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Dangers of volunteering

Dangers of volunteering

December 19, 2023

I've always held the belief that, as citizens of our communities, we should all be required to undertake some kind of public service.

In Israel, nearly all citizens serve in one or more public roles for at least two years while in their teens or 20's.  It can be in the military or a program linked to a community need.

When we graduate from high school, most of us don't have a good idea what we want to do next.  If you did, great!  But, I know I didn't.  Had something like the Israeli requirement been offered, it would have changed the rest of my life.  As it was, I voluntarily turned to the military and that was the "change agent."  Aged a bit.  Got my head cleared.  Was exposed to some life experiences.  Figured out what I wanted to do.  Voila!

When aged a few years, the next step was some sort of community service, i.e. Chamber of Commerce, school board, city council, local committee, etc..

While I'm of the opinion that each of us should serve the public good in some capacity, that's more of a tough sell nowadays.  Biggest reason for that is it makes you a better target for violence.  Or, threats of violence.

I'm ashamed to say it, but public notoriety now can be dangerous. In the current environment, threats against public officials or those serving in many volunteer roles can be bad for your health.  And, there number is increasing.

In our hometown - and quite possibly yours - there are openings on civic committees.  People are being urged to volunteer.  Used to be, there were more volunteers than vacancies.  Not always the case these days.

One of the reasons, I suspect, is volunteering for certain jobs can put a target on your back.  Even in our small city, it's not unusual for members of boards and commissions to receive threats of one kind or another.

Most often, it's through (un)social media.  The vast exposure we have to nutcases, screw balls and folks who hide behind the anonymity of the I-Net can't be ignored.  Whether they mean to carry through on their threats or just want to scare someone, the person on the receiving end can't be sure.

Local law enforcement is being called upon much more often these days when city/county/state/federal or other public-serving citizens receive threats.

Broadcasters have been on the "threat list" for years.  More than 45 years ago, I was assigned a police detail for several weeks after receiving threats of harm.  We were told then that people making anonymous threats seldom are a real danger.  The word "seldom" always seemed to me to be a huge disclaimer of the assurances.

Our nation runs on volunteerism.  People who give of themselves to serve on boards, commissions, committees, task forces and the like are absolutely necessary for continuity and getting things of a public nature accomplished.

But, the current wave of threatening communications has put a damper on people volunteering.  Almost everywhere.  The aforementioned I-Net gives lowlifes the anonymity to make their threats.  Unfortunately, it's not possible to tell the harmless, mindless idiots from the real bad guys.  On the old I-Net, they're all the same.

We live in a small, almost rural community.  Sort of out of the "main stream."  But, I'm not sure I'd accept a request for public service now if one were to come.  "Rural" we may be.  But, threats-against-service have surfaced here as well.

With local, state and federal elections just 12 months off, it'll be interesting to see who'll choose to put their names on the ballots.  Or, work the elections.  It could be there'll be more open spots than in previous years.

I hope not.

 

Justice O’Connor

Justice O’Connor

December 18, 2023

Sandra Day O’Connor, who died on December 1, was an accomplished jurist who demonstrated that women lawyers and judges are every bit as good as men. Although there were very few job openings for women when she graduated with honors from Stanford Law School in 1952, her remarkable example has brought about a dramatic change in the legal profession. Women have not been handed equality in the legal workplace, they have earned it. I won’t say they have achieved full equality, but there has been tremendous progress over the years. O’Connor helped to forge the way.

I had the privilege of observing Justice O’Connor in action on three occasions in the 1980s and came away mightily impressed. The first instance was in 1983, when the Supreme Court finally heard argument in a case filed in 1975 by former Idaho Attorney General Wayne Kidwell against Oregon and Washington. Kidwell rightly claimed the downstream states were endangering salmon and steelhead runs by overfishing. In 1980, the Court sent the case to trial, which resulted in a decision against Idaho. As Idaho’s AG at the 1983 hearing, I argued that enough fish should be allowed to return to Idaho to perpetuate the runs and provide Idahoans with an allocated share.

