Issues

It was my new mantra of “do today what yesterday you might have put off until tomorrow” that guided my decision to compete in the 2011 Huntsman World Senior Games last October, four months after colon-cancer surgery. The goal wasn’t merely to prove that a 71-year-old guy can come back from major surgery and resume normal activity, even if the activity seems like a stretch to the sedentary of any age. It was also to acknowlege successful recovery from cancer while various friends are battling the Big-C, or have lost their battles.

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The Washington Legislature ensured that the controversy over charter schools will become a focus in the state’s gubernatorial campaign by specifically rejecting charters as part of any education-reform efforts in a bill that creates a handful of what will be called “collaborative schools.” The manner in which the legislation was conceived and approved, at the request of Gov. Christine Gregoire after she specifically warned that she would veto any bill authorizing charter schools, has “controversy” written all over it.

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Now that the so-called crowd-funding measure has whipped through Congress with a speed and level of bipartisan support unheard of in recent years, the effort to make it fulfill its promise of creating new companies and jobs begins. And that may prove more challenging than its passage. Before any entrepreneur with a can’t-fail idea rushes to the Internet in hope of attracting a crowd of investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission must first set the rules on how provisions of the law will be permitted to play out. The agency has 180 days to fulfill those duties.

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The political struggle in Moses Lake over the cost and management of its irrigation district is a microcosm of the conflict going on in cities, towns and taxing districts across the country between supporters of growth and progress, and those who seek to constrain government and contain spending. But because major companies have begun to focus attention on the area due to things like transportation access, cheap electric rates and low property costs, economic development opportunities are now on the minds of community leaders. Thus the obscure political contest has taken on new importance for the region’s 45,000 residents.

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The tax breaks for high-tech companies that are now seen by some as depriving the state of millions of dollars at a time of dire budgetary challenges were a proud accomplishment of his administration, says former Gov. Mike Lowry, noting they were created to lure new business to Washington. “We were coming out of what was, at that time, the state’s worst recession and we needed to attract industries that would produce good-paying jobs,” Lowry recalled of the proposal he came up with and pressed through the 1994 Legislature.

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A year ago Congress had to be talked out of doubling the amount of wealth required for individuals to invest in start-up companies. Now the lawmakers are considering the idea of removing basically all qualifications so that crowds of small investors might provide capital for entrepreneurial ventures. What has stirred support among lawmakers and others for using the Internet and social media for crowd-fund investing is the challenge faced by many start-up companies to find funding in this struggling economy and the promise of the jobs such companies could create.

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The mounting pressure on Congress and the Obama Administration to find some job-creating ideas to jumpstart the ailing economy is stirring growing interest in a couple of Congressional proposals that would lessen investor protections for the sake of allowing businesses more growth opportunities. One proposal, already filed as a House bill by Rep. Ben Quayle, R-AZ, with the intent of accelerating the growth of younger companies, would suspend for most newly public companies what many view as a costly and troublesome provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. The other proposal would help entrepreneurial and start-up companies, many currently  hamstrung in their ability to attract growth capital, to reach large numbers of investors for limited amounts of money via the internet in what’s being called crowd-fund investing.

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The solar-power half of the alternative-energy supremacy that Kittitas County  envisioned for itself may not be as close to death as it seemed to be a few months ago.

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It’s difficult for people in the media business to visit these days without conversation turning to the travails of media-mogul Rupert Murdoch that have resulted from likely criminal conduct by his executives in London, possibly even his son. Thus in the past couple of weeks, visits I’ve had with media friends have been laced with analyses of how the phone-hacking scandal could possibly have been permitted to happen. But almost more importantly has been the focus on how corrupt relations with those in power were permitted to flourish.

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It’s been three years since the City of Chicago created a new model for public-private partnerships: a giveaway of a major future-revenue stream to the private partner for a few pieces of silver to help the public partner address the current financial crisis. Since then other cash-strapped cities have been debating how or if the Chicago idea might be workable in some form elsewhere. But officials in Washington State’s two largest cities said “not likely” when asked if the Chicago idea had any merit for consideration in Seattle or Spokane.

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