Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 3532 - 3556 of 3749
Colfax voters have done the right thing. They approved the two year levy request for the school district. At this writing, with ballots still to be received and counted, the levy has received a 58 percent approval. With a mere majority needed for passage, it is very unlikely the levy will fail as the count continues. Despite certain misgivings and a wide range of concerns about operations at the school district, the voters in the district have put their money into the school coffers to insure good educational opportunities for the students....
W. Bruce Cameron I have a second cousin who, as a woman in her 20s, is considerably younger than I. Well, not “considerably.” She’s a bit younger. She’s my age. At any rate, she lives in my area, many miles from her parents, which she insists is due to no intent on her part, though when she graduated from college she submitted resumes everywhere but in her home state. She is planning her wedding, and her father asked me to sit in on his behalf and represent his point of view. I thought it was adorable that he thought the father of the bride w...
Long-time Washington lawmaker Sid Snyder had a sense of humor, dignity and respect that permeated the halls of the state Capitol for nearly a half century. A grocer from Long Beach in Southwest Washington, Sid set the tone for our Legislature. After Sid retired, Hoquiam Rep. Lynn Kessler kept that protocol alive. Now, after 18 years in the state House, she is hanging it up as well. That is good for her and not so good for the rest of us. Snyder and Kessler are Democrats in a Democrat-leaning state, but Republican legislators like Jeannette...
OK, HILLARY, your dearest wish for many years has been to go down in history as a better president than Bill, so go for it. The current president is in such deep doo doo there’ll never be a better time than now. Hand in your resignation as Secretary of State explaining that as a patriotic American you cannot honor a pledge not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries that are in compliance with the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty even if they attack us with biological or chemical weapons. Appeasement and disarmament have never b... Full story
The Colfax School District levy is again in front of the voter. The first version was rejected by voters in February. This second effort addresses some of the complaints that prompted its rejection in the first place. The amount of money being requested has been cut, and it is now virtually the same as the levies approved in the past. Support of this levy request is essential to the district and the functioning of the schools. The levy revenues pay for a variety of school programs and services. Not enough financing comes from the state to...
Dear Daughter: Though you are over 21, I am denying you permission to go on vacation to Guam, of all places, for the following reasons. 1. I never heard of anyone going to Guam for vacation. People go to Guam to fight the Battle of the Pacific. I’ve seen your pictures of their luxury hotels and fabulous beaches, but what the tourist bureau hasn’t told you is that you’ll have to wade ashore with an M-1 rifle. 2. In the movie “Taken,” the daughter goes to Europe against her father’s wishes. He’s forced to get on a plane and save her, in the p...
Levy support I am writing this letter to express my support for the special levy that will take place on April 27 for the Colfax School District. I have always been proud to live in a community that valued the education of their children and realized the benefits that a quality school district brings to their community. I also have to admit I was very disappointed when the levy failed in February. There is little to gain and much to lose if the voters fail to pass this levy again. There would have to be significant cuts to programs, staffing...
Ever since the generators at the Grand Coulee dam started spinning in 1942, low-cost hydropower has been the key to our economic strength and way of life. During World War II, its abundance enriched uranium at Hanford produced aluminum for Boeing’s bombers, built Navy vessels at Kaiser’s shipyard in Vancouver and provided plenty of affordable heat and light for our homes, schools and hospitals. That low-cost water power comes from the Columbia-Snake River System. While dams present a challenge to salmon runs — many of which have been succe...
IS SUPERINTENDENT of Public Instruction Randy Dorn all washed up or can he convince the voters by 2012 that his repentance is real? If he chooses to run for reelection, that is. The head of the state’s schools pleading guilty to driving under the influence is not the kind of thing you run in your ad asking for voter support. He pled guilty and has served a day in jail, with 364 more days hanging over him if he falls off the wagon and is caught driving so it’s up to him now. But let’s go back to 1983, the year the state passed its new tough...
++++ Some blossoms . . .finally. ++++ The MUMS for their efforts. Colfax must not be ready for flowers on Main. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 211 N. Main St Colfax, Wa 99111... Full story
Olympia has decided how it will handle the projected $2.8 billion state deficit. A last-minute and complicated combination of spending cuts, increased taxes and fees, fund transfers and federal funds addresses the shortfall. The immediate budget problem which kept the state legislature in special session for a month has been addressed, but the question remains if the crisis has been solved. The new budget is a last ditch solution. It addresses the most immediate needs of the state, but it does not correct the structural problems that brought... Full story
Having raised teenage girls, studied them, and even having written a book about them, I still don’t know what they are for. My suspicion is that teenage daughters are a father’s punishment for having once been a teenage boy. This doesn’t seem fair to me, but then again, my concept of the word “fair” may have been distorted by the way my daughters used it between the ages of 12 and 20 — what I call the “war years.” It seems that teenage girls have a vocabulary all their own. The phrase “no fair” means “I don’t like it.” Most often it is heard in...
