Right Mind

Article was misleading

The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Moscow is served up a delicacy, a French restaurant run by an authentic French chef. One week after they open their doors, you write a puffy piece (Daily News, Aug, 23) which implicitly suggests the owners of this restaurant are ethically wrong because they include a traditional French food, foie gras, on their menu.

Last year I drove through south-central France and saw many farms where flocks of soon-to-be foie gras swarmed, honking around their keepers. They looked like pretty happy free-range geese to me. I think the suggestion made by the chef, Francis Foucahon, that mega-American chicken farms are more cruel than French goose farms makes some sense. The suffering of our domestic factory chicken, corn-fed beef and dairy cows could stand a muck-raking article. But perhaps it makes better press to criticize a slightly exotic practice from a different culture than it is to question those involved in the production of ordinary food that we consume on a daily basis.

Let’s hope the next time you write an article about this restaurant in your newspaper, it’s a review of the food.

Barbara Morgan, Moscow

Barbara, check out this article: Foie gras business doing well in rural Caledonia.

It’s not all the way that PETA and the Intoleristas wish to spin it.

Cultural decline may be here a good while

The following letter to the editor appeared in today’s Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

Ed Iverson (Opinion, Aug. 26 & 27) scores important points in lamenting declines in our society of historically vital indicators of cultural literacy. What correlated factors might explain why “typical” Americans recognize characters in the “Simpsons” TV series but not in the U.S. Supreme Court? He points to the learned founders of this republic and compares them with today’s Americans (polls don’t record only elites). Until the mid-20th, century schools, print media and libraries were primary sources of public information. Explosions of electronic media have since eroded those connections.

In colonial and early U.S. populations, only propertied males could vote and influence public policy (some states had a religious test). Mass public education didn’t “take off” until mid-19th century, and majority access to both secondary schools and universities is a phenomenon of the 20th century (still under way for minorities). In the meantime, the inroads on both children’s and adults’ free time by radio and screen programming have dwarfed attention to print media. In my own public high school I read Caesar’s “Gallic Campaign” (in Latin) and read “The Odyssey.” Today, curricula are more in tune with high-tech based economies driven by college entrance requirements, desires to earn big bucks, and material gratifications – reflecting a hedonisitic-narcissistic culture honoring not historical values but personal gratification. Entertainers and sports achievers earn millions while Latin teachers disappear. Should public policy address these issues?

The Internet makes cultural, political and socio-economic data accessible to the masses. It behooves family, community, churches and employers to promote more value-laden fare as “entertainment.” Philanthropists like the Carnegies and Rockefellers, and now the Gates, influenced how our wealth should be distributed. Corporate criminals brought to trial over the past 10 years suggest a contrary trend. Perhaps the spiritual warning given 2,000 years ago still bears relevance: “The love of money is the root of evil.” Cultural decline may be with us for a good while.

W. Ken Medlin, Moscow

Moscow School Board approves new contract for teachers

As reported in today's edition of the Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Penni Cyr says Moscow teachers are thrilled about their new contract, which was approved by the school board at a special meeting Tuesday night.

The new contract offers more healthcare benefits and provides a 3.4 percent increase to the base of the salary schedule. It will affect roughly 170 teachers in the Moscow School District, said Cyr, president of the Moscow Education Association and the high school librarian.

“We’re pleased we are seeing a raise after a few years of slim to none,” she said.

The final contract also raised the healthcare allowance by 4.9 percent, increasing the allowance for qualifying employees from $530 a month to $556 a month.

Controversial BYU professor to speak at ISU

Only from academia.

From today's Idaho Statesman:

A physics professor from Brigham Young University — who has been cricitized by colleagues for theorizing that explosives, not planes, brought down the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001 — will speak Friday at Idaho State University.

Steven Jones, who teaches at BYU's Provo campus, has said he believes pre-planted explosives may have been used to collapse the buildings, in which about 3,000 people died. That theory, one of numerous explanations from people unwilling to believe that planes flown by terrorists caused the buildings to collapse, has won Jones critics, including other BYU instructors such as Allan Firmage, a professor emeritus of civil engineering.

