Observations on the news

The City of Olympia’s homeless response coordinator Colin DeForrest said in a recent news article that the temperatures of business owners are “ready to blow” in response to the homeless situation in downtown Olympia.  His observations are right on target.  Recently a meeting of Olympia Downtown business owners was forced to move to a new location when protesters took over the meeting facility.  The business owners moved to a new location, only to be faced with a protester who refused to leave the meeting.  Several  business owners responded and physically showed the protester to the door, in the process of which the protester suffered minor injuries.

Riots in France are over a significant increase in the gas tax for the purpose of stopping global warming.  Here in Washington State voters have twice rejected a tax which would have also significantly increased the state gas tax for a similar purpose – to reduce the impact of global warming.  Anything we do to try to reverse or stop global warming would be insignificant and extremely costly until India and China stop pumping pollution into the air.  Those two countries account for 80 percent of all pollutants released into the atmosphere.

A recent editorial in The Olympian recently took the City of Lacey to task for not having any women or minorities as finalists for the position of Lacey Police Chief.  All six of the announced finalists are white males.  I suspect that all of the finalists are well-qualified for the position, but the city has refused to release the resumes of those finalists.  Diversity is an element that needs to be taken into consideration whenever we make a hiring decision . If – and that’s a big IF – there’s a problem, then it rests with the firm hired by the city to make the first cut.  Incidentally The Olympian’s editorial board is comprised of all women.  Where’s the diversity there?