Editorial writers around the country are talking about the nation's reaction to swine flu. They're split about 50-50 on whether Americans are going overboard in closing whole school districts, canceling state sports tournaments, urging people to stay off subways. After all, people die of the flu every year.

The writers, tongues firmly planted in cheeks, are suggesting possible reasons for all the hype. Here are the going theories:

"Two words: Sweeps week."

"Media tired of talking about the economy."

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

While most people were focused on what lawmakers were doing about Washington state’s $9 billion deficit, a potentially momentous election measure quietly made its way through the 2009 Legislature.

Senate Bill 5599, which was signed into law Tuesday, is designed to elect presidents by straight popular vote, thus turning the Electoral College into a quaint constitutional fossil.

This would effectively amend the U.S. Constitution, in concert with other state legislatures. That’s an ambitious agenda for a measure that wouldn’t amend even the state constitution. The idea hasn’t gotten nearly enough public debate, so it’s good to see opponents launching a referendum that would force a real discussion of its merits.

SB 5599 is part of a multi-state effort called National Popular Vote. The strategy is ingenious.

Legislatures would be persuaded, one by one, to join a compact under which their states’ electoral votes would automatically be awarded to the presidential candidate who won a majority of votes nationwide.

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You may have noticed that President Obama is taking pains to call swine flu by its medical designation, H1N1, so as not to antagonize the swine farmer lobby. Now the World Health Organization has announced it too will refrain from fouling swine's good name.

I like how agricultural officials in Illinois chose to drive home the message that pigs are still safe to eat.

CAPRON — Swine flu fears have caused Capron Elementary School to call off its plans for a “kiss the pig” contest.

Agriculture experts say it’s a good thing, because they wouldn’t want to put the pig in harm’s way. ...

“Right now, you could make the argument that the fundraiser shouldn’t be held for the pig’s sake,” (Illinois Department of Agriculture spokesman Jeff) Squibb said. “If anyone is at risk, based on what we know at this moment, it would be the pig.”

This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Parents of impressionable children, beware: If a pilot program now under way is successful, an advertising blitz for state-sponsored gambling could be coming to your neighborhood convenience store.

The "Enhanced Lottery Retailer" merchandising campaign at five mini-marts in the South Sound area includes brightly colored placards, eye-catching signs advertising jackpot sizes, new dispensers and other features designed to spur impulse purchases of scratch lottery tickets.

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The Legislature quietly passed a measure aimed at undoing the electoral college formula in presidential election. Now – with a referendum filed – let’s have the debate.

Giving people an extra nudge to buy lottery tickets would be unseemly during good times. But during bad times, when people are more desperate than ever for an economic boost and may be more susceptible to a glitzy marketing campaign, it's just wrong. (This editorial was held today to make room for a swine flu editorial. We'll post it on the blog early today.)

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.

Washington has a huge back door standing wide open to the swine flu: the migrant farmworker stream. The state’s public health agencies should be launching a crash effort to reach this population.

Most of Washington’s migrant farmworkers are Mexican. Many of them – or their friends, or their families – are likely to have been in Mexico recently or had close contact with someone else who’s been there.

This population is at obvious risk of carrying and transmitting the swine flu.

Another problem: Migrant farmworkers often travel in crowded vehicles and live close together in migrant housing.

Another problem: Migrants don’t have regular doctors. Few have any kind of health insurance. Although they can seek medical treatment at community health clinics – some of which focus on farmworkers – many are simply disconnected from the American health care infrastructure.

Yet another problem: Migrants tend to lie low – to remain disconnected from mainstream institutions – to avoid deportation. Some may fear stepping forward for treatment.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

The latest sign that the economy is bad, really, really bad: The City of Tacoma is, in the words of a city councilman, having to cinch its belt one notch tighter.

City Hall had been an oasis of relative prosperity. While the state’s businesses laid off workers by the thousands and the Legislature grappled with a $9 billion shortfall, Tacoma city government seemed largely immune to the ravages of the recession, thanks partly to healthy reserve.

Just a few months ago, the City Council felt flush enough to spend $4.6 million on overhauling the city’s salary schedule, a move that bumped nonunion employees pay up by as much as 15 percent. The council almost handed City Manager Eric Anderson a similar raise last month before he wisely declined.

Now it appears that Tacoma won’t ride out the downturn as easily as it expected.

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WashingtonVotes.org released its annual Missed Votes Report today, and the Pierce County delegation looks pretty good.

The Perfect Attendance Award for always showing up to vote is shared by Sen. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor; Rep. Jan Angel, R-Port Orchard; Rep. Tami Green, D-Lakewood; Rep. Troy Kelley, D-Tacoma; Rep. Jim McCune, R-Graham; Rep. Dawn Morrell, D-Puyallup; Rep. Skip Priest, R-Federal Way. None of them missed a single vote (out of 847 in the Senate and 887 in the House). That's impressive.

On the other hand, Rep. Dennis Flannigan, D-Tacoma, had by far the highest number of missed votes in the House: 164. Legislators were given the opportunity to explain their reasons for not voting. Here's what he said:

"I've missed several votes, even days in this legislative session. My (wife) has been, and continues to have difficult health problems.”

The City of Tacoma certainly wasn't alone in misjudging the depths of this economic crisis, but City Hall is just now getting around to trimming things like travel and subscriptions? It's not lost on citizens who have already had to tighten their belts several more notches that they are footing the bill.

Giving people an extra nudge to buy lottery tickets would be unseemly during good times. But during bad times, when people are more desperate than ever for an economic boost and may be more susceptible to a glitzy marketing campaign, it's just wrong.

UPDATE: With the World Health Organization upping the swine flu warning level to 5 ("pandemic imminent"), we're changing gears and writing about the need for local and state health officials to address possible outbreaks among the mostly Mexican farmworker 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.

Notes from the Mothership….

In my primary occupation I spend a great deal of time driving. I guess you could say I’m in the pick up and delivery business. I’m either delivering children or picking them up. An occupational perk of being in the van- which by the way, my kids have nicknamed “The Mothership” or “ Mo’ ship” is that I spend a great deal of time listening to the news. Stop me on the street and I can rattle off the day’s headlines- current Dow Jones numbers included. I say this without a hint of pride. It just comes with the territory.

So yesterday, I’m driving my usual route, coffee in hand, with one extra delivery (son forgot his lunch,) listening to the news as usual: “Swine flu, potential worldwide pandemic, banks in need of more capital, Arlen Specter switches parties, Dow up 87 points …”and then this: “Astronomers see oldest object in the universe yet.”

The announcer goes on to say, “The ten second blast astronomers witnessed (“witnessed”!) happened when the universe was only 630 million years old.”

The fact that scientists even know what a gamma ray burst looks like is pretty impressive, considering we didn’t know the earth was round until a short time ago, relatively speaking.

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Now that President Obama has made it through the first 100 days, what should he focus on in the second 100? The Washington Post
asked former officials, strategists and others for their advice.

ALLAN J. LICHTMAN
Author of “The Keys to the White House” and “White Protestant Nation”; history professor at American University
Forget about the first 100 days of a president’s term. Since Franklin Roosevelt established that artificial benchmark in 1933, newly elected presidents have accomplished more in their second 100 days than in their first.

Dwight Eisenhower signed the armistice ending the Korean War on July 27, 1953. Ronald Reagan steered his landmark 25 percent across-the-board tax cuts through Congress on Aug. 4, 1981, and George W. Bush gained passage of his signature $1.35 trillion tax cut on May 26, 2001.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Some on the Puyallup City Council have argued that the group doesn’t deserve the rap for being dysfunctional.

Sure, they say, a few troublemakers occasionally make a scene – but the city’s business is still getting done and isn’t that what matters?

Yes and no. Governing by faction is certainly possible – the Supreme Court does it all the time – but open hostilities are rarely conducive to sound decision-making, if for no other reason than they tend to scare off cooler heads.