In a letter to the editor of a Utah newspaper, Firmage labeled the conspiracy theory being touted by Jones as "very disturbing" and "very unreliable."

Jones' talk Friday is titled, "What Caused Not Two, but Three Skyscrapers to Completely Collapse on Sept. 11." 

Academicians can get away with the most bizarre ideas. I’m sure this guy must be tenured.

Clarkston man pleads guilty to crime against nature

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune (subscription required).

Jack K. Cook of Clarkston pleaded guilty Monday to committing a crime against nature for performing oral sex on a man in a Lewiston gym's sauna last year.

…

Cook chose to enter into a Rule 11 plea agreement, that stipulates he will undergo a psycho-sexual evaluation.

Sentencing will be delayed pending review of Cook's appeal that the charge itself is unconstitutional because it punishes gay sex acts.

The crime against nature charge, which includes oral sex, bestiality and sodomy, does not factor in vulnerability or consent.

A taste of France close to home

From the University of Idaho’s Argonaut: an article on the finest restaurant in Moscow and Pullman.

Notice of Public Hearing-Moscow Area of Impact

NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING

BEFORE THE LATAH COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION Tuesday, August 29, 2006

5:35 p.m.

Per Idaho Code 67-6509, 67-6526, 67-6511, and the Latah County Zoning Ordinance, the Latah County Planning Commission will hold a public hearing at 5:35 p.m. on Tuesday, August 29, 2006, in Courtroom 3 of the Latah County Courthouse, Moscow, Idaho, to receive comments on:

A modification to the Moscow Area of City Impact Ordinance and Agreement changing the amount of days for returning processed applications from 14 to 23; An amendment to the Moscow Area of City Impact Ordinance, Latah County Ordinance #247, adopting new City of Moscow Ordinances: 2005-03 Outdoor Lighting Ordinance; 2005-07 Removing All Old References to Outdoor Lighting;

2005-33 Conditional Use Permits for Schools, Commercial Schools, and/or Educational Institutions in Commercial and Special Zoning Districts; 2005-04 Modifying Regulations for Telecommunications Facilities and Antenna Towers; and 2006-03 Retail Establishments and Large Retail Establishments

All interested parties are encouraged to attend the hearing. Accommodations for individuals who qualify under the Americans with Disabilities Act are available upon request. Notice is required in the Planning Office three working days prior to the hearing in order to acquire accommodations.

This hearing will be held pursuant to the Latah County Hearing Procedures Ordinance, under authority of the Idaho Local Planning Act, and under the Latah County Zoning Ordinance. The Latah County Planning Commission reserves the right to limit the length of testimony.

Additional information on this request, including a full copy of the proposal, is available from the Planning Department at the Latah County Courthouse, Moscow, Idaho. Phone (208) 883-7220. Written comments will be accepted at the above office prior to the public hearing.

Michelle Fuson
Director

Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design John Hooper in Rome Monday

From the UK Guardian:

Philosophers, scientists and other intellectuals close to Pope Benedict will gather at his summer palace outside Rome this week for intensive discussions that could herald a fundamental shift in the Vatican's view of evolution.

There have been growing signs the Pope is considering aligning his church more closely with the theory of "intelligent design" taught in some US states. Advocates of the theory argue that some features of the universe and nature are so complex that they must have been designed by a higher intelligence. Critics say it is a disguise for creationism.

A prominent anti-evolutionist and Roman Catholic scientist, Dominique Tassot, told the US National Catholic Reporter that this week's meeting was "to give a broader extension to the debate. Even if [the Pope] knows where he wants to go, and I believe he does, it will take time. Most Catholic intellectuals today are convinced that evolution is obviously true because most scientists say so." In 1996, in what was seen as a capitulation to scientific orthodoxy, John Paul II said Darwin's theories were "more than a hypothesis".

