This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

America’s children and unborn grandchildren are on a spending spree. Congress – as it shapes a stupendously expensive stimulus bill – is doing the actual buying.

Because that package will be billed to our children’s credit cards in the form of national debt, we owe it to them to shop judiciously.

So far, that’s not happening. The $819 billion measure that emerged from the House of Representatives last week would be far less expensive if it were stripped down to those provisions that might actually help jump-start the U.S. economy.

The bill has other provisions – including long-term infrastructure investment – that may well deserve passage on their own merits. But the package as passed is anything but focused on the immediate crisis.

A hypothetical example of pure stimulus would be to give all Americans debit cards whose balances would have to be spent within six months – or else forfeited. If $300 billion were distributed this way, roughly $1,000 would be put at the disposal of each person in this country. And it would be spent; virtually all of it would be injected into the economy.

=> Read more!

Everybody has an idea about what the stimulus package now being debated in Congress should and should not include.

My colleague, Pat O'Callahan, has written an editorial about the issue for Sunday in which we suggest stimulative action that will get almost immediate results. And that means putting money directly into our hot little hands.

Not money exactly. It should be something like loaded VISA cards – maybe $500 to anyone who filed a tax return last year. And give the card an expiration date: say, three months from time of issue. Talk about motivation.

Now, here's why I call it the High-Def Stimulus Package.

Say you've had your eye on one of those spiffy high-def TV sets . . . you know, the ones that take up half the living room wall. You're worried about the economy and have been hoarding your shekels. But now you've got $500 burning a hole in your wallet. And you HAVE to use it or lose it.

=> Read more!

Sunday: America's children and unborn grandchildren are on a spending spree. Since we're the ones doing the actually buying – in a stimulus package that will be billed to their credit cards – we owe it to them to shop judiciously.

Monday: It's easy to see why some Lakewood city officials are upset about a $90 million shopping and restaurant center planned for Fort Lewis. The development is simply beyond what is needed – even with the projected increase in personnel expected in coming years.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

State Rep. Dave Upthegrove took exception with our editorial this morning calling his bill to prohibit the UW from giving special exceptions to athletes during enrollment cutbacks a "revenge of the nerds" moment.

Let the record reflect that Upthegrove himself was a student athlete. And that college film class in which he was forced to make do with outdated equipment? Just an elective.

He also took issue with our description of his bill. He's concerned that we made it sound like his legislation would apply retroactively to the students granted admission to UW's spring quarter. It would not. We were using this year’s students as a case study for what might be the consequences of such a bill.

On 1/30/09 1:15 AM, "Upthegrove, Rep. Dave" wrote:

Hi Kim,

I appreciate your interest in my legislation, and am excited to see a public debate.

I know your editorial has been published, so my communication is too late, but I wanted to let you know a couple quick things about me and my motivations for the legislation. I was a two-sport varsity letterman in High School and still play in an organized weekly basketball league, and am a sports fan. I took a film class in school to fulfill some elective requirement, and used video equipment as one of several examples when pressed by the Seattle Times reporter.

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In the early 1970s, a University of Montana group called the “Radical Student Coalition” was mighty proud of the fact it orchestrated student defunding the Montana Grizzly football team. “Heavy” and “Far out!” “Off the Pig(skin)!” “No more dollars for gratuitous acts of violence in Vietnam-era Missoula!”

Of course, Montana Grizzly football continued; the UM administration continued to fund the program, and a saner generation soon restored student funding. The Montana Griz became a NCAA 1-A powerhouse, with huge alumni support.

But kneejerk liberal anti-Footballism did not die out. My favorite liberal folktale is that, on Superbowl Sunday, acts of domestic violence against women increase exponentially. This fabrication still shows up as "fact" in leftist blogs and rants. Maybe they even teach about it in Evergreen State College Women’s Studies courses.

“Soccer good, football bad.”

Now it appears the Radical Student Coalition has grown up, and some of them are running Western Washington University! Good grief. Cut the WWU Viking football program? A century-long WWU tradition? Say it ain’t so!

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

A state lawmaker upset about the University of Washington’s special treatment of student-athletes should back off his bill.

Rep. Dave Upthegrove appears to be having a Revenge of the Nerds moment.

The Des Moines Democrat was the kid in school who watched “Citizen Kane” on a surplused film projector while football players reviewed game footage on big-screen televisions.

And it’s stuck in his craw ever since. When the University of Washington announced that it was closing its doors to new students this spring – athletes excepted – Upthegrove decided enough was enough.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Lake Washington commuters ought to shoulder a hefty share of a new Highway 520 bridge.

It’s official: The Federal Highway Administration will go for tolls on the I-90 bridge over Lake Washington if the Legislature goes for them.

So go for the tolls, Legislature. It’s a matter of fundamental fairness to Washingtonians who live outside the neighborhood of Seattle and Bellevue.

The fairness works like this:

The Highway 520 bridge over Lake Washington must be replaced, at a projected cost of at least $4.6 billion and perhaps as much as $6.6 billion. Also, Gov. Chris Gregoire plans to replace Seattle’s Alaskan Way viaduct with a tunnel, which will also cost more than $4 billion. Together, these projects look likely to suck the funding out of highway improvements across the state – including high- priority jobs in the South Sound.

The more state tax revenues are spent on the Highway 520 bridge and the tunnel, the less will be available for improvements in the rest of the state. So the Legislature should adopt any reasonable measures that promise to contain the cost of those projects.

Measures like tolls on the I-90 bridge.

=> Read more!

Our former cartoonist, Chris Britt (now with the State Journal Register in Springfield, Ill.), has a funny bit on YouTube about Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (UPDATE: Make that former Gov.).

Titled "Cocky," it depicts a boxing match between "Blago" and Abe Lincoln. Check it out.

It's hanging inside the entrance to the Pierce County annex on South 35th Street -- where Pat McCarthy no longer works.

Photo of the photo taken Wednesday.

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Rail to Lakewood: Make it work – and look good
Sound Transit appears to be avoiding plans that would have done the most damage to Pacific Avenue traffic and the Dome District.

Sound Transit’s rail connection from the Tacoma Dome to Lakewood could have inflicted serious and lasting damage on downtown Tacoma. Now it looks as if the damage will be minimized – thanks to people who cared enough to do something about it.

Most of the 8.2-mile Dome-to-Lakewood route is uncontroversial: The Sounder trains will simply run on existing tracks. The potential for harm lay in the 1.2 miles of new tracks that are to link Tacoma Dome Station to freight tracks just past the Rescue Mission.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

A happy outcome for worker rights
A U.S. Supreme Court decision provides needed protection
for workers who cooperate with sexual harassment investigations.

One would think that federal law protected a person who cooperated with investigators looking into sexual harassment claims.

But one would have been wrong – until Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Incredibly, a federal appeals court had ruled that civil rights law protected the person who brought the sexual harassment claim – but not a co-worker who provides information supporting the claim.

=> Read more!

Today's report that Russell Investments is cutting its global workforce by 20 percent – with perhaps 200 jobs disappearing in Tacoma – is a double whammy.

It's not only a loss of payroll for the community. Local nonprofit groups accustomed to generous grant support from Russell will suffer, too.

Unannounced, but certainly no secret, is the company's decision to drastically curtail its charitable contributions. The company will refocus its charitable giving on "financial literacy" efforts.

In "decline" letters that went out recently to local non-profits seeking grants, Julia Garnett, the company's corporate giving manager, explained:

=> Read more!

The City of Tacoma has done a good job working with Sound Transit to minimize a new rail line’s damage to the Dome District and Pacific Avenue traffic.

The U.S. Supreme Court made the right call in a case involving a woman fired after answering questions in a sexual harassment investigation. It ruled that she should be protected against retaliation, even though she isn’t the one who brought the lawsuit.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

In his Washington Post blog, Comic Riffs, Michael Cavna writes that he's noticed something about political cartoonists who depict President Barack Obama: many are "bizarrely obsessed" with his lips. He writes:

For every Steve Benson or Mike Luckovich who is zeroing in on a swell, spot-on Obama, there seems to be a cartoonist who invokes “caricature” in the most grotesque sense of the word. Obama’s lips have been rendered in such unnatural tints, and at such dimensions, that somewhere, even R. Crumb would blush. And of course, this physical area of caricature — unlike, say, Obama’s ears — comes freighted with a legacy of racism and cruel, blackface-era mockery.

I hadn't really noticed that as I plow through the cartoons that come in every day. If anything, I get the feeling that the cartoonists overly emphasize Obama's ears (like in the Scott Stantis cartoon above).

Cartoonist Taylor Jones discusses drawing Obama in Obama 101. His comments include ones like this:

As subjects go, Obama is easy to caricature. I wish he were genuinely funny, but at least it’s easy to capture his “essence” on paper. His eyes are dramatic. Not because he’s particularly expressive, like a comic actor, but because his eyes are framed by strong eyebrows and fringed with dark eyelashes.

Watching the global economic climate we had to know it was coming.

Today Russell Investments announced it will cut twenty percent of its workforce in the coming year. Obviously as the city’s largest employer this is going to hurt. Those being let go will feel the brunt of it, but we as a community will suffer, too.

Having Russell in Tacoma is a source of pride, and when in better times their growth caused them to look for a larger home, the city took a collective breath and held it.

=> Read more!

Gov. Chris Gregoire wants the Legislature to write a blank check for a multibillion-dollar tunnel through downtown Seattle. Washington’s lawmakers should refuse to sign it.

The tunnel – a proposed replacement for the Alaskan Way viaduct – is a reasonable idea. It wouldn’t merely replace the viaduct, as a new elevated highway would have done, it would also eliminate a huge concrete barricade between downtown Seattle and its waterfront. It promises huge benefits for that city.

The problem: After pledging that Washington taxpayers will pay no more than $2.8 billion for the project, Department of Transportation officials now say the state will assume financial liability for any cost overruns.

