though, you didn't discover that Washington by far experienced the greatest increase in food stamp use last year.

The number of recipients in Washington grew 25.6 percent from December 2006 to December 2007, the chart indicates. But there's an asterisk that denotes "Temporary increase in response to natural disaster."

So that must be due to the flooding that hit Lewis County and other parts of Southwest Washington last winter. I'll check around and see what the rate of change was if the flood-related aid wasn't included.

And now for a word from some folks who like to argue about urban design and planning in Tacoma. One of the most diverse event sponsorships I've ever seen, and a great opportunity to discuss how to make a pretty good town even better.

Local Life Tacoma and Exit133 have partnered to bring James Howard Kunstler, urban planning advocate, social critic, journalist and novelist, to Tacoma on April 23, 7:00pm, at the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts' Theatre on the Square.

This event is sponsored by Veritas Mortgage, Embellish Salon, the University of Washington Tacoma Urban Studies Department, Boe Architects, the University of Puget Sound Politics & Government Department, BCRA, and The Broadway Center for the Performing Arts. Student ticket prices are made possible through the generous support of the City of Tacoma.

James Howard Kunstler is the author of seven novels and countless articles and essays including The Geography of Nowhere and The Long Emergency. Geography earned much attention and praise, launching him into the spotlight as a commentator on America's hapless urban planning . . .

Mr. Kunstler aptly describes his lectures as "stand-up comedy with some dark moments." His audience knows he is dependably acerbic, witty, well-read and exceedingly alert, drawing from a tremendous store of hard facts and idealism that ends on a good note: Well-earned and reasoned hope.

Mr. Kunstler will tour Tacoma and be speaking specifically to our city within the larger framework of his life's work. After the lecture, he will sign books in the lobby. Books will be available for sale from King's Books. For more information and tickets, contact the Broadway Center Box Office by phone at 253.591.5894, visit in person at 9th & Broadway or any time online at www.broadwaycenter.org .
# # #
More information is available at:
Local Life Tacoma
www.golocaltacoma.com/locallife.htm
Exit133
www.exit133.com
James Howard Kunstler
www.kunstler.com</blockquote>

Just heard some bad news from one of our favorite – and most needed – community organizations. It's not what you want to hear when we're heading into economic recession when more families will be facing hard times.

Community Health Care, which runs medical and dental clinics for low-income and uninsured people in Pierce County, is cutting services and staff due to financial problems.

CHC plans to lay off 11 employees, transfer four others and eliminate 15 vacant positions. It will also close a children's dental clinic at 1102 S. I St. in Tacoma. Two other dental clinics in Tacoma and Lakewood will remain open.

A CHC announcement today said a combination of flat or only slightly increasing revenues and rapidly increasing operational costs forced the moves, which will result in a balanced budget by June 1. Last year CHC clinics served 35,791 patients.

A CHC fundraising drive for the new Kimi and George Tanbara Health Center in the Salishan area of Tacoma will continue. Groundbreaking is set for May 9.

CHC's annual luncheon –– the usual donation requested sort of affair -- will be held at 11:30 a.m. April 15 at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center.
Mona Locke, former TV newscaster, director of the Puget Sound Susan G. Komen fore the Cure (for breast cancer) and wife of former Gov. Gary Locke, will be the speaker.

A legislative uprising against the state's math 10th grade WASL requirement finally drove a stake through the test's heart last week, when the governor signed a bill to replace it with end-of-course exams. See today's editorial.

Problem solved? No way.

Anyone who thinks the WASL vs. EOC choice is an obvious one should check out this January report to the state Board of Education. (Click on "full report" under End of Course Assessment Final Report.)

In the comparison on page 3, EOCs come out well ahead in several categories – such as "assessing students near the point of curriculum delivery." Otherwise, it's mostly a wash. Most of the people who don't like the WASL now probably won't like the EOC, either.

One virtue of the bill the governor signed is that it lets lawmakers tell WASL-haters they've done something about that mean, nasty, anti-kid test. Note its popularity in the Legislature: It cleared the Senate 35-12 and the House 91-1.

In September, I wrote an Insight cover article about a University Place entrepreneur, Bob Divers, who hopes to develop a revolutionary $2.2 billion “clean” coal-fueled power plant near Wallula in Walla Walla County.

The project has hit a couple snags, but nothing fatal. Here’s an update:

Hopes for the power plant depend on the outcome of test drilling to prove that liquid CO2 injected thousands of feet deep in basalt formations will mineralize, becoming a solid safely trapped in the earth.

Researchers from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland were to supervise the test drilling earlier this year on Port of Walla Walla property near Wallula. But, as geophysicist Pete McGrail reports:

A number of issues have come up. Because drillers are in very high demand for oil & gas work, we were required to close on a contract yesterday to maintain our place in line. It has taken longer than we expected to process the data we collected from the seismic survey that was done in December and we need that information before proceeding with drilling. Hence, we had to release the driller.

We also need to close a contractual land use agreement with the Port of Walla Walla and that could not be done in time either. So, we had to reluctantly face reality and accept the delay. Next window is September according to information we have at the moment.

The test-drilling project also raised concerns among Walla Walla port commissioners, who said they’re worried about potential liability if things don’t go right. A few local residents also told the commissioners they fear the project could lead to a “dirty” coal power plant at the site.

Divers, a University Place resident, told me in September that the power plant, called the Wallula Energy Resource Center, would proceed only if the test proves that sequestration works. The developers would still have to get approval from the state Energy Facilities Site Evaluation Council. As a political matter, no coal-fired plant that releases emissions in the atmosphere has a chance of being approved.

The test-drilling delay prompted Divers' company to temporarily withdraw its site license application. Otherwise the backers would have to keep paying $10,000 to $15,000 monthly charges to the state while its application was pending.

Power utilities across the country have been cancelling plans for new coal-burning power plants left and right. Good thing, too. But coal is America's most abundant energy resource. If a clean way to tap it can be found, it would go a long way toward reducing greenhouse emissions not only in the U.S. but also in fast-developing nations like China and India.

So we all have good reason to hope Pete McGrail's sequestration experiment works.

Saturday:

We believe in respecting the Makah Tribe’s whaling treaty rights. But the tribe only weakens its claim when it fails to enforce its own internal rules against the tribal members who bumbled an illegal killing of a whale and ended up torturing the animal to death. We’re glad to see that at least three of the accused whalers will go to trial in federal court.

Sunday:

The Legislature’s abandonment of the math WASL this session will turn out to be bone-headed unless sufficient rigor is enforced in the new “end of course” exams that are to replace it.

The Public Disclosure Commission’s slap-on-the-wrist response to state Rep. Dennis Flannigan’s failure to disclose a $28,000 purchase of stock in the company marketing the controversial Prometa protocal makes a joke of disclosure rules.

Monday:

We hail the state’s rating as the most-improved state in boosting childhood immunizations. This is important work, especially in light of persistent “free riding” by some parents who object to state-required vaccinations.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Dave posted yesterday about the flurry of interest from the children's products industry over our mention that an editorial supporting the state's toxic toy bill might be in the offing.

We ended up talking with representatives of Mattel, the Toy Industry Association and the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, which includes carseat makers who say the law as written would outlaw their products.

They made some good points about how the bill, given more time, could have been more finely crafted. The Legislature did hurry this one through, probably due to the level of anxiety out there. (Or, if you're more cynical, because it's an election year).

But legislating is always a messy process, and we believe that unintended consequences might be addressed during the rule-making process by the Department of Ecology. Should Gov. Gregoire sign the bill, we'll be watching to make sure the subsequent rules don't go further than necessary.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer held out the possibility in its editorial today that some of the concerns could be handled by a partial veto. Meanwhile, in the Seattle Times, columnist Nicole Brodeur came out for a full veto, saying the state should wait on the feds to act.

We're expecting to receive an op-ed from the toy industry; it's tentatively slated for publication Sunday.

Today's front-page news article headlined, "Geoduck harvest suddenly in limbo," drew a quick response from the aggrieved party -- in this case Bill Dewey of Taylor Shellfish Farms.

A Pierce County hearing examiner had ruled that the firm couldn't harvest some 900,000 planted geoducks on Case Inlet because its 5-year permit for the site was expired.

Dewey complained that the article omitted a key piece of information:

The article totally omitted that we’d been lead to believe by the county PALS staff that the permit did not expire and that no additional permit was required for the continued operation of the farm. The article makes it sound like Taylor was just ignoring that the permit expired in five years. Until we got the letter from the county in August of 2007, any communication we had with the county lead us to believe there was no expiration to the permit.

Clearly we would not have even planted an initial 6 year crop not to mention subsequent crops had we believed the permit was only good for five years. I made these important points to your reporter and she opted not to include them.

The decision clearly has major ramifications for Taylor Shellfish and the Foss family who leases us the tidelands. As the article notes, we’ll be pursuing an appeal and pursing damages against the county.

Before Dewey contacted us, the ed board had already discussed the issue and decided we need more information before we could form an editorial opinion.

Click here for the text of the hearing examiner's decision.

Spotted a story in the Wall Street Journal this week that should make us awful glad that the Tacoma Sheraton is no longer a Sheraton.

The Journal reports:

The Sheraton brand has slipped so far in quality and consistency that Starwood executives say it can't charge as much for rooms as some competitors. The company has embarked on a three-year project to renovate hundreds of hotel and open dozens more.

That won't be easy, though, because Starwood Hotels & Resorts, owner of the Sheraton company, doesn't actually own most of its hotels. It would have to persuade owners and franchisers to foot the bill for upgrades. (Full story below).

Portland-based Provenance Hotels bought the Sheraton Tacoma a couple years ago and initially planned to continue it as a Sheraton franchise. Instead, Provenance decided to invest $22 million turning it into the glass-art themed Hotel Murano, with spectacular results.

Thank goodness.

=> Read more!

Whoa, talk about over the top. The Building Industry Association of Washington is known for bare-knuckle politics, but some of the stuff in the group's latest newsletter is just wild.

BIAW President Brad Spears, a Spokane homebuilder, tries to tar all environmentalists as extremists by associating them with the "eco-terrorists" who torched three homes on Snohomish County's "Street of Dreams" last month.

Spears blames the Earth Liberation Front – although investigators have not confirmed a link to the group. Somehow Spears links muddle-headed teachers, Al Gore and King County Executive Ron Sims as promoting an ethic of "the end justifies the means."

Spears concludes:

Given this attitude that permeates environmental debate today, can we really be shocked when our youth takes this green light to skirt the rules to the extreme by burning down homes?

The kids who torched the houses in Snohomish County and the kids who earlier burned down a research center at the University of Washington are simply expressing what they've been taught: Preserve the earth at all costs.

The older folks in the mainstream enviro groups silently applaud this new and novel approach: If you build it, we will burn it. It's the next, natural step in the environmental movement.

Yikes! He can read minds, too! If that little speech doesn't take your breath away, check out out the "Stormwater Report" in the same newsletter. BIAW operative Mark Musser traces today's state environmental regulations back to Hitler and the Nazis. To quote:

What environmentalists offer today, instead of the racist German National Socialism that defined the Nazi party, is an international environmental socialism, an amalgam of Nazism and communism . . .

Builders in Washington state are being squeezed by an environmental movement which extols ecofascism on the one hand . . . while on the other hand they are micromanaged to death by an ecological bureaucracy that would make any Soviet commissar green with envy . . .

I kid you not. Ick.

I don't know if breaching the four lower Snake River dams is a lost cause, but it's been around for lots of years without getting the political traction it needs in Congress.

Two would-be dam-breachers – Michael Garrity of
American Rivers and Todd True of Earthjustice – came by today to make the arguments again. They're hanging their hopes on an upcoming federal court decision on whether the Bush administration's latest proposal to protect salmon runs in the Snake River satisfies the Endangered Species Act.

Chances are, it won't. That doesn't mean the Pacific Northwest is going to gladly part with 3,500 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity to improve the health of four salmon runs.

An inconvenient truth: Hydropower emits not a molecule of carbon dioxide, which is making it more – not less – popular as concerns mount about global warming.

Garrity and True rightly note that the four dams in question generate "only" an average of 1,022 mw (enough to provide Seattle's power needs). But their much higher maximum capacity allows them to quickly ramp up to meet spikes in regional power demands – such as when severe cold spells hit the region.

I asked Michael how those four endangered runs were faring. Here's his e-mail:

Steelhead: Recent years have seen about 30,000 wild fish returning. The recovery goal is 53,000, although the goal includes a lot of more specific index population goals. The B-run, or winter component, of this run is doing much worse than the summer run (A run).

Spring/summer chinook: Recovery goal is 42,000 (as with steelhead this is broken into a lot of smaller goals for index populations). The last couple of years have seen about 10,000 return after three or four years in the early 2000s over 20,000 and one approaching 40,000.