It was clear during the hearing that Justice O’Connor understood the need to protect and perpetuate the runs for the benefit of everyone. A number of her male colleagues could not seem to grasp that basic concept. When the decision came out, O’Connor wrote an outstanding opinion favoring Idaho. Unfortunately, it was a dissent that only two other Justices agreed with. It was not a total loss because the majority ruled that states which share a natural resource must “take reasonable steps to conserve and even to augment” the resource for the benefit of all. However, the majority refused to implement a conservation and allocation formula because the runs in the 5-year period selected by the trial judge were so depressed that a formula would be pointless. In other words, there were not enough fish to mess with during those 5 years, so why bother?

O’Connor argued that the use of the 5 years of depressed runs was a serious error and that it was precisely because the runs were so endangered that Idaho had made its case. Had the good old boys on the Court paid attention to her well-reasoned opinion, our wild runs of salmon and steelhead would undoubtedly be in better condition today.

The second case arose in 1980, when Legal Aid attorneys filed a suit challenging the conditions of confinement for juveniles at Idaho’s State Hospital South in Blackfoot. The suit was brought on behalf of a mentally challenged 15-year-old boy, Jeff D., who was not being provided with necessary mental health services. The State recognized it was in the wrong and eventually agreed to a settlement that was better than the judge might have granted, but which required the Legal Aid attorneys to waive any claim for attorney fees against the State. However, after settling, they renewed their attorney fee request and the case ended up before the Supreme Court in 1986. O’Connor was active and engaged during the argument, but did not write a separate opinion. She and four others joined Justice Stevens’ opinion, ruling in favor of Idaho. Even though the fee issue was fully resolved, the underlying Jeff D. case still lives on to this very day.

In my third trip to the Supreme Court, Justice O’Connor wrote a majority opinion, holding against the State. A jury had convicted Laura Lee Wright of lewd conduct with her daughters, ages 5 ½ and 2 ½. The trial judge found that the younger daughter was unable to testify to the jury, but allowed a pediatrician to testify as to what she had told him about the abuse. Wright was convicted for abusing both, but the Idaho Supreme Court overturned the conviction for abusing the younger daughter on hearsay grounds.

The State sought and was granted review by the nation’s high court. In Justice O’Connor’s 1990 opinion, she and four other members ruled the admission of the pediatrician's testimony violated Wright’s constitutional right to confront her accuser. Had there been indicators that the testimony was particularly trustworthy, the conviction might have been upheld. Justice O’Connor wrote in a scholarly fashion, providing needed guidance in sex abuse cases involving younger victims. I did not agree with the ultimate outcome, but I respected the manner in which she handled the case.

By demonstrating great skill and dignity as a jurist, O’Connor helped to shatter the glass ceiling for women in the legal profession. I recall that my 1964 law school class at Northwestern Law School in Chicago started with 168 students, only 8 of whom were women. Now, law schools across the country have a slight majority of female students. A world of job opportunities in the legal and judicial arenas have opened up for women, thanks to the path paved by Sandra Day O’Connor. May she rest in peace.

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Smaller parties still matter

Smaller parties still matter

December 17, 2023

In March, a new organization was added to the list of small political parties qualified to appear on the Oregon ballot: the No Labels Party. Oregon was the third state nationally to accept its application, after Colorado and Arizona.

Whether next year a No Labels’ candidate will actually appear on the ballot – or make much difference – remains an open question. The group is aimed solely at presidential politics and doesn’t need an in-state organization. As of November, the Oregon Secretary of State’s office reported that it had about 1,500 registered voters in the state.

Other smaller parties have more. In Oregon, the Constitution, the Independent, the Libertarian, the Pacific Green (affiliated with the Green Party of the United States), the Progressive and Working Families parties all have thousands of registrants.

The Independent Party of Oregon is distinct from the others, not as a matter of law but simply size: It has far more registered members than all the other smaller parties put together, and has been legally classified as a major party. It’s not really a “small” party.

America’s politics, and Oregon’s, is highly polarized. In the 2020 presidential election, more than 2,374,320 votes were cast in the state for president; all but 75,490 (3.2%) went to either Democrat Joe Biden or Republican Donald Trump.

In 2022, when Betsy Johnson’s well-organized and strongly-financed campaign emerged for governor, she wound up in a very distant third place.

In addition to these organized groups, there are also “other” registrants, which are not among the “nonaffiliated” – which is a separate category – but presumably members of other parties which don’t have ballot status in Oregon. State records do not break down who these somewhat mysterious people are. Their numbers have declined a little in recent years but are substantial; at about 15,690, they account for more voters than any of the small parties but the Libertarians.

