Like I said in the last post, I don't usually read the Tacoma News Tribune. It's a scandal rag, owned by the McClatchy organization.

Last week, I couldn't help looking at their story on the Port of Tacoma - a copy was lying there on a table at work, open to the story, Port of Tacoma's Blair Development: Millions to nowhere. So reluctantly - knowing that with a title like that, it couldn't be a good story - I read on.

In the article, they tell the story of the development of the proposed new container terminal for NYK.

Briefly, in 2007, the Port of Tacoma signed a deal with the shipping line NYK, to provide them a new dedicated 168 acre container terminal in Tacoma, located on the tip of the Blair Peninsula. Integral to building the new terminal was relocating an existing terminal, Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE), and the demolition of existing buildings, as well as the cleanup of some toxic waste sites.

Because the Port didn't own all the property necessary for the project, it spent some $146 million on property acquisition and demolition.

In 2007 when the deal with NYK was inked, the economy was going great guns. All the projections - which were accepted pretty much universally - held that Chinese imports would explode in the coming years, with cargo growth rates reaching as much as 25% a year. The big fear, up and down the West Coast, was that we would not have enough dock space or the infrastructure available to handle the glut of Chinese cargo coming in.

As late as January 2008, I can remember maritime industry executives publicly berating the West Coast ports that they were derelict in their duty for not preparing for the onslaught of Chinese imports. The specter of newly developing ports in Mexico and Canada was dangled as a probable outcome if the West Coast ports didn't act quickly to provide additional capacity.

At that time, Port of Tacoma, and Tim Farrell, the Port's Executive Director, were hailed as visionary and forward-thinking for making the NYK deal. Bold leaders cited as examples of what other West Coast ports should do.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Tacoma enjoys an almost unique place among West Coast ports - of all the major US ports on this coast, Tacoma is the only location with large amounts of suitable land adjacent to navigable waterways that could be developed into marine terminals. LA and Long Beach are pretty well built-out. San Francisco and Oakland are mostly built out, as is Seattle. Portland has the bar on the river and can only accommodate smaller ships.

Tacoma is really the only major West Coast US port with a good amount of room left for expansion.

The only serious competition is in Canada - in Vancouver and the new port at Prince Rupert - both of which are marketing themselves very aggressively.

So the Port of Tacoma signing a deal for a new terminal for NYK in 2007 was a no-brainer. It was a deal designed to ace out our Canadian competition. And it would set up Tacoma for the future.

That's the climate of when the NYK deal came about. We were in a highly competitive situation. No one ever thought the economy would tank.

But stuff does happen.

The TNT's article cited cost over-runs as another major problem with the NYK project. Cost over-runs in any kind of large project like this are inevitable. If you look at 10 similar sized projects, public or private, I suspect you'd see similar escalations in costs. So this really isn't out of the ordinary.

The fact that NYK backed out of the deal is only reasonable. West Coast ports right now are way under capacity, and will likely remain that way for some time. Conditions change. Deciding not to finish building the terminal now with the current prevailing world economic climate is only reasonable. It's an appropriate response to changing conditions.

But that in no way invalidates the initial decision to build the terminal.

As to the $190 million already spent by the port:

• $146 million to acquire the property and demolish vacant buildings.
• $35 million on design and planning.
• $6 million on environmental cleanup and permitting.
• $3 million in staff resources to support the development.

That sounds like a whole lot of money but in the long term, the only money potentially wasted is probably the $35 million on design and planning, and the $3 million in staff resources. But even so, I wouldn't write it off just yet - some of the effort may yet pay off in future projects.

If the port spent $146 million in buying property and demolition, and $6 million in environmental cleanup, that's likely money well spent - and an investment that will see a very good return in the future.

The real estate market may be flat right now but that won't last. Commercial land that has the potential to be developed into a marine terminal is extraordinarily valuable. When the global economy does recover - and it will, it's just a matter of time - then developments will again take off.

