When the Navy boasted a couple weeks ago that it would allocate $5 billion to renovate four submarines at the Bangor submarine base, I couldn't help wondering how far that same $5 billion would go if we chose to spend it on, say, regional transit. The whole light rail line from Northgate to Sea-Tac is expected to cost around $3 billion. With $5 billion, we could build the MLK tunnel, the extra spur to Southcenter and Longacres, and get a large chunk of the Northgate to Everett section built, too. Or maybe we could blow the whole $5 billion on a tunnel under Lake Washington--for mass transit, of course, not for automobiles, as a certain local politician once proposed. (Okay, okay, it was Paul Schell.) Or we could dump the money into farmworker housing. Let's see: $5 billion divided by 157,000 farmworkers equals $31,847 per person to build permanent homes. That beats the hell out of the $8 million the state wants to allocate to build only 10,000 homes. And $5 billion would sure go a long way towards giving teachers the 10-15% salary increase they've been asking for, instead of Gov. Locke's measly 2%. $5 billion would also buy a lot of books, lab equipment, computers, and school supplies. And then there's the upcoming college tuition hikes...in short, there's plenty of need out there for that $5 billion. The Navy should move to the back of the line.--Maria Tomchick

Speaking of light rail, I've heard several white activists slam the idea of building a light rail tunnel through Rainier Valley. I don't understand this attitude. Members of Save Our Valley--one of the city's only genuinely multi-racial activist groups--have been pushing hard to change the original Sound Transit proposal, which would build tunnels in the north end and under Capital Hill, but save money by tearing up Martin Luther King Way for surface rail. They've been doing it without any help from north side white activists or, more importantly, without asking for our help, either. This must be galling for some white folks, who've rushed to point out technological problems with building the tunnel. Come on. Residents and businesses in Rainier Valley had to fight just to get the rail line in their neighborhood at all; the least they deserve is equal treatment. And when a community of color knows what it wants and decides to fight for it, we should support that decision, not try to thwart it. Otherwise we send a racist message: "we're white and we know better, so we'll make these decisions for you." I don't think so.--M.T.

Breakthrough! The grass roots movement that has spawned hundreds of low power unlicensed radio stations across the country--including Free Seattle Radio, profiled in ETS! last week--has apparently finally penetrated the thick heads at the Federal Communications Commission. Last week, against the wishes of the National Association of Broadcasters and major commercial broadcasters, the FCC issued a proposed notice of rulemaking that solicits public comment on the idea of allowing licensing of low power, neighborhood stations. As envisioned by the FCC (but by no means guaranteed yet), the stations would have to be noncommercial and could not rebroadcast or be owned or managed by existing stations. That the FCC is even considering such an idea in the face of massive industry opposition is a testimony to the enormous pressure that the free speech pirate radio movement has put on it, legally and pragmatically. There's simply no way the FCC can shut down all those stations, though at last check it's still trying. A massive show of public support for low power stations might ease the current enforcement hassles, too. FCC, 1919 M St. NW, Washington DC 20554. It's Notice of Proposed Rulemaking FCC 99-6.--Geov Parrish

In a recent article the New England Journal of Medicine called the U.S. health care system "the most inadequate and most expensive in the developed world." In a recent series of articles, the journal said that people in the U.S. pay $3,925 per person for health care each year, while in the second most expensive country, Switzerland, people pay $2,500 per person per year. And when differences in per capita income are taken into account, U.S. citizens still pay $1,000 more per person than their counterparts in Europe. According to the journal, there are three reasons for this: doctors in the U.S. are paid more for the same amount of work, a day in the hospital costs more, and hospitals in the U.S. embrace new, expensive technologies very quickly--probably in an effort to be "competitive." The fastest-growing item in the medical field is prescription drugs, which have increased at double-digit rates in recent years. But the biggest chunk of money spent on healthcare in the U.S. goes to pay for hospital stays. Half of this amount is paid by taxpayers through Medicare and Medicaid. Private insurance companies only cover about one-third.--M.T.

A nice protest in Olympia last Monday of Shell and its promotion of the illegal and murderous military regime in Nigeria. Four protesters positioned themselves on top of the gas pumping island at the Black Lake Shell station and draped banners over the sides while a streetside placard-waving crowd of about 30 or 40 passed out leaflets. The climbers lasted up on the canopy for about an hour before being detained for criminal trespass. Shell has a fine tradition of attracting protest in the area; it was a long-running target of South African activists in the 1980s for its support of that apartheid regime. When Shell sold its area stations to another oil company in the early '90s the protests disappeared. Now that the multinational is creeping back into the area, attention for its ugly corporate tendencies should make a comeback, too. --G.P.