Weekend Links

Sorry about missing the last couple of weeks. No real excuses because they all sound lame.  I attempt to do better in the future. Of course, like many of the weekend links I have posted in the past, this one is getting posted Monday night.

LOCAL:

1. The struggles within the Settle Public Schools continues. Over the past couple of years, a vacant school building has been for sale. A private school made an offer of $9.7 million but was turned down in favor of an offer from the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, which was millions less and taxpayer subsidized.

2. Interesting story on a dang if you do, dang if you don’t scenario. Out on the beautiful Olympic peninsula there was a small dam that generated electricity for the region. Recently, that dam was torn out to allow for the restoral of the salmon runs that had died on the river that was dammed. Now another problem has arisen. To replace the energy generated by the dam, one alternative being looked at is to burn the waste from logging. The environmentalists have sued to block this effort. It would not surprise me to find out that the same group of folks that forced the dam to be torn out are the ones blocking attempts to replace the energy generated by the dam.

3. This is the kind of thing that I like to see. I am all for doing what we can for maintaining and improving the environment. It has never been about that whole global warming crap for me. I have been interested in the environment for a very long time. It just that the people who are involved tend to be a little nutty about the whole process (see story above). Now comes two guys, who I am sure voted for Obama and all of his hopey-changy garbage, who come up with an idea that not only benefits the environment, but benefits the dairy farmers. For all of you tree-huggers out there, this is how is supposed to work. If you want to make changes, come up with an idea like these fellas did. This almost sounds like capitalism at work. I’m sure the enviro-communists are having fits right now.  What a great idea!

4. A little bit of good news for the local real estate market. Home sales and prices continue to drop, but there has been a surge in pending sales.

5. State takes aim at those preying on immigrants. This may come as a surprise to some of my readers, but I put this class of individuals in the same category as whale poop. Anyone who takes advantage of folks trying to immigrate legally should be locked up for a very long time. I would also take exception to anyone doing this to illegal immigrants. The illegals shouldn’t be here, but that is not an excuse to take their money and leave them worse off than they were before.

6. David slays Goliath. Microsoft loses at the SCOTUS to a tiny firm over a function (XML editing) within Microsoft’s word processing program Word.

NATION:

1. This is more than a little scary. Buried within the linked article is a stat that might give you the willies.  Based on percentage, housing prices have fallen further than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It took 19 years for those losses to be recovered.

2. So when is the US going to get all that oil for blood the progressives have been screaming about all these years? Recently, two international consortiums finalized deals with the Iraqi government to develop two very large natural gas fields. Neither consortium involves US companies.

3. EPA stonewalls further economic development and energy independence. A proposed pipeline from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast continues to be blocked by Obama’s EPA due to their objections the environmental impact statements don’t ally concerns over oil spills and greenhouse emissions. Not sure how much green house gas would be released by a hunk of steel and aluminum tubing stretching across the central US, but it must be tons for the EPA to be concerned about it. I wonder how many jobs this construction project would create. I also wonder how much oil imports we could reduce if the pipeline were built.  2012 can’t come soon enough.

4. Another reason why 2012 can’t come soon enough. The whole National Labor Relations Board and their stopping Boeing from building the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina now has the attention of House Republicans.   The sooner we get rid of this current administration (2012 is around the corner), the better the economy will be. Anyone thinking that the NLRB is also doing some favors for the two democratic Senators from Washington State? Would this be happening if Slade Gorton were still in Washington?