Fall chinook: Recovery goal is 3,000 given current restricted habitat. 10-year geomean is 1,273, though recent years have been a bit better (in the 2,000-3,500 range).

Sockeye: Recovery goal is 1,500. They've been in the single digits the last few years.

Word gets around: Editorial writer Kim Bradford noted on the blog Wednesday that we're preparing an editorial on the toxic-toy bill awaiting the governor's signature.

Bingo, we got emails this morning from a representative of an association that represents makers of children's carseats, and from Bill Stauffacher, a Pierce County political consultant representing the Toy Industry Association, and from a representative of Mattel, the big toymaker. Here's Stauffacher's pitch:

The legislature passed a bill with extremely low standards that apply to all parts of the toy – but offered no flexibility for accessible and non-accessible electronics (jacks, “lead free” solder, resistors), inaccessible parts (screws, axels, and joints) and phthalates widely used in plastic wiring and non-mouthable plastic parts of a toy. Many toys simply won’t meet the one-size-fits all standard established in Section 3 of the bill.

Additionally, small toy retailers are saying the bill’s costly testing and reporting requirements will lead toy makers (especially smaller niche toy makers) to avoid Washington State.

This issue is much more complicated than it appears. All parties – customers, toy makers, retailers – want safe toys and this goal can be achieved. But common sense arguments deserve a fair hearing.

A Wall Street Journal story Wednesday gave a good overview of the issue from a national perspective, noting that Washington is one of many states taking action due to inaction by federal regulators.

And this just in from the Washington Toxics Coalition:

=> Read more!

The governor is getting the full-court press from the toy industry to veto part if not all of the toxic-toys bill passed by the Legislature. We think she should sign the bill. Washington would join more than 20 other states that are taking action on lead-contaminated toys because of inaction by the feds. We’re looking at last-minute arguments from the toy industry for partial veto.

We don’t see any good reason the Tacoma City Council shouldn’t approve opening the Jackson Avenue onramp to the Narrows Bridge to all traffic during the afternoon commute hours. Traffic there is flowing easily now, and West End residents have no objection.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Jim McDermott is a museum-quality specimen of the American foreign policy leftist. It's no big surprise that he was conned into accepting a Saddam-financed propaganda trip to Baghdad back in 2002.

McDermott was right – but only by accident – when he declared that Iraq then was harboring no weapons of mass destruction. Why? Because Saddam's regime said so. Its declarations had to be taken "at face value," McDermott said.

It was a self-destructing claim, however true. Russian intelligence (which got the WMD story right) would have been a far more credible source.

McDermott was roundly criticized at the time for lending his prestige to Saddam by spouting off in Baghdad rather than on Capitol Hill. Presumably, Iraqi intelligence got its money's worth.

But the real problem was the contradiction in his purposes. McDermott wanted to stop a war that – give him credit – later turned into a disaster. But on the same trip, he was also trying to undo the international sanctions that were keeping Saddam from getting unhindered access to the revenues from Iraq's oil wealth.

The unraveling of those sanctions – especially by Russia and France – were precisely what had many Americans alarmed enough to support the original decision to invade Iraq.

After the invasion, a top-to-bottom search for Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" led by Charles Duelfer famously came up empty. But read the fine print. While inflicting one of the greatest embarrassments in U.S. history on the Bush administration, Duelfer also concluded that Saddam intended to get his nuclear and chemical weapons programs back up and running once the sanctions were lifted.

In the real-world political context of 2002, fighting the sanctions amounted to inviting the war. McDermott and many others wanted it both ways: No war – and no fetters on Saddam Hussein. That took more obtuseness than accepting a junket on Saddam's dime.

How's this for pressure? Archie McPhee's, the wacky Ballard institution beloved by children and big kids who never grew up, says it will close if Gov. Gregoire signs the toxic toys law. (Hat tip to AWB).

The governor is said to be weighing whether to sign the legislation outright or veto portions. The toy industry is lobbying hard against the legislation, which sets toy-safety standards that include the nation's toughest restriction on lead content.

We're considering an editorial that encourages the governor to sign the legislation. State rules are not the ideal way to regulate the toy industry, but inaction at the federal level is giving state lawmakers no choice. Nothing we've seen so far shows that the law's requirements will be an onerous as the toy industry makes them out to be.

Our editorial board met Tuesday with U.S. Sens. Murray and Cantwell to discuss their concerns about the Air Force tanker decision. Some of the questions they raise — and that Boeing is raising in its high-profile advertising campaign – are darn good ones. The Air Force needs to provide answers.

At the pace the federal government is moving on the Hanford cleanup, the job won’t be done for another 140 years, leaving the Columbia River vulnerable to leaking radioactive waste. This is absolutely unacceptable. The state may have no alternative but to haul the feds into court again.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

The News Tribune's editorial board has been following light rail politics in the region for a very long time.

We endorsed the ballot measure that created Sound Transit way back in 1996 in large part because it promised to tie this area into the rest of the Puget Sound megalopolis with a rail line running from Tacoma through South King County to Sea-Tac Airport and the big cities beyond.

Sound Transit is now thinking about (fatally) postponing the earlier plans for light rail through this southern corridor. We are not amused; see today's editorial.

Some people can't seem to remember that light rail extensions from Seattle to Tacoma, Bellevue and Everett – though deferred for a later round of construction – were part of the plan from the word go.

Here is Sound Transit's 1996 vision for regional mass transit. The blue dash-and-dot line depicts where future light rail lines were to be built. We think that vision still looks pretty good; we hope the Sound Transit board sees it the same way.

By the time the 2008 Tall Ships Tacoma festival begins in July, a 400-foot-long public esplanade will be open on the water side of the historic Balfour Dock Building on the Foss Waterway. That's an architect's rendering shown here.

This good news comes in the Foss Waterway Seaport's spring newsletter, Seaport Today. The esplanade project began last summer when the Foss Waterway Development Authority took out a deteriorating wharf that supports part of the 107-year-old building. The building will be the home of the Seaport, formerly known as the Working Waterfront Museum.

Go here to see progress on the wharf work. A couple more tidbits from the newsletter:

Former Weyerhaeuser executive Bill Holland has taken over as board president, and the Seaport has hit the $1 million mark in its two-year, $12 million capital campaign.

Wanna volunteer? Contact volunteer@fosswaterwayseaport.org.

Quote for the day:

A fictional military man, an old experienced commander, observed that he "knew how capable people who desire something are of grouping all the information in such a way that it seems to confirm what they desire, and knew how willingly on such occasions they omit all that contradicts it."

The writer? Leo Tolstoy, in the new translation of "War and Peace." The novel was completed in 1869 – long before anyone ever heard of "weapons of mass destruction."

We have a strongly worded editorial coming Wednesday morning on the prospect that Sound Transit might give up on extending light rail to Tacoma in its next ballot proposal. (Find it here in the morning.)

During an email exchange today with Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg on that matter, he also argued that Sound Transit should hold off until 2009 to go back to voters for Phase II expansion. Ladenburg stepped down as Sound Transit chairman last year but remains on the board for the rest of this year.

All that being said, I'm still not sure this is the right year. I understand the advantage of high voter and young voter turnout, but we are falling into a national recession. Even if the local economy remains good as I think it will, the national economy may well affect the vote.

Also, it appears that John Stanton is prepared to put his "governance change" proposal forward as an initiative and fund signature gathering to get it to the ballot this year. While I think his plan is poorly thought out and dangerous for Pierce County, he has the money to get it on the ballot and distract from any Sound Transit measure.

Plus, once Light Rail opens in 2009 in King County, I think we get a lot more
people as supporters, since this is what has happened around the US in the past.

Stanton confirmed today that supporters of forming a single regional body to govern both mass transit and road construction are exploring an initiative campaign to put it on the November ballot.

Stanton, a Seattle telecom billionaire, and former Seattle mayor Norm Rice co-chaired a 2006 state task force that recommended regional governance. A bill to that effect stalled in this year's Legislature. RG backers will have to decide soon whether to proceed, because the deadline for signatures is July 1.

Like Ladenburg, the TNT ed board and most Pierce County elected officials are wary of regional governance, fearing that the needs of the metro Seattle area will dominate, to the detriment of Pierce County.

The 2008 Daffodil Festival's Royal Court, including Queen Olivia Anderson of Cascade Christian School, called on the Pierce County Council today. Only one council member currently running for office sent out a press release and photo.

Sen. Patty Murray began our editorial board meeting today by throwing her pen on our conference table and declaring "I'm as mad at Boeing as you are."

It wasn't what you might expect from the state's senior senator, who as of late has been doing her best to inherit the title of "the senator from Boeing" by loudly protesting the Air Force's decision to award the refueling tanker contract to a partnership that includes Boeing's French rival Airbus.

Murray might be disgusted about the ethics scandal that cost Boeing the tanker contract in the first go-around, but it's not holding her back. During our hour with her and Sen. Maria Cantwell – likely their first-ever joint editorial board appearance – Washington's senators detailed their concerns about the process that led the Air Force to award the contract last month to Northrop Grumman and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co.

Most of their complaints have been in the news. Namely: They contend the Air Force changed the rules of the game in mid-play, could be undermining the U.S. trade case against Airbus for receiving illegal subsidies and will be handing over sensitive military information – as well as valuable research and development money – to a foreign company.

One criticism we hadn't previously heard was the inferior survivability of the Airbus' A330 platform. Murray couldn't reveal any proprietary details, but she said that Boeing's tanker has technology that would help save both the plane and crew in the event of an attack. The Air Force gave Boeing high marks in that area but the rating did the company little good since survivability didn't have much weight in the process.

One problem with such concerns is they seem to assume that the Air Force has some interest in putting their pilots and planes at risk. That's hard for us to believe.

What amounts to a sort of primary for Pierce County’s first no-primary, ranked-choice voting election in November will begin soon.

Officials of the county Republican and Democratic parties are scheduled to decide next month which candidates for county executive and county council will have their blessing as the parties’ representatives on the RCV ballot.

In RCV voting, there is no primary; in November, county voters will rank their top three choices for the executive and council races. Last fall, voters decided to make auditor, assessor and sheriff non-partisan offices.

The 208-member Democratic central committee will meet April 10, two days before a county convention on April 12. The Republicans will meet April 12 to decide which GOP candidates to back.

The parties agreed last year, as part of a blue-ribbon committee formed by county Auditor Pat McCarthy, to name their choices for the county races by April 15, in order to give other candidates time to file as independents during candidate filing week in June. (Dems' plan here; GOP plan here.)

This month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing a top-two primary in Washington could add a new twist to the RCV vote. The court’s decision turns largely on the political parties’ “right of association” -- in other words, the parties’ right to decide which candidates can claim to be the parties’ chosen representatives in elections.

No problem there. But the decision also says political parties don’t have the right to restrict candidates from expressing their party preferences on the ballot. McCarthy has asked the county prosecutor’s office for advice on what that means for the county's RCV process.

McCarthy observes:

Quite frankly, I think the rules dictating these two very different methods (top two vs. RCV will be different, at least to how it relates to this issue, party identification. This assumption may change with a legal interpretation.

We are dismayed at the possibility that some on the Sound Transit board seem to be backing away from the agency’s historic commitment to a rail connection between Pierce County and Sea-Tac airport (and points north). When the region approved a mass transit system in 1996, the chief benefit for the South Sound was the prospect of a light rail connection to heart of the Puget Sound economy. The board should know: This editorial page will not support a Sound Transit ballot measure that effectively precludes regional light rail for Pierce and South King Counties. If money is short, what’s available to be used to buy right-of-way for a planned line.

Is serving Nutraloaf to prison inmates cruel and unusual punishment? Hardly. The message to unruly prisoners is “if you can’t stand to dine, don’t do the crime.”

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Before it get taken for granted, let's note the arrival of democracy in Washington's school levy elections.

Levies in four South Sound school districts – Auburn, Eatonville, Orting and Clover Park – passed this month because, and only because, voters amended the state constitution last November.

The amendment did away with the old requirement of 60 percent approval for school levies. The new requirement: 50 percent-plus-one – i.e., majority rules.

Letting 40 percent of the electorate kill a levy gave opponents one-and-a-half times the voting power as supporters. Under that archaic rule, the March 11 levies in the above districts all would all have failed, despite the fact that the Clover Park, Auburn and Eatonville measures all won around 58 percent.

Someday, it will be hard to believe that Washington set such a high hurdle for local funding of its public schools.

Green Drinks Tacoma is NOT a bunch of Irishmen going bonkers on St. Patrick's Day. The drinks, alcoholic or not, are normal, but the folks quaffing them consider themselves green in the Earth-friendly sense.

Here's a dispatch from Krystal Kyer of the Tahoma Audubon Society:

If you're interested in sustainability, conservation, and the environment, then come hang out at Tacoma Green Drinks, a monthly networking and social gathering. Join in as Green Drinks visits the Harmon Brewery & Restaurant, 1938 S. Pacific Ave., Tacoma, on Thursday, April 3.