Dysfunctional is as dysfunctional does, and the Puyallup council is looking like a prime candidate for intervention.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Fast-tracking a special session of the Legislature can be justified if there’s an urgent need to correct some injustice. But the session proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire might actually produce more injustice.

The governor wants lawmakers to come back to Olympia briefly for some unfinished business. Her office identified three failed bills that do in fact need revisiting.

One would allow expedited deportation of criminal illegal aliens; another would allow $60 million to be cut from levy equalization; the third would revise an initiative that currently is forcing some utilities to buy renewable power they don’t need at their customers’ expense.

The deportation bill is not controversial. The other two are.

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Some on the Puyallup City Council have argued that the group doesn't deserve the rap for being dysfunctional. But dysfunctional is as dysfunctional does.

A special session of the Legislature can be justified if there's an urgent need to correct an injustice or save the state from going broke. The session proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire meets neither test.

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.

If the letters to the editor are any indication, the four-person Puyallup City Council majority has ticked off a lot of folks in that community. (See our editorial on the subject Wednesday in the print edition and later today on the blog.)

We've received five letters criticizing the council majority for actions that include abruptly deciding to take a vote on changing council district positions to at-large. One member of that majority, Mike Deal, has now reversed course, so it's unlikely that the change will be made.

Whenever we receive that many original letters on one subject, it's pretty safe to say that emotions are running high. A sixth letter writer (whose letter ran today) took the opposite tack – criticizing the council minority for being quarrelsome – but the trend is heavily in the other direction. There may be a council majority, but the majority of letter writers doesn't seem to be on board with it.

Hot off the press: Arlen Specter, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania, comes out of the closet and declares, “ I am a Democrat.”

He can now put his elephant ties on eBay and toss out his orthopedic footpads ‘cause this 79-year-old man no longer has to stand and filibuster. He’s joining the majority party - that is if Al Franken of Minnesota ever gets seated. Specter, a man who has professionally stood under the Republican Party banner since 1966, is finally calling himself a progressive.

Friends, family, co-workers are all thinking the same thing: “He was the last to know.” Ever since Specter was seen cozying up to President and Mrs. Obama at the White House Super Bowl party, Republicans have had their suspicions.

Specter hasn’t exactly marched in lockstep with fellow conservatives. His voting record shows he voted pro-life, but also pro embryonic stem cell research. The ACLU gave him a 60 percent rating, indicating a mixed civil rights record. Although Specter stood against gay marriage, he helped vote out a Republican-backed constitutional amendment that would state marriage was exclusively between one man and one woman. He’s one of the few Republicans in favor of civil unions.

But even though he wasn’t what you’d call a neo-conservative, the Republicans could count on him for some things.

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Health authorities trying to stop the spread of swine flu are urging Americans to stay home if they feel sick. Businesses are encouraging their employees to do the same. But what about workers who can't afford to miss a day's pay? Is paid sick time merely a job perk or is it a matter of public health?

The Institute for Women's Policy Research argues it's the latter.

...analyses of Bureau of Labor Statistics and other data conducted by the Institute for Women's Policy Research (IWPR) have found that less than half of workers have paid sick days, and only one in three are able to utilize sick days to care for sick children. Workers without paid sick days lose wages if they stay home, and many workers risk losing their jobs. As a result, workers who lack paid sick time are more likely to go to work with a communicable illness, and parents who cannot stay home with a sick child are more likely to send sick children to school or day care. Workers who work in direct contact with the public, such as restaurant workers, child care workers, and hotel employees, are among the least likely to have paid sick days.

People who go to work or school while sick may infect coworkers, customers, and classmates, resulting in even more infections. With seasonal influenza, this pattern of infection is a serious problem, costing employers and families millions of dollars a year and sometimes causing serious illness or death, especially among infants and the elderly.

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One of this state's elder statesmen (I'm not sure he'd appreciate the term, not being elderly) has challenged the consistency of our editorial logic.

Last week, we argued that the Legislature should fund human welfare programs in the budget rather than let voters decide their fate.

(We've been primarily concerned with the Basic Health Program for the working poor, which will have 40,000 people pared from its rolls.)

Here's his criticism. Below it is my response.

Patrick:

I appreciate the logic of your April 22 lead editorial: lawmakers should not tell voters they need to vote for a tax increase to fund an essential service. If a public vote on a tax increase is a good idea, it should be the sacred cows they put on the ballot instead.

Yet my memory is that the Tribune consistently endorses EMS levies, ostensibly based on the premise they are needed to fund an essential service. Why should state lawmakers be criticized for doing the same thing you praise local lawmakers for doing: telling voters they need to vote for tax increases to maintain an essential service? Why shouldn’t EMS services be funded with existing revenues and local lawmakers told to put sacred cows on the ballot?

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Faced with a potentially lethal strain of influenza, the danger lies in underreacting.

Or overreacting – as when stock markets tremble in response to the World Health Organization’s “be ready just in case” warning about swine flu.

This flu is still in the wait-and-see stage. It has killed scores of people in Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, but so far no Americans infected there appear to have died from the illness. No one has been able to explain the discrepancy.

The WHO’s pandemic flu alert is at four on a scale of one to six. A four means “The new virus can cause sustained outbreaks and is adapting itself to human spread.”

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

“It was a fun round of cards tonight. Of course, the winners always feel that way.”
– State Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Roy

Score one for the Tacoma pirates, or the Pierce County mafia reincarnated, or whatever other epithets the South Sound’s lawmakers earned in the Legislature’s race to the finish this weekend.

A session that began with the prospect of a historic budget deficit was bound to have a theatrical finish. But no one could have predicted the drama would have something to do with insisting on fair treatment for Tacoma power ratepayers.

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The Pierce County delegation rides again? Our legislators showed some grit in demanding consideration on legislation amending green-energy mandates and fending off potential threats to capital projects.

Faced with a potentially lethal strain of flu, the danger lies in underreacting. Or overreacting – as when stock markets slide around the world after the World Health Organization issues a tentative "be ready just in case" pandemic warning.

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 often leave our morning editorial board meetings with many more ideas for editorials than ever make the page.

We may have spotted a story that makes us wonder what's really happening behind the scenes, or a news event has us pondering "what ifs." Our discussions are usually just the starting point, after which we do our homework to figure out if there's anything worth writing about.

That was the case last week when a story about the fate of the crumbling People's Center pool on the Hilltop got us asking, "Hey, isn't Metro Parks looking for some place to put a 50-meter pool? Wouldn't that be a great asset for the Hilltop?"

Our great idea is a no-go, according to the staff at Metro Parks. Here is the response I got from Lois Stark at Metro:

There is definitely not enough space at Peoples to build the 50M pool – even if we tore down the Center and replaced it with a 50M pool (which we would never do!), there still wouldn’t be enough space. You really need a lot of parking to make a 50M pool successful since it is used for swim meets and competitions.

This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

Parks will put funds to good use
Removing two Elwha River dams is something that’s been talked about for a long time in the Northwest. But thanks to $54.7 million in federal economic stimulus money, it’s starting to look like it’s really going to happen.

The national parks are getting $750 million to fund 750 projects in 48 states, and Washington state is faring very well with $62 million for 33 projects. Only California is getting more for its national parks – $97 million.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

The 2009 Legislature was dealt one of the worst hands in state history: a recession-driven $9 billion hit to projected revenues.

The Democrats who control both House and Senate had to pass a balanced budget under these dire circumstances. To their credit, they did it without punting tough decisions to the voters through a November tax measure.

Republicans are complaining that the operating budget isn’t sustainable, that it’s propped up by billions of dollars worth of federal stimulus funds, deferred pension contributions and raids on state accounts – one-time money that won’t be around next biennium.

All true. But that’s what you do when your back is to the wall. Keeping all those billions in the bank would have turned Washington into a humanitarian and educational disaster zone. If the state is still in the depths of this recession come 2011, we’ll find out what hard times are really like.

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Seattle or Tacoma is the question that hangs heavy over Russell Investments today. The deadline for a decision has been set for the end of May. As I write this, the people of Russell are busy weighing data. Statisticians, urban planners, demographers, accountants have all been employed to gather information down to the minutia.

