Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 2023 - 2047 of 3750
Some say spring is the most wonderful time of the year in Washington when apple trees blossom, tulips bloom and colorful lentils carpet the fields on the Palouse. While the spring colors are eye-catching, it is in fall when our state reaps the benefits of our bountiful harvest. The Washington Policy Center (WPC) recently published a report detailing agriculture’s value to our economy. It is a joint effort with the Washington Farm Bureau to bolster support for farmers, ranchers and food processors. It is hard to succinctly summarize agriculture... Full story
Robert Osborne Day? May 3 is the 84th birthday of Robert Osborne. Mr. Osborne is one of the most well known film historians in the United States. For the past twenty years he has been the primary host on the Turner Classic Movie Channel. I just got back from a trip to Hollywood. The folks down there are doing things to celebrate Mr. Osborne’s amazing life. Mr. Osborne is one of the most famous people ever to have been born in Whitman County. What has his hometown done to celebrate his life? May I suggest that May 3, 2017, be proclaimed ... Full story
If you want real betrayal and towering egos, forget the presidential campaign; look no further than the gripping intrigue swirling around Michael Strahan's leaving his perch on the ABC "Live!" program that he's co-hosted with Kelly Ripa for four years. He'll move over full time to the network's slipping morning show "Good Morning America." All of this was engineered by duplicitous upper management, pardon the redundancy, behind the back of Ms. Ripa. As Bart Simpson would say, she had a cow when she heard the news, which was about the time it wa...
Harriet Tubman was literally a freedom fighter. The "Moses" of the Underground Railroad liberated herself and dozens of others from slavery over the years in a biopic-worthy life of bravery and idealism. She has now been selected to eventually replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, bumping him to the back in the worst defeat for Old Hickory since John Quincy Adams "stole" the presidency from him in 1824. The political imperative at work here is obvious -- find a woman, preferably a minority, to downgrade one of the dead white males dominating...
It was another strange week in the political arena. Ted Cruz, although then a distant second in the Republican race, named Carly Fiorino as his running mate and introduced her as the future vice president of the United States. It was a moment for serious policy discussion. Instead, she suddenly broke out in song, singing a little tribute to the Cruz family. This week Trump accused Cruz's father of somehow being linked with Lee Harvey Oswald and somehow being involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. His accusations are based on a...
Kirk Adams has earned the reputation as a visionary leader who gets things done for people with disabilities. Those qualities coupled with hard work and determination rewarded him with the nation’s top job advocating for the blind. In May, Adams, who grew up in Snohomish, becomes only the sixth American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) president since the nonprofit was formed in 1921. It is the organization where the legendary Hellen Keller’s archives reside. Carl R. Augusto, retiring AFB president, calls Adams “a brilliant strategist” and som... Full story
Another perspective The April 14 Gazette carried an extensive article liberally quoting three elected representatives from our district, Sen. Mark Schoesler, and Reps. Mary Dye and Joe Schmick, on their opposition to Initiative 732, scheduled for the November ballot. Although the article contains many misleading statements, one comment by Rep. Schmick deserves support: “I think every voter should be educated so they know what they’re voting for.” In that spirit, I’d like to offer some other perspectives. Initiative 732 is designed to make po...
Give Donald Trump credit for planning ahead. He is preparing to be a sore loser. Trump's complaints that he is being undone by a rigged system crafted by a corrupt Republican Party is the dress rehearsal for his campaign's closing argument should it come up short in Cleveland. Trump will, in his telling, have been stabbed in the back by insiders and be fully justified in wreaking a terrible revenge on the party that he briefly sought to lead. Facts and logic don't particularly matter to Trump or his mouthpieces, yet the "rigged" charge is...
Well, we don't have visual proof, so we'll just have to take the participants' word for it. It was only a brief chat, but one that rescued Bernie Sanders from the embarrassment of having left the New York campaign trail to attend an obscure Vatican "rich people are bad" meeting when he could ill afford to be away. Pope Francis was feeling particularly charitable, so as he was heading out the door, he gave Sanders the gift he so desperately needed, bragging rights to say he actually did meet with the pope. Their encounter amounted to a pity...
The presidential campaign on the Repubican side has hit a new low. Now, Donald Trump is criticizing John Kasich’s table manners. Trump said Kasich, when at a diner during a campaign stop, shoved pancakes into his mouth. “It’s disgusting,” said Trump. “Not presidential.” Trump even said he had told his young son to turn away from the television set so as not to watch the horror of it. The attack on Kasich’s table manners may be Trump’s response to the new pact between Kasich and Ted Cruz. Neither of these Republican presidential candidates have... Full story
Even though President Barack Obama has less than a year remaining in office, his administration is cranking out new government regulations at record pace. The rush reflects the President’s plan to use his final months to cement his domestic-policy legacy. Unfortunately, that process circumvents Congress which is constitutionally charged with writing our laws. The new rules are sweeping and cut across labor, health, finance and the environment. They range from setting overtime pay for white-collar workers to more obscure matters such as r...
If the Republican Party is to be saved from Donald Trump, Ted Cruz's runaway victory in Wisconsin will have been the inflection point. If you thought this service to the GOP would be met with plaudits from the party's insiders, you obviously don't know anything about their relationship to the Texas senator. St. Augustine famously prayed, Dear Lord, make me chaste -- but not yet. The GOP establishment's prayer is, Dear Lord, deliver us from Donald Trump -- but not with Ted Cruz. The increasing likelihood of a contested convention in Cleveland... Full story
I'm among those who believe that when a political figure puts forth his or her spouse or grown-up children to appear on his or her behalf, those adults should be subjected to the same rigorous coverage as the candidate. The young kiddies can be cute props, off-limits to our snarky skeptical questions, but once they reach 18, they are fair game. If family members are out there, they should expect to undergo the standard journalistic shredding. It is obviously true for Bill Clinton. He's morphed from former president to husband of wannabe future...
