Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
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The good news is we are developing new life-saving medications every day. The bad news is they are very expensive and paying for them could bankrupt our health care system. For example, Avastin, which is prescribed to treat a number of cancers, costs $100,000 a year per patient. Soliris, used to treat a rare blood and kidney disorder, costs almost $410,000 per year. The latest medication drawing attention is Sovaldi. While highly effective in curing patients with chronic hepatitis C, it costs about $1,000 a pill or about...
Remember the rhyme of the Ancient Mariner: “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink?” Even though water covers 70 percent of the Earth’s surface, less than two percent is freshwater. Therein lies the problem. As the world’s population grows, demand for water is increasing; in periods of drought it becomes a crisis. California has been in the grip of a severe drought this year. As summer ends, we are beginning to see the economic impact and it is staggering. The University of California at Davis estimates the statewi...
What if we could peer into the future and see the consequences of the decisions we make today? In a way, we can. According to Washington state economists, a carbon tax high enough to achieve Gov. Inslee’s stated climate change goals would increase gasoline prices almost 60 percent over time and raise natural gas prices – currently our most affordable energy – nearly 35 percent. The carbon tax is only one part of Inslee’s climate change agenda. How much will the rest of it cost Washington families? At this point, we don’t k...
Over the Labor Day weekend, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee gave a compelling commentary on the need for employers and employees to set aside their differences and partner. Easier said than done, especially in today’s often vitriolic and politically charged atmosphere. Huckabee bashed those who detest unions and those who trash employers – and rightly so. Success today hinges on a balance between the “job creators” and the “job holders” based on mutual respect, fair treatment and job satisfaction. If American co...
Every day, birds flying near a certain spot on the California-Nevada border are incinerated in midair. They’re called “streamers” for the puff of smoke that appears as they ignite and plummet to the ground. Federal wildlife investigators estimate there’s one “streamer” every two minutes. What’s causing this? The birds are falling victim to a massive solar energy installation in California’s Mojave Desert. Launched last year, the $2.2 billion facility is the world’s largest plant to employ power towers. It sits on 4,000 acr...
The good news is Washington is separating itself from the national jobless rate. In July, an average 6.2 percent of Americans were looking for work, while Washington State’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.6 percent. The state added an estimated 7,300 jobs in July, and June’s report of 9,100 new jobs was revised upward to 13,600 jobs. The Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area boasts our state’s lowest jobless rate at 4.7 percent. Even so, warning lights are flashing. Counties in northeast and southwest Washington continue to strug...
Today, there is a tendency to look with distain at manufacturing facilities, especially those located on working waterfronts. Historically, those factories were sited there because the raw materials and finished products could be transported only by water. But as our state and nation progressed, railroads, highways and even airports were added and industrial areas formed. In fact, our legislature, cities, counties and ports funded the necessary improvements to those areas to specifically attract industries and the...
For decades, radio newsman Paul Harvey gave us a side of the news that we either hadn’t heard or hadn’t considered. His “Rest of the Story” commentaries provided an in-depth look at the news behind the headlines. Today, all the headlines are about the negative impacts of fossil fuels. But when you dig deeper, as Paul Harvey did, you get the rest of the story. For thousands of years, food, water, clothing and shelter were the basic necessities of life. Today, we need to include electricity. In China and India, home to more th... Full story
Today’s news is filled with images of the massive wildfires roaring through the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest in central Washington. The arid pine forests east of the Cascades are prone to wildfire, especially when they are attacked by bark beetles, which bore into the trees and suffocate them. Now those tiny insects are boring into healthy majestic trees in the pristine Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area. One way to prevent such infestations is through selective thinning and removing dead and diseased trees. B... Full story
Reducing mankind’s carbon footprint has become the defining issue of our time and rightly so. Virtually every level of government has policies to reduce greenhouse gases by regulating everything from industrial CO2 emissions to cow flatulence. But as Kermit the Frog said, “It’s not easy being green.” It turns out that some good ideas don’t work well – or not at all. Still, the government continues to mandate them. For example, a three-year study funded by the Department of Energy confirmed that producing ethanol from corn and...
