Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 2035 - 2059 of 3750
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...
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...
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...
When I was growing up, I lived not far from a paper mill, close enough that the foul odor often defined our existence. Today -- metaphorically, but in a very real way -- the stench that hangs over our country is suffocating us. This one has many sources: the corrupt economic system, the feckless and greedy operation of our public and private institutions, the resultant anger that is misdirected into bigotry and, most noxious, the politicians who enable all this. It also darkens our sky, turning the bright hope that has always characterized our...
The presidential campaigns continue to slog along with intermittent moments of substance and endless hours of childish bickering and accusations. Now, the two Republican front-runners are fighting over their wives and how they have been treated. One is accusing another of getting sleazy tabloid stories published. A campaign manager has been charged with assault. It is a new low, and nearly every candidate has been subjected to some dirt. The media, especially televised media, reports it all. The tone often is not that of disseminating serious...
For the last 20 years, Lt. Gov. Brad Owen (D) has served Washington well. Now, he is retiring and leaving the state senate as he found it–a dignified place to debate and enact public policy. Owen, a former convenience store owner in Shelton, will not seek re-election. It will be the first time in 40 years that his name will not be on the November ballot. He was elected to the state house in 1976 and then to the senate in 1983. Owen is currently the longest serving lieutenant governor in the country; however, that is not the record in W...
Incredible I have lived in Dusty for almost 17 years, a tiny little town right in between the two wonderful towns of LaCrosse and Colfax. When I was younger, I enjoyed riding to LaCrosse with my dad to run farm errands, searching for eggs in the park during Easter, swimming in the pool during the summer, and afterward enjoying a frozen treat from the store. Living on the family farm in Dusty, I have enjoyed getting to know neighbors who are now close family friends. While I may have a LaCrosse address, we are located in the Colfax School...
George Wallace knew how to handle the hecklers who routinely disrupted his events. "These are the folks," he declared at a rally in 1968, "that people like us are sick and tired of. You've been getting a good lesson in what we've been talking about. They talk about free speech but won't allow it to others." Wallace knew the protesters were priceless to him in stoking passions and drawing media attention. "They are on our payroll," he joked. George Wallace had unsurpassed skills as a popular agitator, but even he would have to admire how Donald...
His horrified critics may ostracize him for being such a crass act, but many of Donald Trump's most bizarre pronouncements turn out be true. For example, he was ridiculed for having the chutzpah (look it up, Trump supporters) to insist that he was a "unifier." That, it turns out, is certainly the case. You know where I'm going with this. Contempt for Trump is as bipartisan as anything gets these days. Hillary Clinton, or her sound-bite scriptwriters, chastised him for his heated rhetoric as his rallies have turned increasingly violent: "If you...
The city of Colfax wants to establish a new parks district. The city parks and pool are currently the responsibility of the city. The proposed change would put the parks and pool in a new taxing district with its own board and financing. This is a new approach to funding and maintaining the city parks. Also new is the idea that the district itself could match the Colfax School District boundaries and not just the city’s. One impetus for the effort to form the district as a separate entity from the city is the age and deterioration of the c...
Get ready! More colossal container ships are coming. We got a glimpse of the future this leap year when the Benjamin Franklin sailed into Elliott Bay. Four years from now, hopefully, many mega-container ships will dock in Puget Sound waters. The Benjamin Franklin is the largest vessel ever to call at a U.S. port. It is longer than two Space Needles stacked on top of one another; wider than a CenturyLink Field and rises 20 stories high. In fact, when fully loaded it barely fits under San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and when empty its 1...
Not My Child! Not too long ago, my son, Casey was hurt in a car wreck, and as a prevention specialist, I was most interested in the prescriptions―specifically, the type and amount of pain medications the doctor was proposing to give Casey. To my dismay, he was prescribed a very large dose of pain meds. Casey and I agreed that this prescribing practice was excessive, and he probably wouldn’t need most of the pills. Truth be told, Casey said, some of the people he knew at work would gladly take the surplus medication off of his hands. From a doc...
If there's anything we thought we knew about the GOP, it is that it is the party of Reagan. Paying obeisance to Ronald Reagan -- his memory, his accomplishments, his policies -- has long been the price of entry to Republican presidential politics. Yet here comes Donald Trump, who gives no indication of caring the slightest about Reagan's legacy, and he has rampaged to front-runner status anyway. It is like Trump set out to kick down the door of the House of Reagan and the structure teetered to the brink of collapse, more decrepit than anyone ha...
This campaign makes life really easy for us pundits. We don't have to be very creative or entertaining. There's no way anyone could imagine a campaign as bizarre as this one. But this is a mixed blessing. Analysts are supposed to, uh, analyze. In doing so, we're endeavoring to provide perspective on what has happened and to offer insight into what can be expected. Tragically, none of us has any earthly idea how the campaign will turn out -- or, to put it another way, whether there is any chance that Donald Trump actually could be elected...
According to a CNN report, about half the political ads running prior to Super Tuesday 3 were anti-Donald Trump ads. The one that gained the most traction was about his attitude toward women. This commercial showed a variety of women simply quoting some of Trump’s more sexist comments. Reportedly, it has gained tremendous internet viewership and has been widely seen on television. The ad was just part of the “stop Trump” advertising intended to slow his campaign. It was said that if he won both Florida and Ohio on Tuesday the Republican race...