Chinese imports will take off again. It may be one year or even 2-3 years or longer, but the world economy will heal and when it does, Tacoma will again have to look at building new dock space.

If the Port bought that land at 2007-2008 prices, then in the long run it'll be a bargain. Real estate is almost always a good investment. It'll payoff handsomely. The costs of the inevitable environmental cleanups now are probably less than it would cost later, so that also is a wise investment.

The land they bought is a great investment for the Port.

So what do we have in the final analysis? The Port spent maybe under $40 million on a well-conceived deal to gain a major new customer. A move which everyone at the time - up and down the coast - hailed as a bold, visionary move.

So now the News Tribune conducts a sensationalistic, witch hunt and assigns "blame" for the supposed "fiasco" - which they largely they invented - onto Tim Farrell.

This is asinine. If any one single person is to blame, they might single out George W. Bush for destroying the world economy (and that probably isn't totally fair because he had a lot of help in the matter).

But Tim Farrell isn't to be blamed for anything at all. He did his job well. The project was a victim of circumstances, pure and simple. No one in their wildest imaginations would have thought shipping or the economy generally would decline like it has.

Let's face it, the whole thing is about selling newspapers - messy scandals are great fodder for the presses.

It's not what the TNT reported - I'm sure their facts are all correct. It's what they left out of the story that gives it their trademark bias. By failing to report the whole story, they've made Farrell look like a bad guy - when he wasn't at all. They've damaged an innocent person, possibly cost him his job. All to sell newspapers.

And that's why I don't read the Tacoma News Tribune.

Perhaps if they'd just stick with stories about women impregnated by space aliens? That works well for their competition (the National Enquirer).

I don't generally read the Tacoma News Tribune. It's a McClatchy "newspaper" - and I use that term loosely. McClatchy rags all seem to tout the McClatchy line - they're anti-labor, right-wing, rags with a very specific, narrow agenda. I guess you could say they're the print equivalent of Fox News.

When McClatchy bought the TNT from the Baker family years ago, one of the first things they did was engineer the breaking of the newspaper's union - pretty much just as they've done at most all the other McClatchy rags. That kinda set the tone for everything else.

I stopped reading the TNT - cancelled my subscription - when they came out with a story about longshore workers in Tacoma, about the longshore casual selection process. The story was quite biased and the editorial that followed was a sniveling, whiny piece of drivel - motivated by what was obviously the fact that the editor's kid must not have gotten a casual card and the editor was pissed.

When you intimately know a subject - I am a longshoreman in Tacoma - then it's easy to separate fact from fiction. The story about ILWU Local 23 was severely biased. And if the TNT promotes lies about that, then I have to figure the rest of their coverage is similarly biased.

So like I said, I quit subscribing.

I did pick up an occasional Sunday paper - mostly for the ads. And I continued to read the online version - for the local news.

Then a few months ago, the paper published yet another whiny, anti-labor editorial that was blatantly untrue and biased - and since then, I quit reading the online version.

At that time, I sent the following letter to the editors of the TNT which (not surprisingly) they refused to publish.

Editors:

I read with interest your recent op-ed piece titled, State employees finding out how other half lives.
It was a great reminder of the McClatchy organization's anti-union, anti employee bias.

I haven't paid to read the TNT in quite some time; but after reading this recent story, I've decided to quit reading even the free online version. The bias is just too much to take. I've got my gag reflex to consider.

It's not a big deal giving up the TNT.

Aside from the ad inserts, the only thing you really had going for you was the local news coverage.

But Tacoma Weekly actually does local news better, now - online and in print. Sad but true. They've got a nice website, and it doesn't have all those nasty, annoying pop-ups like your site does.

As to national and international news: better, more authoritative sources for national and foreign news are a dime a dozen, online - the New York Times, Washington Post, Jerusalem Post, London Daily Mail, on and on... the list is endless.

Your paper, sir, has become superfluous.

