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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

"The Bourne Legacy"


Warning: This is a plot spoiler review and also a socio-economic/technological review of "The Bourne Legacy" now playing at Regal Sehome 3 in Bellingham, WA

"You have a plan, right?" "You're a doctor, so you've thought this through?" says Jeremy Renner ("Aaron Cross") to Rachel Weisz ("Marta Shearing") in the Bourne Legacy .  Marta, a virologist taking part in genetic modification of soldiers, does not have a plan. As most members of the professional classes would, she suffers psychological collapse as her superiors in the military industrial complex  brutally hunt her down.  Aaron Cross,on the other hand, has a plan and it doesn't involve being hunted down.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Condemned to Republican representation....

With all but 200 votes counted, here is how nearly 40% of Whatcom registered voters cast their ballots for U.S. Senate and Wa Legislative Districts in Whatcom County::
Race Candidate Votes PercentageOfTotalVotes
United States U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell 24,723 54.973
United States U.S. Senator Michael Baumgartner 13,296 29.5644
United States U.S. Senator Art Coday 3,111 6.9175
United States U.S. Senator Glen (Stocky) R. Stockwell 1,030 2.2903
United States U.S. Senator Chuck Jackson 886 1.9701
United States U.S. Senator Timmy (Doc) Wilson 842 1.8722
United States U.S. Senator Mike the Mover 611 1.3586
United States U.S. Senator Will Baker 474 1.054
Total
44,973




Legislative District 42 State Representative Pos. 1 Natalie McClendon 13,625 44.111
Legislative District 42 State Representative Pos. 1 Jason Overstreet 17,263 55.889
Total
30,888




Legislative District 42 State Representative Pos. 2 Matthew Krogh 13,626 44.2288
Legislative District 42 State Representative Pos. 2 Vincent Buys 17,182 55.7712
Total
30,808




Legislative District 40 State Representative Pos. 1 Kristine Lytton 9,692 100




Legislative District 40 State Representative Pos. 2 Howard A. Pellett 2,255 20.1663
Legislative District 40 State Representative Pos. 2 Jeff Morris 8,927 79.8337
Total
11,182

Some obvious thoughts:

(1) Populated south Whatcom county (e.g. most of south Bellingham) is now so Democratic the Republicans don't bother to run candidates in the new 40th District.
(2) Overall, Whatcom county leans Democratic as can be evinced by Maria Cantwell's primary victory of nearly 55%.
(3) Krogh and McClendon will need a voter registration and voter turnout miracle to beat Overstreet or Buys in the 42nd.

Redistricting has nearly guaranteed legislative votes that cancel out each other in the Fourth Corner. The gerry-mandering seeds almost the entirety of Whatcom County's geographical presence to the Republicans, links the 40th Orcas Island liberals with South Bellingham of the same and cuts off working class North Bellingham from Democratic support:


And that's probably not going to change much in November unless Matt and Natalie can galvanize farm workers, WCC students and core Democratic neighborhoods like the Lettered Streets, Cornwall, Birchwood,  and Columbia in Bellingham.  Unless they can  find a way to transplant some of the 16,000 returning WWU students to 42nd  district address....I don't see much Democratic legislative representation for those of us who live in neighborhoods north of downtown in Bellingham. Here is about as clear a picture as I can screenshot tonight of those Bellingham neighborhoods north of downtown now condemned eternally to Republican legislative representation:




Friday, August 10, 2012

The Carbon Trade in the Fourth Corner (Part I)

