The first and perhaps last chance for Washingtonians to apply for a 100 watt Low Power FM license comes June 11-15, when the FCC holds the fifth of its five filing windows for various sets of states. Washington is in that last group. Thanks to the perfidy of Congress, the National Association of Broadcasters, and National Public Radio, nobody in any sizable city (like Seattle) need apply. Incidentally, NPR and its "public" radio allies will be holding a national convention in Seattle May 15-18; the people's radio will gather at the Washington State Trade & Convention Center, registration $500 a pop. Amusingly, I've been invited to talk at the convention May 17 on the topic of LPFM and public radio's need to diversity its audience. Stay tuned for a report...--Geov Parrish

Please help if you can--UW football coach Rick Neuheisel (annual income: over $1 million) has been deprived of some much-needed spending cash when the state's Executive Ethics Board barred him from accepting a deal with Nike Inc. for as much as $150,000 a year. The board ruled that the proposed contract between the sweatshop parasite and the humble state employee constitutes "outside compensation," prohibited under the state's ethics laws. Under a 5-year contract signed in 1999, Coach Neuheisel is limited to a meager $897,000 a year, before bonuses. But, since his team won last year's Rose Bowl, the coach is in a good position to negotiate a cost-of-living raise in 2004. When signed, Neuheisel's contract was one of the richest in the country; two years later, it's no longer even in the top 20.

The university may help mitigate Neuheisel's loss by raising his modest compensation, following a pattern set by dealings with the university's previous coach. But if they can't find the money--after all, Washington state is on a "bare-bones budget," according to Governor Locke--perhaps Nike's sweatshop slaves will donate some of their compensation package to the beleaguered coach.

In 1998, ETS! raised the same issue with previous UW football coach Jim Lambright, whose deals with Nike and various media, banks, and sporting goods makers netted him a quarter million a year. (...) In 1999, the ethics board ruled that Lambo's deals violated the law, but something about football makes people forget. It's the same thing that makes people willing to pour an enormous amount of taxpayer money into a violent, drug-addled, male-only program at a public institution. --Valerie Jean Rose & G.P.

The rumor is that Bush's Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is insane. Now we know it's true. Rumsfeld is behind the push to develop a new low-yield nuclear weapon to add to the US arsenal. It would penetrate and destroy deeply-buried targets. Evidently, he has hallucinated a scenario wherein Saddam Hussein is busy manufacturing biological weapons in a deeply buried, hardened bunker under the desert. Among his other paranoid fantasies are Russians building a nuclear-war command center inside of a mountain and the starving North Koreans manufacturing long-range missiles in the bottom of a mine-shaft. Of course, Rumsfeld is supported in his insanity by the nuclear industry, which sure could use some of that government money. By the way, "low-yield" is a relative term; one of these weapons has the explosive power of 30 Hiroshimas.--Maria Tomchick

Striking Seattle ACORN workers following up on their victory two weeks ago before the National Labor Relations Board, got some more good news on May 3. Lawyers for the ACORN national office offered the Seattle workers full back pay from the time they first offered to return to work about a month ago. The latest deal also includes the workers returning to their jobs. The workers had previously offered to return to work once the original conditions of the strike were met, including a 40-hour week, lunch breaks, a sexual harassment policy, and paychecks paid on time and in full.

The workers were scheduled to return to work on May 7. Support for and inquiries into their well-being can be made to the local ACORN office at 206-723-5845. The Seattle IWW, which is representing the workers, is at 206-706-6250 --Troy Skeels

It's a pity America's military doesn't miss things as often as its media. Once again--in the tragifarce late last month of US "intelligence" helping Peru shoot down and kill two US missionaries it mistakenly took to be drug runners--our fawning, frothing, autopatriotic networks (including the "liberal" NPR) missed at least two major points. The first one, remarkably, was the same one they missed only two weeks previously, when we killed a pilot in China: the deadly presence of US military personnel in remote parts of the world where we're not at war and have no legitimate business. Can't anyone draw the obvious conclusions about American empire from these incidents? Secondly, and more ominously, pundits tut-tutted that we--er, our Peruvian stooges, whom we pay handsomely to pull the triggers we sell them at a taxpayer-subsidized deep discount--shot down "innocents." As though it's completely appropriate that someone who, instead of Bibles, actually had drugs in the plane (and as though one can tell a plane's cargo by its appearance), should be shot down and killed--no trials, no questions.

