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A potpourri of opinions
Adele Ferguson
Political Columnist |
ITEM — Striking members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild called on readers and advertisers to boycott the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer until a new work contract is hammered out. Advertising and reading, they said, should be shifted to the union’s recently spawned publication, the Seattle Union Record.
COMMENT — Hey, we’re not mad at either paper, so why should we get involved in it? It’s bad enough that there is so little trust between the two sides that the papers felt compelled to fence in the plant and for fear of what? Vandalism? This is the kind of stuff you might expect from striking longshoremen or teamsters, but newspaper folk? We’re supposed to be more civilized than that.
ITEM — Some Republican state lawmakers have vowed to attempt a repeal in the 2001 Legislature of the extension of health care benefits to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian state workers granted at the direction of Gov. Gary Locke. Also coming to the Legislature, if signatures are obtained, is Initiative 250, limiting eligibility for benefits to lawful spouses.
COMMENT — Access to individual health care contracts has been restored, hasn’t it? Let these live-ins buy their own, or the next thing we know everybody with a live-in house mate will expect it. Which, I suspect, is exactly what’s coming next.
ITEM — There is no evidence, says an independent group of salmon researchers, that the billions of dollars spent on conservation practices are having a positive impact on salmon numbers, a negative impact or no impact. The recovery efforts, they said, include leaving more trees as buffers, keeping cattle and urban pollutants out of streams and limiting growth in sensitive habitat areas, but they have ignored counting the fish to monitor the results. It’s time to spend more money on counting, they said.
COMMENT — Counting the fish? Why don’t they count the nets instead? There they go again, blissfully overlooking the one sure way to restore the salmon and that’s to stop netting them, particularly at the terminal end of their spawning journeys where they are helpless to avoid walls of nets at the river mouths and bank to bank nets upstream. When the fish are all gone, we can thank the commercial fishers, tribal and non-tribal, and a string of gutless governors who let them destroy a resource that belongs to all the people of the state, regardless of some inane judges.
ITEM — The Washington Education Assn. will ask the Legislature to provide housing allowances for teachers in areas where cost of such is so high they can’t even live in the districts in which they teach because their salaries aren’t sufficient..
COMMENT — See, what did I tell you. You thought when you voted to guarantee them an annual cost of living raise that would shut them up for awhile. Now they not only want salary increases on top of the COLAs but housing allowances. It’d probably be cheaper in the future to build new schools in the low rent districts and bus the rich kids in.
ITEM — Two Bremerton teen age sisters died of asphyxiation in a house fire that started from a candle burning in the bedroom of their younger sister, who escaped the blaze.
COMMENT — For God’s sake, how long does it take to get through to people about the dangers of candles, fireplace ashes stored in paper sacks or cardboard boxes and carelessly stored matches and cigarette lighters? I’ve been preaching this for years to no avail, but I would hope, considering the season with increased use of candles, every school at its next assembly would deliver the message to students that candles can be as lethal as a loaded pistol. Otherwise, I fear, these girls are just the first victims.
(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.) |
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