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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...
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...
StageWest Community Theatre had great success with the last production of the 2018-2019 Session, “The Savannah Sipping Society” by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten. Most performances had a capacity crowd and the dinner theatre was a complete sell out. StageWest would like to thank the congregation of Emmanuel Lutheran Church and the minister, Arianna Arends, for the generous use of their building for all of our auditions, rehearsals and performances. Without this kind gift, StageWest would not have been able to...
I recently received word that the Eastern Washington University Downtown Student Gallery will be closing soon. I understand that this is due to a lack of funding, not participation, therefore, I would like to make the following statement and suggestion for keeping the gallery doors open. Since I moved here four years ago, I have participated in several Spokane art-fests. While Spokane offers outlets for my art, I am more interested in bringing art into Cheney. I have been in communication with some local artists as well as...
It is garden season which is a passion close to my heart. I find myself cringing in horror whenever I see Roundup weed killer, marketed by Monsanto/Bayer, lining store shelves in Spokane and around the country. I recently read in “Living Maxwell,” an organization that supports organic and healthy food sources, that 250 million pounds of Roundup are sprayed each year. Research is showing that many products that we eat now contain glyphosate absorbed from the weed killer. According to the article, 0.1 ppb (parts per bil...
Our court system is out of control. I was watching a Mariner’s game the other day when the network filled a break in the action with a half dozen commercials. My drink and chip bowl were both full, so I sat back in my recliner and day-dreamed. I came fully awake when a law firm announced they had won a $289 million settlement against the makers of Roundup and requested I call the number on the screen to see if I could share in the bounty. I have used Roundup in my garden for several years, so, after the ball game, I r...
There are dams that should come down and those that shouldn’t. Hopefully, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts its review of the 14 federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, that will become abundantly clear. That review is expected to be ready for public comment in late 2020. Here is the difference. Demolishing the two dams on the Elwha River west of Port Angeles was a good thing. They were built in the early 1900s to bring electricity to the Olympic Peninsula a...
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...
Imagine what it feels like to lose. Multiply that several times over. How tempting is it to throw up your hands in defeat and get really mad about it? When I was in junior high I went to a small school that wouldn’t be able to field a girls’ basketball team unless every girl in both the seventh and eighth grades turned out for the team. Basketball was not my favorite sport, but I turned out for the team so that the girls who liked basketball would have a chance to play. Turns out we weren’t very good. For two years strai...
An inescapable news topic in recent weeks has been Georgia’s new legislation governing abortion, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week and sparking outrage and debate across the country. The much-buzzed-about “heartbeat bill,” HB 481, is one of the strictest in the country and bans abortions after six weeks. The ban is the fifth in the country to ban abortion after that date, but takes it one step further by granting a fetus full legal personhood. And regardless of your stance on abortion, the precedent set by this...
Tax season is over, so now we have time to consider how our tax dollars are being spent. One glaring concern should be our funding of the Israeli military. Part of that money is used to incarcerate and torture Palestinian children as young as 10 years old — arresting them at night, harassing them, keeping them in frigid rooms, forcing them to sign confessions in a foreign language without defense lawyers or parents — in military not civilian courts. Convictions are 99 percent according to UNICEF. These terrible pro...
Frank Watson’s Guest Commentary “Religious Freedom Condemns Terrorism” is another in an unfortunately long history of predominantly conservative commentators criticizing Muslims for not condemning terrorism perpetrated by Islamic extremists. Watson is “still waiting for a Muslim spokesman to condemn 9/11.” He goes on to say that the terrorist attacks in Sri Lanka were, “absolutely denounced throughout the globe…except by Islamic political and religious leaders,” who he claims, “were conspicuously quiet.” Then tangentially,...
President Trump’s pro-energy policies are on a collision course with his protectionist policies. Let’s hope, for the sake of the economy and energy independence, energy policies prevail. At a time when U.S. oil production is at an all-time high, the president’s tariffs on metals are raising the cost of pipeline and drilling materials. In the last few years, breakthroughs in extracting oil and natural gas secured America’s spot as a top energy producer. Last year, U.S. production surpassed both Russia and Saudi Arabia....
Twenty years ago, Washington voters outlawed ethnic discrimination within our state. Initiative 200, passed by a decisive popular vote, specified that employers or those granting contracts, “shall not discriminate against nor grant preferable treatment … on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin.” This past Sunday during their last minute session, our Legislature struck down the people’s initiative. Ethnic background is now a required criteria for evaluating new employees and granting state contracts. Propone...
In just over two weeks, residents will get a chance to see something unique — a fairly accurate depiction of a historical moment that shaped this country into what it is today. The Washington Civil War Association, in conjunction with the city of Cheney, will bring a two-and-a-half day reenactment of the conflict spanning the years 1861 – 1865 that claimed around 1 million American lives — more than all the major wars fought before and since combined. Ostensibly referred to as “The Battle of Minnie Creek,” or the “Battle of C...
As president, Donald Trump has leaned heavily upon what he has called an “America First” policy. This nationalist approach involves walking away from cooperative agreements with other nations and relying, instead, upon a dominant role for the United States, under girded by military might, in world affairs. Nevertheless, as numerous recent opinion polls reveal, most Americans don’t support this policy. The reaction of the American public to Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from key international agreements has been host...
“One of the biggest challenges of the 21st Century is dealing with the progress of the 20th Century — especially old computers, monitors, cellular phones and televisions. These appliances depend on potentially hazardous materials, such as mercury, to operate. After a five-to-eight year useful life, many are tossed into dumpster and sent to landfills where they can leach into the soil and groundwater.” That was the opening paragraph of a column I wrote 20 years ago. Howev...
This week I had the privilege of eating lunch at a local middle school while working on a story. In the process, I talked to school officials and some students about what they were eating and the importance of a good meal during the school day. Over the course of my career I’ve talked to kids at sporting events, political rallies, domestic violence shelters and volunteer events. These conversations have led me to one conclusion, which I can look upon with absolute clarity. We don’t give kids enough credit. Children are con...
On March 15, a small group of white supremacists attacked a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, killing 50 worshipers. Political and religious leaders throughout the world condemned the act and the terrorists. The six gunmen were rounded up and will be punished to the limit of New Zealand law. As far as we know, the motivation of the attack was more racial than religious. In retaliation, a group of Islamic terrorists sent seven suicide bombers to Christian targets in Sri Lanka last week. They inflicted 800 casualties, 300...
By ANDREW MEYERS and TOM VANDER ARK Contributors Lyft recently announced that it would be going public. Uber isn’t far behind. In little more than a decade, the two companies have upended the transportation sector -- and transformed how we think about both transportation and work. If only we could bring that sort of innovation to our nation’s education sector. American schools have scarcely evolved since the days of the horse and buggy. Our educational system incentivizes memorization and rote learning in the age of Goo...
Our state Legislature has accomplished all their goals. They have outlawed eyeball tattoos, enacted the biggest budget increase in history, raised the price of gasoline, and enabled the worst school funding debacle since statehood. Having done all this with time to spare, they recently voted to change the amount of available daylight. As I understand the logic, too many people get confused during the change from daylight savings to standard time, so we should quit changing. Making daylight savings time permanent would give us...
I’d like to offer a contrast of ideals and character for your consideration. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing several Medical Lake High School students, members of the Circuit Breakers robotics team. I went into the interview not knowing what to expect, having never spoken with a teenager involved with robotics. I guess I expected some serious nerdiness. What a pleasant surprise it was. The kids I spoke with were polite, intelligent, engaging, enthusiastic and d...
