What About TV Coverage?
From Bagpipes column, January 25, 1996: Easy, don’t pull the plugs on all your appliances just yet. Electrical power produced by the WNP-2 nuclear plant costs the Bonneville Power Administration 3.55 cents per kilowatt hour and sells it for 2.85 cents, not $3.55 and $2.85. Tuesday’s “Bagpipes” misplaced a decimal point in an item about BPA’s decision not to shut down the only nuclear power plant completed of the five begun by the Washington Public Power Supply.
Republican leaders in Congress asked the TV networks to let them respond to President Clinton’s State of the Union address on Wednesday, rather than right after Clinton speaks tonight.
CBS and ABC said no.
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., wanted to air their answer during the same time slot on Wednesday that Clinton will use this evening. That, Dole said, would let the president have his day and the Republicans have theirs.
But Andrew Hayward, president of CBS News, said the normal back-to-back airing would serve the public interest better.
Where do “Bagpipes” readers line up?
A plug too costly to pull
The Washington Public Power Supply System finished only one of the five nuclear power plants it had intended to build. Now, the Bonneville Power Administration pays $3.55 per kilowatt-hour for electricity from WNP-2 but can sell it for only $2.85.
BPA isn’t ready to shut the plant down, however. Shutdown could cost $350 million and would deprive the region of a backup power source when low-water years curb hydroelectricity generation.
Does WPPSS, once an electrifying political issue, still have the voltage to generate reader reactions?
Honest, the guy who gave the speech was JFK
A vigilant reader named Mary Anne Stuckart noticed a problem or two with the Perspective page in Sunday’s Spokesman-Review.
The page featured a reprint of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, delivered 35 years ago.
The page said the address had been delivered on Jan. 21, 1961. In fact, it was on Jan. 20, just as the Constitution requires.
A photo on the page showed a man speaking at the ceremony, and he was identified as poet Carl Sandburg. Actually, Robert Frost is the poet who participated in Kennedy’s inaugural ceremony.
And actually, the man in the picture was Cardinal Richard Cushing.
These corrections will be published on the Roundtable page of next Sunday’s paper. It seems appropriate, however, to salute Stuckart’s alertness right away.
Someone with that kind of grasp on historic detail should be a teacher, right?
She is - at Hutton Elementary School in Spokane.
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