There was a time when highway speeds were limited to 55 miles per hour. The speed limit was inaugurated to save fuel. Environmental and safety concerns were also in the mix. Now, speed limits in 35 states are 70 mph or more. A toll road in Texas between Houston and San Antonio has an 85 mph limit. Some say this is just the beginning of higher speed limits, what with new automobiles being safer and handling better at speed than older ones. This week the Washington State Department of Transportation held hearings on raising the speed limit on... Full story
It was shocking to read that a scant number of small businesses are taking advantage of federal tax credits designed to make health insurance more affordable. According to the Business Journals Washington (D.C.) bureau, only 181,000 small businesses claimed the Small Employer Health Insurance Tax Credit in 2014 based on Government Accountability Office (GAO) data. That’s only a fraction of the 1.4 million to 4 million small businesses that were estimated to be eligible. In 2010, that credit was a key selling point for President Obama, Senate M... Full story
Students at the University of Michigan called police the other day -- because someone had written Donald Trump's name in chalk. No arrests were made. The episode is part of a nationwide trend of Trump supporters writing pro-Trump messages on sidewalks, stairs and other surfaces at college campuses, where fainting fits are sure to ensue. When they could get no relief from law enforcement, the University of Michigan students took it upon themselves to erase the offending messages -- including "Trump 2016," "Build the Wall" and "Stop Islam" --...
Now that Donald Trump has decided to occasionally tell the truth, he might want to reconsider. It's gotten him in all kinds of trouble. The subject of abortion really twisted him in knots, first with a not-to-be-deflected Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who persisted in asking Trump whether his calls to make abortion illegal meant that the person who got one should be penalized. Trump's reluctant acknowledgement that he believes she should receive "some sort of punishment" sent the political world, to say nothing of the social-media universe, into a...
Hanging on the wall at the Gazette office is a 1919 copy of the Gazette. A one-inch story on the bottom of the front page reported that old postal rates were back in effect. First class letters would again be two cents, and post cards would again be one cent. “Gone is the three cent stamp,” declared the story. That was 97 years ago. This week, current postal rates have dropped. Reportedly, it is the first decrease since 1919. First class stamps are now 47 cents, down from 49 cents. Some other rates have also been rolled back. Int...
Boeing’s new cost-reduction plan has deep ramifications for Washington because the bulk of the 4,500 job cuts are likely to land here. CEO Dennis Muilenburg asked investors to view the savings initiative as "playing offense in a competitive marketplace" even though Boeing has a $431 billion backlog of 5,800 aircraft orders. Translated, Muilenburg means the aerospace giant needs to find ways to lower the price tag of its airplanes. Boeing leaders worry because Airbus’ A320 scooped up 63 percent of the orders last year in head-to-head com...
Donald Trump has made his first threat to sue over the procedures for selecting delegates to the Republican convention. It surely won't be his last. The Wall Street Journal reported that Ted Cruz may come out of Louisiana with as many as 10 more delegates than Trump, even though the mogul narrowly beat Cruz in the popular vote there. In a tweet, Trump pronounced it "unfair" and worthy of litigation. The Louisiana delegate picture isn't evidence of anything untoward. Trump and Cruz both won 18 delegates on election night. Marco Rubio, since...
What a presidential-election choice we have, America! That is if you enjoy political tactics that are so low they would be better suited for a limbo contest than a campaign. We are choosing many candidates who, instead of representing our aspirations, are demonstrating our asinine worst. For once, the latest example wasn't started by Donald Trump. In fact, this one is from an anti-Trump PAC, "Make America Awesome." It's not officially connected to the Ted Cruz organization, but that's a distinction without a difference. Who among us believes...
The Secretary of State issued an audit report on the Whitman County elections office recently. It was not flattering. The elections office is a county office under the supervision of the county auditor, Eunice Coker, but it is located outside the courthouse in the relatively new elections office fronting on Main Street in Colfax. It is a spacious and modern space which replaced the cramped quarters the office once had in the courthouse. The new space was declared a necessity to make elections more accurate and efficient. According to the...
Road and bridge tolls keep many elected officials awake at night. These often inflame voters because they are costs motorists see while driving; whereas, a gas tax is hidden in the price of a gallon of fuel. Too often people filling up their cars ignore the stickers on the pumps which break down the state and federal taxes they are paying. In Washington, the combined gas tax is now 62.9 cents a gallon while signs are posted from Tacoma to Bremerton telling you crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge costs between $5 and $7 depending upon how you...
Losing track The Washington State legislature is again into a special session. This was supposed to be a 60 day session. Last year was supposed to be a 90 day session. According to the newspaper, this is the sixth legislative session in seven that has been extended into special session. I believe our representatives consider this to be the norm. They appear to spend the majority of their time writing hundreds of various bills early in the session, spending hundreds of hours in committee hearings discussing these bills (many of which never move...
President Barack Obama inadvertently found the perfect photo-op for his Cuba visit at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana. A news photo at Revolution Square caught Obama standing together with American and Cuban officials, with an enormous mural of the iconic revolutionary Che Guevara looming over his shoulder on the adjacent Ministry of the Interior building. Che is, of course, ubiquitous on dorm-room walls and T-shirts in the United States, and a hero of the Cuban revolution. He also was a coldblooded killer who set...