Green Youth, a periodic networking opportunity created for the under-21 crowd, will begin at 4:00 pm. Adults who work alongside youth or who offer internships are encouraged to attend. The regular Green Drinks gathering will kick in at 5:30 pm.

=> Read more!

Gov. Chris Gregoire certainly isn’t taking Pierce County for granted in the run-up to her re-election bid this fall.

Last week she spoke at the Tacoma-Pierce County Economic Development Board’s annual luncheon and staged a bill-signing ceremony on the dais for a tax measure that could help keep the Russell Investment Group in Tacoma.

Saturday she spoke at Pierce County’s annual volunteer recognition event before nearly 700 people at the Landmark Convention Center. Instead of doing the usual speak-and-run, she stayed around more than an hour to shake hands with each of the 93 award winners as they were announced.

And this summer she’ll share some deserved credit by presiding over a groundbreaking ceremony for the new pedestrian overpass over the railroad tracks at the county’s new Chambers Bay Golf Course. Gregoire included $2 million for the overpass in the state capital budget legislators approved earlier this month.

The overpass groundbreaking will begin at 1:30 p.m. July 29. The overpass, due for completion in 2010, will provide public access to 2 miles of undeveloped Puget Sound shoreline.

A lot the drama around implementing the Top Two primary could be eliminated if the Legislature would just allow the parties to indicate their preferred candidates on the ballot – with an asterisk, say. State doesn’t have to do it, but it would head off more legal challenges from the parties.

By approving health benefits for Tacoma City Council members, the council is moving the city a big step closer toward a full-time council – which is not what the charter envisions. If the council thinks full-time is best, that ought to be a citywide discussion rather than a fait accompli done in piecemeal fashion by the council.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Laurie Jinkins, a well-known Tacoma civic leader and gay-rights activist, has been named deputy director for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.

Jinkins, currently assistant secretary for systems quality assurance for the state Department of Health, will start her new job April 7. She expects to serve as the county health department's interim director while its board continues a search for a new director.

Jinkins, an attorney, led Tacoma's charter review commission in 2004 and chaired the successful 2002 campaign against repeal of a city ordinance extending non-discrimination protections to gays.

When I confirmed the news with Jinkins today, she replied:

I am so excited to be able to continue working in public health and to do it in my home town. I'm sure that there will be lots of challenges, but they'll be NEW challenges. Plus, TPCHD is viewed as being one of the most creative, innovative and hard working health districts in the state. I hope to help keep that going.

I've been reading "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," the first in a best-selling series of novels by Alexander McCall Smith, because it's the book selected for Pierce County Reads.

I'd always assumed Smith's stories about the clever but modest Mma Ramotswe were too fluffy too bother with, but now I'm a fan, too. These tales of life in Botswana are utterly charming and life-affirming. And full of little pearls of wisdom.

Here's one passage I thought was a beautifully simple way of saying something quite profound:

There was a (British) Commissioner down in Mafikeng, over the border into South Africa, and he would come up the road and speak to the chiefs. He would say: "You do this thing; you do that thing." And the chiefs all obeyed him because they knew that if they did not he would have them deposed.

But some of them were clever, and while the British said "You do this," they would say "Yes, yes, sir, I will do that" and all the time, behind their backs, they did the other thing or they just pretended to do something.

So for many years, nothing at all happened. It was a good system of government, because most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.

The Discovery Institute's Cascadia Center, which I take a lot more seriously than its "intelligent design" operation, is becoming an increasingly prominent source of ideas for solving the Puget Sound region's transportation problems.

They are big proponents of congestion pricing and other tolling schemes for shaping traffic flow as well as funding road construction. This detailed post from the center's blog gives a good rundown on transportation-related actions that emerged from the Legislature this month.

Two tidbits I gleaned from the roundup (which includes useful links):

On reason the Legislature is likely to authorize "variable tolling" on the SR 520 corridor next year is that it is a requirement for obtaining $136 million in federal funds to help pay for tolling projects and a passenger foot-ferry on Puget Sound.

And lawmakers passed a bill outlining a broad policy famework for tolling that leaves open the possibility, according to Cascadia's Bruce Agnew, that some toll revenues could be used for transit. Cascadia backs the idea.

Sixteen environmental groups and the state League of Women Voters have asked the governor NOT to veto part of a climate-change bill opposed by business groups.

April Putney, Pierce County rep for Futurewise, a smart-growth advocacy group, shared the letter they sent to Gov. Chris Gregoire this week.

The Association of Washington Business, as noted here earlier, asked the governor to veto Section 2 of ESSB 6580, called "Local Solutions to Global Warming." The environmental groups disputed the AWB's claims that the legislation would lead to more land-use appeals and lawsuits.

Pierce County officials told me they support the bill, especially now that unfunded mandates have been eliminated and the greenhouse gas reduction goals made voluntary. According to county special projects coordinator Debby Hyde, the ounty will wants to play a leadership role and participate in pilot projects authorized by the bill.

Randy Boss, one of Gig Harbor's most vocal opponents of the new Narrows Bridge, sent a Paul Revere-like email all over creation just now. In that second paragraph below, I'm sure he didn't mean to say that Bob Oke, the late state senator who championed the bridge, is still campaigning from the grave.

I sent the e-mail below to every member of the Washington State Senate several times during the last session of the legislature asking them to NOT support renaming the Narrows Bridge after the late Senator Bob Oke. The effort was successful as the Joint Memorial never made it past the Senate and therefore died.

Mr. Oke is now taking a new tact. She is meeting with City Councils, County Councils and civic organization trying to gain support from these organizations to convince the State Transportation Commission to do what the Senate could not, and would not, do, rename the Tacoma Narrows Bridge the Bob Oke Bridge.

A formal resolution is now before the Pierce County Council and will be heard on April 7th in support of renaming the Tacoma Narrows Bridge the "Bob Oke Bridge"! I can only assume that similar resolutions are being planned in Kitsap County and other cities throughout the southsound. I need your help.

I need to be able to present to the State Transportation Commission proof that "we the people" are not in favor of this idea. Would you please send me an e-mail opposing this renaming and then send this e-mail out to everyone you know and ask them to do the same. I'd love to march into the State Transportation Commission meeting and drop 10 or 20,000 e-mails on their desk and say "COUNT THESE".

This will only take you a minute - PLEASE HELP......send the e-mail - I'll do the rest!

Randy Boss

We've mentioned that both U.S. Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell will meet with the TNT editorial board Tuesday to discuss the controversial Air Force aerial tanker contract.

The senators will warm up first with a "roundtable discussion" with Boeing subcontractors at the University of Washington just before their visit to The News Tribune. Cantwell's office said the senators want to hear how the tanker decision will affect Boeing subcontractors in Pierce County.

Murray, particularly, has been on the warpath since the Air Force selected a team of Airbus and Northrop Grumman over Boeing to build a new fleet of refueling tankers. The contract is worth $40 billion, with the potential for add-on work up to $100 billion overall. The Government Accountability Office is investigating Boeing's formal protest of the award.

Boeing, meanwhile, kept up a media offensive, mailing information packets on its tanker proposal to editorial pages around the nation. Much of the information can be found at www.boeing.com/tankerfacts. Another Web site, www.globaltanker.com, lays out Boeing's argument that the greater fuel efficiency of its proposed plan would save the Air Force billions.

The governor is getting pressure from the business community to veto part of a climate-change bill approved by the 2008 Legislature. We may look at this for an editorial topic.

The Association of Washington Business asked Gov. Gregoire to veto a section of ESSB 6580 that directs the state Department of Trade and Economic Development to give cities and counties tools, including computer modeling, for assessing the climate effects of land-use decisions.

The AWB contends:

Section 2 will create de-facto DCTED rules and regulations that could provide the foundation for climate change-related land use appeals to the Growth Management Hearings Boards. Such appeals and litigation have hindered responsible land use planning, adversely impacted private property rights, limited the supply of buildable land and had an adverse affect on affordable housing in this state.

I ran the AWB’s concerns past Bill LaBorde, former Tacoma Utility Board member now serving as program director for Environment Washington.
He says the bill originally would have made reducing greenhouse-gas emissions one of the goals cities and counties have to consider in local land-use decisions.

But the bill got watered down, LaBorde says. There’s nothing mandatory about it now, and the CTED tools would only be available to cities and counties that voluntarily want to use them.

For more on the AWB veto request and LaBorde’s response, read on:

=> Read more!

When Gov. Chris Gregoire plans to sign a measure promoting airplane suppliers, she goes to Spokane where community leaders are trying to lure aerospace companies.

When she wants to sign housing bills, she shows up in Seattle where property values are pricing people out of the market.

And when she decides to sign crime legislation, she comes to Tacoma – where ???.

(The fact that Sen. Mike Carrell sponsored some of the bills and lives close by doesn't quite cut it).

UPDATE: The governor's communications director, Pearse Edwards, just called. He said the bill signing has nothing to do with Tacoma's reputation. Rather, it just happens to be a convenient place for many of the bill sponsors to meet.

Plus it bookends a December event in Tacoma at which Gregoire announced she'd be making sex offender legislation a priority. That visit was a response to the Zina Linnik case.

Boeing has a decent case in its protest to the General Accounting Office over the Air Force tanker decision. It is based on the only legitimate argument for overturning the controversial award to Airbus/Northrop Grumman, and Congress should abide by the GAO's judgment.

Starbucks, like Microsoft and Boeing, is an iconic company with a worldwide presence. It's the reason the world thinks of us Puget Sounders as latte addicts. But Starbucks is in trouble. We're pulling for the company to right itself with its new emphasis on coffee aromas and customer service. But the market will decide -- and the market can be brutal.

How do you spin this to make the shareholders look good?

By Miles Weiss
March 20 (Bloomberg) — Fidelity Investments, the world’s largest mutual-fund company, said shareholders in two of its mutual funds voted down a proposal yesterday recommending the funds stop investing in companies that contribute to genocide.

The proposal was backed by about 27 percent of the Fidelity Capital and Income Fund shareholders who voted and 28 percent of those from the Fidelity Select Healthcare Portfolio who cast ballots, according to company spokesman Vincent Loporchio. The resolution needed a majority to pass, Loporchio said.

Fidelity, which is based in Boston, and other asset managers have been pressured by activists to sell stakes in companies such as PetroChina Co., the oil producer whose parent does business with the government of Sudan. About 200,000 people have been killed and 2 million made homeless by a civil war in Sudan’s Darfur region.

The genocide proposal, according to the proxy, would apply to “companies that, in the judgment of the board, substantially contribute to genocide, patterns of extraordinary and egregious violations of human rights, or crimes against humanity.”

I think the folks at Tacoma Public Utilities are a bit peeved. Former Tacoma Power Superintendent Steve Klein has swiped another valuable staffer.

TPU legal counsel Anne Spangler is leaving for the Snohomish County Public Utility District, where Klein became general manager two years ago. You could see TPU Director Bill Gaines practically bleeding between the lines in a statement calling Spangler "an outstanding employee" TPU hates to lose.

Spangler, a chief assistant city attorney assigned to TPU, is the third key TPU employee to join SnoCo. The others were Click! manager Dana Toulson and Tacoma Power engineering manager Kim Moore.

Uncompetitive pay is a factor in TPU's brain drain, utility officials believe. Although Tacoma Rail, Tacoma Water and Tacoma Power are utilities with separate revenues and budgets, its managers and skilled professionals are paid according to lower city general government pay scales – a sore point with utility officials.

A city compensation study that's nearing completion may prompt some adjustments, but the City Council would have to approve.

It was a big departure in 2003 when the Council for the first time allowed the utilities director to earn more than the city manager. The Utility Board now sets the pay for its director.

You'd think that using asterisks would be simplest way to identify the candidates on a Top Two primary ballot who are backed by the Democratic and Republican parties.

Can't do it, Attorney Gen. Rob McKenna and Secretary of State Sam Reed have indicated. Probably because it's too easy. When we hear a better reason, we'll let you know. (One guess: The state will argue it has to treat all candidates the same on the ballot.)

For now, Monday's U.S. Supreme Court ruling means the state has to produce a primary ballot that somehow indicates which candidates have the parties' backing.

At least we think that's what the ruling means. It's certainly what state Democratic and Republican party leaders think it means. But as near as we can tell, McKenna and Reed don't want any distinction made on the ballot itself – leaving to the voters pamphlet, the parties and the news media to publicize the party choices.

Remember, no candidate can be denied the right to state his party preference on the ballot. One possibility I've heard is a format similar to this:

Dogcatcher:
Joe Smith (R)
Jack Straw (prefers R)
Jill James (D)
Julie Jones (prefers D)

That could work. But I like the asterisk better.

Meantime, here's a helpful FAQ about the Top Two primary issued by Reed's office.

=> Read more!

