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In case you missed the news, Ambre Energy—the Australian firm behind two of the three remaining coal export projects in the Pacific Northwest—is selling its North American coal business to the company’s largest creditor, a risk-hungry private equity firm called Resource Capital Funds. Ambre will realize just $18 million from the sale, even though it claimed as recently as last fall that its North American coal assets were worth between $200...

In case you missed the news, Ambre Energy—the struggling Australian energy startup that has been trying to launch a coal export business in the Pacific Northwest—has agreed to sell its entire North American coal business to its main creditor, a risk-loving private equity firm registered in the Cayman Islands. The documents describing the proposed sale, available on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) website, show that Ambre will part with its entire North American coal...

Clark A new report from Frontier Group and TransitCenter makes a provocative (and almost certainly true) point: federal tax policy subsidizes traffic congestion. The IRS lets employers offer their employees a tax-free parking subsidy of up to $250 per month—which, by the report’s estimate, boosts national rush-hour traffic by roughly 820,000 vehicles per day. Worse, the tax subsidy for parking focuses the benefits on upper-income Americans—the very people who need...

Editor’s Note 5/3/16: Does the record-warm spring have you craving to hop back on your bike… but still a bit nervous to navigate busy city streets? In this popular article, former Sightliner Jennifer Langston shows how you can get around on neighborhood greenways, a network of family-friendly roads. Read (and ride) on! I haven’t used a bike to get across town in six years. I know because that’s how long it’s been since...

Alan You probably don’t think you want to read a six-page account of the Washington State budget, with charts and tables and citations, and if you’re not a resident of the state, you’re probably right. But if you are resident, you’re mistaken. State Representative Ross Hunter has written a compelling and understandable article about this year’s budgetary imponderables that illuminates and makes real the Abrahamic choices facing the legislature. It’s...

If you’ve been following the Northwest coal export debate, you’ve probably heard of Ambre Energy—the struggling Australian firm that’s behind two of the three remaining coal terminal proposals in Washington and Oregon. Ambre made headlines back in August, when the state of Oregon denied a key permit for the company’s proposed Morrow Pacific coal terminal project on the Columbia River. But even if you’ve heard of Ambre, you may not have heard of...

In Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indie finds himself on a ledge before a chasm, with no obvious way across. Ignoring the evidence of his senses, he follows a clue he’s been given, takes a leap of faith and lands on an invisible plank. The proposed US Clean Power Rule puts Oregon and Washington, along with other Western states, on a ledge, too. Oregon and Washington are on a...

Update: The federal General Services Administration plans to auction off the Federal Reserve Bank building, with an opening bid of $1 million and a closing date of Jan. 28, 2015. The Seattle Public Schools Board of Directors disappointed hundreds of downtown families and residents yesterday by unanimously voting against plans to acquire the vacant Federal Reserve Bank building—at least through a federal disposition process that would let the district have...

Over the last few years, the Northwest has been embroiled in an increasingly heated debate over its participation in fossil fuel exports. Energy companies’ plans to build coal terminals, oil depots, and gas pipelines are drawing out protestors, grabbing headlines, and earning plenty of attention from elected officials. So to get a better sense for how these companies are playing the political game, we combed through campaign contribution data published...

Here’s a look at the latest US Department of Energy figures in its quarterly coal export report, which take us up through the second quarter of 2014: The big coal export story in the west was in California where shipments out of the Los Angeles District (from LAXT at Long Beach) and San Francisco District (from the Port of Stockton and the Levin-Richmond Terminal) fell by 12 percent and 19...