Sorted by date Results 2170 - 2194 of 3200
If some of your friends are political cranks, then you know the argument. Goes like this: Your town spends, say, $600 providing a “get your picture taken with Santa” event for the local kids. Hopefully, they do it at Christmas “Great,” your crank buddy says. “The whole freakin’ city is fallin’ apart, and Mayor McCheese is playin’ with Santa. That $600 could be spent helping to get drugs out of the city.” The idea is that ANY money spent on ANYTHING other than simple education, minimal road repair and cops, lots of cops, is...
Last week my wife’s van had the door window smashed out at Fish Lake trailhead. To the persons responsible here’s the damage you caused: My five-year-old daughter is now concerned about bad guys, so you stole her innocence. This is what is most upsetting to me; my daughter didn’t make it to be six years old without being the victim of a crime. You broke the tinted window, which was the most expensive one on the vehicle. With no idea of what you would find inside, that just makes you a complete vandal to begin with. Our daught...
This is an interesting week as it marks the juxtaposition of two religious observances important to two different faiths, yet very intertwined. Tuesday, March 26, marked the beginning of Passover for members of the Jewish community, an important holiday, if you can call it a holiday that runs through April 2. The same goes with the other holiday, Easter, which for many Christians begins today with Maundy Thursday and culminates Sunday with Easter. I raise the issue of calling these observances holidays because, unlike other...
In a previous column, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush). The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Co...
During the months of September-June, Cheney experiences an especially dramatic influx in population due to the presence of the Eastern Washington University campus. Within this time period, on any given weekday the streets surrounding the campus are lined with cars. The reason these scenarios are problematic, is because of intersections like the one in which Fifth Street meets C Street, that don’t feature four-way stop signs. When nearing the intersection from C Street in a motor vehicle, it is nearly impossible to assess w...
Children’s minds are constantly growing. They want to be stimulated, and they want it so badly that they seek out media deemed “inappropriate” for their age group. Dumbing down cartoons for fear that children won’t understand stifles the potential for stimulation, insults the target audience, and truly turns the TV into “the idiot box”. It’s ageism against children, who demand quality programming as much as adults. So what are we going to do? Petition the networks? Write our own shows? Throw out our TVs? Actually, the...
I am currently on my third year here at EWU and I love pretty much everything about the school, but the large amount of foot traffic crossing the main roads when classes are starting, and ending become very hectic. Although I am one of the people walking from class to class in the morning, I also have a school job that requires me to drive through campus frequently in the afternoon. I have found myself waiting 20 minutes on Washington Street to get from the police barn, past the football field, because of students crossing...
Funding education isn’t the only headache Legislators are taking extra-strength Tylenol for these days. Funding of the state employee’s retirement pension system is also eliciting consumption of a few tablets. Senate Bill 5851 would create another retirement plan the state could offer its workers, but one not based on defined benefits as the other three plans, two of which are active, are but on defined contributions. Like the current plans, employees and employers would be required to make contributions, the difference bei...
As someone who came to the Legislature from private business, I have advocated that the Legislature get serious about turning around our stagnant economic growth through policies to encourage private investments that create jobs. House Republicans continue to offer common-sense solutions that would get economic development projects started sooner, curb the rate at which state agencies are drafting new regulations for businesses, and make it harder for the Legislature to raise your taxes. Here are just a few of our ideas....
Medical Lake may be small, compared to other cities in the Inland Empire. But its recent stance on Spokane County’s Joint Land Use Study (JLUS) is commendable, holding out on approving the land-use document. The City Council has held strong against unfathomable pressure from surrounding jurisdictions, sticking to the interests of its residents. Many came to open houses last year to speak against the document and the numerous regulations it imposes on homeowners and developers. JLUS was created with the main intent of protecti...
It’s too bad last fall’s Initiative 1240 allowing for creation of charter schools didn’t pass by a wider statewide margin. If it had, it would have been easier to claim those filing a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results weren’t hearing what voters were saying – that our public school system needs reforms. The Washington Education Association, League of Women Voters of Washington and Chicano/Latino civil rights organization El Centro de la Raza filed a lawsuit Feb. 27 with the state Attorney General’s office challenging...
Where is the Occupy movement now that the depravity of the super rich is on full display? The suddenly increased national debt is primarily the result of a deep recession caused by the top bankers and hedge fund hustlers of Wall Street, saved from their folly by massive and costly federal intervention. The result has been a season of obscene profit for them, while the rest of the nation has floundered. But instead of making the rich pay, ordinary citizens will be visited with job furloughs and a savaging of public services...
It is clear how unhealthy children are today. I am a mom of three kids in first, fourth and fifth grade. I have studied healthy options for my own childrens’ needs, health and educational needs and so on, as well as the needs of children worldwide. I am interested in the quality and availability of those needs, specifically healthy food options for children everywhere. The biggest issues about children’s health are obesity and early onset of disease in children. I am not here to blame parents for the occasional fast food dinn...