Tacoma Streetcar, a citizens group, has been making the rounds of neighborhood councils to drum up support for its hope of creating a system of streetcars (see the press release below).

Don't take this as a knock on streetcars, which can be a excellent component of urban transportation. But Tacoma's leaders should think long and hard before falling into this parade.

The problem: If Sound Transit were somehow persuaded to fund a streetcar system as an immediate priority, it would probably doom forever Pierce County's chances of getting a light rail connection to Sea-Tac Airport and beyond.

When the agency developed November's unsuccessful Roads & Transit package, it broke all the available piggy banks to barely get light rail down to the Tacoma Dome Station. There was hardly a penny to spare.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any way Sound Transit could finance both the light rail connection and an expanded transit system within Tacoma. Something's got to give.

=> Read more!

Our editorial board is no fan of the Top Two primary system that Washington voters approved by initiative in 2004. In today's editorial, we noted in lamenting tones the U.S. Supreme Court's surprising decision to uphold Top Two, calling it a poor counterfeit of the state's beloved blanket primary.

The editorial did hold out hope that some of the unintended consequences of Top Two would be beneficial. As perhaps the biggest supporter of Top Two on the editorial board (I was at another newspaper writing editorials in support of Top Two when The News Tribune was staking out its position against it), I want to put in a good word for those "unintended consequences."

This new system could quite possibly lead to more vigorous races, especially in areas like Seattle and Eastern Washington that are dominated by one party. Top Two should produce general-election contests between two actual front-runners rather than anointings of the ruling party's shoo-in candidates.

Todd Donovan, a political-science professor at Western Washington University, sees it that way too. He told the Seattle Times:

"A lot of people who have been running virtually unopposed in November will probably not be running unopposed anymore," Donovan said.

David Brewster has a similar thought on Crosscut. He said Top Two could give challengers a better shot of unseating incumbents — and convince the parties not to take any seat for granted.

Imagine District ZZZ, which has been electing a Democratic incumbent for years. No ambitious challenger from the Democrats stands a chance in the primary, when loyalists and beneficiaries of Rep. Rottenborough give him early contributions and easily nominate him. The Republicans have long since written off District ZZZ, so their candidate gets a paltry 20 percent in the general election -- if anyone runs at all.

Now, under the new system, the Democratic challenger has a much better chance. She runs a barely-respectable race in the primary and comes in second, ahead of the Republican nullity. Now it gets interesting. Republicans and independents get a chance to vote for the challenger in the general election. Money starts arriving. Rep. Rottenborough starts paying attention, probably moving toward the center. Instead of taking District ZZZ for granted, the state party has to divert some money from other races to make sure of holding the seat.

Obama’s speech on race in America Tuesday was frank, insightful and hopeful – the qualities that have made him such an attractive presidential candidate. It’s also a spectacular comeback to a potentially fatal revelation of his pastor’s anger toward America.

The University of Washington Tacoma emerged from this year's legislative session with strong assists that will keep it growing and moving forward. Thursday's meeting of the UW regents on the Tacoma campus is a recognition of the important role UWT now plays in the state's higher ed system.

On today's editorial page we published an "editorial follow-up" to a March 6 editorial that drew a complaint from Bethel School Superintendent Tom Seigel.

As the editorial notes, Seigel took exception to parts of the editorial, which supported legislation that, among other things, would allow school superintendents to file complaints against administrators in other districts if they felt misled by teacher job recommendations.

The editorial cited the case of Jennifer Rice, a teacher who got in trouble in the Bethel district for inappropriate socializing with students and later landed a job in the Tacoma district. Rice is now awaiting charges of sex crimes involving two boys.

As a result of Seigel's complaint, we corrected and clarified statements in the March 6 editorials. However, we felt that a key question remains: Whether a letter of recommendation a Bethel administrator had written for Rice's placement file adequately disclosed Rice's troubled record. We believe it did not.

Go here to see source documents in the case, including the controversial reference letter and a job evaluation of Rice that rated her performance "satisfactory" although she had disobeyed orders to "keep her distance" from students.

State Supreme Court Justice Charles Johnson is going for a fourth six-year term on the court.

(The Political Buzz blog had this Monday, but they were bribed with brownies. We play it straight over here. We only accept bottles of Scotch.)

Johnson, the Gig Harbor lawyer who came out of nowhere to unseat a veteran justice in 1992, announced his re-election bid this week. He is already the court's longest-serving member.

In a press release, Johnson noted that this is Sunshine Week and declared himself a champion of open government. He pointed to his "strongly worded dissent" in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that expanded the ability of public officials to withhold documents by citing attorney-client privilege.

Johnson didn't mention his majority vote in a still-controversial "felony murder" split decision that prompted state groups representing state troopers, police chiefs and sheriffs to withdraw their endorsements in his 2002 re-election bid. But Johnson handily defeated Pamela Loginsky, a staff lawyer for the Washington Association of Prosecutors.

What the legal cognoscenti are waiting for is whether the Building Industry Association of Washington will field another conservative property-rights advocate for a court seat. A BIAW-backed candidate gave Chief Justice Gerry Alexander a tough battle two years ago, but Alexander held on.

With a heavy Democratic turnout expected in November, the BIAW might take a pass this time. We'll see.

We've had a lot to say over the years about the turmoil surrounding Washington's primary election systems.

The latest twist is a new ruling from U.S. Supreme Court that will leave the state with a modified version of Lousiana's heretofore unique "Cajun primary." The voters approved this in 2004, but we've never liked it much. See today's editorial.

If you want more on Washington's primaries without our spin, the Secretary of State's office is a good place to start.

New York Times columnist William Kristol made a fairly serious mistake in his column about Barack Obama and his controversial pastor that ran today in The News Tribune. Here's what Kristol posted on The Times' Web site:

In this column, I cite a report that Sen. Obama had attended services at Trinity Church on July 22, 2007. The Obama campaign has provided information showing that Senator Obama did not attend Trinity that day. I regret the error.

Usually when a columnist makes a mistake, a correction comes across the wire in time to fix the column prior to publication. This did not happen in this case. Indeed, as of 12:15 p.m. Tuesday, we have not received a correction. We plan to complain to the Times.

Well, Calvin Goings is nothing if not persistent.

Peeved that I turned down his oped submission last week, Goings, a Pierce County councilman running for county executive, found another way to publish his piece: He posted it in this blog.

Give him points for creativity. I don't have much of a problem with that: I'm happy to let blog readers judge for themselves the merits of the submission. I stand by my call on the original; it was an artful dodge full of campaign posturing. We have standards.

But there's a limit. Goings posted his article again today, as a comment on the latest development in the flap over Goings' call for the planning director's dismissal. OK, that's two bites of the apple. No more.

Actually, I think the kosher way for Goings to have handled this would have been to post his article on his campaign website, and post a link to the article in the comments section of this blog. Directing readers to his own Internet real estate instead of publishing it on ours would seem to be a more straightfoward thing to do.

Decisions on oped submissions and letters are among the judgment calls we make every day in producing the editorial pages. We have a responsibility to be fair. Of course, what seems fair will depend on whose ox is being gored. But rest assured that we have no obligation to let our pages be used inappropriately for self-serving ends.

A mystery surrounds Bear Stearns, the venerable investment bank rescued Friday out of fear that its collapse could send all of Wall Street reeling.

Namely, its name.

How does a firm in this racket survive for 85 years with a name like "Bear"?

Why not Bull Stearns, Windfall Stearns or Rally Stearns?

If anyone decides this company needs rechristening, here are some names we would argue against: Crash Stearns, Panic Stearns, Nosedive Stearns, Sell-Off Stearns, Lemming Stearns and Halloween Stearns.

Lose Your Shirt Stearns wouldn't be a good one, either.

Side note: A sad aspect of the Bear Stearns collapse is that 30 percent of its stock is held by employees. A stock that was worth $70 a share a week ago was valued at $2 a share in the sale to JPMorgan Chase.

And, rather ironically, Bear Stearns famously refused to contribute to the $3.6 billion bailout of hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. What goes around comes around.
--D. Seago

The risk of a global financial crisis looms as the world watches to see if the Federal Reserve can stave off a wider financial panic of the kind that brought down the venerable and once-mighty house of Bear Stearns. The trouble is, the Fed is running out of tools and having to invent new ones to fix a much riskier and less transparent market. One worrying question is whether taxpayers will end up holding the bag, as they did after the savings-and-loan crisis.

The Port of Tacoma has egg all over its face. The revelation of embarrassing emails showing disrespect for commissioners and citizens shows that the port staff needs some re-education about the responsibilities of working for a governmental institution.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Whatever air was left in Pierce County Councilman Calvin Goings' "fire Chuck Kleeberg" balloon last week disappeared completely today.

The county's most prominent developer association said it would not be a part of any move to dismiss Kleeberg and complimented him on his willingness to work with the development community.

That stance by the Master Builders Association of Pierce County is significant because Goings, running for executive this fall, may have hoped his attack on Kleeberg would help win an endorsement from the MBA. If any group had reason to be unhappy with Kleeberg, it would be the builders.

Here's the letter the builders group sent to County Executive John Ladenburg and to the County Council:

=> Read more!

Since when did the state teachers union start plotting legal strategy with a national drug-legalization organization?

One of the most curious things about the state supreme court's recent ruling on random drug tests in high school athletics was a friend-of-the-court brief filed jointly by the Washington Education Association and the Drug Policy Alliance, which bills itself "as the nation's leading organization of people who believe the war on drugs is doing more harm than good."

Somebody at the alliance appears to think the street drugs themselves can do more good than harm. Its Web site links to the upcoming World Psychedelic Forum, during which "more than fifty experts from all over the world will bear witness to, and shine light upon the multi-dimensional psychedelic experience with its tremendous potential for expanding consciousness and for self-awareness."

I asked WEA spokesman Rich Wood why the union hooked up with three Berkeley lawyers from this outfit for the purpose of challenging drug tests for student athletes.

His reply:

As the brief states, our position is that suspicionless drug testing of students has a detrimental effect on students by discouraging them from participating in sports and other activities. It also discourages them from seeking help if they do have drug problems.

Our position is about what professional educators believe works best for their students and has nothing to do with the decriminalization of drugs. So to answer your second question, no. Our members discourage illegal drug use, and they know full well the problems it causes students and their families.

My reply:

Fair enough. But why did specifically the WEA link up with the Drug Policy Alliance in this amicus? Why not a separate brief? The partnership does give the appearance that the WEA and the alliance have a common broader agenda on drugs.

No answer from Rich yet on that question.

“I am NOT making this up,” downtown Tacoma rhinestone dealer Steph Farber tells me. The U.S. Air Force, he reports, has selected a new recruiting slogan, “Above All.”

So? I reply.

Do you know the German translation of that? he asks.

I’ll bite, I say.

"Uber Alles" – as in "Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles..." Shall we all sing along?

Oops.

It’s true. Here’s how an Air Force spokesman pitched it:

"The new slogan is admittedly a bold one," said Col. Michael Caldwell, deputy director of Air Force public affairs, "but so are Airmen." This campaign accurately portrays Airmen and how they're executing the Air Force mission to ensure the security and safety of America now and in the future.

"'Above All' is about what we do and how we do it," Colonel Caldwell said. "The job of the Air Force is to defend America and we do that by dominating air, space and cyberspace. The new campaign and slogan captures our roots, but also illustrates where we're going as a service as the Air Force prepares to contend with future threats."

For more from Col. Caldwell, go here. Check out the debate going on at the BoingBoing blog.

Pierce County Councilman Calvin Goings didn’t win points for diplomacy this week when he publicly called for firing the county’s planning director, Chuck Kleeberg.

County Executive John Ladenburg was particularly incensed – and many county employees annoyed – because Goings’s call for Kleeberg’s head was placed on the main page of the county’s employee-only intranet page as well as emailed to all county employees. Goings says his press release wasn’t treated differently than any other.

Kleeberg’s acerbic response appeared on the oped page Wednesday. Goings asked for oped space to respond. We initially agreed to run it Friday, but we turned down the submitted version because did not address the substance of Kleeberg’s article. Goings' piece said that he would not “get personal” and cast himself as one “never afraid to stand up for the taxpayers and fight against the forces of the status quo.”

If Goings thought his call for Kleeberg’s dismissal would elicit cheers from the county’s development industry, he was mistaken. Kleeberg himself faced representatives of the Pierce County Master Builders Association on Wednesday; he said afterward he thought the session had gone well, although the MBA has been critical of permit delays in the Planning and Land Services Department.

At week’s end, Goings’ resolution urging Kleeberg’s firing found no support from council colleagues. For the record: Goings, D-Puyallup, is running for county executive this fall. Ladenburg is term-limited – and backing Democratic county Auditor Pat McCarthy to succeed him.

Saturday:

We’re glad to see police busting scrap metal buyers who aren’t following the rules to make sure they aren’t buying stolen metal. Making it tough to sell stolen copper and other metal is the best way to curb the epidemic of meth-related metal theft and vandalism plaguing the county.

