Fishing for Salmon and Steelhead is Not a Right

Today, the Republican Senate Chair of the Washington State Senate Committee on Natural Resources held a hearing on the lawsuit and settlement on the ongoing operation of Chambers Creek Hatchery in Puget Sound.  Essentially, Wild Fish Conservancy sued Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife because they were operating the hatchery without the proper permits and vetting from the federal wildlife agencies.  Since Puget Sound Steelhead are listed under the Endangered Species Act, the federal wildlife agencies (in this case NOAA/National Mariner Fisheries Service) is required to examine and permit hatchery, or non-native fish operations.

 Here is a link that discusses the litigation.

And since nothing is easy in fish politics, particularly in Washington state, this settlement set off a firestorm.

From tribes who use hatcheries to supplement their harvest to charter boat captains to so-called angling groups, the fireball of anger toward Wild Fish Conservancy and those who support wild steelhead, was enormous.

At the hearing, there were invited panelists, almost all who were angry at the settlement.  There were the usual professions of "oh, I believe in wild steelhead, but..." and the rest of the sentence was something to the effect..."I have an economic right to catch steelhead and hatchery fish are the only fish I can catch and keep."

Now I usually side and am sympathetic with economic loss in the face of environmental regulation.  But in this case, no one has a right to make a living off of furthering endangering an iconic fish that is struggling.  No one.

In the Pacific Northwest thousands of men and women lost their jobs, their livelihoods, because of the battles over the Northern spotted owl.  They lost their ability to be outside, in the woods they loved.  And now our streams and rivers are cleaner, our salt water is better, because logging practices, implemented during those hard times, are far better for wildlife.  Those changes were a shared sacrifice.  Taxpayers footed the bills for re-training of the forestry community, for restoration of the forests, and for research into better methods of logging.

We are currently spending billions of taxpayer dollars for salmon and steelhead restoration.  It seems to me a large number of taxpayers are subsidizing a small outdoor recreation opportunity.  Or to paraphrase Winston Churchill,  never in the length of natural resource management has so few owed their livelihoods to so many gullible taxpayers.

It's time to stop the hatchery programs and let nature see if it can restore our wild salmon and steelhead.  Think of all the money taxpayers will save.

Guns Kill

Seattle is in the process of either exploding or imploding.  Over the span of 6 days, we have had 6 homicides and countless shootings, including someone shot in the leg while attending the Folk Life Festival (usually attending by aging hippies rather than gun toting types).  Today, three people (and maybe more) were gunned down at a coffee shop near the University of Washington and one more was gunned down at a parking lot near the hospital area of Seattle (known as Pill Hill to us locals).  The last victim, a woman, may have been trying to stop her Mercedes from being stolen, or may have resisted a car jacking, although we don't know the facts.

The first murder, on Thursday, is heartbreaking.  Justin Ferrari, a man who used to swim at the same pool I slog through my daily laps, was running an errand with his parents and two children.  He stopped at a stop light and was shot, apparently "in the way" of an argument.

So, here I go again.  The NRA likes to say that guns don't kill, people do.  In part, that is true.  Except, people use guns to kill.  And while I agree that outlawing guns is not going to solve this problem (plus, I have a soft spot for hunters), it seems we are again in need of a collective discussion about how our society uses guns.

I fly fish.  I roam the woods.  And frankly, I am less scared of the cougars, bears, and other varmints out there, than I am of all the other fly fishermen who carry hand guns.  I am amazed at how many people feel the need to pack a gun.  It's stunning to me.  So that, without even pausing to talk, some anal fly fisherman who resents my labs, could whip out his handgun, kill the dogs and more than likely kill me.

Overlay this prevalence of guns with a city that seems incapable of managing the most basic services, rather focusing on issues that keep vocal constituencies happy, and we have created a mess.

Tragic, unnecessary, horrific deaths and injuries.  Guns kill.  Guns kill.

