News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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The SeaTac minimum wage initiative is in limbo. The central element of Proposition 1 is a $15-per-hour minimum wage for workers at SeaTac Airport and area hotels, restaurants and car rental agencies. But, it also includes a complex web of employee work rules enforced by the city of SeaTac. On Aug. 26, a King County Superior Court judge ruled that Prop 1 did not have enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. Proponents have gathered additional signatures and appealed the judge’s r...
Different strategy, same results There’s an old saying, “There’s more than one way to catch a cat.” It means, if you don’t succeed one way, try again using a different strategy. In this case, the “cat” is the Columbia River — or more precisely, eliminating the dams and commercial use of the river. The activists’ vision of a wild, free-flowing Columbia River has great emotional appeal, but it would have dire consequences for our state. Those dams produce 75 percent of our electricity, maki...
Gov. Jay Inslee was in New York for the world rollout of BMW’s new electric car, the BMW i3, which is partially built in Washington. We are all justifiably proud of our state’s role and see the car as a harbinger of Washington’s economic future. The BMW i3 features parts made from carbon fiber processed at the SGL plant in Moses Lake. Because it is strong and lightweight, carbon fiber is used in the production of jetliners, fighter planes and race cars. Now, it’s making its way into the retail market to produce lighter. more fuel-efficient vehi...
There’s an old saying that oil and water don’t mix. That may be true, but apparently they coexist quite well. Traveling through Sweetwater in west Texas, you see an interesting mix of irrigated farming, cattle ranching, oil production and wind energy. Farmers draw water from wells to irrigate fields and provide drinking water for people and livestock. Scattered across those same fields are traditional oil wells that have been pumping crude since 1921. Less than 10 miles from Sweetwater is the Roscoe Wind Farm — 627 wind turbines standing in ir...
The tributes to former Gov. Booth Gardner, who died March 15 at the age of 76, remind us of a better time. Throughout his political career, Booth was known for his respectful demeanor, good humor and dedication to consensus. That is in stark contrast to today’s reality. Now, partisan rancor is the norm in a high-stakes blood sport where the only goal is political advantage, and people with opposing views are assailed as enemies. This scorched earth mentality has become so pervasive, people a...
In November 1982, our state’s unemployment rate peaked at 12.2 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Interest on a fixed rate home loan was 13.4 percent, and an 11.5-percent inflation rate burned through our checkbooks. The economy was a mess. The impacts of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 hadn’t fully kicked in yet, and Gov. John Spellman (R) and the Legislature had repeatedly increased taxes and cut programs to balance the state’s budget. It was a bleak t...
When we moved from Montana to Olympia 35 years ago, we saw enticing television and magazine ads for our neighboring states, but none for Washington. Fast forward to 2013 and nothing has changed. It was puzzling then, but even more perplexing today, considering the money and jobs at stake. Tourism in our state is no small potatoes, it is big business. Visitors spent $16.4 billion in 2011 and accounted for 150,000 direct jobs, which is nearly twice Boeing’s workforce in our state. But our state i...
California and Texas are like the two biggest kids on the block going toe-to-toe for bragging rights. Who’s the biggest? Who’s the best? Bravado aside, comparing the business climate in these two states reveals why one state is lagging while the other is thriving. California, once the most attractive business environment in the nation, is today caught in a downward economic spiral while Texas is on the upswing. Between 1960 and 1990, more than four million people moved to California, attracted b...
In “the good old days,” schools emphasized “reading, writing and arithmetic” taught to the tune of the hickory stick. But today, we seem to have created a two-tiered education philosophy. College-bound students are encouraged to learn science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). But STEM skills are not emphasized for students going directly into the job market, the military or to a trade school. That’s a mistake. Part of the problem started with our parents’ generation. For example, my...
A small critter is causing big problems in the South Puget Sound. It’s called the Mazama pocket gopher. Some 100,000 pocket gophers inhabit prairie lands throughout northern California, Oregon and Washington. Our state is the northernmost part of its range, where separate populations are scattered in pockets throughout the area, including Thurston and Pierce counties. Last December, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) proposed to list several subspecies of the Mazama pocket gopher in W...
Recently, Matthew Rose, CEO of BNSF Railway, visited editorial boards in Vancouver, Spokane, Seattle and Bellingham to talk about a variety of issues related to increased train traffic. However, the 800 pound gorilla in the room was not train traffic, but the commodity those trains would carry: coal. In Washington, coal has been shipped by train for decades. Currently, about three to four coal trains a day pass through Clark County. Rose said it’s hard to predict specifics at this point, but i...
Any realtor will tell you people looking to buy a home want good schools and safe neighborhoods. They also look for decent roads for when they head to the mountains or the beach during holiday weekends, such as Memorial Day or July 4. They want to know that if they are in an accident, someone will respond quickly to help them. While Washington needs more money to build new highways and repair existing roads, streets and interstates, one area in which our state excels is emergency response. In...
Activists waging a national war on coal have turned their sights on the Pacific Northwest, targeting proposed shipping terminals in Washington and Oregon that would export coal to China. They’re aggressively lobbying federal officials to change how these projects are evaluated. If they succeed, our economy could become a casualty of the war on coal. Currently, such projects undergo a rigorous environmental review known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) involving months or even years o...
In 1942, the completion of Grand Coulee Dam was hailed as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Seventy years later, most of us aren’t aware of what that dam or the others on the Columbia River continue to do for us. To commemorate Grand Coulee’s completion, the Bonneville Power Administration commissioned legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie to write songs praising the dam that harnessed the mighty Columbia River. Guthrie toured the region from the Bonneville Dam to Grand Coulee, and within a month...
“Keep it simple.” This old saying is more than a bumper sticker slogan, it’s a principle that is especially important when it comes to taxes and regulations. Washington employers have been working for decades to simplify our state’s tax and regulatory policies. Currently, employers must work their way through a maze of complex, overlapping and often contradictory regulations and tax rules that differ from one city to the next, one county to the next. It’s like playing a game that has 50 differ...
An old TV commercial for an antacid once asked heartburn sufferers, “How do you spell relief?” For thousands of western Washington people left in the dark by winter storms, the word is “p-o-w-e-r.” And it took more than a couple of Rolaids to deal with it all. Normally, we flip a switch and the lights come on. We think nothing of it until a storm knocks out our power. Then we realize how important electricity is to our everyday lives. The Pacific Northwest periodically experiences heavy snow, i...