Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1779 - 1803 of 3750
President Donald Trump’s agenda has dramatically changed. He is about to celebrate his 100th day in office, and the major items he promised for his first 100 days while on the campaign trail have not come to pass. The promised repeal and replacement of Obamacare is stymied. Tax reform is in limbo. The much ballyhooed wall on the country’s southern border has been dramatically truncated. The ban on immigrants has been stopped in the courts. And, despite his unrelenting criticism of presidential leadership by executive order, he governs out of...
Trumpism is in crisis. This isn't a function of poll numbers, or any melodrama of the past months, but something more fundamental: No officeholder in Washington seems to understand President Donald Trump's populism or have a cogent theory of how to effect it in practice, including the president himself. House Speaker Paul Ryan isn't a populist and doesn't want to be a populist. He has spent his adult life committed to a traditional limited-government agenda. He crafted his own platform during the campaign, the so-called Better Way agenda, to di...
Apologist I have managed to keep my blood pressure in check without upping the dosage while reading the opinions of your recently added columnist, Frank Watson. But it has not been easy. This latest one, “We Have Lost the Spirit of Compromise,” almost pushed me over the edge. Where was he with this observation when Congress, including our very own congresswoman, promised to do nothing for eight years? Frank seems an apologist for the person a friend of mine refers to as “The Orange One.” I don’t understand how anyone can support someone f...
American entrepreneurs’ ability to invent, create and bring products and services to market makes our nation great. Their success generates the tax revenue which fund our schools and puts people to work. Many “big businesses” started in the imaginations of immigrants who came to our country – a place of boundless possibilities. America is a land where your station in life doesn’t matter and where hard work, innovation and perseverance are the keys to success. The story of M&Ms is a good example. Today, the Mars Company is a global giant mar...
April Fools' Day has come and gone, but on the first of the month, I kept marveling at how -- starting even before he ran, continuing through his campaign and certainly since Inauguration Day -- Donald Trump has played us for a fool. Successfully, I might add. After all, we elected him, or enough of us did. Millions of people were and are attracted to his message of hate and ignorance -- that, combined with justified anger at the establishment. Even though millions more did not vote for him, he and his operators finessed a Democratic candidate...
Mary Dye, 9th Legislative District representative, has protested the cutbacks in funding for fairs in the state. Reportedly, the threatened budget cuts at the expense of county fairs is not new. The cuts seem more symbolic than financially important. Out of the entire state budget of billions of dollars, the fairs have only been getting $4 million. Mark Schoesler, state senator for the 9th District, blames house Democrats. County fairs are important to rural communities. They provide entertainment, opportunities for education, local...
What happened to the American spirit of compromise? Our political landscape has fragmented into bastions of ideology that refuse to give an inch. Is this rigidity new with the first Obama administration or is that just as far back as my memory goes? I’m not sure, but I do recall being somewhat surprised when President Obama refused to listen to the opposition. I remember thinking that his repeated, “I won and can do whatever I want,” would come back and bite him as well as become the new political normal. The masterpiece that is our Const...
Driving east along SR 14 these days, you see water pouring out of Columbia River dams. It is already a high water year with much of the runoff from our heavy mountain snowpack yet to come. It is part of our “feast or famine” weather cycle. As you pop over the hilltop near the historic Maryhill Museum, you look down to see John Day Dam with its floodgates open spilling massive amounts of water. Then you see remains of the razed Goldendale Aluminum Co. smelter next to the dam. That plant once accounted for 1,300 jobs, $40 million in personal inc...
A connection I believe most Americans would agree with the opinion Mr. Mark Bordsen expressed (March 23) in a letter to the Whitman County Gazette, regarding Russian Federation President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He is a bad guy. A very bad guy. But then Mr. Bordsen attempted to establish a connection between Putin and President Trump. However, all of the news stories I have read that “speculate” on some such connection say somewhere deep within the story that there is no evidence yet. Hmmm. However, I do recall that Bill Clinton was pai...
There's stumbling out of the gate, and then there's what Republicans just did on health care. They came up with a substantively indefensible bill, put it on an absurd fast track to passage, didn't seriously try to sell it to the public, fumbled their internal negotiations over changes -- and suffered a stinging defeat months after establishing unified control of government. There has been a lot of finger-pointing after the collapse of the bill, and almost all of it is right. This was a partywide failure. House Speaker Paul Ryan has -- faint pra...
Let's dispense with the sanctimony and admit it: Most of us really enjoy piling on. I know I do. There are few things more exhilarating than participating in mass malice. Rarely do we get such an obvious opportunity for schadenfreude than the Trump-Ryan health care debacle. Maybe Donald Trump should have his ghostwriter create a new book: "The Thwart of the Deal." And while we are being brutally honest (or is it honestly brutal?), let's acknowledge that cheap shots like that are the best shots. They're certainly no cheaper than all the...
Most agree that the climate is changing. And, the changes are not good. Large swaths of coral are dying along the Great Barrier Reef. Weather patterns are changing dramatically, causing extremes of weather and potential loss of productive land while the world’s population soars. Sea levels are ticking up. Fifteen of the 16 warmest years have been recorded since 2001. Greenhouse gases are a major contributor to the problem. As early as 1957, during what was called the International Geophysical Year, greenhouse gases were predicted to be a p...