Forget Facebook, Here is Someone Who Made Something Useful

Eugene Polley died recently.  Here is his obit

He invented the wireless remote.

He is one of my heroes.  I can watch multiple sporting events, switch around during the news, or even turn off the TV from my couch.

And the wireless remote isn't a fad, it isn't ephemeral, it doesn't have a shelf life of nanoseconds in order to make some dot.com kid rich.

Like Boeing, Ford, MacArthur, Hewlitt, Packard...Polley gave us a legacy that continues to be useful.

Rest in peace.

In Which Professional Sports Fanatics Expose Themselves As Drug Addicts

We haven't posted in a long time but events over the past few months regarding Seattle's attempts at bringing back an NBA team (as well as NHL) brought us back to the keyboard.  Here is a brief synopsis: http://blogs.seattletimes.com/today/2012/05/public-arena-investment-capped-at-120-million-until-hockey-arrives-in-seattle/

First, my disclaimer.  I am a sports nut.  Last night while eating dinner I watched the Golf Channel play a re-run of Payne Stewart's US Open win in 1998.  I watch horse racing, hockey, softball, baseball, lacrosse (which, by the way, I still don't understand), football, basketball...but I am also very very leery of the economic model called professional sports.  It's almost as bad as the economic model banks ran on during the last decade: "make the money and run, and if you're not making money, hold someone hostage until you do."

Seattle had an NBA team until this city decided it was no longer going to be held hostage.  A mere 7 years after we spent a lot of money and sold bonds (which we are still paying off, by the way) renovating what is known as Key Arena (a legacy arena from the 1962 World's Fair) with luxury boxes for the rich and smaller seats for the rest of the public, the team ownership, a bunch of oil drenched cowboys from Oklahoma, lit out of town after paying a minimal sum for breaking the lease.  It was far too easy.

Now, a rich hedge fund guy with the "cool hip man" 48 hour no shave look waltzes into town after quietly buying up light industrial land south of downtown.  He schmoozes an unpopular mayor who sees redemption if he can land a sports team.  And of course there is a problem.  The rich hedge fund guy doesn't have enough cash to build the stadium on his own (and by the way, refuses to say who are his co-investors), so he needs the city and county bonding authority.

Listen up all you rabid sports fans in Seattle.  When you keep saying this isn't going to cost the taxpayers anything...like your credit card, public entities have a credit limit.  They can only issue so many bonds at prime interest rates (in other words, not have to pay a lot of interest).  Once that limit is hit, they have to spend a lot more money to get money.  So, in issuing $200 MILLION in bonds, that means $200 MILLION that isn't going to be used for repairing bridges, building sewers, updating transit infrastructure.  Oh, those projects may get done, it will just cost us a lot more money.

Second, all you rabid sports fans keep saying that taxpayers will not ever have to pay a bloody red cent because the bonds will be paid back with revenues from the arena.  Let me stop laughing at that one.  Over the mountains there is a town called Wenatchee who was lured by a song-and-dance man to build an arena.  They were told they would not pay a bloody red cent because revenues would cover the bonds.  Guess what?????  Here, apparently Mystery Hedge Fund Man is saying he will cover the bond payments if revenues fall short.  Of course, if revenues fall short that means he isn't making money either.  Get it?

Third, remember the professional sports model.  It isn't that the teams aren't good, or the salaries blown way out of proportion, or expenses way too high.  No, the reason they don't make money, we're told, is because there are not enough "state of the art" stuff in the facility so we have to keep re-doing the stadiums and arenas (talk about environmentally unsound).  So, mark my words, in a few short years, this state of the art arena will be a relic and Mystery Hedge Fund Man will threaten to take the team to, oh, I dunno, Wenatchee.

I heard they have an empty arena.