Tax incentives, traffic patterns, proximity to parks and recreation, real estate by the cubic foot are all being measured and analyzed and prepared for power point presentations. Numbers are being sliced and diced like offerings at a Chinese Buffet, and these numbers will be whispered about in closed-door meetings and open town hall forums. “Should we stay or should we go?”

If I may, let me interrupt the madness. Everyone put down your pencils and pie charts for just a moment because this decision can be distilled down to one question, and it is this: Ginger or Marry Ann?

Don’t pretend you don’t know what I am talking about. Most of us are at an age where the 1960’s television show “Gilligan’s Island” shaped our cultural consciousness even if we only saw it in reruns.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition:

Try this thought on for size: Osama bin Laden with thermonuclear weapons.

That may exaggerate the potential of what’s happening in Pakistan right now, but perhaps not by much.

The fanatical Taliban – Osama’s patrons in Afghanistan – are tightening their grip on large sections of Pakistan. Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal and the means to deliver it. The idea of a nuclear-armed Taliban should frighten every sane person on earth.

That prospect has begun looking all too possible in the last few weeks. The Pakistani government – apparently taking its cue from Neville Chamberlain – has decided to “make peace” with the county’s Taliban insurgency by turning over the immense Swat Valley to its tender mercies. The Taliban has since been imposing its vicious, totalitarian version of Islamic law on everyone in sight.

Women are already being flogged in public for the faintest acts of independence. It’s only a matter of time before a religious reign of terror begins. The Taliban’s response to female education includes bombing the schools and throwing acid into the face of girls. Its leaders don’t debate whether gays should marry or have civil unions; they debate whether to stone them to death or bury them alive.

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It's hard to believe, but in Washington state the people who give tattoos and perform invasive piercings like the ones in the photo are virtually unregulated.

The person who gives you a manicure or cuts your hair must be licensed by the state and comply with health regulations, but the person who pierces navels, eyebrows, tongues and parts of the body that won't be mentioned here does not – at least for now.

Gov. Gregoire is expected to sign legislation (Senate Bill 5391) that would require people who pierce or tattoo to be licensed. And the state Health Department will have to adopt rules about the sterilization of needles and other instruments and jewelry used in body art. The law would go into effect July 1, 2010.

It's about time. Back in 2006 I editorialized in favor of regulating the body art industry. Sen. Jim Kastama, D-Puyallup, was one of the sponsors of legislation then that did not pass. He was more successful this time around.

Here's what I wrote back in January 2006.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition:

Short term, this will be a miserable year for public education, with teacher pay raises and other priorities being torpedoed by Washington’s fiscal crisis.

The one consolation is that other state programs, by and large, will be suffering much more than the schools.

Long term is another story. In an otherwise dismal year, the Legislature has laid the foundation for sweeping future improvements to the state’s schools – more funding coupled with demands for better performance from the education system.

The prospects of House Bill 2261 seemed iffy at times, mainly because the state teachers union mounted a bizarre and lonely war against it. In the end, the WEA found itself abandoned by nearly all its traditional allies, including the state PTA, the League of Women Voters and a host of lawmakers who’s always supported the K-12 system.

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We've talked a couple times about commenting on Jennifer Rice's kidnapping and rape conviction. We couldn't figure a way to do it – an interesting way to do it.

One thing we look for when picking topics for commentary is some degree of controversy. Take a case like Rice. Once you say that "pedophilia is bad, especially when teachers do it," that's about the end of it. Nobody's going to argue that it's good for teachers to molest their students. We can't argue a position, because there's no other side to argue against.

So, no editorial of Jennifer Rice. For the record, we're opposed to child-rape, too.

Our editorial today mentions two specific concerns about how the Legislature is building the next state budget: sheltering state workers from the brunt of the recession and building a beefy savings account.

On the former, we were struck by the action in the Senate Ways and Means Committee last week. As Adam Wilson of our sister paper The Olympian reported, Republicans unsuccessfully proposed making state employees pay a greater percentage of their health insurance premiums as a way to buy back devastating cuts to social services.

I emailed the Senate Republican caucus staff this afternoon for more details and got this response:

Sen. Zarelli’s amendment would have upped the employee share to 23 percent assuming the current value of the benefit package is maintained (scaling back benefits would reduce the employee share). For comparison, the Kaiser Family Foundation found covered employees nationwide paid 27 percent premium share for family coverage.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

State Rep. Eric Pettigrew, if he has any sense about him, regrets ever suggesting that “people will die” if the Legislature doesn’t send a sales tax increase to the ballot.

Hyperbole doesn’t become the Seattle Democrat, and it certainly isn’t helping sell lawmakers or voters on his proposal to offset cuts in health care.

A poll leaked over the weekend showed that public support for a three-tenths sales tax increase (Pettigrew’s baby) is falling far short of the 60 percent groups that would underwrite a pro campaign want to see.

Support is also faltering at the state Capitol. The House, the more enthusiastic of the two chambers, was barely able to get the sales tax referendum out of committee on Tuesday.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition:

Susan Boyle doesn’t need a makeover. She’s already had one.

A Web site named DailyMakover.com has input the Duchess of Dowdy’s face into its software and worked its magic. Says its blonde, pert editorial director:

“We selected a sleek, side-parted bob with bangs to help bring more contour to her face. As for makeup, we wanted to bring out her eyes so we thinned out her brows, added thickening mascara and a soft, gray eyeliner. Susan also has a natural, red hue in her cheeks, so we used foundation to even out her coloring and added a rose lipstick.”

To which we say: sacrilege.

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Scott Hoover of University Place is probably the most famous meter reader in the Northwest.

Not only did The News Tribune feature him in a front-page article, but Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur also wrote about him. A front-page teaser in the Times showed Hoover doing his job.

Hoover is no ordinary meter reader. He was the lucky applicant – out of about 1,400 – hired for a single full-time opening at Tacoma Public Utilities. Of the 807 applicants who showed up to take the test, he was among the 27 invited back to interview.

The story has struck such a nerve because it so perfectly reflects the economic times we're in that one job could generate so much interest. It didn't hurt, of course, that it pays well ($17.76 to $23.56 an hour) and includes good City of Tacoma benefits.

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I can't help posting this second piece of commentary on Susan Boyle. Amy Wilhentz teaches journalism at the University of California, Irvine.

Ordinary in an Extraordinary Way

By Amy Wilentz

Special to the Los Angeles Times

It is a bad world in which to be an almost-50-year-old virgin, unemployed, with frizzy hair, midriff bulge and a figure like a spinster teacher from the 1940s.

In the international world of televised talent shows, you’re simply not supposed to appear on stage if you look like that. Talent is nice, but it must be packaged, matched by a certain, shall we say, physical ability to seduce. In the entertainment world these days, if you have to choose, talent runs second to “dateability.”

So if you look anything like Susan Boyle, the Scotswoman who is the latest Internet phenomenon for her performance of “I Dreamed a Dream” on a British TV talent show, you’re at least supposed to get a stylist who can do something for you before you go on. And preferably, if you’re going to look like that and be in public, you should be a commentator on economic matters in the Third World or a former secretary of State or an expert on the human genome.

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I've been resisting writing about the Susan Boyle phenomenon the last few days, mainly because I thought enough people were writing and talking about it already.

Today, I give in. The story's got legs that aren't getting tired. I also think it's too important. You'll see my take on Boyle in tomorrow's paper. (Most of our editorial positions are group decisions, but I'll be doing this one on my own, with the usual review by my colleagues.) Look for it in this blog this evening.

Below is a column on the phenomenon by editorial columnist Rod Dreher, who contrasts Boyle with porn star Marilyn Chambers. I agree with every word.

Susan Boyle’s redemption song

By Rod Dreher

The Dallas Morning News

Two female entertainers made headlines last week. They were separated by nine years, one ocean and a moral universe. Spare a moment to think about the lives of Marilyn Chambers, who had everything, and Susan Boyle, who had nothing – and what they did with what they were given.

