Author: Michael Pellegrini
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Hazzard County, Tacoma
Boss Hogg Lives! Okay, here’s the scenario: somewhere in a town probably deep down in the rural South, the politicians decide unceremoniously to dump part of the city’s utility system. The line given to the townsfolk, is that the utility system is losing money. This issue of losses is hotly contested, but the town fathers…
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Privatizing Click is not the answer
The whole problem with Click! Network is that their management are idiots. They never have had any idea how to compete in selling broadband access. Click’s always controlled the wholesale prices that the ISP’s use to set their prices. They kept the wholesale prices higher than they should have been because they were trying to…
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Happy Labor Day to us all!
In a day and age when organized labor seems largely irrelevant to many, this is an appropriate time to stop and reflect on the gains made by unions in the past 100 years. Although no one seems to remember now, some of the most basic protections we presently…
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This is how democracy dies
A liberal’s long journey away from Barack Obama and the Democratic party By Michael Pellegrini About seven and a half years ago following the 2008 elections, I wrote a blog post titled America: Disgraced then reborn. I absolutely gushed about how happy I was at the election of Barack Obama. I was dead certain he…
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America’s war against Islam
From a Muslim perspective, this whole “war on terror” has to look a whole lot like a “war on Muslims.” We’ve invaded Iraq and Afghanistan. Innocent civilian deaths in the Iraq war – and that’s just innocent civilian deaths by themselves – run overall between an estimated 110,000 to over 600,000 lives. Can there be…
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Are you ready for the oligarchy?
The thing that disturbs me the most about this methanol/LNG mess is not the methanol or LNG per se. Rather it’s that these issues bring home the hard, cold fact that while we were sleeping, there’s been a coup. Our city’s been taken over by hostile forces. Tacoma and the United States are…
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What can Port of Tacoma do to become more competitive with the Canadian ports?
To recap, Vancouver has a slight edge in certain factors like the cost of transiting terminals, they have more large super-post-Panamax cranes, they have slightly better rail delivery rates through state-subsidized Canadian National Rail, slightly better productivity, and they get a break of about $100 per container on Harbor Maintenance Tax. And they have massive…
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Port Metro Vancouver or Port of Tacoma? Who’s got the edge?
According to a report prepared for Port Metro Vancouver (PMV), their Container Traffic Forecast (which again, I encourage everyone to read), they predict that West Coast container volumes will increase between 3.4% and 5.7% per year through 2030. Based on that, they’re forecasting their share of the traffic will provide increases…
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Port of Tacoma – moving boldly into the future, or sliding into oblivion?
I read a really good book recently, on the evolution of container shipping: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson. It’s a great book. Anyone interested in understanding the Port of Tacoma and/or the shipping business should read it. One of the things…
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An open letter to the Tacoma City Council and Port Commissioners
Self determination is really important to Americans. That is after all, why we fought the Revolutionary War — so the American people could decide their own fate, not King George and the English aristocracy. Well it’s obvious some people in Tacoma have forgotten that. Most elected leaders in this democracy would err on the…