Still, by themselves Oregon’s small parties do generate support, sometimes shifting levels of support, and they can matter in who among large-party candidates prevails and by how much.

Oregon is among the states allowing cross-party endorsement voting, in which more than one party can nominate a candidate – and the smaller parties often do. (The process is related to, but distinctive from the true “fusion” system used in New York state.)

The results show up in many places on Oregon voter guides where partisan offices appear. In 2022, for example, Ron Wyden was nominated for the Senate by not only his own Democratic Party but also in the Independent Party of Oregon. The Republican nominee, Jo Rae Perkins, also was nominated by the Constitution Party. The Pacific Green and Progressive parties, meantime, offered their own nominees.

There have been five consistent small parties in Oregon – aside from the Independent Party of Oregon which has grown larger over the years – which are the  Constitution, Libertarian, Pacific Green, Progressive and Working Families parties.

It would be fair to group the latter three  – as left of the Democratic Party. In 2023, they accounted for 19,795 voters.

The Constitution Party has been situated to the right, or near the right flank, of the Republican Party; it’s the only small party clearly on the right and has about 3,830 registered voters.

The Libertarian Party may help boost the small-party registration on the right. It takes some elements from both ideological sides – it famously calls for less government and disagrees with a number of policies of both major policies – but in recent decades has seemed to draw more from the right than from the left. Its party registration in October was 20,484.

Taken together, the right may be losing a few more voters to small parties than are the Democrats, though the gap isn’t large.

Of the three left-leaning parties, the Pacific Green and the Working Families parties are the larger, with 8,000 or more registrants each in recent years, while the Progressive Party has been much smaller. But the trend lines have favored the Progressives. In 2019 it had about 2,380 registrants but four years later increased their number, by about half, to 3,635.

During that same time, both the Pacific Green’s and the Working Families’ numbers fell. The PGs declined from 8,700 in 2019 to 7,850 (in 2023), and the WFs from 9,720 in 2019 to 8,310 in 2023. That may reflect some movement from those parties to the Progressives, for reasons that are unclear.

Does all of this, taken together, much influence the outcome of partisan elections statewide? Probably not in most cases, unless the race becomes very close, coming down to a few thousand votes, and then decisions about cross-endorsing as opposed to running a separate candidacy could matter.

Don’t say it doesn’t matter, though, nor No Labels either even if it lacks registrants. In 2022, two congressional seats were decided by a couple of percentage points. At that level, what the small parties do can make a difference.

 

Book report

Book report

December 16, 2023

Plenty more good reading this year, a little more - it seems on review -weighted toward history this time. Or is it that gazing on the past can be a relief from coping with the present?

As previously: What follows are some reflections on 10 of the books I read for the first time this year - not necessarily the 10 best, or those I enjoyed most (though I recommend all on both counts) but the 10 that left the strongest impression, that drew my attention back weeks and months after I first consumed them. Not all are new, though most were, but they all were new to me this year.

And once again, they're listed here in alphabetical order (by author name), not preferential ranking, which would be too problematic for books as different as these.

Tim Alberta - The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (2023). Pressed to name my top book of the year, this might be it, and I might go so far as to call it the book this particular author was born to write. Alberta is the son of an evangelical preacher, and contrary to what you might expect he has not fallen away from his faith. He writes clearly here from his faith perspective, which he turns into a strength for readers whether they share it or not: Much of his concern here is how and why so much of American evangelicalism has moved sharply away from the sensibility it had for many years until recently, into an obsession with politics and culture over spiritual and biblical concerns. If you're not a co-religionist, you can read it with a filter; either way, it offers a wealth of understanding about what has happened in America's conservative Christian community. Highly recommended for anyone who wants a better understanding, as well, of the trajectory of recent American politics. And a bonus: He offers as well some causes for hope for improvement.

Steve Coll - Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, 2001-2016 (2023). The title oversells slightly; we more or less knew the wars were going on, as they were happening. What Coll does spectacularly here is throw a whole new layer of explanation for what happened in Afghanistan all those years, including (but certainly not limited to) American dealings with the Pakistan intelligence agency, notably the division of it (Directorate S) which was involved with double- and triple-dealing with the Taliban and other players in the area. There's great insight too into the shifting and problematic role of the American-backed Afghan government. The story is long, complex and reiterates how difficult was the American effort to make headway in that part of the world, even recognizing the significant number of mistakes we made along the way.

