Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 2955 - 2979 of 3750
The economic news is bad. The U.S. economy added just 69,000 jobs in May, less than half the expected number, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down jobs figures for the two previous months as the unemployment rate rose to 8.2 percent. Amidst all the bad news, politicians are debating what the federal government can do to make things better. One suggestion is to stop making things worse. Two things slowing our economic recovery are uncertainty and regulatory overload. When employers are unsure of what will happen next or are overwhelme...
IT MAY NOT be fashionable to say so these days, says the Wall Street Journal, but three cheers for the Senate filibuster. “This week the 60-vote requirement (to halt a filibuster and advance a bill) will once again help kill a nasty bit of legislating known as the Paycheck Fairness Act.” It did just that the other day, the final vote 52-47. Our own U.S. Sen. Patty Murray is in the front row of Democrats attempting to equalize pay between men and women. It’s brought up periodically because trial lawyers want it, says the Journal, since it is a...
A few short days from now the Palouse Empire Fairground will once again be home to an amazing array of abused exotic animals. The traveling circus that visits us here in Whitman County each summer is the Jordan World Circus. Dozens of U.S. cities and counties, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Austria, India, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal and Slovakia have passed measures to ban wild animals in circus acts. Other nations, including Britain, Norway and Brazil, are on the verge of doing the same. The Palouse is home to not one, but two major c...
There comes a time when enough is enough. No more excuses, no more delays. In 1986, hospitals, local governments, schools, small businesses and doctors were fed up with the high cost of personal injury lawsuits and liability insurance. They successfully lobbied for tort reform legislation, which was signed into law by Gov. Booth Gardner. Fast forward to 2012 and you see that same tipping point with our public schools. Taxpayers are tired of hearing, “Just give us more money and we’ll fix our schools.” We’ve been there, done that and nothing...
SOMEBODY sent me a copy of a Facebook entry by one of her correspondents which offers “10 reasons to thank Obama.” I was sure the Facebook entry wasn’t original since practically the same list of reasons to vote for Obama appeared shortly thereafter in my local newspaper’s letters column signed by a Poulsbo man and letters responding to that have followed. I figure the list was hatched in Democratic talking points, which is the D campaign propaganda list available to Obama stooges, considering all had dates of inception which most ordinar...
The recall effort to oust Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a Republican, came to a head Tuesday. Running to replace him was Tom Garrett, a Democrat and mayor of Milwaukee. In the simplest of terms, the recall and subsequent election was a contest of the Tea Party against public workers and unions. On Tuesday, Walker’s recall was rejected. He received almost 54 percent of the vote. Apparently, voters like what he is doing and want their leaders, as he said, to stand up and make tough decisions. Walker had tried to solve the state’s budget cri...
Activists waging a national war on coal have turned their sights on the Pacific Northwest, targeting proposed shipping terminals in Washington and Oregon that would export coal to China. They’re aggressively lobbying federal officials to change how these projects are evaluated. If they succeed, our economy could become a casualty of the war on coal. Currently, such projects undergo a rigorous environmental review known as an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) involving months or even years of public hearings and analysis by federal, state a...
IT WAS A MIGHTY cheap price paid by the Rutgers college student who drove his roommate to suicide by rigging the computer webcam in their room so it could be turned on remotely for viewing from elsewhere. What Dhartan Ravi wanted to see and have others see with him was a homosexual encounter between Tyler Clementi and another male. Three days after Clementi found out about it, he jumped off a bridge. Ravi was called a cyberbully who didn’t like gays. He was convicted by a jury of anti-gay intimidation, invasion of privacy and several other c...
The people have spoken, and, on Friday, hard liquor will no longer be sold by the state. It will henceforth be sold by private retailers. The network of state liquor stores has been closed, and new retailers are preparing for business. The change is the result of Initiative 1183. It was passed by popular vote with the help of a lot of money from hopeful booze sellers. The most prominent of which was Costco. Aside from the changes in distribution and retailing, another dramatic change is expected: The historically high prices for hard liquor in...
May Day success May Day Committee chairmen Chris Cochran and Connie Kriebel did a wonderful job to make our May Day festival last weekend in Garfield a real success. I don’t remember a parade being that long in a long time, and I’ve been around quite a while! We were given a beautiful day with many happy memories. Darlene Perkins, Garfield Kudos Kudos and praise to Huber Action Freight for speaking the truth with their latest sign. They have taken a stand and for this they deserve applause. We should all as Christians speak and use the tru...
When the Environmental Protection Agency was formed in 1970, our environmental problems were easy to see: factories belched black smoke, leaded gasoline fouled our air and water and rivers were so polluted they actually caught fire. Today, 42 years later, much has been accomplished. Our air is clearer, our rivers are cleaner and aquatic life is thriving in our streams and estuaries. We have made so much progress that the remaining issues are literally microscopic, measured in parts per trillion. Today, science is the key to establishing if a...
THERE’S something really wrong in this country when we have so many people out of work and unable to realize the American dream of owning your own home because of sky-high prices, yet we have a president jetting all over the country day after day meeting and dining with people eager and able to pay up to $40,000 for the privilege. Barack Obama picked up $15 million at one of those $40,000 a plate feasts at the home of actor George Clooney, and during that same weekend ate in Seattle with 50 couples who forked over $35,800 apiece and sat down at...
