Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 3382 - 3406 of 3749
The question Washington voters should ask themselves before voting on a state income tax this fall is, “Will we be better off with an income tax?”Judging from experience, the answer is, “No.” Initiative 1098 would impose a 5 percent income tax on individual income over $200,000 and $400,000 for a couple. In addition, the measure would reduce some business-and-occupation taxes for small businesses and reduce property taxes by about 4 percent. That might sound reasonable to some, but experience tells us that a state income tax is a bad idea. F...
WHEN I READ what the police found when they investigated a house where a party had been going on and found a bunch of Central Washington University female students sick and vomit all over the place, I thought it was the result of the girls watching election ads on TV. I know every time perky Patty Murray comes on saying “I sponsored this ad,” I want to throw up. How someone can portray such a picture of innocence and take credit for such nasty ads is beyond me. Dino Rossi is not on our side. Dino Rossi is not one of us. Dino Rossi did a rea...
#!*! Hunters who have no respect for private property. Several Pet Peeves received recently were attacks on individuals. Such expressions should be submitted as signed letters to the editor....
It is a tough time in Colfax. The school district is wracked with dissension. The city is in a mess over the Thompson/Walter controversy. And, in its most recent brouhaha, the county courthouse is trying to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost money and come up with a way to keep track of it in the future. All this could be depressing. Thank goodness for the Thrifty Grandmothers. These dedicated women just keep plugging away. They continue to fund community needs with their donations. The Grandmothers Club is not a checkbook...
Appreciate I have not been involved with the situation involving the city of Colfax and the volunteer firemen and ambulance. There is one issue, however, that I have heard about which I would like to address. The issue is whether or not an employee of the city should be going on ambulance runs, as a volunteer, while on duty as a city employee. If anyone is bothered that the volunteers are “compensated” while on an ambulance run, I would like to point out that the last two audits by the Employment Security Department consider the payments to...
October is National Sarcastic Awareness Month. Right, I’ll be sure to celebrate that. It’s also National Caffeine-Addiction-Recovery Month, but I don’t know what events the organizers are planning because I’ve slept through the meetings. Some people celebrate October as Bat-Appreciation Month, which I can, well, appreciate, but I am not sure what to make of the declaration that it’s also National Window-Covering-Safety Month: I guess one should cover one’s windows with drapes and not with something less safe, like maybe explosives. Most signif...
Maintain We believe Cathy McMorris Rodgers is the same common sense candidate we had at the time of the primary election. Nothing gained or lost by the absence of the canceled debate. We urge the voters to maintain the three to one margin exercised in the primary - a good way to say "Thank you, Cathy." Gerald Druffel, Carol Druffel, Clarkston Remember If our economy is bad, you might notice it is getting better and that’s because the GOP is no longer in the driver’s seat driving us into the ditch. As our president so aptly put it, his adm...
My friend Tom and his wife Emily often disagree about the wisdom of his decision to buy a powerboat just to leave it in his garage. She says it was silly to spend all that money on a boat that hasn’t been wet for two years, to which Tom counters, with devastating accuracy, that it gets wet every time he washes it. I like to go over to Tom’s and sit in his boat with him because, like any good captain, he gives me free beer. Often I’ll help him with nautical chores, such as the time we installed his fish finder, which is how we determined that...
The stagnant jobless rate in our nation is even worse than it seems. Nearly one in 10 of those eligible for work are receiving unemployment benefits, and if you add the people who have given up searching for a job, exhausted their unemployment benefits or are working part-time jobs to pay the bills, unemployment is close to 20 percent. Most people want to work, pay their bills and put a little extra in the bank for their children’s college education or for retirement. But the Pew Economic Policy Group recently reported a record 30% – or 4.4...
Absentee ballots should be in your hands by now, so I’ll take the liberty of telling you how I am going to vote on the ballot measures. It is not my intent to persuade you to vote one way or the other, just keeping you informed. For starters, I’m voting for only three of the seven. See if you can guess which ones before you read this. That’s if you can name them, not the numbers but the subjects, without peeking. Go ahead.. It’s a good civics lesson for you. Initiative 1098 — This is the most important measure on the ballot because it would...
Everyone has a story. Casual comments about incidents on Highway 195 always lead to an outpouring of new stories about crazy passing and narrow escapes. After the spate of traffic deaths on the highway several years ago, nothing has changed on the road, except for the addition of rumble strips. Repeatedly, drivers recount close calls and dangerous situations stemming from illegal and unsafe passing on the two-lane sections of the highway. For regular users of 195, it is not unusual to have to take to the shoulder to avoid on-coming vehicles....
Don’t get fooled I am supporting a ‘no’ vote on Initiative 1098. Don’t be fooled, if 1098 passes it could come to haunt everyone. David J. Stueckle, LaCrosse Tax initiative This is a note to the voters of Whitman County. Please join me in voting for Initiative 1098. This is an attempt to help reform our state’s outdated and regressive tax system. I-1098 would establish a progressive income tax on the wealthiest 1.2 percent of households. Individuals who earn $200,000 and couples who earn $400,000 annually would pay a tiny income tax. I-1098 wo...