Chambers, who died at 56 of undetermined causes, was one of the most famous and successful porn actresses of all time.

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Democrats in the House teamed up with Republicans late last week to insert a poison pill in the bill to revise Initiative 937's green energy mandates. By giving utilities credit for all hydropower (which already supplies 75 percent of the juice used in this state), Democrats hoped to make the bill so unpalatable as to kill it.

We are OK with that given how the alternative would have treated utilities like Tacoma's. A so-called compromise left large utilities like ours on the hook for buying more and more green energy credits even when power demand doesn't warrant it.

As expected the Senate rejected the poison pill amendment. Now it's up to a conference committee to sort out the differences in the few remaining days of session. Tacoma better hope it's got a friend on the panel, or its ratepayers could end up bearing the brunt of the burden for making Washington "greener."

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition:

The LeMay Automobile Museum had a very bad 2008. But it looks to have a very good 2009. The Tacoma City Council can help make that happen next week – and it ought to.

The museum project came close to going bust last year after the economy went sour and backers hit a brick wall trying solicit donations. Fund-raising had stalled at $49 million – including donated land and automobiles – and they needed at least $57 million to break ground on a complex that had already been squeezed for economy by the architect.

America’s Car Museum – as it is also called – is now back on its feet, thanks to a creative financing plan. Museum leaders have identified two sources of credit, private and federal, that would put the project over the top and permit a long-awaited groundbreaking later this year.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

True high-speed rail is still far down the track, but President Barack Obama’s blueprint for investing billions in rail has one big thing going for it: The Pacific Northwest is on it.

Obama’s plan – which directs the spending of $8 billion in federal stimulus money and pledges to request another $1 billion annually for the next five years – represents the biggest federal commitment for passenger rail in decades.

Certainly, $8 billion won’t buy a European-style network of bullet trains crisscrossing the country.

But the money can help pick up the pace along well-traveled regional corridors. One of the 10 corridors identified by the White House is the Eugene, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C., route served by the Cascades line.

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An update on Brian Ebersole.

The former Tacoma mayor, speaker of the state House of Representatives and Bates College president keeps getting more interested in what we used to call the Third World. (The old communist Second World went bust 20 years ago; shouldn't that make underdeveloped countries the new Second World?)

Ebersole's been operating a hotel in the Philippines; now he's gotten into Cambodia. Locally, he's also been working on behalf of the Martin Luther King Housing Development Authority. I asked him why he left the organization a few days ago. His reply:

Pat,
I'm resigning only from my compensated position at Martin Luther King Housing Development Authority, I will still work on their behalf as a citizen volunteer. They can not afford to pay me, and they need all their resources to keep going.

Regarding the Philippines and Cambodia – in 2005, I bought a small beach hotel in the Philippines. It keeps five good people employed and provides them health care. They would have no income or health care if the business shut down.

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A HUD loan for the LeMay Museum looks like the only way the project can be kept alive in Tacoma. It needs City Council approval.

The Pacific NW may be uniquely positioned to tap federal dollars for high-speed rail, thanks to Washington and Oregon’s incremental investments in the Cascades line.

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.

John McGrath wrote a great column in Sunday's TNT. He endorsed the proposed rescheduling of the Apple Cup – the annual WSU-UW end-of-season football game – at a neutral site, Seattle's Qwest Field. This is a very, very good idea.

Disclaimer: Although I am a CWSC (CWU to youngsters) Wildcat, I grew up in Ellensburg reading the daily sports page of The Spokesman Review. That makes me an ex-officio Coug.

And while I am excited about Qwest, I must say that I have truly enjoyed watching the Cougs beat the Huskies in November in the Palouse. I will never forget watching Drew Bledsoe hurling long bombs to crimson-uniformed, nimble-fingered Coug wide receivers sprinting down snow-covered Martin Stadium field. The only purple in sight was tiny blotches of uniformed dawgs buried in deep snow....

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This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

House amendments muck up what was a hard-won agreement on fixing the state’s unemployment insurance system.

The Legislature is sure to do something to fix the state’s unemployment insurance program in the coming days. The question is whether, in throwing a bone to labor, Democrats will sell out businesses.

Lawmakers were expected to deliver a one-two boost to jobless benefits this year. Workers got their share earlier this session in legislation that raised benefit checks by $45 a week and ensured that no one will receive less than $200 a week.

But when it was time for businesses to get theirs, House members balked. In the name of providing marginally better benefits to workers, lawmakers scuttled a tenuous compromise that would have given businesses a break while putting the state’s jobless program back in compliance with federal law.

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This editorial will appear in Sunday's print edition.

Cleaning up someone else’s mess is never pretty, but President Obama did a respectable job last week wading through the previous administration’s torturous muck without getting mired in it.

By releasing Bush-era memos approving brutal CIA interrogation techniques, Obama disavowed in no uncertain terms the legal theories that proved the justification for what amounted to, in some cases, torture.

To be sure, the president had already outlawed harsh interrogation techniques. But providing nearly unfettered public access to the documents that helped author what Obama called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” went a step further. It was official acknowledgment of common knowledge – an assurance that when history is written, there will be no doubt of the lengths to which the United States went to wage its war on terror.

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It's ironic that the USS Bainbridge, the Navy destroyer involved in the rescue of ship captain Richard Phillips, was named after a naval officer who fought pirates 200 years ago.

Oh, and William Bainbridge also has a Puget Sound island named after him.

Here's an article about Bainbridge from the Los Angeles Times.

By Jerry Hirsch
Los Angeles Times
Earlier this week, sharpshooters on the fantail of the Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge picked off three pirates with single bullets to the head, freeing a hostage merchant marine captain. Two days later, the Bainbridge sailed to the aid of another American merchant ship attacked by pirates.

William Bainbridge, the naval officer for whom the ship is named, would be pleased. Bainbridge played an important role cleaning out a similar nest of corsairs who plagued shipping off African coastlines two centuries ago.

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For Sunday: Obama succeeded in making neither his critics nor supporters happy this week by releasing virtually complete Bush administration torture memos while also promising CIA operatives that they won’t be tried for using methods that were OK’d by nation’s top lawyers. But the alternatives – suspicion fueled by continued secrecy or intelligence-gathering timidity in light of possible prosecution – were no better.

For Monday: House members, still smarting about a flap over a labor email, have exacted their revenge by scuttling a deal on reforming unemployment insurance. It was the wrong target, and the Senate should restore the original version of the bill.

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

Writing today's editorial about the Seattle Mariners' surprisingly strong start, it was hard to keep my fan enthusiasm under wraps. After all, my fondest sports memory, next to seeing my Florida Gators beat favored Ohio State for the 2007 national championship, was watching the Mariners clinch something or other back in the '90s.

My memory is a little fuzzy as to what exactly they clinched. Division title, maybe?

Anyway, it was amazing. My sister, brother-in-law, two little nieces and I were bad dancing on our seats at the very top of the Kingdome – and I mean VERY top. We were in the absolute last row, but we still had a lot of fun.

More proof of what a Mariners geek I am:

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

Rejuvenated Mariners are surprising everybody
Ken Griffey Jr.’s return and an emphasis on the little things has the team sitting pretty in the American League.

Wait ’til next year” is the forlorn cry of disappointed fans at the end of another dismal season.

Well, next year is here and, inexplicably, the Seattle Mariners are doing well. More than well, actually. Superbly. As of this writing, before the Mariners’ Thursday game, the team was sitting comfortably atop its division and had the best record in the American League.

Yes, the season is young and much can go wrong on the long slog to October. But there’s no escaping the sense of excitement Northwest fans are feeling for this rejuvenated team.

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I'll admit it. I didn't think the "tea party" movement had legs. Having spent a lot of time in Olympia over the last twenty-some years, I've seen my share of organized (and disorganized) protest rallies. From a few dozen disheveled folks standing in the rain at the foot of the Legislative Building to several thousand disciplined advocates chanting in rhyme - it's all part of springtime in the state capital.

