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The law doesn’t reach me

The law doesn’t reach me

April 21, 2023

In May last year, St. Luke’s Health System filed a lawsuit against then-candidate for governor Ammon Bundy and several of his organizations, alleging harassment and defamation.

The cross-accusations need no recounting here, but the progress of the lawsuit - or the lack of progress - does.

The point of complying with the terms of a lawsuit was set out clearly enough last year, when St. Luke’s CEO, Chris Roth, said, “It is important for us to stand up to the bullying, intimidation and disruption, and the self-serving and menacing actions of these individuals, for the protection of our employees and patients, and to ensure our ability to serve our community. St. Luke’s has not been the only target of these individuals and believes that no one should be subject to such abuse. Inaction would signal this type of behavior is acceptable in our community. It is not.”

A lawsuit like the one his organization pursued would be the legally appropriate way to right the balance.

Not much forward motion has been made on that case in the near-year since, though, since Bundy hasn’t shown up in court or apparently even responded to the lawsuit at all.

Law requires that county deputies serve legal papers like those filed in this case, but Bundy would have none of it. One news report gave this account of an encounter from a sheriff’s deputy from the viewpoint of Bundy himself: “I came out the door near him and chased him out of the storage area demanding that he get in his vehicle and leave. He did, but the second deputy wanted to confront me. Nose to nose I demanded that he leave my property immediately and never come back.” Private companies that handle process serving which were engaged by St. Luke’s apparently haven’t gotten through either.

In another account posted online, Bundy said he, “did tell deputies to get off my property and not come back,” but didn’t threaten violence. But local law enforcement seems to have gotten a clear contrary message. Gem County Sheriff Donnie Wunder apparently was spooked by the ferocity, and initially declined to send out another deputy: “My concern is with the safety of process servers and my deputies. I do not want to risk harm over a civil issue.”

Finally, on Tuesday, Ada County Judge Lynn Norton apparently had enough, declaring probable cause that Bundy had committed contempt and ordered him held in custody under bond. The sheriff evidently has agreed to return to Bundy and get the job done.

The case is scheduled for trial on July 10.

And here we have the candidate for governor who, had he been elected, would have been responsible for upholding the laws of the state. Can you imagine how that might have gone?

True, he didn’t come close to winning. But Bundy has become a significant cultural figure. In last November’s election he received 101,835 votes - far shy of the number needed to win but enough to show that, in Idaho at least, he has a significant following. If he could get away with defying the law as he has, how many more cases of direct defiance will Idaho have to cope with in the months and years ahead?

An attorney representing St. Luke’s remarked at a recent court proceeding, reflecting on Bundy’s no-shows at court, “I think it’s impossible not to conclude that, absent Mr. Bundy having some consequences for his actions, it will just continue.”

He was right.

No one wants another Randy Weaver incident - the memory of that 1993 standoff doubtless has some people concerned - but if we want to live in a safe society, one governed by law rather than by waving guns (or the threat of same) in each others’ faces - then this kind of behavior has to be brought to an end.

 

Patrol

Patrol

April 20, 2023

The wind out of the west was chill and biting on Dale’s face. He pulled the collar on his camo coat up. Patrol could be boring, but they’d gotten an alert about a grey van possibly heading their way.

Dale looked back west at the roadblock, manned by his fellow militiamen. This two-lane highway didn’t have a lot of traffic. But it headed west to a heathen state, so the Militia for the Unborn patrolled it. He was here to save lives.

He regretted missing his son’s basketball game that night. But when he’d joined the Militia, and the legislature gave them the marching orders, he knew this cause was righteous. He accepted the sacrifice. He’d known this cause was worthy all along, but now they could act.

That time they’d crossed the border and set fire to that abortion clinic had been an unofficial act. He knew they were breaking a law in that neighboring heathen state, but Dale believed there were higher laws than the laws of man. Still, when the laws of man sanctioned their actions, he did feel a warm comfort. It felt good to be in a righteous state where he could serve the unborn.