At one point, in 1994, the US briefly suspended some military cooperation with Peru due to concerns over its shoot-to-kill policies. But then another Clintonian tough-on-drugs spasm restored the funding, with a few bullshit "rules of engagement" understandings doubtless added. Those now will no doubt be "investigated" and "refined," so that our stooges will use only the best judgment when, without evidence, they identify, try, convict, and execute people on sight. That's how American justice works in the rest of the world, and here at the heart of the empire, our networks' state propaganda thinks that's just fine.--G.P.

Perhaps the world's most iconoclastic monarch, Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, has developed a mixture of palm oil and diesel which can be burned in standard diesel engines. The King has applied for a patent on the formula, which he developed and tested himself. The idea of using cheap and abundant palm oil as a fuel is not new, but the King is the first to develop a practical mixture. The government has asked the Petroleum Authority of Thailand to assist with producing the fuel for sale in Thailand at low cost. The mixture, besides containing a renewable fuel source and reducing Thailand's dependence on petroleum imports is said to be less polluting than straight diesel.--T.S.

A group of high school students, visiting Washington DC in April, were silenced by the authorities while singing the National Anthem at the Jefferson Memorial. Winners of a VFW sponsored patriotic essay contest, the students got a lesson in why patriotism takes such a beating when it moves from essays to the real world. The essays were on the theme "What Price Freedom?"

Overcome by patriotic fervor, the students burst into song at the sight of Jefferson's grand marble effigy. "It was an awesome feeling. You just thought, I am so blessed to be part of this great country," said Kirsten Winston. "We got to almost the very end and we were at the last stanza when the National Park Service asked us to stop."

Park Rangers called a halt to this public display of affection because according to federal regulations, any group of 26 or more people gathered at a national monument who attract an audience, are considered a demonstration, which requires a permit, and in some instances assault with less-lethal weaponry. While armed quelling of expression was thankfully not necessary in this instance, we can hope that the young essayists will thoughtfully incorporate this experience in their future writings concerning freedom, and other breaches of protocol.--T.S.

The Seattle P-I could be in real trouble. The Seattle Times' move to morning circulation put it in direct competition with the P-I...to the P-I's detriment, it turns out. Last year's circulation figures show that the Seattle Times is up 3.3%, while the P-I is down 9.1%. We may soon become a one-paper town. With the Seattle Weekly's continuing slide into the toilet (the News Bites column, in particular, is incoherent and unfunny), good feature writing will become impossible to find. Except here, of course.--M.T.

What pushed Gov. Gary Locke to finally draft a transportation plan? Well, the announcement that Boeing was moving its corporate headquarters probably did it. At Boeing's recent annual shareholders' meeting, CEO Phil Condit said: "There are very clear areas where this state needs to do more...Moving parts and pieces around the Puget Sound area, commuting in the Puget Sound area is really tough. And that's something that needs to be addressed." In other words, he was saying that Washington State needs to build more roads soon--or else Boeing might move the rest of its company out of the Puget Sound area. That sort of blackmail usually makes our elected officials sit up, roll over, and play dead.--M.T.

Brief, Shameless Self-Promotion: What started with ETS! continues to grow! The kind folks at Working Assets' www.workingforchange.com will shortly begin carrying national columns of mine--some similar to those I now run in Seattle Weekly, some new. As part of the deal, they've generously offered to do something I was doing myself for a while, until poor health and lousy software intervened: maintain an e-mail subscription list of my columns. If you'd like to get both the WA and SW columns (generally 1-2 a week), drop me a note at ets@scn.org. And look soon for the full archive of the last decade or so of my writing at www.geov.org...

Got any suggestions for events at which ETS! can table this summer, handing out papers and selling our new (and fine!) t-shirts? Let us know--e-mail ets@scn.org or call 206-903-9461.

Don't forget that the Sidran for Mayor campaign will, in theory, be fined $250 for every "Sidran for Mayor" poster that appears on the city's utility poles. Get to work!--G.P.