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Posts published in November 2023

Zinkes of the world

Zinkes of the world

November 7, 2023

Montana has a U.S. representative named Ryan Zinke.

Zinke likes to strut around the U.S. Capitol grounds wearing a large, black cowboy hat and big ol’ black Western boots. Always shined. Of course. Just like every “cowboy.”

I don’t know if he’s got any cattle in Montana. But, in Washington D.C., he is a committed member of the far-right “herd.”

Zinke's latest bellowing is about as racist as it gets. He, and a few dozen members of that small self-righteous herd, want to send any Palestinians now on visas in this country “back where they belong.”

Zinke masquerades as a supporter of Israel. He may have some limited understanding of what that means. But, he’s “all hat and no cattle” when it comes to knowing what’s currently going on in the Mideast. Especially where Palestinians are concerned.

Zinke not only wants to stop issuing visas to Palestinians, he wants to revoke any such documents back-dated to October 1.

“I don’t trust the Biden Administration any more than I do the Palestinian Authority to screen who is allowed to come into the United States,” he said.

Zinke and others of his ilk have authored a bill to pause issuing visas for Palestinians issued since October 1.

Zinke says “This is the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I’ve seen and it’s well-deserved.”

The title of the bill he’s backing is “Bill to Expel Palestinians from the United States.” The measure would direct the Department of Homeland Security to “identify and remove covered aliens without lawful status” including those whose lawful status has just been revoked by the same legislation.

Zinke’s bill – which has the backing of about 10 others of the far-right “Freedom Caucus” – stands no chance of passage. But, it does represent an increase of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab noise from those on that ragged edge of the ultra-conservative element in Congress. Marjorie Taylor-Greene is another sponsor of the same garbage.

While the actual fighting action is in the Mideast, it seems there’s a wave of antisemitism sweeping the world at the moment. While antisemitism is normally defined as opposition to Jews, haters appear to have lumped into the word about everybody with black hair and dark skin.

Even in the rather small Northwest community in which this writer lives, I saw a window sign along the highway last week saying “Jews Go Home.” It disappeared after a couple of days. But, I’d bet the thought still lingers on the property.

Reading it, I suddenly thought “What if the Jew in question was born in Seattle? Is Seattle far enough away to go ‘home’?”

Hatred of others because of religion or skin color – or anything else – is a damnable thing. It’s totally unreasonable and without any basis in thought. I’ve never felt the urge to stigmatize others for the way they worship or for living a lifestyle different from my own. What a terribly boring place this would be if we were all the same.

The Ryan Zinkes of the world would have us believe people with dark skin or who worship the one God differently should be shunted off to somewhere else. Preferably out of the country. They should be ostracized because….. Because…. Oh, Hell. For some ill-conceived “reason” totally unreasonable.

What’s happening now in the Mideast has roots going back thousands of years. Thousands of years before there was a United States. Thousands of years before there was a Western world. The combatants probably wouldn’t admit to that but, it’s true.

Jews have been battling for many thousands of years for a homeland and they’ll likely battle more thousands of years to keep what they now have. While we Westerners may look at the fighting and killing as just another “skirmish” in the Mideast, the distrust – the hatred – goes further back than most of us can truly understand.

My father told me he’d like to live long enough to see peace in that historically war-torn region. He didn’t. I have much the same thought. But, peace there won’t happen in my lifetime. And, likely not in my children’s. Or their children’s children either.

The Ryan Zinkes of the world will keep the distrust and the hatred alive. You can bet on it. But, that doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t prevail with understanding and love. That doesn’t mean we can’t overcome his ignorance with wise thought and wise action.

I’ll bet we can.

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Protecting Idaho’s judiciary

Protecting Idaho’s judiciary

November 6, 2023

Idaho has a truly outstanding judiciary, thanks to procedures designed to ensure competent, non-partisan appointments. Magistrate judges are appointed to four-year terms by regional commissions and thereafter run in non-partisan retention elections within their judicial district. The Idaho Judicial Council was established in 1967 to ensure a non-partisan, competence-driven selection process for district and appellate judges. The Council screens candidates and recommends 3-4 of the best to the Governor, who makes the appointment. After that, they run for re-election on a non-partisan ballot. It has been remarkably successful in producing highly-qualified, impartial jurists.