Cherry Point and Lake Whatcom Basin 1 from NASA WorldWind
"Nearly three weeks after the group’s initiative to prohibit the use of gas-powered craft from operating on Lake Whatcom Reservoir, city and county attorneys ordered a recount using a different law than the one usually usedlocally for the validation of signatures.
The new criteria was taken from a state law brought forth by initiativeopponents who call themselves “Lake Whatcom Stewardship Association” (LWSA).”That law would limit the length of time allowed for gathering signatures to sixmonths and would require disregarding more than 400 signatures.
At their Sept. 13 meeting, City Attorney Joan Hoisington told City Councilmembers that they could not try to salvage the initiative for the Novemberballot.. “There is no initiative,” she said.
“This isn’t about boats any more, it’s about democracy,” Crozier said. “The powerful mustn’t be allowed to ignore due process and violate civil rights ofcitizens who are trying to make a difference.”" (quoted from http://groups.yahoo.com/group/whatcomgreenparty/message/2841?o=1&d=-1 )
 It may be the case that Judge Snyder's rejection of anti coal initiative represents sound legal practice. But if water quality activist Sharon Crozier were still with us, she might beg to differ.  Sharon, a fiery grandmother and cancer survivor (a phrase she didn't like), had a golden heart. She was the type of activist Noam Chomsky's prototypical 'elite' would hate the most: a committed idealist with a passion for truth and reform. And thus the legal and political system of Whatcom County tormented her. She shrugged off flailing criticism from liberal and moderates and political intimidation and from the right wing in Whatcom County.  All of this criticism simply because she wanted to remove motor boats from our drinking water source. Her worst opponents, the 'property rightista' class attacked her campaign savagely. At one point she received a death threat in a Hagen's parking lot while seeking signatures for the "Motor Boats Off" petition . I believe the exact words of her tormentor were: "If you f*ck with my property values b*tch, I'm going to take you out to that lake and drown you."  Sharon devoted herself to the cause despite all the hatred and intimidation that was sent her way. She had good reason to. Still today, Whatcom County's cancer incident rates are number three in a state with higher than the national average incidence rates to begin with:

Countysort sort alphabetically by nameascendingAnnual Incidence Rate
over rate period(95% Confidence Interval)
sort sort by rateascending
Average Annual Countsort sort by countdescendingRate Period
Washington 5476.8 (474.4, 479.1)31,5342005-2009
US (SEER+NPCR) 1465.0 (464.7, 465.4)
§
2005-2009
Mason County 7554.6 (530.3, 579.8)4132005-2009
Grays Harbor County 7540.0 (518.1, 562.6)4742005-2009
Whatcom County 7527.5 (513.2, 542.1)1,0642005-2009
Pierce County 7521.6 (514.1, 529.1)3,8162005-2009
Snohomish County 7517.6 (509.4, 525.9)3,1872005-2009
Skagit County 7509.8 (492.8, 527.1)7042005-2009
Thurston County 7506.7 (494.2, 519.4)1,2992005-2009
Jefferson County 7497.2 (467.7, 528.5)2512005-2009
Cowlitz County 6495.3 (476.7, 514.3)5552005-2009
Kitsap County 7489.8 (477.6, 502.2)1,2782005-2009

Yet somehow, Whatcom county residents can't put together the fact that dumping unburned hydrocarbons into their water supply is a toxic practice that may be killing them. Sharon and her environmental partner Tim Paxton, never got the chance to put their initiative on the ballot. I doubt Coal-Free Bellingham ever will either.

Personally, I find the arguments against a Coal-free Bellingham contrived. Sure, we need a strong interstate trade act. But you could extend that argument to justify everything from the shipping of toxic waste to continuance of the slave trade. A community like Bellingham should have some control over the burdens placed on it from the mountains of coal that will eventually be trafficked through their downtown and residences.  Currently, there is no legal framework to give a community such control.  In another era, would we have been justified in using the laws that govern interstate trade to allow the transport of slaves from free to slave states? Fifty globally warmed and polluted years from now, equating the carbon trade with the slave trade may not seem so outrageous.

