News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Sometimes being first isn’t good. Such is the case with legislation making Washington the only state to ban natural gas in new homes and commercial buildings. Thankfully, the legislators ended their session in Olympia and left that bad idea on the table. However, it is destined to come back next year. The issue is complicated and expensive. Earlier this year, Gov. Jay Inslee (D) unveiled it as part of a package to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It included a phase out of natural gas for space and water heating by forbidding the use of fossil...
It isn’t often we hear good news from Hanford, but the Dept. of Energy recently announced the nation’s first commercial advanced nuclear power reactor would be developed on the massive federal reservation north of Richland. Much of the news from Hanford focuses on radioactive waste cleanup and storing it safely. It has accumulated since the 1940s when nuclear reactors enriched uranium for nuclear weapons. While that tedious work will continue for years to come, Hanford scientists have a new mission — develop smaller and safer nuclear react...
The Ever Given’s grounding in one of the narrowest parts of the Suez Canal underscores the vulnerability of the world’s supply chain. The reverberations will be felt for months as consumer demand, suppressed by the COVID pandemic, ramps up. The canal, which was completed in 1869, is the main shipping artery between Asian and European seaports through which 10 percent of the global shipping traverses. Much of the 120-mile waterway is extremely narrow, especially for ships as long as the Empire State Building (New York City) is tall (1,300 ft....
Surprisingly, there is something U.S. Presidents agree upon: America’s economic and national security hinge upon maintaining our technology edge in semiconductors. Those tiny computer chips are the brains of modern electronics. They operate our laptops and smart phones and permeate every sector of our lives from farming and manufacturing to health care and public safety. They are embedded in our military’s most advanced equipment and give us a tactical edge. Semiconductors are among our nation’s top five exports. The Semiconductor Indus...
Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson’s $33 billion plan to remove the lower Snake River dams is unwise. However, if he pushes it, he needs to include the impact of breaching dams in his home state, which completely shuts off salmon and steelhead migration. Simpson, a Republican representing eastern Idaho, announced he wants to rupture the four lower Snake River dams — Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite — all in southeast Washington. Those impoundments have fish passage systems to allow adult anadromous fish to conti...
Why would any company spend $5.5 million for a 30-second Super Bowl ad that leaves viewers perplexed, as some glitzy and abstract commercials did? After production costs are tacked on, you’d think advertisers would want their messages clearly understood, especially in difficult times. Some prominent advertisers, such as Coca Cola, Budweiser and Pepsi, traditional large buyers, skipped Super Bowl LV; however, Weather Tech did not. After the game, the list of best and worst ads was released. It did not include three commercials sponsored by W...
With COVID-19 vaccines being widely dispensed, will an end to this pandemic halt “work from home?” Will workers return to downtown offices at pre-pandemic levels? Not likely! However, it is not an either/or question, said Stanford Professor Nicholas Bloom, who is co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship program. “Working from home will be very much a part of our post-COVID economy,” he added, “so, the sooner policymakers and business (employers) think of the implication...
Now that vaccines are available, we hope our lives will return to the way they were before the coronavirus pandemic blanketed the globe. That is not likely to occur. Last March our booming economy was clobbered by COVID-19. A worldwide pandemic ensued. There was no vaccine to counter it and even though vaccines were developed at “warp speed” lots of things changed and have become imbedded in our daily lives. Futurist Bernard Marr, columnist in Forbes, believes employers quickly adapted to a remote workforce. While less than ideal, working fro...
While the coronavirus and its devastating effects on people and economies worldwide were unfortunately the top 2020 stories, the massive impact of western wildfires can’t be ignored. It was catastrophic. The National Interagency Fire Center’s western states tally shows a record 8.6 million acres were incinerated in 2020 compared with 4.6 million acres in 2019. In Washington, just over 700,000 acres were burned; however, California and Oregon were not as fortunate. By comparison, a combined 5.7 million acres were destroyed. Fires inc...
Christmas is an especially difficult time for anyone grieving for lost loved ones. Try adding a crippling killer virus into that mix. That is the tragic reality of 2020. Even though the traditional ceremonies attended by thousands went virtual this year, more than 1.7 million holiday wreaths were placed against grave markers of fallen service men and women. Normally, the fallen are remembered on Memorial Day, but thanks to a Maine family and over hundreds of thousand donors and volunteers, on Dec. 19 those wreaths were laid on the tombstones...
Many years ago, a reporter asked George Weyerhaeuser, then CEO of Weyerhaeuser Co., why his company spent so much time and money informing its workers, public officials and people about its business of growing trees and converting those trees into lumber and paper products. His answer was simple: “People need to know what we do and why what we do is important to them.” He believed if people and elected officials understood Weyerhaeuser, they would make thoughtful decisions based on facts. To Weyerhaeuser, there was no other option. Log...
Christmas is a difficult time for anyone grieving the death of a loved one. It is especially hard when they were slain in the line of duty while protecting our country. It hit home again last month when Army sergeants Eric Emond, 39, Brush Prairie, and Leandro Jasso, 25, Leavenworth, were killed in Afghanistan. Both were experienced elite soldiers who served multiple tours in combat zones. Normally, the fallen are remembered on Memorial Day, but thanks to a Maine family and over 800,000 donors and volunteers, more than 1.8 million Christmas wre...