I don’t have any special beefs or concerns to write about this week. At least nothing I want to mentally exhaust myself over that is. The sequester is in place, like it or not, and we are awaiting the affects. It was a dumb idea, one that while signed into law by President Obama was also passed by Congress, including 174 of 240 House and 28 of 47 Senate Republicans, with 85 House and six Senate Democrats voting nay. But, you can blame who you like, if it helps you feel better. Really, the only way something like that would ha...
Are our schools better off in the hands of local residents, or a non-profit group directed by the state? Senate Bill 5329, currently under consideration, is among the education-related proposals in the Legislature. State senators of both parties from the west side are sponsoring the bill, which passed through committees with a 12-3 vote. The bill creates a state superintendent district as an established office within the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction (OSPI). Low-performing schools from the bottom 10...
Didn’t know what to make of it. President Obama’s denunciation of sequestration, and the plagues, pestilence, death, destruction and horrible heartburn that he assures us are sure to follow if sequestration goes into effect, had me thinking (briefly) that my memory had gone. So I looked it up. What do you know? I remembered correctly. On Aug. 2, 2011, President Obama signed the Budget Control Act into law! That’s right! President Obama signed the law that, if he’s to be believed, has gotta be the worst thing since Dill Pi...
As a Cheney resident I look out my window and see many hungry college kids wandering the streets at night. I think that this has great potential for the members of our society to be brought together through their hunger. All of the places in Cheney that are open 24 hours a day are always booming. I think that opening up a small 24 hour grocery store would be very beneficial for the Cheney population and bring some lively spirit to downtown Cheney. A grocery store has more variety and if there are personal items that needed...
I am writing this due to the short memory of some of our high school senior parents. It is amazing to me that some parents view their lack of convenience as more important than the safety of the entire class on graduation night. Unlike a few of these parents in Cheney, I do remember having friends from high school die way too soon! Yes, most kids who do go to the sponsored all nighter are “good” kids that may not get hurt or in trouble. But, my plea to all parents is - let’s consider all the kids. As more and more paren...
We, the U.S.A., have reached a cultural and economic tipping point, the recent school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the recent killing of Christ Stevens, ambassador in Libya, the refusal of our former Secretary of State to take full and unconditional responsibility for insufficient security at many U.S. diplomatic residences and embassies around the world. Plus the display of absolute dysfunction within the legislative branch of our government, which the whole world can easily see. And our dysfunctional national government has...
Things are about to change. It might not be apparent just yet, but the world is living in an exciting time for technology. In truth, we’re living among the Teslas and Edisons of today’s generation and the level of technological growth is just about to heat up. Many readers will remember some of the first home computers that came out in the 1970s, running BASIC programming. I just barely remember floppy discs from elementary school when they were actually floppy. Today, a more powerful computer than the one I used just 10 yea...
Over the last 29 years of my life, I have worked for the federal government- both in military and civilian status. For the most part I have enjoyed working my career, but I like many of my hard working and dedicated colleagues we have endured many bumps and bruises along the way. This time is different. Government employees are now being vilified by the press and Congress that have tried to paint us as all making over $100,000 dollars and having great benefits. Most of us in the rank and file do not make anywhere near that...
OK, we survived the Mayan apocalypse Dec. 21 and not long after were steered away at the last minute from the fiscal cliff Now we’re led to believe if we listen to President Obama that come March 1 there’s yet another end-of-the-world as we know it crisis awaiting us. He speaks daily now of massive dissection of defense; crippling cuts to cops; trimming teachers and so on, and so on and so on. Pick a federal program and it will be a mere shadow of its former self. The country will simply fall apart, oh my! All over losing a f...
For nearly four years, President Obama refused to admit a foreign-policy “secret” that was widely known here and throughout the world — namely, that the White House, Pentagon and CIA are engaged in ethically questionable and rapidly escalating drone warfare that’s killing innocent civilians as well as enemy soldiers in Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. But by nominating John Brennan, the architect of this high-tech kill policy, to head the CIA, the president has let the drone out of the bag. In the past few days, both Br...
In his famous novel “1984,” George Orwell warned that it doesn’t take a military boot against your neck to oppress you. Government can do it by using talking points — what Orwell called “newspeak” — to hide truth, distort language and keep the public in the dark. Orwell cautioned that this manipulation poses the biggest threat to freedom, whether the government doing the manipulating is right wing or left wing. President Obama seems to be taking a page from “1984.” The novel’s main character is a young bureaucrat living in a...
One of the Spokane’s most known and admired figures, Appeals Court Justice the late John Schultheis, once gave some advice to young lawyers in a 1999 Spokesman Review article to: “Spend more time in the raising of your kids.” It’s good advice not just for lawyers, but also for anyone who has chosen to have a family, natural or adopted. It’s also good advice that if followed, might lead to something many people in and out of government are advocating for: education reform. Federal, state and local spending on K-12 education...
