SeattleIAM: Carlos Silva Officially a Mariner, EPA Chokes Washington’s Plan for Stricter Emissions Laws

This is a selection of recent popular blog articles from SeattleIAM where you will find the best blogs from Seattle, Washington as well as video uploads, social networking, rumors, and blog authoring

Mariners Sign Carlos Silva

From the Mariners Blog, Geoff Baker reports that it’s a done deal between free-agent pitcher Carlos Silva and the Mariners. “His four-year deal, said to be for $44 million” will be finalized after his physical. Seattle has been “courting Silva for quite some time, but their efforts intensified late last week when Japanese free-agent Hiroki Kuroda spurned the Mariners and signed with the Dodgers.” After Kuroda wasn’t an option any longer, “the M's made Silva their No. 1 target.”

New pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre told Baker that he “had Silva at the top of his list of available free agents even before Kuroda signed.” The post states that Stottlemyre also thinks Seattle infielders “are good enough to sweep up all the ground balls that Silva induces with his sinker, while the flyballs he yields should die on the Safeco Field warning track.” Once the deal is announced, the Mariners starting rotation will be better than last years according to Mariners manager John McLaren. Baker doesn’t think Silva will “make or break the 2008 Mariners” by himself, but it “strengthens the back of the team's rotation.” Now they need to “strengthen the front-end of the rotation as well.”

Smoking Ban to be Forced on Private Residences in Auburn

Writing over at horsesass.com, the “straight poop” on area politics & the press, Will challenges the logic of a recent smoking ban that the King County Housing Authority has placed on an Auburn apartment complex. He points to Jackie Brooks, a 74-year-old who “has smoked for a half-century and figures she consumes a pack a day inside her Auburn apartment.” Brooks has lived in the complex for 14 years. “People are successfully goading a government agency to impose a particular public health morality… forcing these old smokers out of their homes may be popular, [but] it’s still the wrong thing to do.”

Blogger Will, not a supporter of the I-901 ban on public smoking, admits in his post there are “legitimate points to be made for restricting smoking in public.” Enclosed places make sense, but it gets “murkier when you’re talking about… places that people can essentially choose not to go to, and… didn’t think it was the place for the state to tell business owners what environment they should provide.” He reasons that those arguments are far from this one. Someone smoking in their own apartment is not directly affecting neighbors. “Banning smoking in private residences just goes way too far.”

Sonics Lack of Effort Costs Them in Game against New Orleans

Gary Washburn, writing for the Seattle Sonics Blog, reviews the Sonics loss to New Orleans last night (107-93). He states that “the Sonics are back to square one, a place they never thought they would return after consecutive road wins.” He points out that those back to back wins were against “two of the league's worst teams in New York and Minnesota” and now the Sonics have been “brought back to reality with blowout losses to Utah and New Orleans.” The game was not even “competitive.” Seattle fell behind after the Hornet’s 13-0 run in the second quarter and didn’t respond.

“The problem was a lack of effort,” he says in his post. They played like they “knew they were going to lose.” He calls them on not chasing rebounds and allowing the Hornets “to dominate the paint.” Sonic players such as Chris Wilcox, who had only three rebounds in 26 minutes, “disappeared against formidable opponents.” The biggest issue, however, was the difference in point guards. Hornet’s Chris Paul “torched his Sonics counterparts for 21 points and 15 assists compared to a combined 18 points and five assists for the combination of Luke Ridnour and Earl Watson.”

EPA Chokes Washington’s Chances of Following in California’s Footsteps

Today on Seattlest, we learn from Tara that the head of the Puget Sound Clean Air Society, Dennis McLerran, is “pissed.” Washington was one of 18 states that supported California’s “bill to place limitations on vehicle emissions, which would have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 30 percent in the next 10 years.” The Environmental Protection Agency denied the bill, stating that President Bush’s renewable-fuel energy law “will do more to address global warming than imposing tailpipe rules in individual states. The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules.”

“McLerran claims in a Seattle Times article the EPA’s decision is purely political, not factual,” writes Tara in her post. Killing this bill lessens Washington’s “chances at following California in an aggressive attempt to protect our environment.” In the 37-year history of California’s Clean Air Act, this is the first bill to be vetoed by the federal government. “Normally, we can see both sides of a story,” writes Tara, “But with… several EPA lawyers and advisers on record stating that the EPA has no legal ground to overturn the petition, we suspect alternative motives.”

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