Census vital to farmers, ranchers and rural America USDA Farm Service Agency has teamed up with the U.S. Census Bureau to encourage all farmers and ranchers to complete the 2010 census. The census forms, which were mailed in March to all residents in the United States and Puerto Rico, are comprised of 10 questions and take only 10 minutes to complete and mail back in the postage-paid envelope. The questions include names of residents, ages, sex, date of birth, race, relationship to the head of the household, whether the resident rents or owns...
Boeing now has six new 787s in various stages of flight tests, and the good news is the test results are positive. The company aims to certify the new aircraft and deliver the first of its new composite passenger liners to Japan’s All Nippon Airways before the New Year. Boeing bet a big chunk of the farm on the high-tech “Dreamliner” and Washington state has an equally big stake in its success. Boeing and its Puget Sound suppliers are a key reason the Seattle-Bellevue-Everett unemployment rate is 9.3 percent compared to 11.3 percent for Portl... Full story
IT’S BEEN A LONG time since I visited the Demilitarized Zone between North Korea and South Korea, and the way things are going it may be a lot longer before any journalists are allowed back in. The hostility between the two Koreas just made the news again with the sinking of a South Korean naval ship near their maritime border on the Yellow Sea. South Korea doesn’t rule out the renewal of North Korean skullduggery but suggests it could have been an old mine left over from the Korean War when the North mined those waters. That didn’t stop the N...
++++ The Girl Scouts sold all their cookies with the help of Rosauers and all of Colfax. ++++ Our friendly Colfax butcher who is a true humaniarian. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 211 N. Main St Colfax, Wa 99111... Full story
New Federal standards announced last week call for an increase in the fuel efficiency of vehicles. The new standards require an average of 35.5 miles per gallon for new vehicles by 2016. Many new vehicles reach that standard now. The kicker is that fleet averages, not just selected models, will have to achieve that mark. The new standards also will control greenhouse gas emissions. The ruling calls for the development of new vehicles with new technology. Many of these are close to reaching the roads anyway. Even the new cars on the market now...
Message received In January, when we heard of the requests of the School Board for the amounts of the special levies, we were very concerned and wrote a letter asking the voters of our school district to vote no on the levy proposals. Since that time many meetings have been held and community involvement in the process has been great. The School Board has agreed to reduce the levy amounts to levels that are comparable to previous levies and to reduce spending to compensate for reduced State funding. We applaud the School Board for their...
W. BRUCE CAMERON I have a problem with my spam filter: It sometimes blocks e-mails from Nigerian bankers who want to transfer large sums of money to my checking account, from people who are willing to give me access to dangerous narcotics and from scantily clad women selling drugs designed to make me more of a man. (By “more of a man,” I’m not saying the drugs would make me even more likely to leave the toilet seat up or to refuse to ask for directions. I’m saying the pills would enhance my tendency to buy worthless products from scantil...
Few people know that tucked into the massive new federal health reform law was a federal takeover of the student loan program. Begun in 1965, the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) program was a public-private partnership in which banks provided federally guaranteed student loans. In the early ‘90s, the federal government created a “government option” of direct federal loans as an alternative. With the passage of the health-care bill, private lenders are pushed out and starting July 1, all students will get their student loans directly from t...
ITEM–The Seattle Times has called for consolidation of smaller school districts with their neighbors to save money. Savings could be achieved by eliminating duplicate positions, i.e. bureaucratic overhead, and forming cooperatives for purchase of supplies, says The Times. They could still use the same buildings and bus systems. COMMENT–As I have written many times, consolidation is rarely done because parents and students don’t like it, and we’re kidding ourselves if we think all those surplus bureaucrats will just melt away or move to Austral... Full story
++++ For Jack Thompson and Jerry Lewis for the great for the great music. ++++ To Nancy Cochran staff and students of Steptoe for the excellent mystery theatre. Great show. Great dinner. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 211 N. Main St Colfax, Wa 99111...
Nine members of a Michigan-based Christian militia reportedly posed a grave and imminent threat to the country. They have been arrested. More arrests may follow. The group is called Hutaree. The group allegedly planned to kill a police officer and then wait until the funeral services for him to kill more. Hutaree was hardly secret. Members operated openly. It had a website which showed members training with firearms and practicing tactical maneuvers. Neighbors knew of them and some of their activities. Hutaree may be a new organization, but...
I taught my daughter everything I know about volleyball, which is, in essence, how to identify a volleyball. Thus prepared, she has gone on to play the sport in high school and college, and her club team came in first place at nationals a few years ago — in other words, I did a great job. My daughter seems to believe that most of the credit should go to her for all the games and drills and practices, which is just silly. “Your natural athleticism flows through my DNA into yours,” I inform her biologically. “My father was a great fisherm...
Colfax Impressed Over the past several weeks I have immersed myself in data underlying our local school levy. I have learned a lot about how public education is funded and how district operations are managed. The thing that has impressed me most is the need to credit local agricultural land owners for their role in supporting the education of our children. Sixty five to seventy percent of levy funds are provided by the relatively few individuals that own the surrounding farm land. That is no small contribution in light of ever-difficult profit... Full story
