By MIKE ELLIOTT (May 7, 2013) — Recently environmentalists have been claiming that coal dust poses an environmental risk to the region because coal transits the Northwest by rail. But there is no credible study to support this assertion, and I wonder what the true motivation for making such a claim might be. I have [...]
By JOHN BURBANK (Apr. 30, 2013) — What rhymes with going, going, gone? How about Boeing, Boeing, bawn? That doesn’t make sense in English, but it sure hits the nail on the head with the once loyal, Washington-state born, bred and based Boeing Company. Every sign points toward Boeing’s departure from our state. I never [...]
By DAVID PARSONS (April 19, 2012) — As Congress and President Obama work toward reforming immigration, many scientists in labs at the University of Washington are watching carefully to see how their futures will be impacted. More than a third of UW graduate researchers are immigrants, and about half of post-doctoral scholars, approximately 500, work [...]
By JEFF JOHNSON (Apr. 15, 2013) — Today is Tax Day. Benjamin Franklin once said there were two certainties in life: death and taxes. But in America today there is a third certainty. Our tax structure is so riddled with tax loopholes, that corporate America and the rich pay far less than their fair share [...]
By JOHN BURBANK (Apr. 12, 2013) — At a poker table, the Washington Roundtable’s latest education report would amount to a bold bluff. Our elected representatives in Olympia should call them on it. The leaders of Washington’s biggest corporations say they want more graduates from the state’s colleges and universities to employ — but they’re [...]
By JOSH SWANSON (April 9, 2013) — Today it seems more difficult than ever to discern fact from opinion. Some say the stilted mix of TV ratings, profit-minded corporate journalism and credibility-challenged blogs has inflamed partisanship, dashed fair-minded discussion and hopelessly polarized the country. Others say that’s nothing new. After all, it was Mark Twain [...]
By REP. CHRIS REYKDAL (April 8, 2013) — A successful America — and Washington State — requires a robust and healthy middle-class. We created that middle-class from the bottom up from 1941 to 1980; four decades of growing prosperity because we literally built things for the rest of the world, we invested in our workers, [...]
By JOHN BURBANK (Mar. 28, 2013) — It’s fine to expect instant gratification when downloading an app to your smartphone or streaming a movie to your computer. But we can fairly expect our elected representatives to behave differently than the average consumer, by making choices that are less about short-run returns and more about building [...]
By JEFF JOHNSON (Mar. 21, 2013) — Yesterday, on the first day of spring, Shelly Treator, President of Local 155 of the Association of Pulp and Paper Workers, led 130 hourly workers off the job at the pulp and paper mill in Port Angeles on an unfair labor practice strike. Nippon Paper the owners of [...]
By JOHN BURBANK (Mar. 13, 2013) — We elect our state legislators with the hope that they will look out for the public. So it always is sort of a shock when legislators work to undermine government services that work best for people. It as if they want to say, “See? Government doesn’t work!” And [...]