Jonathan Eig - King: A Life (2023). Some years ago I read the Taylor Branch trilogy, America in the King Years, an epic of research which probably totaled eight times the words of the new Jonathan Eig biography of Martin Luther King, and gave me the satisfied feeling that I had the waterfront covered. I didn't. For all the vast detail and immense depth of the Branch books (he seemed almost to have documented every time the man got in a car and drove somewhere), I had to conclude that while the books gave a great overview of the Civil Rights era and environment, and lots of detail about both the central and surrounding personnel, they didn't really tell me who King was. Hence, this book, which was well worth filling in many gaps I hadn't appreciated were there. Eig was blunt up front in saying that he intended to write about the man in full, and the result is neither expose nor hagiography. Rather, I felt after reading it that I had a better sense of the human being. Who turned out to be plenty impressive enough.

Henry Grabar - Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World (2023). So you read the title and your first thought is, oh yeah?  Prove it. (I seem to run into books like this two or three times a year.) Okay: After reading Grabar's extensive case, I'm not sure that parking does fully and entirely does explain the whole world. The press for motor vehicle parking does explain a scandalously large portion of it, though, and not just in the United States, and not just in road and building design; these and other factors lead to ripple effects all over the place. You might expect this to devolve into an anti-car and pro-public transit screed, but while Grabar does nod in those directions a bit, his view - and his range of research - is much more sophisticated, with a surprising number of prospective solutions on order. This is a livelier account than you might anticipate, given the surface (ahem) name of the core subject.

Adam Hochschild - American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis (2023). A close call here between two books covering related territory. I probable enjoyed (as in, it was easy reading) Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland a little more; it was the smoothly told story of the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, miraculously done without explicit (only implicit) mention of similar problems in our own time. Hochchild's more rigorous history put the period in a larger perspective, though, and offers even stronger lessons for us a century later. A reviewer in the Philadelphia Inquirer said it "chronicles our nation’s horrific period from 1917–21, when Woodrow Wilson, his men, and a paranoid culture went to war against union activists, immigrants, resisters, and Black people, among others—on a level that should forever shatter any myth about American Exceptionalism. A cautionary tale of what happens when democracy goes off the rails.” It ought to be a required read these days.

Laura Meckler - Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equality (2023). I'll admit this book first grabbed my attention because, at a long-ago high school event in Washington, I was in a group including a student who loudly and proudly proclaimed himself as being from Shaker Heights, Ohio, at every opportunity. (Guess what his nickname was?) But Shaker Heights actually had some bragging rights I wasn't aware of: It was well ahead of nearly all of the country, and still is, in working toward developing a school system fair to all of the people who were in it, a system aiming to avoid the problems so many people encountered elsewhere, including in neighboring communities. How well did they do? Meckler (who attended school there) reports here on the history of the work in progress, which still very much is in progress. It's partly a cautionary story and partly a pointer for hope. It's also an exceptionally well researched slice of recent history.

Jacob Mikanowski - Goodbye, Eastern Europe: An Intimate History of a Divided Land (2023). The war in Ukraine doubtless had something to do with it, but I wound up reading a lot about central and eastern Europe this year; the fact that it's been an under-read subject (by many Americans, I suspect) gave it additional pertinence. And there were some good reads. For a solid, straight-through narrative (that educated me considerably about the area), I can strongly recommend The Middle Kingdoms: A New History of Central Europe by Martyn Rady (2023). On points, I enjoyed Mikanowski's review a bit more, because as its title indicates it is a more personal take (the author's background is Polish, Catholic and Jewish), giving a clearer sense of the culture, the feelings of the people, what's important to them, and how it got that way. Or, best of all, read both books for the strengths in each to get a better sense of the surprising history of the eastern part of the continent. (Did you know Lithuania was once the mightiest empire in Europe? Well ...)

Chris Miller - Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology (2022). I do have a bone to pick here with Miller's periodic lionizing of the Great Men who launched key new phases in the development of microchips. I'll forgive him that because this book lays out, better than anything I've seen elsewhere, the shape of chip development and how and why key choke points in the system have developed. Miller makes the apt point that if oil was the central commodity of the last age, microchips have replaced it: Our society is (way too) dependent on those tiny and immensely complex items, and our growing reliance on a handful of providers is a little frightening, and an underappreciated global problem.  This book helps place much of the situation in perspective.

