ADAGE: MC Democrats Playing Word Games

I'm attaching below an article that John Komen wrote expressly for the Democratic Party Newsletter but the editorial board refused to publish until they have a pro ADAGE article to provide balance. I spoke with the Chair of the party, Andrew Graham, prior to posting tonight. I wanted to let him know that I was posting John's article. Andrew insists that ADAGE has a boiler not an incinerator. But Andrew, just like ADAGE leadership, cannot explain away the ash coming out of the process of burning the woody biomass.

John pulled the article from the Dems and sent it to Mason County Budget Watch, the only local blog dedicated to the "unvarnished truth". So here you go, Mason County. I present to you John's article that was meant for the Mason County Democrat Newsletter.

Mason County residents have come alive. The incinerator issue has roused our usually apathetic citizenry from their torpor. After years of dull acceptance, we've become a community of activists.
It has been a long time coming, and it is gratifying to say the least. Finally, we are hearing voices of protest and reading angry letters to the editor. And the letters! They have been filling two full pages in the usually listless opinion section of the dormant local weekly newspaper,
And they are well written and articulate, these voices of the people. The writers have done their homework. They ask pertinent and important questions, and they are calling to task their elected county officials.
The outside special interests who zeroed in on Mason County to build their 195-foot smokestack figured they could ignore the general population. They need only influence a dozen elected county officials, and they would be home free to go ahead with their incinerator plans. And they nearly pulled it off without a murmur from the public,
They didn't figure on Theresa Jacobson. Almost singlehandedly, Jacobson roused the populace to the danger this community faced. The smokestack, she cried, will endanger the health of everyone, especially those most vulnerable, our children and the elderly.
She is tireless, this lady from the Agate area. She summoned activists and called on scientists. And she got the ball rolling. Never, says Jacobson, had she witnessed such a dramatic turnaround in public activity. There have been rallies, forums, discussion groups, demonstrations, even chanting pickets outside the chambers of Mason County's elected officials.
Only two of those dozen officials harbored doubts about the incinerator project. Port Commissioner Jack Miles and PUD 3 Commissioner Bruce Jorgenson have refused to be stampeded into acquiescence.
Now the letter writers and forum questioners are venting their ire and concerns toward the other elected officials. And rightly so. Why, they ask, are their county commissioners, their port commissioners, their Shelton city commissioners and their PUD 3 commissioners refusing to listen to them?
"What can we do?" cried one recent letter to the editor. "When the game is hopelessly rigged," wrote John Cox of Shelton, "the only option is to stop the game." He calls on the citizens of Mason County to "write letters, make phone calls and join in the demonstrations."
Another letter writer, Linda Pittman of Shelton, recalled the attempt some 20 years ago to locate "a medical waste incinerator" in Mason County. It failed because of citizen protest.
"The fight will be more difficult this time," wrote Ms. Pittman.
She's right, of course. But the people this time are fighting back with an intensity and purpose seldom seen in this quiet rural county.
And directly ahead is the citizens' trump card--the 2010 elections. On the ballot will be two elected officials who have played key roles in support of the incinerator. Their fate will be decided by the incinerator issue--and a populace roused to action.

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John Komen is a retired journalist. He was an Obama delegate to the 2008 Washington Democrat Convention in Spokane and is a frequent contributor to the newsletter.

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