During his 12 years as Idaho Governor, Butch Otter appointed over 55 judges for Idaho’s judicial system–5 Justices of the Supreme Court, 5 judges for the Court of Appeals and over 45 district court judges. He regularly received praise from governors of other states for the high quality of Idaho’s judiciary, which Otter attributed to the Judicial Council selection process. Otter regards our excellent judiciary as an important part of his legacy and he has good grounds for doing so.

Unfortunately, in this era of strife in Idaho politics, even the court system finds itself in the crosshairs of extremists in the Legislature who get their instructions from Dorothy Moon and the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF). The GOP platform calls for judges to be elected in a “partisan election process.” That would discourage many of the best lawyers from seeking judicial office and result in politicization of the court system.

Our judges rarely deal with hot-button issues. Those generally go to the federal court in Idaho. It is essential to have experienced, competent judges on the state courts to handle everyday legal disputes–criminal cases, business disputes, family matters, personal injury, worker compensation and a wide range of other issues that need to be decided by impartial, well-qualified judges, not politicians in black robes.

Legislators in the GOP’s extremist branch have begun targeting the courts for failing to rubber stamp their pet legislative projects. They were particularly enraged by the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision striking down their statute that made it practically impossible for the people to pursue an initiative or referendum. The Court issued a well-reasoned opinion affirming the constitutional right of Idahoans to make laws they want when the Legislature refuses to act. Legislators retaliated in 2022 by denying pay raises for our judges. While they voted 7% cost-of-living pay increases for other state employees, they provided no increase for Idaho judges.  The initiative decision was frequently mentioned by legislators during proceedings.

During the last two years those same extremist legislators have tried to infuse partisanship into the selection process for judges. They approved legislation giving a partisan tilt to Judicial Council membership. A bill made it out of committee this year in the Senate that would have gone a long way toward making most district and appellate judges seek election in our low-turnout May primaries. That would have largely disabled the Judicial Council appointment process which has been so successful in developing Idaho’s outstanding judiciary.

There are ominous signs of what lies ahead. The IFF has recently taken potshots at the Judicial Council process, claiming it is controlled by lobbyists acting for their clients. As Chief Justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, I served on the Council and was impressed with its emphasis on competence and lack of partisanship. The IFF clearly does not understand how the Council operates.

On the other hand, the extremists who now control the GOP are calling out elected officials at all levels of government, including the Governor, for failing to strictly abide by the party platform. Legislators who dare to use their brains and depart from strict compliance with the platform are being called into loyalty sessions by party functionaries, much like the old Soviet Politburo. Their demand for legislation requiring partisan election of judges will undoubtedly become part of the Politburo loyalty tests.

If Idahoans want to keep a remarkably competent judiciary that will impartially decide disputes between businesses, family members and other private litigants, they must let their legislators know they won’t stand for politics in selecting judges. We certainly don’t want to entrust politicians with handling cases like the Daybell and Kohberger murder trials. It’s time for Gem State voters to stand up and speak out for our court system.

 

OR 3 will stay blue, but what shade?

OR 3 will stay blue, but what shade?

November 5, 2023

In the broad picture, the departure after next year of longtime U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer will mean a change of personnel rather than a change of politics for Oregon.

The biggest immediate impact may be on how much more junior, in seniority terms, the Oregon delegation rapidly has become. After Blumenauer’s departure, the senior House member will be Democratic Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, who has held the office just over a decade, and after that Republican Rep. Cliff Bentz, now in his second term. The other three members of the delegation all were elected for the first time just last year. Oregon has built significant seniority in its senators, but will have less in the House for years to come.

Seniority aside, Oregonians shouldn’t expect dramatic change in the representation of the 3rd after next year.

That’s not a commentary on Blumenauer but rather on his district. The Oregon 3rd has been for generations centered on Portland, and for the last couple of generations it has solidified as solidly liberal, much the most partisan district in Oregon in recent years. Even after the recent census-driven reapportionment, the 3rd is more Democratic than the eastern-Oregon 2nd district is Republican. In the Northwest overall, it is second only to the central Seattle district in Democratic lean, and is more Democratic than any Northwest district is Republican, including those in Idaho.