His alert gaze swept back east as he saw a grain truck approach. He radioed down to his comrades. They got up and stood by their barricades in a semblance of attention as the semi barreled past.

Nothing for a while. The property taxes coming due filtered into his mind. How was he going to pay them? Maybe sell that old snowmobile. Might get enough if Craigslist panned out.

He couldn’t get anybody to help with the plumbing business, so that money had been getting short. Doug, his old helper was doing a rider for meth, and he couldn’t get anybody to do the crawlspace work. Dale looked down at his girth and sadly smiled. That belly ain’t getting under a house. He patted it fondly. Hell, it even made kitchen sink repairs tough.

Still nothing coming.

Jenny had said she’d take the three little ones and go to Hiram’s game. He needed the support. The other parents would accept Dale’s sacrifice. Maybe not all of them. He got a sense some thought he was not doing God’s work out here on patrol. Their weakness didn’t trouble him too much.

A red sedan came into view, and he radioed to his comrades. They put up the barricade and shouldered their arms. The sedan slowed. Dale watched from the hill, ready to provide back up. He hoped to be on the barricade next tour. They were due to be relieved tomorrow by the Freedom Militia.

He watched the commander approach the driver’s side as the other two brought their weapons to ready. He couldn’t hear anything from this distance and the wind was just enough to whistle in his ears. Nobody got out. The barricades moved back with the commander’s signal, and the sedan moved on slowly. I guess no one of childbearing age was inside.

That was the protocol. Look for the women who could be bearing. They had the pee sticks in their pockets. And they had the bottled water. Sometimes it took twenty minutes for the lady to get the stick wet. Then you read the lines and make your determination. One lady tried spitting on the stick, but now we make them squat in front of the car so we can be sure.

The red sedan was going really slow, not gunning off to make up for lost time. Dale thought that odd. He stared at it too long and didn’t catch sight of the gray van until it was on the straight heading toward the roadblock. The folks from the sedan had gotten out and were going back to the trunk.

Weapons came out.

 

Institutionalized forgetfulness

Institutionalized forgetfulness

April 18, 2023

One of the best things about the aging process is it brings a much improved perspective about life and other things we lacked when we were younger.

At our house, over the last several years, we've been dealing with some health issues not uncommon when you grow more rings on your trunk. So far, we've won more battles than we've lost.

At eight decades plus six, having dealt with issues that could've ended life, it's not uncommon to reflect on where you are and how you got there. Long memory can make small things that happened many years ago seem more important than you realized back then. Conversely, it can make things that happened 70 years ago, which seemed life-ending at the time, hard to remember. Ah, teenage angst.

Recently, long memory and tradition combined to cause me some of that angst with what passes for "informed media" these days. We live in the Portland "metro area." Half a dozen TV stations, 14+ radio and several newspapers online.

But news? NEWS?

A year ago last December 7th, we were living in the Phoenix area with many more media outlets. Not a word about the 81st year commemoration of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Not one word! And, in that media market, there's a very large military base and many thousands of retired military.

Before that disappointing ignorance of our national history, there was another. November 23, 1963. The day John Kennedy was assassinated. Not a word. Not one word!

Now, I admit, to the child practitioners of what passes for media these days, both events were likely "ancient history." Things learned about in their teens along with the Civil War and Viet Nam. Just something "back there."

Well, the difference is there are still a lot of us old folk around who lived through Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy assassination. We remember where we were, who we were with and how shocked we were at those times. The killing of nearly three-thousand military and civilians on a single Hawaiian Sunday morning and the murder of a president are indelibly preserved in the minds of millions of us. They're not "back there." Their details are not "ancient history." Each incident still evokes sadness and anger. Neither has been relegated to remote, dusty files. Not for us.

One of the failures of today's simplistic journalism is the rabid desire for the new, the different, the "first-with-what's-next" syndrome - the surface treatment of stories. Hard news - whether today's details or those of significant national history - need more attention than it gets. Thanks to the hiring of media "consultants," who are short on hard news knowledge and long on fancy "likeability" polling, news value is often replaced by news fluff.

