Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
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There comes a time when enough is enough. No more excuses, no more delays. In 1986, hospitals, local governments, schools, small businesses and doctors were fed up with the high cost of personal injury lawsuits and liability insurance. They successfully lobbied for tort reform legislation, which was signed into law by Gov. Booth Gardner. Fast forward to 2012 and you see that same tipping point with our public schools. Taxpayers are tired of hearing, “Just give us more money a...
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 m...
Recently, the EPA proposed new air quality regulations for power plants that activists say will finally kill King Coal. The rule would require all new power plants to cut emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by almost 44 percent. While natural gas plants can meet the standard, coal-fired plants cannot without expensive carbon-capture and storage technology that is not commercially available. While EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson stresses the standards will apply only to new power...
When environmental organizations pushed Washington voters to approve their renewable energy Initiative 937, they touted biomass energy — incinerated wood waste — as one of their preferred alternatives to fossil fuel. They reasoned that biomass energy plants would help clear forests of flammable wood debris from dead and diseased timber, put idled loggers and millworkers back to work and produce cleaner, more affordable energy. But since voters narrowly approved the ini...
On April 21, 1962, the Seattle World’s Fair opened. The “Century 21 Exhibition” ran for six months, drew 11 million visitors, turned a profit and left the Northwest with a wonderful Seattle Center. A half century later, many of the fair’s landmarks remain, and the Center’s 73-acres is a gathering place for people from all walks of life. It is Seattle’s Central Park. The Space Needle has become Seattle’s icon. Conceived in an architect’s notebook, it was constructed in...
Last year, Fotis I. Antonopoulos, a successful Web designer in Athens, decided to set up his own e-business to sell olive oil products. It took him 10 months, winding his way through the city collecting dozens of forms and stamps of approval, including proof that he was up- to-date on his pension contributions, before he could get started. But, according to The New York Times, even that was not enough. In perhaps the strangest twist of all, his board members were required by...
It started in 1935 with a $3.8 million loan to Cuba for the purchase of U.S. silver ingots. That loan, backed by the U.S. government, was the beginning of the Export-Import Bank. Today, the bank helps finance export sales by thousands of U.S. manufacturers. While it is little-known outside our nation’s capital, the Export-Import Bank is a lynchpin of our economy. It provides direct loans, loan guarantees and insurance to help finance sales of American goods and services o...
Adversity often brings out the best in people. We find ways to pitch in and solve problems that government can’t. Since the recession began, non-profit organizations have seen a big increase in volunteerism, and as state and local governments are forced to slash public services, volunteers are coming forward to pick up the slack. For example, after the City of Las Vegas laid off half of its park maintenance staff, neighbors put together volunteer work crews to pick up t...
What’s that old saying? “One step forward, two steps back.” Just as our economy is starting to move again, rising gas prices threaten to put the brakes on the recovery. Gasoline is at the highest price ever for this time of year. AAA reports the average price in Washington on Feb. 22 was $3.68 a gallon. That’s up 14 cents in a week and 21 cents in a month. Analysts say gas could hit $4.25 a gallon or higher by late April. Rising prices for gasoline, diesel and jet fuel in...
There is finally a bit of good news from Olympia. The state’s Revenue Forecast Council reports that tax revenues for this biennium will be $96 million higher than projected last November, and state tax collections for 2013-15 are projected to grow by 6.6 percent. But we shouldn’t get too excited. Even with this additional revenue and the cuts the Legislature made in December’s special session, lawmakers still need to make up about a $1 billion deficit to balance the budge...
As Congress continues to struggle with our nation’s massive $15 trillion debt, another looming crisis has slipped off the radar screen: Social Security. Social Security is running almost $50 billion in the red each year, deficits that are being covered by reserves in the General Fund. But because the number of people getting benefits is outpacing the number of people footing the bill, the program will be insolvent in 20 years. Social Security started in 1935 as a sort of w...
As Congress and state legislatures struggle with the sluggish economy, high unemployment and growing deficits, it may seem that a solution is out of reach. That’s not the case. In fact, you and I can make a real difference with the choices we make every day. The realization that consumers control the marketplace is fueling a burgeoning movement to “Buy American.” When consumers choose American-manufactured products, they support American jobs — the more products purchas...
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s campaign slogan was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” In 1993, Washington employers modified the slogan to, “It’s the economy, don’t kill it,” and emblazoned it across a huge banner draped from AWB’s building near the state’s Capitol Campus, where it could be seen by elected officials driving by. But lawmakers didn’t get the message 19 years ago; they left employers holding the bag for new taxes and fees as well as added costs for unemployment insuranc...