Blumenauer, who won the seat in 1996, following Ron Wyden’s move to the U.S. Senate, has had no tough elections since the day he was sworn in. He has not fallen below 67% of the vote in any general election in that district, and primaries have been no problem for him either. Considering the party registration in the district, Blumenauer was, if anything, slightly underperforming, but on the evidence of numbers, the district seems satisfied.

So let no one suggest that he has decided to retire at age 75 because of political difficulties; he was there for life if he’d so chosen.

But, given a fresh choice, what kind of representative might the district want at this point?

The question doesn’t relate to the usual broader issues, the way it does, for example, in the competitive Oregon 5th, which next election might choose a nominee of either party. But within the context of left-of-center Democratic prospects, variations exist.

As Bluemenauer was quoted as saying, “There are literally a dozen people salivating at the prospect of getting in this race.” And why not? Once past the primary, without any major errors, the Democratic nominee is likely to hold the seat without difficulty for a long time, as Blumenauer and Wyden did.

But different candidates – and none formally has announced plans to run yet – could bring different approaches.

You could illustrate that through two of the first names to be circulated broadly as prospects for the race.

One possibility is Deborah Kafoury, formerly chair of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners. Much like Blumenauer, she has been deeply involved in Portland-area government – and in the state Legislature – for many years. It’s easy to imagine that her service in the district might look a lot like Blumenauer’s: Unmistakably liberal, supportive of much that’s on the metro area’s agenda, but not particularly cantankerous or high profile. A candidate like her might be seen as an establishment choice in the same sense Blumenauer has been.

Another name being bounced around is that of current Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, whose sister, Pramila Jayapal, represents that super-Democratic central Seattle district. Pramila Jayapal is more a national political figure, more an ideological leader in Congress, than Blumenauer has been; she chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

That’s not to say that Susheela Jayapal would follow exactly the same path; many of the headlines around Susheela Jayapal have concerned homelessness, budget issues and other local concerns.

But Portland voters may take note that the Seattle representative has been a strong supporter for the Multnomah candidate. She remarked, for example after her sister’s election to the Multnomah commission, “I am really proud of her. She did a lot of work listening to organizations dealing with housing and homelessness and she has very clear values. We have very similar values around treating people with respect and giving people a hand up.”

So, expect the next representative from Oregon’s 3rd to be a liberal Democrat. As to what kind of liberal Democrat the district will prefer, we have yet to see.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

The sadness of a squish

The sadness of a squish

November 4, 2023

House Republicans this week elected a speaker. Turns out political exhaustion is a big advantage in today’s GOP. A guy who before this week virtually none of us had ever heard of turned out to be the (far, far) right guy at the right time.

After going three weeks with no speaker, while a government shutdown looms (again), the Middle East boils and Ukraine strains to beat back Putin’s totalitarian onslaught on western democracy all the GOP’s many factions united behind Mike Johnson. The new gavel pounder is a Louisiana backbencher whose only real qualification is that he is not Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan or Tom Emmer. For those keeping score at home – those guys all were destined to be speaker until they weren’t.

Yet, the issue of the week is not that House Republicans elected a genuine political radical from the far, far right as Speaker of the House, but how, as there can no longer be doubt, the entire party has been transformed once and finally into an ideological cesspool of resentments, hatreds, conspiracy, white Christian nationalism and hyper partisan nonsense, or worse.

Exhibit A in the no longer in doubt department is one of the nation’s prime examples of the certain death of real, constructive, character-driven conservatives. Idaho remains as good a case study as any of the vast rot that has polluted conservative politics and turned people who once displayed real character and occasional bipartisanship into craven, quivering opportunists clutching for a grip on power regardless of the cost in their own shame and their country’s democracy.

A week ago, Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, a guy who once stood over Barack Obama’s shoulder in the Oval Office to celebrate a bipartisan Idaho wilderness bill, was pilloried by his party’s state chairwoman for having the audacity – even independence – to vote NO to deny the loathsome Jim Jordan the speaker’s gavel.

Simpson’s “inclination to engage in inside-the-Beltway political games rather than focusing on the pressing business that truly matters to our constituents is disappointing,” fumed Idaho’s top GOP mouthpiece and John Bircher, Dorothy Moon. “Representative Simpson has served in congress for decades. Perhaps all this time away from Idaho has caused him to lose sight of the real work that Americans need on the important issues that impact them and their families.”

