Equal Wedding

The story of the historic marriages of Karen Franks and Dana Fickeisen, followed by that of Karen Chiricello and Mary Langley,  on Sunday, December 9, 2012--the first legal same-gender marriages in Jefferson County, WA on the first day such marriages were possible in Washington State after voters approved Measure 74 in the November election, confirming the state legislature’s passage of a law legalizing gay marriage in its last session.

Equal Wedding
(9.5 minutes)

Flu Vaccine Anyone?

This story started when my friend Julie Horner posted this simple query on her Facebook wall: “…to flu shot or not to flu shot?  That is the question.”

Julie’s quandary quickly uncovered an astonishing assortment of opinions, facts, and fables, and revealed surprising passions on both sides of the question of whether one should or shouldn’t get an annual vaccination against influenza.  Within an hour she had accumulated about 30 responses, a number that nearly doubled by the end of the day.

Here's the KPTZ Compass Segment her inquiry inspired:

Flu Vaccine Anyone?
14 minutes

It's the Cheese...

In recent years the local economy, like the national economy, has been sluggish at best, and many local businesses have been having a hard go of it.  But for at least one local start-up, business is booming:

Growing Cheese Co.
(13 minutes)

Defending Against the Defense Lobbyists

Defending Against Defense Lobbyists

Diane Randall didn’t much mind the ceaseless drizzle that enveloped Port Townsend on the day she was in town last week, considering that if she’d been at home in Washington D.C. that Monday, she would have been near the center of what meteorologists had already dubbed the worst storm in history—Superstorm Sandy, which within a day would leave dozens dead and an estimated toll in property and infrastructure damage that mounted into the billions of dollars.

The storm had direct relevance to Randall’s visit here, because she had come to talk about national security, and how we can best use our public resources to achieve it.  Hurricane Sandy was exposing a huge hole in a defense plan that focuses on mostly theoretical threats of foreign aggression, but by-and-large fails to take into account the very real and immediate threats from Mother Nature as the result of climate change—a failure she finds to be disconcertingly absent from campaign discourse this electoral season on the part of either party.

Randall is the executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation, or FCNL, the D.C.-based Quaker lobbying organization perhaps best known for the “War is Not the Answer” bumper stickers and lawn signs that can be seen all around Jefferson County. 

She was in town seeking support for an FCNL campaign to trim at least $1 trillion over the next decade from projected military spending, declaring that the time has come for the Pentagon to take its fair part in reducing the deficit, and citing an urgent need to refocus public resources. 

To put that proposed cut into perspective: Draconian though it may sound, it would only reduce military spending to 2007 levels by the year 2023.

“If war is not the answer, the answer is: let’s peacefully prevent war before it happens,” she told the full-house audience who had come to hear her talk titled “How we can Protect the Federal Budget from Defense Lobbyists” at the Community Center that night.  Pointing out that diplomacy is far less expensive than war, Randall criticized a budget that dedicates 39 cents of every tax dollar on the military, while spending only about two cents on what the FCNL terms the “peaceful prevention of deadly conflict.”

“Relative to what the military gets­—the Pentagon gets—to what’s spent on diplomacy and development, which really are the effective tools for peace, we’re way out of whack,” she observed.

Randall talked of the dangers to funding for vital social service programs presented by the so-called “fiscal cliff” that will be set in motion when last year’s Budget Control Act kicks in on January 2, especially in the face of an intensive campaign on the part of defense industry lobbyists to exempt defense contractors from their part of the automatic budget cuts.

“Now is the time for legislators to hear from you,” she told her audience.  “They’re certainly hearing from the defense lobbyists.”

Citing studies showing that legislators are far more responsive to personal visits or other communications from their own constituents than from any paid lobbyist, Randall pressed her audience to educate themselves on the issues by visiting the fcnl.org website and then to develop a respectful ongoing relationship with their representatives in Congress, and to regularly let them know what they think.

 “If everyone in this room would talk to their elected officials, that would be a lot of people,” she said. “I think you could count on the fingers of two hands the number of people who have gone in to talk with their representatives about reducing defense spending.” 

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Defending Against the Defense Lobbyists