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The last week has not been good for small businesses in our part of the state. The U.S. Postal Service began slowing “snail mail” services. Stores were ordered to stop using plastic bags and required to make their paying customers pay for a paper bag. And the state announced the minimum wage would jump to $14.49 per hour Jan. 1. If you don’t own or manage a business, this may seem overly dramatic. Who cares if it takes an extra day for your mail to arrive, right? It’s only 8...
I want the best for Medical Lake. We all do. I believe Terri Cooper has the vision to usher us through the growth that we will likely see in the next few years. Our choice to control growth needs a strong leader who is able to mediate and facilitate. I’ve known Terri for many years. We worked together as founding members of Re*Imagine Medical Lake. We worked shoulder to shoulder revamping Founders Day and other festivals to create community and promote tourism in support of small businesses. She is fiscally sound and b...
By Don C. Brunell Contributor Gov. Jay Inslee’s end run around the legislature banning natural gas in new homes and commercial buildings is a bad idea. Even though the state legislature adjourned last spring without passing his bill, he unveiled building codes which would accomplish the same thing by fiat. Inslee’s proposed regulations forbid the use of fossil fuels for heating and hot water in new structures. Prohibiting natural gas is expensive for home and building owners many of whom installed energy efficient natural gas...
I am writing this letter of endorsement in support of Terri Cooper for mayor of Medical Lake. I was employed by the Medical Lake School District for 34 years and over my career was as a teacher, assistant principal and high school principal. I’ve served on multiple boards and am currently the Medical Lake Citizens for School Treasurer and served six years as the chair of the Lilac Festival Parade and one year as its president. While I was employed by the Medical Lake School District, all administrators were required to l...
As a former councilmember with Shirley Maike, I am pleased to continue my endorsement and support for her re-election as mayor of Medical Lake. Shirley Maike has the demonstrated proven knowledge, skills and abilities to remain as mayor through her years of experience on the City Council and her current position in leading the city of Medical Lake. She was awarded a certificate in municipal leadership form the Association of Washington Cities. No. OJT is needed. Shirley is also a respected and strong member of our city. Her...
Have we become too divided as a country to properly honor those lost to tragedy? This question has crossed my mind multiple times in the last week, which was largely focused on recollecting the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. Saturday was the 20-year anniversary of the attacks. I was glad to see many tributes and well-written, thoughtful notes in print, online and via social media commemorating and honoring the 2,977 lost, including 340 firefighters and 72 law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, I also saw...
The Sept. 16 story, “WSU orders 4-H volunteers to get vaccinated” was listed in your news section and clearly consisted of the personal views held by your publisher (who wrote the piece). The author’s reference to the “Wuhan coronavirus” was wrong and irresponsible. This terminology perpetuates racial violence. Such personal views belong in the editorial or opinion section. Holly Lynch Cheney...
Arrogance is running wild in Olympia. It has consumed the State Legislature and the office of governor. This article addresses only the arrogance, not the specific policies, of these institutions. It is time for Uncommon Sense. In 1776, Thomas Paine published a 47-page pamphlet that, as much as any other factor at work in the American colonies, emboldened the populace to rise up against the monarchy of Great Britain. The pamphlet was called Common Sense. It was a runaway bestseller in its time, ubiquitous from pulpits to...
Talk about a bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur. On Sept. 3, Washington State University Extension Office Director Vicki A. McCracken took it upon herself to dictate that all 4-H volunteers now have to be “fully vaccinated” to continue in their position or face being “inactive.” She cited Gov. Jay Inslee’s edict that everyone connected to education – from preschool through the university system – must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18. Apparently, neither McCracken nor...
The Sept. 8 Cheney School Board meeting had some heat. Public comments were heard and limited to the opening minutes. These comments may be delivered in person or emailed prior to the meeting. An angry parent at the meeting complained about the education being delivered. He had a variety of complaints. But what stuck with me was his need to hire a tutor for his second-grade child to insure she could read. At a digital meeting last October, a parent submitted a question wondering what the district planned to do for students...
Sept. 11, 2001 – a day that no American who lived to see will ever forget. I was recently asked about where I was that day, and I remember it keenly, deeply. I think it’s a question every American has an answer to—a moment engraved in time. Since it was early September, it was right in the middle of hop harvest. My cousin and I were working to unplug the picking machine, a more-than-common occurrence for hop farmers, when his wife called, crying. Those first moments that morning were ones of disbelief. Then, justification—it...
It’s clear: Parents in Washington are sick of their children being used as pawns by radicals in power who wish to destroy family, children and faith. Widespread protests against mask mandates at school and vaccine mandates at work have erupted statewide, with many calling out Gov. Jay Inslee for his aggressive misuses and abuses of emergency powers. This has largely been a fight for religious freedom and individual liberty, but it is creeping onto another deeply disturbing frontier — the fight for parental rights. The see...
The long-term effects of the COVID-19 vaccines are unknown. The leadership is telling us the vaccines are safe; yet, the minimum 5-year observation trials for gene therapy drugs have not been conducted. The COVID “vaccines” are gene therapy drugs. Some doctors are warning us that the vaccines are sterilizing women and creating blood clots that lead to heart failure. Many of these doctors have been fired from their jobs and sued in the courts in an attempt to coerce others into silence. When criticism is met with an att...