The battle in Seattle over the city council’s imposition of a head tax on large companies is generating disparaging labels which local elected leaders likely will come to regret. As a mayor, the last things you want are “anti-business” or “job killer” red letters stamped on your city’s investment opportunity portfolio. A head tax is a “job killer” because it discourages companies from hiring full-time employees and encourages employers to replace people with computers and machines. According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, businesses in Se...
With western wildfires growing in size and destroying more homes, farms and businesses, there is a need for new tools and approaches. The infernos are spreading so fast they are outstripping our ability to fight them in traditional ways. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last November: “Over the course of just a few weeks, a major fire can pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than California’s many climate change programs can save in 12 months. Scientists debate whether California’s vast forests are emitting more carbo...
Millions of college graduates find themselves saddled with crushing debt, and more than a third of them won’t be working in their chosen profession. Many will be working for low wages. Meanwhile, millions of high-paid jobs are available in the skilled trades – electricians, plumbers, manufacturing workers, pipefitters, mechanics, appliance repair, computer techs, medical assistants and welders. Known as blue collar jobs, they routinely pay $45,000 to $65,000 a year or more. According to Salary.com, the average heavy equipment operator in Sea...
Most of the 2.5 million annual Alamo visitors focus on the epic 1836 battle in which a small band of brave Texans was eventually overrun by the Mexican army. Folk heroes like Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis were among the Texans killed while fighting for independence from Mexico. However, the Alamo is more than a small Spanish-style church, depicted on tourism brochures, which barely withstood a 13-day pummeling from Mexican cannons. It is a large complex built nearly a century before the siege where irrigated agriculture was...
Have you carefully checked your utility bills lately? Most people don’t unless they are monsters like the ones for garbage in Scranton, PA, and Los Angeles. In Vancouver, WA, our garbage and recycling bill now has an added 3.6-percent refuse tax. It costs us $1.29 more every two months. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, in Scranton, residents started receiving a $300 annual trash collection fee, which is a 68-percent increase since 2014. In LA, an assisted-living operator’s bill was less than $500 a month, but jumped to a who...
It’s not good to be a North Korean guest worker these days. As part of stepped-up sanctions against the rogue nation’s accelerated nuclear and ballistic missile development programs, countries around the world are expelling North Koreans. They are being sent back to an impoverished country, which continues to spend the bulk of its money on sophisticated weapons systems. North Korea is a nation where over 70 percent of its citizens have no electricity, over 125,000 are imprisoned, and food and jobs are scarce. Its dictator sends conscripted wor...
Earlier this month, China launched its “national sword” policy which bans many recyclable materials it traditionally imported. Meanwhile, its upcoming March edict imposing a lower limit on contaminants is having global reverberations. Since the 1990s, the world has shipped the bulk of its used paper, plastics and metals to China. In 2016, its imported value was $18 billion. Nearly one-third of North America’s recyclables were processed in China — much of it from West Coast states. China was hungry for scrap and tolerated higher contami...
Christmas is an especially difficult time for anyone grieving for lost loved ones. It is especially painful for America’s military families whose son, daughter, spouse or parent was killed while serving in uniform. Normally, the fallen are remembered on Memorial Day, but thanks to a Maine family and over hundreds of thousands of donors and volunteers, more than 1.5 million wreaths were laid on the tombstones of our fallen soldiers, sailors and airmen on December 16. The panoramic view of Arlington National Cemetery’s rolling hills with its whit...
For the last two decades, federal legislation allowing oil and gas exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) has been stymied. Now, it is part of federal tax reform which Congress is likely to approve. Allowing new oil and gas leases would greatly help Washington refineries, workers and state and local economies. Current crude supplies from Alaska’s North Slope are declining and refiners have looked elsewhere for replacement stocks, e.g., oil-by-rail from North Dakota. ANWR is not the picturesque landscape you might imagine w...
While Seattle is growing rapidly, our rural areas continue to struggle. They don’t have the corporate giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and Boeing creating jobs and economic opportunities. Farms are predominantly family-owned. Today, there is a rejuvenated effort to bring prosperity to Washington’s rural communities. While agriculture is the largest sector, timber, manufacturing, high tech and energy provide opportunities as well. Rural jobs and economic revitalization are national in scope. Writing in “The Daily Yonder,” Bill Bishop reports...
Last year, Seattle Times aerospace reporter Dominic Gates wrote about the similarities and differences between Boeing’s corporate office move to Chicago and Amazon’s plan for a second headquarters. Boeing wanted to leave Seattle in an effort to separate its corporate leadership from manufacturing sites, while Amazon, with an unusual strategy, plans to keep its headquarters here but set up a parallel operation elsewhere. Boeing hoped to find a more conservative business climate while Amazon wants a city which is a “cultural fit.” Gates reporte...
In Washington, the legislative stalemate over permitting new household wells and the state’s construction budget has not only delayed needed funding for public projects, but triggered yet another salvo in the wider conflict over future supplies of fresh water for people, fish and farms. At immediate risk is $4.2 billion in state funding for local water and sewer projects, school construction, mental-health facilities, colleges and universities, and other construction. While there is general agreement between Democrats controlling the House a...
Key tax policies emanating from the east and west coasts are like passenger trains passing one another heading in opposite directions. One train is loaded with elected officials proposing changes to reduce taxes while the other is packed with those pushing for new and higher taxes. The cumulative effect of those modifications will impact all of us and our economy, jobs and ability to compete as a state and nation. The adjustments will determine whether we grow, limp along or wither away. Make no mistake, they will impact our pocketbooks and...