Shortly before noon yesterday, I was on the phone with a colleague with a long background in union politics. He described the scene, sounding surprised at what appeared to be a legitimate grassroots outpouring. The crowd continued to build. Then I heard the official estimates of nearly 5,000 protesters.

At the risk of being (legitimately) accused of "retrotalk" I'm going to invoke the old Buffalo Springfield lyric: "There's something happening here, what it is ain't exactly clear." And I think state and national political leaders would be well-advised to pay attention to it.

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We're taking a break from the serious stuff to have a little fun.

Yes, the season is young and much can go wrong on the long slog to October, but there's no escaping the sense of excitement Northwest fans are feeling for the rejuvenated Seattle Mariners.

In the rest of the column, we say "ditto" to a Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial on a subject of utmost significance: The new postal stamps honoring "The Simpsons" in all their dysfunctional glory.

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

On Sunday, we editorialized for a second time urging the Legislature, if it was going to mess with Initiative 937's green energy mandates, to treat Tacoma power customers fairly.

Today on Publicola, former Stranger news editor Josh Feit raises the possibility that some 11th-hour horsetrading could prove detrimental to Tacoma's interests.

His theory: The Senate has agreed to pass an education reform bill (which our editorial board supported) in exchange for getting the House to quit stalling on the I-937 bill.

Amending I-937 to lower the renewable energy standards has emerged as “take-home” issue for Senate leadership, and I was getting word yesterday afternoon that the earlier compromise Democratic leadership struck with Greens to amend I-937 was on the verge of collapsing as leadership started adding new provisions that would scale back the voter-approved initiative too far.

Only in the waning days of a legislative session could a long overdue redefinition of what "basic education" means somehow come to be associated with giving utilities an out on buying more green power.

The I-937 "compromise" Josh mentions would shift nearly the entire burden for driving production of new renewable energy to large utilities like Tacoma's, which would still be on the hook to buy increasing amounts of green power they don't need.

The House opposition seemed to be Tacoma's best bet of getting some consideration. Now that's apparently in question. Bob Mack, Tacoma Public Utilities' guy in Olympia, tells me that there are further meetings this afternoon with legislators.

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Jobless numbers cast pall on ‘glimmers of hope’
With unemployment likely to increase, it’s hard to find much comfort in faint improvements to the economy.

When the stock market seemed to be settling in above the 8,000 mark, hope began sprouting like fresh spring shoots: Maybe the economy had turned a corner.

But the chill of recession lingers. Unemployment figures out Tuesday were up alarmingly – to 10.6 percent in Pierce County and 9.2 percent in Washington state, both higher than the national jobless rate of 8.5 percent. And March retail sales reports came in lower than had been expected.

=> Read more!

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Three veteran hands are leaving their posts as the community faces some of its biggest challenges in years.

Seasoned leaders are not easy to come by, and Pierce County has lost three respected veterans from the human services field in recent months.

First to go was David Ottey, who retired at the beginning of the year from the Emergency Food Network. Then word got around that David Alger will be leaving Associated Ministries come May. Now it’s Don Rennegarbe of Tacoma Community House who is headed out the door.

Enough’s enough. Forget a federal bailout; what Pierce County really needs is a moratorium on retirement.

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Welcome, Tea Bag protesters.

As most of you are new to the business of protesting, being more practiced in the art of support (the war in Iraq and President Bush), I took it upon myself to put together a little primer.

Please note: Standard-issue protesting equipment should include: outrage toward government; skepticism toward privilege and power; and a willingness to stand, shout and march without easy access to bathroom facilities. If you have these in place, you are well on your way to becoming a counter-revolutionary.

One quick bit of housekeeping: As far as symbols go, tea bags are proving a bit troublesome. As one blogger put it: “The tea bag broke on my T-shirt leaving a stain and I forgot my bleach pen”

Plus, the tea bag is a waste of perfectly good tea. Folks may want to have a contest to come up with something catchier, recognizing that the peace symbol has already been taken, and the American flag is both a symbol for the mainstreamed and marginalized.

Also, a little nod to those who came before you seems fitting.

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The chill of recession just won't go away. Unemployment figures out Tuesday were up alarmingly – to 10.6 percent in Pierce County and 9.2 percent in Washington state, both higher than the national jobless rate of 8.5 percent. We’re willing to be patient, as President Obama advises, but it’s still welcome news to hear that Microsoft is offering an immediate stimulus plan: It’s giving out free vouchers for computer training.

First, David Ottey at Emergency Food Network. Then David Alger at Associated Ministries. Now Don Rennegarde at Tacoma Community House? We don't begrudge these guys their retirements, but Pierce County is losing some veteran social services leaders at a time when it needs them most.

If you have comments or questions about these topics, please email them to kim.bradford@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 Wednesday's print edition.

The pending agreement to ensure summer lake levels would be a major breakthrough in the community’s decade-long fight.

Boaters and fishermen, rejoice. A deal in the offing could help ensure that your beloved Lake Tapps will be around for decades to come.

What a difference a year – and a new face – can make. About this time last spring, tensions between the Lake Tapps community and a coalition of east King County cities and water districts were running high.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Voters must rescue emergency services
Times may be tough, but the citizens of DuPont, Fife and Fire District 10 still need quick responses from skilled emergency crews.

The fire department’s budget may seem a bit abstract to most of us most of the time. But if your house catches fire or you suffer a heart attack, well-funded emergency services suddenly start looking very important.

Three fire and ambulance measures are on the April 28 ballot – in DuPont, Steilacoom and Pierce County Fire District 10, which covers the Fife area. All of them deserve passage.

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The pending Lake Tapps deal to ensure summer lake levels would be a major breakthrough in the community’s decade-long fight to preserve the lake.

This is a tough time to be asking voters to approve taxes of any kind. But fire and emergency services funding measures on the April 28 ballot in DuPont, Steilacoom and Fife merit support.

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

Piracy problem isn’t America’s alone to solve
The scourge will continue as long as many nations are willing to pay princely ransoms for hijacked ships.

The rescue of an American sea captain from Somali pirates after a five-day standoff was an Easter Sunday lift to the spirits akin to January’s “miracle on the Hudson” story.
The Navy deserves praise for what’s being called a “textbook” operation to liberate Capt. Richard Phillips.

The skipper of the Maersk Alabama cargo ship had courageously offered himself as a hostage when a gang of Somali pirates boarded his ship full of relief supplies headed for Uganda, Rwanda and – ironically – Somalia.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

Cutting human services to the bone in hopes of persuading Washingtonians to approve new taxes is the wrong approach.

Olympia insiders are starting to place the usual bets about whether the Legislature, now in a mad scramble to finish its work, will go into overtime.
Chances are lawmakers will wrap up business on April 26 as scheduled. Politicians don’t want to look dawdling or indecisive when the economy is tanking and people are hurting.

But say they do run out of time. A special session could have an upside – if only lawmakers used it wisely.

In a perfect world, the Legislature would finish the budget on time and save the extra innings for the inevitable debate over tax proposals.

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I was scanning the wires to see if there were any developments on the pirate story I was editorializing on for Tuesday when I spotted the slugline, "Detonating squirrels."

How can anyone resist reading that?

Thinking it must be a belated April Fools story, I started reading. Unfortunately, it's real.

Squirrel lovers, read at your own risk.

Parks to detonate squirrels
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — The Finch Arboretum is being overrun by ground squirrels, and Spokane Parks and Recreation is bringing in some special artillery.

The agency is using a special machine called the Rodenator Pro to detonate some of the estimated 100 to 150 squirrels tearing up the grounds.

Shades of Carl Spackler, the gopher-hating groundskeeper from “Caddyshack.”

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The crisis involving the Maersk Alabama and its captain may be over, but the problem of piracy off the horn of Africa remains, presenting yet another foreign policy challenge for President Obama.

Lawmakers better not be planning to single out human services for extra cuts to persuade voters to pass a new sales tax in November. The Legislature should pass the budget they want the state to live with, without banking on a bailout from the voters.

