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 , , ,

Why politics must fall away: Climate Change Speech-athon

originally published in The Herald

Twenty-six years ago, then-Sen. Bennett Johnston, a conservative Democrat from Louisiana and the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, made a prescient observation.

“We must examine and assess the dangers of global warming caused by the greenhouse effect that actually threaten human survival within the century, requiring even more stringent energy efficiencies and conservation,” Johnston wrote.

A second decade into a new century and with climate change manifesting in tangible, ominous ways, it’s deja vu all over again.

“We know that rising sea levels threaten Seattle and ports throughout my state critical to our economy,” Sen. Patty Murray said on the Senate floor this week. “We see them in our rural communities facing longer-lasting and more severe droughts that wither crops and turn our forests into kindling for wildfires.”

Murray, along with 29 Democratic colleagues including fellow Washingtonian Sen. Maria Cantwell and Oregon’s Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, participated in a 14-hour speech-athon on the Senate floor Monday and Tuesday to underscore the threat of climate change. It was a sobering rundown of real-world outcomes that are disrupting Northwest industries, including shellfish die-offs spurred by climate-related ocean acidification.

“Ocean acidification is an economic issue,” Cantwell said. “We have generations of shellfish growers that are threatened now by the impacts of carbon in our oceans and the warming of our oceans.”

The future is now. The Vancouver Sun reports that 10 million scallops near Qualicum Beach died this year because of ocean acidity.

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March 13, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Abolish daylight saving time: Enough of “spring forward”

originally published in The Herald

Daylight Saving Time is an anachronism that should have gotten the heave-ho 70 years ago. Northwesterners understand that sunlight is an indulgence, a dissipating scourge that weakens resolve and elevates sin. Give us dishwater skies and, around midday, a square of filtered light.

Why Daylight Saving? Benjamin Franklin figured it would save on candles (he just might have been joking, Twain-like.) When DST finally was implemented during World War I, the mission was to boost the war effort by curtailing coal consumption. Less artificial light at night, more resources to fight Kaiser Wilhelm II.

Cooler heads prevailed after the war, and DST was ditched until the attack on Pearl Harbor, when the same thinking took hold. “War Time” continued through 1945. There was fiddling off and on, until the Uniform Time Act of 1966 which, other than the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, was the most notorious misstep of Lyndon Johnson’s career. Prior to the law, states could do what was in their best interest.

Do Northwesterners crave less morning light in March? We who ride out “June-uary” (and March-uary?) As Philip Larkin wrote in his poem, “Aubade:” Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare./In time the curtain-edges will grow light./Till then I see what’s really always there:/Unresting death, a whole day nearer now.

So, more time in the soundless dark to see unresting death. Or even, say, to experience it.
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March 11, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

As railroads replace pipelines: Bakken Crude Oil Shipments

originally published in The Herald

Life felt simpler when North Dakota was known primarily for ice fishing, Lawrence Welk and the Norsk Hostfest in Minot. Today, crude oil beneath the Bakken formation in western North Dakota has rejuvenated the state’s economy and driven down unemployment to the lowest in the country at 3.1 percent.

The trouble with Bakken crude (disregard its carbon footprint and the mess of hydraulic fracking for now) is that it’s highly flammable. The 2013 derailment of an oil train in Quebec and attendant inferno that killed 47 people brought into focus the perils of rail transport, particularly with older “DOT-111” tank cars. These aging carriers — around 80,000 are in use — are more likely to puncture than newer tank cars with sturdier hulls.

Bakken crude is an everyday feature of the Northwest landscape. Washington is the fifth-largest refining state in the U.S.

Shipments of Bakken crude into the Pacific Northwest began with zero fanfare two years ago, the Sightline Institute’s Eric de Place writes in an institute report, “The Northwest’s Pipeline By Rails.”

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March 10, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Hagel’s budget, NW realities: A Leaner Military

originally published in The Herald

The trouble with peace, it seems, is it doesn’t always pencil out.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s preview of the administration’s shrinking postwar budget is a sober reminder of what the United States sacrificed after more than a decade of extended ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also foreshadows the evolving face of battle: More technology, cyber-warfare, smaller, nimbler forces and (we hope against hope) less bloodshed.

The new normal of a leaner military could transform the American century into the multipolar century (or the Chinese/Russian/American century.) “We are entering an era where American dominance on the seas, in the skies and in space can no longer be taken for granted,” Hagel said Monday.

The new reality includes reducing the active-duty Army from 522,000 soldiers today to between 440,000 and 450,000. It’s a circa-1940 force level that’s likely to tick up. The Army National Guard would shrink by 20,000 and the Army Reserve by 10,000. The Navy will see a reduction in combat ships, but not its 11 aircraft carriers. The Air Force will lose its A-10 “Warthog” tank-killer planes and the venerable U-2 spy plane.

