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Enough stalling on Hanford: U.S. Department of Energy

originally published in The Herald

In the blur of last week’s news, an inter-governmental battle reached critical mass. It’s wonky, involves multiple acronyms, and pitches up sense-dulling statements.

It also goes to the future of the most contaminated spot in the Western Hemisphere and the federal government’s reckless pattern of heel-dragging.

On April 18, Attorney General Bob Ferguson and Gov. Jay Inslee gave thumbs down to the U.S Department of Energy’s March 31 proposal to amend the timeline and other features of the 2010 consent decree governing the retrieval and treatment of high-level radioactive waste at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The Hanford consent decree is a binding agreement that flows from a 2008 lawsuit.

Last month, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz met with the governor and the attorney general to discuss the federal government’s revised proposal. Inslee and Ferguson were underwhelmed. In October, the Energy Department informed Ferguson that the feds were at “substantial risk” for failing to meet three consent-decree milestones. Those delays will have a domino effect on all the agreed-to deadlines for the Hanford waste-treatment plant designed to transform high-level radioactive waste into glassified “logs.”
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April 23, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Obama here to listen, comfort: The Oso tragedy

originally published in The Herald

In the wake of tragedy, politics needs to fall away. One month after Oso’s landscape collapsed into a river of earth, leaving dozens dead, President Barack Obama will do what presidents do best: Bind the region’s wounds, comfort the grieving and commit the nation to disaster recovery.

Obama plans to thank first responders and meet survivors and the families of victims. From the air and on the ground, he will take in a mountain staircased in mud and snags that still entomb four people.

The alphabet soup of federal agencies, particularly the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is delivering. But even FEMA has limits, capping individual assistance at $32,000. The takeaway is something residents internalize, that government and nonprofits can help feed, shelter and rebuild, but they can’t make you whole. That takes a groundswell of neighbors and families helping one another, a spirit that transcends government. It’s a spirit that Gov. Jay Inslee, Rep. Suzan DelBene, County Executive John Lovick, Sen. Kirk Pearson, Rep. Dan Kristiansen, Arlington Mayor Barb Tolbert, Darrington Mayor Dan Rankin and many other lawmakers seem to recognize.
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April 22, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , , ,

Higher ed that looks like us: WWU President Bruce Shepard

originally published in The Herald

The truth can be uncomfortable, especially in the parochial world of higher education. Bruce Shepard, the president of Western Washington University, provoked a debate that’s kindled predictable blowback from right-wing media. In his January blog, Shepard echoed the need for diversity.

“In the decades ahead, should we be as white as we are today, we will be relentlessly driven toward mediocrity; or, become a sad shadow of our current self,” he writes.

Shepard’s takeaway goes to the heart of public education, to serve the needs of all Washington students. It’s as much an economic as a social justice argument, that magnifying the racial divide accelerates that relentless bend toward mediocrity.
“Many do get it. But, too often, I encounter behaviors and communications that suggest to me that folks have not thought through the implications of what is ahead for us or, more perniciously, assume we can continue unchanged,” Shepard writes.

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April 20, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Common sense and firearms: I-594 and I-591

originally published in The Herald

If you can’t convince them, confuse them. It’s a shrewd, if cynical axiom that could pay off for opponents of gun-sale background checks.

This fall voters will weigh in on two competing initiatives, I-594, which requires background checks on firearm sales and transfers, including online sales and gun shows; and, I-591 which prohibits background checks “unless a national standard is required.” (The latter qualifer a reminder of big-footing feds.)

An April 15 Elway poll illustrates the confusion, with 72 percent of respondents likely to vote for background checks, 55 percent likely to vote for the initiative with the “unless a national standard” language, and 40 percent inclined to vote for both (!) To quote “Alice in Wonderland,” “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Presupposing that impossible happens and both measures pass, the Legislature will need to disentangle the mess (more counter-logic, but possible) or the state Supreme Court will decide. Dave Ammons, communications director for the Secretary of State and a longtime Associated Press scribe and analyst, figures the court is the more likely resolver (the justices may need to read their Lewis Carroll.)
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April 18, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

In search of third-way politics: Sen. Rodney Tom’s retirement

originally published in The Herald

From its inception, the Senate Majority Coalition Caucus was a coalition of convenience. Two defecting Democrats gave Republicans control of the state’s upper chamber. But neither Rodney Tom nor Tim Sheldon were willing to jettison the Democratic label. And, so, the coalition with Tom as chief, and the patina of a moderate, third-way agenda, was conceived.