I've long criticized university journalism schools as the wrong place to develop a good reporter. Any damned fool can be taught to write. What's missing in most "J" school grads is something that can't be taught. A trait ALL really successful media folks share. Curiosity. You show me a curious person and I'll show you someone that can learn to write. Curiosity first. Writing second.

As our nation skews to a preponderance of other cultures, other religions, other national histories, it will be even more important for news people to be grounded in those new realities. Our country is becoming more than just the ancestors of the Caucasian Pilgrims. We're becoming a human "Joseph's coat" of many colors, languages and ethnic backgrounds. We'll no longer be a majority of any particular race but rather a mix of many. And that's what this country is about.

For a top notch, professional journalist/reporter in the future, this new reality will present some challenges. One will be the need to really KNOW these new Americans. Their social and political histories. Their important cultural and religious traditions. What issues and needs are - or were - important. Whatever is important to them will need to be important to the people who report on their lives. And to the rest of us.

These new realities - these new demands - won't be served by a media that can't remember JFK's murder and acknowledge it appropriately. They won't be served by ignoring the Japanese attacks that started a world war in which hundreds of thousands died and millions more were involved and let the date go by unnoticed. Or September 11, 2001. Viet Nam. Desert Storm. Sandy Hook. Nashville.

The new reality will be the media will have to know each of the different strains that'll make up this demographically changed America. That'll require more knowledge of the dates, names and places important to their audience. All will have to deal with a broader scope of viewer/reader interests if the media itself is to remain relevant.

As long as a great many people are still alive who were living when these major events happened, those moments won't be "ancient history." They'll be remembered - personally felt - like the national and life changing events they were.

It is - and will be - the media's job to remember, too.

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An independent judiciary

An independent judiciary

April 17, 2023

No doubt about it. A large swath of the legislature is still honked off about the Idaho Supreme Court’s 2021 decision overturning a raw legislative power grab.

In reaction to voter approval of Reclaim Idaho’s initiative to expand Medicaid coverage, indignant legislators passed a law designed to make it virtually impossible for the people to ever again exercise their constitutional right to legislate. The Supreme Court issued a well-reasoned opinion, affirming the constitutional right of Idahoans to make laws they want when the Legislature stubbornly refuses to act. Legislators have retaliated by denying cost-of-living pay raises for our judges.

Last year, the Legislature provided  7% cost-of-living pay increases to most state employees, including court staff members, but failed to provide any increase for Idaho judges. Legislators did approve a bill that made substantial changes to the selection process for district and appellate court judges, tying it to a judicial pay increase for judges. The bill would have increased high court salaries by only 2%. The Governor vetoed the bill because of obnoxious changes to the judge selection process. Even though legislators had time to pass a separate pay raise for judges, they refused to act.

Legislative observers thought the lawmakers would correct their ill treatment of judges in the 2023 session, but that was not in the cards. In January, Rep. Bruce Skaug, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the judges “were robbed” last year, but the Legislature took no action to require the robbers to provide restitution to the judges. The Legislature did approve a pay increase for judges this year, which boosted pay for Supreme Court Justices by 3%, while all other state employees got 4%. That leaves an 8% cost-of-living gap in pay for high court judges.

A case can be made that the Legislature has violated Article 5, section 27 of the Idaho Constitution by failing to provide cost-of-living increases to judges during these last two years. While the provision allows the Legislature to diminish or increase judicial compensation, it may not do so during a judge’s term in office. When the Legislature determines that an increase in compensation is necessary for state employees to compensate for an increasing cost of living, haven’t legislators diminished the compensation of the only state employees who were deprived of the increase? It would be interesting to see how a court might decide such a case.

Make no mistake, the Legislature has long been aware that judicial recruitment, particularly for district court positions, has been hampered by the low statutory salaries.

