Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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While European cities are welcoming large cruise ships again, many of the same ship owners are canceling calls to North American seaports because of continued stringent COVID restrictions. In March 2020, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) issued a "No Sail and Suspension of Further Embarkation" order. The 2020 cruise season abruptly ended. Since then, the order has been only slightly modified. However, Canada's shutdown has been extended through February 2022. Both directives apply to vessels...
Surprisingly, there is something U.S. Presidents agree upon — America’s economic and national security hinge upon maintaining our technology edge in semiconductors. Those tiny computer chips are the brains of modern electronics. They operate our laptops and smart phones and permeate every sector of our lives from farming and manufacturing to health care and public safety. They are embedded in our military’s most advanced equipment and give us a tactical edge. Semiconductors are among our natio...
America’s media is suffering from a truth deficit leaving many to wonder where to go for honest, reliable and accurate information. Unfortunately, it is not the mainstream or social media. Last month Forbes magazine found for the first time, fewer than half of all Americans acknowledge any kind of trust of major media. The information was captured in Edelman’s annual trust barometer. “Fifty-six percent of Americans, for example, said they agreed with the following statement: “Jour...
These days the mere mention of tax incentives for factories touches off a major firestorm in Seattle and you’d better be looking for an expeditious way out of town. Not so in Austin where major international corporations are receiving millions in property tax rebates when they build giant new factories creating thousands of jobs. Similar to Washington, Texas has no income tax. It has a sales tax and relies heavily on property taxes to support city and county governments. Property taxes are h...
In the coming decade, European Union leaders are investing heavily in hydrogen fuel research, believing it is a key to eliminating CO2 discharges from vehicles. One new technology is called pyrolysis. It is hoped the technology will allow Europeans to pipe hydrogen much like natural gas now travels long distances across country and under water. Hydrogen created by pyrolysis is an adaptation of an industrial process developed over the years. It was designed to remove CO2 from the process creating charred wood and organic matter. Currently, 95...
Idaho Congressman Mike Simpson’s $33 billion plan to remove the lower Snake River dams is unwise. However, if he pushes it, he needs include the impact of breaching dams in his home state which completely shutoff salmon and steelhead migration. Simpson, a Republican representing eastern Idaho, announced he wants to rupture the four lower Snake River dams— Ice Harbor, Little Goose, Lower Monumental and Lower Granite—-all in southeast Washington. Those impoundments have fish passage systems to allow adult anadromous fish to continue upstr...
Why would any company spend $5.5 million for a 30-second Super Bowl ad that leaves viewers perplexed as some glitzy and abstract commercials did? After production costs are tacked on, you’d think advertisers would want their messages clearly understood especially in difficult times. Some prominent advertisers, such as Coca Cola, Budweiser and Pepsi, traditional large buyers, skipped Super Bowl LV; however, WeatherTech did not. After game, the list of best and worst ads was released. It did n...
With COVID-19 vaccines being widely dispensed, will an end to this pandemic halt “work from home?” Will workers return to downtown offices at pre-pandemic levels? However, it is not an either/or question, said Stanford Professor Nicholas Bloom, who is co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s productivity, innovation and entrepreneurship program. “Working from home will be very much a part of our post-COVID economy,” he added, “so, the sooner policymakers and business (e...
Now that vaccines are available, we hope our lives will return to the way they were before the coronavirus pandemic blanketed the globe. That is not likely to occur. Last March our booming economy was clobbered by COVID-19. A worldwide pandemic ensued. There was no vaccine to counter it and even though vaccines were developed at “warp speed” lots of things changed and have become imbedded in our daily lives. Futurist Bernard Marr, columnist in Forbes, believes employers quickly adapted to a rem...
While the coronavirus and its devastating effects on people and economies worldwide were unfortunately the top 2020 stories, the massive impact of western wildfires can’t be ignored. It was catastrophic. The National Interagency Fire Center’s western states tally shows a record 8.6 million acres were incinerated in 2020 compared with 4.6 million acres in 2019. In Washington just over 700,000 acres were burned; however, California and Oregon were not as fortunate. By comparison, a combined 5.7...
Christmas is an especially difficult time for anyone grieving for lost loved ones. Try adding a crippling killer virus into that mix. That is the tragic reality of 2020. Even though the traditional ceremonies attended by thousands went virtual this year, more than 1.7 million holiday wreaths were placed against grave markers of fallen service men and women. Normally, the fallen are remembered on Memorial Day, but thanks to a Maine family and over hundreds of thousand donors and volunteers, on...
Would you believe in the future when a cement truck shows up to pour your foundation or patio, the mixture will likely contain ground-up wind turbine blades? As a part of new agreement between GE Renewable Energy and Veolia North America (VNA), old blades, consisting mostly of fiberglass, are shredded at a processing facility in Missouri and then shipped to cement plants across America where they replace coal, sand, and clay in manufacturing. “Last summer, we completed a trial using a GE b...
