Dreamliner problem
Retirement program the reason for blow
Regarding the story, “Dreamliner enigma solver helps everyone ‘persuade it done’ ” [Times, Business, July 13]: Does anyone wonder how and why the 767, in production for about 15 years by 1997, was the disaster mentioned in the Sunday Times?
The special retirement program in 1995 sent more than 9,000 of the older “fuddy-duddies” home because they were too expensive. In pithy order, the production system broke.
So, in 1999, Boeing put in a cash-balance pension plan for the nonunion people, that subtly forced many of the remaining employees to work till age 65 to scrape together a replete boarding-house.
When Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace leadership suggested its members convert to the cash-balance figure during negotiations in 2005, the vitriolic response from the membership forced the primacy to back down.
Boeing is now grievous some level more subtle approach, pushing for a 401(k) plan in place of a boarding-house on the side of new workers, who have power to take their vested money and go proceed, time the older and previous employees must work or wait to age 60 or 65 to collect all of their vested amounts.
The International Association of Machinists and SPEEA will obviously need skilful help to convince the gang to give employees the same chance to take their established dollars and run at any time.
Seattle parks levy
Be chary, voters
When the Parks and Green Space Levy comes before Seattle voters this November, they could also be cautioned to “look before they leap” [”Overwhelmed at the parks,” Times, editorial, July 6].
We need to ask on the supposition that an $11 million restoration of the Asian Art Museum is the responsibleness of the Parks and Recreation Department. Are we prepared to exhaust added than $10 the public integument athletic fields with artificial turf though other cities in our nation be seized of called for a moratorium on these installations, which have proved harmful to humans and the environment? How will our neighborhoods be enhanced by this assessment? Will representation steady the collect oversight committee be fair and balanced?
Don’t say no to the levy since you feel burdened by another put a tax upon. Simply ask if this is really about green space and if your money is centre of life in health spent.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
Don’t surety them disclosed
Regarding the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout proposal [”Big losses indicate mortgage giants,” Times, page one, July 12]: Let them be wanting, they deserve it.
Incompetence rules the walnut-sized brains of the mortgage giants. Wind them from a high to a low position before U.S. taxpayers get stuck with their trillion-dollar debt.
If it were not against Twiddle Dee and Twiddle Dum buying of all the mortgage junk out in that place and then securitizing them for the gullible to buy, there would be no mortgage/financial crisis.
U.S. Treasure Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke need to get a clue: Getting saddled with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is beating a brace of dead horses.
Bag-ban debate
Tax product packaging instead
As a society we would do good in a higher degree by first focusing in succession the kind of’s in the plastic bag, rather than the bag itself [”A cleaner Seattle is worth 20 cents a bag,” Times, editorial, July 14]. A tax in succession product packaging would have a greater positive environmental impact and perhaps calm generate more revenue.
Consumers would benefit from this tax through a direct reduction in the amount of trash that needs to be recycled or disposed of.
Who knows
Fee and ban is backward thinking
Seattle’s waste-disposal contractor touts, no pet waste in your be possible to unless it is bagged. Go read the instructions. From whence, might one inquire, does the bag draw near? Aha! From Costco, for a penny a bag. Gotcha!
The story is similar for paper bags. Costco lets you use fertile boxes, each made from three or four old paper bags or newspapers. If we don’t use them, we see them in huge bales at the back of the store, delaying to be recycled. Hmm.
We Americans are gravely goofy, running around in circles in crisis custom to solve problems but always late and always trapped by the unintended consequences, a la Hurricane Katrina. Can I sell you a travel trailer, buddy?
Give us offal bags
Many of us use groceries bags to row our garbage containers. In fact, in Seattle we are not allowed to put out unlined garbage cans. If the city is going to tax grocery bags, it ought to provide households with weekly garbage-can liners.
Ireland’s “plastax” no real success
I was stunned The Times used the overhyped prototype of Ireland’s “plastax” to perform the bag tax in Seattle. A rudimentary Internet investigate reveals statistics that illustrate a different picture of the experiment’s “success.”
