Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 1659 - 1683 of 3750
Key tax policies emanating from the east and west coasts are like passenger trains passing one another heading in opposite directions. One train is loaded with elected officials proposing changes to reduce taxes while the other is packed with those pushing for new and higher taxes. The cumulative effect of those modifications will impact all of us and our economy, jobs and ability to compete as a state and nation. The adjustments will determine whether we grow, limp along or wither away. Make no mistake, they will impact our pocketbooks and...
Lucky to have them Lucky to have them It made me sad to read last week’s “Pet Peeve” about the so-called “conflict” between the mayor and unified executive director. While I have only lived in Colfax a year, I have continually been impressed with how well these two competent and highly-motivated people work together to get things done. Differences of opinion can be healthy, especially if each party treats each other with respect. Clearly both the mayor and the unified executive director respect each other, and for that I am grateful. We are lu...
Donald Trump is the first president in U.S. history to have been baited into undermining his own negotiating position by negative TV coverage. Less than 12 hours after Attorney General Jeff Sessions explained that the administration is ending DACA -- Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals -- because it's unconstitutional, Trump tweeted that he might revive the program if Congress doesn't act. This was an implicit admission that he's bluffing on DACA, which gives Democrats every incentive not to trade anything meaningful for a codification of th...
I did it! I made it through Sunday without watching an NFL game! Perhaps I didn't mention it, but I've decided to boycott the National Football League. It's not an easy decision for me. I played football. Come to think of it, that might explain my mental acuity (or lack thereof). But I've had a lifetime attachment to the game. Until now. At least I won't be watching the pros play on TV, and certainly not in person. That's become way too expensive. The reason for my shunning the NFL can be explained in two words. You can probably guess them....
It has been a long time coming. Whitman County received word about its latest state audit, and the news was good. Over the years the county has been plagued with unsatisfactory audit reports and even audits that couldn’t be completed because of faulty and missing records. The problems have stretched the confidence of county leaders as well as the public. From those dark times to now, the results have dramatically changed. The state auditors have recommended procedural changes that will further advance the improvements of the county’s financial...
At last count firefighters were battling 82 major wildfires in 10 western states. The fires have already scorched 2,300 square miles of forests and range lands, dislocated thousands of people, and burned hundreds of homes and buildings. This has been the third worst forest fire season on record, prompting western congressional members to add billions to emergency hurricane relief legislation It isn’t over yet. The cost of fighting fires already broke this year’s U.S. Forest Service budget. It is part of a disturbing trend in which com...
Bewildered I was very much bewildered when, on Sept. 6, I attended the Regular Meeting of the Board of Commissioners of the Public Hospital District No. A-1 of Whitman County (Pullman Regional Hospital) regarding gender reassignment surgery. It seemed obvious that the board went through the necessary process to appear as if they had debated and studied this issue, but really they only went through the process because it was required. It appeared to me that collectively they already had their decision made before they started the process. The...
Even in our divided politics, it should be a matter of consensus that the president of the United States can't write laws on his own. That's what President Barack Obama did twice when he unilaterally granted amnesties to swaths of the illegal immigrant population. The courts blocked one of these measures, known as DAPA, and President Donald Trump has now begun the process of ending the other, DACA, on a delayed, rolling basis. In a country with a firmer commitment to its Constitution and the rule of law, there'd be robust argument over how to...
Hurricane Harvey is such a tragic natural disaster that it's been impervious to the vigorous attempts to steal the spotlight by that unnatural disaster Donald Trump. His attempts at provocation -- like the Joe Arpaio pardon and his usual Twitter outrages -- were not enough to deflect our focus. The nation was concentrating instead on the thousands upon thousands of people suffering in the Gulf region, particularly Houston, as the historic deluge drove them from the safety of homes that had been turned into death traps by the rising water. But...
It is not exactly pope-speak but Pope Francis called people who deny climate change “stupid,” using a quote from the Bible. It is a “moral responsibility,” he said, to do everything possible to alleviate the changes. He is right. The climate is changing. It has been changing for years. Those who deny the fact seem most intent on denying the causes and the effects. As one said, the climate has been changing since the end of the last Ice Age, there is nothing to do about it. And, so it has, but there are many things humans can do to lessen...
If the news is correct, both major political parties are ready to work with each other to reform the US tax code. The debate over expenditures should be debated at another time and place. This is the income portion of the budget, save everything else for another discussion. The first task should be to determine the objective of an ideal revenue code and write a tax plan mission statement. I suggest the following: In our democracy, taxes are needed to generate the funds necessary to operate our government. Tax collection should be fair and...
All of the things that went wrong in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 appear to have been corrected with Houston's recent Hurricane Harvey. Chalk it up to a series of important lessons learned. By now everyone knows that Harvey came ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, dumped a record 51 inches of rain on 22 million people from Corpus Christi to Port Arthur, TX, and sent thousands to shelters. The hurricane hit Houston, America's fourth largest city and an urban area which accounts for 3 percent of our nation’s GDP. It had the makings o...