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

When I was a kid there were two holidays my siblings and I looked forward to with great relish: Halloween and Easter. Granted, both occasions were usually fraught with some inherent humiliation, one Halloween I recall a sincere “What’s wrong with wearing your father’s leisure suit and going as Hollywood Square’s legend Paul Lynde? I have a scarf that will match perfectly.”

Easter too had its own perils; scratchy dresses, hair pulled so tight I looked positively Vulcan, and every other year squeezing into patent leather shoes. “Of course they will fit, you only wore them twice.”

But alas, those recollections are cast quickly into the shadows because the sunshine that penetrates those memories shines directly on the one thing those two holidays had in common: candy. Sweet, sweet, yummy, candy.

Yea, yea, all kids like candy, right?

Please note this: My siblings and I didn’t just like candy, we needed candy. You see, we were deprived. My mother believed, more than most, in “good nutrition,” and she didn’t just preach it, she practiced it.

Do you know how good a jellybean looks to kid whose steady diet consists of carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts?

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If your e-mail inbox is anything like mine, you're constantly getting chain mail about all sorts of insidious threats. In my case, most of these come from relatives (I mean you, Dad).

Invariably I check out the claims on snopes.com and find them to be false. In some cases, they've been making the rounds of the Internet for years. If you'd like to check out the 25 top urban legends, according to snopes, click here. (Not all are false, either.) The weirdest: that the Swiffer WetJet can be dangerous for pets.

I recently stumbled across another Web site that specializes in confirming or refuting political rumors: factcheck.org. Many of the rumors overlap with ones you can read about on snopes.

Check out the site's most frequently asked questions. On the list is the perennial chestnut: "Was Obama born in the U.S.?"

The death of Point Defiance's beloved Qannik has prompted a debate about whether belugas can live full lives outside the wild. We asked biologists at the Humane Society and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums to give us their takes. Go here to read what the experts said and then tell us what you think.

This editorial will appear in Monday's print edition.

Conservation efforts take a big step forward
Wildlife and future generations will benefit from the Nisqually Land Trust’s biggest acquisition to date.

The Nisqually River and its watershed are among the great treasures in a region rich with natural wonders. Now a new agreement promises to afford important protection for a key piece of land in the watershed and the wildlife that inhabits it.

The Nisqually Land Trust’s $2.56 million purchase of 720 acres of timberland north of Ashford in eastern Pierce County will help provide a valuable corridor for wildlife – particularly Rainier elk – moving between the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and Elbe Hills State Forest and preserve habitat for endangered spotted owls and marbled murrelets. And because the parcel will never be developed, scenic vistas will be preserved – a plus for Pierce County tourism.

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This editorial will appear in Sunday's printed edition.

As Washington’s legislative session winds to an end, it’s looking more and more likely that the state’s green power mandates won’t escape unscathed.

That’s not altogether a bad thing. Initiative 937, passed by voters in 2006, has always been a well-intended but rough-around-the-edges law.

But not all fixes are created equal. The proposal getting the most traction in the Legislature right now would place greater burdens on Tacoma rate payers than the law already demands.

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With the increased attention to income taxes here (and just having done my filing), I thought some of you may also enjoy this tax primer from Reason TV. (h/t Instapundit)

We often hear from readers who don't think people should be able to leave anonymous comments on our Web site articles and blogs. After all, letter writers in our print product must use their own names.

I see their point, but there is a difference in print vs. online content. Just look at our online cartoon slideshow; we often put cartoons there that would never make it into our print product.

Of course, sometimes an online commenter abuses his or her anonymity and goes too far. When we see that, or someone draws our attention to it, we can delete it. When we do, it's because the commenter has clearly crossed a line with obscene, offensive or possibly libelous remarks and not because it disagrees with us or is factually incorrect. (We'd be deleting a lot of comments if that were the case.)

Former Washington Post editor Doug Feaver has some interesting thoughts on anonymous comments.

Listening to the Dot-Commenters

By Doug Feaver
I am writing in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.

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Back in 2005, Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, was the Legislature's lone vote against the Uniform Mediation Act. We opined on the act today because we're troubled by one provision of it – the one that lets the governor escape public disclosure of her office's dealings with the owners of the state's only coal-fired power plant.

I caught up with Carrell today to ask him whether he shared our concern back in 2005. The answer was: Kind of. Carrell says he objected to the legislation putting documents not just beyond the reach of the public, but beyond the reach of even judges.

Carrell is against most expansions of privilege, the right to keep certain communications secret in court. "Anytime I see that word, my radar screen goes way up. Under privilege, the truth will never be known."

A new report argues convincingly that Washington has lost its competitiveness in attracting aerospace industries. That fact hasn’t been lost on Boeing.

Annexation to Tacoma might be most logical answer to Ruston's financial woes. One thing's for sure: The former company town has nothing to lose by examining the option.

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.

Al Franken will win Norm Coleman’s seat and become the next senator from Minnesota. Yet the Gopher State Senate saga drags on, and it is obvious that many non-Minnesota GOP want it to continue all the way through a U.S. Supreme Court appeal.

To review: Al Franken, the comedian turned politician, has maintained a razor-thin margin of victory (right now it stands at 300-plus votes) throughout five months, three recounts and two court challenges.

When Franken wins this latest vote, Norm Coleman will immediately ask the Minnesota Supreme Court to order yet another recount, this time using a larger pool of uncounted absentee ballots. If Coleman loses this appeal, or if the appeal produces too few votes, he ought to concede.

But he may not.

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This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition:

Closed-door talks about a coal-fired plant’s pollution may reveal an unforeseen effect of an otherwise well-intentioned law.

The revelation that Gov. Chris Gregoire’s advisers have secretly struck a deal with the owners of the state’s only coal-fired power plant has sparked concern among more than environmentalists.

Open government advocates are also justifiably troubled by what could be an unintended consequence of a 2005 law intended to make mediation a more attractive option.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

For $1.8 million, the region could provide considerable relief to long-suffering Puyallup drivers.

If there’s a street more plagued with congestion than Meridian Avenue, we’ve haven’t seen it. At rush hour, cars crawl down it like a herd of sloths.

Much could be done to fix the problem. For starters, the Puget Sound Regional Council – which disburses federal highway money – ought to fund a proposed Intelligent Traffic System along Meridian through the entire city of Puyallup.

ITS, as it’s called, employs modern information technology to optimize the movement of traffic on busy corridors. It has three major elements: smart signs, smart signal controls and smart cameras.

The signs tell drivers, in real time, what’s happening on the road ahead. If there’s an accident or other obstruction, they can suggest alternate routes. The cameras, spaced regularly along the road, display traffic in real time – another way to anticipate traffic conditions. The state Department of Transportation uses both on the busier stretches of the state’s highways.

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Tacoma's downtown library has had its share of problems from homeless, mentally ill people using it as a day shelter. It doesn't seem to be alone:

People with Mental Illnesses May Pose a Greater Threat to the Future of Libraries Than the Internet, Treatment Advocacy Center Study Finds

ARLINGTON, Va.—People with untreated severe mental illnesses may pose a greater risk to the future of America’s public libraries than does the invention of the Internet, according to a new survey released in the March/April edition of American Libraries, the journal of the American Library Association.

The survey of 1,300 public libraries finds that 9 out of 10 library staff members said that patrons with a mental illness have disturbed or affected the use of the library by other people, with an almost equal number (85 percent) saying they have had to call the police as a result.

"Our nation’s libraries are turning into daytime shelters for people with severe mental illness who need to be in treatment," said lead study author E. Fuller Torrey, M.D., founder of the nonprofit Treatment Advocacy Center and Executive Director of the Stanley Medical Research Institute."The fact that libraries remain a safe haven from violence and life on the streets for people with mental illness is a sad commentary.Doing so devalues human life and the importance of libraries in our communities."

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In case you haven’t heard, we Americans have all been invited to a tea party, yes, a tea party, but before you scramble off to your bedroom muttering “whatever shall I wear,” know this: It ain’t your Nana’s tea party. This is a tea party served up Revolutionary style, circa 1773.

