Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
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Unfortunately, what happens in Taiwan doesn’t just stay in Taiwan, it impacts us. So, when President Xi Jinping announced China’s plan to step up “unification “efforts, it gets our attention. “U.S. ties with Taiwan, a Cold War ally, are a lightning rod in the testy relations between Washington and Beijing, which sees Taiwan as a breakaway province and vows to use military force if needed to annex the island,” the Wall Street Journal reported recently. Xi’s words are not idle...
Setting the record straight I want to correct statements in the story you published in the Ritzville Adams County Journal on Oct. 6. Point One – The duly-elected mayor of the town of Lind has the authority to execute actions pertaining to permits submitted by the residents. Point Two – The statement of trespassing on property is also incorrect. Our contractor performed the work on the town of Lind's street right-of-way. There was no trespassing on the property. Point Three – The estimate of cost for installation of the water...
Medical freedom is more than women deciding if they are going to abort a pregnancy. It is a person’s decision if they want to waive resuscitation. It’s ending untreatable painful suffering. It’s choosing to take a riskier healing path than what’s recommended. It’s deciding what drugs to take. It’s deciding on vaccinations. The trio of COVID vaccinations was not welcomed by everyone. Some people decline to receive them. It used to be we had a right in Washington to decline medi...
It is often argued that managed health care can provide better clinical outcomes while holding down health care costs. Over the years, managed care has taken on many different names including health maintenance organizations, accountable care organizations, and medical homes for instance. The structure of managed care is based on a primary care provider who serves as a “gatekeeper” and coordinates the care of an individual patient with multiple specialists. The idea is tha...
The last week has not been good for small businesses in our part of the state. The U.S. Postal Service began slowing “snail mail” services. Stores were ordered to stop using plastic bags and required to make their paying customers pay for a paper bag. And the state announced the minimum wage would jump to $14.49 per hour Jan. 1. If you don’t own or manage a business, this may seem overly dramatic. Who cares if it takes an extra day for your mail to arrive, right? It’s only 8...
Food security is often thought of as a national topic, but food security starts locally. Washington state is part of what the U.S. Department of Agriculture has dubbed the “Fruitful Rim.” Yet, we are also home to numerous “food deserts” where food is hard to come by. The USDA defines a food desert as a “low-income tract where a substantial number or substantial share of residents does not have easy access to a supermarket or grocery store.” More specifically, food deserts are...
Poland and America are like two trains passing each other in opposite directions. That is becoming increasingly clear as President Biden rolls out his progressive agenda. The key question looking forward: “Will government or consumers drive our economy?” Poland broke the shackles of Soviet communist domination three decades ago. Free for the first time since World War II, Poland cast off its yoke of government control and central planning in favor of an American-style free enterprise system where consumers, not elected offici...
Collective Adventure improves community I am writing this letter in support of the Christian ministry The Collective Adventure in downtown Ritzville. The director of the ministry, George Smith, and his wife, Mary, have hearts to reach out to people who are in need in the community. I am aware of the negative publicity recently regarding the ministry, and I understand the concerns expressed. But as the number of people who make up the margins in American society grows, it’s nearly impossible not to be confronted by the c...
Talk about a bureaucrat with delusions of grandeur. On Sept. 3, Washington State University Extension Office Director Vicki A. McCracken took it upon herself to dictate that all 4-H volunteers now have to be “fully vaccinated” to continue in their position or face being “inactive.” She cited Gov. Jay Inslee’s edict that everyone connected to education – from preschool through the university system – must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18. Apparently, neither McCracken nor Inslee have attended the fantastic fairs and other 4-H...
School events shouldn’t compete with community Labor Day weekend has been a time when the communities of Benge, Lind, Ritzville, Sprague and Washtucna come together to celebrate and display what have been some of the great mainstays of our communities since their beginnings in the Wheat Land Communities Fair and Ritzville Rodeo and the Ritzville Chamber of Commerce Parade. I was disappointed on Saturday of the Labor Day Weekend to learn that our school was participating in an out-of-town athletic event that took many s...
Arrogance is running wild in Olympia. It has consumed the State Legislature and the office of governor. This article addresses only the arrogance, not the specific policies, of these institutions. It is time for Uncommon Sense. In 1776, Thomas Paine published a 47-page pamphlet that, as much as any other factor at work in the American colonies, emboldened the populace to rise up against the monarchy of Great Britain. The pamphlet was called Common Sense. It was a runaway bestseller in its time, ubiquitous from pulpits to...
We have to get back to normal The masking at schools and inside public places, regardless of vaccination status, is very questionable. The one-size fits all approach (typical of government) should not apply to our rural, sparsely populations areas, especially those with small numbers of students and classisizes. Again, the medical people, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Health, etc., are being overly cautious and unrealistic. Supposedly, some 600,000 people, mostly elderly, died from COVID-19 in the U.S....
When thinking of England’s fabled Sherwood Forest, the medieval images of Robin Hood and his band of archers and swordsmen hiding in the woods giving the sheriff of Nottingham a hard time comes to mind. Who would envision a crew of young American oil workers concealed among the giant oaks drilling oil wells? However, the crude production from those wells was essential in helping fuel the D-Day invasion launched from English shores in 1944. Until Guy Woodward and Grace Steele Woodward published “The Secret of Sherwood Forest ...
