Cartoon for the Day

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Claude Bennington Mason County Progressive

PAC PETITION TO SUPPORT EPA

KEEP OUR AIR AND WATER CLEAN AND TREASURED LANDS SAFE!

Subject: Shut down the EPA?
From: Barbara Boxer and Ben Cardin

If you want clean air and safe water for your family, neighborhoods free of hazardous waste, and our precious natural lands protected, we need your help now.

Extreme Republicans in Congress are trying to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, repeal the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act, and defund efforts by the Department of the Interior to protect our nation's wildlife and natural treasures.

And we must stop them.

Sign our petition today and stop extreme Republicans from rolling back these fundamental environmental protections!

Thanks for standing with us.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer and Ben Cardin
U.S. Senators

So What Happened to Our Air at 8:00 AM?

WHY DID SHELTON'S PM 2.5 AIR MONITOR JUMP THIS MORNING?

9/6/11 MEETINGS IN REVIEW

MARATHON TUESDAY

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Tom Davis Mason County Progressive

It’s not often you get to attend a County, Port and City meeting all in the same day and live to write about it, but that’s exactly what happened. Due to the long holiday weekend, all three commissioner meetings aligned with Jupiter and Mars and fell on a Tuesday. If I could have arranged to have a root canal between meetings, my day would have been perfectamente.

So you’d think I’d have a lot to report, but the most exciting thing that happened was watching John Dobson crawl out of his skin while attempting to answer a particularly pithy question about the Port’s “contractual obligations", but I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s start from the beginning.

9:00 AM, BOCC Meeting: The empty seat once occupied by Commissioner Lingle stands as a silent memorial to a truly independent thinker, and I fear it will be a very long time before anyone comes close to filling his shoes -- certainly not from the current crop of candidates.

On the agenda were 17 action items and two of three scheduled hearings, all of which are unworthy of reporting, so let’s just jump to the final hearing: Adoption of "Findings of Facts Justifying a Moratorium on Collective Gardens".

For the official version you need to read the minutes; for a brief summary go to the Mason County Daily News website; and for a longer, yet more lifeless version of the story, you can just stand by your mailbox and wait for the Journal to be delivered. But if you want to get a real “sense” of the proceedings, an accurate, insightful, professional perspective, then read on.

So the hearing was about a couple of capitalistic potheads who opened a medical marijuana dispensary and now want to grow their own weed, as prescribed under RCW: 36.70A.390. Several months ago, Commissioner Lingle and Ring-Erickson were in favor of licensed marijuana dispensaries (with reasonable caveats), and outvoted Tim Sheldon, who apparently prefers his dope on the rocks.

But where, oh where, does someone with arthritis find a little legal reefer to quench their flaming joints? Enter the “Collective Gardens” where several pot-peddlers can grow up to 45 plants under state and local supervision. Not to be outmaneuvered by mere legality, the County quickly placed a moratorium on “Collective Gardens” so they could pretend to study the where, when and hows of the proposal. And now that the moratorium was getting ready to expire something had to be done; something MUST be done.

Cut to the short-story: Both Tim and Lynda voted to extend the moratorium till November 20, in order to allow Barbara Atkins from Community Development more time to study the issue. Toward that end, a Citizen Advisory Committee will meet outside Dunkin’ Doughnuts every Friday night at 12:00 AM (BYOP).

2:00PM, Port of Shelton Commission Meeting (one of my favorite of all pastimes): Few people showed up at the meeting and for good reason, nothing of any importance was on the agenda. I try to sit as close to Executive Director, John Dobson as possible, not to be annoying (though that seems to be the result), but it allows me to read him like a summer novella.

Be that as it may, I felt compelled to dispel another of the annoying myths being promulgated by the Port regarding the Shelton Hills development: Jay and John have stated that the Port is “contractually obligated to the FAA” to protect current and future airport operations from, well, just about anything that might jeopardize airport functions.

What I wanted to know was if the stated threat – possible complaints about noise coming from future residents who might ban together and limit airport operations – had to be real, or could the threat simply be perceived to be real? As suspected, there is more ambiguity and subjective interpretation to this issue than the Port had led the public to believe, as a quick call to the FAA confirmed.

