Take a break from the 2020 campaign and reminisce about previous presidential transitions. Bill Clinton in 1997 and George W. Bush in 2001 limited contributions to their presidential inauguration festivities to $100,000 from any one donor. Bush upped the limit to $250,000 in 2005. Barack Obama did not accept contributions from corporations, labor unions, PACs (political action committees) or lobbyists for his 2009 inauguration celebration. Individual gifts were capped at $50,000. Still, he set the record with a $53 million haul.
The current occupant of the White House had no such limits. Thirty donors contributed $1,000,000 or more to the total of $107 million. What’s still in question is where all that money went.
Surprise! A lot of it went into the Trump Organization.
Fifty years ago, Congress voted against funding supersonic aircraft. The result was massive layoffs at Boeing and the not-so-tongue-in-cheek billboard adjacent to I-5 on the way out of Seattle.
Things are different now. Microsoft, Starbucks and Amazon—along with Nirvana and grunge—changed the Queen/Jet City’s image. The working-class town became hip and synonymous with tech.
Seattle’s metamorphosis continues in the twenty-first century. With a median home price of $750,000 and median household income above $150,000, the city has become a place for the well-off and not-so-well-off/homeless with not-so-much in between.
Boeing is contracting again, shutting down 787 Dreamliner production. Amazon is giving mixed messages about continued growth in Seattle.
And another Seattle landmark is about to disappear. Elephant Car Wash, the first automated car wash in the city, announced it was closing after seventy years at the triangular block bordered by Denny Way and Battery Street. Soon to disappear is its iconic garishly-pink neon elephant sign. The company will continue to operate its fourteen other car washes in the Puget Sound area. The property owner has not announced any plans for the property that’s now surrounded by high-rise condominiums and office towers that may or may not be occupied by Amazonians.
An earlier victim of urban progress was the Lincoln Towing Company’s landmark truck—also pink—on Mercer Avenue. In the age of GPS smart phones, nobody needs directions anyway: “Take the Mercer exit from five and turn right at the toe truck.”
Remember Cliven Bundy and his boy Ammon? They faced off with the Bureau of Land Management—the other B.L.M.—in 2014 because they didn’t want to pay rent for federal land. They said their livestock should graze for free, that U.S. taxpayers should subsidize their ranching business. When B.L.M. came to impound Bundy’s cattle, they recruited the right-wing Oath Keepers “militia” to join them in a stand-off with the B.L.M.
On the second day of 2016, Ammon led an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. The takeover was to support father-and-son arsonists Dwight and Steve Hammond. They had been convicted of torching more than a hundred acres of federal grazing land to get rid of juniper and sagebrush, so more grass for their grazing cattle would grow. (They were recently pardoned by the current occupant of the White House.)
The months-long occupation resulted in property damage totaling millions of dollars to the Refuge’s headquarters.
Since that time, Ammon has distinguished himself by declaring the Mormon church had been infiltrated by socialists, globalists and environmentalists. He has criticized the current president’s immigration policy regarding Central Americans seeking asylum, expressed support for Black Lives Matter and said the United States is like Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
During August of 2020, he led mask-less demonstrations at the Idaho state capitol protesting COVID 19 restrictions and disrupted legislative sessions. State police handcuffed him to a chair and wheeled him out.
Last week Ammon Bundy attended his son’s high-school football game, but was refused admission because he was not wearing a mask. Watching the game from behind the end zone, he refused to comply with requirement to wear a mask on school property. When he wouldn’t leave, the game was cancelled at half time. “I don’t give two shits what you have to say, you’ve ruined it for everybody!” a woman told him on her way out.
The Boeing Company has come a long way since 1916, when Bill Boeing began building airplanes in his Seattle barn. Looking to the future, the company is hopeful that its 737 MAX will soon be certified to fly again. The aircraft has been grounded since March 2019, after two crashes killed 346 passengers.
Boeing has been accused of withholding information from the F.A.A. during the 737 MAX certification process and the F.A.A. accused of not carrying out its regulatory duties when it originally okayed the aircraft.
What started out as a child-molestation case ended with the Supreme Court ruling that much of eastern Oklahoma belongs to the people who there first: Native Americans.
The convicted child molester brought suit contending that because he was a member of the Creek Nation and the offense occurred on reservation land, the state of Oklahoma did not have jurisdiction. The state countered that because the treaties going back to the 1830s had been ignored in practice all along, and officially ignored since Oklahoma became a state in 1907, the reservation had no authority on its own land. The Supreme Court said otherwise.