The current salary for Idaho’s district judges, who handle felonies and heavy-duty civil cases, ranks 49th in the nation, as compared to other states’ general jurisdiction judges. With the 3% increase this year, Supreme Court Justice will make $165,212, which equates to about $79 per hour. The Legislature was more than happy to pay $470 per hour to the private lawyer it hired to represent it in the initiative lawsuit that it lost in the Supreme Court in 2021. In comparison with another government position, the Attorney General’s new Solicitor General, who is not even authorized to practice law in Idaho courts, is making $158,000. With the 7.5% pay raise for the AG’s office this year, he will receive about $170,000, almost $82 per hour. District and appellate judges take a substantial pay cut to serve the people. They need to be compensated adequately if we hope to keep the remarkable judiciary that we currently have.

The Take Back Idaho PAC, which supported reasonable, pragmatic Republicans in the 2022 primary election, will make judicial pay a high priority as it gears up for the GOP primary next year. Hopefully, those in the Legislature who want to financially starve the courts into capitulating to their way of thinking will take heed. Idaho has a remarkably even-handed, competent judiciary, but it will not remain so if vindictive lawmakers keep trying to make judgeships financially unattractive. Idaho’s judges need the strong support of the public to keep our justice system operating as the founders intended, which includes acting as a check on power abuses by the other branches of government. All fair-minded people need to speak up for our judges.

 

You ain’t seen nothing yet

You ain’t seen nothing yet

April 15, 2023

Note: Idaho is as good an example as any in the American West of a state whose politics have been taken over by a new “political elite” – white Christian nationalists – who have found the traditionally very conservative state rather easy pickings for a power grab that is becoming steadily more radical.

An old slam against Idaho holds that the state is constantly striving to degrade itself in order to become “the Mississippi of the West,” Mississippi often being dead last in national rankings for education spending and attainment, not to mention poverty rates and other widely accepted indicators of social and physical health.

For a while in the 1980s and 1990s – from the governorships of Cecil Andrus, a Democrat, to Dirk Kempthorne, a Republican – there seemed to be a broad consensus that a state defined by white water rivers and giant baked potatoes could, by maintaining a relentless focus on improving educational attainment, growing higher education opportunities, increasing vaccination rates and generally avoiding divisive culture wars, avoid being the “Mississippi of the West.”

Along the way something went off the rails. Way off.

When Idaho makes the national news these days it’s for unconstitutionally attempting to place travel restrictions on its residents who seek medical care. Or criminalizing medical care for transgender kids. Or when its radical attorney general grabs headlines after being sued for issuing a crackpot legal opinion – subsequently withdrawn – that held that “Idaho’s abortion ban prohibits medical providers from referring patients out-of-state for abortion services.”

The Idaho AG, like some good ol’ boy in the south in the 1950s, swore to uphold a Constitution he apparently has never read.

Idaho’s ruling elite once held court in the capital city’s corporate board rooms and sipped their cocktails at a private club nestled along the Boise River. The legislative majority took it’s marching orders from the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI), the corporate influence organization long dominated by Micron, the economic engine of southwestern Idaho, as well as home grown big businesses like the J.R. Simplot Company and Idaho Power. It was an insular, clubby, very conservative elite, something I never thought I’d lament passing away. Yet for the most part it has, replaced by a new, very different elite.

In fairness the corporate elite back in the 80s and 90s was generally committed to producing a workforce that kept the wheels of business turning. I can’t remember one time when IACI spent one second attacking local librarians, for example. Their lobbyists sought to keep corporate taxes low, and as a result they hardly celebrated the state’s chronically underpaid educators, but at the same time they didn’t seize every opportunity to bash teachers. And they didn’t, overtly at least, attempt to defund public education.

Culture war fixations on drag queens, hatred of the LGBTQ community and abortion bans – a state policy now officially responsible for driving physicians from Idaho – never appeared on the old elite’s lobby card. Such fights are, after all, generally bad for business and hamper recruiting the talent that keeps the bottom line healthy. But those days are gone. Long gone.