It’s called a “Tea Party Protest,” or TPP, and this incarnation began when CNBC TV personality Rick Santelli ranted on camera about the “bankrupt liberal agenda” and asked how many Americans wanted to bailout “loser” homeowners.

Known on You Tube as “the rant of the year,” Rick Santelli either “captured the mood of the country” or went for “cheap arrogant populism.” It all depends on whom you ask.

On Feb.27th of this year, the first of these TPPs popped up around the country. One source cites an estimated 30,000 were in attendance, but the gatherings went largely unnoticed. Some blame the biased liberal media for the omission; others say, “We just thought it was a Leonard Skynard concert.”

The next TPPs are scheduled for next Wednesday April 15th, which as it happens is tax day.

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Contrary to today's Viewpoint by conservative Dick Davis, state Sen. Rosa Franklin, D-Tacoma, thinks an income tax will happen in Washington. She introduces an income tax bill just about every session, and this year is no exception.

This Viewpoint will run in the print edition Thursday.

It is inevitable that we will have
a state income tax

By Sen. Rosa Franklin
When it comes to our state tax system, many of us here in Washington behave like someone who needs dental care but is afraid to see a dentist.

You know what I’m talking about — the folks who ignore their pain for weeks and months until their teeth hurt so much there’s no choice but to finally go to the dentist. And by then the damage is far worse than if it had been attended to it early, and the cost is far more expensive. Instead of using their heads, they base their choices on emotion and fear.

We’re doing the same thing today with our state tax system. And just like those of us too scared to make the smart choice with our teeth, we’re going to pay for it. In fact, we’re paying for it already in budget cuts to our schools and social services, health care and much more.

Our current tax structure was developed more than a century ago for an economy based on agriculture, manufacturing and local commerce. It was appropriate then and for many decades afterward, but over time it has become less and less appropriate — and adequate
— for the needs of our modern economy.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

We’re not seeing any public groundswell for a whole new tax in the middle of this excruciating recession.

Political courage is to be praised. So is the willingness to provoke debate. On those grounds, we applaud the Senate Democrats who have dared broach a taboo subject: a state income tax.

Realism is also to be praised. On that ground, we suggest this particular debate be tabled until happier days are here again.

It’s understandable that some Democrats are casting about for new taxes to soften the viciously sharp edges of the budget now taking shape in the Legislature. The immense, recession-driven revenue shortfall is forcing Democrats to take a meat ax to more than $3 billion worth of priorities they themselves embraced in years past, including health care for the poor and cost-of-living raises for teachers.

In proposing some form of income tax, such senators as Majority Leader Lisa Brown of Spokane, Jeanne Kohl-Wells of Seattle and Rosa Franklin of Tacoma are dipping their toes in political waters that once teemed with sharks.

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This editorial will appear in Wednesday's print edition.

Defense secretary right to retarget spending
Military priorities – not home-district job programs – should determine where defense dollars are spent.

“My hope is that . . . the members of Congress will rise above parochial interests and consider what is in the best interest of the nation as a whole.” – Defense Secretary Robert Gates, on weapons program cuts

Good luck with that, Mr. Gates.

Really, what were the chances that members of Congress whose home districts are heavily dependent on Pentagon spending would look approvingly on Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ proposed program cuts?

The howling started almost before he finished unveiling his 2010 budget priorities.

Although legislators from affected districts are expected to pressure President Obama to overrule Gates, the commander in chief should stick to his guns, so to speak. Military priorities, not home-district jobs, should determine where defense dollars are spent.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

Some men may now find it easier to vent their rage with bullets. That was certainly the case in Saturday’s Graham massacre.

Pity the police who responded.

The crime scene they discovered in Graham Saturday was a horror: four children shot to death in their beds, another in a bathroom amid clear signs of a struggle. Each child shot multiple times.

The perpetrator: Daddy. Daddy had also shot himself after he’d finished executing his children.

People are inevitably lumping this shocking massacre together with six other multiple killings that have left 53 dead since March 10. One bore resemblance to this slaughter: a March 19 attack in Santa Clara, Calif., in which a man killed his two children and three other relatives.

Two were lethal attacks on police. In another, a gunman shot his mother and nine others in a lethal rampage in southeast Alabama. In another, a Vietnamese immigrant slaughtered 13 people in an immigration center. In yet another, a man broke into a nursing home and shot seven elderly residents and a nurse.

The apparent motives included wives who’d walked out, loss of jobs, difficulty finding jobs. Obviously, none of those frustrations and disappointments are grounds for murder, much less murder on such a scale. The one factor connecting all these massacres was the lack of inhibitions against killing, the ready resort to lethal force.

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This editorial will appear in Tuesday's print edition.

The size of the state’s fiscal crisis makes a squeeze on the criminal justice budget inevitable. The trick is to do the least harm.

Washington won’t dig its way out of a $9 billion budget hole without making communities more vulnerable to criminals.

That’s one of many hard truths that emerged last week as the Senate and House rolled out separate plans to bring state spending in line with revenue projections hit hard by the recession.

One proposal trades early prison release for greater monitoring of ex-convicts in the community. The other attempts to preserve truth in sentencing, but at the expense of probation and supervision for supposed “low- risk” offenders.

Each approach has its detractors. The question for lawmakers is which strategy will do the least damage.

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Michael Kinsley is an all-purpose commentator who's worked in television and magazines (he edited both The New Republic and Harper's) before going online with Slate magazine.

Here's his take on the future of newspapers. Basically: They don't have a future, and don't sweat it.

Go all the way to the end to see my rebuttal.

Life After Newspapers

By Michael Kinsley
Special to The Washington Post

Few industries in this country have been as coddled as newspapers. The government doesn’t actually write them checks, as it does to farmers and now to banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers. But politicians routinely pay court to local newspapers the way other industries pay court to politicians. Until very recently, most newspapers were monopolies, with a special antitrust exemption to help them stay that way.

The attorney general has said he is open to additional antitrust exemptions to lift the industry out of today’s predicament. The Constitution itself protects the newspaper industry’s business from government interference, and the Supreme Court says that includes almost total immunity from lawsuits over its mistakes, like the lawsuits that plague other industries.

And then along came the Internet to wipe out some of the industry’s biggest costs. If you had told one of the great newspaper moguls of the past that someday it would be possible to publish a newspaper without paying anything for paper, printing and delivery, he would not have predicted that this would mean catastrophe for the industry.

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Surely it is okay to talk about the Wailers on a Pacific Northwest editorial website. And I don’t mean “Bob Marley and the Wailers” for crying out loud. I mean THE Wailers, the Boys from Tacoma. In case you haven’t heard, they’ll be co-starring alongside the Ventures (another Tacoma band) at the Moore in Seattle next Friday night.

Many northwesterners who were teeneagers in the 60s have a Wailers story. Mine has to do with the difficulty of picking up KJR (95am) radio in Ellensburg. At night-time it was possible; in your car cruising down 8th in front of Central Washington State College, the rock and roll waves from KJR came in on pretty strong.

Daytime was harder; the signal came in and out. But where there’s a will…

My best friend, Lloyd Nickel, lived across from the “Big Pool” on Poplar and 6th. On a hot summer day, the Big Pool was about as good as it got in Greasewood City (aka Ellensburg). Lloyd brought the radio outside via an extension cord; he placed it on a lawn chair in the exact right location, antenna extended. Full tilt boogy. Disc Jockey Pat O’Day came on the air prime time, the 2pm to 5pm show.

Everyone knows the Wailers’ “Tall Cool One,” but my memory is the “Seattle” 45rpm. It’s ironic that the Boys from Tacoma would call a signature tune “Seattle,” but Wailer Kent Morrill explains the song was originally called “Dallas.” Its post-November 22, 1963, release found it renamed. Marketing.

They didn’t need to market that song to me, man. It starts out hard with drums, 2 bars, then Buck Ormsby blasts in on bass, then Kent electronc piano; then guitar. They all amp up and continue to rock. “Seattle” is all instrumental, a motif of the Northwest (and west coast) sound at that time. And those drums! I am sure other regions had drummers who could do syncopated push-beats, but this was the first time I had heard any drum kit move like that.