Simon Sebag Montefiore - The World: A Family History of Humanity (2023). As coherent histories go, this is a huge, fabulous, boggling mess: Not in its scholarship or insight (which are impressive indeed) or its lively writing but for its sheer overwhelming mass of barely connected details, linked mainly by the fact that almost everyone in the book, which ranges across most of human history, is related to someone else. I'd love to see Montefiore on a panel discussion with, say, Jered Diamond, who famously thematically reduced (in considerable part) much of human history to Guns, Germs and Steel. That one barely mentioned individual people; this one is all about individuals (mainly royalty and rulers, with some exceptions). In Montefiore's case, you have to pick out the concepts and through-lines while watching Niagara Falls roar by. (The frequent romps of sex, scandal and violence keep the pages turning at a fast clip.) It's a good lesson, though, in the usefulness of looking at things through new angles: This book is almost like flipping the telescope on Diamond, and seeing history anew.

Louise Penny - A World of Curiosities (2022). This year tended to do less for me in the area of fiction; there I wound up re-reading old favorites more than enjoying new ones. The leading exception to that was unexpected, in that I tend to tire of lengthy novel series after a while, and too often they start feeling like carbon copies (remember those?) of each other. Behold an exception, in the case of the 18th book in the Louise Penney murder mystery series about Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, and much the best among those I've read. Gamache is an unusually well-drawn character among the army of fictional dogged police officers, but that's really the lesser attraction here. This longish novel is packed with detail and wide-ranging subject matter and striking characters, veering expertly between historical revisionism, psychopath thriller and small-town cozy. The first quarter or so struck me as a little confusing; get past that and you'll find as solidly ripping - and inventive - a read as has come along in the last two or three years.

 

Legitimate power

Legitimate power

December 15, 2023

The wave of Idaho Republican Party purity tests, and the push for control by a faction of the party statewide, has been expanding to stunning levels in the last couple of years.

There seems to be no limit to the grasping for control by leaders of the state party, including Chair Dorothy Moon, and such allied groups as the Idaho Freedom Foundation. Republican legislators, even from the farthest right wing of the party, have been called into local star chambers to explain themselves and - presumably - beg for forgiveness for using their best judgment at the Statehouse.

You have to wonder what it will take finally to generate some meaningful pushback.

Maybe that’s beginning to happen.

There’s been, for a while now, some organized effort on the part of long-time Idaho Republicans who are pushing for a return to a Republican Party more like the one they knew a generation or two ago, and quietly among some local Republican leaders.

Backlash may be starting to grow among a tipping point of Idaho legislators, maybe enough to change the political atmosphere.

Directing your attention now to Idaho Falls, where all six of the legislators in Districts 32 and 33 have been called to answer charges of deviation from the state party platform. All six have declined to appear, though five did hold a recent town hall meeting (which spoke to a range of legislative issues, and surely was a better use of their time). What’s most remarkable about the six is how different they are. One of them, Barbara Ehardt, is a fierce culture warrior solidly on the right flank of the legislature; she still wasn’t pure enough to evade the inquisition, and quite reasonably expressed astonishment that she’d been targeted. (Apparently, her chief sin had to do with funding public schools.)

Maybe that claim of Ehardt infidelity was the last straw, the clear evidence that no Republican legislator is safe. In any event, you can sense something a little different in the air.

Consider the comments from one of the six, Representative Marco Erickson, in an interview with the columnist Chuck Malloy. The new party disciplinary actions, he said, “wakes up people to the idea of why they need to run as precinct officers. We need to have rational people in there and civil discourse again. We’re going to have to take those small neighborhood positions and take back the party.”

Spot on.

If his talk of precinct officers strikes you as small stuff, be advised: It isn’t.

If you’re wondering how the extremists and power grabbers took over the Idaho Republican Party, remember: They did it the honest and old-fashioned and structurally sound way.

They ran their candidates for precinct committee spots in the primary elections. (Battles over precinct committee positions are age-old, and tend simply to be won by whoever outworks the other side.) Upon winning majorities of these offices at the county level, they take control of the local party levers, which can strongly affect who runs for county and legislative offices, and in some places provides assistance and encouragement for like-minded people to run for non-partisan city and school offices.