This is a sad event.

I recall the glory days of the TNT when the Baker family still held forth - I suspect that period will be viewed as the golden age of newspaper journalism in Tacoma.

But that business model has become outmoded. Print journalism is in its death throes.

It's not going to be long till the TNT folds, just like the PI - and who would have thought that would ever happen?

When the end does come, I will shed a tear - one - for that which was once an honest newspaper. And I will miss the ads...

As an aside to Mr. Zeeck, after the dust settles, may I suggest you contact Karl Rove - I've heard he's looking for a new PR flak - that oughta be right up your alley.

Have a great day,

Mike Pellegrini
Tacoma

Editor's note: We came within about an inch of this actually happening. Let's not forget!

We’re lucky to have secured a pre-release excerpt from the new Time Magazine issue set to be on newsstands the week of December 21, 2009 – Time’s Person of the Year edition.

2009 Person of the Year

Selecting the Person of The Year is always a tough call, but given the recent political developments in the United States and the world generally, this year was somewhat easier and we were unanimous in picking George W, Bush as our 2009 Person of the Year.

It’s easily demonstratable that George W, Bush has made life much safer for God fearing Christians the world over, and on that basis alone, our choice for Person of the Year was easy.

In the turmoil following the terrorist bombing of the 2008 Democratic National Convention – which precipitated the loss of all the top Democratic Party leadership including nominee Senator Barack Obama – George W. Bush boldly took charge, suspending the presidential elections, declaring martial law.

By immediately rounding up all the godless heathen terrorists – Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, homosexuals, anarchists, liberals and the like – the United States is now finally enjoying the peace and safety we deserve.

Similarly, the purification of Iran with the neutron bombs was also a stroke of genius. By killing all the godless heathen terrorists and leaving the infrastructure intact, George Bush made it possible for American public to have cheap gasoline once again.

Our hats are off to George W, Bush!

Continuing coverage:

George W. Bush and Faith – page 24
Our Mission to China: converting godless heathens is fun and rewarding – page 25
My Legacy: By George W. Bush – page 26
Osama bin Laden sighted again – capture imminent – page 26
The First Lady’s perspective – by Laura Bush – page 27

Sirs:

I'm a regular KPIG listener. I live in Tacoma, WA, and listen to the internet stream. I've been a regular listener pretty much since KPIG went live online. In the 70's, I lived in the Santa Cruz area and was a big fan of KFAT.

I'd like to register a protest concerning Mapleton's decision to do away with live DJ's at KPIG on the overnight shift.

KPIG is the last of what sadly is a dying breed - a radio station run by actual human beings, rather than programmed by computer-generated playlists with voice-over's from talent located on the East Coast or wherever.

The reason KPIG has been so successful is that it fills a unique niche - there really aren't any other stations where the DJ's actually choose much of what gets played. This is the last living remnant of "Free-Form FM" radio, a style popularized in the 60's and 70's which has since faded.

I particularly like the fact that the DJ's often play a lot of cross-genre music, not always sticking to a pure Americana format. Perhaps Laura Ellen deliberately designed the Americana genre loose to accommodate DJ choices? If so, that was a brilliant stroke.

But the balance of radio is a ClearChannel wasteland.

It seems the majority of radio today is mainly of the "satellite radio," variety - which is sanitized, homogenized, filtered, and re-packaged - to the point where every station, regardless of genre, sounds almost completely the same. All playing the same 40 songs (of whatever genre) over and over and over and over...

I abhor that kind of radio. I refuse to listen.

If you do away with live DJ's, then you've destroyed the one element that makes KPIG unique. KPIG would become just another radio station. It would lose that quirky, eccentric, unpredictable goodness that makes KPIG what it is.

I am aware of the realities of running a business. Perhaps you could cut executive/clerical/administrative staff, instead? Have everyone in management tighten their belts?