In a widely circulated op-ed defending his vote against Jordan, the bomb throwing Ohio election denier, Simpson fell back on the argument that he was merely defending the priorities his Idaho constituents, including workers at the Idaho National Laboratory and the state’s agricultural interests.

“It is abundantly clear the next Speaker of the House could seriously impact Idahoans’ way of life. Fortunately, I know my constituents want me to continue fighting for issues that are important to them. I cannot vote for a Speaker who does not support our state. And I will not take Chairwoman Moon’s ill-advised input when I have been fighting for Idaho longer than she has lived in the state.”

Simpson specifically cited Jordan’s votes against the Department of Energy budget and Simpson’s own Farm Workforce Modernization Act, legislation to give these critical workers a path to citizenship. Trouble is Johnson voted NO on those issues as well.

Simpson withheld support from the former wrestling coach because Jordan has never voted for a farm bill, and while Johnson reluctantly voted for the last major farm bill, he severely criticized the nutrition provisions of the bill, which must be reauthorized before the end of the year.

As Politico reported, Johnson favors deep cuts to the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the country’s largest program that helps to provide food aid for low-income Americans” and which is a hot button issue that will surely emerge as the dysfunctional Republican majority attempts to pass a new farm bill.

“I cannot – and will not – support a Speaker who has repeatedly taken positions against Idaho’s best interests,” Simpson declared as he tried to hold off criticism of his vote against Jordan. His principled stand had the shelf life of an overripe avocado.

On Wednesday Simpson enthusiastically voted for Johnson, described by one partisan wag as “Jim Jordan in a sports coat,” a guy with a scant experience but with a voting record almost identical to Jordan’s. In the space of five days Simpson went from standing up for his own voting record and policy priorities to voting for a speaker who has never supported the Idaho priorities Simpson found so important before he didn’t.

Moreover, Johnson is every bit as much an election denier and conspiracy theorist as Jordan. He lead the effort to round up congressional support – including that of Idaho’s other House seat warmer, Russ Fulcher – for the whack-a-doodle Texas lawsuit that would have thrown out millions of votes in several states.

Sidney Powell, the Donald Trump lawyer who recently pled guilty to election interference charges in Georgia, was a full throated proponent of the nonsense that a Hugo Chavez inspired Venezuelan plot to rig voting machines cost Trump the election. Fox News spent $787 million to settle a lawsuit over that lie. The man now second in line for the presidency was an “intellectual” architect of this lie.

Johnson has taken fringe positions on LGBTQ rights, opposed same sex marriage and been a champion of a national ban on abortion. Yet, Mike Simpson, the momentarily pragmatic Republican who took flak for his anti-Jordan vote, mentioned none of this in a statement saying he was “proud” to vote for the new speaker.

There is a word for such behavior – gutless.

As the Never Trump conservative Charlie Sykes wrote this week – he might have had Simpson in mind – “For a few halcyon moments, it looked like the center would hold as a modest rump of ‘moderates’ blocked the ludicrous Jim Jordan. But in the end, the squishes did what squishes do; and their defeat was as comprehensive as it was condign.”

It’s Mike Simpson’s screwball critic Dorothy Moon, the election denying crackpot atop the state’s Republican Party, who won this skirmish. The nuts are in full control. No evidence can disabuse them of their fantasies. No farm bill or health concern of a pregnant Idahoan is near important enough for them to back off their fear and loathing for real policy, or heaven forbid actual governing. The gentleman from Idaho had a brief moment, then he again embraced the real power in his party.

Simpson did get one part right – it is abundantly clear that the new speaker will seriously impact the way of life of his constituents.

 

The dam fight at thirty-something

The dam fight at thirty-something

November 3, 2023

When the Snake River Basin Adjudication was begun in 1987, no one expected it would be completed quickly. Water adjudications in western states often have taken decades, and the SRBA may have been the largest ever, covering six figures worth of water rights across almost nine-tenths of Idaho.

Nonetheless, it has been completed - at least in general terms - and it only took a remarkably brief 26 years.

That bit of history prowled around the back of my mind this week when I saw the latest court developments in the legal action aimed at breaching the four lower Snake River dams, located in southeastern Washington state. The dams are the Lower Granite (closest to the Idaho border), the Little Goose, the Lower Monumental and the Ice Harbor (near the confluence with the Columbia River).

