Sorted by date Results 777 - 801 of 3198
On July 4, at a Starbucks in Tempe, Arizona, six police officers were asked to either move out of a customer’s line of sight or leave the establishment because they were making a patron uncomfortable — for being police. As a progressive-minded American who believes certain (unjust) laws are meant to be broken and who strongly opposes any manner of police abuse or overreach, I am not particularly comfortable around police myself (although, admittedly, I am white and tend to get the benefit of the doubt during confrontations)....
Technology firms portray themselves as bastions of equality and progressive values — but in reality, they frequently discriminate against female workers. Sixty percent of the time, tech firms offer men higher salaries than women for the exact same role. And that’s assuming firms even interview female candidates. More than 40 percent of the time, firms exclusively interview men. Once they accept job offers, 65 percent of female tech workers say they’ve faced discrimination due to their gender, compared to just 11 perce...
I spent the Fourth of July sitting on the porch of our cabin on the river thanking God we had a cabin on the river. I tried to ignore the roaring jet skis and speedboats pulling kids on inner tubes. I groaned inwardly as they churned the water of my favorite fishing hole into a white froth. One interesting boat towed an inflated contraption that looked like a large living room couch. It carried three or four riders in a sitting position, no training or effort required. You could even include the family dog if you wanted. I...
Shortly, after Apollo 11 landed on the moon and astronaut Neil Armstrong took his famous first steps on the dusty lunar surface, some comedian in our army unit at Ft. Knox, Ken., posted a sign in our barracks: “Sorry, Drill Sgt., No Green Cheese!” Our basic training drill instructor was already “highly agitated” because President Richard Nixon ordered a “training holiday” so we could watch live television coverage of landing. On July 20, 1969, our unit was supposed to...
I am amazed at the growth of Cheney since my family and I moved to Ferry County many years ago. Following the death of my husband and scattering of my now adult children, I moved back to Cheney to be close to my son, his children and my grandchildren. As has been my long-time habit, I began walking daily for exercise and to pick up litter. I am dumbfounded at the amount and variety of litter I encounter as I walk along State Route 904 and Presley and Salnave. I started carrying a single grocery bag to fill the litter, and...
Those following the news recently have probably heard of the Palm Beach multi-millionaire Jeffery Epstein, thrust back in the spotlight after more than 10 years this week when he was charged with sex trafficking and a horde of lewd photographs of underage girls was discovered in his home. The current charges have sparked questions about the apparent mishandling of the investigation into Epstein’s activities years ago, and the carefully constructed pyramid of protection he built to shield himself from federal prosecution. B...
Deployments to Vietnam from Fairchild normally included an overnight stop in Pearl Harbor. Some of our crew had been there before and suggested we go out to the USS Arizona. We went to the pier and rode to the site in a small open boat operated by two U.S. Navy sailors. There was nothing to see except the tops of the gun turrets, but it was our chance as American fighting men to pay homage to those who had gone before us. I made the pilgrimage each time I deployed to or from Southeast Asia. The now familiar iconic monument...
Picture yourself traveling through space. Ahead hovers your home, a glowing bright blue orb reflecting the sun’s light off its vast oceans in the otherwise inky-cold blackness of space. As you know from your travels among the unimaginable vastness of the cosmos, planet Earth is a unique and infinitesimal bubble of life within the uninhabitable and unforgiving vacuum of space. From the Bible, in the Book of Romans, chapter 1, verse 20, we are told, “For since the creation of th...
I am a gardener. It is the only way I’ve found to be partners with God. Women and God partner up to produce additional human beings. After a brief DNA donation, men only get involved when the offspring wants to know how to throw a curve ball or borrow the keys to the car. So I garden. God does the heavy lifting by producing sun and rain. I get to plant the seeds and keep out pests. Weeds are endemic. I get my daily exercise hoeing and pulling the leafy intruders that hide in my rows of beans and lettuce. Animal pests are a g...
HBO recently broadcast a dramatization of the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl accident — at the time, the highest severity nuclear accident in history — a 7 on the International Event Scale. Some 30 people died as a direct result of the accident, thousands more died or are dying as a result of Acute Radiation Syndrome and large swaths of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were contaminated by radioactive fallout. According to the director of the Chernobyl Plant, the immediate area around Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for “at least...
More than half of Americans say they have a hard time affording their prescription drugs. Luckily for them, the Trump administration recently proposed a rule to criminalize the shady business practices that keep drug prices high for patients at the pharmacy counter. Lawmakers should support the proposal full stop. The president’s reform takes aim at middlemen in the drug supply chain known as “pharmacy benefit managers” or PBMs. Insurers hire PBMs to negotiate with drug manufacturers and help decide which drugs insur...
Are detention facilities along the U.S.’s southern border refugee camps or concentration camps? That seems to be the question in the minds of people, most recently Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The freshman Democrat from New York referred to these camps housing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as the latter over the weekend, prompting a reply from Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King. King pointed to a trip he took last year to Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp, and urged Ocasio-Cortez to accept an open invitatio...
