Clear Skies County: We have work to do in managing our new digital technology

Posted by Empire Press on Feb 20, 2013 in All News, Clear Skies/Jim Russell, Voices | 0 comments | By Jim Russell | Technology is improving our lives. But society’s response to the wealth created by corporate access to the Internet’s free Big Data is our greatest challenge. Technology is essential to my well being. An implanted ICD regulating my heart sends data to a wireless computer by my bedside, which forwards it to Boston Scientific in Massachusetts, permitting my local physician to...
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Clear Skies County: Big Data is a big deal — so prepare yourself

Posted by Empire Press on Feb 13, 2013 in Clear Skies/Jim Russell, Voices | 0 comments | By Jim Russell | Free digital data on the Internet is such a big deal it has acquired a label: Big Data. You’d better understand what it is and how you can benefit from it or you’ll lose some of your wealth. I benefitted from it and a traveling companion and I avoided losing hundreds of dollars. Corporations are mining Big Data to capture wealth. The McKinsey Global Institute, the research...
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Clear Skies County: We’re headed for a better way

Posted by Empire Press on Feb 6, 2013 in Clear Skies/Jim Russell, Voices | 0 comments By Jim Russell We are finding better ways to work together in this country, or am I am confused by effusion generated during the recent “Follies 2013” production in Wenatchee? I joined Karen  at the “Follies” performance as one of 50 special celebrations during our 50th year of marriage. In the finale, the entire cast is dancing and singing uplifting, inspiring lyrics from, “Better...
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Clear Skies County: Tell legislators to keep GET going

Posted by Empire Press on Jan 30, 2013 in Clear Skies/Jim Russell, Voices | 0 comments By Jim Russell One of our state’s model programs for the middle class and our youth is under attack for spurious reasons. The Guaranteed Education Tuition program (GET) allows people to invest in credits today with a guarantee their savings will cover residential undergraduate tuition at any public or private college in the country, when a child is ready to enroll. Investor payments cover the...
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Taking a day to be thankful

Posted by Empire Press on Nov 28, 2011 in All News, Clear Skies/Jim Russell, Voices | 0 comments Today, we should thank magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale for our first national Thanksgiving proclamation. Undaunted by her age of 74, by 15 years of rejections by previous administrations, and driven to tidy up the scattered statewide Thanksgiving dates of New England legislatures, she wrote to President Lincoln in 1863 that a Thanksgiving “needs national attention and authoritative fixation, only, to become an American tradition.” Lincoln assigned William Seward to write it.
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Lacy for East Wenatchee mayor

Posted by Empire Press on Oct 24, 2011 in All News, Clear Skies/Jim Russell | 0 comments For the first time in 13 years, East Wenatchee has a mayoral race between mayor Steve Lacy and council member Dave Bremmer. Once you’ve decided who has the most attractive signs and most signs implanted in yards, what else do you need?
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Focus, PFD members: avoid default

Posted by Empire Press on Oct 10, 2011 in All News, Clear Skies/Jim Russell, Douglas County | 0 comments Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, arranged for Treasury officials to explain that the public facilities board should avoid default on Town Toyota Center debt on Dec. 1. I attended the meeting, reviewed it on the Wenatchee World’s livestream, read articles and commented online. I examined the three interlocal agreements that created the events center, defined the relationship between the...
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Get out of the swamp boat business immediately

Posted by Empire Press on Sep 29, 2011 in All News, Clear Skies/Jim Russell, East Wenatchee | 0 comments How did East Wenatchee council members plunge into a self-created swamp miles east of the city and lose $112,000 in two years? Easily. A majority was driven by enthusiastic mayor Steve Lacy, the city’s economic development directives and then urged on by its event director, Dawn Collings and her advisory board, as well as United States Sprint Boat Association officials and fans.
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Why not improve student graduation rates and save money?

Posted by Empire Press on Sep 15, 2011 in All News, Clear Skies/Jim Russell | 0 comments Surveys of high school dropouts found that 81 percent of them believed high school would have been more relevant with real-world learning and connecting school with work. From the 1870s to the 2000s, the United States has fallen from the highest high school graduation rate to 13th and has the worst college dropout rate of industrialized countries.
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