The news involves a delay in further developments, which is to say, another in a long list of delays of anything resembling final action. Specifically, the parties involved asked the court for another 45 days to negotiate, following up on an earlier delay of 60 days.

Those are a pittance. The legal action over the four dams started in 1993, which means attorneys have been kept busy on the subject for 30 years - three years longer than it took to adjudicate the highly complex and contentious water rights across most of Idaho.

It’s hard to conceive that there’s much new left to talk about.

The issues associated with the dams (and I’m not going to try to relitigate them all here) mainly concern preservation of declining salmon runs on one hand, and the electric power the dams generate, and concerns about impacts on commercial river traffic (you’ll hear this a lot at Lewiston) on the other. Environmental, tribal and some governments have been on one side, and a number of federal agencies, economic interests and others have filled the other. The region, and many of its top elected officials, have been split - and within the parties as well as between them.

One report from the University of Washington said “Despite research and knowledge of the effects of the LSRDs on salmon and steelhead populations, river ecology, and tribal sovereignty there remains resistance at the state and federal level. The barrier to remove the LSRDs for Governor [Jay] Inslee (D) of Washington is the fact that the dams produce renewable energy, recreational, and economic benefits. However, both Gov. Inslee and Senator [Patty Murray] have been open to exploring the possibility of removing the dams if the benefits and services the dams create can be replaced by alternatives.”

Yale School of the Environment noted that over the last three decades, “On at least five occasions, federal judges ordered the agencies to consider removing the lower Snake River dams, and each time the agencies responded with delay and diversions, once going so far as to call the dams immutable parts of the landscape⁠ and therefore not subject to the Endangered Species Act.”

Neither side seems inclined to quit.

Still, after 30 years, the context of the legal battle has changed, and the changes may suggest where this is heading.

First, in the last decade, the debate has taken place in the context of demolition of a number of other dams in the region.

Second, the dams need repairs if they're going to continue in service, and that will be costly.

Third, renewable energy, notably solar and wind,has taken off in a big way in the inland Northwest, and the argument that the dams are needed for their electric power generation has become less central in the debate.

It could be that if the parties come to accept some of the trend lines, and not just the starting and hoped-for ending points, the case could be resolved before another 30 years has passed.

 

Retire

Retire

November 2, 2023

Just as people start things in all sorts of ways, so do they quit them.

Some people describe “falling into” a job or a profession. Others tell the story of seeking it, “knowing” from a young age that it was their calling.

I’ve seen some folks bounce around, swapping professional hats from one career to the next. I admire that fluidity.

Me, I’ve been a doctor, or in training to be one for over half my life. Not much of a bouncer am I.

I have dabbled widely, from fixing old cars to remodeling houses, but all the while, I have had a singular profession. I was a family doctor.

But I have decided to retire.

I have let go of many things in this career.

I used to practice intubations. That is when you stick a tube down someone’s airway, past the vocal cords, inflate the cuff, then pump air into their lungs when they aren’t breathing. Such a violent act can save a life. I thought I should keep that skill sharp when I was covering emergency rooms. That skill faded long ago.

Same with all the interventions to gain access to a dying patient’s blood stream. I thought I was pretty good at it, but like welding, you need to keep in practice.

I used to love providing obstetric care, delivering babies. I got training to do C-sections, since such an intervention was sometimes called for when you deliver babies.

But after many years of delivering babies, I began to notice a change in myself. During training, as a resident on the delivery ward, two or three women could be in labor at a time. I would check on then regularly, and catch a nap whenever I could, since back then, we did 24–36-hour shifts.

Out in practice, a woman might go into labor midday. I’d check on her, have dinner with the family, check on her again, then sleep a few hours, knowing I had a full clinic schedule the next day. Then I would go in at 2 or 4AM and do the delivery, sew up what needed to be sewed, write the orders, check on the baby, then go back home for a couple more hours of sleep.

As I aged, and I slowed down the number of deliveries I was doing, I found I could not sleep as she labored. I could not put my mind to ease that I had done and checked all that was needed. So, I would sit at the nurses’ station or go check on her more frequently. My inability to nod off was telling me something. My mind was not at peace with the process. Too many worries. I realized it was time to let go of this aspect of the profession I loved.

