

This and That, Then and Now

Bev Kearney of the University of Texas is a Hall of Fame track and field coach. She was forced to resign when it was revealed she had a consensual relationship with a student years ago.

I was two years into college before I realized that it wasn’t required that professors sleep with their students.

Seriously, if this isn’t the worst case of gender inequality, it ranks right up there with the treatment of Saint Joan of Orleans.

While I frown on this whole sleeping with college age students, if every professor who ever participated was forced to resign, we would all be self-taught. (Of course, I am going over-the-top, but so did the administrators at the University of Texas.)


The huge, inept insurance company AIG (“All Is Giggles”?) was seriously thinking about suing the United States government. For those coming in late, AIG asked the US government for a payday loan of $180 billion. It was the largest bailout ever. AIG managed to pay it back, with a profit to the US government (that’s taxpayers like you and me) of $22 billion. But the loonys down at AIG thought that the US government took too much money in the payback. So they were thinking of suing (or rather, joining their ex-CEO in a lawsuit).

Not only should they have never considered suing the US taxpayers but they should have emphatically demanded that no one else sue the government, either. Not ask, demand. Start with denying the ex-CEO his pension if he persists (he would win in court–but might die before he saw a penny of the pension–it would serve him right). AIG should not only not sue the US, but join in the defense, pay the lawyers’ fees and generally act like a mench.


Everybody is all excited because we might get a basketball team. (Not really ‘everybody’ but to hear it on the local stations, it is ‘everybody’.) Great. Like I can afford a two hundred dollar ticket. Or you. But someone is stupid enough to pay to see it.

Chris Hanson is going to bring the City on board, to the tune of $200 million, for the sole purpose of making the City (read: taxpayers) liable for any cost-overruns or epic financial collapse (if he can cough up $500 million for the team, you are telling me he couldn’t have found the last $200 million?).

OK, great. On the night of the first game, when the team is here, the arena is finished and before everyone sobers up, the City of Seattle should invoke the right of emient domain and seize the team. The Supreme Court allowed a city to seize a private home to sell the land to a private developer; they will allow this. An NBA team is just another private asset that a city can seize. The NBA says their constitution, by-laws and so on prevents any team from being owned by a city. Tell them their by-laws have all the power of a wet kleenix. The NBA is just another private company and their laws, rules and customs have no real legal standing.


The Sound Transit board keeps trying to send trains between Everett and Seattle. This, in spite of 78 landslides since Thanksgiving.

They should stop this Sounder service because it is moving slightly over a thousand people a day. The cost is over $30,000 this little line that no one takes. This is not even counting the hundreds of millions we paid to Burlington Northern to use their track.

But the landslides are immediately worrisome. If the train derails when it hits the soil on the tracks, it will derail. When that happens, injuries and even death always result. If the train goes into the water–and most of this part of the track is right next to the water–it will be a miracle if anyone survives.

It is beyond sense to keep sending trains down this track. The individual members of the Sound Transit board will not be able to escape personal responsibility. Nor should they. They know of the danger and they can choose to do the right thing.

Some are saying it is safe to send the train if it has stopped raining. Has no one have a memory? When Seattle had an enormous landslide that covered Aurora Avenue (all six lanes) and went all the way to Dexter Avenue, it had not rained for two weeks previously. Just because it has stopped raining, it does not mean that there is no danger of landslides.

Dick Falkenbury

Dick Falkenbury