One could plausibly argue that Idaho’s new ruling elite now takes its orders from some shadowy white Christian nationalist “deep state” that has found Idaho – Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri and Florida, even Montana – an attractive place to practice what conservatives used to lament as “social engineering.”

Just this week the Missouri House of Representatives voted to eliminate all state funding for public libraries. The “Show Me State” will now be known as the “Books are Bad State.”

The Tennessee House of Representatives expelled two African American legislators, both young men, and declined to act against a third white woman who protested in the House chamber over the legislature’s failure to do anything about gun violence in the Volunteer State. The protest followed a mass murder at a private Christian school in Nashville.

The expulsion of the Black lawmakers – Democrats in an overwhelmingly Republican state – seemed to many unprecedented, even as the expelled members were quickly reinstated by local officials in Nashville and Memphis. The force them out action was unprecedented at least since such Jim Crow-style tactics are normally better disguised, but the retribution was also of a piece with radical rightwing efforts to broadly disenfranchise voices of dissent.

The Nashville assault rifle slaughter wasn’t even the latest mass shooting in our gun happy land. This week’s mass shooting was in Louisville, Kentucky, a place once known for bourbon and baseball bats. The doctor who treated the victims in Louisville stated the obvious: “You just can’t keep doing what we are doing because you just can’t keep seeing these lives lost, you can’t keep seeing all these people with these horrific injuries.”

But we will, of course, keep doing exactly nothing, except marginalize the dissenters.

Idaho’s ruling elite hasn’t expelled dissident legislators – not yet anyway. Stay tuned. The state’s Christian nationalists have determined that younger voters represent a real threat to the political power of Idaho’s new elite, and they made certain to pass legislation this year banning the use of student ID cards as a form of voter identification. It’s merely the beginning.

As the nonpartisan Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University reported recently, registration among 18- and 19-year-old voters in Idaho increased by 66% from 2018 to 2022, the largest jump in the country. Want to bet they are signing up to vote in order to support bans on medical care for transgender kids or outlaw library books?

Picking voters, as Idaho Republicans increasingly do by restricting who can vote in a GOP primary, is a tactic to reinforce the Christian nationalist grip on the state. In this respect, Idaho is the new Mississippi, or the old Mississippi, more Jim Crow than Jim McClure or Phil Batt. Gone is a generation of conservative politicians who believed politics was a game of addition where growing followers was better than marginalizing opponents.

If you want to really see where the white Christian nationalist elite is headed look South. As University of North Carolina historian Tressie McMillan Cottom wrote recently in the New York Times, the region that birthed our original sin continues to define the far right trajectory of places as far off as Idaho or Montana.

“Nothing about the future of this country can be resolved unless it is first resolved here,” Cottom wrote, “not the climate crisis or the border or life expectancy or anything else of national importance, unless you solve it in the South and with the people of the South.”

The trajectory on the far right of American politics is set, as certain, and as southern, as sweet tea and humidity. Florida man might hang on for one more go around, but as Cottom suggests, “The kind of brutality you need to really summon the South’s ghosts needs more than a televangelist like Trump. It needs a true believer. That’s a Southern specialty.”

Deeply conservative Idaho once tried to resist becoming another Mississippi. Now its ruling elite gladly embraces the full deal. And believe me you ain’t seen nothing yet.

 

Wild Idaho approaches

Wild Idaho approaches

April 14, 2023

On the morning of April 9, one of the Northwest’s largest cross-governmental efforts in recent years - involving the the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Fish and Game Department, Idaho Fish and Game, Idaho State Police and the Idaho Transportation Department - got underway in a rural area in eastern Idaho, along Interstate 15 south of Blackfoot.

The objective: Moving about 600 elk to the east side of the freeway, some distance  from people and traffic.

It was not a sudden appearance for the animals. Back before Christmas, Fort Hall law enforcement was reporting “large herds of elk and deer have migrated onto the Reservation, along with numerous moose. Winter conditions have pushed these animals to lower elevations along I-15, I-86 and nearby Reservation roadways, posing a potential hazard to motorists.” Area governments took notice and made some attempts to help, but the elk, as is their wont, were persistent.