Or, another possibility might be offering a live, CD quality stream on a subscription basis. NOT Real Player. If that venture failed in the past, it was because of the bloatware/spyware/malware that Real builds into all their products - I refuse to install any Real product on all of my computers. The period when the internet stream was offered only on Real was the only time I have stopped listening to KPIG.

But surely there are other stream-casters that you could work with? Put up a CD quality stream with a company other than Real and I'll buy a monthly subscription - and I'm sure many others will as well.

Thanks for bringing KPIG to the world. Please don't tear down what Laura built!

Sincerely,

Mike Pellegrini
Tacoma, WA

It really kills me how Bush has been touting his record in the last week or so, listing as one of his major accomplishments that since 9/11, there have been no further foreign terrorist attacks on US soil.

With his approval rating running at a meager 22% - the lowest rating in history for a sitting president, I guess Bush feels like he has to try and clear his name. But his arguments don’t stand up to scrutiny.

Let’s take a quick look backwards and examine the validity of Bush’s claims.

Okay, Bill Clinton served from 1993 till 2001. There was one actual foreign terrorist attack on the US during Clinton’s presidency – the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center where six people were killed.

However, since the attack took place only a little over one month from the time Clinton took office, it’s kind of hard to lay the blame on his administration.

Okay, so who was the slacker president that let this 1993 bombing happen? Why it was daddy Bush, that’s who. George H.W. Bush served as president from 1989 to 1993.

Looking back from 1993, we find that, well – there really aren’t any other attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil.

Looking further back, you come to the War of 1812 where the British sacked and burned Washington DC. But here again, we were at war, and it was British troops, not terrorists that did the damage.

So when it comes down to it, there really haven’t been any other attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil – ever. Just the two that happened during the presidencies of Bush 41 and Bush 43.

Given the fact that only two presidents in all history have ever allowed foreign terrorist attacks on US soil – George W. Bush and his daddy – then how in the hell is it an accomplishment to have no new attacks since 9/11?

What a load of tripe!

The most devastating foreign terrorist attack ever on American soil took place during the watch of George W. Bush.

Then afterwards, Bush bungled the hunt for the perpetrator – Osama bin Laden, when he withdrew all the troops from Afghanistan and sent them to Iraq. This allowed bin Laden to easily escape. Good job, Georgie!

Let’s look for a minute, at Bush’s other grand accomplishments.

Number one, the war in Iraq was a terrible, horrific mistake. A mistake Bush deliberately led us into – with malice and aforethought. He lied and distorted pre-war intelligence – the “Weapons of Mass Destruction – the WMD,” and he lied and distorted the facts trying to tie Saddam Hussein into 9/11 as the other part of his justification for the invasion of Iraq.

The facts of the matter is that Saddam Hussein was a despicable tyrant but he had no ties at all to the 9/11 terrorists, and he had no WMD – he was not a threat to anyone outside Iraq. There was no just cause for the US to invade Iraq and Bush knew it.

The real basis of the US invasion is that Saddam had tried to murder Bush’s daddy and Bush was trying to get even – and then also, there were the bucks – the other main motivation was that through the war, Bush and his oil buddies (can you say Halliburton – Dick Cheney’s company) were able to rape and pillage Iraq, raking in countless millions and millions and millions of dollars.

This is absolutely horrendous.

The fact that the US invaded another sovereign country with no just reason or provocation is a horrible, disgusting black blot on the good name of the United States. We may never recover from this.

But wait, there’s more.

Adding insult to injury, Bush tried and to a large extent succeeded in turning the United States into a police state – taking away our civil liberties in the name of protecting us and making us secure. Warrantless domestic wiretapping, the suspension of habeas corpus for terror suspects, holding terror suspects indefinitely without charging them, even demanding library patron lending records without warrants (using a “National Security Letter”) to see what books people were reading, and on and on, along with all the other changes under the “Patriot Act.”

If Bush had his way, we’d all have a bar code tattooed on our foreheads at birth. Joe McCarthy would be so proud.

