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Most fascinating discussion and appalling performance!   Big part of yesterday's election was about taxation of resident-but-out-of-state businesses, but no one on show seemed to know tax implications of Facebook's new installation, including our state official!  Does Tim McCabe know what he is doing?  Unless I missed something, the only factual piece of information was the 5% franchise fee ($4000-$5000) reported by City of Prineville's Jason Carr.  Excellent questioning by Emily Harris of a gang who apparently cannot shoot straight!   Is it telling that the most cogent voice was that of a realtor (Jim Wilcox)?  McCabe needs to pray that the Governor does not hear a tape of this show.  Sheeesh!

posted 3 years, 3 months ago
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We seem to get real concerned when Chinese manufacturers sell poisonous cadmium plated trinkets on US markets, but we ask about pennies of electrical rates and allow ninety tons of mercury to be dumped in our backyards!  Who is flimm-flamming us?

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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When I was a child, not so many years ago, the Columbia River was free of mercury and we ate salmon from the river.  Now, some 90 tons per year flow into the river from burning coal at Boardman and its sister electrical generating plant.  Last month I visited Bodensee, the huge lake between Germany and Switzerland where I ate a whitefish that has been commercially fished there for centuries.  This lake is surrounded by dense population and industry, including coal burning, but it is clean and the Rhine River flows from it clear.  My questions may sound rhetorical but they are specific: How is it that we allow the debate over burning coal to be framed in terms of cost efficiency?  While hardware exists to burn coal cleanly, why do we allow any mercury pollution at all?  Why do we allow an electrical utility to reduce its future financial uncertainty, while at the same time we allow an enormous uncertainty: Mercury pollution of the River from the Yakima to the ocean?

posted 3 years, 4 months ago
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