That might seem a one-off of odd wildlife news except that, increasingly in the last few years, Idahoans living in cities have been getting a lot more up close and personal experience of wildlife than once was the case.

It’s not just Idaho, of course: People all over the country are reporting more encounters with the wild.

Travis Gallo, who teaches urban ecology at George Mason University in northern Virginia near Washington, remarked that, “Animals are just savvy, and they’re starting to adapt because development is pushing them into cities. (Such as Washington, which is developing a sort of wildlife-relations program.)

But as Idaho has grown and as climate has shifted in recent decades, the critters are moving into human settlements.

The Department of Fish and Game has cautioned residents “around Boise as well as other Idaho cities” to keep their pets well protected and possibly indoors as much as possible during the upcoming coyote denning season.

It also specifically alerted people around Twin Falls and elsewhere in the Magic Valley about, “increasing reports of coyote and fox activity around Twin Falls and as well as other areas of the Magic Valley … [One encounter] involved a fox that aggressively approached a man walking through a large vacant lot near Fred Meyer in Twin Falls. The report also noted that domestic cats have disappeared from the neighborhood.”

And those reports only skim the surface. Within the last month just that one department reported (these are headlines from their news releases):

April 11: Fish and Game officer shoots dog for chasing and killing a deer in Pocatello

April 10: Juvenile mountain lion caught in residential chicken coop in Hailey

April 10: Coyote conflicts with off-leash dogs continue in the Boise foothills

March 30: F&G captures mountain lion in Ammon neighborhood

March 21: Mountain lions continue to be active throughout the Wood River Valley

March 20: F&G continues to monitor mountain lion activity in McCall

Again, it’s not that we’ve never seen any of this kind of thing before. It’s that we’re seeing more of it.

What this gets to is, we need to consider our relationship with the wild world.

One immediate response, this being Idaho, would be: Just shoot ‘em. And there’ll be cases where extreme measures will be needed, maybe including more creative hunting options. But for the most part, that won’t suffice; studies have shown that when animal populations dwindle sharply, increased reproduction tends to compensate.

Idaho, like other places, likely will need to employ a variety of responses, from coordinated efforts like the Blackfoot elk-movers, to greater care in keeping attractants - like food and small animals - away from hungry or predatory wildlife.

Maybe a little less comfortably, Idaho may want to take a look at how it manages its growth. Some of the increased interaction between people and wildlife grows out of the expansion of people living in and taking over areas where animals were accustomed to traveling and eating.

The possible answers are several. This belongs on the agenda for Idaho governments, going forward.

 

Fulcher about Trump

Fulcher about Trump

April 12, 2023

Crickets.

That’s the extent of what we have heard from the three senior members of Idaho’s congressional delegation immediately following the indictment of President Trump. While Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch and Mike Simpson were sending out press releases on other matters, other Republicans were expressing disgust over Trump being the first American president to face criminal charges.

In Idaho, Attorney General Raul Labrador and State Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon were quick to issue statements, blasting Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for going after Trump. Labrador said the actions “serve to further erode the trust our citizens have in the nation’s justice system.” Moon said Democrats “are willing to throw the rule of law aside in order to further their quest for power.”

One member of Idaho’s delegation who has spoken up about the former president’s indictment is First District Congressman Russ Fulcher. As he sees it, the indictment makes Trump the clear frontrunner for the Republican presidential race next year – if not seals the nomination.

“I’ll say yes – at least for now,” Fulcher told me. “It’s an eternity between now and the primaries. But without question, at a time when the congressional dialogue is on issues such as energy, Ukraine and the budget, the dialogue has changed overnight with the Bragg stuff. Across the Republican Party, and with some Democrats, this is seen as a bridge too far.”

And that’s not good news for anyone thinking about challenging Trump for the GOP nomination next year.

“I think where’s he’s going with this is that he wants to protect you, the American people, from what has happened to him,” Fulcher said. “I think that’s exactly what you’re going to see.”