A connection I believe most Americans would agree with the opinion Mr. Mark Bordsen expressed last week in a letter to the Whitman County Gazette, regarding Russian Federation President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He is a bad guy. A very bad guy. But then Mr. Bordsen attempted to establish a connection between Putin and President Trump. However, all of the news stories I have read that “speculate” on some such connection say somewhere deep within the story that there is no evidence yet. Hmmm. However, I do recall that Bill Clinton was paid $5...
A major hurdle for lawmakers in Olympia working to finish the next two-year state budget and adjourn is the so-called “carbon tax.” However, Gov. Jay Inslee wants a first-ever levy on CO2 emissions. While it targets coal and natural gas power plants and manufacturing facilities, everyone will pay more. His proposal is part of a grand plan to raise $5.5 billion in higher taxes. That scheme also includes imposing a new tax on investor’s income and increases existing business and occupation (B&O) tax rates on services. Higher taxes are troub...
It's called a "skinny budget," because it's just a president's blueprint for where the federal money goes, and it doesn't get into details. Those will be fleshed out later. Actually, this one is anorexic, containing the usual bullet points that Donald Trump always prefers rather than getting tangled in the weeds of messy specifics. However, even these budgetary bullet points target the entire notion that the United States has a kindhearted government. The money largely affirms the idea that this is a nation in a defensive crouch. There are...
For years, the Congress of the United States has been poorly regarded. It has been ineffectual, obstructionist, overly partisan and prone to ridiculous squabbling. That situation was to end after the Republican sweep in November that gave the party President Donald Trump and control of both houses of Congress. Nothing has changed, however. It might even be worse now. The Republican party is in disarray. After eight years of big promises and strong criticism, the party now seems frozen in indecision and disagreement. The party has even failed...
PACCAR’s recent announcement it is teaming with computer chipmaker Nvidia to build driver-less trucks is good for Washington. PACCAR, the century-old Bellevue-based truck builder, plans to manufacture new Kenworth, Peterbuilt and DAF computer-guided trucks capable of delivering freight over our nation’s roadways. Hopefully, many of them will be assembled at its Renton plant. Self-driving cars already exist. Google has been testing them since 2009. They have logged more than 2 million miles. The company reports of the 11 accidents, none were cau...
Risky business What is happening to America? Why have Republicans and conservatives changed? It used to be their complaint that Democrats were not tough enough on communism and liberals were weak on defense. Now we have President Trump who says he wants to increase our military budget (already the world’s biggest), at the same time he is soft on Russia. Trump and some of his staff and associates have ties to Russia’s dictator, Putin and to Russian businesses tied to Putin. This is bad. Russia is not our friend. Putin is former KGB, the Rus...
Of all the arguments to make for repealing and replacing Obamacare, the very worst is that people don't need health insurance. Yet this is a Trump administration talking point. White House press secretary Sean Spicer recently told reporters, "When we get asked the question, 'How many people are going to get covered?' that's not the question that should be asked." Pressed on the merits of the bill by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's "This Week," Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney shot back, "You're worried about getting people...
Many Republican leaders are leery about having their name attached to the GOP's replacement for Obamacare, a health care overhaul they have demonized since it was passed seven years ago. But they're having a devilish time coming up with one of their own that doesn't make things worse. It's hard to blame them for preferring not to be identified with their American Health Care Act, which is the official title of their slapped-together replacement. They have to come up with something now that they have a lock on our government. After all, they...
Despite pre-election predictions to the contrary, Donald J. Trump is the legitimate President of the United States. Many Americans are unhappy with the election results and are gunning for him. He is getting very little slack from those who opposed him. Some of his efforts are being fought, in part because of what they are, but also because of who he is. Just weeks into his term, still within his first 100 days in office, he has jolted the status quo and embarked on sweeping changes. Agree with him or not, change is in the air. The change, howe...
In 2003, Gov. Gary Locke (D) faced a 10 percent revenue hole in the state’s budget. He also stared at a sluggish economy still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. People were reluctant to fly and airlines stopped buying Boeing jets. Locke faced either recommending substantial tax increases or finding a new way to allocate state tax revenues. He turned to Minnesota’s former commissioner of finance, Peter Hutchinson, who helped his governor balance the budget by cutting waste, tightening efficiencies and prioritizing spe...
During the campaign, I agreed with much of what Mr. Trump proposed. We need to defend our borders, but when he proposed building a wall that Mexico would pay for, I was hoping that he was speaking metaphorically. Walls have never provided security for the builder. The Great Wall didn't keep China safe from the Mongols in the 13th century any more than the Maginot line kept France safe from the Germans in the 20th century. They just don’t work. If there is actual or perceived benefit from breaching the wall, it will be breached. Thus, I was s...
Colfax Conflating In a letter to the editor last week, Mark Bordsen was outraged that the President characterized the mainstream media as ‘the enemy’. In the technical nuance of the words, Mr. Bordsen may be accurate in that the mainstream is not an ‘enemy’. However, it is unarguable that the mainstream media has shed the fiction of objective journalism and has become the President’s political opposition. Conflating the terms ‘enemy’ and ‘opposition’ is not difficult. Politicians of all stripes do it all the time. I seem to recall, a certain...
At Middlebury College earlier this month, Charles Murray needed a safe space -- literally. In a significant escalation of the campus speech wars, protesters hooted down the conservative scholar in a lecture hall and then roughed up a Middlebury faculty member escorting him to a car. The Middlebury administration commendably tried to do the right thing and stand by Murray's right to be heard, but was overwhelmed by a yowling mob with all the manners and intellectual openness of a gang of British soccer hooligans. Sometime soon, we may yearn for...