Despite the solemnity often attached to it, Memorial Day is a good time to smile. In my case, one reason to smile is dear Auntie Grace. I would visit her often at her beach house. Sometimes a cousin would join us. Neither of us were yet in school. Auntie Grace would wake us just as the sun was rising and send us off fishing at the public pier by ourselves. She gave us a drop line and a quarter each. We’d fish for a while and then go to the bait shack and buy our very own cup of hot chocolate. We always got a fortune back in change. These w...
Complete Shock I’m writing this letter in response to the certified letter I received from Office of the Chief of Police about the Colfax Municipal Code 10.18.040 (Junk Car Law). The letter I received was a complete shock to me, as no one has previously contacted me about the vehicles that I legally purchased and I believe are legally parked on my legally purchased property. According to the letter vehicles are junk cars if they meet three of the following criteria: 1. Is three years old or older, 2. is extensively damaged; such damage i...
In 1942, the completion of Grand Coulee Dam was hailed as the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Seventy years later, most of us aren’t aware of what that dam or the others on the Columbia River continue to do for us. To commemorate Grand Coulee’s completion, the Bonneville Power Administration commissioned legendary folk singer Woody Guthrie to write songs praising the dam that harnessed the mighty Columbia River. Guthrie toured the region from the Bonneville Dam to Grand Coulee, and within a month he had written 26 songs, the most famous of whic...
I’M MORE than a little suspicious that Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, among others, knew in advance that the President was on the verge of leaping aboard the gay marriage bandwagon. Biden kicked it off on Meet the Press with “Men marrying men, women marrying women and homosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.” The next morning Duncan voiced his support for gay marriage over MSNBC, followed by Caroline Kennedy, co-ch...
The upcoming county commissioner elections have generated a lot of interest. Challenges to the two sitting commissioners whose terms are ending this year have been expected for some time. This week is the official filing period for candidates seeking office, and so far two candidates have filed to run against Commissioner Greg Partch. Commissioner Pat O’Neill is expected to have at least one challenger. Commissioner Michael Largent does not come up for reelection for two years. For several months, three candidates seemed likely challengers t...
Step raises reality I want to begin by saying that I am the wife of the grader operator out of the Colton shop in District #2. My husband and many of his co-workers have worked in their positions for many years. There is a very low turnover with these hard working guys. I am so fed up with the continuous reference in the paper from the higher ups about these employees getting longevity (step) raises every 18 months. To quote Mr. Lothespeich “employees have gotten scheduled longevity raises of 3% for every 18 months they work at the same time e...
There are dams that should come down and those that shouldn’t. Demolishing the two dams on the Elwha River west of Port Angeles is a good thing and, hopefully the salmon and steelhead will return in record numbers. The dams were built in the early 1900s to bring electricity to the Olympic Peninsula at a time when salmon and steelhead were plentiful in other Pacific Northwest rivers. On the Elwha River, the issue was clear: Two barriers were blocking salmon from moving upstream. The care with which the demolition was planned, studied and i...
A few weeks ago the national average price for a gallon of gasoline peaked at $3.94. Every newscast covered the escalating prices, punctuating the reports with unhappy people at a gas pumps. Newspapers were no better, and talk shows railed over the situation. Many blamed the president. He blamed speculators. Others blamed the greed of the oil industry. Despite the emotion, nothing was new. We’ve been through this before. The country was first hit by fuel shortages and dramatic price increases in the 1970s. Long, desperate lines of motorists w...
For much of the world, Italy is synonymous with “la dolce vita,” the sweet life, full of pleasure and indulgence. But that life comes at a price, and the bill has come due. After 60 years of ever-increasing cradle-to-grave benefits and lifetime job security, Italy’s economy — the eighth largest in the world — is breaking down amidst declining birthrates, protectionism and crushing debt. Stunted by policies that discourage competition and thwart growth, Italy’s economy has been stagnant for 15 years, forcing that nation to borrow heavily in...
IT’S BAD ENOUGH that the cream of the security crop in our government, the Secret Service, dallied with prostitutes on a trip to Colombia while making sure of the safety of our soon to arrive on a visit president.The more worrisome thing to me, however, was the stupidity of the agent or agents who questioned the fee charged by his lady for the night, thus blowing the lid off the whole thing by triggering her complaint to the local cops. Prostitution is not against the law in Colombia so she had as much of a right to complain as if she were a t...
Some years back, the Whitman County commissioners decided to give up control of their salaries and the salaries of their elected cohorts and turn it over to an independent citizen committee. As a result, on Tuesday night, the county’s elected officials received substantial salary increases. The decision is final and absolute. Now, everyone has to live with it. Surely, those elected officials receiving the increases will have no problem living with it. It is just the rest of us that may have problems. Some lower level county employees may h...
W. Bruce Cameron Editor’s Note: The following column was originally published in 2007. In this berserk, time-bankrupt world, I believe I should be grateful for an opportunity to spend several peaceful, uneventful hours sitting on an airport runway with the seatbelt sign on. It provides me with time to look inward, toward my bladder. After an afternoon of controlled breathing, I feel as though I’ve gotten in touch with my inner child — the child who used to wet his pants. There’s a reason pilots hold their passengers hostage for hours and hou...
Open Palouse I had a very small shopping list of things I wanted to accomplish when I was appointed to the Palouse City Council 25 years ago. Trees for downtown was tops on my list, followed by saving the historic Pratt truss, F-Street bridge. I lost on both. A perfectly serviceable bridge was replaced at huge cost by a slab of concrete. Trees in 1988 could line Main Street for less than a thousand dollars, well within the city’s well-managed budget. That plan was shelved until then councilman Echanove discovered how persistence could turn a s...