That ought to be a show-stopper. A new elevated highway would serve the essential purpose of the project: letting motorists drive through downtown Seattle safely and efficiently. The additional cost of a tunnel serves other purposes – legitimate, but chiefly of benefit to Seattle and King County. State taxpayers should not be left on the hook for any and all overruns on the tunnel’s construction.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Does the state control booze sales to promote temperance or make money? Washington can’t have it both ways.

Gov. Chris Gregoire is hoping a bender or two will help bail the state out of its budget bind.

Her proposed spending plan assumes that state liquor sales – one of the few sectors of the economy doing well, for some reason – will help cover the $6 billion budget shortfall. Gregoire is asking the Liquor Control Board to boost revenue by $21 million over the next two years.

The focus is on opening new liquor stores – “in order to meet the ongoing demands of an increasing population of individuals who are 21 years of age or older” – and expanding hours. But also in the mix are gimmicks such as offering gift cards and letting liquor stores sell stuff like corkscrews and ice.

It doesn’t get much more desperate than trying to drown the state’s fiscal crisis in booze. But these are desperate times.

=> Read more!

Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Updike died today at age 76. He's best known for his books featuring the famous character of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom.

I'm ashamed to say that the only book of his that I've read is "The Witches of Eastwick" and that's because I'd seen the movie, starring Jack Nicholson, Cher and Susan Sarandon. (The book is much better.)

When I looked Updike up on the Web, I found that he has quite a hefty entry on the Brainy Quote site.

Here are a few about writing:

When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but toward a vague spot a little to the east of Kansas.

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea.

Here's a Los Angeles Times article about him:

=> Read more!

The state got into the liquor business to control sales. Now it's looking at it as a profit center. If the original rationale is gone, why not privatize the whole enterprise?

It's confirmed: State taxpayers will be on the hook for Alaskan Way tunnel overruns. We have Paula Hammond's word that there will be no overruns. Let's stop this in the Legislature.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

Spotted a Washington state angle in this Wall Street Journal story today about small towns that like having prisons for neighbors – because they benefit from cheap inmate labor.

Medical Lake, on the other side of the Cascades, is worried because state officials facing a fiscal crisis want to close a local correctional facility to save money.

In the small city of Medical Lake in Eastern Washington, Mayor John Higgins pleaded with his state representative to help keep the nearby Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women from shuttering. The state is thinking about closing the 350-inmate prison by 2010.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Puyallup trail link needs swift action
Puyallup could lose out on $300,000 – and that would be
bad news for Pierce County recreation enthusiasts.

Little by little, mile by mile, Pierce County’s remarkable Foothills Trail is taking shape.

Today it is 15 miles long, stretching from Puyallup to South Prairie, and plans are for it to eventually be more than 28 miles long and link up with King County’s Interurban Trail. But 7.35 miles of trail could be added fairly quickly – if the City of Puyallup could only complete a land deal with local property owners.

The land acquisition would make possible a 1.35-mile trail linking the Foothills Trail with Puyallup’s six-mile-long Riverwalk Trail. That deal is being held up until completion of a city annexation plan. But if it doesn’t happen soon, $300,000 in state money for the trail linkage project could go away. And it might be years before it’s available again, if ever.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

President Obama all but reverses a purely political Bush policy that denied states the power to regulate tailpipe emissions.

President Barack Obama can’t help but look good against his predecessor’s do-nothing record on climate change, but give him credit for the speed at which he is moving to break with the Bush administration’s disastrous policies.

On Monday, Obama effectively unraveled one of President Bush’s more overt concessions to the auto industry – the rejection of 14 states’ request for the authority to impose stricter car emission standards.

Obama ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider its denial, making a reversal all but certain.

The tougher standards – sought by California and Washington, among others – would drive improvements in fuel efficiency and greenhouse emissions to roughly half the nation’s automobile market.

=> Read more!

President Barack Obama can't help but look good against his predecessor's do-nothing record on climate change, but give him credit for the speed at which he is moving to break with the Bush administration's disastrous policies. On Monday, Obama effectively unraveled one of President Bush's more overt concessions to the auto industry.

Little by little, mile by mile, Pierce County’s remarkable Foothills Trail is taking shape. About seven miles of trail could be added fairly quickly – provided state Recreation and Conservation Office cuts the City of Puyallup a little more slack.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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 column from a North Carolina professor (which will run in the print edition Tuesday) makes the case that the Obamas should get their daughters' pooch from a kennel, and a Southern one at that.

But that's not why I'm posting it. I was more interested in reading what it had to say about the grand success of spay and neuter campaigns – which we took note of last week – and their possible unintended consequences.

By Hal Herzog
Special to The Washington Post

In choosing his Cabinet, President Obama turned to the North, the Midwest and the West. Because Obama stiffed the South, he really ought to look below the Mason-Dixon line for the First Dog. This would be a solid move politically, but it’s also a matter of supply and demand.

The Obamas are reportedly leaning toward a labradoodle or a Portuguese water dog. They say they want the First Pet to be a dog from a shelter, a decision that’s both fashionable and morally sound. But as with other shifts in our collective tastes in pets, the growing popularity of shelter animals has had an unanticipated side effect — there is a mismatch between the number of people who want to rescue a dog and the number of dogs needing to be rescued.

=> Read more!

Our Sunday editorial lamented the threats to government transparency in this legislative session and briefly mentioned a couple of bills that would supposedly implement the recommendations of the state Sunshine Committee.

The Washington Coalition for Open Government took a close look at one of those bills and determined that SB 5294 is not all that it purports to be.

Under the cloak of implementing the “nonunanimous” recommendations of the Sunshine Committee, this bill would codify the very broad attorney-client privilege exemption of Hangartner.

Hangartner is the state Supreme Court case that introduced an attorney-client privilege into the open records act, thus making whole bunch of records exempt from public disclosure even when there is no controversy. Last last year, the Sunshine Committee voted 7-3 to recommend the Legislature close the loophole.

Sen. Adam Kline, a Sunshine Committee member, was on the losing end of that vote. Now, guess who the prime sponsor of SB 5294 is? You got it. Kline couldn't persuade his fellow committee members when the matter was up for discussion, so now he's apparently trying to have his way under the guise of doing the committee's bidding.

House Majority Leader Lynn Kessler also sits on the Sunshine Committee – and she was on the winning side of that vote. Here's hoping a bill with language that actually reflects the committee's recommendation will be forthcoming from her office.

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

It’s basic training, of sorts, for U.S. troops headed for Iraq, Afghanistan and other trouble spots:

Learn the culture. Deal with the locals in ways they understand.

At Fort Lewis, Army units at the platoon level learn how to distinguish friends from enemies and avoid insulting behavior in what can be very foreign Arab societies. In one mock exercise, for example, soldiers left their helmets, body armor and weapons outside when dealing with an Iraqi police chief.

In that country, a matter of simple respect. Counterinsurgency campaigns can be won or lost over such issues.

=> Read more!

Monday morning Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is expected at his own impeachment trial but instead will begin a media blitz. Between segments “life without peanut butter” and “How to talk to teens about sex” Blagojevich will pitch his tale of woe to Good Morning America’s Charlie Gibson. Blagojevich and his wife will then sit down with the ladies on ABC’s “The View” and then top off the day with Larry King Live.

Expect a veritable feast of Blagojevich.

The governor claims he is stepping out in the name of all that is good and fair.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Sunday's print edition.

President Barack Obama didn’t waste any time last week putting federal agencies on notice that openness is the new order of the day.

“Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side, not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known,” he said Wednesday.

Democrats in Olympia would do well to take a cue from their guy in the White House. As a new era of transparency dawns in D.C., there are moves afoot in this Washington to draw the curtains tighter.

=> Read more!

It’s a rough time to be a Republican, but even losers have some small pleasures in life. Now that Barack O’Bama has been inaugurated, Republicans finally have some peace and quiet. After eight years, the Democrats have begun to quit whining about George W. Bush.

My own personal favorite shabby insult was the ubiquitous “Bush is the worst President in American history!”

The Worst? I can think of more than a dozen pretty bad Presidents off the top of my head:

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A Vanderbilt University professor thinks so – and says he has the data to prove it.

Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management professor Ray Friedman says the campaign and
election of Barack Obama have had a positive impact on black students' test-taking ability. He's calling it the "Obama Effect."

Friedman found that a test administered at key points in Obama's rise to the presidency – such as after his nomination acceptance speech and his win in November – showed that the difference between the test scores of black and white students was "statistically insignificant."

Friedman suggests that much of the racial performance gap can be linked to black students' perception of negative stereotypes about their race. They see Obama's ascent to the presidency as a stark refutation of those stereotypes.

He said:

"Obama as a role model did not have an immediate impact on black Americans’ concerns about such stereotypes. However, our findings give us reason to believe that the influence of extraordinarily successful role models like Obama will help to drive improved performance and, over the longer term, to dispel negative stereotypes about African Americans, bringing us closer to a 'post-racial’ world.”

Here's an article about Friedman's study.

In November, when Pierce County Council members approved a more-or-less status quo 2009 county budget, they basically put their trust in Santa Claus.

Well, guess what. There is no Santa for local governments, so the council and new County Executive Pat McCarthy now face an $8 million budget shortfall before the the first month is out.

McCarthy sent a general memo to county staff Friday warning of "painful" cuts that will be necessary to cope with a disastrous downturn in revenue.

In fact, the county now projects it will receive less general fund revenue this year than it did last year -- for the first time anyone can recall, McCarthy wrote. (Full text below).

The council budget left 75 positions unfilled. Now it appears there will be no choice but to order layoffs in some departments. McCarthy said projections suggest the shortfall could grow even larger as the year progresses.

This old editorial writer opines:
Council members knew darn well revenue was falling off a cliff when they adopted the budget. But they and lame-duck County Executive John Ladenburg opted to kick the can down the road.

So the new budget won't even survive the first month of 2009. McCarthy doesn't have the option of crossing her fingers and hoping for the best.