For years, energy experts warned us that regulations and policies that reduce the supply of affordable conventional energy would result in higher prices for American families. Now it is clear the warnings were well-founded. The USA Today recently reported that electricity bills have skyrocketed. The newspaper reports that American families paid, on average, a record $1,419 a year for electricity in 2010. Demand for electricity remains high even as energy supplies shrink. In...
Washington is one of only 10 states that effectively prohibit low-income parents from choosing where their children go to school. The battle lines over alternatives such as charter public schools or school vouchers have been sharply drawn in our state. Supporters say the issue is choice; that education is the key to a child’s future and parents — particularly low-income parents — should be able to send their children to the best possible schools. Opponents argue that alter...
With a bad economy, political bickering in our nation’s capital and daily news coverage of raucous protests here at home, it may seem harder to get into the Christmas spirit this year. But if you look closely, you will see countless examples of generosity, courage and hope. Just a few weeks ago, more than 18,000 motorcycles rumbled down I-5 for the 33rd Annual Olympia Toy Run. A tougher band of softies was hard to find, as the state’s capitol filled with leather-clad mot...
Just about the time the Congressional “Super Committee” declared failure, our national debt clock rolled past $15 trillion. Even as the discussions, co-chaired by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., ground to a halt and Congress left the Capitol for Thanksgiving, the debt clock kept ticking. That means each taxpayer’s portion of our debt is now $133,687. Where will this all stop? Are we headed for another partisan meltdown over raising our debt ceiling? Will we see another downg...
Even as the new health care law heads for the U.S. Supreme Court where it faces an uncertain future, Washington state is moving forward with its $23 million effort to design and implement a health care exchange. State health care exchanges, mandated by the federal law, must be in place by 2014. They were billed as a way to promote competition and provide access to subsidies for qualified consumers. While each state is supposed to design its own health care exchange, exchanges...
How about some good news heading into the holidays? It comes from our nation’s farmers and ranchers. Agriculture is an economic sector where America has not lost its edge. In fact, it is a bright spot in a persistently glum economy. The U.S. Agriculture Department expects our nation’s agricultural exports to reach a record $137 billion this year and grow by another $2.3 billion in 2012. While our nation has an overall trade deficit, our agricultural sector has a trade sur...
President Obama says he will delay until 2013 a decision about the $13 billion Keystone pipeline, which would carry Canadian oil to Gulf coast refineries. Supporters say the 1,661 mile pipeline would create as many as 20,000 high-paying construction jobs, reduce our dependence on oil from unfriendly nations and revitalize the stricken Gulf Coast economy. Opponents worry about potential environmental impacts, and Midwest property owners in the path of the pipeline say “not in m...
The next time you’re on a commercial airliner, think about this: The GPS navigation unit in your car is more advanced than the technology used by air traffic controllers. The radar-based air traffic control technology used today is almost 60 years old. While it worked well with fewer, slow-moving aircraft, today’s modern jetliners can fly more than a mile and a half in the time it takes for a radar beam to sweep across the screen. Because of that, planes must be kept thr...
Today, the good news is cars are safer, more fuel-efficient and emit fewer greenhouse gases. The bad news is today’s automobiles burn less gas and cars in the future will be fueled by cleaner electricity and even hydrogen. So how could this be bad news? Two words: gas tax. Since President Dwight Eisenhower modeled our interstate highway system after the German autobahns, our roads have been built and maintained with federal and state gas taxes. In Washington, the 18th a...
In January, Washington’s minimum wage will crack the $9 mark and we will once again be No. 1 — the state with the nation’s highest minimum wage. Of course, some think that’s good news. Ensuring that people can support themselves and their families is a laudable goal. But there’s a problem: It’s called the law of unintended consequences. Sometimes, an action causes the opposite of what it was intended to do. We are perilously close to that when it comes to the minimum wag...
In today’s era of $14 trillion budget deficits, $18 billion seems like chump change. But with every penny of federal spending on the chopping block, that amount is eye-catching. NASA needs that money over the next five years to build its new space launch system —a behemoth rocket that would eventually carry our astronauts to Mars. The rocket will be topped with a space capsule similar to Apollo, which carried Americans to the moon and back 40 years ago. The new rocket will be...
In today’s dog-eat-dog world, change is constant and accelerating. Other countries are stealing our factories and jobs and are hungry for more. That is the new reality. For example, in the 1990s, a California-based company called FormFactor developed a new and faster way to test semiconductors, the heart of today’s computers. Chipmakers needed assurance their products operate efficiently, consistently and have long-term durability. FormFactor was founded by a Ukrainian imm...
