Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 3507 - 3531 of 3750
Frustrated by rising workers’ compensation premiums and a political stalemate in Olympia, the people who provide the jobs in our state want change. Those employers, whether they run hospitals, schools, small businesses, nonprofits like Goodwill, local governments or large corporations pay the lion’s share of the premiums for workers’ compensation insurance. Those premiums cover medical costs and lost wages due to workplace injuries and pensions for those who are permanently injured and cannot return to work. Washington has one of the most expen...
ITEM—Researchers from Washington State are in the second of a four-year project to develop a mechanical harvester that will remove the stems from cherries as they are picked. The stems sometimes dent the fruit as it’s shipped, say the researchers. COMMENT—Then I’d say they’re piling them too deep in the shipping boxes. This appears to threaten an end to one of life’s little pleasures, pulling a maraschino cherry out of its jar of syrup or your drink by its stem and popping it into your mouth. Dipping in with your fingers to get the cherry won...
It is unknown for sure just how Memorial Day started. There are many claims. Some say it was started by freed slaves, a druggist in Waterloo, New York, or a group of Confederate women. In any case, soon after the Civil War, celebrations honoring fallen soldiers were conducted in a variety of places. In 1868, the holiday was officially proclaimed and a ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery included decorating grave sites with flowers. It was called Decoration Day. Early official ceremonies were primarily for Union soldiers. Former Confederate...
You’d think I’d enjoy a baby shower — after all, I like to see babies (I even was a baby once), and I like to take showers. But I’ve always elected to avoid them because no one has ever invited me. That all changed when a former co-worker asked a bunch of us over to celebrate her former pregnancy. She now had a little 6-month-old girl she named Andie and wanted to throw a coed baby shower so all of the men would feel stupid. See, baby showers have their own rules and their own vocabulary. You can’t just open a few beers, put on the basketbal...
Parking lot The parking lot at Schmuck Park needs attention. It is so dirty that it is hard to tell that it is asphalt. This is the second year that the lot has been ignored. Anybody driving there causes a dust storm. Schmuck Park is the city’s premiere park and is used by residents and travelers alike. The city should show more pride in it. It is embarrassing the way it is. Bruce Davidson, Colfax Oops An article in the Gazette of May 6, 2010 (Japanese TV crews giving Palouse WWII makeover) would seem to be attempting a makeover of our n...
Each year, the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council) publishes a list of the best to worst state tax systems for entrepreneurship and small business. It pulls together 16 different tax measures and combines those into one tax score that compares tax burdens in the 50 states and District of Columbia. Among the taxes included are income, capital gains, property, death/inheritance, unemployment and various consumption-based taxes, including state gas and diesel taxes. The overriding advantage for the states with the best tax...
A BILL MOVING through Congress has some wine lovers worried they won’t be able to get their specialty wine in the mail any more, according to the newspapers. The Comprehensive Alcohol Regulatory Act of 2010, introduced in the U.S. House earlier this month, is meant to strengthen state control of alcohol distribution. It is supported so far by the National Beer Wholesalers Association, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America and 31 Democrats and Republicans, but some wine lovers believe the bill will limit their ability to get the b...
The unpronounceable volcano in Iceland is still spewing ash. Although not the biggest eruption ever, it may have the largest impact of any in history. International air travel has been affected. Entire airports have been shut down for fear of the danger of the airborne ash to airplanes. At one point, virtually all of Europe’s air traffic was grounded. The volcano is a natural phenomenon. Humans will have to adapt and adjust. As with other such natural events, the negative environmental impact may not be long lasting. A case in point is the r...
I believe that dancing was invented to give men something to dread. Men counterattacked with beer, but then women counter-counterattacked with video cameras, and now every man on the planet knows that out there somewhere is footage of him dancing at a cousin’s wedding, just waiting to be shown at a retirement party or some other embarrassing occasion. My first dance was in seventh grade, a phase of childhood so torturous I can’t believe it is still legal. At that time, I had a very specific and obsessive crush on every girl my age. I went int...
LaCrosse Community Pride An Open Letter to our LaCrosse area friends and neighbors: We’ve been working as a committee to help preserve and refurbish one of the finest old buildings in town—the big brick building that for more than ninety years was the community grocery store. We hope to see the building once more become a community center for groceries and perhaps other enterprises, too. Our hope, through developing a nonprofit entity, is to assist in improving the long range prosperity of our community. We’ve decided that the best route is to...
As legislators and others comb through the massive health-care reform law, they are finding little-known provisions that will have a big impact on the American people and our economy. For example, tucked into the health-care law is a provision that imposes a 3.8 percent federal tax on the proceeds from the sale of your home. How is that related to health care? It’s not. Sallie Mae, the company that processes student loan applications, just announced 2,500 layoffs because of a little-known provision in the health-care reform law that i...
ANOTHER PUBLIC official was snapped up by the cops for driving under the influence after getting sauced at a party. Port Orchard Mayor Lary Coppola was the culprit and the event was the May 2 Port Orchard Rotary Crab Feed and Auction. It’s only been a month or so since Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn failed a sobriety test when he was stopped for speeding and a defective tail light on his way home from a community dinner. I wrote right after the Dorn affair about the time Lt. Gov. Brad Owen, a Shelton state senator at the t...