Let's see if the pet community projects that council members and the previous executive favored in the little-examined "slush fund" part of the budget remain unscathed. They're like congressional budget earmarks. Many are for worthy causes, but they aren't the core functions of county government.

Here's McCarthy's bad-news memo:

A budget crisis is not the way I wanted to begin my new administration.
Unfortunately, that is the reality.

=> Read more!

Sunday: President Barack Obama didn't waste any time last week putting federal agencies on notice that government openness is the new order of the day. Democrats in Olympia would do well to take a cue from their guy in the White House.

Monday: The Army's new emphasis on cultural training for recruits is a necessary response to the new kind of wars it is fighting – wars in which firepower is less important than connecting to the population

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

Merrill Lynch’s CEO John Thain resigned yesterday in light of the fact that his company is circling the drain. (See last week’s massive taxpayer bailout)

Word at the cyber water cooler is that last year Thain needed a change of scenery so he hired David Smith, the same designer who is updating the Obama White House, and gave him an $800,000 budget to re-do his office.

Of course anyone who has ever worked with a contractor/decorator knows that even a modest bid of $800,000 can quickly double. It was no different for Thain. The bill for his office makeover? $1.2 million.

People, have we not heard of Pottery Barn?

In Thain’s defense, he fell in love. And as these things go, it was perfectly unintentional.

=> Read more!

Faced with a severe recession, it’s not a bad thing for government to look busy. When public confidence is shaken, creating the impression that problems are getting fixed can be as important as actually fixing problems.

That’s one argument for Gov. Chris Gregoire’s plan to make emergency withdrawals from Washington’s $4 billion unemployment trust fund. The prospect of injecting more money into the pockets of the jobless and businesses may deliver a healthy if modest psychological lift.

Still, it would be optimistic to expect that passing out $200 million in extra unemployment benefits and another $204 million in tax breaks for companies will do much to jump start Washington’s stalling economy. It’s just not enough cash to do the job.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

WASL replacement
needs to be up to the test
Cheaper, shorter and faster are OK – as long as Washington’s students are being rigorously assessed.

Some WASL critics should be happy with the news that Randy Dorn, the state’s new superintendent of public instruction, wants to do away with the hated test by 2010. They recognize the need for a graduation requirement that assesses student proficiency but don’t think the WASL is a good way to do it.

Other truly diehard critics likely still aren’t satisfied, because Dorn wants to replace that high-stakes test with a different high-stakes test that students will have to pass in order to graduate. (Although alternatives still will be available to students who cannot pass the test.) These critics – including the Washington Education Association – would just as soon do away with any graduation requirement other than passing the 12th grade.

=> Read more!

Yesterday, I expressed my doubts that Dale Washam would have won the assessor-treasurer's without the benefit of Pierce County's ranked-choice voting system, which has no primary.

I believe Washam's candidacy wouldn't have survived the scrutiny it would have gotten had he been one of only two finalists going into the November election.

I asked RCV champion Kelly Haughton why he thought Washam would have prevailed in a nonpartisan race even if there had been a primary. His response is below. I have to agree with one of his points: Our editorials do not often swing elections.

Here's Kelly's argument:

In a low profile non-partisan race during a presidential year, the most important things for candidates are name recognition and a good voters pamphlet statement.

Washam and Lee had the best name recognition and voters pamphlet statements, so despite a general lack of campaigning by these two candidates, they received the most first choices in the November RCV election.

This indicates to me they would have been the winners of August primary in a Top 2 race. From your email, I understood that you agreed with the above, but feel like things would have been different after a Top 2 primary.

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Washington has enough cash in its unemployment insurance trust fund to extend and increase benefits to the newly jobless and lower payroll costs for employers. Given the economic downturn and need for a stimulus, that’s the right thing to do.

New SPI Randy Dorn wants to do away with the WASL and replace it with shorter, cheaper, computerized tests. We’re open to that – as long as they’re still rigorous assessments of student proficiency.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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 final word on whether to dump Pierce County's ranked-choice voting system will belong to the voters.

County spokesman Ron Klein, on his next-to-last day before moving to a new post as Sound Transit's communications chief, confirmed that repealing RCV would require voter approval of a charter amendment.

Klein said he believes a draft amendment is before the Council rules committee. As I mentioned in an earlier post, new County Auditor Jan Shabro is all for getting rid of RCV, and so is County Executive Pat McCarthy, who gave up the auditor's post to run for executive last fall.

The irony, Klein noted, is that voters would face the proposed amendment in November -- which will be another RCV election for the county.

Shabro herself will have to stand for election if she wants to keep the auditor post she won by appointment. And it will be an RCV election -- perhaps the county's last.

I think there will be an open seat this fall in the county prosecutor's office now held by Gerry Horne, who is not seeking re-election. That will not be an RCV election, because elections for judge and prosecutor are governed by state law.

Update: Jim King correctly corrects me. Horne's term ends in 2010. I should have known that.

Couldn't make it to the inauguration? No problem! Just Photoshop yourself into the big event. It's fun, and it's a good way to mess with your descendants' minds when they come across the photo in the distant future.

Just click on this Web site and follow the easy directions for downloading your face into one of several photos. I just did a screen grab to my desktop of the finished photo and e-mailed it to my friends with this message:

I had a great seat at the inauguration. I decided to wear red so I would stand out on the podium.

Did you see me on TV? I did the chomp during the inaugural speech. (Go Gators!)

Thanks to radio station KMTT for the link.

It hasn't exactly been a state secret, but Tacoma architect Jim Merritt today made his bid for mayor official.

Merritt filed his formal public disclosure form this morning, and campaign manager Ronnie Bush issued the press release included below.

I'm trying to recall the last person who was elected Tacoma mayor without first serving as an elected official of some kind. Current mayor Bill Baarsma had been a City Council member two different times.

Mike Crowley was appointed by his council colleagues after former House Speaker Brian Ebersole resigned to become president of Bates Technical College.

Harold Moss was a councilman when he was appointed to fill a vacancy. I think Doug Sutherland had never held office before he was elected mayor and later as Pierce County executive.

I'll run the question past Baarsma, who is a walking encyclopedia of Tacoma political history. Update: Baarsma, just back from D.C. for the inauguration, says Sutherland was a City Councilman before he ran for mayor.

The city has already had one architect serve as mayor; that was Gordon Johnston, who served in the early 1970s. Johnston, I believe, was a "political virgin" when he was elected. We're still checking on the other mayors going back to 1952, when a corruption scandal prompted voters to approve a council-manager form of government, including a directly elected mayor.

Here's Merritt's press release:

=> Read more!

It’s the question that sits before the Senate Finance Committee this week. Critics are saying that Geithner shouldn’t even be considered because he failed to pay his own payroll tax from 2001 to 2004.

To which I say: Aren’t those folks being a little too harsh?

Would we disqualify the White House chef if once, and only once, he accidentally poisoned the food? Would we tell the White House driver who carelessly crashed into a telephone pole to take a walk? Like, he would do that again.

So why is everyone giving Treasury Secretary-designate Timothy Geithner a hard time? So what if he didn’t pay his payroll taxes for three years? He was only the employee of the International Monetary Fund. What did he know of taxes?

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Former Pierce County Executive Ladenburg is hoping for a "you're hired" phone call from the Obama administration.

Ladenburg yesterday confirmed what I thought might happen after his eight-year stint as county executive ended last month: He is "under consideration" for a position as Region X director for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Ladenburg would be a plausible choice for the job, given his administrative experience as executive, good relations with state and local environmental groups and his status as one of the state's more high-profile Democrats.

"The current (regional) director used to work for a chemical company, so I think they're going to make a change," Ladenburg laughed.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

The Humane Society, with a strong assist from Pierce County’s new low-cost spay/neuter clinic, hit a major milestone in 2008.

Pierce County’s foremost animal advocates couldn’t be more delighted to be wrong.

About this time last year, officials at the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County were coming to a disappointing conclusion: They weren’t going to hit their goal to end euthanasia of healthy, adoptable pets by December 2008.

It was a laudable, but lofty goal. The Tacoma shelter likely would have been the largest of its kind of achieve “no-kill” status. Open-admission shelters like Tacoma’s don’t have the pick of the litter, so to speak, and have to work extra hard find homes for less desirable pets.

But Humane Society officials realized that they weren’t making progress fast enough. One major setback was that people flooded the shelter with an additional 1,000 animals in 2007 after hearing that the shelter was going no-kill.

News that the shelter was having to abandon its timeline seemed to spark just the opposite reaction from the community. When Humane Society officials recently finished compiling their annual numbers, they were pleasantly surprised.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Opportunity is intangible, so it’s hard to see it vanishing. But sometimes the loss comes into clear focus.

It’s been painfully visible at the University of Washington this month as the school has been forced to deny acceptance to 325 students who would – with enough state funding – have otherwise been admitted for spring quarter.

According to UW Admissions Director Philip Ballinger, almost all the affected students were trying to transfer from other schools. He told the Seattle Times that two-thirds of spring transfers typically come from community colleges.

That hurts. Washington provides its citizens less opportunity to enter four-year colleges than most other states. The state’s large system of community colleges is supposed to make up the difference by getting students through their first two years and then allowing them into an affordable public university.

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The former French President, Jacques Chirac was rushed to the hospital earlier today after being mauled by his “clinically depressed” dog, a fluffy white Maltese.

Turns out that “Sumo” has been suffering from depression for years. Even as a young pup, while his littermates snoozed bellies full of mother’s milk, Sumo lay off to the side eyes wide open. Insomnia.

Always a worrier, thoughts like “what if mother likes my eight brothers and sisters more” or “ I’ve heard runts die early,” ran through little Sumo’s head like a stuck record.

One of Sumo’s sisters, Frisbee, was adopted by some American ex-pats. Years later they met by chance in the park. Sumo’s depression was still evident. Beyond the perfunctory backside sniff, he took no pleasure in the social interaction the park afforded.