It has been a bittersweet process, this deciding to retire thing. I thought I had kept sharp, but I found I was looking up more of the medicines my patients had been prescribed. I was looking into the newly recommended medications and studying their chemistry. My natural skeptical nature made me wonder about the wisdom of this pharmaceutical investment. But I needed to know the wisdom of the treatment and make a wise recommendation. I worried I wasn’t as wise as I should be.

So, at the age of 69 I have decided to quit being a family doctor.

It truly was a passion for me. The fact that I earned a bit less than the local superintendent of schools seemed fitting. I saw too many of my colleagues make way too much money. And that should never be what inspires.

I valued the patients, their stories, their suffering, and their willingness to share their plight with me. They were very generous.

I tried to be too. Letting go can be a gift.

Retirement image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Pix4free

Could ranked choice work?

Could ranked choice work?

November 1, 2023

If Idaho Secretary of State Phil McGrane were to explain ranked-choice voting in an elevator conversation, “I would need a tall building,” he said.

Or, maybe a trip to the moon would be more suitable.

McGrane, in his role as secretary, has not taken a stand on the open-primaries initiative (which includes ranked-choice voting) that is being pushed by Reclaim Idaho. But he’s making himself more familiar with the process, and it will be up to him to figure out the mechanics if an initiative is approved by voters.

There’s no question that the new voting system would make elections, and tabulating the results, more challenging.

Here’s how Reclaim Idaho explains it: “To make sure the winner enjoys support from a broad coalition of voters and not just a narrow faction, there will be Instant Runoff Voting in the general election (also called ranked-choice voting). Here’s how it works: The last-place candidate will be eliminated and each vote for that candidate will be transferred to the voter’s second choice. This process repeats until only two candidates remain and the candidate with the most votes is declared the winner.”

Got it? Under ranked-choice voting, a candidate that gets the most first-place votes may not necessarily win the election. A candidate would need to get more than 50 percent of the vote to secure a victory.

The first part of the proposed voter initiative – open primaries – is easier to digest. Voters can choose from a list of candidates, regardless of political affiliation, and the top four vote-getters advance to the general election ballot. So, the general election for a given office could have (for instance) three Republicans and a Democrat.

One prevailing question is whether ranked choice would be workable for Idaho.

“My observation is that people are focused on what they think it (ranked-choice voting) solves, so it’s more of a policy debate. There’s also a functional piece involved,” he said.

The best role model is Alaska. McGrane will be talking with Alaska officials to see how the system works.Most of McGrane’s questions are on the administrative end.

“Our current voting system cannot tabulate ranked-choice voting, so would require significant changes to our voting system,” McGrane said. “Another thing is, right now we have a county-based system where they feed results to the state. To do the ranking system, the ballots would need to come centrally from the same place, and that’s something our state has never done.”

So, there could be some added cost. At this point, McGrane is not sure how much.

With ranked-choice, there seems to be an assumption that voters will study all races closely and will use some intelligence in ranking the selections. In reality, not all races are created equally in terms of public exposure.

“In a presidential race, or a governor’s race, that’s not such a problem,” McGrane said. For something such as Ada County clerk, which McGrane was before becoming secretary of state, ranking the choices could become more of a dart-throw.

Opinions are mixed about the proposed initiative. Proponents include former Gov. Butch Otter and First Lady Lori Otter, who especially favor the open-primary aspect. In a story by Clark Corbin of the Capital Sun, Lori Otter said closed primaries have made the Republican Party extreme. “If you don’t pay attention to what’s happening,” she warns, “this party is going to lose its power of everything that the Republican Party stands for.”

Former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Jim Jones has written that ranked-choice voting may be the only salvation from “extreme” politics ruling the state.

Idaho’s Republican Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon soundly rejects the proposed initiative, while blasting some of the voices from the past. “Make no mistake, this initiative is a pernicious plot to take away your ability to vote for conservative lawmakers,” she wrote. Brent Regan, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee chairman, also opposes the initiative.

So, here’s a quick voter’s guide:

If you dislike Moon, Regan and those from the far right, then you might think that the voter initiative is the greatest idea since blue turf on a football field. If you are not a fan of the likes of Otter and Jones, then you can equate this initiative with poison ivy – something you don’t want to touch.

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