Like the rest of you, “sticker shock” at the pump has become a regular reality for me. As I turn over more of my paycheck, I joke with the attendant about whether it will cost me the farm or my firstborn male child, though I’m really not willing to give up either. That being said I’m changing the way I do things and putting considerably more planning into any excursions I do around town. That includes any recreation trips I was considering over the next couple of months.
Those thoughts lead to ways to stay closer to home, which lead to thoughts of shopping local, which always brings up the quandary I feel around supporting small businesses and supporting those larger companies that have chosen our community in which to place their business and provide local jobs.
Patriotism vs. profits? Please everyone, stop and observe what your windfall profits are doing to the people of this great country.
I don’t make a habit of going back through things I’ve written before, but with school finished for the year and the Class of 2008 out the door, I came across something the other day that I wrote for the Class of 2001 and thought its message — with a little updating — was still relevant.
Bremerton Mayor Cary Bozeman recently provided the members of the Downtown Bremerton Association (DBA) with encouraging words of continued city revitalization.
With rents skyrocketing and small businesses closing up shop left and right, it’s hard for business owners to believe a change will come their way. The revitalization of Bremerton has transformed the city and there have been many positive changes, but will it bring the people?
We hope so.
Sure enough, there in the How Your U.S. Lawmaker Voted report put out by Roll Call to the media was a listing of the vote in the third week of May on the 2009 military budget.
I had quickly scanned the first part. “By a vote of 384-23, the House on Thursday authorized a $601 billion military budget for fiscal 2009, including $70 billion to fund war in Iraq and Afghanistan for part of the year.”
I was stunned. I read it again.
No holiday tantalizes the senses quite like the upcoming Fourth of July. Nothing is better than a day filled with smelling sweet, succulent chicken, hamburgers and hotdogs as they rest on a lit barbecue pit, cooking to perfection. Except, maybe, walking into a kitchen that smells like apple pie, which forces you to check the freezer just to make sure there’s vanilla bean ice cream to dallop atop a slice.
I was stunned. I read it again.
Sure enough, there in the How Your U.S. Lawmaker Voted report put out by Roll Call to the media was a listing of the vote in the third week of May on the 2009 military budget.
I had quickly scanned the first part. “By a vote of 384-23, the House on Thursday authorized a $601 billion military budget for fiscal 2009, including $70 billion to fund war in Iraq and Afghanistan for part of the year.”
It was the next part that had me reaching for the telephone. Voting yes: Inslee, Larsen, Baird, Hastings, McMorris, Rodgers, Dicks, McDermott, Reichert, Smith.
Sound Off is a public forum. Articles are selected from letters to the editor or may be written specifically for this feature. Today, former South Kitsap School District board member Chris Lemke laments the district’s recent actions in hiring a new school superintendent.
Sound Off is a public forum. Articles are selected from letters to the editor or may be written specifically for this feature. Today, 39th District Rep. Dan Kristiansen (R-Snohomish), argues that a new Washington state tax on Internet sales hurts consumers, businesses and even government.
There is an old saying that the two things certain in life are death and taxes. Sometimes those two converge.
Take growing trees, for example. Tax policy can be the death knell for tree farmers.
Tree farmers are our country’s real risk takers. If they are fortunate, they buy land with mature trees on it.
Congratulations Class of 2008, you did it! You can finally delete WASL and high school cliques from your vocabulary, but be sure to add jobs, taxes and bills. For most of you, these will forever remain a part of your life.
“Love the hair!” the kids commented this week as they thumbed through my high school yearbook. They pointed out our polyester bell-bottomed pants and the way we parted our long, straight hair in the middle, the enormous collars and our platform shoes. When I mentioned that I wore shoes made by Candies, an extremely popular shoemaker at the time, they flashed that great look of teen amazement. Turns out the same corporation is still around, making fashionable shoes for young women in their teens and 20s that commonly feature sandals with wooden soles.
It is too bad that it takes soaring fuel and concomitant food prices to get people to do what they should have been doing all along: buying local.
What does a press secretary do?
Congratulations Class of 2008, you did it! You can finally delete WASL and high school cliques from your vocabulary, but be sure to add jobs, taxes and bills. For most of you, these will forever remain a part of your life.
Thunderbird Rodeo coming soon
It is too bad that it takes soaring fuel and concomitant food prices to get people to do what they should have been doing all along: buying local.
There is global warming. Plus a world-wide energy crisis.
There is an antidote, conservation.
So in a well-intended but ultimately hopeless and pathetic effort to do something about it, I chose to take public transit yesterday from Vancouver, B.C. to Indianola, rather than drive I-5. Here’s a log, like a captain’s log, of my experience.
In a June 4 Guest Opinion (“Victims should be our first safety consideration”) state Sen. Kirk Pearson (R-Monroe) intimated that the state Department of Corrections routinely releases offenders into the neighborhoods of their victims.