Trump may have other indictments – from Georgia, the Jan. 6 investigation and the classified documents found at his Florida home – but those could serve to strengthen his campaign while galvanizing supporters.

“This one is on the system,” Fulcher says. “There’s tax evasion, Ukraine, the Ukranian phone call, Russian collusion, business fraud, his kids’ business fraud, the Stormy Daniels thing, campaign finances, treason and – by the way – the guy has been out of office for a while. We all know that Donald Trump is not a choir boy, but at the same time, there isn’t anyone else on the planet who is going to get that kind of attention.”

The latest chapter, Fulcher says, comes from a prosecutor who is struggling to keep violent crimes down in his home district. “It’s obvious that it’s political,” Fulcher says.

“And what Trump is going through is an example of what happens by going crossways with the system,” Fulcher says. “Remember how they got Al Capone … with a tax charge. If you have a corrupt enough system, and you are creative enough for long enough, you’ll find something. If everything is lined up, and the fix is in, don’t be shocked if there’s jail time (for Trump).”

The merits of the indictment are not the crucial issue, Fulcher says. “The end game is to find a charge. The deep state and swamp is real. The objection to Trump is not his policies, or Stomy Daniels for crying out loud. The blowback is that he threatens their existence.”

But not all is bleak – at least for prospective Republican presidential candidates, Fulcher says. “There’s Ron DeSantis, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley and Asa Hutchinson … these are legit folks and worthy candidates. On the Democratic side, there’s a president who’s not all there – that’s not a criticism, but an observation – and a governor who has destroyed the largest state in the country (California). They are in a jam.”

Fulcher said he has not given much thought to who he will support on the Republican side. But unless Trump ends up in prison, Fulcher sees the former president having a clear path to the GOP nomination.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

 

 

Bette Davis was right

Bette Davis was right

April 11, 2023

Despite some not wanting to believe it, the Republican Party has been morphing into something dangerous and, at times, violent. Still, most of us have given it the benefit of the doubt.

But, dangerous it is. And, at times, violent.

You need to look no further than last week's very dangerous public ouster of two Black Tennessee Democrats from their House seats. Some reports called the GOP action "ruthless" and a "denial of the rights" of the pair. "Racist" as well.

Their "crime?" Exercising rights of citizenship by attending an anti-gun demonstration ahead of a House vote on gun bills. The demonstration in which they participated was triggered in Tennessee by the massacre of six people in a Nashville grade school.

That's it. And, for that they were ushered - and at times - angrily pushed out through the House doors.

For me, "benefit of the doubt" is gone. The Republican Party is, indeed, becoming more dangerous and extreme in its conduct. Some of its most agitating members are appearing at far-right rallies and demonstrations. Their language has become more harsh - more heated. Their conduct more aggressive.

Some Republican-dominated legislatures have gerrymandered election districts into contorted shapes where - in some instances - Democrats can get more votes and still lose. Just shoved it through.

In such states, the GOP is enacting harmful and often questionable legislation. In some instances, legislation designed to deny someone's rights or threaten their way of life because of sexual orientation or some other personal lifestyle.

Some Republican-dominated legislatures have been stripping lesser levels of government of some of their rightful authority. Others are laying on unnecessary new social requirements to receive state funding.

In the Tennessee case, Republicans catapulted three previously unknown legislators onto the national stage and laid bare the Party's outright racist actions. Those actions serve to authenticate our deepening national political and social divides.

Much of the issue in Tennessee - and elsewhere - has been a bubbling over of people's anger at the failure of office-holders to create new gun safety laws. There's a recognizable frustration which is added to every time a new massacre occurs.

Many recent incidents of violence have been in Republican dominated states. States where there is the most resistance to any new laws regarding firearms.

We're seeing people moving from one state to another they believe more representative of their political outlook - one they see as more welcoming - more closely in line with their social "beliefs."

North Idaho is an excellent example of vivid divisions within the GOP. Kootenai County has at least four Republican central committees. Each claims it is the "official" one. Bonner and Boundary County Republicans are similarly divided politically.