Truth be known, I already knew the answer, but wanted to see how far Port management was willing to obfuscate the facts. Bottom line: the Port is just blowing smoke; Dobson dodged the question, then referred me to the 600 page FAA Airport Compliance Manual, document 5190.6B, which I will endeavor to read in its entirety as soon as hell doth freeze over.

But small pleasures come to those disciplined by patience and blessed with insight, and mine arrived in the form of watching John Dobson dance around the truth while contempt seeped from his every pore. I tell you folks, you could feel the love.

6:00PM; City of Shelton: Zip, Nada, Nyet, Nothing; I should have stayed home and curled up with my good wife. The meeting lasted 20 minutes, fifteen of which was taken up by reading the agenda. I counted four people in the audience, including me and a homeless guy who may have been Gary Cronce. I actually like attending city commission meetings, but this one wasn’t worth the gas; even the Mayor looked bored. He kept asking if anyone wanted to make a public comment. I wanted to give testimony but the podium looked so far away and I was so very, very tired. And tomorrow is another day...

WAS THIS PART OF THE PLAN, JAY HUPP?

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF "WINNING"

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Katherine Price Mason County Progresseive

Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

Natalie Johnson of the Shelton-Mason County Journal wrote an informative article in the September 1, 2011, edition of the Journal titled "State grants to city in jeopardy after growth management ruling". She should have titled it: "Was this part of your plan, Jay Hupp?"

I think not. I think Hupp and friends were surprised at the unintended consequences of "winning" it's battle with the City of Shelton over the rezone of the Hall Equities property.

Thanks to the Port of Shelton, the City of Shelton has been found to be out of compliance with the growth management board. A local municipality has taken another local municipality before the Growth Management Board to stop economic growth and clean (non-polluting) development, at a time when we have acknowledged unemployment near 10% in our county.

The Port (except for Commissioner Jack Miles, who stood with the citizens) fought tooth and nail to (unsuccessfully, I am happy to say) bring us ADAGE - a highly polluting industry that would have provided MAYBE a mere 24 local jobs

This same Port now fights the City's plan to rezone property for development which could provide hundreds of jobs, over many years, in all manner of disciplines. A little moment of economic recovery for Shelton and Mason County in this time of financial uncertainty.

Rather than work with the City of Shelton to bring needed economic growth to Shelton, and by extension to Mason County, the Port of Shelton stood in the way of the City's right to rezone it's property and now, thanks to the efforts of the Port, the City is out of compliance with the state's Growth Management Act.

Rather than work with the City to bring growth and economic prosperity to our community, the Port fought the City in an expensive legal battle and, as of the ruling by the Growth Management Board, the Port "won".

But what did the Port win? And how long is their win?

This matter will now be heard by the Thurston County Superior Court where it is hoped the decision of the Growth Management Board will be seen to be wrong, and where that decision should be reversed with a little schooling (one hopes) of the political-minded Growth Management Board for reaching this bad decision at the behest of the Port in the first place.

And that long-winded summary of how we got here, and where we may be going, leads to the reason I wonder whether Hupp's win did not come with an unintended consequence.

Returning to Natalie Johnson's article titled "State grants to city in jeopardy after growth management ruling", we are informed of the potentially unintended consequence of the Port's fight with the City.

The unintended consequence: The City of Shelton is no longer eligible for state funds; any state funds, but in particular some it was hoping to obtain from the state whose funding cycle could end BEFORE the Superior Court in Olympia rules on this matter. What state dollars are drying up as a result of being out of compliance with the GMA?

One is a "20-year loan from the Public Works Trust Fund to pay for upgrades to city well number one, which serves JOHNS PRAIRIE AND THE PORT OF SHELTON!" (Johnson article; emphasis mine).

Johnson goes on to report that this state-funded project "would correct a problem causing high levels of sulphides and iron in the well water, adds a storage tank and removes sand from the well..."

So, did the the Port Commissioners or their Executive Director consider what other events might be triggered by their successfully protecting their private airport from encroachment by pesky citizens and developers?

I am guessing not.

I think these fellows focus so narrowly on what it is they think they are protecting that they cannot see the forest for the trees. Their actions prevent the clean up of Goose Lake; the improvement of the interchange at Wallace-Kneeland and Highway 101; the influx of badly needed jobs for these projects alone; and now they prevent the City of Shelton from being eligible for any state dollars so long as it remains out of compliance with the GMA, including state dollars that would benefit Johns Prairie and the Port of Shelton.