Extend medicare In 2009 all Republican and two Democratic senators killed ACA’s (ObamaCare’s) proposed “public option” that likely would have led to national single-payer health care (Medicare-for-all). Although vastly superior in coverage and more equitably affordable than Republicans’ recent draconian bills, ObamaCare may hardly cut overall costs. Fortunately, single-payer Medicare-for-all would both greatly cut costs and markedly increase ObamaCare’s improved coverage, impossible until health insurance companies lose control. Canadian si... Full story
One of the least safe places to be in Berkeley, California, is in the vicinity of someone holding a "No Hate" sign. So-called anti-fascist, or antifa, activists bearing shields emblazoned with those words assaulted any of the handful of beleaguered Trump supporters they could get their hands on at a small political rally over the weekend. All in the cause, mind you, of demonstrating their supposed opposition to hatefulness. Too many people were willing to perfume antifa in the wake of Charlottesville, where it clashed with Nazi thugs who caused...
What I'm about to describe is Fake News -- it hasn't happened, at least so far. However, I think it's just a matter of time. At some Nazi/KKK rally where some of President Donald Trump's "good people" are joining the lunatic-fringe types in hateful demonstrations, they are confronted by angry counterprotestors. Someone pulls a gun and starts firing. The violence escalates, and people die. You say that it has already occurred, in Charlottesville, Virginia? True, that's where an angry right-wing lunatic took his car and slammed into a crowd of... Full story
YYYY Thank God for neighbors – especially Steptoe neighbors who fight fire. #!*! Real farmers spray their thistles and keep the ditches clean, no cattails to plug up the ditches. Send your pet peeves and okeydokes to Whitman County Gazette P.O Box 770, Colfax, WA 99111 or drop them off at the Gazette office...
The Palouse Empire Fair is back on center stage. The fair has been a long-running show for the county at its permanent home outside Colfax at Mockonema, at the intersection of Highway 26 and Endicott Road. Every year improvements are made at the site. The most dramatic ones to greet visitors this year are the additions and improvements to the Community Building. Regardless of the changes and improvements, the fair is really about people. It is one of the greatest meeting places in the county. Rural residents and city residents mingle at the... Full story
Last February, the European Parliament rejected a tax on robots, but took the first steps to regulate their development and deployment. The legislation also aims to establish liability for the actions of robots including self-driving vehicles. Europe’s governing body, while rejecting the tax to be dedicated to worker training, overwhelmingly passed a resolution to study regulating robots. In an interview with Quartz.com, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he believes that the government should tax companies’ use of robots. That would tem...
I had a birthday last week the same day as the eclipse. It was kind of neat that most of America celebrated and looked skyward with anticipation during my birthday. Most of my many birthdays aren’t any big deal. They just come and go without a lot of fanfare. We didn’t celebrate birthdays much when I was a kid. We acknowledged them, but there were so many seats around our dinner table that we would have been celebrating much of the time. There is one, however, that stands out. It was my 28th. I was in Viet Nam flying Shadow Gunships. We had...
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took the highly unusual step over the weekend of publicly explaining why he won't resign. He responded to Yale classmates who had written an impassioned open letter urging him to quit in protest over what they called (ridiculously overstating their case) President Donald Trump's "support of Nazism and white supremacy." There was no reason for Mnuchin -- a busy man and one of the most important economic officials on the planet -- to bother replying unless he feels a little defensive. After Charlottesville, the...
So, we have the "alt-right," the "alt-left" and a president who is clearly not "alt-there." What Donald Trump is fast becoming is alt-isolated, as the accumulated disgust for his constant degradation of the office has boiled over. After days of vacillating, his news conference tantrum -- where he argued that there is a moral equivalence between Nazis, Klansmen and other violent white nationalist haters and those who fight them -- revealed the depths of his immorality, amorality or just plain stupidity. That was the last straw for many who had...
Hurricane Harvey smashed into the Texas Gulf Coast. The predictions were dire. Almost every hurricane computer model predicted the storm would make landfall and then stall out, drenching the coast and Houston in particular. The computers were right, although ‘drenching” is hardly the word for what is happening in Texas. Early on, it was estimated that 11 trillion gallons would fall on Houston. Some places have suffered from approximately 50 inches of rain in just a few days. And, the rains continue. As of this writing, the storm, after lea... Full story
The incident in Charlottesville is a tragedy. Most accounts blame the white supremacists. Their protest has been compared with KKK meetings at the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It was a white supremacist who drove the vehicle into the crowd. A few reporters, however, attribute part of the blame to the counter protesters who expressed their views forcefully and physically. No one, however, has thought to blame the city leaders who decided to remove the statue of Robert E. Lee. It was a dumb decision. Lee is a national hero....
Recently, family, friends and dignitaries gathered at Hurricane Ridge near Port Angeles to celebrate the designation of the Daniel J. Evans Wilderness at Olympic National Park honoring Washington’s distinguished three-term governor and U.S. senator. Today, America needs a calming voice of reason – a steady and measured leader with the strength, experience and ability to unify our nation. Daniel J. Evans fits that mold. At 91, Evans is still spry and fit. His legacy is that he worked with Democrats as well as Republicans to get things done. The...
Inventory Have you ever looked at the buildings along Main Street in downtown Colfax and wondered about their history, their design, who built them and why? Maybe you own one of these buildings, work there, or shop there and would like answers. On Aug. 30, from 6 to 8 p.m., at the Center next to the county library, you can find out. The Colfax Historic Preservation Commission, in association with AHA!, an architectural history and archaeology firm, has conducted an inventory of the historic buildings in the Colfax business core and will be... Full story