“Happiness is a choice,” Frisbee told Sumo as her owner yanked her away. Sumo found Frisbee smug and her fake American accent did not go unnoticed.

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Just came from City Club of Tacoma's monthly luncheon, where I cornered former Pierce County auditor Cathy Pearsall-Stipek.

She had told me last month she planned to file an initiative to dump the ranked-choice voting method of electing most countywide officials. I wanted to find out if those plans were still on track.

They're on hold, she said, because she thinks the County Council is about to do the deed on its own.

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When you're passing around hundreds of billions of dollars in "free money," don't be surprised at who gets in line for a piece of the action.

Now the equipment rental industry is looking for its share of the stimulus loot (see below). Makes more sense than $5 billion for the porn industry, anyway.

Jan. 16, 2009 (MOLINE, IL) — The American Rental Association (ARA) is advocating an economic stimulus package that provides tax relief that spurs investment in the rental industry along with significant spending on infrastructure that will help lift the declining equipment rental industry.

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Supporters of Pierce County's new ranked-choice voting system have a problem named Dale Washam. Washam, known for filing lawsuits against county officials, got himself elected assessor-treasurer under RCV without any apparent qualifications for the office.

I'm not saying no qualifications, just no apparent ones. I've never met the man and my only conversation with him abruptly ended when I asked him what his qualifications were. But I don't think I know anyone who believes Washam was the best candidate in the race – or that he would have won had voters had more information about the candidates.

The RCV people are defensive. Kelly Haughton, one of the prime movers behind the new system, has done an analysis of the vote (he summarizes it below). Haughton insists that the switch from a partisan to a nonpartisan assessor-treasurer – not RCV – is what got Washam elected.

It's an interesting claim: Voters do pick candidates on the basis of party affiliations, which is hard to do when everyone is supposedly nonpartisan. It's safe to say that Washam would not have been endorsed by either the Democrat or Republican parties.

But I think Haughton's claim that Washam would still have won under a conventional nonpartisan primary-plus-general election is dubious at best.

The lack of a primary election – one of the supposed strengths of RCV – had a lot to do with Washam's election.

Had he gotten through the primary in August, he would have drawn far more scrutiny as one of two finalists. As it was, Washam went into November as one in a crowd of six candidates – none of whom got much attention in an election overshadowed by the races for president, governor and county executive.

Haughton's take:

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The Humane Society, with a strong assist from Pierce County's new low-cost spay/neuter clinic, hit a big milestone in 2008. Not a single healthy, adoptable dog was euthanized for want of a home.

The UW's revocation of acceptance to 325 applicants is a vivid demonstration of the impact of strapped higher ed funding. Nothing should be more shovel ready than college opportunity.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

A fellow member of the National Conference of Editorial Writers was foiled in his attempt to participate in today's historic event. He sent this out to the group earlier today.

By David Donadio

In an inspiring ceremony on Washington's National Mall earlier today, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. Tomorrow, Congress will likely face a constituent service backlash from the thousands of ticketed people who got there hours early and still couldn't get in. A life-long Democratic friend and I lucked our way into a pair of purple tickets to Obama's inauguration, which meant great seats near the north end of the Capitol.

Or so we thought.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

A man swept into office on a tide of hope sought Tuesday to temper public expectations – or at least ground them in history.

Barack Obama took his place in history Tuesday by telling Americans to draw resolve and confidence from theirs.

The 44th president didn’t dwell on the ground-breaking nature of his inauguration. He didn’t have to. The significance of the occasion was not lost on the throngs that packed the National Mall nor the countless people who huddled around televisions around the world.

Obama spoke instead of the challenges ahead and of his faith in Americans’ ability to meet them – a faith rooted not in the results of a single election, but from more than 200 years of shared narrative and shared purpose.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Now it’s homeowners’ turn for some bailout help
President Obama is right to target foreclosure reduction as his administration spends the second half of TARP funds.

Last week, then-President-elect Barack Obama persuaded senators to release another $350 billion in federal bailout money by pledging to use much of it to reduce home foreclosures.

Now he’s President Obama, and Pierce County has a big stake in his success. It had the highest foreclosure rate in the state in 2008, according to a California company that keeps track of foreclosure listings nationwide. The number of 2008 foreclosures in Pierce County, 6,669, was more than twice the number in 2007.

=> Read more!

Not much of dust-up today over the much-anticipated inauguration prayers.

The opener by the Rev. Rick Warren was about as inclusive as a prayer by an evangelical leader could be; nothing to get worked up about. Unless you"re an atheist. Warren did a fine job with subtle nods to Jews and Muslims.

But I really liked the closer by the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the dean of the civil rights movement. His prayer was so grounded in the American black experience that it felt quintessentially American in a way that Warren's prayer did not.

Some viewers didn't care for the final, rhyming portion of Lowery's prayer:

“When brown can stick around”
“When yellow can be mellow”
“When the red man can be the head man”
"And when white will embrace what is right"

You can see some of the negative reaction here. But I thought it was a nice touch of humor with a point, and a point that was entirely appropriate to make under the circumstances.

See the full text of Lowery's prayer here and Warren's invocation here.

A nice Inauguration Day cartoon from John Sherffius, editorial cartoonist of the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera. I'll probably run a roundup of inauguration-related cartoons on Saturday in the Cartoonists Sketchpad.

President Barack Obama said what he needed to say in an inaugural address that promised Americans a break with the past and reason to think the current crisis can be overcome. But, as one Washington state official said afterward, the nation has elected a man, not a magician.

Pierce County has a big stake in President Obama's efforts to get a $350 billion bailout bill through Congress. It stands to benefit more than any other county in Washington from funding to reduce foreclosures.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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 editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Forgoing repayment of a housing stimulus is a smart idea, but lawmakers should not extend the incentive to all buyers.

If Congress looks like it’s flailing for an answer to the country’s economic woes, that’s because it is. Little that it’s tried so far has hit the mark.

The housing stimulus lawmakers passed last July certainly hasn’t done much to goose the market. House sales In King, Snohomish, Pierce and Kitsap counties were down – again – last month, to their lowest point in at least nine years.

Lawmakers had hoped to encourage more first-time buyers to take advantage of the housing slump by offering them a $7,500 tax credit. But this is no ordinary tax credit. Buyers have to pay back the money in full.

Consider the first-time homebuyer tax credit more of a no-interest loan – still a good deal, but perhaps not convincing enough for potential buyers already worried about taking on even a mortgage in this shaky economy.

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You don't have to be in D.C. right now to wallow in Obaminable commercialism.

I found Obama cookies on sale at the Metropolitan Market in Tacoma's Proctor District. They were going for $5.99 for a package of four. No peanuts or tree nuts included, the label says.

These were made by Little Rae's Bakery of Seattle. All profits go to the Dino Rossi 2012 gubernatorial campaign fund. Not.

The Metro Market folks were also cashing in on Obamanation fever by promoting Graham Beck Brut champagne. According to Metro, the Obamas tried this champagne and liked it so much they ordered six bottles of it to share on election night.

That appears to be true. The Graham Beck winery, a South African outfit, brags about it on its website.

And some restaurants and bars hosting inauguration parties, like this Seattle joint, are offering mimosas made with the Beck non-vintage brut.

The Obama's may have another reason for favoring the Beck bubbly. Beck also says this was the wine of choice for Nelson Mandela's inauguration as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

We bought a bottle, of course. At $16, we could afford a chance to if this champagne is truly presidential caliber. If I had to guess, though, the inaugural balls Tuesday night will be serving made-in-the-U.S. bubbles.

Kathleen Olson, the executive director of the Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County, recently finished compiling the organization's 2008 stats and couldn't wait to share the great news.

The Tacoma shelter – for the first time in recent memory – didn't have to euthanize a single healthy, adoptable dog in 2008. That's down from 37 dogs that died in 2007 at the shelter for nothing more than want of a good home.

That's a big milestone for an organization that wasn't sure it could end euthansias so soon. Last year, the Humane Society backed off of an earlier pledge to become a no-kill shelter by December 2008.

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This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

The election of America's first black president is a vindication of Martin Luther King Jr.'s critical faith in America.

The symbolism is momentous.

When Barack Obama is sworn into office Tuesday on the steps of the Capitol, his hand will rest on Abraham Lincoln's Bible. Nearly two miles to the west, at the opposite end of the Mall, the Great Emancipator himself will witness the inauguration from within the Doric columns of the Lincoln Memorial.

Obama is a flesh-and-blood politician, not an icon carved in stone. Like any new president, he will enjoy a honeymoon of popularity that inevitably will give way to missteps, criticism and political opposition. He is no more guaranteed re-election, let alone greatness, than he is doomed to failure.

At another level, though, there remains the stark fact that Obama is the first African American president elected in a country whose foundations are stained by the cruelties of slavery and Jim Crow. Viewed through the prism of the past, Obama's inauguration – if not the man himself – is as iconic as the monumental sculpture of the seated Lincoln.

Symbolically, the intermediary between Lincoln and Obama's inauguration is Martin Luther King Jr.

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Tacoma's first election of 2009 is only seven weeks away. The Tacoma School District pitches a $300 million construction bond issue to voters on March 10.

Leading the campaign will be Stadium Video owner Marty Campbell, hired by the Citizens for Tacoma Schools committee.

Campbell faces a tough assignment, given the tough economic climate and a high validation requirement for the bond measure. But he calls the proposal a home-grown economic stimulus.

=> Read more!

In his column today, Leonard Pitts Jr. talks about the slew of editorial cartoons that came out after after the Nov. 4 election showing Abraham Lincoln celebrating Barack Obama's victory.

I think we ran one or two of them. This one, by former News Tribune cartoonist Chris Britt, is one that didn't run at the time. I thought it was a little goofy then, and still do. But it does illustrate the point Pitts is making in his column:

"... when Obama was elected in November, every third political cartoonist seemed to use an image of a celebrating Lincoln to comment upon the milestone that had occurred. Lincoln, they told us, would have been overjoyed.