The Islamic Way of War: Muslims have stopped fighting on Western terms—and have started winning

Andrew Bacevich (professor of history and international relations at Boston University) has a long article over at The American Conservative on why he thinks Muslims have started winning: they have stopped fighting on Western terms.

[T]he sun has set on the age of unquestioned Western military dominance. Bluntly, the East has solved the riddle of the Western Way of War. In Baghdad and in Anbar Province as at various points on Israel’s troubled perimeter, the message is clear: methods that once could be counted on to deliver swift decision no longer work.
…
So it turns out that Arabs—or more broadly Muslims—can fight after all. We may surmise that they now realize that fighting effectively requires that they do so on their own terms rather than mimicking the West. They don’t need and don’t want tanks and fighter-bombers. What many Westerners dismiss as “terrorism,” whether directed against Israelis, Americans, or others in the West, ought to be seen as a panoply of techniques employed to undercut the apparent advantages of high-tech conventional forces. The methods employed do include terrorism—violence targeting civilians for purposes of intimidation—but they also incorporate propaganda, subversion, popular agitation, economic warfare, and hit-and-run attacks on regular forces, either to induce an overreaction or to wear them down. The common theme of those techniques, none of which are new, is this: avoid the enemy’s strengths; exploit enemy vulnerabilities.

What the Islamic Way of War does mean to both Israel and to the United States is this: the Arabs now possess—and know that they possess—the capacity to deny us victory, especially in any altercation that occurs on their own turf and among their own people. To put it another way, neither Israel nor the United States today possesses anything like the military muscle needed to impose its will on the various governments, nation-states, factions, and political movements that comprise our list of enemies. For politicians in Jerusalem or Washington to persist in pretending otherwise is the sheerest folly.

It’s time for Americans to recognize that the enterprise that some neoconservatives refer to as World War IV is unwinnable in a strictly military sense. Indeed, it’s past time to re-examine the post-Cold War assumption that military power provides the preferred antidote to any and all complaints that we have with the world beyond our borders.

In the Middle East and more broadly in our relations with the Islamic world, we face difficult and dangerous problems, more than a few of them problems to which we ourselves have contributed. Those problems will become more daunting still, for us and for Israel, should a nation like Iran succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons. But as events in Iraq and now in southern Lebanon make clear, reliance on the sword alone will not provide a solution to those problems. We must be strong and we must be vigilant. But we also need to be smart, and getting smart means ending our infatuation with war and rediscovering the possibilities of politics.

I commend the entire article to you. Very thought provoking.

HT: Chris W.

Idaholake to be drained, poisoned

From the Associated Press:

Officials with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game plan to partially drain and then poison Deer Creek Reservoir next month because of a nonnative fish that threatens the trout fishery.

Biologists say that if the golden shiners aren't eliminated, they could escape that reservoir and get into the larger Dworshak Reservoir about 10 miles downstream. That reservoir, biologists said, is too big to use poison.

The shiners, which grow up to about 6 inches, were found in Deer Creek Reservoir earlier this month, and compete with trout and kokanee.

"This is a resource risk that needs to be dealt with in a very timely fashion," Ed Schriever, regional fisheries manager for the department at Lewiston, told The Lewiston Tribune. "There is a reason it is illegal to introduce fish or to use live bait and this is the reason."

Biologists plan to use the chemical rotenone, which kills the fish by attacking their gills.

Robert Hand, a biologist with Fish and Game, told The Associated Press on Monday that the rotenone will dissipate within several weeks and leave no toxic byproducts.

 

 

 

Wind fears spark concern: Some experts drawing links to 1910 blazes

The following story of interest was in today's Spokesman Review (subscription required):

Dry winds are expected to whip through the Inland Northwest today and tonight.

Strong gusts are nothing new for the Inland Northwest, but the incoming weather system and the current scarcity of firefighting resources is prompting comparisons with the conditions that led to massive fires in 1910.