Then, when enough counties are of like mind, they can take over the state party central committee, which can control the direction and select the leadership of the party statewide.

How did the current leadership of the Idaho Republican Party get there? That’s how.

How do you beat them? The same way.

The good news for people like Erickson is that both sides can play, and the odds are that his will be able to generate more public support - most likely - than those now in power.

Erickson said he now plans to run for a precinct office himself. That would make perfect sense, and he would be well advised to get his fellow legislators, and others of like mind, to do the same.

It’s unglamorous, hard work. But it's how actual change happens.

 

Intentions

Intentions

December 14, 2023

Do you want everybody to have health insurance? I am yelling this question into a sharp, dark westerly wind, in the middle of a long winters’ night. Questions like that know their own answers. I know it. But I want you to know it too and feel good about your answer. I feel fine about mine.

This comes up because we bought our daughter a truck she found on a lot in Spokane. She has an old 4Runner on its last legs. But a new car is out of the question on her salary.

I drove it down to our Idaho town and took it to our DMV to register it and get the title transferred. I brought in all the paperwork from the used car lot to the nice lady. She sorted the papers for me and handed back the half dozen she didn’t need.

“Do you want my proof of insurance?” I’d held that sheet back. We’d just gotten the form in the mail.

“No, we confirm insurance electronically.” She smiled at me. She was getting out all her paper forms she needed me to sign.

“Do they tell you what we paid too?” I should not be amazed at this level of data sharing, but it always feels like an infringement. She laughed and said no.

Then I went through our plan. We had paid for the truck, but we wanted to give it to our daughter who lives down in Canyon County. She works for the government so she couldn’t afford the brakes and axle seals and steering rack that needed replacement on the old 4Runner.

The kind, efficient lady listened and suggested we just add her to the title. Then, after a time, she could just remove us from the title, and it would save her the hassle.

And, she offered, since I didn’t have plates to transfer, they could have the new plates sent to her.

How helpful! “That would be great!” I said. “Do you need her address? And her name?”

“No, she’s here in our system.”

I was shocked. “Do you have her street address?” She printed up a form that had my daughter’s name and address.

So, the Idaho DMV can find my daughter without me even giving them her name, or her street address.

And this year, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare kicked 100,000 people off Medicaid because they couldn’t get a reply to a mailing or an email. Go figure.

I actually tried to. At a recent IDHW Board meeting I asked what data bases they used to try to find these folks they were kicking off coverage for lack of response. I asked if they used the Secretary of States voter registration data base. It’s public record. They did not. They suggested they had paid some national company some money to help, but, shrug, this was as good as they could do.

I knew the back story. But right here you need to answer that question I screamed into the storm. Do you want everybody to have health insurance? If your answer is no, then the backstory will satisfy you.

This year, the Idaho legislature budgeted for 120,000 less people to be enrolled in Medicaid. And so, the IDHW did that job. The Department will meet its budget.

But those folks will get care.

They will call for an appointment in a doctor’s office and tell the nice phone lady they have Medicaid. But when they come in for the appointment for their diabetes, the receptionist will tell them they are not covered. And they will go back home.

But then a week or a month later they will get hauled into the emergency room. Then, the hospital will have their paid staff go about re-enrolling them.

You probably know it would have been cheapest for them to die quietly at home. Is that your intention?

 

Finding rational people

Finding rational people

December 13, 2023

Bonneville County’s Republican Central Committee may have picked a fight against the wrong legislator.

Rep. Marco Erickson of Idaho Falls isn’t a bit worried about the central committee taking away his job in the Legislature. But he says they should be concerned about him going after their political positions. He says he’ll be running for a precinct office.

What’s happening in Bonneville County, he says, “wakes up people to the idea of why they need to run as precinct officers. We need to have rational people in there and civil discourse again. We’re going to have to take those small neighborhood positions and take back the party.”

Erickson, in his second term, is one of six GOP Republican legislators in Districts 32 and 33 who have been called out for multiple violations of the state party platform. None of the six scheduled appearances before the committee to answer to the allegations, which could lead to disciplinary action at some point.

Erickson shrugs off anything the central committee does. “I was elected without any of their influence.”

He says the complaint against him lists multiple violations. “They had 15, maybe 16. I don’t remember half of them, because they were so funny. It cracks me up – we’ve already had these discussions when they whined about it the first time.”