As a resident of both the City of Shelton and the Port of Shelton, I am pretty unhappy about these results.

If you are a resident of the City or the Port, or both, perhaps you would like to share your feelings with the current Port leadership?

Hupp, Wallitner and Dobson have had the unbridled running of the Port for a long time, but there has always been this annoying buzz in the person of the citizens of Mason County and the only commissioner not on Social Security, Jack Miles.

If these three officials can play fast and loose with MOST things Port while the citizens are watching and Commissioner Miles is there to represent his constituents, what will it be like in the awful event that Dick Taylor should beat Jack Miles? All things Port would "fly under the radar" as Commissioner Hupp loves to say. All things...

Keep it light.

LABOR DAY 2011

LONG LIVE LABOR UNIONS!

Image:
Industrial Workers of the World, published in Solidarity, 1917;
Rebel Voices: An IWW Anthology, edited by Joyce L. Kornbluh, 1998

Cartoon for the Day

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Claude Bennington Mason County Progressive

TAR $ANDS: Dirty Oil for Export via USA

Excerpt from:
U.S. Awash in Oil and Lies, Report Charges
by Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada - With four times as many oil rigs pumping domestic oil today than eight years ago and declining domestic demand, the United States is awash in oil. In fact, the U.S. exports more oil than it imports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration - and has done so for nearly two decades.

The country's oil industry is primarily interested in who will pay the most on the global marketplace. They call that "energy security" when it suits, but in reality it is "oil company security" through maximising profits, say energy experts like Steve Kretzman of Oil Change International, an NGO that researches the links between oil, gas and coal companies and governments.

The only reason U.S. citizens may be forced to endure a risky, Canadian-owned oil pipeline called Keystone XL is so oil companies with billion-dollar profits can get the dirty oil from Canada's tar sands down to the Gulf of Mexico to export to Europe, Latin America or Asia, according to a new report by Oil Change International released Wednesday.

"Keystone XL will not lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but rather transport Canadian oil to American refineries for export to overseas markets," concludes the report, titled "Exporting Energy Security".

Little of the 700,000 to 800,000 barrels of tar sands oil pumped through the 2,400-kilometre, seven-billion-dollar Keystone XL will end up in U.S. gas tanks because the refineries on the Gulf Coast are all about expanding export markets. One huge refinery operator called Valero has been touting the potential export revenues of tar sands oil to investors, the report found.

Because Keystone XL crosses national borders, President Barack Obama has to issue a permit declaring the pipeline serves the "national interest" in order to be approved.

"The only way Keystone XL could be considered in the national interest is if you equate that with profits for the oil industry," said Kretzman, who wrote the report.

Canada's huge tar sands deposits, located mainly in the far north of the province of Alberta, are the world's second largest oil reserves, but they are landlocked. It's the industry's biggest worry and also Alberta Energy Minister Ron Lieper's biggest concern.

Lieper recently said that without new pipelines "our greatest risk in Alberta is that by 2020 we will be landlocked in bitumen". Bitumen is thick tarry oil from the tar sands that needs lots of high-energy and chemical processing to be usable - one reason it's widely considered the world's dirtiest oil.

The shortest route to the big Asian markets is through the Rocky Mountains to Canada's west coast via the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline. However, Canadian native people live on some of the land and are staunchly opposed, so the industry thought it would be easier to put an export pipeline right through the U.S. heartland, said Kretzman.

"The oil industry would have done the Northern Gateway first but gambled that resistance to the pipeline would be far weaker in the mid-west," he told IPS.

They were wrong.

Thousands of people, including landowners and religious leaders, have gone to Washington DC in the past two weeks to tell President Obama to reject Keystone. Nearly 850 people have been arrested for standing on the sidewalk in front of the White House in what protesters call the largest civil disobedience in the history of the U.S. climate movement.

"It's remarkable, a very dignified and moving protest much like the civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s," said Maude Barlow, chairperson of the Council of Canadians, a large environmental NGO.

"This is about the rights of the environment and future generations. It is the blossoming of a new movement," Barlow told IPS from Washington.