"The key here is to get through the next two days. Those are going to be pivotal days for us in terms of fire behavior," Idaho Panhandle National Forests spokeswoman Gail West said Monday afternoon.

The fires in 1910 were started when gale-force winds caused hundreds of small fires in North Idaho and Montana to merge into a massive blaze that burned 3 million acres, killed at least 85 people and burned entire towns.

Today, fewer than 10 fires are burning in these same forests of North Idaho, but West said the historic blaze is being increasingly discussed among firefighting officials, especially when high winds are predicted.

Stay tuned.

Your Gov't Education Dollars at Work

HT: Gary E.

August Stats

I ran stats on this site for the last 30 days. I thought you might be interested in what others thought was interesting.

• Average Successful Requests per day: 12,627
• Top readers:
• Adelphia
• Verizon
• Turbonet
• FSR
• UIdaho

Here’s what I thought was interesting: the posts you read the most this month:

• Trinity Fest banner
• Metzler Quote of the Day
• Idaho Congressmen: Bringing Home the Bacon
• Our Socialist City Council is at it again
• Pulpit Blunder (still getting major hits, even after a year!)
• Controversy brews between UI students, neighbors
• Top 50 Richest Athletes
• Muslims are our enemies, stupid
• Approval Ratings for All 100 Senators

Some of the things that got the most reads were really surprising to me.

Liberals Should Know Better

By Arnold Kling (adjunct scholar with the Cato Institute; Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; economist with the Federal Reserve Board and later with Freddie Mac): Liberals Should Know Better.

I get a feeling that most liberals a) have never had an economic class, and b) do not think about the unintended consequences of their actions.

Like other Idaho towns, Iona grows unexpectedly

From today's Idaho Statesman:

It was an unexpected math lesson: When classes started last week, roughly 50 unexpected students showed up for the first day at Iona Elementary School.

Eighteen of those surprise students were first-graders, forcing Principal Brad Bird and other administrators to scramble. By Friday, another first-grade teacher had been hired to handle the overflow. But school staffers are still waiting for two more portable classrooms to house all the extra students.

"Our spring estimates were that we'd have about 560 kids this year," Bird told the Post Register. "I thought we'd get about 20 to 30 more over the summer, but we ended up with 629."

City officials say the bursting-at-the-seams elementary school is just one example of what's happening all over the 123-year-old village of Iona.

Just northeast of Idaho Falls, Iona has become the latest target of developers hungry for land to build new subdivisions. Since 2002, eight subdivisions spanning nearly 320 acres have been platted in Iona or on its outskirts.

Will Moscow School District see a surprising number of new students show up on the first day of school this year?

How the Schools Shortchange Boys: In the newly feminized classroom, boys tune out

By Gerry Garibaldi over at City Journal.

Since I started teaching several years ago, after 25 years in the movie business, I’ve come to learn firsthand that everything I’d heard about the feminization of our schools is real—and far more pernicious to boys than I had imagined. Christina Hoff Sommers was absolutely accurate in describing, in her 2000 bestseller, The War Against Boys, how feminist complaints that girls were “losing their voice” in a male-oriented classroom have prompted the educational establishment to turn the schools upside down to make them more girl-friendly, to the detriment of males.

As a result, boys have become increasingly disengaged. Only 65 percent earned high school diplomas in the class of 2003, compared with 72 percent of girls, education researcher Jay Greene recently documented. Girls now so outnumber boys on most university campuses across the country that some schools, like Kenyon College, have even begun to practice affirmative action for boys in admissions. And as in high school, girls are getting better grades and graduating at a higher rate.

As Sommers understood, it is boys’ aggressive and rationalist nature—redefined by educators as a behavioral disorder—that’s getting so many of them in trouble in the feminized schools. Their problem: they don’t want to be girls.

Well worth the read.

Egalitarians will hate this article, though, since they deny that there are any real differences between the sexes other than beneath the zipper…

HT: Christopher W.