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This editorial will appear in Sunday's edition.

Delayed to death – what an apt phrase to describe what could be in store for Pierce County transportation projects.

As The News Tribune’s statehouse reporter Joe Turner explained in Friday’s edition, Gov. Chris Gregoire’s transportation plan sacrifices projects here and elsewhere to help ensure that Seattle’s megaprojects stay on track.

The cannibalization is an attempt to cover a $5 billion gap between what state officials promised voters and what they expect to reap from gas tax hikes passed in 2003 and 2005. High gas prices and the ailing economy have hurt gas tax collections at the same time project costs have soared.

Gregoire’s plan doesn’t drop projects – at least not on paper. But it does push their start dates out so far that they wouldn’t get built without a new source of money.

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I personally know only two non-politicians heading for the other Washington this weekend to attend the Obama inauguration.

One is Amelia, a neighbor and dependable catsitter who is making the trip with fellow students from Mason Middle School in Tacoma. Lucky kid.

The other is Michael Stoddard, a City of Tacoma mapping specialist I am working with on a highly classified project having to do with commuting to work by bicycle.

He will get no work done next week, Stoddard told me, because he's got tickets for Big Event itself -- the swearing-in -- as well as one of the official inauguration balls.

Here's Stoddard's account of how he earned the privilege:

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This op-ed by musician/composer/producer Quincy Jones moved on the wire late Friday. We won't be able to use it in the print edition prior to the inauguration Tuesday. But given the local connection – Jones talks about growing up in Seattle – I thought our online readers might be interested in it.

Obama offers a sense of hope for the country

By Quincy Jones
Like many Americans and citizens of the world, on the morning of Nov. 5, 2008, I awoke with a renewed sense of purpose. The night before I had seen an event I could never have imagined, the election of an African-American as president of the United States of America. It’s true — if you live long enough, anything is possible.

As I sat with family and friends watching the election results, I resigned myself to tempering my emotions. Like all of Barack Obama’s supporters, I was encouraged by the strength, poise and deftness with which he ran his campaign. I knew that he was the best person for the job. But as a black man in America, I knew from experience not to let what I wanted to happen stray too far from the reality of what I knew could happen.

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Indulge an old English major here as I watch in real time Barrack Obama’s historic train ride to the nations capitol. I can’t help but think of another famous ceremonial train ride, a ride so remarkable it prompted America’s most celebrated poet, Walt Whitman, to write words that would stir a nation for generations.

“O Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done…” http://www.bartleby.com/142/193.html

The train carrying Lincoln’s body left Washington D.C. on April 21, 1865 and traveled 1,654 miles to his home and final resting place in Illinois. Much of the nation lined up along the tracks and mourned the funeral procession. Walt Whitman was in the crowd.

We know that Lincoln had a grand vision for our nation, one given to him by our Founders and one he kept sacrosanct through enormous trials, but Whitman, a great admirer of Lincoln, often said that our sixteenth president had good “horse-sense,” and that it took both the strength of Lincoln’s ideals and the strength of his practicality to keep our war torn nation in one piece.

When Lincoln was shot on April 14,1865 the nation was pre-maturely forced to say good-bye. Today, a ceremonial train comes back.

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What got all the buzz was the appeals court decision that teachers can legally engage in sex with students 18 years or older.

But I found another decision more intriguing. The state Court of Appeals ruled Monday that the Washington Constitution gave chronic truants the right to an attorney at their first juvenile court hearing.

I get that adults and kids both have a right to an attorney, at public expense if necessary, when criminal penalties are involved.

But here's what truants face in their first juvy appearance: a) judges asking why they've been skipping school, and b) possible court orders to get back in school, appear before a community truancy board or submit to drug tests.

Only if a truant blows off the court order might he or she eventually face contempt proceedings – in which case an attorneys is already provided.

Am I missing something? As far as I can tell, the court has decided that kids deserve legal counsel to protect their possible interest in skipping school. Yes, there's the drug testing, but all kinds of juveniles get drug-tested (student-athletes, for example) without a court-appointed attorney.

So ... is mandatory school attendance the legal equivalent of jail time? If so, a lot of kids are going to need lawyers.

This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

18-year-olds fair game for sex with teachers?
Close the legal loophole that is letting a Hoquiam teacher off the hook for allegedly having sex with one of his students.

Schoolteachers shouldn’t have sex with students. When they do, they should face criminal charges.

State law isn’t clear enough on that point, according to a Washington Court of Appeals panel that ruled in favor of a schoolteacher accused of having sex with a student. Fortunately, lawmakers who went into legislative session Monday are acting quickly to provide that clarity.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

The Seattle P-I’s likely disappearance is a shame chiefly because fewer reporters will be breaking fewer stories as a result.

When Johann Gutenberg introduced movable type, he put a lot of scribes out of work. As the Internet has offered alternatives to “old media,” it has put some newspapers out of business. Stuff happens.

The News Tribune is in no threat of going under, but the Post-Intelligencer, one of Seattle’s two daily newspapers, is dying. Unless it finds a buyer quickly – a very unlikely prospect for an enterprise that loses about $14 million a year – it may be dead by spring.

Journalists and many other Americans mourn the loss of a major newspaper, especially one that has published since the 19th century. But newspapers are commercial enterprises, and enterprises do fail in a free economy. Their employees suffer immensely when they are thrown out of work, but so do other workers who lose their jobs.

In a dynamic, wealth-creating economy, there have to be losers if there are to be winners. As businesses, newspapers deserve no extra pity.

What ought to worry people – for the sake of democracy, not newspaper owners – is a net loss of reporting. Thomas Jefferson famously said that, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

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We shouldn’t sentimentalize the likely loss of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Businesses fail and industries decline in a dynamic economy. What will be hard to replace is not so much the newspaper as the on-the-street reporters who broke stories. Internet journalism still doesn’t have nearly enough of them to keep democracy healthy.

Is it legal for a teacher to have sex with a student as long as the student is 18 years old? A Washington Court of Appeals panel says yes. Legislators should fix that loophole in state law pronto.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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 oped below will appear in tomorrow's printed opinion section. It's a demand that Judge Michael Hecht personally answer specific accusations that he frequented prostitutes and threatened to harm one of them.

Its significance lies in its source: Sal Mungia, the president-elect of the Washington Bar Association and past president of the Tacoma-Pierce County Bar Association. Six other past presidents of the Pierce County bar (see below) have endorsed it.

Hecht so far has been responding to the allegations through his attorney, Wayne Fricke. Mungia says that's not good enough.

JUDGES CANNOT REMAIN SILENT WHEN ACCUSED OF MISDEEDS THAT AFFECT THEIR ABILITY TO SERVE

Lawyers serve a variety of roles in our society: representing clients, promoting access to the legal system for those who otherwise can’t afford it, and educating the public about the need for a fair and impartial judiciary, among others.

In addition, all lawyers, whether or not they ever appear in a courtroom, are officers of the Court. As officers of the Court, we owe a duty to the legal profession, and more importantly, to the public, to promote the integrity of our courts and to advance the public’s faith that those who literally sit in judgment of their fellow citizens do so with the public’s utmost trust.

Last fall, Pierce County voters elected Michael Hecht to the bench. On January 12, 2009, he was sworn in and he is now preparing to begin his judicial duties. We, as officers of the Court, have a duty to the people of Pierce County to promote the public’s confidence that Judge Hecht has not engaged in conduct that undermines the people’s trust in our court system.

Our role as lawyers is not here to raise issues that are personal to Judge Hecht and that do not pertain to his ability to function as a judge.

What is of interest is whether Judge Hecht has violated the laws of the State of Washington by patronizing prostitutes, or by engaging in sex with minors, or by threatening others with bodily harm if they disclose such activities on his part.

Engaging in any of these acts would severely undermine the public’s faith in Judge Hecht’s ability to fulfill his duties fairly and impartially as a judge. That has already been demonstrated by the Pierce County Prosecutor, Gerald Horne, asking that criminal cases not be assigned to Judge Hecht.

There is a difference between a criminal prosecution and having the public’s confidence – the two are not synonymous. There are a variety of reasons why the Attorney General might decide that charges should not be brought: statute of limitations, lack of corroborating evidence, burden of proof, etc. Whether a public official has criminal charges brought against them should not be the standard to which we hold our elected officials.

As a private citizen, Michael Hecht has every right to not publicly respond to these allegations. As an elected official, however, he owes the public a direct answer to these allegations. If someone accuses a judge of engaging in criminal conduct, we, the public, expect that judge to deny engaging in that conduct if it is unfounded.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Washington’s attorney general is proposing worthy legislation aimed at limiting abuses of public disclosure laws.

Attorney General Rob McKenna has been a leading champion of expanding and protecting public access to official records and meetings. He’s also a pragmatist.

McKenna has been concerned in recent years with a couple of abuses of the state’s open records and meetings laws – namely, the ability of local governments to hold illegal closed-door meetings and of prison inmates to pervert records requests to harass their jailers and judges.

He hasn’t met with much success on either front. McKenna’s legislation to require public bodies to tape their executive sessions has become a perennial target for sharp-shooting city and county lobbyists.

And his argument that incarcerated felons have no right to request public records – an interpretation that would have spared agencies from having to respond to meaningless requests from prisoners with too much time on their hands – was rejected by the state Supreme Court last year.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition:

The benefits of replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct with a two-mile tunnel could be spectacular, but they largely accrue to Seattle.

At last, a decision.

Eight years after the Nisqually Earthquake rocked the Alaskan Way Viaduct a little too hard, Gov. Chris Gregoire, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels and King County Executive Ron Sims have finally settled on a plan to replace the elevated highway.

If the Legislature agrees, Highway 99 will run underneath downtown Seattle in a two-mile tunnel instead of riding high on an elevated highway. The price tag: somewhere north of $4 billion.

That is a mountain of money – far beyond the $2.8 billion the state has set aside for the project. Advice: Watch your pocketbooks. Everyone in the state had better be tracking the progress of this plan.