Sunday:

The state Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling against random drug tests for school athletes is consistent with the state’s constitution, which holds stronger privacy rights than the federal constitution. But schools can still make use of the tactic if they can document the need for it — much in the same way cities are required to demonstrate the need for teen curfew laws.

For Democrats, the new state budget was relatively restrained -- but the fact remains that they still increased spending and thus added to the $2.4 billion-plus budget shortfall the Legislature will face in 2009.

Monday:

We hope the various parties trying to work out a solution for the neglected Bonney Lake Forest succeed in restoring public access.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Letter writer Ken Upton of Lakewood, a well-known musician and entertainer in these parts, wrote to tell us about the pre-Ventures musical career of the legendary band's original drummer, Howie Johnston.

In his letter, which appears today, Upton laments that the amiable, talented Johnston didn't get to share in the Ventures' big success in the 1960s because he was badly injured in a 1961 automobile accident and had to be replaced.

Upton also sent along a photo of the group he and Johnston were in while at Lincoln High School, The Four Roses and a Chaser, circa 1949. The Ventures, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Monday, formed about a decade later.

From left, the members are Upton on piano, "Rocky" Copple from Clover Park High School on bass, Wayne Simon on trumpet/clarinet/sax, Johnston on drums and Larry Miller on guitar.

We've noted in an editorial and here on the blog that we thought U.S. Sen. Patty Murray was overdoing her attacks on the Air Force tanker decision that went against Boeing.

Perhaps the senator noticed. Her office called up today and scheduled a visit with our editorial board on March 25. The subject: tankers, natch.

Update: We're going to get both barrels. Washington's other U.S. senator, Maria Cantwell, will also attend the session:

We'll be glad to hear the senator's arguments firsthand. Murray hasn't given a floor speech on the subject since Monday (she blasted the tanker choice from the floor every day last week), but she's scheduled to speak at a Boeing workers' rally on Wednesday in Everett.

Our editorial stance, for the record, is that evidence of a flawed selection process is the only legitimate reason for Congress to block the Air Force decision. That's the case Boeing is making in its formal protest of the decision. The Government Accounting Office is investigating.

Meanwhile, former US. Sen. John Breaux, D-La., hired along with former U.S. Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., to lobby for Northrop Grumman, said he doesn't blame members of the Washington and Kansas delegation for squawking so loudly. This from a wire story:

“If I was the senator or congressman from a state that did not get the contract, I would be trying to do everything that I could to reverse it,” he said.
“We are particularly sensitive to the political pressures (lawmakers) are going to be under. I think that is why I can be helpful,” Breaux said.

The true hidden jewel at Pierce County’s Chambers Bay Golf Course – two miles of unspoiled Puget Sound shoreline affording spectacular views – could be open to beach walkers by next spring, if not sooner. (Correction: Not that soon. See note below.)

Opening up the beach was always part of the county’s goal in creating the new golf course, which overlooks the Sound in University Place. A three-mile walking trail passes around and through the links, but the Burlington Northern’s mainline tracks separate the course from the shoreline.

A solution to getting trail walkers over the tracks wasn’t expected so soon. But $2.4 million for a pedestrian overpass was included in the capital budget that cleared the Legislature this week. Gov. Chris Gregoire had included funding in her capital budget proposal.

The county’s share of the project is $1.25 million for planning, permitting and engineering. County spokesman Ron Klein says the project should go to bid by late summer or early fall. The governor will preside over a symbolic groundbreaking this summer.

Klein adds:

We are working with the Chambers Creek Foundation on a large community celebration to be held Aug. 9 to officially open the Central and North Meadows. We hope to have the parking lots open to the public within the next few months but will not open the meadows until August to allow the grass to establish as much as possible.

The Chambers Creek Properties Web site provides details on the county's plans for developing the remainder of the former Lone Star gravel mining site.

Correction:

We do not anticipate being able to start construction until the beginning of 2009. This project requires construction over the tracks and will take some coordination with the railroad. At the earliest we will have it open would be the first of 2010.

Anne-marie Marshall
Senior Planner
Public Development Division

The prospect of a Democratic nominating convention that may actually decide the party’s presidential nominee this year seems mind-boggling – but only because Americans have grown used to the primary/caucus system designed to avoid brokered conventions. U.S. history is rich with examples of convention wheeling-and-dealing. Lincoln was nominated this way.

We’re glad to see that Pierce County Superior Court judges have reduced an unacceptably large backlog of court cases, but they still have a long way to go.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

David Madeira, president and CEO of The LeMay – America's Car Museum, took issue with a blog item Wednesday that reflected my impatience in looking for a scheduled date for groundbreaking. Herewith, Madeira's response in full:

david: I'm really disappointed in your negative blog about the museum. You take a positive release about the NY Auto Show and turn it into a negative op ed. Do you realize that we get to go to NY, open their show, get international exposure and have it all paid for by State Farm and IBM? And, we bring international media attention to Tacoma. Shouldn't your blog be to tell people how cool this is and how good it is for the City instead of using it to be negative?

Your facts are wrong:

1. the City didn't "approve a scaled back contract"--we're trying to complete our entire vision. We asked and gained approval to allow us to stage it so we can get moving on it more quickly.

2. Last fall I expressed the hope, that if all goes well we could break ground this spring. I still hope we can--but until we know bids are solid and in price range; approve the contractor; and gain financing we can't. We're trying to make sure we're in good position before we announce a ground breaking--rather than announce and then run into an issue and have to delay.

3. It's not a $143,000,000 project; it's a $100,000,000 project.

You call it a "long-awaited ground-breaking" and then say "if it ever gets off the ground". While it may seem long to you and to me; think about it. What has been attained in 3 years of a 5 year campaign for a brand new institution is remarkable. What's remarkable is that a small entity that in the year 2002 had a $30,000 bank account and less than 100 members now has raised $50,000,000 including land; has 2,400 members in 45 states and 4 countries; an international board; and is close to breaking ground on a $25,000,000 first phase. I dare you to show me another entity that has even contemplated such an undertaking so young in it's life. And we're not curing cancer or solving world hunger.

You can focus on progress, recognize the problems we face in a difficult economy; tough auto industry, and being a young institution taking on a major project. And you could applaud the progress and urge the community to help get us over the top. Instead, you choose to seed doubt and negativity? What good will that do--just discourage people from supporting the project and make it even tougher for us? Why would you do that?

You can report the facts, good and bad. No problem. But if you're going to do a story or blog--why don't you talk to me?

Thanks, David

David Madeira
President and CEO
LeMay-America’s Car Museum®

Good riff on the Eliot Spitzer sex scandal today from The Nation's Katha Pollit:

Just once I'd like to see a male politician caught in a sex scandal stand up there at the press conference all by himself.

You want to be an alpha male with extra helpings of testosterone and appetites that cannot be denied? Fine, but if you get caught, Be. A. Man. Don't drag your wife in front of the cameras to prove how strong your marriage is . . .

I'm not saying the wife has to divorce her ethically challenged spouse, although, come to think of it, that would make a change. But just once I'd like to see her skip the press conference and fly off to Paris instead.

.

From the Heritage Foundation, this interesting graphic on the age of America's geriatric warplanes, including the presidents, No. 1 songs and most popular TV shows when they were rolled out.

Heritage, a conservative think tank, advocates a bigger defense budget – including new planes.)

It's remarkable that Boeing's B-52 – a lumbering dinosaur created in the early 1950s – remains in service.

The current political battle over whether Airbus or Boeing gets to build the new aerial refuelers was set in motion by the antiquity of Air Force's existing tankers. The KC-135, built in Renton, was introduced in 1956.

It's commonly noted that some of these antiques are older than than their crews. Some are probably are older than their younger crewmembers' parents.

As you might expect, House Republicans in Olympia had nothing good to say about about the $7.5 billion transportation budget that just emerged from the Democratic-controlled Legislature.

State Rep. Doug Erickson of Ferndale, the top Republican on the House Transportation Committee, derided the Democrats’ various transportation initiatives and said they offer “no vision and little hope for congestion relief.”

Erickson contended the new transportation budget would spend 18 percent more that the revenue anticipated from current gas taxes, which amounts to “kicking serious problems down the road.” By 2014, he charged, state debt payments on road financing will “drastically outweigh” gas tax revenue.

Although I don’t have confirmation, that wouldn’t surprise me. The cost of all the road work the state needs to do, including massive King County megaprojects like replacing the SR 520 bridge and the Alaskan Way Viaduct, far outstrips available revenues.

But I don’t see much reality in the GOP alternative, either. Erickson claims the Republican plan would raise more than $6 billion over 10 years to relieve traffic congestion – without raising taxes.

Using “private sector innovation throigh Transportation Improvement Zone financing” would raise $1.5 billion for an Alaskan Way Viaduct tunnel, Erickson claims. Sounds ephemeral to me. Some $1.3 billion would come from diverting sales and use taxes on new and used cars and auto parts – which presumably would create a revenue shortfall somewhere else in the budget.

The notion of meeting state transportation needs without raising taxes just doesn’t pass the straight-face test.

For what it’s worth, the Democratic transportation budget cleared the Senate on a 45-4 vote, and Erickson’s Senate counterpart, Sen. Dan Swecker of Rochester, praised the budget.

The latest word on the long-awaited groundbreaking for the LeMay car museum, from museum publicist Holly Wood (no joke):

We are waiting for board approval of our finance plan at the board meeting on May 1st, before we can announce the ground breaking date. Groundbreaking will happen late spring or early summer.

I queried Ms. Wood after receiving another press release, this one about the museum’s exhibit in the annual New York International Auto Show next week. The announcement I – and many others – are waiting for is when they’re going to start building the darn museum – or at least its first phase.

“The LeMay – America’s Car Museum,” as it is officially named now, is supposed to rise in the west parking lot of the Tacoma Dome, near Interstate 5. In September, when the Tacoma City Council approved a scaled-back contract with the museum, LeMay director David Madeira predicted groundbreaking in six months – which would have been about now.

The grand vision calls for a $143 million showcase for the classic car collection amassed by the late Pierce County garbage king Harold LeMay. But for now the museum project will begin with a $25 million or so car collector’s center and “showfield.”

If it ever gets off the ground.

No sooner had I posted the previous message about state Rep. Steve Kirby and payday lending than I got this week's Seattle Weekly newsletter in my e-mail in box. The Weekly has a story on Dennis Bassford, CEO of the Seattle-based Moneytree, who figured prominently in last year's defeat of payday lending reform (and contributed to Kirby's campaign).

Bassford is using philanthropy to try to win over advocacy groups who represent his target customer – and it appears he's having some success. On the Friday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, he appeared with Roy Innis, chairman of the New York–based Congress of Racial Equality, to push the button that launches NASDAQ trading. The story says a spokesperson for CORE lauded Bassford as "the kind of face for corporate America that corporate America needs."

John Burbank, a former editorial page columnist for The News Tribune and head of a liberal think tank in Seattle, is running for the Legislature.

Burbank is seeking the 36th District seat of Seattle Democrat Helen Sommers, the powerful House Appropriations Committee chairman who announced her retirement today. Sommers, who held her seat 36 years, is the longest-serving member of the Legislature.

Burbank heads the Economic Opportunity Institute. He was the author of an ill-fated "latte tax" that would have imposed a 10-cent surcharge on coffee drinks to support early learning and childcare.

For at least six years, Burbank and Richard Davis, who was then president of the Washington Research Council, alternated a weekly column on state issues. The columns ended when Davis took a job with the Association of Washington Business.

Federal Way Municipal Court Judge Michael Morgan has no good argument for keeping secret a city investigation into problems in the city court that have already prompted another city judge to resign. Morgan’s stance only weakens public confidence in the integrity of the court; voters should remember that if he stands for re-election.

Tacoma School Board President is taking some risks with his emphasis on school board openness. The board’s decision to name the semifinalist applicants for superintendent might scare off some good applicants. The board president might have gone overboard in unilaterally cancelling a board trip to a convention to meet potential candidates. But on the whole, we applaud his desire to make sure public business is done in public.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Tacoma state Rep. Steve Kirby – chair of the House financial institutions committee – proved an effective obstacle to payday lending reform last year. So when consumer advocates went back to the Legislature this year to press for reforms in the mortgage lending market, they worried that Kirby would be another roadblock.

For a while, it seemed that would prove true after Kirby's committee gutted the provisions of a broker-responsibility bill. But with the end of session in sight, advocates are calling the session a victory for mortgage lending reform. And Kirby deserves a bit of the credit.

=> Read more!

Epiphanies don't usually come to me in the checkout line (except about Elvis and Britney), but there's a first time for everything.

I was at Wal-Mart recently – yes, I had an excuse for being there – when I heard the checker get excited about the deal the guy in front of me had scored on a junior mountain bike.