And then how about the Bush administration’s use of torture? They admitted the use of waterboarding on terror suspects – which is the controlled drowning of a subject. And they admitted the use of all the other standard, lesser techniques like sleep deprivation, degradation and beatings and so on (which are mostly prohibited by the Geneva Convention).

There was the Abu Ghraib Prison episode, where it became public US soldiers had been torturing prisoners (remember Lynndie England walking her naked prisoner on a leash?). While the Bush administration was able to distance themselves from this and publicly disavowed the events there, I suspect the real facts are that the soldiers were acting under orders from on high. Right from the top.

But all that was nothing compared to what some lucky people got.

When they really wanted to romp on someone, the Bush administration used “extraordinary rendition.” It was for those times when simple torture just wouldn’t do, and they wanted to really torture someone with absolutely no holds barred. Using rendition, they simply kidnapped the people and sent them to a country where torture was legal – countries like Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Morocco, and Uzbekistan.

But wait, there’s even more.

No list of Bush’s grand accomplishments would be complete without including the current world financial/economic crisis.

Okay, I suppose it isn’t fair to credit Bush with bringing about all the current economic woes, but he should certainly get the lion’s share of blame.

His policies of lax regulation with little or no government oversight allowed the business world to run rampant. And it was their blind greed run amok that brought on much of our current misery.

So now home foreclosures and business bankrupcies are hitting historic highs, unemployment is rising to record levels, and we’re lurching into what looks like the most signitficant economic downturn since the great depression. Our children’s children will be paying these bills.

Thanks, so much W.

It’s absolutely crystal clear that George Bush ran the United States right into the ground, on nearly every level that counts.

• He ruined the economy – not just of the United States, but also of the world.

• He blackened the name of the United States by needlessly involving us in an unjust war.

• He is responsible for the deaths of over 4,200 US service people in Iraq, and is responsible for the wounding and maiming of over 31,000 more Americans in that unjust war.

• He is responsible for the deaths of between 90,000 and 98,000 innocent Iraqi civilians.

• He let Osama bin Laden go free, by withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.

• He tried and nearly succeeded in turning the US into a police state.

• He tried to set himself up as “above” the law of the land. He flouted and disregarded the US Constitution any time it conflicted with his “God Given” goals.

Given all these facts, I don’t think there’s any question that Bush will go down in history as our worst president ever.

If someone wanted to, I think you could make a good case for trying Bush for genocide, and for treason.

I just hope the country can someday recover.

Well, we did it. Barack Obama got elected. Now the fun begins.

The stench of George Bush – America’s worst president ever – will linger for years and years. It’s hard to even begin to count the ways George Bush has screwed up the United States and the world.

Where do you begin? Our economy is in ruins, and the whole country is falling apart at the seams, with the world economy trailing behind us like a drunken sailor, bobbing and weaving, about to pass out. Then we’ve got wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a trillion dollar debt, the loss of many of our civil liberties in the name of freedom – and that’s just the beginning.

After eight years of a Bush republican, Neo-Con feeding frenzy – where Bush’s buddies spent day and night gorging themselves on the spoils of our labor, things are kind of rough. Bush and his buddies have raped and pillaged their way through much of our children’s inheritance. All that’s left are the smoking ruins.

I really don’t envy Obama – he’s coming into a pretty hopeless situation.

But at least I am heartened by the fact that I believe Obama is better qualified to turn the situation around than anyone else I can think of. To the extent anyone can, Obama has the best chance.

And more importantly, we’re not continuing to dig ourselves any deeper.

If John McCain had been elected, it just would have been a third term for Bush – no difference at all. That would have been a fate worse than death.

By electing Obama, we’ve prevented that – prevented further damage from being done.

That’s a very graphic demonstration of how upset people are with the way Bush took the country – the way he took the country down into the sewer.

So, like I said, here we are, at the crossroads.

Where we go next, I do not know.