Having lived in three developing countries for 17 years, I met very fine Americans — as well as arrogant and ignorant Americans. Representatives from the U.S. Embassy, USAID, Peace Corps, U.S. Military, UNICEF and UNESCO and missionaries are among those I encountered. Many stayed briefly, never getting to know the culture. Most Americans, including me, travel with American glasses, and don’t often see what is happening right before our eyes. For instance, in Sierra Leone, I saw women working the fields, and thought for two...
By DON C. BRUNELL Contributor When thinking of England’s fabled Sherwood Forest, the medieval images of Robin Hood and his band of archers and swordsmen hiding in the woods giving the Sheriff of Nottingham a hard time comes to mind. Who would envision a crew of young American oil workers concealed among the giant oaks drilling oil wells? However, the crude production from those wells was essential in helping fuel the D-Day invasion launched from English shores in 1944. Until Guy Woodward and Grace Steele Woodward published “T...
Every day, millions of workers enter people’s homes to provide care to those with disabilities and the elderly. These “direct-care” workers assist individuals with bathing and dressing, cooking and eating, taking medication, and getting exercise. For the people they help, they are lifelines to health, independent living, and economic stability. Yet our system for providing this care is in desperate need of repair. Medicaid serves approximately 4.8 million Americans with home- and community-based services, but there are still...
Jacquelyn Belock is a progressive candidate for Cheney City Council Position 3 and deserves your consideration. Her answers to the questions the Cheney Free Press published on July 22 got my attention, and I have now met with her and confirmed my intent to vote for her. She’s not afraid to do the right thing, even if it makes some enemies. You can read about her in the Progressive Voters Guide (progressivevotersguide.com) and at electbelock.org, where you can also request a yard sign. She is a paleontology instructor at S...
One aspect of the last 18-plus months that has struck me is how life can sometimes imitate art. Specifically, for me, how some events with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic correlate to the Steven Spielberg summer blockbuster “Jaws.” In the movie, a woman is killed while swimming. The movie’s unwilling hero, Sheriff Martin Brody, gets a report from the medical examiner that the death was caused by a shark attack. But under pressure from the mayor and city council of the island town of Amity, the examiner backtracks, saying “yes,...
“There is no military solution to the conflict.” That was the conclusion reached by the Biden administration earlier this year, which set into motion the plans for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of August. Nearing the termination of this process, in a few short days we witnessed the collapse of the Afghan government, the takeover by the Taliban, desperate Afghans trying to flee the country or seeking other sorts of protection, and international NGO workers holing up in safe places in the cap...
Is this it? Is this all we can expect now from the Cheney Free Press in terms of local area news and commentary? Publisher Harnack’s opinion piece on Aug. 12, 2021 (Parents should push back on Olympia masks in schools mandates) leaves a reader with big dose of “huh”? Of all the critical local issues swirling about, we get a commentary from Publisher Harnack on how parents should rise up and reject mask mandates for students to return to school. No discussion on why masks are again necessary, no discussion on why our child...
Long before I became a state legislator for the 6th District, I served 22 years as an officer with the Spokane Police Department. During my time with the SPD, my top priority always was to protect and serve the public. It has been 15 years since I stepped down from the department. Though I no longer wear the uniform and badge, I still care very much about the men and women who put their lives on the line each and every day to protect the public. That’s why I’m so concerned about the future of law enforcement here in Was...
I’ve been in the public safety profession in one capacity or another, since the late 1970’s, and I have seen significant changes in the profession — some good and some not so much. However, recent events in Olympia and across the nation regarding “police reforms” has caused me to wonder where these reforms are going to lead us, particularly here in our hometown of Cheney. Candidly, the recently enacted police reform measures in Washington have made it harder for good cops to do an already difficult job, and more complicated t...
Parents of public school students in the 9th Legislative district have had enough of coronavirus-related mandates from Olympia. Shutter schools, curtail sports, wear masks, limit field trips and restrict access to graduation. Those actions have not been embraced here. And neither has Gov. Jay Inslee’s renewed call for all public school students to remain masked for the upcoming 2021-22 school year. Area parents are pushing back. This week, led by a group from Fairfield, many p...
One hot mid-August Wednesday morning in 2000 I received a phone call from then-Cheney Free Press Dave Rey. Rey didn’t waste any time. After a quick greeting, he asked one simple question “How’d you like to come work for the Cheney Free Press?” Similarly, I didn’t waste any time with my response: “Yes.” After several interviews and job search disappointments, I was finally going to put my recently earned journalism degree to work as a staff reporter at a local weekly newspaper. While not specifically what I had sought when g...
The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were billed as the “Hydrogen Olympics!” Then along came COVID and sporting events worldwide were put on hold. The summer games were delayed until 2021. Postponing the games cost Japan billions and thwarted its efforts to showcase the Japanese “Green Growth” strategies. Japan, like the United States, plans to become carbon-neutral by 2050. While countries like China are betting on lithium batteries, Japan’s centerpiece is hydrogen. As Japanese researcher...
