Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 3157 - 3181 of 3750
Colfax I was dismayed to read of the accusations against Joe Reynolds. And I am most disturbed by the paper listing the accusations in such sensational-like detail! Remember that he has only been accused. Especially to those who have known him for years – this strikes me as being inflammatory and a defamation of his character with no charges proved. I don’t think these details needed to be on the front page of the Gazette! Your paper may have crucified an innocent man! Pat Zuger,... Full story
Overheard at the Coffee Shop I know it sounds strange, but I’m one of those people who goes to a coffee shop to drink coffee. I don’t bring my laptop so that people will see that I’m so busy that I can’t even take a coffee break without working, nor do I bring my mp3 player so people can see that I go to the coffee shop to listen to music, nor do I bring my iPad so I can show people I know how to work an iPad. I was sipping coffee yesterday when I overheard two young women working on a crossword puzzle behind me. One wore a yellow top, the oth...
Desperate times too often result in bad choices. Translated, that means when taxes don’t match state spending, governors and lawmakers rob dedicated accounts. Dedicated accounts were established to tax people or employers for a specific purpose and only use that money to fund that program. In essence, they promise not to siphon it off to balance the general fund budget. However, robbing Peter to pay Paul has become common practice in Olympia. For example, in 2009, Washington state faced a $9 billion budget deficit. To help close that gap, s...
SINCE THIS is written some days before it appears in print, I don’t know where we are in the battle over raising the debt limit, deadline for decision Aug. 2, but I pray that House Speaker John Boehner makes no deals with the president or Democrats unless the results are immediate, not promises. Remember what happened to George “Read my lips, no new taxes” H.W. Bush? Democratic leaders came to Bush and promised that if he signed a tax increase they insisted was necessary, they would use any savings from military down sizing to bring down the f... Full story
A twin-engine Mitchell B-25 bomber which saw duty in the Mediterranean during World War II, was on display at the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Airport for three days over the weekend. The airplane, the result of a 28-year restoration effort after being recovered from dry storage in the Arizona desert, was flown to Lewiston by the Commemorative Air Force for the fourth annual Lewiston Air Fair. Although the Mitchell B-25 saw service in most World War II battle zones, its most memorial mission credit was the Doolittle Raid over Tokyo over 69 years a... Full story
Giant Palouse Earthworms are so slippery that nobody can verify where they are. That is why once again they have been denied Endangered Species classification. The scientists just are not sure how many there are and exactly where they are. In fact, it seems that they are not even sure what they are. First, it was said they only existed in unspoiled native Palouse soil. Now, reports have surfaced that they live in forests and as far away as Levenworth. At first, too, they were considered to be up to three feet long, purplish in color and... Full story
My Unnecessary Sister There’s a legend in my family that when I was 7 years old, I tried to trade my sister for a dog. This isn’t actually true: I would never have done that! What I said was that if the family across the street wanted my sister, they could have her. I never asked them to give up their dog, for heaven’s sake. My sister, Amy, was to me both an unfortunate and an unnecessary addition to a family that had been doing just fine with me as an only child. She seemed to spend most of her time screaming about something, using a special f...
A state song nominee with the word “Palouse” TOO BAD. The guy who filed an initiative to change the state’s official song from “Washington my Home” to the former Seattle NBA franchise’s fight song, didn’t show up with the 240,000 signatures needed to get it on the November ballot. In fact, he didn’t show up with any by the deadline. Kris Brandon said on filing last March that he wanted to raise awareness about the Super Sonics departure. The team left Seattle in 2008 for Oklahoma City. The initiative said that, if passed, once a professional...
Gordon McLean, Retired Administrator of Whitman Hospital In 1987, Whitman Community Hospital was in serious trouble. A strong economic engine and health care system with the Hospital at its hub was in jeopardy. At the brink financially, a lonely parking lot, and curtailment of services, a failed effort to create a public hospital district , and retiring physicians all fed the fuel for “doom and gloom” coffee shop chatter and news headlines. In 1993 and 1994 Whitman was ranked in the “Top 100 Rural Hospitals” in the United States. The turnaro...
More peas A few days back, President Obama conducted a news conference in which he stated that in order for the country to once again enjoy the robust economy of yesteryear, we would all have to be part of “shared sacrifice!” I wonder how many remember the meeting he had with Senators and Congresspersons in which he later stated that he had made an agreement that the lower tax rates for all but the rich would have to be discontinued. This was when I immediately noticed that the IRS was now taking $30 more a month from my pension check! I wil...
Whitman County Commissioner Pat O’Neill announced Tuesday he will conduct a community meeting next week in Pullman to discuss issues of county governance. O’Neill said he wants to focus the meeting on wind power and the county’s financial management. The meeting will be next Tuesday, July 26, at the South Fork Public House in Pullman’s Wheatland Center. The meeting will open with a social period at 5 p.m., followed by a presentation by the commissioner at 5:30. O’Neill, who represents commissioner district two, will then open the floor to...
No perfect solution to energy needs Imagine coming home from work, tossing your keys on the hall table and flipping on the light switch. Nothing happens. You sigh, remembering that this is the night your neighborhood is scheduled for a rolling brownout. Even with electricity at 25 cents a kilowatt hour, there’s not enough power on the grid to supply the homes, hospitals, factories and office buildings in your state. New laws limit the amount of electricity you can use, and homes are equipped with utility sensors that allow regulators to remotel...
Political leaders of the United States are embroiled in a debate over raising the national debt ceiling. Not raising the ceiling would be catastrophic. Without the increase in its borrowing limit, the country could not pay its commitments and government could not keep functioning. The fallout would affect every American and every economy in the world. Yet, the debate continues and the deadline for solving the problem fast approaches. Part of the delay is that the decision to raise the debt ceiling is tied to efforts to cut the growing Federal...
