Editor's Take: May 22, 2008
Credit: flickr.com/Paul Galipeau
Seattle: Fabulous Prizes for Driving Less
You’ve heard the rumblings from back East about a “gas tax holiday.” Seattle is going 180 and seizing the media opportunity to motivate citizens to drive less. Yesterday, the mayor announced the “Give Your Car the Summer Off” program. The city and local businesses will offer cash and prizes to folks who park their cars and take public transit.
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Seattleites Offered Incentives to Cut Summer Driving
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
05/22/2008
Mayor Greg Nickels is urging Seattle residents to curb their car driving by 10 percent through his "Give your car the summer off" campaign.
Local businesses and museums are dangling incentives to try to get people to take the bus, ride a bike or car pool to cut down on the number of miles they travel.
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Some Idahoans Biking for Holiday Weekend
Boise Idaho Statesman
05/22/2008
David and Crystal Hatt will be staying home this Memorial Day weekend, preferring to bicycle around their new hometown rather than spend money filling the family Dodge Durango.
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Report: Interior Played Politics with Endangered Species
Missoulian
05/22/2008
Several top officials may have played politics with Endangered Species Act cases and the Interior Department could have found more such decisions had it better investigated the problem, a new report says.
And of the eight species delisted in recent years, including the Yellowstone National Park grizzly bear population, only two had met all their recovery criteria, the report said.
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BC Caribou Nearly Extinct
CBC BC
05/21/2008
There has been no real progress in efforts to save the southern mountain caribou in BC, according to a longtime wildlife biologist.
Even though the BC government announced a caribou recovery plan last October, the animals are facing extinction, says Dr. Lee Harding, formerly with Environment Canada.
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One Doctor's Plan to Cover Portland's Kids
Portland Mercury
05/21/2008
After seeing so many Portland children without health care, one local doctor launched an initiative to help children get medical care. The idea: Kids enrolled in Portland's public schools who don't already have health care would qualify for health insurance through a program paid for via the city budget (which has a multi-million dollar surplus at the moment). Once the program is off the ground, the public school districts would pick up two-thirds of the tab, which is estimated at less than $40 a month per child.
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A Bridge Over the Columbia River Why?
Willamette Week
05/21/2008
Portland politicians say global warming is a dire threat. But they want to spend $4.2 billion on a project that makes driving easier.
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Bay Area First to Fine Climate-Polluting Businesses
San Francisco Chronicle
05/22/2008
Jumping ahead of state and federal regulators, the Bay Area air quality district became the first in the nation on Wednesday to impose fees on businesses that pump some of the highest levels of carbon dioxide into the air each year.
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Blue-Collar Oregon (Heart) Obama
Coos Bay World
05/21/2008
Barack Obama won a huge victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Oregon primary mostly with the support of men and younger voters.
But the Illinois senator also found plenty of votes among blue-collar workers who had been the staple of Clinton victories in other states, and from those who said that change was more important than experience in a candidate.
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Views: Helping Native Students Graduate College
Anchorage Daily News
05/22/2008
While Alaska Natives make up an increasing share of the UAA student body, few of them graduate.
Nine percent of students on the Anchorage campus, or 1,400 of them, are Natives. But only one in 10 degree-seeking Native students who started at UAA in 2000 had earned a bachelor's degree six years later.
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Views: Middle Class Just Nostalgia?
Washington Post
05/22/2008
According to a new Pew survey, more than half of Americans believe they either have not moved ahead in the past five years (25 percent) or have fallen behind (31 percent). Pew pronounces this "the most downbeat short-term assessment of personal progress in nearly half a century."
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