He said points were taken away for supporting initiatives pushed by the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, and not having high enough scores with the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s “Freedom Index.”

“Did we support those bills because they came from IACI? Well, no. We supported them because they were good for Idaho,” he said.

Erickson isn’t the only one who has issues with the central committee’s scoring system. Rep. Barbara Ehardt of Idaho Falls (District 33) – who has a background as an educator and coach – says she was downgraded for supporting funding for schools. She said her constituents, of all political stripes, strongly support school funding.

“They want it done,” Ehardt said. “If you are paying attention to your district, that’s what you get. If you are on the side that too much money is being spent, then it’s up to you and do the grunt work and change the hearts and minds of people – then share that information with legislators.”

Ehardt, a vocal conservative voice in the Legislature, says she was “shocked” about the notice from the central committee; up to now, the relationship with party leaders has been good. Ehardt says she’s always glad to discuss her votes, but the tone of the committee’s letter to her is not the basis of a “friendly” conversation.

Erickson sees the party leadership being taken over by losing candidates, or those who get high scores from the Idaho Freedom Foundation. “I’ll call them Libertarians Impersonating Republicans. What’s happening is a classic case of people who can’t win their own elections because they are so extreme. It’s backfiring on them left and right.”

The 44-year-old Erickson resists the notion that he is neither “Republican” or “conservative” enough. “I don’t measure myself based on score. I measure myself on the ability to be an effective leader. When you have surpluses like we’ve had, people are saying we should make investments back in the public – the infrastructure so we can have better quality roads and bridges … or for better schools. They can slam me all they want, but I understand things on a bigger level.”

Erickson is the vice chair of the House Health and Welfare Committee, which fits with his life away from the Legislature. He is a director of a non-profit coalition that focuses on issues such as drug and alcohol prevention, and after-school programs for teens – which has him communicating with families.

“And they want me to vote against the Health and Welfare budget? Are you kidding me? As legislators, we can’t spend hundreds of hours going through each budget. If JFAC (the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee) supports it, then I’m voting for it,” he says.

“For me personally, it’s time to step up. All it takes is one election and 30 new rational thinkers. If we get a majority, all those guys who are in there will be mostly out, or they will quit.”

Apparently, the political drama in Bonneville County is just getting started.

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

 

Deal with it

Deal with it

December 12, 2023

Our country seems ready to "BLOW ITS STACK."

There are stories in the media daily of a fight or an attack breaking out in a store somewhere.  In just one day, here's an incomplete list:

Oregon:  Woman crawls through McDonald's drive-thru window demanding DoorDash order;

Texas:  Grocery store worker sent bomb threat to co-workers with a note reading "I hope you all die;"

Georgia: Woman jabs Walmart shopper in the neck with a needle full of a "foreign substance;"

Michigan: Woman in a Kroger store used a bag of ice to knock a clerk unconscious.

Wherever we live, there are short fuses ready to blow.  Just a cross word can send some folks off the deep end.  Stories of personal attacks - even attacks on authority figures like cops - are everywhere.

I've got to admit.  I, too, have a short fuse.  I can feel something simmering just below the surface.  Especially when I'm driving.  Just one wrong move - cut me off just one more time - and WHAM!  I've pounded the dashboard more than once.

What is it that's brought on this anger all of a sudden?  Why so many people walking around just seemingly spoiling for a fight?  Who's to blame?

We've been subjected to a great deal of bad news for a very long time.  Wars, rumors of wars, businesses failing, city/state/federal tax increases, dangerous weather, bad politics and bad performers.  All this and more.  And, it's every day, every day, every damned day!

I don't think you can usually pin it all on one 'some one' or one event or another.  Seems to me to be a compilation of many 'some one's' and many 'events.'

I can tell you the name of one 'some one' who's triggered an outburst or two from me.  Donald Trump!  Yep, him!  The 'orange man.'  Donald John Trump.

The guy's already been officially charged with felony crimes in four different federal jurisdictions.  If you count only what's hanging out at the moment, there's an estimated 91 charges with more coming.

Do you realize this guy's been 'page one' national and international news for more than eight years now?  Eight years!  If you're reading this in New York State, it's been more like 40-50 years of Trump 'news.'  There are literally millions of teenagers that have lived with 'Trump news' all their young lives.