Bruce the Answer Man on Birthdays for Women W. Bruce Cameron Welcome to another edition of Bruce the Answer Man! Today’s topic: Human relationships, are they possible? Let’s go with the first caller. Caller: Hello, Answer Man, longtime listener, first-time caller. Oh, and due to the sensitive nature of my topic, I want to remain anonymous. Answer Man: Tom? Caller: What? Answer Man: You’re my next-door neighbor, Tom. Caller: Wow, you are the Answer Man. Answer Man: Plus, I have caller ID. So, by “sensitive nature,” I suppose you mean that thin...
Taxpayers should cut up Uncle Sam’s credit cards My dad used to say, “Public officials should never borrow money, except in an emergency, like a war.” As the mayor of a small town in Montana, he put that principle into practice. Buying a new dump truck was not an emergency. If the city didn’t have the money to buy it, the answer was no. Even if state or federal funds were available to make the down payment, if the city couldn’t come up with the rest of the money, the answer was still no. Most vendors feel the same way when it comes to politi... Full story
A review of the Inslee file AS SOON as I heard that Jay Inslee was going to run for governor next year, I dug out his file so I could refresh my memory on why I thought his running the state was a lousy idea. He happens to be my Democratic congressman in the First District, coming here as a carpetbagger after serving a freshman term in the Fourth District, and forced to find a new landing place by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Pasco, in 1992. He soon became a clone of our most liberal member of Congress, Jim McDermott of Seattle, and joined Baghdad Jim...
Makes you wonder I recently read that Avista has signed a 30-year contract to buy “wind power” from First Wind’s planned turbines in Whitman County — before the last appeal has even been heard and ruled on. Now I know why the Whitman County Planner told me, over two years ago, that it was a “done deal.” That was when the planning commission was in the early stages of changing the Ag Ordinance to include wind farms and there had been no public hearings. What did he know way back then that the rest of us didn’t know? Does Avista know the same thi... Full story
The former Elks Lodge, now the county’s distressed Community Education and Training Center (CETC), was a center of activities in Colfax. Not only was the building used by locals, but people travelled from all over the county to spend some time there. It was one of the town’s biggest draws, and it helped to keep Colfax a mini regional center. The loss of the Elks Lodge and all the activities it hosted has dramatically impacted Colfax . . . and not for the better. After the Elks Lodge closed, the building was developed as an education cen...
The Mysterious Case of the Horse in the Night Time W. BRUCE CAMERON Sometimes when my parents talk to me I can feel my brain turning over in its grave. Their stories can take on a surreal, surely-someone-slipped-me-some-LSD aspect. For example: Just past midnight a few nights ago, my mother awoke to the sound of a horse throwing up in the backyard. My mother has never heard a horse throw up before, so it is pretty impressive that she was able to identify the species of the animal solely by the noise it was making. When she looked out into the...
Tread carefully on state health exchange Later this month, state legislators will begin discussions about designing and implementing a health-care exchange. If experience is a guide, and it is, Washington lawmakers should tread very carefully because recent events have shown how perilous such efforts can be. State health-care exchanges, authorized under the federal health-reform law, were originally characterized as virtual open-air markets where health-insurance providers would compete side-by-side so consumers could easily compare coverage... Full story
Photos on cigarettes follow many warnings SO WILL A PICTURE of a diseased lung, rotting teeth or a corpse on your cigarette package convince you to give up smoking? Because that’s what the Food and Drug Administration has ordered on every package sold after September, 2012. The aim, of course, is to cut down on tobacco use which, according to the American Smokers’ Rights Foundation, kills about 443,000 people a year. That’s out of the 43 million Americans estimated to be smokers. They don’t call them coffin nails for nothing. They’ve tried eve... Full story
On Tuesday, Casey Anthony, 25, was found not guilty of killing her 2-year-old daughter, Caylee. After a month long trial and three years of investigation, this verdict was handed down by a Florida jury in a brief 11 hours of deliberation. This case of the dead child, the lying mother and the dysfunctional family had captured the interest of the nation. The not-guilty verdict caused an immediate uproar. One pundit cried that it was the worse miscarriage of justice since the O.J. Simpson verdict. The prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable...
To a Teenage Daughter: Cease and Desist W. Bruce Cameron Dear Teenage Daughter: You are to Cease and Desist acting like a teenage daughter. It is summer, and you have begun wearing an inadequate amount of clothing. Most offensive is your bikini, a bathing suit named after the Bikini Islands, where the United States tested 23 nuclear weapons. I think we can both agree that nuclear explosions are not a good thing to have in the house or, worse, out in public where boys can see them. One of the nuclear tests at the Bikini Islands inspired the... Full story
Poland: A bastion of free enterprise In 1975, as America was preparing to celebrate its bicentennial, Poland was a suppressed Soviet satellite state. The Polish people were impoverished, had no right to free speech and if you wanted a job, you had to play ball with Communist Party bosses. Poland was a bleak land that had never recovered from World War II. That same year, more than 5,000 miles away, the Business Week program began at Central Washington University as a way for high school students to experience our nation’s free enterprise s...
AARP policy, Gregoire departure,War Powers Act ITEM - News that AARP, the most influential lobby for senior citizens, has decided that America’s fiscal straits are so serious that it is willing to consider supporting cuts in Social Security, was deemed a political earthquake nationwide. AARP has for years regarded any reformers of Social Security as evildoers who want to bankrupt Granny. The change in heart, it’s said, is because AARP finally accepts that Social Security cuts are inevitable and wants to be at the bargaining table when they are...