Other massive pipelines are being planned, including ones bringing tar sands crude to New England and the Great Lakes, she said. "Keystone is just the beginning. Once these are built they will have to put something in them."

Infrastructure dictates policy, she stressed. Once pipelines, refineries or power plants are built, it is nearly impossible for governments to shut them down.

Last year, scientists writing in the journal Science concluded there is already enough fossil fuel burning capacity to raise global temperatures by 1.5 degrees C by 2060. Any additional power plants, vehicles, or other fossil fuel burning equipment built from 2011 onward puts humanity at ever greater risk of catastrophic climate change.

"We conclude that sources of the most threatening emissions have yet to built," the scientists wrote.

The Obama administration knows this but the powerful oil lobby can use its unlimited funds to attack Democratic officials during the next election cycle if they don't approve the pipeline, says Kretzman.

Changes to U.S. law in 2010 allow corporations to spend as much as they want on elections, and there is no sector with more money than the oil industry.

"That scares the hell out of the Obama administration," he said.

It's never been clearer that corporations wield the real power in the United States and Canada, activists say.

"This is the beginning of a very big fight for the future," Barlow told IPS.

Link to complete article:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/02-7

SHELTON BLOG NOTE:

TAKE ACTION!
SEND PRESIDENT OBAMA A MESSAGE:
http://act.350.org/sign/tar-sands/

DICK TAYLOR? I DON't THINK SO!

When It Snows in Hell & All the Little Angels Go Skating

Submitted to Shelton Blog by Katherine Price Mason County Progressive

In his 8/25/11 letter to the Journal editor titled "Avery urges voters to support Dick Taylor", Brian E. Avery, recent candidate for Port of Shelton Commissioner, encourages those who voted for him to now vote for Dick Taylor. It is hard to discern from his letter exactly what prompted Mr. Avery to take this position.

In his letter to the editor, Mr. Avery states that the two sitting Port Commissioners (Hupp and Wallitner) must be "honorable men" because they "have chosen to represent the voters of the Port District and the call of public service is a noble one".

I, however, think that the use of the word honorable isn't quite right here because their behavior toward the citizens ("voters of the Port District") shows a side of them which is not honorable in the least. And "public service"? Serving up an airport for their buddies seems more likely, and at the taxpayers' expense to boot.

How else can we explain the Port spending more than one-quarter of a million dollars in attorney fees (in a twelve month period) to protect the airport from the pesky developer next door? That's a quarter of a million TAXPAYER dollars, not Hupp and Wallitner dollars. What else might the Port have done with that money that might have benefited the citizens a little more? An endless list of things, actually!

Mr. Avery suggests that Hupp, Wallitner, and Ring Master Dobson should "give up your shortsighted focus on the airport". Aside from wanting to burn biomass, the airport is very nearly the sole focus of the Port right now, and protecting the airport trumps the citizen's right to benefit from the development planned by Hall Equities.

In addition, Mr. Avery encourages Hupp and Wallitner to complete the master plan for the harbor and stop their opposition to the Shelton Hills Project. When it snows in hell and all of the little angels go skating, they sure will get right on that; and I am sure they will thank Mr. Avery for the suggestion.

Mr. Avery also states in his letter that the "bickering" at the Port has to end and that is why we should now all support the only candidate who can stop the "bickering", namely Dick Taylor. He proposes that Dick Taylor, the candidate who is financially supported by Hupp, Wallitner, Dobson, Rick Hoss, Jack Krause, Linda Gott, Wyla Wood, Patti Case, Jerry Ring-Erickson (his campaign treasurer), etc., and the rest of the folks who think biomass did not get a fair shake here in Shelton, can stop the "bickering" at the Port.

Well of course Dick Taylor could stop the "bickering"! He is a "yes-man" for industry (remember "Citizens for a Prosperous Mason County" that Steve Bloomfield and Dick Taylor started to support ADAGE?).

Indeed, Mr. Avery makes a number of really good points about things that should and could be done at the Port by the existing commissioners, but then suggests that they will be done when Dick Taylor is on the team.

Really? These are the very things these two great "public servants" have clearly demonstrated that they do not want to do now. What in the world would make them want to do these things later, particularly when they have biomass-proponent Dick Taylor on their team?