The problem is that the law is subsumed by needs of power and money in a capitalist society. The needs of the people count second. Whatcom County has historically always been a "resource class" colony : Timber, Coal, Silver, Salmon, Raspberries, Dairy, Energy, Oil. Here in Whatcom County, we ship our resource products the world over.  Only recently have we established strong service sector economies in health, education, tourism, property. To understand how the carbon trade may come to dominate the fourth corner, consider our region's strategic energy assets:

Thursday, August 9, 2012

"Kiss the concrete"...

When I was younger and growing up in east Oakland, I would listen to news stories about drive by shootings. The cops would be called on the carpet because indiscriminate drive by shootings were tragically killing the old and very young.  The gangs were just bulleting neighborhoods to establish territory, but if you were too young to react to the street or too old to "kiss the concrete" fast enough, you ended up full 9mm slugs. "Kiss the concrete" is the operative phrase to keep in mind.  "Keep your head up" is one I kept in mind when I walked the mean streets.

I find it ironic that the recent great 'terrorist' events of our time have been the work of young, male college students apparently all suffering from a disturbing mental illness: Seung-Hui Cho, Jared Loughner, James Eagan Holmes.  Worse than this are the revelations that university officials in all three cases had forewarning of their illness and (for one reason  and to some degree or another) punted the ball. Existing media reports make the case of James Eagan Holmes to appear to be especially disturbing and noteworthy in this regard.  Of course, plenty of other mass shootings have occurred recently by non-students in America and around the world.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

The Progressive Voters Guide....

REMEMBER TO VOTE TONIGHT:

If you are a 'progressive'  in the 42nd district (Whatcom County) and you are looking for someone to list their recommendations and compile supporters for each candidate you could try here:

http://progressivevotersguide.com/2012/washington/primary/county/whatcom/42nd/

The ballot is long this primary...

Monday, August 6, 2012

Oil tankers from Vancouver...

Excellent article from the Globe and Mail on the Kinder Morgan proposal to double existing pipeline capacity and ship Suezmax style tankers from Vancouver. Great graphic features here.  With the addition of multiple coal ports, Shale Gas facilities, and Alberta oil exports, the fourth corner could become the Rotterdam of the West.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

We thank the PDC of WA...

We thank the PDC of WA for the detailed maintenance of its political contribution database. Although the PDC has its critics, it is the essence of democracy to understand who is driving the political process. Sorting by contributions for all Washington elections in 2012, these are the contributions over $100K to date (August 4th, 2012) :


Name Contributor Date Amount
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS GATES BILL 2012-06-19 800000.00
VOTERS WANT MORE CHOICES - SAVE THE 2/3RDS (MIKE FAGAN) ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON BUSINESS PAC 2012-06-29 265000.00
NEW APPROACH WA STEVES RICK 2012-07-17 250000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS GATES BILL 2012-06-07 200000.00
VOTERS WANT MORE CHOICES - SAVE THE 2/3RDS (MIKE FAGAN) ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON BUSINESS PAC 2012-05-30 185000.00
SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTL UNION WA ST COUNCIL PAC SEIU WASHINGTON STATE COUNCIL 2012-04-24 150000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS JACKIE 2012-06-13 125000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS MIKE 2012-06-13 125000.00
NEW APPROACH WA AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF WA FOUNDATION 2012-07-19 100000.00
NEW APPROACH WA STEVES RICK 2012-06-29 100000.00
OUR WASHINGTON SEIU 1199 NW 2012-07-07 100000.00
SEIU HEALTHCARE 1199 NW PAC SEIU HEALTHCARE 1199 NW 2012-06-26 100000.00
VOTERS WANT MORE CHOICES - SAVE THE 2/3RDS (MIKE FAGAN) WASHINGTON BEER & WINE DISTRIBUTORS ASSOCIATION 2012-05-11 100000.00
WA UNITED FOR MARRIAGE SEIU WASHINGTON STATE COUNCIL 2012-05-24 100000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS JACKIE 2012-06-22 100000.00
YES ON 1240 WA COALITION FOR PUBLIC CHARTER SCHOOLS BEZOS MIKE 2012-06-22 100000.00