Dialogue

We haven't written in awhile, but feel it's appropriate to begin today, three days after the brutal killings and assaults in Tucson, Arizona.  As the link in the caption alludes, there is now much discussion and loud debate (only in America can we have loud debates about loud political debates) over the climate of our political culture.  Almost immediately after it was reported that a moderate Democratic Congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, was the target of the shooting (and indeed was brutally shot in the left side of her head), the TV, radio, and internet content providers instantly went to their respective "airwaves" and began alleging that the murders and assaults were the result of violent language in today's political climate.  One "target" of the commentator's rage is Sarah Palin, who last summer posted a map of America with various Congressional districts covered in "crosshairs," urging her followers to "target" those districts and vote out the incumbent Congressional representative, replacing them with more conservative followers of Palin.  Giffords was one of those districts.

However, it is not a straight line from violent political discourse to a deranged gunman shooting at a Congresswoman and killing a federal judge.  While it appears Congresswoman Giffords was the target of the shooting, there are many other variables to the motive of this crime, including the possibility the young man was insane.  Nonetheless, this crime is a vivid reminder of theories of criminal behavior that we have forgotten in this "lock 'em up and throw away the key" era: society has a huge role to play in crime.  How we shape our children, address mental health issues, regulate instruments of violence (guns), poverty, education, greed and wealth.  Whether it's an Enron executive inflating stock value or this young man who shot at a crowd of people on a Saturday morning, our society shaped and informed those acts.

Unfortunately, ideology and violence are a potent mix.  The reason the picture with this blog is of a Northern spotted owl is because it is merely one example of violence and ideology.  In the 1990s the Pacific Northwest was split apart by widely divided sides on how our federal and state forests were managed.  The Northern spotted owl was listed as a threatened species under the Federal Endangered Species Act, and violence broke out in the woods, federal offices, and in state legislatures.  A colleague of mine had an owl nailed to his door.  So-called eco-saboteurs reigned terror upon federal offices, logging companies, and even a research facility at the University of Washington.  These same "eco-saboteurs" later testified that they had large caches of automatic weapons and had trained on how to kill corporate executives.  Loggers revved up chainsaws, threatening to cut down trees which held tree-sitters (and in Humboldt County, California, a tree was felled with a tree sitter in it).  These are violent acts in the name of "righteousness" and ideology.

Those of us who sought dialogue were laughed at for not being "pure."  Even attempts by President Clinton to find compromise, where portions of forests could be sustainably harvested and other areas protected, was ripped and tattered by the vastly opposing sides.

Until, until we are ready as a society to reflect on our own, individual reactions to ideologies we don't agree with, we will not find "reasoned" discourse.  While it does take a village to raise children, to change how we talk about heated issues will take each of us to quiet down.  Then to turn to the person next to us, summon courage, and ask them to quiet down.  To tell that person you will listen, but only if they talk, not yell or threaten.  Perhaps this will never happen.   And more deranged people like the Tucson shooter, or the Unabomber, or Peter Young (an animal "rights" advocate who encourages violence), or the man who murdered the abortion doctor in Kansas, will continue to feed off of our collective anger.  It's up to each of us, individually right now to not point fingers at anyone else but ourselves if we want this cacophony of anger to stop.

Drill Here, Drill Now

During the 2008 presidential campaign, environmentalists mocked Sarah Pallin's simplistic slogans of "drill here, drill now."  But, today, President Obama is going to announce a breathtaking proposal to open up vast areas of coastal waters, including in the Arctic, for oil and gas drilling.

I suspect many environmentalists did not hear President Obama during the campaign talk about the "necessity" of opening new areas for drilling nor his endorsement of nuclear power.  The next issue, highly complex one, will be when the US Forest Service begins opening up federally managed forests for the harvesting of woody biomass as a source of biofuels.

Drill here, cut there....

China Rising, II

Yesterday, it was announced that Geely, a Chinese auto company bought Volvo, formerly owned by Ford (a little known fact to all the Volvo drivers who thought it was a company from Sweden, which it once was).  Geely's major financier?  Goldman Sachs.  And Goldman Sachs  is funding this deal.

Great article here about why American taxpayers may end up holding the bag, again, with these "too big to fail" banks.