Wal-Mart and Woods’s Law

From LewRockwell.com blog:

One proof of Woods’s Law – that someone will eventually call to curb or abolish any market innovation that benefits the poor – can be seen by studying Wal-Mart. Here is a company that unquestionably increases the purchasing power of the poor, thus improving the poor’s standard of living and while helping the poor live more independent, autonomous, and (I would argue) virtuous lives. It’s heroic. So, following Woods’s Law, it is predictable that Wal-Mart is attacked by disparate and disgruntled – but well-funded – groups to force it to unionize its labor force and provide benefits to its workers above and beyond whatever benefits the firm and its employees would agree to voluntarily.

That these groups are funded by unions who extract money from members under the threat of force raises moral questions that are not my focus today. Still, I wonder how much more effective Wal-Mart could be, and by extension how much better off the poor would be, if it didn’t have to divert resources to combat their efforts.

Well worth the read.

It really amazes me to hear liberals say how much they care for the poor; then they turn around and try to prevent the poor’s best options.

But that goes with a statist mindset: making people dependent upon the Nanny State as opposed to being dependent upon themselves.

HT: Christopher W.

Gays must change, says archbishop

From the U.K. Telegraph:

The archbishop of Canterbury has told homosexuals that they need to change their behaviour if they are to be welcomed into the church, The Sunday Telegraph can reveal.

Rowan Williams has distanced himself from his one-time liberal support of gay relationships and stressed that the tradition and teaching of the Church has in no way been altered by the Anglican Communion's consecration of its first openly homosexual bishop.

The declaration by the archbishop - rebutting the idea that homosexuals should be included in the church unconditionally - marks a significant development in the church's crisis over homosexuals. According to liberal and homosexual campaigners, it confirmed their fears that the archbishop has become increasingly conservative - and sparked accusations that he has performed an "astonishing" U-turn over the homosexual issue.
…
[T]he archbishop denied that it was time for the church to accept homosexual relationships, suggesting that it should be welcoming rather than inclusive. "I don't believe inclusion is a value in itself. Welcome is. We don't say 'Come in and we ask no questions'. I do believe conversion means conversion of habits, behaviours, ideas, emotions," he told a Dutch journalist.

"Ethics is not a matter of a set of abstract rules, it is a matter of living the mind of Christ. That applies to sexual ethics."

So the saga in the Anglican communion continues.

Kerry's 2010 Anti-Iranian Actions

Day By Day© by Chris Muir.

St Petersburg cathedral gutted

Via Reuters:

As flames leapt from the main dome of the Troitsky (Trinity) Cathedral — one of the largest wooden domes in Europe — passers-by helped to rescue priceless artefacts from its renowned art and religious icon collection.

“The fire services don’t have long enough ladders to reach the top of the dome.

“They have been aiming their water guns at the middle section,” a photographer said by telephone from outside the cathedral.

The cathedral had been covered by wooden scaffolding during reconstruction work when the fire started.

“The main dome has been destroyed but we could not stop the fire because it was so high and now other domes are in flames,” a spokesman for Russia’s emergencies ministry told Interfax news agency.

Emergency services said there had been no casualties.

The Troitsky Cathedral, built overlooking one of central St Petersburg’s canals, is big enough to hold 3,000 worshippers and also housed the military uniforms of Russian 19th century tsars.

HT: Doug F.

Check out the Ad that Ran in Today's Daily News

National poll results disappointing at best

Ed Iverson has a column in today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News.

Most Americans can name the Three Stooges. Only a minority can name the three branches of government. According to a Zogby International poll recently published by Reuters, nearly three quarters of the citizenry could accurately identify Larry, Curly, and Moe as the Three Stooges. Only 42 percent could name the executive, the legislative and the judicial as the three branches of the U.S. government.

Zogby documented the pubic ignorance that plagues our democracy in some rather creative ways. For example, the poll found that three-fourths of American citizens correctly identified at least two of Snow White’s seven dwarves while only one-fourth of us could name as many as two Supreme Court justices. At a time when controversy swirled around the latest Supreme Court nomination, a large majority of those polled were familiar with the name of Taylor Hicks (the “American Idol” winner) while only a paltry few recognized the name of Samuel Alito. The pollsters spoke to 1,213 people across the United States. The results had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.