Portions of the new national health-reform law are just now going into effect, but the impact is already being felt. Insurers are warning of higher premiums, and some companies say the law will force them to eliminate employee health insurance coverage. Beginning Sept. 23, insurers are required to cover “children” under their parents’ policy to the age of 26, even if those children are married and live in another state. As a result, some insurers are dropping their “child only” policies. Ironically, rather than expand coverage as promised,...
DICK MORRIS says a Patty Murray win over Dino Rossi in Washington State is the key Democrats need for a 60th filibuster proof majority in the Senate. USA Today listed Sen. Murray as one of the top four female incumbent senators on the ropes. Deja vu. Patty Murray kicked off her career in 1992 as “a mom in tennis shoes” who was the first to declare against fellow Democrat Brock Adams just before he threw in the towel when he was named the most vulnerable of the senators up for his meandering among the female flocks. She outpolled Republican Rod...
About midway through second grade, I decided to take a break from women. At school, a hot brunette named Barb told me that she would be my girlfriend forever if I would link arms with her and walk the circumference of the playground so that all the second-grade women playing pony would see us. If I elected not to, she would leave me for a boy named Billy. When she put it like that, I didn’t see that I had much choice in the matter and agreed that she should go to Billy. At home, a hot redhead named Susie O’Dell said she loved me and wanted to...
For months, the termination of Colfax Fire Chief Ralph Walter has absorbed Colfax. The fire chief was accused of not knowing even the very basics of his job. He was fired, and then he sued to get his job back. Charges and counter charges swirled. City Manager Carl Thompson was accused of not following even the very basics of city policy and not doing even the very basics of his job. Some in the fire department declared they would not continue to serve if Walter stayed on the job. The mayor was accused of acting arbitrarily and being...
“Oktoberfest” is a festival named after October and held in September. If you were in Munich last month, you were probably celebrating by eating vast quantities of Rokeg (meat and blood pastry), Schweinshaxe (ham hock) and Alka-Seltzer. The whole thing is apparently a lot of fun, with men dressed in short pants and singing songs about their wunderbar Stekerlfisch (wonderful fish on a stick). Something like 6.6 million people are participating this year, drinking 7 million liters of beer, eating 58 thousand pork knuckles and standing in lin...
Not the answer Try this: No farms, no families. No families, no children. No children, no school. No school, no town! CRP is not a farm. It is not a tool. It is not the answer. How about a hospital without a town? I don’t think so! Just some of my thoughts after the front page last week. CRP up. Hospital down. Doesn’t anyone see? Doug Schuster, St. John An honor It was an honor for me to ring the school bell at the dedication of the Jones School House on Sept 9th at the Palouse Empire Fair. The school is one of the few one room schools lef...
Our founding fathers envisioned a government by the people. In fact, in his Gettysburg Address on Nov. 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln concluded with the words, “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” In the last few years, we’ve forgotten Lincoln’s words. We now have government by regulation, and it is paralyzing our nation. The growing mountain of costly, overlapping and often conflicting government regulations at the federal, state and local levels has stymied growth as investors s...
I SEE, I told Tim Eyman, that the Elway poll shows support has dropped for your Initiative 1053 requiring a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to increase taxes, and a Seattle legislator got a piece published in the Times calling it “undemocratic, unfair and unwise.” “It always breaks down to who turns out to vote,” he said. “People who have voted for it three times already and watched the Democrats suspend it to raise taxes and violate the will of the people will walk over glass to vote for it.” If there’s anything that’s undemocratic and unfa...
The state is awash in deficits. Cuts to the budget and efforts to raise revenues have only touched the surface. The state faces a continuing financial crisis. More adjustments to cure the imbalance between revenues and expenditures are needed. Some of these are bound to be serious and contentious. Not everybody will be pleased with the outcome, but this certainly is no time for the public to throw a monkey wrench into the recovery process. The November 2 ballot contains potential monkey wrenches. Initiative No. 1107—If the new taxes on c...
In 2004, the voters in the state of California approved a bill mandating the spending of $3 billion on stem-cell research, though because it was California they did not approve a bill to pay for it. A new breakthrough, however, suggests that maybe the whole thing could turn into a moneymaker for the nearly bankrupt state. Stem cells are amazing building blocks of the body that can be coaxed into growing into nearly anything you want, like an elbow or a kidney. Put some stem cells into a petri dish, stir them up, and voila, you can grow...
President Obama and congressional candidates are tripping over themselves trying to convince voters that they will have a tax plan to soak the rich, help the middle class and jump-start small business. They want to entice people to spend what money they have and sway wary investors to shake loose with the $13 trillion currently tucked away waiting for more certain economic and political times. Visible tax relief is but a small part of the equation for struggling people and employers. It is the hidden taxes imbedded in the family grocery, phone...
“NEW NAME in GOP Mix” headlined the Wall Street Journal. Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana led a straw poll of conservatives in the mix to become the GOP presidential nominee in 2012 taken at the Family Research Council summit the other day. Rep. who? He’s the third ranking Republican in the House, said WSJ reporters, although they neglected to mention what position that was, or where the summit took place. I had to look in the Washington Times to learn that the summit was in Washington, D.C. In fact, the Times ran a list of 17 hopefuls whose names...
#!*! The end of summer, but an okeydoke for the start of school. YYYY All those working together to make Hullabaloo a great event. Looking forward to this year’s edition. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 211 N. Main St Colfax, Wa 99111...