The deal: a mountain bike for $39.

Not a toy. It wasn't a Santa Cruz Superlight with a full suspension, but it was a real bicyle with real brakes, knobby tires, 15 gears, made out of real steel and rubber. For the price some tire pumps go for.

I asked the customer if I could take a look. Sure enough, the manufacturer had a Chinese name.

You hear manufacturers and unions all the time about the Chinese using subsidies, an undervalued yuan and subsistence wages to dump ultra-cheap consumer goods in the United States.

When you see a $39 mountain bike going through the checkout at Wal-Mart, it's hard not to see their point.

Our editorial Sunday criticized Senate Democrats for challenging the constitutionality of requiring a legislative supermajority to raise taxes.

The Yakima Herald-Republic had another take. Its editorial on the lawsuit argued that, while Democrats might have ulterior motives, there is value in settling a question that has been kicking around for 15 years.

We want public officials and agencies to be more transparent. In the same spirit, here’s a look at our own editorial board interaction with the City of Tacoma and our newsroom Monday.

Today, our lead editorial leads with the headline, “Fire department fails openness test.”

The editorial criticizes Tacoma Fire Chief Ron Stephens for not making himself and fire commanders available for detailed interviews needed to complete The News Tribune’s investigation into the department’s response to a chlorine leak on the Tideflats last year.

City of Tacoma spokesman Rob McNair-Huff saw the blog item Monday previewing Tuesday’s editorial topics and sent us this message.

Hi Dave,
I want to fill you in with some background regarding your planned editorial tomorrow in response to Susan Gordon's piece on the Feb. 12, 2007 chlorine leak in the tideflats.

The story left a mistaken impression that the fire department was not answering questions related to the incident, but the truth is that the department and I were in contact with the reporter on a nearly weekly basis, tracking down documents and answering questions that provided the background for the story. I have been personally involved tracking down answers to questions for the reporter since August 2007.

To my knowledge, the reporter failed to request an interview with the fire chief until two weeks ago, and we set up a 60-minute interview and allowed the meeting to stretch to 90 minutes to ensure that the reporter had the information she needed. Of course the department is sensitive to criticism, but from what I have seen, they have been answering questions related to this incident for more than a year.

I hope this background information is helpful.

Our next move was to consult with Hunter George, the team leader who supervised Susan Gordon’s work on the story. I replied to McNair-Huff:

Rob,
We checked with the newsroom. Susan Gordon and her editor, Hunter George, told us they asked you in October for an interview with the chief during which he would be allowed to review the stories that had been written at that time and offer comment.

According to Gordon, you told her the chief was not willing to be interviewed. While you did answer many questions posed by Susan, this information did not include the substantive issues involving the department’s response to the chlorine leak – questions that could only be answered by the chief and the top fire personnel who involved in the incident response.

Therefore, our editorial position remains the same: the department’s own response to our reporter’s inquiries amounted to stonewalling after June 28, when Chief Stephens ended Gordon’s interview with fire officials.

Dave Seago

McNair-Huff responded:

Thank you for your reply. I still disagree with your conclusion, and here is why. Susan Gordon requested appointments with the fire chief and the city manager in October to have them sit down and read the story that was already written and react/comment on the story. We declined those offers. We did not, however, decline any interview request, and I have made it clear over the last six months that I have been involved with this story that we would answer any specific questions that Susan had for the story, but that we would not sit down and read the story and react to it in that manner.

I believe that much of this comes down to miscommunication. If Susan had asked for an interview last October to help clear up remaining questions that would have been a much different request than setting an appointment to review an already-written story and to offer comments.

And frankly, until two weeks ago when I received a voice mail from Dave Zeeck, I was wondering why the story had still not run because I was left with the distinct impression that the City had answered all of the questions that Susan Gordon needed to finish her story.

Rob,
It remains the newsroom’s contention that you told the reporter there would be no more interviews and that all questions regarding the incident would have to go through you. If the chief was willing to talk about the incident, he would have made that known to The News Tribune one way or another.
Dave

What I hope readers will take away from this exchange is how the editorial writers operate independently of the newsroom. Sometimes we are in the position of having to judge whether a news story was inaccurate or incomplete and have to do some reporting and fact-finding of our own.

Most times we end up siding with the newsroom, but there have been occasions when we felt a news story was misleading or incomplete and, as a result, took an editorial stance that was different from what the initial news coverage might have indicated.

Huge increase in Sound Transit ridership, most of it on rail, underscores the ned to get mass transit built in light of relentlessly rising fuel costs.

Rock ‘n roll justice: Tacoma’s Ventures finally get their due with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

This is a side note to the heart of the debate over state lawmakers' attempt to roll a bunch of fee increases into one bill, but I can't let it pass.

Tim Eyman (whose Initiative 960 makes legislative approval of fee increases an issue) claims that voting on a package of increases violates the "spirit" of I-960. How rich.

It's not like the idea for this maneuver originated in the halls of the Capitol. No, it came straight from supporters of Eyman's tax-limiting measure who pooh-poohed allegations that I-960 would be too onerous.

The conservative Washington Policy Center – whose supportive three-part series on I-960 was widely cited by Eyman himself — suggested last fall:

While requiring legislative approval of all fee increases would increase legislative oversight and workload, one possible remedy would be to streamline the process by using omnibus bills that include many fee increases at once.

By doing this, legislative approval would still occur for all fee increases, but rather than considering a separate bill and taking a separate vote on each proposed increase, the legislature could combine them into one bill and one vote per agency. This is how lawmakers handled the wide range of tax increases they imposed in 2005, using one bill. The amendment process could be used to add or remove fee increases or to adjust the dollar amount of an increase.

Tacoma Fire Chief Ron Stephens’ defensive, circle-the-wagons mentality regarding post-incident investigation of last year’s Tideflats chlorine leak badly serves both the public and his department. It shouldn’t have required the intervention of the city manager to get him to cooperate with a TNT inquiry into what went wrong. And the Department of Labor and Industries should reexamine its own its own, apparently cursory review of the incident.

The bid by a local ownership group for the Sonics comes to late for a legislative response this session, but lawmakers should take it seriously next year. The proposal has a lot going for it.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Looks like it’s time to put Tacoma’s Titlow Pool – more precisely, how to replace it – back on the public’s radar screen.

Voters approved $6 million for replacing the pool in an $84 million bond issue in 2005. But Metro Parks Tacoma commissioners appear to be paralyzed by indecision.

Competitive swimmers who train at Titlow want a new 50-meter pool. Park staff believes a family-style play pool would serve more people. To see if it could make everybody happy, the park board asked staff in December to study building a two-pool facility at three locations: Commissioner Ryan Mello provides this update:

Staff has found no feasible site as of yet to support the two-pool competitive/leisure complex the Board envisions. Furthermore, this vision will require approximately another $2 million more to realize than what is on hand via the '05 bond.

We are looking at more sites and potential partnerships at the moment with other organizations like: Tacoma Public Schools, UPS, TCC and other potential sites such as Peck Field and People's Center. The work going on with the City and County to do a masterplan of the Heidelberg/MPT Headquarters/Cheney Stadium/Foss HS site is also bringing a little breathing room to the decision to see what comes of that and what would make the most sense.

Building a two-pool complex at Kandle Playfield east of the Westgate Shopping Center would require an additional $3.6 million – money the park district doesn’t have and has no prospect of getting, according to staff reports.

Building one at the current Titlow site would cost an extra $4.2 million and
could be stymied by wetlands-related environmental issues. A two-pool facility on the hill south of Metro Parks headquarters on South 19th Street would require an extra $5.2 million.

Parks Director Jack Wilson has warned commissioners that the longer they dally, the less the district will be able to build for the original $6 million allocation.

A Wilson memo dated Feb. 1 draws this plaintive conclusion:

Our pool planning consultants detemined that the existing 50-plus year-old Titlow Pool has exceeded its normal life expectancy and residents very much want to see a new pool built as described in our park bond brochure. Inflation is eroding purchasing power of the bond funds available for this project.

A firm understanding of what will be built, where it will be located, how it will be funded and what the timeline for the project (is) will be needed. We estimate it will take almost two years from when we begin to hire a consultant team to design the pool to when the pool can be open for swimmers. This is the best-case scenario that assumes we do not experience major delays with land use issues and permitting.

If you ask me, I'd say the park district's credibility with the voters is on the line. Decision time!

The federal jurors in Tacoma may have decided Briana Waters was guilty of helping torch a lab at the University of Washington, but there are plenty of people out there who don't.

Most of them, by some coincidence, happen to share her enviro-political views.

This from the Support Briana Website:

Briana Waters is a devoted, loving mother and partner, a dedicated musician and violin teacher, and a caring friend to many. It has come as quite a shock to everyone who knows her that she has been wrongly accused of participating in a politically motivated arson at the University of Washington.

And this from a leftist site called CounterPunch:

Briana Waters is a victim of the "Green Scare" the federal government's hysterical, post-911 witch-hunt against environmental activists, and its overzealous charging tendencies.

"Reasons to Worry" is the headline on the faded copy of The New York Times Sunday Magazine I dug out of my files the other day.

The subhead read:
"Why you could be excused for feeling a little uneasy about the collapse in household savings, rise in mortgage debt, a large and growing trade deficit and the fact that Asian countries hold so many U.S. treasuries"

The date: June 11, 2006

Spin forward to Friday, March 7, 2008. The top Page One headline in the Wall Street Journal offered more gloomy news:
"Housing, Bank Troubles Deepen
"Foreclosures Reach a New Record; Home Equity Falls"

The article noted:

Among the latest trouble signals, the number of American homes entering foreclosure rose to the highest level on record in the fourth quarter of 2007. Meanwhile, homeowners' share of the equity in their homes fell to a post-World War II low . . .

Perhaps most troublesome for policymakers: The deterioration in household finances is expected to continue throughout the year as housing prices fall further.

Back to that NYT Sunday Magazine article: Author Niall Ferguson, a Harvard historian, recognized the risk of "subprime mortgages" long before the word entered the common vocabulary last fall. He saw the ticking time bomb:
Within two years, the "teaser" interest rates on vast numbers of subprime mortgage loans sold with adjustable rates (ARMs) would suddenly shoot up.

But American homeowners weren't the only ones bingeing on credit, Ferguson noted. The U.S. government was (and is) bingeing on debt, too. "It turns out that George Bush has the biggest ARM in the world," he wrote.

The president doesn't deserve all the blame. Congress, Wall Street and the U.S. banking industry all acted like we could live on credit forever without actually having to pay our bills.

What we're learning now is that eventually you have to pay the piper. The main question now for the country is how deep the pain of recession will be and how long it will last. We could have seen it coming.

The Nisqually Land Trust is one of the outfits that does God's work around here. For years, it's been quietly and successfully buying up land in the Nisqually River Valley to preserve sensitive and scenic habitat from logging and development.

It's just scored a big coup by securing 142 acres in Ashford – the Allen Estate – near the entrance to Mount Rainier National Park. Those acres have been in imminent danger since 2005, when their owners decided to log them. Most of the park's visitors may not pay much attention to the big Douglas firs that line the road into the park – but they'd sure notice if those trees were cut down.

The $780,000 purchase (with federal grant money) is part of a larger effort, the Mount Rainier Gateway Initiative, which aims to protect 4,500 acres near the park.

You've got to like these guys.

Oh, brother. Now Washington legislators are getting into the fuss over the big Air Force tanker contract.

The Washington Policy Center's Jason Mercier alerts us that 66 House members signed on to a resolution urging Congress to halt the tanker purchase. A handful of Pierce County and South King legislators are among the sponsors – including two smart enough to know better – Rep. Pat Lantz, D-Gig Harbor, and Rep. Dennis Flannigan, D-Tacoma. Guess they figure it's harmless.

Mercier comments:

I have to wonder if we are asking Congress not to sign contracts with companies that manufacture planes over seas like Boeing does with the 787. (News story).

The Airbus tanker assembly model sounds a lot like what Boeing is doing for the 787: See these Northrop Grumman statements here and here.

It would have been nice for the home team to win but we should be fine with the Air Force selecting the best deal for the federal taxpayers.

Washington's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray took to the Senate floor again today, firing another broadside at the air tanker decision that didn't go Boeing's way.

This time, Murray contended darkly that allow the Northrop Grumman-EADS (Airbus) team to build aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force will destroy the U.S. aerospace industry and weaken national security.

I’ve said this before. With one contract, we could wipe out what it has taken our nation 50 years to build up – an experienced and exceptional aerospace industry.
And once it’s gone, we won’t get it back. We won't get it back. And once we lose the ability to produce military technology, we begin to lose control over our nation's defense.
Mr. President, this decision effectively gives foreign governments control over aspects of our national security.

For a dose of reality, see this AP wire story (it fronted the TNT business section today) pointing out how much Boeing would have depended on critical imported parts to build the tanker.

And Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein, who used to cover the defense industry, calls Boeing "one of the biggest corporate whiners in Washington (D.C.)." (Column here). He adds:

Overturning this contract decision would set a terrible precedent. It would signal to allies that while their governments are expected to buy our stuff, we won't buy theirs. It would mean that Boeing would become the monopoly supplier of transport planes to the U.S. government, with the power to dictate prices and terms. And the message it would send to every contracting officer in every government agency is that if they know what is good for their careers, they will put political considerations ahead of getting the best value for the American taxpayer.

I dropped by the glass-art-themed Hotel Murano Thursday to check it out before writing an editorial on it to run over the weekend. Workers were busily getting it ready for the $500-a-plate black-tie gala Saturday.

I talked with curator Tessa Papas and public relations director Dina Nishioka about the art showcased at the hotel. I liked almost all of it, especially the three "Viking Ships" (pictured) hanging from the ceiling. But I'm not quite sure what to make of the black, life-size horse lamp in the lobby. It's a conversation piece if nothing else.

I learned that the 104-foot-high sculpture out front, which will become the property of the City of Tacoma, was by a Greek artist, Costas Varotsos.

It's kind of interesting that two of Tacoma's biggest, most expensive pieces of public art are by Greeks. The other, of course, is the neon art (pictured) by Stephen Antonakos in the Tacoma Dome. And it turns out, the two artists know each other.

Here's another coincidence: The neon art went into the Dome in 1984 – the year the Sheraton Tacoma Hotel opened. The Sheraton is now the Hotel Murano.

Saturday:
The $22 million makeover of the old Sheraton Tacoma as the Hotel Murano, a glass-art showcase, is an extraordinary investment in Tacoma and promises to be come a tourist destination in itself. A celebration is in order.

Sunday:
Washington’s Supreme Court did Democratic lawmakers a favor by refusing to fast-track a decision on a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Initiative’s 960’s requirement for a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. The lawsuit, filed by Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown, was a transparent bid to make it easier to raise taxes next year to deal with an expected $2 billion shortfall.

Justice catches up with ELF collaborator Briana Waters in Tacoma’s federal court. This is a case in which the sins of the mother will be visited upon the child — Waters’ three-year old, born long after Waters was involved in torching a horticulture lab at the University of Washington.

Monday:
We say “amen” to U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks’ vow to keep the administration from changing long-established policy in order to allow visitors to take loaded weapons into national parks.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Two notable quotes, via wire services, from Jim Albaugh, chief of Boeing's defense and space division, in testimony to Congress Wednesday:

We will only protest in the event we think there is an irregularity in the proposal phase,” he said. “Any company that protests and makes protest a part of their capture strategy is doing a real disservice to the country and the military.

That's a smart stance, because otherwise defense contracts get awarded on the basis of political pull. Not good. Albaugh said Boieng has never protested an award his 33 years with Boeing. Also . . .

Losing the contract won’t “make or break the Boeing company,” Albaugh said. The tanker program would have represented about 1 percent of Boeing’s revenue over five years, he said.
“Not a big driver in terms of growth or profitability, but clearly one that we would have liked to have won,” he said.

My guess is that Albaugh is also being cautious about protesting because it is entirely possible that Boeing will have to retreat once the Air Force goes public with a full analysis of its decision. That will follow briefings the Air Force will give the two bidders this month.

Intriguing factoid from today's Wall Street Journal about the relative strength of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in caucuses and primaries:

Ten of the Illinois senator's 25 victories are in caucus states, which typically are smaller and where turnout is generally under 10 percent of eligible voters. Of Sen. Clinton's 16 victories, 15 are in primary states, where turnout is typically 30 percent or higher. About 17 percent of Sen. Obama's delegate votes are from caucus states, compared with 10 percent of Sen. Clinton's.

The prospect of a brokered Democratic nominating convention prompted discussion during today's ed board topic meeting. Americans have got so used to the primary system, we agreed, that they've forgotten that the parties have an absolute legal right to control their nominating process.

Consider the pickle Democrat super-delegates are in: They may have to decide among themselves not which candidate they personally identifiy with but which candidate is most likely to beat John McCain. On that point, it seems to me, you could flip a coin. Good arguments either way.

1. Clinton and Obama have been trashing NAFTA on the campaign trail. Maybe they think they have to, but they ought to be smart enough to recognize that NAFTA has been a net win for both the U.S. and Mexico and that protectionist moves ultimately come back to hurt both U.S. consumers and the economy.

2. Washington legislators shouldn’t drop the ball on a bill that would strengthen math and science education in Washington, in part by paving the way for paying such hard-to-recruit teachers more.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Well, scratch any notion that former Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps might run for mayor next year. He doesn’t live in Tacoma any more.

Phelps tells me, only half in jest, that he moved to Lakewood as part of a 12-step program for recovering politicians. Avoiding temptation, you know.

Actually, he said, his wife was scared to death that she would get beaned by a golf ball at their former home near the North Shore Golf Course in Northeast Tacoma. Balls landed in the yard all the time.

Phelps is now working on the performance audit team for state Auditor Brian Sonntag. His latest project was drumming up support for legislation requiring public bodies to tape their executive sessions. Strong opposition from associations representing cities and counties sank the measure this year. But House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler, a staunch supporter, vows to push it hard next year.

Phelps remains active in Tacoma civic life. He was recently elected treasurer of Tacoma's Life Center megachurch, which has an eight-digit budget. And he’s still heavily involved in Tacoma’s Global Neighbor Project, which promotes relief for Lesotho, one of Africa’s most impoverished and AIDS-ridden nations.

In April, Phelps said, World Vision, the international relief organization partnering in the Lesotho initiative, will bring its touring African village exhibit to Tacoma and Puyallup. “World Vision Experience: AIDS” is an interactive, walk-through exhibit depicting life through the eyes of four African children. See a video on the exhibit here.

If you're a Doonesbury fan, you've probably noticed that we've been running
"Doonesbury flashbacks" this week – reruns of earlier cartoons that appear when cartoonist Garry Trudeau is on vacation.

That's OK for a week here and there, but what do readers think about three months of reruns?

We received this message today from Trudeau's syndicate:

It has been 16 years since Garry Trudeau took an extended leave from Doonesbury. He has requested another break, well deserved in my mind, to work on other projects, travel and regenerate a few creative cells. This break will last twelve weeks (Sunday, March 23 to Monday, June 16). He looks forward to resuming the strip before the two major political conventions and the general election.

Garry will select the 12 weeks of Doonesbury substitutes, which will be automatically provided to you free of charge. We can also provide a different comic strip that is available in your territory as a substitute.

So what should we do? Run three months of reruns? A different comic strip? Or use the extra space to run a few more letters to the editor every day? (That's what I'd like to do; we receive far more letters than we are able to run.)

Let us know your thoughts.

Tacoma Power Superintendent Bill Gaines responds to our earlier post about tidal power on Puget Sound:

Saw your editorial blog quoting (Snohomish County PUD Director) Steve Klein on tidal power. Steve seems to be saying that he is happy spending taxpayer’s (but not ratepayer’s) money ‘developing’ tidal power, even if it is uneconomic in the face of other resource alternatives.

The issue is not whether Tacoma or Snohomish has the greater need for new resources, but rather which new resource alternative is most economical and environmentally acceptable. On that latter point, the following is a recent news clip which begins to hint at the environmental backlash that will attend any attempt to install hydrokinetic generation.

Tacoma is not walking away from its investigation of this technology. Rather we are assessing the results of our Phase II study to determine next steps.

=> Read more!

The roundup has begun.

Earlier today, Thurston County deputies arrested five young suspects on suspicion of committing felonies in last month's riot at a hip-hop concert at The Evergreen State College.

Four of the five were Evergreen students – two of them reportedly members of the school's women's soccer team. Evergreen apparently doesn't offer the course "Basics of Criminality 112: Avoiding mob violence while police are recording the whole thing on video."

It's appalling, of course, that students getting a tax-subsidized education at a public college would go on a rampage like this. Who do they think they are – Husky football players?

Some representatives of the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County stopped by to chat about a recent story on their campaign to become a no-kill shelter.

They came to reiterate that they have not abandoned their goal to end the euthanization of healthy, adoptable animals. The only thing they've abandoned is the timeline; they don't think the December 2008 deadline is doable.

I'm not surprised. In 2006, we ran a piece in our Insight section that illustrated how bold the Humane Society's goal was. (It's not available on our site any longer, but you can find the text here.) By our reckoning, the local Humane Society, had it been successful, would have been the largest, open-admission shelter to achieve no-kill status in the country.

=> Read more!

The sale of Lake Tapps water to an alliance of east King County cities is nearly a done deal, but Lake Tapps politicians and residents aren't done fighting.

State Rep. Chris Hurst, D-Greenwater, and Pierce County Councilman Shawn Bunney, R-Lake Tapps, sent a letter seething with resentment to state ecology officials this week. This snippet gives you an idea:

Now that Cascade is in the process of concluding their exclusive negotiations, they are attempting to appear caring about the lake, the surrounding cities and the public at large when in fact they seem to see the community as nothing more than a necessary annoyance.

Accusing the Cascade Water Alliance of ignoring the interests of Lake Tapps residents, Hurst and Bunney urged the Department of Ecology to base a crucial water-rights permit on a water-management proposal developed by a Lake Tapps task force, rather than one the alliance is negotiating with the Muckleshoot and Puyallup tribes.

Last week the alliance announced a $39 million purchase deal with Puget Sound Energy, owner of the lake. It's contingent on Cascade striking an agreement with the tribes on stream flows and obtaining a state water permit, expected this spring.

I wouldn't hold out much hope that DOE would go along with the Hurst-Bunney request. It looks like the Cascade purchase, in the works since 2001, is pretty far down the road. We've invited Hurst and Bunney in for an ed board session to talk about it, though.

Here'sa letter from the alliance on their intentions, and here's the letter Hurst and Bunney sent to Ecology.

The senior senator from Washington state ripped into Airbus again on the Senate floor today.

Patty Murray accused Airbus of using "funny numbers" and inflating its claims for the number of jobs it creates in America. She denounced as specious any suggestion that assembling the new Air Force tankers in Alabama will make the planes "American-made."

Mr. President, that’s like shipping a BMW over from Germany, putting new tires on it, and calling it America’s newest luxury car. As I have said before, you can put an American sticker on a plane and call it American – but that doesn’t make it American made.

Full text below:

=> Read more!

How well could you eat on $3 a day?

Representatives of Pierce County food banks are scheduled to meet with the ed board March 18 to discuss a Food Stamp Challenge they plan to stage in April.

The idea is to get elected officials and other notavbles to try living for a week on a food-stamp budget. Although prices of gas, food, utiilities and housing keep rising, the value of government-issue food stamps has been flat.

Here's a report on how four congresspeople fared when they tried a similar challenge last year.

Former Tacoma Utility Board member Bill LaBorde, now head of Environment Washington, corrects me on an earlier blog posting about tidal power on Puget Sound. Here’s Bill:

At the end of your posting you note that California's renewable portfolio standard (RPS) allows hydro to count as a renewable resource while I-937 does not. This is a common misconception that was fueled by the opponents to I-937 during the 2006 campaign.

The truth is that California's RPS treats hydro not much differently than I-937. Both the California RPS and I-937 count "conduit hydroelectric" and the incremental increases in energy produced from efficiency improvements to existing dams. The only difference is that the California policy counts existing small-scale dams (under 30 megawatts) Tacoma's dams, except for the Wynoochee dam, are all much larger and would not be eligible under California's RPS. (More info here.)

Power generated by large-scale dams, like all but one of those owned by Tacoma, are not eligible under the California renewable standard (none of the mid-Columbia dams would count either).

We could have included small scale hydro as they do in California but we saw no reason to add a controversial element to the initiative when not a single utility asked for such a provision (we met with most of the state's utilities before filing the final version of initiative). Not a single utility expressed any intention of building a new dam on during the 15-year horizon of this initiative.

The reason that surplus hydro owned by utilities like Tacoma is so valuable in California is not because of their RPS, it's because of their limits on greenhouse gases. In fact, as we implement mandatory greenhouse gas limits here in Washington, hydro-owning utilities like Tacoma will see the price of existing hydro-power go up no matter I-937.

Remember when U.S. Sen. Henry Jackson used to be called "the senator from Boeing?" I always thought U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks inherited the mantle when he championed the B-2 Stealth bomber, which was a nice piece of defense work for Boeing.

But Washington's U.S. Sen. Patty Murray is definitely Boeing's pit bull now. After blasting the Air Force today on the Senate floor for stiffing Boeing on the bit air tanker competition, she's going at it again Wednesday. This word from Murray's office:

At between 10–10:30 AM ET/ 7-7:30 AM PT tomorrow morning (3/5) Senator Murray will again deliver a speech on the Senate floor deriding the Air Force for choosing the French company Airbus. Her speech tomorrow will focus on faulty claims made by Airbus on the American jobs they’ll create and the company’s checkered history. Senator Murray will also continue to discuss her opposition to outsourcing our military capabilities.