Our education system must bear some of the blame for this appalling level of public ignorance. Six out of 10 Americans named Bart as Homer’s son on “The Simpsons” television show while only two in 10 were familiar enough with Homer, the ancient Greek poet, to name “The Iliad” or “The Odyssey,” his two famous epic poems. Less than 40 percent of those polled could name Mercury as the planet closest to the sun while more than 60 percent knew that Krypton was Superman’s home planet.

The American founders would simply shake their heads in disbelief at how dull we have become. On the other hand, perhaps they would not be too surprised. Almost to a man, they were very suspicious of democracy. Accordingly, they did everything they could to limit the “power of the people,” and this in an age when “The Federalist Papers” were common fare for the nation’s newspapers. The two political parties at the close of the 18th century were the Federalist Party and the Anti-Federalist Party. Both assumed that the average voter could read and follow an argument. Using the regular newspapers they carried on a debate about the size and scope of the new government. That “debate” has been preserved in something called “The Federalist Papers.”

This series of articles on the nature of governance is today reserved for graduate students in schools of political science at our most prestigious universities. The average public school graduate does not have the necessary tools (let alone the perseverance) to read and interact with something like “The Federalist Papers.” To encounter this level of public ignorance would have certainly confirmed the founders’ lack of confidence in the ability of the body politic to transact the nation’s business.

A 1964 research paper by Philip E. Converse revealed that only 2.5 percent of the public judged politics against some sort of “abstract and far-reaching conceptual” yardstick, such as a firm grasp of the meaning of liberalism or conservatism. Even if that percentage has increased some, it leaves the vast majority of modern voters basing their decisions on image and spin. Moreover, shocking levels of public ignorance are not confined to America. They are observed in all modern democracies.

All this leaves one somewhat skeptical about the current obsession with “getting out the vote.” Mail-in balloting, motor-voter registration, and provisions for ballot translation are examples of the recent efforts to get a higher turnout.

Elections are judged successful or not based on how many voted. A low turnout has the effect of producing grave observations and long faces all around. Maybe we ought to rethink that in an age when Larry, Curly, and Moe out-poll the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary.  

Ed Iverson is the head librarian at New Saint Andrews College in Moscow.
He earned a master’s of library science at the University of Southern Mississippi
and studied theology at Regent College in Vancouver, BC.
In 1990, he ran for the Idaho Senate as a Republican from Mullan.
He lives with his wife at Viola.
They have two children and six grandchildren.

State report details Idaho housing market

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune (subscription required).

Idaho's housing market boiled for five years, but much of north central Idaho did little more than simmer.

Valley County saw growth in new houses jump far ahead of population growth.

Idahoans built 68,000 homes between 2000 and 2005, according to a report released this week by the Idaho Department of Commerce and Labor.

New houses, up 12.8 percent, were a bit higher than new residents, 1,293,953, up 10.4 percent.

Two of every three houses were built in Ada, Canyon and Kootenai counties, according to the report. Add in Blaine, Madison, Idaho Falls, Jefferson, Valley, Teton, Camas, Adams, and just 11 counties saw 55,000 of the new houses.

…

Latah County led the five north central Idaho counties with the creation of 6 percent more houses, or 831 more.

Palouse River Fire has scorched 3,500 acres

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune (subscription required).

The 3,500-acre Palouse River Fire about three miles east of Colfax in Whitman County was reported to be 70 percent contained Friday evening after at least one minor flare-up earlier in the day, said Glenn Johnson, public information officer on the fire.

Johnson said reports the fire was 100 percent contained are premature, since hot spots, burning stumps and smoke from a destroyed railroad trestle and grain elevator continue to cause problems.

While the wall of flame that raced through the river canyon was knocked down late Wednesday night, firefighting crews continued Friday to build a fire line around the burned area.

