Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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Honoring Booth Gardner The tributes to former Gov. Booth Gardner, who died March 15 at the age of 76, remind us of a better time. Throughout his political career, Booth was known for his respectful demeanor, good humor and dedication to consensus. That is in stark contrast to today’s reality. Now, partisan rancor is the norm in a high-stakes blood sport where the only goal is political advantage, and people with opposing views are assailed as enemies. This scorched earth mentality has become so pervasive, people assume it’s the nature of pol...
The Beetle and the Pipeline When progressives talk of government, it is in an alluring can-do spirit. Making the case for more spending, President Barack Obama invokes the 19th century as a heroic age that built government-supported railroads. MSNBC hosts pose in front of monumental 20th-century public-works projects and speak of what all of us can do together. This is all well and good as nostalgia, but is utterly detached from the spirit and the practices of 21st-century government. We don’t excel at building things. We excel at studying thin...
Consider Cyprus. The country, part of the European Union, is bankrupt. Its banks are failing. In fact, they have been closed for over a week. The second largest has been shut down forever. Although a small country, Cyprus became a haven for international money. The banking sector itself exceeded the rest of the country’s economy many times over. Banks in Cyprus held billions in international money. Some was legal money, stashed there to avoid taxes and instability in other countries. Some may be illegal, sent to Cyprus for laundering. Also usin...
Positive focus Okay, I for one, am sick and tired of the negative anonymous comments about the flags that decorate our Colfax Streets. I cannot believe that there has been so much criticism over flags that add much to our aging downtown. If you do not have the courage to sign your name to any comments, then you have no business tearing down our community by your negative comments. Furthermore, we should be proud that we have a state college 20 minutes from our town. There are many Colfax residents employed at WSU, we reap the economic benefits...
One-Stop Tax Collection Makes Sense Regulations are like bricks. One brick doesn’t weigh that much, but as you add more bricks, the load gets heavier and heavier until eventually it becomes a crushing burden that slows progress to a crawl. Complying with one regulation doesn’t require that much time and money, but as you add thousands of regulations a year from hundreds of federal, state and local agencies, compliance consumes an ever larger portion of an employer’s time and money — money that isn’t available to hire or sustain jobs. Take some...
Hugo Chavez’s Cheering Section Let us pause and reflect. The left’s favorite self-aggrandizing thug has shed this mortal coil. Hugo Chavez, R.I.P. All the country’s least-reflective and most-reflexive ideologues of the left immediately issued warm farewells — Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and, of course, the nation’s 39th president, Jimmy Carter. Carter praised Chavez for his commitment “to bring profound changes to his country,” which, by installing himself as the effective president for life, he certainly did. Carter noted his “fo...
The Supreme Court is hearing arguments whether or not voters need to prove citizenship to register to vote. What’s the big deal? Not requiring citizenship to vote could be good for the economy. Forget the curmudgeons and old fogies who see voting as a sacred act. Let’s make money off the allure of free and open elections. Many people already come to America to have children. Residential houses, or birthing barns, allow pregnant women from around the world to live here until their child is born. The child, of course, is automatically an Ame...
The powers in the other Washington appear to be aligning to reform our country’s immigration laws. It has taken awhile, but it is now time to make the necessary changes. There are an estimated 12 million undocumented workers in our country. While people may disagree on the ultimate solution, many concede that it’s not practical to deport them and not fair to leave them in limbo. Immigrants have been part of our history since our nation’s founding. To this day, the freedoms and promise of America continue to attract people in search of a bette...
It is not just the winter of Republican discontent. It will in all likelihood be the spring, summer and fall, as well. The national party is leaderless and nearly issueless, but besides that, is thriving and in fine fighting trim. Once, taxes and national security were the party’s pillars, supplemented by domestic issues like welfare reform and crime and by symbolic issues like the Pledge of Allegiance and flag burning. Now, the pillars are in disrepair. Cuts in income taxes don’t have the same resonance because rates are so much lower than 30...
There is a lot more to government revenues than just taxes. There are those ubiquitous fees. Raising taxes takes some doing. Raising fees is a simple matter. In Washington state, raising fees has become almost an art. Most state departments and agencies raise fees without much difficulty and without much protest. State Senator Mark Schoesler wants to make the fees and the changes in fees more transparent. He authored SB 5751. It recently passed in the senate. Schoesler’s bill would require state agencies to publish all fees and make them a...
Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2008. My Neighbor Tom I’ve been good friends with my neighbor Tom ever since he got his new bass boat. He and I have spent many pleasant hours sitting in that boat, sharing memories and speculating on how much fun it will be if we ever get the boat out of his garage. Tom purchased the boat the way most men make their important decisions: completely on impulse. As he tells it, it wasn’t his fault — his system was overwhelmed by all the watercraft at the boat show, until he simply...
Oakesdale Now that I have fallen off the cliff I find that I have more time to reflect on just what our leaders have been and are doing for me and the rest of the citizenry. As opposed to getting our situation back on the right track regarding the economy, the lessening of wasteful spending, and putting people to work, the Democrats seem to be more concerned with gay marriage, and every person sporting a college degree and the Republicans with their taxes being raised to help pay the bill. Makes one wonder just how far they got in school, when...