From recent evidence that Boeing sacrificed safety for profit with Federal Aviation Administration complicity (essentially letting Boeing self-regulate and the last country to ground 737s), we again realize we vitally need strong regulations and independent regulators. Absence of oversight in our profit-is-God culture encourages cost-cutting that compromises safety. In his 2003 book, “The Future of Freedom,” noted analyst Fareed Zakaria describes the vanishing social responsibility over time of wealthy interests such as cor...
Citizen-led efforts to save, relocate and restore Cheney’s 1929 Northern Pacific Railway Depot received a solid boost last month with a donation of $10,000 from a local donor who wishes to remain anonymous, but who asked that the gift be earmarked “in memory of the Cheney men who built the depot.” It seems that a public acknowledgment of this generosity is in order. We are grateful, too, for the numerous donations received in memory of our friend and co-founder of the Cheney Depot Society), Dr. Charles V. Mutschler. To date,...
The criticism of President Trump’s tariff war continues to grow. The attacks are mostly centered around the American consumer. I understand the concern. I don’t want the prices at the checkout to be any higher than they absolutely need to be. I enjoy a good bargain as much as anyone. But consumer thinking is short term. Could our President actually be looking out for the long term best interests of our nation? A few years ago, I was asked to list the most serious problems facing our country. First on my list was our growing d...
When I planned to spend last weekend out of town, I had visions of carefree walks on the beach, cocktails at interesting coastal cafes and hours wiling away walking my pups against the serene backdrop of nature. Anyone who’s ever traveled across state lines with multiple dogs on short notice knows I needed a reality check. And I got one, in a big way. The day before we were set to head home, a check engine light went on in the car. Innocuous enough. No problem, I thought, we’ll swing by an auto parts store, borrow a code rea...
Congratulations graduates! It’s been a long time since I stood in your place. I remember being excited to finish a big phase in my life and apprehensive about starting a new one. I am sure you feel much the same. For the past 12 years, you have been a child in our public school system. Your graduation is the rite of passage from childhood into the world of adults. Well...almost. Our court system considers you an adult, so shoplifting is no longer a juvenile offense. You can serve in the military or get married without a...
This is for all you civilians out there. Yes, you, who have never served in the defense and protection of these United States. You see, all veterans make a sacrifice. All serve with the explicit understanding that at any time they may be called upon to protect and defend this great country of ours from enemies foreign and domestic, as the oath of enlistment reads. And in doing so they give something up. In a word, they give up their freedom. Because serving in the armed...
Congressional Democrats want to fundamentally transform Medicare by imposing socialist price controls on prescription drugs. But they know such drastic changes would be dead-on-arrival in the Republican-held Senate. In the meantime, some of them are coalescing behind a more moderate-sounding proposal that would achieve a similar result. This proposal, known as “binding arbitration,” would allow government-appointed arbitrators to dictate, er “negotiate,” drug prices. Currently, Medicare pays for drugs in different ways. M...
President Trump vowed to expand patient access to prescription drugs on the campaign trail. But with one proposal, his administration seems to be working against this goal. The Department of Health and Human Services recently unveiled a plan to impose artificial price controls on the advanced, physician-administered drugs covered under Medicare Part B. While the proposal could trim government spending, it will reduce access to medicine and devastate innovation. The president should reconsider. It’s no surprise that HHS w...
Memorial Day weekend was busier than usual this year in Cheney. Here are some thoughts on that. This year saw the first staging of a reenactment of the American Civil War by the Washington Civil War Association. In partnership with several businesses and organizations — including the city of Cheney and American Legion Post 72 — the two-and-half-day event featured association members in period dress and accoutrements engaging in battles and demonstrating how people lived and thought during that conflict over 150 years ago...
The first law of economics is Murphy’s Law. The second, right behind Murphy, is the Law of Unintended Consequences, which says: “Any outside input into the free market tends to disrupt its normal flow.” The free market can be visualized as an intricate web of connections, kind of like a spider’s web. The spider can feel a fly at the very extreme edge of the web and reacts to secure a meal. The market also feels the slightest outside influence and reacts in ways that can only be predicted in hindsight. More often than not, th...
It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50-plus stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on their bottom line by chalking it up to market pressures — as with the case of Shell’s Arctic drilling rig. Business magazines credited falling fossil fuel prices with the decision to withd...
I didn’t know much about volunteering growing up. As far as I was concerned, the only volunteers that existed were the ones I saw on television handing out food at homeless shelter soup kitchens or on the news passing out water at local fun runs. As I got older, the face of volunteering underwent a drastic change. I came to realize my parents had done a certain amount of it themselves at my schools or by offering their specialized skills to people for free. My grandparents were devoted givers of their time, committing t...
America celebrates Memorial Day this weekend, a long-running and, in the past, controversial holiday eventually made official by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. The purpose of the holiday is to remember our nations fallen servicemen and women who have died in the defense of these United States. The weekend also unofficially ushers in the beginning of the summer vacation season with local parades, picnics, camping and road trips, baseball games and, less often, trips to...
