Dear Mr. President:
You spoke a lot last year about hope and change.
So I hope you will change the dialogue about saving the Northwest's wild salmon. And you have a perfect opportunity to do it.
Mr. President, you should listen to three former governors from the Northwest: Idaho's Cecil Andrus, John Kitzhaber of Oregon, and Mike Lowry of Washington. They know you are reviewing the salmon recovery plan you inherited from the Bush administration; your decision is expected by Aug. 14. They wrote you a letter Wednesday urging you to ditch the plan.
Good advice. And maybe the easiest decision you will make all week.
• First, it isn't your plan. No bruised egos to soothe, no pride of authorship issues to navigate.
• Second, the plan might be dead anyway. The plan sits in U.S. District Court in Portland, Ore., where Judge James Redden has rejected two previous federal plans. He has urged your administration to draw up contingency plans in case salmon numbers continue to falter — backup plans that would include breaching the four lower Snake River dams. The governors predict the latest recovery plan is "likely to be found illegal."
I'll bet you a beer that the governors are right. In deference to your tastes, I'll make it a Bud Light, I guess.
• Third, and more important, the governors make a really good point. Calling a do-over doesn't delay the cause of salmon recovery. It clears the table and allows the Northwest to begin a constructive discussion about saving our anadromous fish.
"Dialogue among key parties on the salmon, energy, water and job issues at stake here has never entirely died, but it was not a priority for the last administration. Bringing people together to find lawful, science-based solutions that help people, create jobs, and build the green economy of tomorrow is a priority for you, and it is exactly what is needed in this case."
Exactly.
Think about community organizing on a regional scale, and you have a sense of what the governors have in mind. And they're not alone. Three Northwest senators — Mike Crapo and Jim Risch, both R-Idaho, and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore. — say they are interested in getting the region together to talk about salmon. That's a gutsy move on their part. Your administration's leadership would go a long way to making something happen.
The dialogue is changing, which means it could be time for another idea working its way through Congress. The Salmon Solutions and Planning Act of 2009 has 25 House sponsors — including Reps. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore.
The bill does not order dam breaching. That's important. Instead it directs federal agencies to study the facts about breaching. The Department of Transportation would study the rail and highway improvements needed to replace slackwater shipping through the lower Snake. The Department of Energy would study replacing power from the dams. The Army Corps of Engineers would study riverfront restoration. The Interior Department would study irrigation issues.
Basic research, and the kind of sound science you seem eager to embrace.
This idea has come up before. I would hope it gets a more receptive greeting — if not outright support — from your administration.
I know your energy has been consumed by health care reform. As you have said so many times these past few months, the economy will not fully recover unless we address health care.
In a sense, the salmon issue has had the same effect on the Northwest. The region's economy is tied to real, sustainable solutions which are now lacking. Water users and shippers deserve some certainty. So do the outfitters, guides, restaurateurs and hotel owners who would profit from a healthy sport fishery.
The governors are dead on: Your predecessor did nothing to resolve this issue. As the Bush administration stayed in power, our wild salmon remained in peril.
After eight years of polarizing politics and scientific skullduggery, it's time for change. A lot of people in the Northwest would hope to help.
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On the beer front I'd honestly ask Patrick Orr for advice ;-)
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Thanks for the straight talk, Kevin...
and for the courageous and consistent opinion of the Idaho Statesman on this topic.
In salmon restoration, Idaho has the most to gain of any state in the region - restoring central Idaho as the heartland of wild salmon that it once was (and could be again). Standing in the way are four federal dams that we can do without, leaving over 400 other dams in place in the Columbia basin.
I have no doubt that the four high-cost, low-value dams in question will eventually be removed - people can select their own timeframes. The question is: will that happen before, or after, Idaho salmon runs become extinct?
I have no doubt both our burials will occur prior to that.
Don't drag Rockycrasy into this and somebody stay on their own topics.
Herein lies the real story...Instead of reporting, the editorial concept at this paper is to work angles into blunt edges.
Politics does a story, does a story, does a story to death and never stops to consider when one story is enough. IS.com does *105* or however many nearly identical blurbs on Robert Manwill, Larry Craig, Foothill dog crap etc, all nearly exactly the same except for the headline, as if it's a production line.
After a while the cynics no longer believe that you care nor that you have a journalistic mission. If 150 posters say 199 things the same way each time then the chances are you are just playing with your 'food', inverse trolls in that you actually run the paper and aren't posters complaining.
