Maybe it’s the inevitable result of realizing I’ve been unemployed for five months now. Or maybe it’s that comment from last week about job postings as smoke screens for referral-hiring that I just can’t get out of my head. But I’ve hit the point at which this job search process not only feels like a colossal waste of time, but is beginning to chip here and there at the edges of self-worth.
Last week, you might have read about the developer of the Fred Meyer project at Maple Valley’s Four Corners, where he’s complaining about the high permit costs and saying that the project might be dead unless the development fees and improvement costs are cut in half.
Ouch. Half of the total fees and improvements totals about $2 million, according to his figures.
Memorial Day became a national day of remembrance thanks to the efforts of wives and mothers of fallen soldiers. Civil War widows lobbied for years until Memorial Day originally Decoration Day was officially proclaimed in 1868.
Four members of the County Council are balking at putting a sales tax boost on the August ballot.
Reagan Dunn and Jane Hague (both of whom represent portions of Bellevue), Kathy Lambert and Peter von Reichbauer don’t like the idea of raising taxes while taxpayers still are climbing out of a recession.
Good for them. Let’s hope this sends a message to the rest of the County Council.
Just so you know, I was properly admonished for going MIA on y’all in last week’s paper. Travis (my husband) was packing the car for a drive to Mount Rainier on Saturday when a neighbor pulled up to say hello. No sooner did I walk out of the house, than he gave a friendly wave and called out from his truck. “Hey! Where were you this week? I didn’t see your column! What, did you get a JOB or something?”
When I submitted my column last week on fireworks, I held my nose while pressing the send button. I’m normally a self-loathing type anyway, but that column smelled a lot like a “Last-Minute Deadline Special”. Well, I ended up getting more mail on that column than anything else I’d written so far.
The King County Council used to be a partisan body. It appears it still is, despite the fact that voters several years ago mandated that all nine council seats be non-partisan.
On Monday, May 10, the council passed, 5-4, a resolution praising the national health care plan passed recently by Congress.
How come I can’t find things?
Or more specifically, how come I can’t find things, but girls can?
I have discovered this is another of the many tricks God invented for heavenly entertainment. Men never get to find things and women always get to magically see things so they can make fun of the dopey loser.
Freedom ain’t easy.
I mean, it’s easy to say, but it’s an even tougher concept to grasp, especially in a world of finite resources.
For hundreds of years, the United States of America has been the Land of the Free, the Land of Opportunity, where anyone, from any race, creed, culture or background, could go in order to live their life as they want.
It’s a little early to be talking about Independence Day fireworks, but it’s fresh in the minds of the Covington City Council Members.
Last month, there were two fireworks-related items on the agenda; one to ban fireworks completely, and one to consider changing the penalties. For all you fireworks lovers who aren’t paying attention, the absolute ban on fireworks only needed two more votes to become law, but fortunately it failed.
One of the things that has long annoyed me about political coverage in the traditional media is the careless, unsophisticated way that journalists – and many pundits who appear as guests on news shows – classify people according to their political views.
So how about them Mariners?
So much hype coming into to this season one would have almost expected the Mariners to be undefeated in the first month of the season. But the loss of Cliff Lee, a multi-million dollar star left hander, added to a rough start. However, some of the kids have done a fabulous job of picking up in the rotation. Both Jason Vargas and Doug Fister have been pitching like seasoned veterans.
Everybody’s got a card they could play. Be it race, age, ethnicity, sexuality, economic or – as I did last week – gender. I’m not a fan of playing those cards. Especially if you do it because you didn’t get what you wanted. I’ve always believed people should be judged by their work or their character. So I can’t say my last column was a proud moment.
If you’re wondering why last week’s paper was so pleasant to read, it’s probably because my picture wasn’t in it.
Instead of my weekly complaining, this space was filled by a column from the head of the YarrowBay development company, (Brian Ross, CEO) who attempted to explain their side of the new law creating Community Facilities District (CFD) taxing authorities. He seemed a little peeved about my previous week’s column, but I spent most of it picking on a city councilor, and not the CFD itself.
As the daughter of a disabled World War II veteran, I grew up knowing the sacrifice our veterans and their families make for our country firsthand. And today, those who have served us in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning from service to a particularly difficult job market. These brave men and women were the first to stand up and say, “I want to serve,” but they are often times the last to find employment when they return home.
As the Puget Sound region’s population grows, so will scrutiny over Korean immigration.
Earlier this month, a handful of Federal Way officials and leaders visited South Korea, armed with a sales pitch for Korean investors. One tool in their arsenal is the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which grants green cards to foreigners (and their families) who pump $1 million into Federal Way’s economy.
A couple months ago I took the opportunity to rip apart “American Idol” for giving false hope to viewers of someday being rich and famous. I’m not finished. One of the biggest problems with the show is its insistence that singing some karaoke tunes on TV is enough to qualify someone as a celebrity.
So. Women in technology. As in: women who work in IT or digital media. Women who write code and run databases. Women who test servers and fix bugs.
The Puget Sound Region is expected to experience significant population growth in the next 20 years. Unlike the rapid and rambling expansion of the 1980s and 1990s, future growth will focus on predominantly “urban growth areas,” like ours, designed to contain sprawl and create higher quality and more sustainable communities.
Forty years ago, when the first Earth Day was organized to draw attention to the serious environmental problems created by decades of thoughtless development and industrialization, few Americans realized the extent to which we had deforested our wild places, strip mined our mountains, and carelessly polluted our air and water.