Where did they learn that syncopation? Fort Lewis was 10 miles south and Jackson Street 40 miles north of the Boys from Tacoma. Northwesterners didn’t have to go to Memphis to learn rock and roll; the South came to us.

And all of that blasted out of a tiny (1”?) speaker in an AM radio on a lawn chair in front of the Big Pool in Ellensburg, Washington, summer 1964.

Ed McClanahan once aptly wrote: “It was at this moment that I discovered there was such a thing as art, and I had to get me some.”

This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

The Legislature can increase subsidies for low-income day care without acting as the SEIU’s enforcer and dues collector.

After scuttling the Worker Privacy Act, a high priority of organized labor, the Legislature’s Democrats don’t want to go home without giving their union supporters something.

A bill designed to crowd child care workers into the Service Employees International Union is the wrong thing to give them.

This idea has been kicking around Olympia for years, and it hasn’t improved with age. House Bill 1329 and its Senate companion measure would define many child care providers in private centers as public employees.
Although the bill doesn’t name names, they would wind up being represented by the SEIU, the union that has been hungrily pressing lawmakers to pass the measure.

Supporters say pulling providers into one grand collective bargaining unit will produce higher state subsidies for the many low-income children who need day care. The SEIU would negotiate contracts with the governor, who in turn would present them to the Legislature for up-or-down votes. Under the law, the state would deduct the union dues from the providers’ pay and hand them over to the SEIU.

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

If lawmakers must swing a wrecking ball into Washington’s higher education system, they should at least pad it with more tuition money.

This recession will wreak havoc across state government. Given the gaping revenue shortfall, the Legislature has to spread the pain far and wide – across social welfare programs, public schools, criminal justice, everything.

But even against that dire backdrop, the House and Senate budget plans would just cut too deeply into funding for college education – without offering public universities the necessary relief of higher tuitions.
The result: Admission denied to at least 10,000 qualified college applicants every year.

That’s no mere statistic. It translates into thousands upon thousands of Washingtonians who will wind up shut out of career opportunities their entire lives. Their wages will be lower; their unemployment rates will be higher; their families will be poorer.

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With the end of the legislative session in sight, one really bad idea seems to have gone away. Governor Gregoire's proposal to save money by combining the Washington State Historical Society with the Eastern Washington Historical Society appears to be dead (for the time being).

On the surface, combining state agencies always appears cost-effective – two bureaucracies are rolled into one and thus numerous budget lines eliminated or pared. But state employees are resistant to such paring, and new costs would be added (in this case) because of the distance between Spokane and Olympia and Tacoma.

More important, the Eastern Washington Historical Society has a special mission appropriate to Eastern Washington. And both of these state agencies are headed by great directors who have proposed significant budget cuts within their separate structures.

If it ain't broken...

Sometimes I get letters to the editor that make me want to scream. Here's one – which we aren't publishing – from a Tacoma reader:

I'm going on my second day without buying a paper. When the PI bumped up the price of their paper from fifty cents to seventy five they priced them selves out of my budget. I use to enjoy reading two diverse papers. Now, sadly, at the end of Davids Zeecks Column on Sunday I saw that "The News Tribune" was going to raise news stand prices by twenty five cents (daily) and fifty cents for a Sunday paper.

Funny... It seems not to long ago I read that "The News Tribune" was doing "okey dokey" and that they would be in business for some time. David Zeecks states one of the factors for the increase is the cost of newsprint. With the PI to the north out of business where is that newsprint going?

And the cost of reporters? Are they getting raises? Really? In this reccession? And why a quarter a paper, why not a nickle or a dime? Whats magical about the quarter. I feel like I'm being fleeced by someone who figures that they should be able to get what they want by being the only game in town. Good luck I'm now an online reader.

No, the P-I's closure has nothing to do with the price of our newsprint. No, our reporters aren't getting raises.

No, we aren't the only game in town – the Internet is sucking so much advertising revenue out of newspapers that the weaker ones (like the P-I) are folding.

And yes, if all newspaper readers stopped buying papers because they could get the news online, there'd be precious little news to be found online. Oddly enough, most news comes from reporters employed by newspapers.

UW President Mark Emmert was in today, and I've never seen him so close to anger.

He's royally upset by the budgets proposed this week by the state Senate and House of Representatives. They would devastate higher education in Washington, reducing enrollments by at least 10,000 seats.

Emmert wasn't demanding a bigger share of the state budget; he did push for the authority to raise tuition by 14 percent. For middle-income families, this would be more than offset by expanded federal financial aid now in the pipeline. Low income families are already effectively exempt from tuition under the Husky Promise program.

Some highlights of the visit:

• "More students want to go to college than at any time in our history."

• Washington is more dependent on engineers, scientists and other tech specialists than any other state, "and we're the state that has beat the hell out of higher education."

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This editorial will appear in tomorrow's print edition.

To make mental illness an excuse for criminality would stigmatize all the mentally ill as potential criminals.

Credit Washington state’s tight insanity defense for the conviction of Douglas S. Chanthabouly.

The jury’s verdict Wednesday closed a criminal case that traumatized Tacoma as much as anything since Tacoma’s then-police chief, David Brame, shot his wife and himself in 2003.

Chanthabouly’s killing of 17-year-old Samnang Kok on Jan. 3, 2007, was so deeply upsetting because it happened inside Foss High School, where both were students. It was like a lightning strike. Foss is not a violent school in a crime-plagued neighborhood; if this could happen at Foss, it could conceivably happen anywhere.

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This editorial will appear in Friday's print edition.

The new assessor-treasurer seems to want to cement his indictment of his predecessor, but there is nothing more to be gained.

Shame on Ken Madsen, Pierce County’s former assessor-treasurer, for not doing the property inspections required of his office. Double shame on him for lying to the state about it.

Now that that’s out of the way, can the county’s new assessor-treasurer focus his attention on the business at hand? Dale Washam, in office just three months, risks getting derailed in a bullheaded pursuit of an already vanquished foe.

To say Washam doesn’t like Madsen would be an understatement. After losing two elections to Madsen, Washam tried to get him thrown out of office. That effort failed, but Washam won in the end.

In a surprise upset last November, Washam beat out three more qualified candidates for Madsen’s open position. Then he promptly produced evidence of what he had been alleging for years: that Madsen allowed his office to skip physical inspections of county properties required by state law.

Vindication tastes good, and Washam apparently wants a couple more helpings.

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Something about the Web seems to bring out the stupidity lurking in the hearts of all young men.

Arrests made after Maine arson shows up on YouTube

WATERVILLE, Maine (AP) — Police in Maine say seven teens and young adults have been arrested after a video was posted on YouTube that showed them setting off Molotov cocktails inside a vacated building and then rolled credits naming those involved.

Waterville police say the suspects, who range in ages from 14 to 20, broke into in a former Boys and Girls Club through a window. Police seized the YouTube video showing the group making and throwing the devices, which exploded and caused flames as high as 20 feet.

Police say the video, which has since been taken off the video-sharing Web site, showed the faces of the suspects as well as text naming those pictured. Each is charged with arson and burglary.

This editorial will appear in Thursday's print edition.

Lawmakers think voters here are silly for still going to the polls. There are worse things – like sticking your nose where it doesn't belong.

How does a harmless divergence from the accepted norm merit the intervention of venerable state legislators?

More to the point, why in the heck is the Legislature trying to meddle with the way Pierce County votes?

So we're different, perhaps even a bit behind the times. Old ways die hard here. We still elect colorful characters. We still build like there is no tomorrow (or at least we did until the economy threatened to prove us right).

And, yes, some of us still like the idea that we can show up at a neighborhood church or school on Election Day and vote the way God intended: at the polls.

So what? It's not hurting anyone else. Running a two-headed voting system costs Pierce taxpayers an extra $70,000. But if they are willing to foot the bill, how's it anyone else's business?

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