One of the biggest challenges of the 21st Century is dealing with the progress of the 20th Century — especially old computers, monitors, cellular phones and televisions. These appliances depend on hazardous materials, such as mercury, to operate. After a 5-8-year life, many are tossed into dumpsters and sent to landfills where those hazardous materials can leach into the soil and groundwater. That was the opening paragraph of a column I wrote 20 years ago. However, today the problem is much l...
Diversity in the ranks has been the lifeline of our military, but it wasn’t always that way. We ought to be thankful for all of the men and women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who put their lives in harm’s way to protect our freedoms and way of life. When my father was inducted into the U.S. Army during World War II, our military was segregated. That lasted until 1948 when President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981. Truman recognized integration was key to winning the war in Eur...
It’s no secret that airlines and airplane manufacturers have been clobbered by the coronavirus pandemic. Particularly hard hit are international flights traditionally flown by jumbo jets. Borders are closed and people aren’t flying. There is a small silver-lining. Just as restaurants started take-out service to survive, airlines are filling planes with freight. U.S. airlines are reeling from the pandemic and have lost more than $20 billion combined in the last two quarters. Even with the surge i...
Diversity in the ranks has been the lifeline of our all-volunteer military, but it wasn’t always that way. As we celebrate Veterans Day, we ought to be thankful for all of the men and women from a variety of ethnic backgrounds who put their lives in harm’s way to protect our freedoms and make safe our way of life. When my father was inducted into the U.S. Army during World War II, our military was segregated. That lasted until 1948 when President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981. Truman...
A couple of years ago, a major regional medical clinic leader announced his support for a local tax hike to beef up the city’s police force and provide cops with better training and capabilities. His rational was two-fold: the Clinic needed police to augment its security and good public safety attracted the best staff. Any realtor will tell you people want good schools and safe neighborhoods. They want police who can respond quickly to emergency calls and investigate crimes. Today, the p...
People have changed their travel preferences to minimize their COVID-19 exposure. Travel trailers and motorhomes are iconic symbols of campgrounds in our “great outdoors.” Meanwhile, outdoor recreation increased once the initial lockdowns were lifted. Before the pandemic came ashore in the U.S., the number of active camping households was increasing. It reached 1.4 million in 2018. In effect, outdoor recreation came before “social distancing” had a name. As travelers try to keep their separation...
To the average American, China’s control of the world production, processing technology and stockpile of critical metals is not their concern. However, to our military and high-tech leaders, it is a very big deal. Our government has a list consisting of 35 metals considered to be vital to our national economy and security. While 17 are classified as “rare earth” and are not commonly known, all are critical components of products such as smart phones, laptop computers, lithium-ion batte...
Like other nations, China is struggling with the deadly Covid-19 virus and suffocating under mountains of trash its residents generate each day. Wuhan hospitals generated six times as much medical waste at the peak of the outbreak as they did before the crisis began. The daily output of medical waste reached 240 metric tons, about the weight of an adult blue whale. While the pandemic has dramatically improved air quality because people are working from home and not commuting, it has been a...
Not only is the world in the grasp of the COVID-19 pandemic, but America’s western wildlands are burning up as well. Gov. Gavin Newsom told reporters California has a dual crises: the massive wildfire complexes and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “At this time last year, California had seen 4,292 fires that burned 56,000 acres. So far this year, we’ve had 7,002 fires that have burned a whopping 1.4 million acres.” California reports more than 660,000 coronavirus cases. In Washington, the gig...
Sunny summer weather helped restaurant owners and workers recover after they were broadsided by the coronavirus pandemic last March. However, as fall morphs into winter and diners are forced back inside, the big question will be: Are there enough customers to keep what’s left of the restaurant sector financially viable? The worst fears of many American businesses are coming true. With no recovery in sight from the COVID-19 pandemic, 72,842 businesses across the U.S. have permanently closed, a...
If Americans are to receive all of their electricity without coal and natural gas by 2035, they will need nuclear power. Even if Washingtonians, who already procure over 70 percent of their electricity from the hydro, are to be completely devoid of fossil fuel generation by 2045, they must have nuclear. Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act passed earlier this year by the legislature leans heavily on renewable fuels, particularly wind and solar. It calls for electrical generation to be c...
Our environmental quality strategy must be encompassing and not just focus on climate change. Since Democrats announced their Green New Deal, the emphasis is reducing greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, which contribute to global warming. Their goal is to replace gasoline and diesel burning vehicles with those operated by batteries and to eliminate coal and natural gas burning power plants. It is understandable since the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities is from...
On July 4, 1975, America proudly celebrated its Bicentennial as the world’s greatest nation while Poland was a suppressed Soviet satellite state. Poles had no right to free speech, were hungry and impoverished. If you wanted a job, you played ball with Communist Party bosses. If you disagreed with their ideology, you likely were imprisoned. Poland was a rather bleak land which had not recovered from the German Blitzkrieg in 1939. Meanwhile, in Washington, the Business Week program started at C...