I am assuming that Mr. Avery is being sincere. Nevertheless, ignore, please ignore, his recommendation that we now turn to Dick Biomass Taylor as the savior of our Port.

I'm voting for Jack Miles...he is our best chance to protect the environment and insure that citizens have a voice at the Port of Shelton.

OBAMA CAVES IN TO BIG POLLUTERS

Excerpts from:

Obama halts controversial EPA regulation
By Julie Pace and Dina Cappiello

WASHINGTON —President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration's controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency - and the unanimous opinion of its independent panel of scientific advisers - and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone, smog's main ingredient. The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month - and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.

The withdrawal of the proposed regulation marks the latest in a string of retreats by Obama in the face of Republican opposition. Last December, he shelved, at least until the end of 2012, his insistence that Bush-era tax cuts should no longer apply to the wealthy. Earlier this year he avoided a government shutdown by agreeing to Republican demands for budget cuts. And this summer he acceded to more than a $1 trillion in spending reductions, with more to come, as the price for an agreement to raise the nation's debt ceiling.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, had muted praise for the White House, saying that withdrawal of the smog regulation was a good first step toward removing obstacles that are blocking business growth...

Obama had initially set out to correct a weaker standard set by President George W. Bush. Jackson had said in July that the standard would not survive a legal challenge because it did not follow the recommendations of the agency's scientific advisers.

In March, the independent panel said in a letter to Jackson that it was unanimous in its recommendation to make the smog standard stronger and that the evidence was "sufficiently certain" that a range proposed in January 2010 under Obama would benefit public health.

The White House, which has pledged to base decisions on science, said Friday that the science behind its initial decision needed to be updated, and a new standard would be issued in 2013.

Major industry groups had lobbied hard for the White House to abandon the smog regulation, and applauded Friday's decision.

"The president's decision is good news for the economy and Americans looking for work. EPA's proposal would have prevented the very job creation that President Obama has identified as his top priority," said Jack Gerard, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute.

The withdrawal of the proposed EPA rule comes three days after the White House identified seven such regulations that it said would cost private business at least $1 billion each. The proposed smog standard was estimated to cost anywhere between $19 billion and $90 billion, depending on how strict it would be.

However, the Clean Air Act does not allow the EPA to consider how much it will cost to comply when picking a new standard.

Republican lawmakers have blamed what they see as excessive regulations backed by the Obama administration for some of the country's economic woes, and House Republicans pledged this week to try to block four environmental regulations, including the one on some pollution standards, when they return after Labor Day.

But perhaps more than some of the other regulations under attack, the ground-level ozone standard is most closely associated with public health - something the president said he wouldn't compromise in his regulatory review. Ozone is the main ingredient in smog, which is a powerful lung irritant that occasionally forces cancellation of school recesses, and causes asthma and other lung ailments.

A stronger standard, while it would cost billions, would also save billions in avoided health care costs and hospital visits.

Criticism from environmentalists, a core Obama constituency already battling him over a planned oil pipeline from Canada to the Gulf Coast, was swift following the White House announcement.

"The Obama administration is caving to big polluters at the expense of protecting the air we breathe," said Gene Karpinski, the president of the League of Conservation Voters. "This is a huge win for corporate polluters and huge loss for public health."

In his statement, the president said that withdrawing the regulation did not reflect a weakening of his commitment to protecting public health and the environment.

"I will continue to stand with the hardworking men and women at the EPA as they strive every day to hold polluters accountable and protect our families from harmful pollution," he said.

The decision mirrors one made by Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush. EPA scientists had recommended a stricter standard to better protect public health. Bush personally intervened after hearing complaints from electric utilities and other affected industries. His EPA set a standard of 75 parts per billion, stricter than one adopted in 1997, but not as strong as federal scientists said was needed to protect public health....

The American Lung Association, which sued the EPA over the Bush standard, said it would continue its legal fight now that Obama is essentially endorsing the weaker limit. The group had suspended its lawsuit after the Obama administration vowed to correct it.

Link to complete article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2016089941_apusobamaeparegulation.html

SHELTON BLOG NOTE:

TAKE ACTION NOW!
SEND PRESIDENT OBAMA A MESSAGE AT:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=214704.0&dlv_id=184365
AND/OR
http://us.greenpeace.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=16461.0&dlv_id=19961