I think we can assume that things will continue to get worse for at least the short-term future – as Obama has predicted. The US and world economies have a tremendous amount of inertia. Just like a mile-long freight train running out of control, you don’t put the brakes on the world economy and expect anything to happen anytime soon.

And it is the world economy that’s sick, not just the United States.

Everything is interrelated these days. It might take a while for the ripples to propagate, from Detroit to Beijing, or from Omaha to Novosibirsk, but they do. Just like waves in a pond.

So fixing the US economy by itself isn’t practical or even possible. The whole world has to get well before any of the parts can truly get well by themselves.

And that’s one helluva complex project.

So if we can dig ourselves out of this recession anytime in Obamas’s first term, I’ll be real surprised.

We shall see. Like I said, at least we’ve turned the corner.

What else? I’ve got a wish list for the President-Elect.

Here are some concrete things I’d like to see Obama do in his first term (besides solve the economic mess):

• Pull all US troops out of Iraq as soon as possible. The Iraqi’s don’t want us there; we don’t belong there, so let’s get our troops out and stop spilling American blood for Bush’s unjust war. This has gotta be the number one priority.

• Catch Osama bin Laden. George W. Bush basically let bin Laden go when he pulled the troops out of Afghanistan to go to Iraq (and it was certainly in Bush’s best interests to have bin Laden loose – that fueled the “War on Terror.” Without Osama bin Laden, Bush would have been a one-term wonder). If bin Laden is captured, then the “War on Terror” can finally be concluded and we can get on with our business.

As an aside, I believe this “War” will go down in infamy, just like the McCarthy period communist inquisitions of the late 50’s. George W. Bush’s presidency is an ugly, horrendous blot on the otherwise grand history if the United States of America. He has shamed us all.

• Modify the Wall Street bailout package to punish the executives who, because of their unbridled greed, were responsible for creating the mess. Right now, some of these guys – like the execs from Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, who drove their companies into the ground with their greed and gluttony, are still collecting their multi-million dollar compensation packages. I heard of one company, I forget which, whose CEO collected a $500,000 salary, then a bonus of $131 million – all based on commissions from bad mortgages which we the taxpayers, had to buy to save the company, for pennies on the dollar.

That’s just dead wrong. Any compensation based on sales of bad mortgages ought to be recovered from them – otherwise we’re just encouraging them to go do it again. We should seize their assets, sue them, do whatever it takes. Limit their total compensation to say $200,000 a year for the life of the bailout loans.

That they should walk away fat and happy without any bad effects at all is just a travesty. This must be corrected. Hell, they really should be in jail!

• Bring the US into parity with Japan and Korea in the area of Broadband Internet. This is my own pet peeve. In Japan and Korea (and other places, like Hong Kong and Finland), they have Internet connections several orders of magnitude faster than what we have here – and it’s cheaper. In Korea, you can get a 100 mb/s fiber connection (FTTH) for around $35 US per month. With no bandwidth caps.

Here in the US, you can’t even hardly find a 100 mb/s connection. Comcast’s best (with the new DOCSIS 3.0 rollout) is a 50 mb/s connection for $129 per month, and that’s with a 250 GB per month cap!

That’s ridiculous.

Bandwidth costs ISP’s the same here as it does in Seoul or Tokyo. Why should US citizens pay 10 times more for a product that’s vastly inferior to what you can get in Tokyo or Seoul?

One reason: greed – that good ol’ George W. Bush motivator. They do it because they can. Because we put up with it.

We’re being forced into becoming a Third World Country because of greed.

This has got to change. The internet is fast on its way to becoming an indispensable utility, like water or power. If the United States is going to compete in the world market, we need to have internet service comparable to the best – and have it available to all Americans at a price they can afford.

I’ve heard mentions that Obama has plans along these lines – bringing us into parity with Japan and Korea – and which also includes legislation for net neutrality, which is an essential.

Let's make it so!