The expense, in and of itself, doesn’t mean the tunnel is a bad idea. In fact, it is a bold decision that carries both risk and the potential for big payoffs. Bold decisions are precisely what the debate over the viaduct has lacked all these years.

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A friend of mine who is one of those rare “love me or leave me” individuals, is known for speaking his mind and sharing the truth as he sees it. If the truth happens to offend or delight, it’s all the same to him.

The guy can be a little blunt, but with him you know you’re getting the unvarnished version.

Today on Facebook he showed a video clip of his truck getting repossessed. Ouch. It was painful to watch. Who knows why he posted it. My guess is typical to his character he thought to himself, “If we’re going to share our lives on this thing then let's really share our lives.”

He’d be the first to tell you that right now things could be better.

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We and probably the rest of the state are OK with replacing the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle with a tunnel as long as there is some guarantee of a stop-loss on the state share of the $4 billion-plus price.

Attorney general Rob McKenna, shot down by state lawmakers and the courts in his attempts to bird dog closed-door meetings of public bodies and crack down on inmate abuses of the open records act, is offering some potentially worthy compromises.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

Look for an editorial here later today on the Alaskan Way Viaduct plan. In the meantime, take a look at this video from the state Department of Transportation showing what a trip through the tunnel might be like.

Hat tip: Former TNTer Niki Sullivan, now of TVW's The Capitol Record.

Wow. State Sen. Darlene Fairley (D-Lake Forest Park) either really hates open government, or else she thinks the state Sunshine Committee isn't doing enough to promote open government.

It's clear from a bill she's sponsoring, though, that she doesn't think the commission is worth a warm bucket of spit.

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This morning, the paper carried my column critiquing a U.S. News report that Washington was the best state to start a business. A reader wrote to ask: "It seems that whenever one of these listings comes out... that its validity is immediately embraced by those who like what it has to say and attacked by those who don't. In your judgment, are there assessments that can be trusted to tell us something meaningful while transcending political bias?

Here's how I responded:

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

The Narrows bridge advisory committee has made a good case that bridge tolls can remain where they are until 2010.

The citizens who advise state transportation leaders about Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll rates might find out today if their hard work was worth it.

The Narrows Bridge Toll Citizen Advisory Commission spent a lot of time this fall examining a request from the state Department of Transportation to raise bridge tolls in July.

The last toll hike took effect in July and was supposed to be good for two years. But transportation officials, taking note of a summer drop in bridge traffic, were worried that they wouldn’t have enough money to meet the new bridge’s debt payments and ongoing maintenance and operations costs.

Thanks largely to the advisory committee’s diligence in digging deep and pressing the transportation department for additional information, it was able to make a good case that the state can afford to leave tolls at their current levels until at least 2010.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Hard-hit Pacific needs answers from Corps
It’s one thing to get slammed by Mother Nature. It’s another to get flooded out by the federal government.

Moods are anything but pacific in Pacific.

Even though floodwaters are receding, many folks in the small South King County town are still fuming – and rightfully so. It was bad enough that Mother Nature dumped her wet stuff on them; then their fellow man added insult to injury.

That’s how a lot of Pacific residents are feeling after the Army Corps of Engineers added significantly to their flood misery by releasing water behind the Mud Mountain Dam Thursday with little warning.

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We received a gracious letter from some prominent state Republicans, including former Secretary of State Ralph Munro. It's not the sort of thing we run in our letters column, but thought it was worth posting here.

On behalf of the Washington State John McCain for President Committee, we would like to congratulate and offer our best wishes to President-elect Barack Obama and his team in this state and Washington, D.C. We hope that Senator Obama is an excellent president and enjoys wide success during the next four years.

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The Washington Transportation Commission, should it dismiss the Narrows citizens committee's recommendation to keep tolls at current levels for less than compelling reasons, could be sending the message that such groups have little influence. That would make policy-makers' ability to sell new tolls even harder.

Many folks in the small South King County town are fuming – and rightfully so. It's bad enough that Mother Nature dumped her wet stuff on them; then their fellow man added insult to injury. That's the feeling of a lot of Pacific residents after the Army of Corps of Engineers added significantly to their flood misery by releasing water behind the Mud Mountain Dam Thursday.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

Pierce County Democrats quietly filed a legal challenge Monday afternoon, contesting the way the Republican-controlled County Council is appointing a new county auditor.

The co-plaintiffs are Pierce County Democratic Chair Nathe Lawver and Ron Lopp, a longtime adversary and critic of county officials. They filed the action pro se, acting as their own attorneys.

The council is expected to name its choice today. If it selects Katie Blinn, a Democrat, the dispute might seem moot. Democrats contend the council is obliged to name a Democrat to fill the seat vacated by former auditor and Democrat Pat McCarthy -- now the new county executive.

Lawver says:

The appointment of Blinn would be ideal, but it needs to be through the process in the charter. The council's actions of modifying the charter through a resolution is illegal by our charter and state law.

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Many newspapers, us included, ran photo collages of President Bush at his final news conference Monday. The Wall Street Journal took a different tack, publishing photos of Bush in early 2001 and now.

I was struck by just how much Bush hasn't aged. Sure, he looks older, but eight years will do that to anyone his age. It seemed that former Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton looked far worse for the wear when they left office.

Then again, such comparisons depend on the photos used. In this gallery of photos at the New York Daily News, Bush is arguably the worst of the bunch. And these photos on CNN don't bode well for Obama.

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow I got on the Republican National Committee's e-mail buddy list.

That's why the RNC is giving me the chance to send a great big "Thank You" to George Bush as he leaves office. Oh, and they'd be ever so grateful if I'd also make a contribution while I'm at it "to help strengthen our Party for the battles ahead."

Here's the letter that was sent to me – and doubtless many, many more people.

Dear Cheryl,

For the last eight years, President Bush has led our country with firm determination and a steady hand in the face of numerous challenges and crises. He restored honor and integrity to the White House and protected America from another terrorist attack.

As President and Mrs. Bush prepare to leave Washington in a few weeks to return to Texas, I know I speak for Republicans and grassroots leaders across America when I say we are all grateful for their tremendous service to our country. To show our appreciation for our Commander-in-Chief, the RNC is asking every Republican to sign an electronic card that will be presented to President Bush before he leaves office. It is the least each of us can do to show our gratitude to the leader of our country and our Party.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's edition.

All three candidates for county auditor have something to recommend them, but the most nonpartisan pick is Katie Blinn.

The Pierce County Council, as it prepares to pick a new county auditor today, doesn’t want for strong contenders.

Last week, an advisory committee appointed by the council picked from among 13 applicants for the job, which is vacant now that former Auditor Pat McCarthy has moved on to the county executive’s office.

The committee selected three finalists: Katie Blinn, assistant director of elections for the state; Richard “Dick” McEntee, an investment company executive; and former state Rep. Jan Shabro.

All three have records of public service and would likely make good county auditors.
McEntee, a former vice president of Nalley’s Fine Foods and Fircrest City Council member, has solid management experience. Shabro, who was on the County Council before being elected to the Legislature, knows her way around local and state government.

But Blinn has a couple of important qualities that the others don’t have: nonpartisan stripes and significant elections expertise.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

No judge can be effective while under a shadow of criminality. The allegations against Superior Court Judge Michael Hecht must be resolved decisively, one way or the other.

Two prostitutes claim that Hecht has solicited sex from them, and one claims the judge threatened to kill him. Several business owners in Tacoma’s Antique Row say Hecht has frequented the area, which is notorious for male prostitution. One merchant says he has seen Hecht pick up young men there.

Those are the accusations. They must be weighed against the credibility of the two primary witnesses, both of whom have criminal records. They must also be weighed against the motives of the private investigator who first brought them to light: Morgan Armijo, the son of former Judge Sergio Armijo, whom Hecht unseated last August.

Clearly there’s the possibility of bad blood here.

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There are three separate cases to be made regarding allegations that Judge-elect Michael Hecht picked up prostitutes and threatened to kill one of them. Criminal prosecution, if it proceeds, would have to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt. The Judicial Conduct Commission, if it has jurisdiction, would have to determine whether he violated the ethics of the bench. And Hecht – unless decisively cleared by the legal system – will have to make the case to the public that the accusations aren’t credible enough to prevent him from serving as a judge.

Without dissing Jan Shabro and Richard McEntee, we are impressed by Katie Blinn’s qualifications to be a technically expert and nonpartisan Pierce County auditor.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

Last month, Milwaukee’s board of education unanimously approved the country’s first “gay affirming” middle school. The Alliance School will serve sixth, seventh and eighth graders who identify themselves as other than heterosexual. To be fair, it will include heterosexual students as well. Classes are scheduled to begin in the fall of 2010.

Why a gay middle school?

A GLSEN study found that 86.2 percent of kids who identified themselves other than heterosexual were harassed verbally in the past year and 22 percent of them were victims of physical abuse as well.

Borrowing parlance apropos, let me just say that middle school sucks for just about everyone, gay or not gay.

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This editorial will appear in Monday's edition.

Here’s hoping Washington’s $6 billion budget hole isn’t curtains for Joemma, Kopachuck and Tolmie state parks.

Gov. Chris Gregoire’s critics say her proposal to close 13 state parks is little more than a ruse intended to work the public into a tizzy.

They are only half right.

The governor certainly understands the power of state parks. Gregoire is getting a lot of bang out of that measly $3.5 million in savings she was able to wring from the closures. Nothing says “austerity” like barring entrance to some of nature-loving Washingtonians’ favorite patches of wilderness.

But this is not the usual ploy to get voters to flood lawmakers’ offices with phone calls and thus bolster the case for unsustainable spending. (Or at least it’s not only that.)

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During the big snow recently, I came across a useful Web site for predicting local weather: the University of Washington Probability Forecast.

