Once again it's been about six weeks since your correspondent (that's me) strayed off course. Lately, I've been focusing on one or two issues each week. But at least once every 42 days or so, I start to feel I'm falling way behind the news curve. And when that happens, it's time for the catch-up column, a scattered commentary on the many things that make living in 2005 Seattle (and America) such a frustratingly interesting experience.
* For starters, on April 5, the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals turned down the appeal of an Oregon National Guardsman who didn't want to serve an extra 26 years. That's not a typo: 26 years!
Emilio Santiago, recently of Pasco, finished an eight-year bit last June. But the government, claiming he was essential to the war effort, extended him for 26 years. He's off to Afghanistan to refuel helicopters or some such as you read this.
It's appalling that a patriotic young American who has already put in more time in the military than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice combined, has been extended without his own consent. Why not send one of Bush's daughters, or one of Cheney's children?
Worse, Santiago wasn't extended for one more year - a term that, though it seems unfair, might be justified in a time of war. But 26 years?
Day after day things have been happening since Sept. 11, 2001, that I have great difficulty reconciling with my idea (deluded, maybe) of what America is and what the country supposedly stands for. People in prison without being charged, say.
Santiago, interviewed after the court ruled against him, didn't even seem angry. He appeared puzzled and hurt. Who in their right (or is it left?) mind can blame him?
*Another news item that confirms all my worst prejudices was played on the front page of The Seattle Times two weeks ago. "Business is basking in strong GOP majority," the big black letters bannered. The article, taken from the Washington Post, went on to say that Fortune 500 companies that invested "millions of dollars" in electing Republicans are emerging as "the earliest beneficiaries" of the Bush government.
Duh! This isn't news. This is a fact as obvious as the nose on Pinocchio's face.
Exxon Mobil, among others, is on the verge of drilling in Alaska's pristine National Wildlife Refuge (America needs more oil for more SUVs).
Wal-Mart, a huge contributor to the regime of corporate flacks occupying the White House, has recently won "long-sought protections from class-action suits," according to the same Post article.
There is an idea abroad in the land that what's good for Big Business is good for America.
This is a fantasy propagated by those with the most to gain, the already-superwealthy CEOs of these same Fortune 500 companies. Making a few rich at the expense of the many is an old American idea all right. The problem is, it's an old South American idea.
* Speaking of the environment - that's a fancy word for places like the pristine Alaskan wilderness our government can't wait to open up for drilling - the Environmental Protection Agency last week unveiled a less-than-stringent rule limiting mercury emissions from U.S. power plants. The new rule was seen as slack by certain environmentalists, but EPA officials said controls could not be more aggressive because, according to another Washington Post report, "the cost to industry already far exceeded the public-health payoff."
What the EPA bosses did not reveal was that a Harvard University study, paid for by the EPA, co-authored by an EPA scientist and peer-reviewed by two other EPA scientists, had "reached the opposite conclusion," again according to the Post.
That analysis rated the health benefits of stricter regulations as 100 times greater than the official EPA announcement. But according to the Post, top EPA officials "ordered the findings stripped from public documents."
According to the study's authors, that's because if the report were factored in, controls would have had to be more stringent, not less. "Hey, pass me that undersized, mercury-ridden tuna, I'm starvin'!"
* It's only fair, since I've supported beleaguered King County Elections honcho Dean Logan in previous columns, to publicly throw in the towel.
I knew Logan when I was a county reporter in Kitsap County. He was then the top aide to Kitsap's longtime (and super-competent) auditor Karen Flynn. Logan was a guy who seemed to have a limitless future. Flynn praised him to the stars. Somebody heard her, because Logan soon left Kitsap for a good job in Olympia and parlayed that success into the King County job.
But day after day Logan's elections crew keeps finding more uncounted absentee ballots. Just last week another 93 were found some-where in what must be the proverbial rat's nest. This time Logan wasn't even telling anybody until a reporter, who must have been tipped, quizzed him about the errant ballots. Three of Logan's employees have been suspended as of this writing, but it seems to me it might be time to put the blame at the top of the chain.
If Logan's department was a jet plane, it would have crashed.
If it was a baseball team, it would have been the 2004 Mariners, without Ichiro.
It if was a movie, it would have been "Heaven's Gate."
One mistake is no big deal. Two or three can be forgiven. But the lost- and miscounted-votes stories that seem to emanate from Logan's department on a near-weekly basis - the election was five months ago - bring me to the sad conclusion that the Peter Principle doesn't just apply to columnists.
* I could go on, and on, and on; there's always more appalling stuff lately, both close to home and far, far away in another galaxy called Washington, D.C., but I ran long in this space last week, and one of my regular readers chastised me when she saw me on the street last week.
"When your piece is on two pages, it's too hard to follow," she said. She was a pointing a finger when she said it, too.
I can't afford to lose her, so I'm stopping right now.
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