#!*! Tea partyers that are living on tax dollars. +++++ Hospital auxiliary volunteers who put on a wonderful Spring Fest. It is something we all look forward to. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 211 N. Main St Colfax, Wa 99111...
This week Colfax was the location for the filming of a Japanese mini-series. The series will trace a Japanese-American family from 1912 to the present. The Colfax segment involves how the Japanese were treated after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and America’s entry into World War II. The Japanese immediately suffered abuse, hostility, discrimination, physical assaults and boycotts. Many of them quickly ended up in government internment camps. As a result, they lost their homes, businesses and livelihood. The treatment of the Japan...
From Where I Sit: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly of Healthcare Reform CEO Whitman Hospital & Medical Center “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” This old saying is certainly true when it comes to healthcare reform. During the debate people without health insurance, and those who sympathized with them, wanted dramatic change. Others with good coverage were nervous about the future. Insurance companies saw a huge threat to their business model and small business owners feared more regulation and taxes. The two predominant political par...
Things to Avoid If You Are Over 40 When I was 12 years old, my father sat me down to warn me of the dangers of alcohol. “Son,” he said gravely, “never make a martini with too much vermouth.” Later in life, schools often provided me with lists of illegal substances and their negative side effects, though I noticed educators usually skipped the most obvious one, which is that drugs make people really boring to listen to. They acted as if making it through childhood without taking on bad habits and addictions meant you were home free, when ex...
Too much wind power? Could Washington and Oregon’s growing fleet of wind turbines become too much of a good thing? Perhaps. At present, there are more than 2,200 megawatts of wind energy flowing through the Pacific Northwest at any given time. That is enough electricity to light Seattle and Portland for one hour. State and federal energy policy encourages the development of more wind projects and developers have received billions of dollars in incentives. Wind power is touted as the cleanest and greenest renewable energy resource. ...
Voters’ mistrust clouds fate for state income tax proposal “I’M NOT VOTING for that income tax initiative, even if they do keep calling it a tax on the wealthy in the headlines, and I’m certainly not wealthy,” said one of my kin. Why? I asked, knowing the answer or at least suspecting it. “I don’t trust them,” she said, them, of course, being politicians. “They say now that it’s only on individuals making $200,000 a year or couples making $400,000 and there would be a cut in property taxes, but how long would that last? Does anybody really...
Two county commissioners have been meeting illegally. At least this is what the third commissioner says. He appears to be right. County commissioners Greg Partch and Pat O’Neill apparently meet to make decisions and then announce them as a fait accompli at public meetings. Such get togethers are illegal. Elected public officials serving on boards cannot conduct business in an unannounced meeting when a quorum is present. In Whitman County, with its three commissioners, a quorum or majority is two. The commissioners work within feet of each o...
Naturally negative? I guess people are just naturally negative. I don’t understand the attitude toward windmills by most people. They use no fuel. Fields can still be planted and harvested. I’ve seen pictures of wheat fields before and after windmills were in place. I don’t know where the windmills did any damage. Windmills could take the place of dams and restore the Salmon and Steelhead runs, boosting tourist trade. Thousands of fish would bring in thousands of dollars. Having truly free flowing rivers would give us the same appeal as Alask...
Inland Northwest Blood Center and Whitman Hospital and Medical Center will conduct a blood drive today from 9 to 1 at the hospital. Walk-ins are welcome. Appointments can be scheduled by calling extension 401 at the hospital on going online: www.inbcsaves.org using sponsor code: whitmanhospital....
I think of all the holidays we celebrate, my least favorite is Earth Day. For one thing, I never know what sort of gift is appropriate. A jar of dirt, maybe? And it’s not clear to me why Earth even needs a “day,” since a spin on its axis creates a day. That’s like giving a man who owns a shoe store a gift of a pair of shoes. Us: Hey, Earth! Know how you’ve given us all these days? Well now we’re giving you one! Earth: I’m thrilled. Don’t get me wrong: Earth is one of my favorite planets. A lot of my friends live there. When I was in grade sc...
Zombies? Can someone explain a few things to us? Here are our questions: Less people attended the Colfax TEA Party rally than last year. Do less people care about the direction our government has gone this past year? The MUMS ladies, who have devoted several years to making Colfax a pleasant and welcoming town, have just given up. Does anyone else care? The Palouse Region is on the verge of being ravaged by industrial wind farms, which do not produce energy that will ever help our grid and come at an unbelievable economic cost to all, except...
Canceling the Constellation program – the successor to America’s historic space shuttle program – is a huge mistake, but that is exactly what President Obama plans to do. He told folks at the Kennedy Space Center that he is also abandoning returning to the moon. Instead, he plans to send astronauts to asteroids and, eventually, to Mars. Obama wants private companies to take over shuttling astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station, but until that happens, the U.S. would pay $50 million a pop for our astronauts to hitch a ride...
After years and years (since the end of Prohibition) of having to buy booze from the state instead of being able to pick up a fifth at the grocery store the way it is in many other states, a couple of initiatives have been filed that would accomplish that. A.T. Song brought in the filings and is believed to represent a coalition of grocery stores. Whether they can get the 241,000 signatures needed by July 2 to get something on the November ballot is the first hurdle. They’ll get plenty of help though from the media, especially the Seattle Times...