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February 26, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

The end of the death penalty: Abolish capital punishment

originally published in The Herald

“I never say, ‘I know how you feel,'” said Snohomish County prosecuting attorney Mark Roe.

Families of murder victims live a nightmare without end. No, we don’t know how you feel, the visceral, ceaseless horror of life torn away.

There are merciless souls who do not deserve mercy. Jayme Biendl’s murderer, Byron Scherf, for one. Or Charles Rodman Campbell, who murdered 9-year old Shannah Wicklund, her mother, Renae Wicklund, and neighbor, Barbara Hendrickson. Campbell was executed in 1994.

State-sanctioned killing turns civilization on its head, but that’s an intellectual construct at a remove from human nature. It’s difficult to argue that murderers such as Campbell are treated unjustly, at least in Washington.

The death penalty was abruptly thrown into relief Tuesday when Gov. Jay Inslee announced a moratorium.
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February 16, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

The legacy of a conservative: Rep. Doc Hastings retires

originally published in The Herald

The retirement of Washington Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, marks a fault in the state’s political landscape. Hastings, who has represented central Washington’s Fourth Congressional District for two decades, is the last of the 1994 “Contract with America” farm team, both doctrinaire and principled. The question is whether those principles still track with the district’s changing demographics and political culture.

The paradox of the Fourth District, like the paradox of much of Eastern Washington, is the oversized hand of the federal government and the majority population that bites off its fingers. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation gave birth to the Tri-Cities, and Franklin Roosevelt and the Bonneville Power Administration made the Eastern Washington desert bloom. From aluminum plants supported by cheap power, to agriculture, to the military, the economy east of the Cascades has been spoon fed by the federal government. As writer Blaine Harden observed in his book “A River Lost,” federal goodies don’t translate into a big-government-adoring electorate. Just the opposite.

Eastern Washington became a political barometer, as Reagan Democrats became Reagan Republicans, and moderate Democrats such as Tom Foley were unseated.

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February 14, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Reconciling the Boldt legacy: 40th anniversary of court ruling

originally published in The Herald

George Hugo Boldt. Forty years ago today, the federal judge’s name became a touchstone, celebrated and cursed.

The Boldt narrative traces from the first tribal “fish-ins” in 1964 to protest the violation of indigenous treaty rights, to a (yes) farsighted 1970 Nixon Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Washington, to the Feb. 12, 1974 ruling that reaffirmed the federal treaties of 1854 and 1855. Tribal members, Boldt ruled, have the right to fish in their “usual and accustomed” places, with half of the annual catch going to treaty tribes.

The treaties shepherded by Washington’s first territorial governor, Isaac Stevens, were a horror, demanding mass resettlement and the de facto genocide of Washington’s first inhabitants. Stevens, an imperious spirit, figured tribal members would die from imported diseases or be absorbed into the larger Euro-American population. Stevens never anticipated a vital community of First Nations.

The only trouble with Boldt, it seems, was that he actually read the treaties.

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February 12, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Why the Seahawks matter: Super Bowl XLVIII

originally published in The Herald

Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson draws strength from his late father. “He used to always tell me, ‘Russ, why not you?’” Wilson said. It’s not quite Horatio Alger, but almost. The 12th pick in the third round of the 2012 NFL draft (note the preponderance of 12s.) Today, a Super Bowl ring and a parade down Fourth Avenue. Why not you, Russ?

The gift of Russell Wilson, the gift of cornerback Richard Sherman — he that dare shout uninhibited — the gift of running back Marshawn Lynch, is ripping apart the Law of Jante. The fictional law, a cultural aversion to individual success, puts pride in the cross-hairs. It’s a sentiment imported by Swedes, Danes and Norwegians in the 1890s that dovetailed with a Coast Salish culture equally skeptical of standouts. Writer Aksel Sandemose reduced the law to 10 rules. Rule no. 1: You’re not to think you are anything special.

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February 5, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , ,

After the Machinists’ vote: Everett lands the Boeing 777X

originally published in The Herald

The Machinists’ narrow approval of a revised, eight-year contract extension Friday provokes guilty relief; relief because the Puget Sound region will benefit from thousands of 777X jobs and the multiplier effect of a vital aerospace supply chain; and guilt, because the Boeing Co. was permitted to frame the debate, freighting Machinists with a decision that was wholly Boeing’s.

To paraphrase Tammany Hall politician George Washington Plunkitt, Boeing saw its opportunities, and it took ’em.

“Tonight, Washington state secured its future as the aerospace capital of the world,” Gov. Jay Inslee said immediately after the vote. Elected officials such as Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson and Snohomish County Executive John Lovick exhausted their political capital with organized labor by urging a “yes” vote. It was a calculated risk that paid off. But exuberance is leavened by the fickle reality of global capital.
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January 6, 2014 phjackson Leave a response , , ,