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Posts published in “Day: April 30, 2006”

Where it hits hard

April 30, 2006

This is where people get really upset about regulation, and you can understand why . . .

Baker City is out there by its own self, quite a distance from other communities. I-84 runs through it, but the 10,000 people of Baker are a distinct community - about 40 minutes from La Grande, the nearest community of similar size, and well over an hour from Ontario. You drive over substantial mountains to get to anywhere else, and those roads - this includes the freeway - get tricky at various points in the winter.

Baker City, and Baker County for that matter, has one movie theatre, the Eltrym Theatre, and you just know that's an important fixture in town. A lot of small-town theatres like it have closed over the years, but the Eltrym has stayed afloat. And now the big movie season, summer, is just about to begin . . .

Maybe. The theatre apparently hasn't met fire safety water sprinkler codes, hasn't for some years, and now the Baker City Council has given its owner until June 30 to at least come up with a plan to meet the requirements. (We're not belittling that; yes, we know about the fires that have taken lives in firetrap buildings.) If the requirements are strictly adhered to, there's a good chance that the owner might just walk away, and the theatre may close.

You get the feeling that a lot of people in Baker are going to be very unhappy if there's not a serious attempt to find some ground everyone can live with . . .

Where it hits hard

April 30, 2006

This is where people get really upset about regulation, and you can understand why . . .

Baker City is out there by its own self, quite a distance from other communities. I-84 runs through it, but the 10,000 people of Baker are a distinct community - about 40 minutes from La Grande, the nearest community of similar size, and well over an hour from Ontario. You drive over substantial mountains to get to anywhere else, and those roads - this includes the freeway - get tricky at various points in the winter.

Baker City, and Baker County for that matter, has one movie theatre, the Eltrym Theatre, and you just know that's an important fixture in town. A lot of small-town theatres like it have closed over the years, but the Eltrym has stayed afloat. And now the big movie season, summer, is just about to begin . . .

Maybe. The theatre apparently hasn't met fire safety water sprinkler codes, hasn't for some years, and now the Baker City Council has given its owner until June 30 to at least come up with a plan to meet the requirements. (We're not belittling that; yes, we know about the fires that have taken lives in firetrap buildings.) If the requirements are strictly adhered to, there's a good chance that the owner might just walk away, and the theatre may close.

You get the feeling that a lot of people in Baker are going to be very unhappy if there's not a serious attempt to find some ground everyone can live with . . .

Cantwell, McGavick and oil

April 30, 2006

Maria Cantwell at an Exxon stationWhat seems undisputed in the contentious world of oil and gas is that we're running out. The exact moment of peak and decline seems yet to be the subject of some dispute, but evidently by the time we hit two decades or so hence, the United States, and the world, we will have a whole lot less oil to burn.

This leads to an obvious conclusion: Unless we want to de-evolve our society (as most of us do not), we should be getting about the business of developing new technology, so that our cars can run and houses be heated from sources other than petroleum. This is neither a stretch nor unrealistic, and any number of specialists have said that the economic pressure for it happen will occur once gas reaches a certain price point; $5 a gallon is often banied about. That, of course, suggests we have no free will or insight or initaitive to act before then, and simply develop the tech because we can see what's coming in the future of oil.

That, we'd suggest, is the logical backdrop to the rising political dispute over our spiking gas prices, those being the immediate sympton of a bigger problem. Watch for the rare politician who looks further ahead than this month's crisis: You may need to go on an expedition to find one.

That doesn't necessarily invalidate the short-range stuff; it instead puts it in its place. While to one extent or another, the rise in gas prices over the last generation was going to happen and is going to continue, the immediate details are not necessarily irrelevant.

Oil and gas spiked unexpectedly and interestingly in an Oregon Republican gubernatorial debate, and that may be worth revisiting. But nowhere in the Northwest has oil and gas become so central to politics as in the still-emerging Senate race in Washington. (more…)