ARC Policy Series
Bitcoin Mining – Server Farms; How are we to choose?
6:30 pm Thursday 18 May
Policy Series
Ben Richards, Protect Pend Oreille
Robert Schutte (ARC Vice-Chair – East)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83419676203?pwd=NUo0NVVYOHU4Ky91RTYxa1Q0cjdXQT09
Case studies instruct by burying important lessons in messy everyday details. That is the idea at least. Thursday we will take up a case study in Pend Oreille County. No spoiler alert here about the important lesson but instead a shift of focus to those messy details. It is those messy details that show the intersection of multiple policy dimensions.
Policy dimensions in the Pend Oreille case include the good and bad of regional economic development, the qualities necessary for good local governance, green electricity and the power grid, something about the economics of manufacturing in rural Washington, and bitcoins.
Bitcoins? Bitcoin mining may be both a messy detail and the important lesson in this case study. Whatever the details of the Pend Oreille case, bitcoin mining has significant consequences for local resource management. It is also very big business. But the server farms that make up “the cloud” also are resource hungry and are very big business. What is the difference for local resource management? Can we embrace server farms and spurn bitcoin mining?
Join our conversation Thursday.
Don
15 May 2023
Economic Development or Shell Game?
6:30 pm Thursday 18 May
Policy Series
Ben Richards, Protect Pend Oreille
Robert Schutte (ARC Vice-Chair – East)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83419676203?pwd=NUo0NVVYOHU4Ky91RTYxa1Q0cjdXQT09
Has a bitcoin mining project in Pend Oreille County disguised as a resurrection of a paper mill revealed any special shortcomings in Pend Oreille county government…self-delusion, incompetence, gullibility, desperation, wishful thinking, greed? Or are the lessons from Pend Oreille a morality tale for all rural counties? Probably we all need to pay attention.
Rural counties, especially in central and eastern Washington, are thought to be easy marks for shysters as well as legitimate venture capitalists. We have cheap real estate and a lot of it, we have cheap power and green power at that, we are anxious to please and are easily flattered, we need jobs and incomes, and our local governments are understaffed and occasionally naïve.
Sometimes this caricature underestimates us. We have local power companies, for goodness’ sake, who build hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River, downstream of Grand Coulee. And, don’t mistake, we have intellectual resources.
Ben Richards is one of those intellectual resources in Pend Oreille county. (Check out Protect Pend Oreille.) Ben has done a masterful job of deconstructing a shell game involving a bitcoin entrepreneur from mainland China, a decommissioned paper mill, the public utility district, the economic development council, and county commissioners.
And count Robert Schutte among the really sharp people who may be your neighbor fixing his fence. Bob is ARC Vice-Chair – East living in rural Pend Oreille county after a career in commercial banking. He knows business plans and sound management. He knows planning.
We are meeting in person for a Policy Circle 2:00 pm Thursday afternoon at the Sacheen Lake Fire Station 32, at 6131 Highway 211.
I urge those of you in Spokane County to come a few minutes up Highway 2, and those of you in Stevens County to come up the highway or over the pass on Highway 20 and join us.
Thursday evening at 6:30 pm we will do our Zoom Policy Briefing as usual.
Don
13 May 2023
Rural Economic Development: What could go wrong?
6:30 pm Thursday 18 May
Ben Richards, Protect Pend Oreille
Robert Schutte (ARC Vice-Chair – East)
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83419676203?pwd=NUo0NVVYOHU4Ky91RTYxa1Q0cjdXQT09
Policy Circle Rejuvenated – Alive again!
Pend Oreille County hosts Ag and Rural Caucus on the 18th. Robert Schutte (ARC Vice Chair – East) and I will do a Policy Circle in the afternoon where we invite local folks, Democrats and Republicans, to brief us on local issues. In our Policy Briefing (via Zoom) in the evening Ben Richards will join us to talk about economic development in rural counties. Ben will lay out a case study in Pend Oreille County that has gone very wrong, and Robert will summarize the lessons for rural counties generally.
Our Better Practices roundtable is on the first Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm.. Use the link above for 2023.
Our Policy Series is on the third Thursday of each month at 6:30 pm. Use the link above for 2023.
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Our mailing address is: Ag and Rural Caucus 2921 Mud Creek Rd Waitsburg, WA 99361