Just plug in your own ZIP code or city to get a localized forecast. I've found it to be pretty reliable, even though it's only good for the next few days. During the tail end of the snow event, I sounded wiser than I am when I'd tell people that we'd only get "a trace of snow, and no more than an inch."

Click here for the site.

This editorial will appear in Sunday's edition.

Politicians are wont to talk their way out of an uncomfortable spot, but when state lawmakers describe the “opportunities” ahead, Washingtonians should hope that it’s more than spin.

The $5.7 billion gap between expected demand for state services and expected state revenues, the largest shortfall ever faced, will exact sacrifices no matter lawmakers’ course.

The question facing the Legislature, which convenes Monday for a 105-day session, is whether the pain will be something more than painful. The depths of the state’s financial woes can be a source of rare political will, if only lawmakers decide to tap it.

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And no, I am not tipping my hat to Tim Eyman and Governor Blogojevich both of whom made the news recently; I am talking about literal nuts and scum, the kind that helped fuel a Boeing 737-800 this week.

Wednesday, the world’s first test of a passenger airliner took off from Bush Intercontinental airport in Houston partially powered by nuts and algae. These nuts aren't the three or four that get sealed up in a silver bag and handed out to the passengers, no the nuts of which I speak were in the fuel tank!

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For Sunday: The depths of the state’s financial woes can be a source of rare political will, if only lawmakers decide to tap it.

For Monday: Thirteen state parks – including Joemma and Kopachuck in Pierce County and Tolmie in Thurston County – are endangered by the quiet scruffiness that endears them to locals.

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.

We don't carry The New York Times columnists anymore. But no one said we couldn't tell you what they're writing about and link to their columns.

Paul Krugman's latest column takes President-elect Barack Obama to task for not thinking big enough when it comes to stimulating the economy. He writes:

"This is the most dangerous economic crisis since the Great Depression, and it could all too easily turn into a prolonged slump.

But Mr. Obama’s prescription doesn’t live up to his diagnosis. The economic plan he’s offering isn’t as strong as his language about the economic threat. In fact, it falls well short of what’s needed."

To read the column, click here.

Retired opinionator Dave Seago files this dispatch from the road:

No word yet on whether former Pierce County Executive John Ladenburg has found a new job.

But one of his top aides, Ron Klein, has landed a key post at Sound Transit.

Klein will begin work Jan. 26 as director of communications and external relations for the three-county transit agency.

Klein, a South Tacoma native with a background in advertising and public relations, was Ladenburg's communications director.

He will continue in his current county post until Jan. 23.

Today's editorial about the hurdles military kids face when they change schools was a natural for me to write: I lived it.

As an Air Force dependent, I attended six different schools – which actually isn't as many as a lot of "brats" attended. That's because we were in one place for four years (Aviano, Italy), a luxury many military families didn't have back in the 1960s and '70s.

While most school transitions were pretty easy, one wasn't: when we moved between my junior and senior years in high school. I had to take a freshman-level history class in order to graduate (the other two seniors in the class were also military kids). And a guidance counselor told me that even though I had the grades to be either valedictorian or salutatorian, I was ineligible because I was a transfer student.

Am I still bitter? Maybe a little. But all in all, the pros of being a military kid outweighed the cons. I saw most of the works of Michelangelo, wandered through the glittering Schloss Linderhof in Germany and climbed the Tower of Pisa – all before the age of 11. Being able to live in an Italian town and make friends with the local kids were experiences that enriched my life.

This editorial will appear in Friday's edition.

In the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventh day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened. ...
And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
– Genesis

OK, this week’s flooding might not be quite up to biblical standards. It just feels that way.

By Thursday, every river and stream in Western Washington seemed to have leaped its bounds and inundated everything in sight: roads, fields, farms, homes, neighborhoods. There was plenty of surplus water in parts of Eastern Washington as well.

For sheer destruction over broad expanses, not much in nature matches a big flood.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Lawmakers can smooth way for state’s military kids
Signing on to an interstate compact could help ease stressful school transitions for children of service members.

Imagine entering your senior year of high school at a brand new school in a different state – and being told that you have to take a freshman-level state-history class to graduate. And despite a perfect grade-point average, you can’t be valedictorian because you’re a transfer student.

That scenario is all too familiar to the children of military members, who often encounter those and other hurdles when they move with their service parent to a new assignment.

The children of military members already have the kind of stress in their lives that children of civilians rarely encounter. They face frequent moves, having to leave friends behind and make new ones. And one or more of their parents might be deployed at any time to a war zone.

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Water, water everywhere. Western Washington has nearly become an island, with all routes south and east cut off by record flooding. Enough already – we've barely recovered from the last great deluge.

Children of military members have enough stress in their lives without dealing with hurdles when they change schools. Washington can help ease that transition by becoming the 12th state to join an interstate compact.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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 public comment period has been extended again regarding the decision by outgoing Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland to allow Taylor Shellfish to harvest geoducks it planted illegally on state intertidal land in Totten Inlet. We editorialized about the decision Tuesday, saying it seemed like a reward to a contributor and a slap at those who had opposed Sutherland's re-election.

The comment period initially ended Monday, then was extended to Thursday after criticism that it had been shoehorned into the busy holiday season. Now Thurston County has gotten involved in the issue, so the comment period will now end at 5 p.m. Jan. 23 – after the new commissioner, Peter Goldmark, takes office.

E-mail comments to sepacenter@dnr.wa.gov. Comments can also be mailed to SEPA Center, P.O. Box 47015, Olympia, WA 98504-7015. Be sure to include the file number, 08-122201, on all comments.

This editorial will appear in Thursday's edition.

Anti-hunger advocates will have to meet their biggest challenge in years without the Emergency Food Network’s David Ottey.

David Ottey is not what you would call a patient man, at least not when it comes to the idea that anyone should have to go without food.

Ottey saw both want and plenty in his 22 years at the helm of the Emergency Food Network. But it is a credit to his determination and passion that the last time the EFN had bare shelves was 1991.

Ottey sounded the alarm that year, and individuals, organizations and businesses have been answering it ever since. Today, the EFN supplies more than 80 percent of all food to Pierce County food banks. Its reserves ensure that no one here need go hungry.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Smoking in vehicles puts children’s health at risk
The science is clear: Secondhand smoke – especially in enclosed places like cars – is dangerous for children.

Parents who forced their children to ingest a poisonous substance that could injure their health probably would be charged with abuse and have their children taken away.

Yet it’s perfectly legal for parents to threaten their children's health in this state – as long as the poison is cigarette smoke.

That could change – and it’s about time. Health officials and anti-
smoking advocates are looking for legislative sponsors for a bill to ban smoking in vehicles when children are present.

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Oh to be a fly on the wall any day at the White House, but today, in particular, it would have been especially nice. This afternoon three ex presidents, Carter, Bush senior, and Clinton met with current President Bush to welcome incoming President Elect Obama. It was a supreme show of goodwill and a genuine display of non-partisan politics, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a while.

A situation like this could have been uncomfortable. Think of the awful accusations these men and their surrogates have lobbed toward one another. Imagine eating chicken salad with someone who accused you of cavorting with terrorists, or passing the salt to someone who said you were responsible for the near collapse of the global economy? Awwwwkward.

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Newly elected Pierce County Executive Pat McCarthy was to announce this afternoon that former Tacoma City Councilman Kevin Phelps will serve as her deputy executive.

Phelps currently works as an administrator and troubleshooter for state Auditor Brian Sonntag, a former Pierce County auditor. McCarthy was county auditor until her election as county executive in November.

McCarthy aides had been saying last month that McCarthy wanted a "flat" top management echelon without a chief of staff serving in the role that Lyle Quasim played for outgoing county executive John Ladenburg.

But Quasim and Phelps, both members of a McCarthy transition team headed by local political consultant Bill Stauffacher, helped persuade McCarthy that some kind of deputy executive or chief of staff role was essential.

Quasim's administrative credentials included a stint as the longest-serving secretary in history of the massive Washington State Department of Social and Health Services.

Phelps has a long background as a businessman, most recently as the managing partner of Tacoma's Landmark Convention Center. He also serves as head of the finance committee for Life Christian Center, a multi-milliion-dollar enterprise.

Hunger fighters will have to meet their biggest challenge in years without the Emergency Food Network's David Ottey. He retired last week after 22 years at the helm of the organization that has helped ensure that no one in Pierce County need want for food.

Parents who forced their children to ingest a poisonous substance that could injure their health probably would be charged with abuse and have their children taken away. Yet it's perfectly legal for parents to do just that in this state as long as the poison is tobacco. That could change.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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 editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Boston had its Big Dig. Seattle has its Big Dither.

The Big Dither is the endless and tiresome argument over the best of all possible ways to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct, the double-decked stretch of Highway 99 that runs like a grey concrete horror along downtown Seattle’s waterfront.

It’s been almost eight years since the Nisqually Earthquake supposedly exposed the viaduct’s potential for a catastrophic collapse.

We say “supposedly” because the leaders of this state, King County and the City of Seattle don’t appear to really believe that the viaduct might actually fall down. If they took their engineers seriously, they would have done something about it by now. There would be at least an occasional flicker of urgency in the Big Dither.

Instead, we have process, process, process. Debate, debate, debate. You would think they were talking about the eventual replacement of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

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Boston had its Big Dig. Now Seattle has its Big Dither – the endless argument over how to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct. Six years after the viaduct was declared a major hazard, Seattle and the state still haven’t agreed on how to build a new one.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

You might have noticed the obituary today for Carlean Johnson – a Gig Harbor woman known for her "Six Ingredients or Less" series of cookbooks.

Her recipes were quick and easy, just perfect for busy parents and working folks. They weren't fancy, and I'm sure the "foodies" would turn their noses up at her generous use of canned soups and other prepackaged ingredients. But they resonated with home cooks, and by the time we ran a 2000 Associated Press article about her, she had sold more than 1 million books.

I have an autographed copy of her first book, published in 1982. I've used several of the recipes over the years, but one I use on a regular basis is for rice pilaf. It's great – and easy.