The guy's become a news "fixture" we see every day.  And, with the first of many court appearances starting shortly, we're going to be even more inundated with gory details, whether electronic or in print.

I really do think Trump's to blame for much of the angry nature present in our national life.  He's been an on-going presence for so long - the subject of so much negative press for years - the lying and publicity-seeking cretin in our daily routines - that we've all become wrapped up in his story.  We may not be conscious of such a thing.  But, it can happen.

We're told by insiders that he's raging with all the legal pressures weighing so heavily.  Throwing things.  Breaking things.  Nearly out of control at times.  Yelling and angry.  ANGRY!

I wish we could take two aspirin, go to bed and wake up when it's all over.  That's not possible.  So, we're going to be subjected to Trump - and whatever happens to him - as he's processed through our legal system for the next several years.

That can't happen without some affect on our national psyche.  It'll be up to each one of us to deal with those affects.  We can't "tune out."  We can't make believe it's not happening.

We didn't make this situation.  But, we've got to learn to deal with it.

A differentAG

A differentAG

December 11, 2023

When Raul Labrador was running for Attorney General last year, he promised to be a different kind of AG and boy has he delivered on that promise. He has done things that nobody could ever have expected an Idaho AG to do.

Labrador certainly made a media splash in June when he hauled off, without warning, and brought suit against his own client, the State Board of Education. He claimed the Board violated Idaho’s Open Meeting Law when considering the University of Idaho’s plan to acquire the University of Phoenix. It is universally known in Idaho legal circles that it is highly unethical for a lawyer to sue his or her own client. A district judge agreed and ruled that Labrador was disqualified from personally handling the lawsuit. He had to assign another lawyer to pursue the lawsuit, while the State Board had to hire private attorneys to defend the case. Labrador’s office added additional claims to the suit but the judge dismissed them, leaving only a single claim for a January trial.

The State Board has consistently argued that Labrador’s employee, a Deputy AG, told the Board it could consider the U of I plan in a closed-door session without violating the law. We now learn the astounding fact that Labrador’s office has asked the judge to allow it to take the deposition of the Deputy AG. So, the Attorney General’s office now wants to put the Deputy, who works for the AG, under oath, to ask questions about what she told the Board. In the more than 50 years I’ve followed the office, including the 8 years I served as AG, I’ve never heard of such strange happenings. It is a further sign of dysfunction within the office.

In another situation where Labrador took legal action against several clients and was, as a consequence, disqualified from handling the lawsuit, the state is facing a claim for almost $120,000 in attorney fees. In that case Labrador, without prior warning, served Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) against Dave Jeppeson, the Director of the Idaho Department of Health and welfare (IDHW) and two of his staffers for their handling of a child care grant program. The CIDs called for the production of a mountain of documents. Jeppeson says he would have handed the documents over if Labrador had simply picked up the phone and asked for them.

Litigation ensued and the IDHW employees had to hire private attorneys to defend against the CIDs. After Labrador was removed from the lawsuit because of his conflict of interest, the AG’s new attorney withdrew the CIDs. Now, the IDHW’s attorneys are seeking an award of $119,112.50 for standing up against Labrador’s meritless claims.

Although Jeppeson was able to deflate the claims against him in court, Labrador’s actions resulted in an agency controlled by the Legislature questioning IDHW’s handling of the grant program. Jeppeson will likely be exonerated in a different lawsuit involving similar CIDs issued by Labrador to a large number of the child care grant recipients. That case is currently pending before the Idaho Supreme Court.

Labrador has not confined his legal hijinks to the State of Idaho. The most recent head-scratching legal action initiated by Labrador involves a California statute making California special education funds available to private schools, except for “nonsectarian” schools. Our AG is asking a federal court in California to invalidate the statute. The case will have no application in Idaho. In fact, Idaho’s Constitution has strong prohibitions against state funds being used for religious institutions or sectarian teaching. With all of his questionable legal exploits at home in Idaho, one wonders why his office should squander time and resources on fruitless out-of-state adventures.

In his first year as AG, Labrador has managed to raise serious concerns among Governor Little’s executive agencies as to whether they can trust the lawyer who is required by state law to represent them. He seems intent on challenging his statutory clients, while using his employees and resources to further his personal agenda. It is high time for him to buckle down and start doing the job that he was elected to do.