If having some happy feelings knowing that a series of dams will 'eventually' be breached makes you happy, Tom, please seek medical assistance for your eco-sexual fantasies. Anyone else need therapy? GET IT. After this year maybe no one will be able to afford it.
I keep wanting to use a R-bomb and hold back, even if there is no Dr. Strangelove here. It flabbergasts me.
Learn how to report.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
This issue will be very much alive, FO, after the burials...
because it hasn't yet been solved, after 18 years.
Your rant about the Statesman covering actual news (including this story as it develops in court and national politics) is a bit silly. The news is the news, whether you are interested in a particular story or not. And it's suitable for reporting in this newspaper, or any other.
You might consider skipping the obtuse comments on topics that tire you. It's not necessary to swing at every pitch.
Deeds had the only real news today and that was Les Paul died.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
It isn't necessary to tell me I should skip an issue, communist.
Notice I haven't flagged you for that.
Try and keep it that way. I don't care a lot for you either but you do have the privelege to speak here as much as I do.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Adam and Eve ate an apple and Cain killed Abel? A bit longer...
than 18 years, Scotty.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Not about you, FO, or Les Paul (rest his soul), or the Statesman
This post is about the regional salmon issue, the ongoing court case, and the Obama Administration approach to it.
I don't give a damn and stop acting like the CIA shrink on MASH
Mr. Obama can eat the salmon. You want your own blog?
It seems to me that you might have one. SO?
Now, for the umpteenth time, stand down. It's not rag on FO day and hang your diatribe.
I also resent all the garbage eco-theology messing up OP/ED
That is exactly what I expressed and had left to stand. It sounds like people are just writing anything to keep a job.
What is the point? If you are optimistic on one hand the paper will survive then why pull this hedging thing? You are killing it anyhow and that bugs me.
No, a story doesn't always need 15 angles. This is terrible editorial planning. Good editorial planning is telling a story as you see it, expanding if readers need more and learning to know when and how to relate it and also how to find other stories in between. The Pulitzer blurb has always hung around your neck like an albatross trying to gore your neck.
Don't rest on your laurels or it will be hard to rise from a chair.
As I've said, you try way too hard to present an editorial feature on a schedule here when what you actually need is to stop fragmenting the beats in dinky blogs and present SECTIONS.
ECONOMY and BUSINESS
SCIENCE and ECOLOGY
NEWS (actual news, possibly to be expanded elsewhere)
HUMAN INTEREST
POLITICAL
OP/ED is a part of every category and should have an editor focused on each.
If you want to do a story on how various factions will possibly affect your life overall, HUMAN INTEREST is the place to do it.
If Rocky has a beat and you want to talk about one of his topics, do a special piece and cross over but stop duplicating him and running over your own foot, so to speak.
Some staff members have really good writing skills and may really just be wasted and trying to cope. SHUFFLE THEM. Brian Murphy is a good political beat writer so that was a nice surprise. Rocky does superbly when writing about real history and facts and proved it with his history of the Idaho Statesman special.
You are never going to be able to make the public read everything you want them to. Give them what they want from you. Maybe if a couple dozen of you bought all the copies it would somehow subsidize your income as the ad revenues pay the bills, but that wouldn't last long when the advertisers learned nobody saw the paper and you were a journalistic Ponzi scheme, now would that?
You've had yourself shut out of or lost the chances for debates, found yourselves at loggerheads for not being the least bit supportive of Larry Craig (and you could've helped him instead of starting the circus you started). You let everything go one way or the other without being a guide in the storm. For that, you suffer and probably rightfully. You had no right.
KTVB followed your lead and made Boise into the yellow journalist paradise of the Northwest. Now why does anyone bristle now?
Stuart, true to your spirit, you've been a wee bit of a drunken elephant all these two years. I don't hate you one bit but I pity your blindness.
Hope you'll be doing okay.
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
By the way, when is Richert being replaced if he's gone 2 wks?
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...
Get your application in!
After all you have more posts on this blog than he does. Though GG has probably posted net more words.
Naw, he walked back in today...
Hopefully this won't lead to stories of a mistress in Jordan Valley and double straws in the Coke bottle at the Chevron...
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There is no life in Idaho...it is a mirror site on god's server. You were dreaming but it is over. Go to your residence and await our commands and THEN we will restore control...