Johnson said the fire grew to about a mile wide and moved six miles before crews got the upper hand.

Sounds like it was a close one.

Wal-Mart has bigger eyes for Lewiston

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune (subscription required).

Wal-Mart is seeking land for a super center in Lewiston.

"We continue to look for a site because we would like to expand our operations in Lewiston,'' said Karianne Fallow, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart in Boise this week. "The super center is our preferred format.''

Fallow's comments were the strongest indication yet of Wal-Mart's interest in a Lewiston super center.

…
Lewiston isn't the only place in north central Idaho and south central Washington that Wal-Mart has eyed for possible expansion.

Wal-Mart has interest in super centers in Moscow, Pullman and Lewiston because they are distinct markets, Fallow said.

Plans for a 223,000-square-foot super center on 28 acres between Bishop Boulevard and a cemetery in Pullman have been appealed by Pullman Alliance for Responsible Development, an anti-Wal-Mart group.

The next hearing in that case is Oct. 18 in Whitman County Superior Court.

Wal-Mart also examined opening a super center in Moscow where it already has a discount store. But Wal-Mart put that idea on the backburner because it found the city's process for a proposed site too cumbersome.

The Moscow site that didn't work for Wal-Mart was on the southeast corner of Mountain View Road and Highway 8, near Eastside Marketplace.

Wal-Mart is continuing to look for other locations in Moscow.

Better look outside the long-arm of the Moscow no-growth City Council…

Moscow councilors have only begun

The following article ran in today's Lewiston Tribune (subscription required). A typical, bang-up commentary by Michael Costello.

The Moscow City Council missed a real opportunity earlier this week. The councilmen and women purchased themselves a little self-congratulation with somebody else's money.

By raising the city's minimum wage to $10.25 per hour for contractors wishing to transact business with the city, the council may now parade around its compassion for the working man without individually costing themselves a dime. There's nothing original in that. In fact, wealth redistribution is what many politicians consider as government's primary function. And many people define compassion as forcing somebody else to contribute to the benefit of another. Some politicians even manage to award themselves a handling charge. Such compassion deserves earthly rewards, I'm sure.

Moscow made little waves by making itself the first city in Idaho to adopt a living-wage ordinance. Previously, such policies were the exclusive dominion of California cities populated by the Hollywood stars, like Malibu and Internet-nouveau riche Santa Cruz. For reasons I've never quite grasped, the denizens of those affluent communes could not bring themselves to pay their servants a living wage without an ordinance telling them that they must do so. I'm still trying to figure that one out.

And so Moscow's claim to fame is that it represents an island of economic enlightenment in a state otherwise known for its laissez faire economics, where jobs that do not generate more than $10.25 of value in an hour's time are still legal. In other words, the city council let a real opportunity for self- aggrandizement get away.

If Moscow really wanted to make a name for itself, then it should have instituted the luxury wage. Why should Moscow's social progressives be satisfied keeping what Pullman's liberals call "undesirable social elements" barely afloat?

I mean, figure it out. Moscow's new living wage barely permits its beneficiaries to pull down 1,800 bananas a month before taxes, Social Security, bar tabs, cell phone, high-speed Internet, cable and widescreen plasma television payments. The lifestyle that one may afford on a mere $10.25 per hour is not commensurate with the expectation that one would have for the Northwest's premier workers' paradise. On top of that, there is no provision to force employers to pay for health care. So medicine comes out of that income.

I wonder how many on the council could make ends meet on $1,800 per month. Danged few, I'd bet.

And so, it's time for Moscow to get off its duff, get serious about its social progressivism and raise the minimum wage to $40 per hour. That would elevate the lowest paid Muscovite to the upper middle class. [DMC: This is the exact same comment I made before. But the logic was lost on the logic professors.]