The speech can be seen on C-SPAN 2 in Washington state.

Here's a snippet from an AP wire story that just moved:

The Kansas congressional delegation on Tuesday asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to suspend its award of the tanker contract until Congress can review the decision. “Based on initial discussions with Air Force officials and media leaks, the Air Forces ratings of each competitor appear unfair, incomplete, and at times illogical,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter. “A thorough review is warranted and necessary.”

Another snippet from the TNT's man in D.C., Les Blumenthal:

The Air Force’s top acquisitions officer, Sue Payton, will testify before the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. Washington state Rep. Norm Dicks is a senior Democrat on the subcommittee, and Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., is also a member. The bulk of the work on the Boeing tanker would have been done in Washington state and Kansas.
"We have a lot of questions, and we want to let the Air Force know we think they made the wrong decision," Dicks said. "We want this plane built by an American company. This is a crown jewel of technology and we are going to give it to the French."

And finally, from a neutral corner, courtesy of The New York Times:

Sen. John W. Warner, R-Va., the senior Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a respected voice on defense issues, predicted that Airbus and Northrop Grumman likely would prevail.
“We’re going to get this thing,” Warner said. “I predict this plane will be started.”
Warner said the Air Force’s plan to replace the refueling tankers has already been delayed too long, and shouldn’t be put off any longer. “I am going to support the contract,” he said.

The Air Force's choice of Airbus/Northrop Grumman for the big air tanker contract was the result of "logic and reason." The angry reaction from Washington's congressional delegation is based on "mendacity."

So says Alabama U.S. Sen. Richard Shelby (pictured).

Shelby would naturally think so, given that the Airbus team promised to do final assembly of the tanker in Mobile, Ala., creating at least 2,000 new jobs in that state.

Here's Shelby's defense of the decision, delivered on the Senate floor Monday.

=> Read more!

The Pierce County Council will decide at 3 p.m. today whether to finally overhaul the county's weak ethics code.

As we said in today's editorial, the proposal before the council isn't perfect. One problem that came up at yesterday's council session is the definition of "lobbyist;" it's somewhat open to interpretation.

Councilman Calvin Goings tells us that he plans to sponsor an amendment today to ask the ethics commission to issue an advisory opinion on who is and isn't a lobbyist. The idea is to put lobbyists who should be registering on notice, and to give guidance to county officials who will be navigating new restrictions on gifts from lobbyists.

County Executive John Ladenburg also has concerns that the proposed financial disclosure requirements cover department heads and his chief of staff, but not key council staffers. He's urging the council to ensure its own house is in order too.

We think both proposed amendments make sense. At the same time, we're adamant that the council not delay ethics reform. It's dallied too long already. Our message has consistently been: Stop seeking perfection. Get something on the books and then come back and tweak it if necessary.

Washington’s U.S. senators, Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray, both made speeches on the Senate floor today questioning the Air Force’s decision on a massive new aerial tanker contract.

Cantwell argued that greater fuel efficiency should have given the Boeing proposal the edge over the winning bid from Northrup Grumman/Airbus.

Murray waxed particularly dramatic, declaring that the decision was
“devastating news for Boeing, for American workers, and for America’s men and women in uniform.” She contended that “outsourcing a key piece of our American military capabilities to any foreign company is a national security risk.

We discussed the senators’ reaction briefly during our daily ed board meeting this morning. At this point, their stance strikes us as overly dramatic political grandstanding on behalf of the home team. The senators have nothing to lose by loudly protesting the decision.

But we don’t know yet if there are serious grounds to challenge the contract decision. Obviously the Pentagon and the Air Force don’t believe there’s a national security threat in letting the Airbus team build the tankers. It’s unlikely that the new tankers really involve any highly sensitive U.S. military technology that should be closely guarded. These planes are basically flying freight trucks.

All things considered, it would be preferable if two all-U.S. bidders had been seeking the contract, keeping all the work in the U.S. But in fact Boeing and Airbus have the large aircraft market, both commercial and military, all to themselves. From the Pentagon point of view – and perhaps that of taxpayers as well – the results are better and more cost-effective if there’s truly competitive bidding.

Finally, there’s the possibility the senators don’t want to acknowledge. The Air Force apparently concluded that the Northrop bid was clearly superior.
According to news reports, Northrup-Airbus clearly bested Boeing on four of the five key criteria.

The clincher, according to Loren Thompson, a well-connected analyst with the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based military think tank, was that Northrup could have 49 tankers operating by 2013, while Boeing could promise only 19.

Read on for the full text of the floor speeches by Cantwell and Murray.

=> Read more!

We lead with a turnaround editorial on the Ohio and Texas primaries. Will they settle anything, or instead leave Clinton and Obama locked in a close slugfight all the way to the convention?

The link between ELF terrorists and the Woodinville Street of Dreams fires hasn’t been established, but they are likely suspects in the case. If they are the culprits, the ostensible logic behind their crime is exquisitely tortured. Terrorism is terrorism, no matter what the cause.

If the turnaround edit on the primaries proves unfeasible, we’ll move the ELF editorial to the lead and in the second spot run a backup editorial backing teacher misconduct legislation spurred by criminal misconduct by teachers in the Tacoma schools. Bill has passed the House but needs a push in the Senate.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Tacoma Power may have given up – for now – on generating tidal power in the Tacoma Narrows (story here), but Snohomish County PUD is still pursuing potential projects at seven locations on Puget Sound.

I checked with Steve Klein, the former Tacoma Power superintendent who now directs the Snohomish County utility.

Klein noted that Tacoma Power has a much less pressing need for new sources of power than the PUD. Tacoma, blessed with lots of hydropower from its own dams, has power to sell and faces only moderate growth in demand.

Snohomish County, by contrast, has to buy nearly all its power and faces strong growth in demand. So the PUD is sticking with a three-year study to determine whether it can draw electrical current from tidal currents.

More from Klein on the subject of renewable energy sources:

=> Read more!

We ran a positive editorial on Feb. 27 about the University Place School District’s intensive efforts to prevent black boys from turning into teenage failures in school.

Hard to fault the district for trying hard to tackle a tough problem. But Brent Champaco’s Feb. 24 news report on the district’s initiative drew critical fire all the way from New York City.

Michael Meyers, executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition and a former assistant national director of the NAACP, submitted a full-length oped piece criticizing such efforts.

I turned down the piece partly because we give preference to local and state contributors, and partly because I felt it didn’t accurately describe what University Place is trying to do.

In a nutshell, Meyers says such efforts are products of “segregationist thinking” and stereotyping that do black students more harm than good.

Click below to read Meyers’ argument and a brief response from University Place School Superintendent Patti Banks.

=> Read more!

Why did the Pentagon choose Airbus-Northrop Grumman instead of Boeing for a a $40 billion contract for new Air Force aerial refueling planes?

That's what U.S. Sen. Patty Murray demands to know -- and she doesn't want to wait two weeks for an answer.

Today her office released a letter from several members of the Washington and Kansas congressional delegations demanding that the Air Force brief Boeing on the decision by the end of the week. The Air Force says it plans to conduct the briefing March 12; until then, it won't formally brief Congress or the public on the rationale for its decision.

Murray could have obtained a few clues from today's Wall Street Journal (sorry, online access restricted). The Journal quoted Gen. Arthur Lichte, commander of the Air Force tanker fleet:

I can sum it up in one word: more. More passengers, more cargo, more fuel to offload, more patients that we can carry, more availability and more dependability.

The Airbus tanker can carry 7,000 gallons more fuel and 30 more people in the cabin that the Boeing tanker version of its 767.

While it's natural to root for Boeing in these parts, it's worth remembering that Northrop Grumman, the lead partner in the joint bid, is the third-largest U.S. defense contractor and built the B-2 Stealth bomber. Final assembly of the plane will be in Mobile, Ala., adding thousands of jobs there.

If it stands, the contract will reflect in the military aircraft industry the same globalization that pervades the commercial aircraft industry. Much of Boeing's hot-selling 787 Dreamliner will be constructed overseas before final assembly in Everett.

Here's Murrays "we want it now" letter:

=> Read more!

A Tacoma woman fears for the future of the nation – and for the very mental health of Americans – if Hillary Clinton is elected.

Here's the letter to the editor we received today. At first I thought she was joking, and waited for the punchline. There wasn't one. Apparently, she actually believes this.

If Hillary Clinton wins the election, we're doomed.

Some important people will resign their jobs in disgust. Our economy will be thrice as bad as it is now. Some people in fear will commit suicide.

We need a change. But not one that Hillary can give us.

I pray you print this letter so people will wake up before it's too late.

You've been warned!

We offer our take on the ethics-code proposals the Pierce County Council is scheduled to vote on Tuesday. We have an editorial writer at this morning’s council study session reviewing the proposals, and we’ll see where things are headed.

The inflation-adjusted price of oil hits an all-time high. South Sound motorists saw gas prices surge past $3.50 for regular this weekend. Americans were already reducing their gasoline consumption. While gas prices may moderate later this year, Americans seem to be recognizing that we pay a heavy price for profligate energy consumption.

About our editorials:
If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to david.seago@thenewstribune.com. Editorials represent the consensus view of The News Tribune's editorial board.
Want to sit in on a daily ed board meeting? Email cheryl.tucker@thenewstribune.com to make an appointment.

Washington state has a numbers problem, and it has everything to do with the epidemic of young adults who can't do math.

Too many kids can't pass the math portion of the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, and too many high school graduates require remedial math classes before they can get postsecondary education.

The reasons behind America's math illiteracy are myriad, but a big factor is the quantity and quality of math education kids get in public schools.

=> Read more!

We can't imagine a better place for the United States to begin high-level energy diplomacy with China than Gig Harbor.

Forget Beijing, New York, Washington, D.C., Shanghai. Gig Harbor's the most logical venue conceivable for a Sino-American dialogue about the future of the planet.

Except for maybe LaConnor, Monroe or the Tulalip casino.

If something comes of these talks on global warming and other weighty matters, will the Senate wind up debating whether to ratify the Gig Harbor Protocol?

To solve the Gig Harbor mystery, I talked to a nameless someone in Sen. Maria Cantwell's office. Cantwell helped engineer these meetings and bring the first one to Washington.

"They wanted a place that would show the best Washington had to offer," said this nameless someone, "and they wanted it to be someplace smaller and outside Seattle."

Curious. Why would high-level energy mandarins want to avoid Seattle? Then my memory clicked and conjured up visions of people dressed up like sea turtles marching through the streets of Seattle; clouds of tear gas; anarchists throwing newspaper racks through the windows of Starbucks. Of course! The WTO riots!

"So they won't get mobbed?" I asked.

"Exactly!" she laughed.

A word to the wise, Gig Harborites: Don't get rowdy with these U.S. and Chinese dignitaries, or you won't see another international summit meeting in your town for years.

Rats. Paul Ellis is bailing out on us.

Ellis, metropolitan development director for the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce, is leaving for new job in the Midwest. He's set to become community and economic development director for "Columbia, Ill.(Metro-East St. Louis)."

Ellis has been the chamber's key staffer on downtown Tacoma business development and on transportation issues. He does the RAMP blog that reports on the work of a county-wide transportation coalition.

I asked Ellis what persuaded him to leave God's country:

It's a step up, and our kids and grandkids are there, too. Metro-East is that part of the St. Louis metro area east of the Mississippi in Illinois--it's the fast-growing part of their region right now; it includes several towns and cities all the way to Scott AFB. Columbia, which is right across the river from St. Louis, has a proposed new 3,000-acre development and a lagging downtown that they want me to help stimulate economically. Should be quite an experience!

BTW, the Regional Access Mobility Partnership hear Wednesday from Tumwater City Councilman Ed Stanley, chair of the Thurston Regional Planning Council. Stanley, who had been scheduled to speak last month, will talk about a possible alliance between Thurston and Pierce counties to fund transportation projects.

The session starts at 8 a.m.in the Fabulich Center (formerly Port Business Center) at 3600 Port of Tacoma Rd. in Fife.

Top 5 reasons Larry Saunders decided to step down as Lakewood's police chief and serve in Iraq (besides the so-called "real" reason he's given: "My skills are really needed.").

5. Al-qaida's a piece of cake compared to Lakewood's bad boys.

4. Fewer casinos in all of Iraq than in Lakewood.

3. Brand-new opportunity to set up Photocop at busy Baghdad intersections.

2. Less sectarian warfare in Iraq than on Lakewood City Council

And the No. 1 reason:

Like many locals, he still can't find his way around Lakewood.

All joking aside, we wish Saunders good luck on his tour of duty. You have to admire someone who's willing to make such a sacrifice at a time of life (he's almost 60) when most folks are planning their retirement.