Up there, you'll hear some of the most discordant voices in Idaho. Several militia groups regularly - and openly - hold their drills on public lands. GOP meetings are often attended by men and women shouldering long guns with a pistol in their waistbands.

It may be an over-simplification to say Idaho is home to such groups because of its long history of Republicanism. May be. But, their certainly is a correlation between the emergence of a more strident state Party and the militance now openly displayed.

Our long history of two-party government is being replaced by a single, dominant party in some places. For better or worse. The long control of GOP state government in Idaho is but one example.

The Republican Party of Dole, Rockefeller, Powell and "Ike" is becoming a haven for the far-right, for extremists of every stripe with a more militant persona.

How far this development is allowed to grow is an open question. But, it appears to foretell - as Bette Davis famously said - "It's going to be a bumpy ride."

A plus for schools

A plus for schools

April 10, 2023

Public education came through the 2023 legislative session much better than anyone had expected. It was not a banner year, but the prospects for Idaho’s public schools appeared dim at the outset of the session because a number of new anti-education legislators were elected last year. Fortunately, because of their inexperience or overzealousness, they were not able to disable our public school system. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they will redouble their efforts in the 2024 session.

A bright spot is the $378.6 million increase in funding for public schools, with $145 million earmarked for increased teacher salaries. That allows for a pay increase of $6,359 per teacher and a minimum statewide starting salary of $47,477. The additional compensation will stem the flow of teachers to other states.

The substantial increase is due in large part to the hard work of Reclaim Idaho, which had qualified an initiative for last November’s general election ballot that would have raised school funding by $323.5 million. In order to nip the initiative in the bud, the Governor called a special legislative session before the election to provide a somewhat larger school funding increase. The session produced a bill raising school funds by $330 million. It provided for repeal of Reclaim’s initiative, which was expected to receive voter approval. The Governor certainly gets a great deal of credit for following up on Reclaim’s groundwork and getting the Legislature to appropriate the $378.6 million.

Going into the legislative session, it was almost a foregone conclusion that legislators would force taxpayers to start paying parents to send their kids to private and religious schools. Outside interests had targeted good legislators who thought taxpayers should only fund public schools, which are run by, and accountable to, the people. The Idaho Freedom Foundation and a fellow traveler called the Mountain States Policy Center worked hard on a variety of so-called “school choice” bills. Surprisingly, they failed in their effort to divert public money away from public education.

After examining how these schemes have played out elsewhere, rural legislators figured that school choice would devastate rural school districts while subsidizing people who already send their kids to private or religious schools in our cities. Also, there would be virtually no accountability for how the hand-outs of taxpayer money were spent. Make no mistake though, the school choice people will be back in force next session.

The Legislature passed a bill that took a tiny step toward meeting its court-ordered mandate to pay the lion's share of the cost of constructing and maintaining public school buildings. In 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the Idaho Constitution placed this responsibility directly on the Legislature, not property owners. House Bill 292 will provide $100 million to school districts to pay off bonds and levies. When you consider that the cost of repairing existing school buildings is about $1 billion and that over $1 billion in bonds and levies were on the ballot this March (most bonds failed), it is clear the Legislature has just scratched the surface of fulfilling its constitutional duty.

HB 292 also eliminated the March bond election date, which has been the most important time for seeking voter approval of bonding measures. Let’s not forget that these measures are only required because the Legislature has refused to honor its constitutional mandate to pay for construction and maintenance of school buildings. The bill provides a dab of property tax relief, but not enough for anyone to really notice. But still, the bill provides a puny start for state funding for school building construction and maintenance, which would provide significant property tax relief. Idahoans must demand more meaningful action next session.

Reclaim Idaho volunteers laid the groundwork for public education successes this year. The Governor stood up for the State’s education system, with effective support from the chairs of the Legislature’s education committees–Dave Lent in the Senate and Julie Yamamoto in the House. Idahoans should thank them all for standing up for our kids.