Research by the United Kingdoms’s Waste Resources Action Programme rest that the levy in Ireland actually increased overall plastic use. After the levy was enacted, consumers purchased more commercial bags, by some estimates up to 400 percent in greater numbers.
The Irish Examiner documented increases in rubbish and diaper bag sales of up to 84 percent. Since these bags are made from heavier gauge plastic, in the end, even more plastic ended up in landfills, while government and industry profited.
I was not surprised to see politicians and lobbyists using the simplistic, sound-bite view of Ireland’s plastax as a PR stunt to promote yet another tax that should rightfully be on a voting-ball. But I hoped local media would explore the replete ramifications of the fee, as well as better options, of that kind as increased recycling facilities.
Ireland has since proposed similar taxes on customers for ATM receipts, chewing gum and conventional light bulbs. No doubt The Times will be a fervent supporter of these measures when they come to Seattle, as well.
Fee hurts the lower and middle classes
One thing The Seattle Times editors didn’t think of in giving their support to the 20-cent fee (aka tax) on grocery bags: the lessen and middle classes.
Example: Let’s say I’m doing my now once-a-week grocer’s shop shopping, and I need to freight up in succession canned goods, sugar, etc.
And where does that $4 go? To unfairly set-off planned rate increases for the city’s recycling and waste arrangement services
So, during the term of all their caterwauling about righteously claiming to secure from attack. the look sullen and middle classes from us evil and “rich” Republicans, it’s liberal Seattleites that are really the ones slowly (and hypocritically) bleeding them dry.
Still enjoy being “green,” folks?
Voluntary better than forced compliance
My grocery store pays me if I use my cloth bags to signify my groceries. Voluntary compliance through positive reinforcement is a better way to go than forced compliance with additional taxes, fines and the “bagestapo” to harass all of us. The Times is simply wrong about Mayor Greg Nickel’s terms proposed.
Governors and stimulus checks
Quit your whining
Now we have to listen to whining governors who wish for federal funds for the cause that they need them for “crumbling schools, roads, bridges and irrigate systems,” [”Governors want own stimulus checks,” Times, News, July 14].
Presently, the dollar is in its death throes. If such a hair-brained scheme were to be acted upon, in that place would be even higher inflation than what we’re presently dealing with. Inflation hurts every man, woman and child, plus local and state governments.
State governments had the ability to prevent the runaway inflation many decades ago, but they failed and meekly allowed the act of the Federal Reserve System. This system is not treaty, has no reserves and has been the vehicle to annihilate the once magnificent dollar to the lowly status it now enjoys worldwide.
Don’t subsist crybabies, governors. Bite the bullet and focus on indispensable services. Cut budgets for social programs, discharge all but essential national servants and establish the infrastructure
Logging and landslides
Don’t disapprove forestry or Sutherland
Forest management is a system of knowledge that is till now evolving, preference many other scientifically based professions [”Logging and landslides, Times, Local News, July 13]. Forestry includes multitude scientific disciplines, such similar to silviculture, geology, engineering and hydrology, to name a scarcely any.
The December 2007 tumult delivered record amounts of rain in a short period of season, something meteorologists have attested to. It also caused a significant number of slides in mature-standing timber: Nearly two-thirds of the landslides reported occurred in standing timber, not cutover forest real estate.
State Lands Commissioner Doug Sutherland worked closely with Lewis County officials and landowners during the retrieval efforts of this unprecedented disaster. The damaged caused by the storm was immense. Many of the people who suffered have praised his efforts.
Sutherland’s opponent is trying to place condemn on him. Don’t be fooled. Sutherland has more bipartisan support than any of the past three land commissioners: Bert Cole, Brian Boyle and Jennifer Belcher. The Department of Natural Resources, under Sutherland, has been recognized as a conductor in environmental stewardship and safety of our original money.
Don’t blame forestry or Sutherland for this blow. Too many other factors came into play.
Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2008055416_weblets17.html?syndication=rss
