Most Recent Stories
Don’t worry, we can still speak up
Like a lot of people, I am annoyed by political advertising. The best of it is self-aggrandizing piffle, and the worst is backstabbing, lying junk. My disgust is genuinely nonpartisan, except when I am really, intensely annoyed by candidates with whom I disagree. I am not annoyed to the point where I hope the government will step in and silence these horrible people once and for all. We do not live in a country where government can tell us what we can or cannot say. We certainly do not live in a country where government can forbid us to express opinions on candidates for public office, do we? This isn’t Russia or Britain or China. This is America. We have the First Amendment to the Constitution, the foundation of liberty. Remember, it says Congress shall make “no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” Most of us have been raised with the notion that this is a very good idea.
Walkers deserve a safe crossing
Two small news items, and the reaction to them, deserve a bit of attention this week. They had something in common — brief accounts of an innocent walk on a public right of way interrupted by sudden, unprovoked injury. One was inflicted by a truck and its driver, the other by a vicious dog and its owner. One story recounted the experience of Manuel Mata Perez of Wenatchee, who last Saturday evening had the idea that he could cross South Mission Street safely if he stayed in the crosswalk and held up one of those orange watch-out-for-me flags. He was wrong. A southbound SUV did not stop. Perez was smacked by its sideview mirror and ended up in Harborview Medical Center in serious condition.
Jazz Workshop still works magic
You don’t get many opportunities like this, not if you play trombone in a junior high school band. You took up the instrument because you wanted to join something, and the trombone was shiny and big and loud and the teacher was impressed by your long arms. But you didn’t really know what it was supposed to sound like. You couldn’t remember ever seeing or hearing a trombone outside the school’s band room. Your parents aren’t much help. There’s isn’t anything in their old CD collection without scratchy guitars and overdubbed vocals — a trombone-free zone. When they say “classic” they mean that Led Zeppelin stuff on their iPod. Then, right in your band room, you see a grown man with a horn. He’s from Los Angeles, they tell you, a professional trombonist who has played with everyone from Elton John to Diana Krall. Then you hear him play. In his hands the instrument is transformed. There’s none of the bwaa-bwaa-blat sounds that you make. It sings, sweet and dark, like nothing you have ever heard, more beautiful than you ever imagined. You see the way he holds the instrument, the way he moves the slide. He is so fast, yet so relaxed and precise. The instrument is an extension of his very self. It is his voice.
For marriage, change is normal
Why not? When the issue is whether the state should sanction same-sex marriage, that question is a pertinent legal test in a thin disguise. When the state denies one class of citizens a right or privilege it grants another, there has to be a “rational basis,” a good reason why not. Society must have a legitimate, common interest in maintaining exclusivity, beyond mere bigotry and resentment. It must be based on reason, and not irrational fears and frights. With gay marriage, the “rational basis” has withered away with our changing social mores.
Safety Valve: Letters from readers
So lucky to have it I keep reading the letters in The Safety Valve regarding prices at Town Toyota Center for Mannheim Steamroller. I don’t know where some of the people got their information. We had what we considered the best seats in the house for a concert such as theirs and they cost $30 apiece. I know if you order over the phone or online there are extra charges but if you go to the ticket office, which is open every day, there are no extra charges and they give senior discounts.
We’ll talk about deficits later
I confess, after 45 minutes I walked out on President Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday, or at least walked away from the television. I missed the part where at last he leveled with the American people. Without reform to beloved entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, without higher taxes and spending cuts, our growing debt will inevitably put the nation at risk. The day of reckoning is so near, with our national debt now exceeding our yearly economic output, that Obama was willing risk his political career to tell us the truth — there are too many promises, and not enough money to pay for them. ... He didn’t?
Stopping us, one pipeline at a time
We were supposed to want “energy independence.” That was the stated goal as taxpayers invested billions in biofuels and battery packs, all to free us from the economic constraints of oil imports. Then the seekers of profit ingeniously found ways to increase production of natural gas and oil on this continent, to the point where “energy independence” was at least conceivable, for what it’s worth. But that wasn’t the “energy independence” they wanted. Then we were supposed to want jobs. Government investment in alternative fuels, renewable energy and electric vehicles was to spawn a green economy, supporting thousands and thousands of jobs, a clean-burning industrial revolution. But, so far, it’s been painfully slow in coming. It costs a lot, making jobs with industries designed solely to collect government subsidies. The green economy has difficulty competing against energy that is cheap and reliable.
The sound of the plow grows faint
Remember those wonderful winter mornings of yesteryear, when your slumber was ended by a city snowplow scraping the pavement outside your bedroom window at 5 a.m.? Well, dream on. Barring emergencies, you aren’t likely to hear that sweet sound in Wenatchee, and probably many other municipalities. Budget cuts do that. They wallop snow removal just like anything else.
Higher education can’t keep up
What is true for the nation is true in the state of Washington. We have an economy strong on technology and manufacturing. Our educational system, however, is weak. Industry requires educated workers. Our schools, colleges and universities do not produce them in sufficient numbers, for myriad social, political and economic reasons. We must import them, from other states, from other countries. We depend on other states to staff our workforce.
A ‘fee’ can look a lot like a ‘tax’
Gov. Chris Gregoire is right. “We can’t wait until roads, bridges and ferries are falling apart to fix them. We can’t kick the can down the road and saddle our future generations with the repairs we failed to make,” she said in her State of the State address Tuesday. Well, yes we can, and we have, but we shouldn’t. It is economically unwise. Despite her unfortunate repeat of the can-kicking cliché (how many cans are already down the road I cannot begin to guess), she is speaking truth. “Our transportation system is the lifeblood of our economy. It moves people to work and goods to market and supports our tourism industry. If we don’t maintain and grow, we come to a standstill.”