Just think of all the economic benefits that would rain down on Moscow. Car sales would shoot the roof as the newly prosperous checkout clerks and hamburger flippers went out and bought new luxury cars and four-wheel-drive pickups so high off the ground that to get in, they would need stepladders. Certainly there will be a sudden surge in demand for chardonnay and Bordeaux. Those who distinguish between French Burgundy and Gallo Burgundy might buy stem glasses too. And as most minimum wage earners are young entry-level types holding their first job, we can expect an enormous surge in video game and comic book sales. Or at least we'd better, or the businesses that sell those things will go out of business.

Yes indeed, then Moscow won't just be the first city in the Gem State to require a living wage; it would be the first city in the Western Hemisphere to outlaw poverty. Moscow could become the first city this side of Dubai where only the well-to-do live.

Of course, undesirable side effects would be include sales of foie gras at Moscow's most politically incorrect restaurant, West of Paris. The newly prosperous will probably buy the wrong kind of cars, big gas-guzzling SUVs and the like. And they might not be far-sighted enough to equip their new homes with carbon-neutral solar panels.

But Moscow's social engineers will certainly get around to banning foods they disapprove of in their own good time. And of course, the next step will be to require certain approved expenditures, such as tofu and hybrid cars, while banning nonprogressive consumerism, such as ATVs, tobacco and coffee not verified as organic, and fair trade.

This can all be dealt with at the next meeting.

Michael, this was brilliant, just brilliant. Thanks.

Eleven House Republicans opposed Risch bill

Details from Betsy Z. Russell's blog An Eye on Boise. Russell is a staff writer with the Spokesman Review.

The 11 GOP dissenters are an interesting mix of urban moderates and some eastern Idaho conservatives. They were: Reps. Stan Bastian, R-Eagle; Larry Bradford, R-Franklin; Jana Kemp, R-Boise; Russ Mathews, R-Idaho Falls; Janice McGeachin, R-Idaho Falls; Janet Miller, R-Boise; Kathy Skippen, R-Emmett; Leon Smith, R-Twin Falls; Steve Smylie, R-Boise; Mark Snodgrass, R-Meridian; and the stand-in for Rep. Tom Trail (Harkins), R-Moscow.

Issues Air Quality Alert, Burn Ban

“An air quality alert and burn ban continues in effect for several north Idaho counties.”

From Northwest Public Radio:

The advisory was lifted briefly Thursday morning, but was quickly reinstated by the Idaho department of Environmental Quality. The advisory and mandatory burn ban covers the counties of Latah, Lewis, Nez Perce, Clearwater, and Idaho.

The cause of the air pollution is the number of fires burning to the south and west of these areas. The fires include those located near Dayton and Colfax, Washington; those in Hells Canyon in Washington and Idaho; those in northern Washington; and other fires in central Idaho.

The air pollution can cause ill feeling in anyone working outside, but doctors especially caution the elderly and children, and those with lung conditions. Several people in the Moscow area reported feeling dizzy and ill from the smoke on Thursday. 

I know quite a few people fighting these symptoms.

Why liberals are crushing dissent

From World Net Daily:

Liberals are actively undermining First Amendment rights to free speech by trying to crush opposing views.

Growing ever bolder in their naked grab for power they are leaving scorched earth behind those who disagree with them. This is why Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and Zell Miller no longer find themselves included in the modern Democratic Party. What is left over for the Democrats are wildly anti-American, anti-God and anti-biblical leftists who are now bragging about their use of brute force to crush the voices of those who disagree with them.

Perhaps that's why this week in one of the boldest moves yet by a sitting liberal, Democrat California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez proclaimed, "The real purpose of SB 1437 is to outlaw traditional perspectives on marriage and family in the state school system."

Check out the rest of the article.

The Dems have decided to move to the left and not the center.

Will that work for them?

BREAKING NEWS — House OKs property-tax bill; Senate considers it tonight

From today's Idaho Statesman:

The Idaho House today passed Gov. Jim Risch's plan to cut property taxes and raise the sales tax a penny in a 47-23 vote after two and a half hours of debate.

The bill then passed the Senate Local Government and Taxation Committee. The full Senate is considering it tonight.