Here it is:

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I spent the long New Year's weekend out on the north Washington coast near Moclips. While driving around, I came upon a planned "eco-village" called Seabrook just south of Pacific Beach along the coast highway.

The community is composed of different styles of homes, from small cottages to near McMansions. Although they all had a New England coastal feeling to them, they still reminded me a lot of another planned community I've visited: Seaside, on the Florida Panhandle. Seaside is where the Jim Carrey movie, "The Truman Show," was filmed.

I liked the feel of the town and the fact that it's walker- and bike-friendly. Homes are for sale and available for vacation rentals, with prices comparing favorably with the motels along the coast. It has a nice restaurant I wish I'd had the time to eat at.

The downside: The homes are not on the beach side of the road, although plans are to build some there and there's easy beach access.

TNT columnist Dan Voelpel had a story about the man behind Seabrook back in May.

This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.


City Council members who e-mailed each other about council business during council meetings were, at the very least, rude.

Rhenda Strub is not going to like this editorial.

She’s the Olympia city councilwoman who’s miffed that a guy named Steven Segall had the gall to question the City Council’s practice of conducting private meetings via e-mail from the council dais.

Segall, you see, lives in Thurston County, but not in Olympia – a fact that apparently disqualifies him from the right to question the council’s practices.

Strub told The Olympian newspaper, “He’s just meddling in something that, frankly, is none of his business.”

Consider this our application to join Segall in the Olympia Meddlers Club. We too live outside the Olympia city limits, and we too think the council’s deliberation-by-Internet stinks.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Out-the-door actions
by Sutherland look bad
Two controversial decisions favor contributors to his unsuccessful
re-election campaign – a geoduck harvester and mining company.

It’s very possible that two actions by defeated state Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland were not really lovely parting gifts to big campaign contributors. And it’s possible that he really didn’t mean to stick it to environmentalists who had opposed his re-election.

It just looks that way.

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The very sad news that state Rep. Bill Grant (who was just about the most likable, down-to-earth legislator in Olympia) died Sunday has prompted an interesting question for the Secretary of State's office. Who gets to suggest nominees for his successor?

Traditionally, the party has had that job. But it seems the Top Two primary – in which candidates don't run as a party nominee, but get to state their party preference – has a wrinkle. Read on for the exchange among election officials.

From: Blinn, Katie
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 11:04 AM
To: McDonald, Patrick; Moreno, Megan; Reed, Sam (Office); Excell, Steve; Handy, Nick; Ammons, Dave; Hamlin, Shane; Even, Jeff
Subject: RE: Rep. Bill Grant

I just talked to Karen Martin, the Walla Walla County Auditor. I told her that, given that the Democratic Party had supported Bill Grant, that Party can claim to nominate three people according to the State Constitution and require the Commissioners to make the appointment from that list of three.

It would be up to someone else (the local Republican Party) to challenge that process. They would have to argue that the provision in the State Constitution does not apply. But this is a risky proposition because, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. That would mean that the appointment to fill Rep. Hailey’s vacancy would not necessarily be a Republican. While the 9th Legislative District (Adams, Asotin, Garfield, Whitman, parts of Franklin and Spokane counties) is clearly Republican territory, they may realize that this is not a wise move.

Katie

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Washington’s indoor smoke ban – a law pioneered in Pierce County – is looking even smarter than anyone first thought.

When the ban was enacted by initiative in 2005, the case for it largely rested on the health of people who work in smoky places – bartenders, waiters and the like. They were at risk, the argument went, because they were forced to breathe the exhaust of smokers eight or more hours a day.

And so they were. But an accumulating body of evidence suggests that other nonsmokers are also placed at grave and immediate risk by shorter exposures to tobacco smoke.

The latest study – a review of heart attack statistics in Pueblo, Colo. – is stunning. Done by Colorado doctors and public health authorities, it found that heart attacks serious enough to require hospitalization fell by 41 percent in the three years after Pueblo adopted an indoor smoke ban.

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A couple weeks ago we published an appreciation of John Ladenburg, who's just been replaced as county executive by Pat McCarthy. A few more thoughts:

Ladenburg was defeated Nov. 4 in his attempt to unseat state Attorney General Rob McKenna. Many have noted Ladenburg's embarrassing failure to beat McKenna in Pierce County itself, whose citizens know him best.

I'm inclined to see that loss as a badge of honor.

Officeholders have the option of steering clear of controversy and doing their utmost to preserve their popularity. Those kind of careerists rarely get much done, but they've usually got plenty of friends and admirers.

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Who started it? Where’s the international outcry against Hamas? At this point, should we care?

What matters is this bloodletting stop. Of course it is horrific and untenable that Israel continues to be hit with rockets, but many of the pictures coming across the wire still show many of the Palestinians, walled up as they are, throwing rocks. And then there are the pictures of Palestinian children covered in blood. Right or wrong, call the lack of protests against Hamas here and around the world a failure of PR.

And while it is true the Palestinians are essentially being held hostage by thugs who want Israel destroyed, I can’t help thinking this terrorist group called Hamas, as awful as they are, have given the Palestinians a small taste of self-determinism, something they haven’t had for a very long time.

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My hat is off to any of these demonstrators who were on the streets in the past protesting the 4,000-plus rockets Hamas fired at Israel before Israel finally fired back a few days ago.

By being as quick to condemn the violence of Hamas, they've shown principle, consistency and commitment to genuine peace.

Some of these guys were out carrying signs against Hamas a few weeks ago, weren't they?

This will appear in Sunday's print edition.

Welcome to 2009. The dawn of a new year is a chance to begin again, and in that spirit, we offer our civic agenda.

Every December, the News Tribune's editorial board weighs its priorities for the coming year and identifies the objectives its members consider essential to improving the South Sound for the people who live here.

For us, it's a chance to revisit our values and reprioritize them to reflect the previous 12 months' successes and failures and what's happening in the region.

For readers, it's a window on the priorities that will drive the editorials that appear on this page the rest of the year.

Our hopes for 2009, like those of many News Tribune readers, are shaped by the sorry state of the economy.

Tough times call for a renewed focus on fundamentals, and we can't think of two more urgent priorities than educating our citizenry and helping neighbors in need. Neither are new to our civic agenda, but we're giving them prominence this year.

Here's our 2009 civic agenda in full.

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Reaction to this week's court ruling that Louisiana must list two adoptive fathers on the birth certificate of a boy adopted by a same-sex couple falls into one of two camps. Either people are outraged that a federal court is foisting gay adoption on a socially conservative state, or they cheer the court's intervention as a blow for adoptive parents' and gay rights.

Missing from that debate is any discussion of the adopted child's rights. Once Louisiana amends a birth certificate, the original is sealed – and stays that way. Such is adoption law in most U.S. states. This child will have no legal prerogative to the most fundamental government record bearing his name, even as an adult. I wonder why that doesn't rile people like the thought of adopted parents being denied their place on a legal document.

Sometimes news comes in the mail.

What looked like another fundraising pitch in the holiday mail turned out to be just the prelude to one: The YWCA of Pierce County plans to move its women's shelter -- but not very far.

Now located at 405 Broadway in downtown Tacoma, the shelter operation will be moved a block uphill to the Wilsonian apartment building at South Fourth Street and St. Helens Avenue.

The move to the larger building will allow the YWCA to increase the number of beds by 50 percent, and each resident family will have its own kitchen and bathroom. The current shelter for domestic violence victims is already the county's largest.

The building purchase is in the works. A $1.65 million capital campaign comes next.

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This just in: Jennifer Aniston and Kate Hudson are among the many who are sick of being celebrities.

They are not sick of the money, or the movie parts, or the VIP treatment, they just don’t want their personal lives to be the focus of attention, which is why they have recently done a host of interviews with almost every major news organization.

Jennifer Aniston even posed nude for the cover of GQ Magazine essentially saying, “Now that I have your attention leave me alone.”

Last month Aniston had her picture taken in an evening gown on a beach in the middle of the afternoon for Vogue Magazine. I imagine she waited until the stylist and two hairdressers backed away from the shot and said with girl next-door earnestness, “I just want to be treated like everyone else.” Click, Click.

Girl, I hear you. It’s not easy being famous.

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Now here's a big-hearted company. Not only did Enterprise go for more than a half-century without a layoff, it has a vice president of corporate responsibility.

I'm just guessing Washington Mutual didn't have a similar position in its corporate hierarchy.

By CARI TUNA
The Wall Street Journal

Until recently, Enterprise Rent-A-Car Co. prided itself on a 51-year history of never laying off a U.S. employee. When competitors slashed fleets and shuttered branches after the Sept. 11 attacks, Enterprise kept hiring.

This fall, though, the nation’s largest car-rental agency said it would dismiss 1,000 of its 75,000 employees, as Americans curtailed driving and flying. “These types of declines are unprecedented,” says Patrick Farrell, Enterprise’s vice president of corporate responsibility.

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Sunday: We print our annual civic agenda, emphasizing preservation of education and the safety net in the face of hard times.

Monday: Washington's indoor smoke ban is making more and more sense in retrospect; the latest vindication comes from Pueblo, Colo., where researchers found a stunning drop in heart attacks after its smoke ban took effect. This is the latest and most rigorous of many studies that have found the same thing.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to patrick.ocallahan@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.

We had our fun today on the opinion page, listing the headlines we'd like to see in 2009.

Now it's your turn. What news of the new year did we miss?

I read a lot of editorials from newspapers around the country in order to compile the "What others are saying" digest that runs Saturdays.

The following St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial – which takes a humorous look at clichés editorial writers tend to fall back on – struck a nerve. I couldn't help but wonder how many of these clichés had wormed their way into our editorials over the past year.

I resolve to try to avoid them in 2009. I'm just glad the list doesn't include "on the other hand," "shovel-ready" and "win-win." I don't know how we'd be able to opinionate without them.

Here's the editorial:

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