Will the highly touted and successful slogan, “Pro-choice” (which was so effective in the losing battle over the Right to Life, itself) prevail in the controversy over legal gun ownership? Currently, owning a gun is the surface issue being debated at state and national levels in the United States of America. However, beneath that surface, the issue has been lurking on the international agenda beginning in the mid 1990s. Since then the United Nations has undertaken every opportunity to ram into law the “Small Arms Treaty.” It is designe...
In March 2010, governors and state commissioners of education from 48 states, plus two territories and the District of Columbia endorsed developing and implementing a common core state standards for selected content areas for grades K-12. The CCSSI just happens to be supported by Achieve, Business Roundtable, U. S. Chamber of Commerce, The U. S. Army and a host of other business and educational organizations. According to the writers of the CCSSI, seven considerations (arbitrary) guided their development. Keep in mind that the standards...
In November 1982, our state’s unemployment rate peaked at 12.2 percent, the highest since the Great Depression. Interest on a fixed rate home loan was 13.4 percent, and an 11.5 inflation rate burned through our checkbooks. The economy was a mess. The impacts of President Ronald Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 hadn’t fully kicked in yet, and Gov. John Spellman (R) and the Legislature had repeatedly increased taxes and cut programs to balance the state’s budget. It was a bleak time: people were hungry and work was scarce. There w...
Some guys have it, and some don’t. I’m referring to that special quality that makes powerful institutions want to throw fistfuls of dollars at them in senseless acts of high-priced beneficence. Jack Lew has it like nobody’s business. You might think the bespectacled treasury secretary nominee is just another brainy budget wonk and miss the animal magnetism that makes his employers lose all sense of financial proportion around him, paying him astronomical sums, forgiving his loans and granting him generous golden parachutes. Yes, Jack Lew is a r...
Community Colleges of Spokane is giving rural Whitman County another opportunity. Some years ago, the group offered classes at the Education and Training Center in Colfax. Most of the classes were academic in nature. Enrollment was low. The offerings at Gladish Center in Pullman were better received and supplanted the Colfax effort. Now, Community Colleges of Spokane is returning to Colfax. This new program, called ACT2, is intended for adults who are not necessarily interested in degrees and credits. ACT2 is for seniors, providing educational...
The only purpose for this letter is to express some muses. I’m thinking of the benefits of having an optimistic President. He keeps telling us how great disaster is, how much things are improving, debt is no problem let’s see how high it can go. It reminds me of a poem I learned years ago. The optimist fell ten stories And as he passed each window bar He called out to his friends “All’s well so far” Jack Ensley, Colfax...
I would like to share nine solutions how government should work for all citizens of our United States of America: 1. The immigration problem: would have been solved if the wall had just been finished, but since ICE was told not to enforce immigration laws, it would only make sense to quit paying them wages and not claim a border, just put up signs going North, reading Y’all Come Back, Ya’heeya!! 2. Obamacare: Order the new...old...regime to get mandatory truth serum shots and return all of the taxpayers money Obama and company have squandered i...
Sometimes Plan B turns out to be better than Plan A. Case in point: our state’s association health plans. In 1993, Gov. Mike Lowry (D) wanted to help small employers offer health insurance. Too many could not afford coverage for their employees and their families. His idea — which was a template for President and Mrs. Clinton’s national health reforms — was a government mandate requiring all employers to offer a plan with the same benefits for all workers. It didn’t work for three fundamental reasons. First, the unions got the Democrat-controll...
I didn’t see anything in the newspapers I take about The Great Backyard Bird Count but it probably takes awhile to compile the results. The GBBC has been done in the middle of February for 16 years where volunteers go out nationwide and count and list the various wild birds they see over a weekend. It’s sponsored by Cornell University and the Audubon Society. It once in awhile makes news when somebody reports seeing a rare bird believed to be extinct and the bird watching community goes nuts over it. Especially if the reporter had managed to...
The long-awaited sequester is upon us. As of this writing, it appears that Congress and the President will let the long dreaded spending cuts go into effect. The administration is predicting dire consequences if the automatic national spending cuts of $65 billion take place, but has done little to avoid them. The Republicans are now saying that letting the sequester occur will not be as bad as previously thought. Sixty percent of the nation says that this is ridiculous and that compromise between the parties should have been reached. The cuts...
Incomplete data The St. John post office is being downsized based on incomplete data. The postal service has admitted to the error but refuses to correct it. Inquiries from our three District 9 state legislators, Senator Mark Schoesler, Representative Susan Fagan, and Representative Joe Schmick, as well as County Commissioner Art Swannack have fallen on deaf ears. Their efforts are to be commended. Now it is time for United States Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers to step in and demand that the USPS, a government agency, put a hold on the...
When Grand Coulee Dam was completed in 1942, it was called the “Eighth Wonder of the Modern World.” With its 151 mile-long reservoir and ability to produce 6,809 megawatts of electricity, no one could imagine a bigger or more powerful dam and no one realized the scope of economic development that low-cost, reliable hydropower would create. Actually someone did. China. This year, China completed its gargantuan Three Gorges hydroelectric project with triple the power generation of Grand Coulee. The controversial project is the largest dam in the...
When President Obama nominated Sally Jewell of Kent for Interior Secretary Feb. 6, you would think that he had located the real Wonder Woman. The 56-year-old CEO of Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) was “A Jewell of a Pick” for “the massive job that makes her, by and large, the landlord of the Western United States,” The Seattle Times gushed editorially. She was “an inspired choice,” echoed Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Former U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks, longtime member of the House Appropriati...