It seemed an inspired experiment for a population repelled by partisan clatter. But Tom, who announced that he won’t run for re-election, was a weathervane. A Republican. Then a Democrat. Then a leader by way of a power-sharing canoodle. There always was the subtext of a coalition in name only.

Tom was paired with Republican Leader Mark Schoesler, R-Ritzville, the de facto message enforcer. It was a humbling, paradoxical job. Tom personally advocated for a range of policies, but his hands were tied, he said.

Tom worked hard. He deserves credit for shepherding issues controversial among Republicans, such as the Real Hope Act. While the Senate punted on a capital budget, it passed an operating budget by a coalition-burnishing 48-1. But not moving on a transportation-finance package was a step backwards.
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April 16, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Our homegrown terrorists: Aftermath of a shooting

originally published in The Herald

Extremists are, by definition, outliers, yet they give expression to a corrosive resentment of race and religion that sits just below the surface. This is the unspoken evil that animates a hate crime.

When the former grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan allegedly killed William Lewis Corporon and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, and Terri LaManno next to a Jewish senior living facility, his mission was to terrorize American Jewry.

He failed.

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April 15, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Clean water and public values: Draft Rule on Fish Consumption

originally published in The Herald

Beware Business Panic. It creates its own catechism that, repeated enough, is taken as gospel.

The latest example centers on Washington’s fish-consumption rate and the state’s update to human health water-quality standards. The pushback, expressed in behind-the-scenes arm-twisting and sky-is-falling letters to Gov. Jay Inslee, injects politics into basic science, with a business bottom line obscuring the public interest.

The controversy was flagged last year by journalist Robert McClure and InvestigateWest. For more than a decade, the Washington Department of Ecology knew it had to update its paltry fish consumption estimates ­— 6.5 grams a day (or three sardines, the operative metaphor.) The estimate is critical because it informs the acceptable level of carcinogenic discharge, specifically arsenic, mercury and PCBs. It’s an inverse relationship — low-ball consumption rates and ratchet up the permissible discharge of cancer-causing toxins.

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April 13, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Time for the hard questions: The Oso aftermath

originally published in The Herald

Thirty-four years ago, President Jimmy Carter asked Gov. Dixy Lee Ray what the federal government could do to help after the eruption of Mount St. Helens. Ray literally spelled it out.

“M-o-n-e-y,” she said.

Sunday’s visit by Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Craig Fugate was an opportunity to survey the magnitude of the horror and underline the need for federal resources (see m-o-n-e-y, above.) Johnson said residents affected need to register with FEMA to qualify for federal assistance. Registering with the feds seems an unnatural reflex for the self-reliant souls of Darrington, Oso and Arlington. They should do it anyway.

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April 7, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , , , ,

Slow, deliberate steps forward: The Oso Aftermath

originally published in The Herald

Crisis reveals judgment. And few crises are as merciless and enduring as the Oso landslide.

The stories are almost too much to bear. As The Herald’s Gale Fiege writes, last week Arlington Mayor Barb Tolbert and Darrington Mayor Dan Rankin toured the devastation. A body was recovered, and after a few minutes the man they were chatting with quietly excused himself.

“I believe they have found my brother,” he said.

On Friday, volunteer firefighter Seth Jefferds stood with fellow firefighters in front of the Oso fire station on Highway 530. “I can’t tell you how tough it’s been and how tough it’s going to be.” Jefferds said. Jefferds’ wife, Christina, 45, and their granddaughter, Sanoah Violet Huestis, 4, were killed in the slide.

Generosity flows. Coastal Community Bank will forgive the home loans of those affected. Washington State University will waive tuition for the 2014-15 academic year for students caught in the fallout. The University of Washington will work with students though its financial aid office.

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April 6, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , , ,

The feds show their hand: Hanford Nuclear Reservation

originally published in The Herald

Attention to the Hanford Nuclear Reservation corresponds to its distance from Washington, D.C.’s political class. If Hanford and its 56 million gallons of highly radioactive crud sat on the Potomac and not the Columbia River, care and attention to its clean-up might be a wee more pronounced.

On Monday, U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz met with Gov. Jay Inslee and state Attorney General Bob Ferguson to discuss the federal government’s revised clean-up proposal. Flying to Olympia with his department team, Moniz hoped to avoid triggering the 2010 Hanford Cleanup Consent Decree, a binding agreement that flows from a 2008 lawsuit. But bypassing the decree’s legal hammer requires delivering more than good intentions. After their meeting, the governor sounded underwhelmed.

“Unfortunately, the draft that was shown to us this morning did not contain the comprehensiveness and level of detail that the state has requested for months from our federal partners,” Inslee said in a statement.

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March 18, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,