Sept. 11, 2001 – a day that no American who lived to see will ever forget. I was recently asked about where I was that day, and I remember it keenly, deeply. I think it’s a question every American has an answer to—a moment engraved in time. Since it was early September, it was right in the middle of hop harvest. My cousin and I were working to unplug the picking machine, a more-than-common occurrence for hop farmers, when his wife called, crying. Those first moments that morning were ones of disbelief. Then, justification—it...
It’s clear: Parents in Washington are sick of their children being used as pawns by radicals in power who wish to destroy family, children and faith. Widespread protests against mask mandates at school and vaccine mandates at work have erupted statewide, with many calling out Gov. Jay Inslee for his aggressive misuses and abuses of emergency powers. This has largely been a fight for religious freedom and individual liberty, but it is creeping onto another deeply disturbing frontier — the fight for parental rights. The see...
Having lived in three developing countries for 17 years, I met very fine Americans — as well as arrogant and ignorant Americans. Representatives from the U.S. Embassy, USAID, Peace Corps, U.S. Military, UNICEF and UNESCO and missionaries are among those I encountered. Many stayed briefly, never getting to know the culture. Most Americans, including me, travel with American glasses, and don’t often see what is happening right before our eyes. For instance, in Sierra Leone, I saw women working the fields, and thought for two...
The long-term effects of the COVID-19 vaccines are unknown. The leadership is telling us the vaccines are safe; yet, the minimum 5-year observation trials for gene therapy drugs have not been conducted. The COVID "vaccines" are gene therapy drugs. Some doctors are warning us that the vaccines are sterilizing women and creating blood clots that lead to heart failure. Many of these doctors have been fired from their jobs and sued in the courts in an attempt to coerce others into silence. When criticism is met with an attack on...
Mark Weigand is well aware of the issues which face Ritzville and the issues which the majority of the city councils have taken over the years that have had negative consequences for the residents of Ritzville. Mark Weigand has not supported bad financial decisions that sometimes the majority of some councils have supported. Unfortunately, we have not had candidate forums in Ritzville for many years so candidates for office of this city have not had to explain why they should be City Council members and why they promoted or...
It has now has been over 530 days since Gov. Jay Inslee proclaimed a state of emergency and again issued another order without going through the Legislature. He ordered that all state employees and healthcare professionals working in private facilities must get the COVID-19 vaccine or face termination. Workers have until Oct. 18 to show proof of full vaccination. If they do not, they will likely be shown the door with “non-disciplinary dismissal.” It is beyond debatable that the governor has abused his emergency powers and...
When stopping the spread of the COVID virus mattered most, Washington state officials failed badly Key Findings 1. State mortality data show that the governor’s restrictions may have increased the number of deaths by 50% during the COVID pandemic. 2. While some lock-down requirements may have helped, they were not as meaningful as has been claimed, and states that imposed fewer restrictions had lower per-capita death rates. 3. The strict lock-down restrictions imposed a health cost of their own, with state data showing that f...
Liberals in Congress are actively campaigning to force price controls on drug manufacturers. The House has already passed bills that would limit the amount of money pharmaceutical companies can charge for drugs. The fate of this proposed legislation is uncertain in the U.S. Senate. At the same time, the Biden Administration and others on the political left are attacking the companies that have made the COVID-19 vaccines. They seek a waiver to the 1994 TRIPS Act, which was accepted by all countries in the World Trade...
McMorris Rodgers undermining medical advice Clearly it is public officials like our own Cathy McMorris Rodgers who most irresponsibly undermine trust in the COVID-19 vaccines and other life-saving recommendations made by medical experts during the pandemic. Her false, fear-mongering public pronouncements on this vital subject are all too characteristic of her. For example, in a rebuke of Biden’s announcement of likely mandatory COVID vaccines for military members, she called any effort to mandate a vaccine an overreach by t...
Mr. Ed Schweitzer, who founded and leads Pullman-based Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, recently pointed out how the new long-term care tax will have an extra-bitter taste for people who call Idaho home but work in our state, in border cities like Clarkston or Pullman. Those include a significant number of SEL’s employee-owners, he wrote in a letter to Gov. Inslee, who will be forced to pay the tax but can never benefit from it if they don’t reside in Washington. His let...
Parents of public school students in the 9th Legislative district have had enough of coronavirus-related mandates from Olympia. Shutter schools, curtail sports, wear masks, limit field trips and restrict access to graduation. Those actions have not been embraced here. And neither has Gov. Jay Inslee’s renewed call for all public school students to remain masked for the upcoming 2021-22 school year. Area parents are pushing back. This week, led by a group from Fairfield, many p...
Massive forest fires in the western parts of our country are not only choking us with layers of thick smoke, but are leaving behind millions of acres of scorched hillsides, ridges and valleys. Simply, there are not enough trees to absorb CO2 and prevent erosion. According to the Arbor Day Foundation, record wildfire seasons in recent years have destroyed millions of trees. Many forests have burned so severely that natural regeneration is not possible, which makes replanting...