If you are looking for a family-wage job these days, there is no better place to look than the Dakotas . . . but for entirely different reasons. While both states rely on agriculture, North Dakota’s Bakken oil field is driving that state’s economy, which boasts a 2.7 percent unemployment rate. It is the lowest among the 50 states – and there are thousands of jobs unfilled. Propelled by well-paying jobs in its western oil-producing counties, the state’s average annual pay has jumped a whopping 44 percent since 2007. Workers... Full story
President Obama thinks the United States should be more like France. He made the comment recently while pushing for mandatory paid family leave. “France has worked this out, why can’t we?” Really! Look a little deeper and let’s see if the French have worked it out. France requires employers to provide an array of benefits, including a $13 an hour minimum wage, four months of maternity leave, two weeks of paternity leave, a 35-hour work week, subsidized lunches, subsidized transit passes, subsidized health care and generou... Full story
While much of today’s news deals with America’s decline, there is hope we can stimulate our economy, create manufacturing jobs and pay down our national debt by increasing our manufacturing and energy production. While goods were once proudly “Made in America,” many of our manufacturing plants are shuttered. When we go to stores today, too often the labels say, “Made in China.” How do we turn this around? One company at a time. In January 2013, Walmart announced it will buy an additional $50 billion in U.S. products ov... Full story
All too often our network of highways, pipelines, railroads, barges, ship terminals and airports goes unnoticed unless there is an accident. For example, we don’t notice the trains delivering the chlorine that purifies our drinking water. We pay little attention to the trucks transporting gasoline for our cars and propane tanks for backyard barbecues. The fact is without trucks, trains, pipelines, barges, ships and airplanes, we couldn’t survive. They transport everything we use every day and some products are pot...
Last month, an inspector general for the Treasury Department revealed that from 2010 to 2012 the Internal Revenue Service handed out $1 million in bonuses to 1,150 workers who owed back taxes. Over the same period, the IRS paid out an additional $1.8 million in bonuses to workers with disciplinary problems, including misusing government credit cards, drug use, threats of violence and unemployment benefits fraud. Give us a break! Apparently, IRS workers don’t have to follow the same rules as the rest of us who pay their s... Full story
Let’s face it. We’re spoiled. Even in our tough economy, most Americans enjoy a myriad of conveniences we take for granted. We awake to a warm house, turn night into day with the flip of a light switch, jump into a hot shower, get dressed and grab a cup of fresh brewed coffee before heading to work in our car or on the bus. On the way home, we stop at the grocery store to pick up a few items from the 40,000 choices offered there. What do all these things have in common? They are made possible by fossil fuels. But we have bec... Full story
Millions of unemployed college graduates are back where they started, living with their parents. Upon receiving their diploma, they find themselves saddled with crushing student loan debt and unable to find a job. More than 36 percent of those who have found jobs aren’t working in their chosen profession and many are working for minimum wage. At the same time, millions of good-paying jobs are going unfilled. Nationally, an estimated three million jobs are available in the skilled trades – electricians, plumbers, man...
Normally, you wouldn’t think the cost of electricity would clobber ranchers, but in Hawaii, high power rates are the central competitiveness issue. In fact, the owners of the mammoth Parker Ranch on Hawaii’s big island have calculated their “per cow” electricity costs. Much of the famed ranch’s 130,000 acres is rich grazing land on a high plateau between Hawaii’s twin 13,000 ft. volcanoes. Parker Ranch is one of the nation’s largest beef producers, with much of its product sent to the mainland. The ranch has an extensive wat... Full story
It’s not often we get a chance to peer into the future to see the consequences of our actions. California has given us that opportunity. Before the rains returned to California, the news was full of dramatic stories about the drought there. Mother Jones magazine warned, “California’s Drought Could Be the Worst in 500 Years.” President Obama flew to California and called for shared sacrifice. As Time magazine reported, “He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: deser...
Where there is life, there is risk. That’s not some insightful quotation; it’s just a fact. We’re exposed to risk from the moment we get up in the morning – slip and fall, dog bite, traffic accident, lightning strike. We can manage risk, we can minimize risk, but we cannot eliminate it. That fact used to be accepted as common sense, but in today’s society, people have come to believe that any degree of risk is unacceptable. In fact, trial lawyers have won lawsuits, not because their clients were injured, but because t...
The Seattle Times headline said it all: “Obama running out of reasons to reject Keystone XL.” For five years, the Keystone XL pipeline has been mired in studies, red tape and delay. Now, the State Department has released its final report, concluding that the pipeline would have little or no environmental impact. The State Department has jurisdiction because the pipeline would cross the U.S. border, carrying 800,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Western Canada to Nebraska, where it would connect with an existing pip...
With the ongoing debate about income inequality and increasing the minimum wage, it’s important to revisit the basics. In order to demand a wage increase, you must first have a job. In order to have a job, someone must create that job. In order to create that job, someone must start a business. But now, when our economy desperately needs more jobs, a major study shows that starting a business in the U.S. is more difficult than ever. The study by the World Bank and the International Finance Corp. ranked 189 nations on how e... Full story