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Posts published in “Day: January 4, 2013”

The Idaho 2012 Yearbook

Each Monday, we publish the Idaho Weekly Briefing, sent via email to subscribers. toward the end of last year, we decided to try something new: Summarizing the key elements of the Briefings from throughout the year in one book. The Idaho Briefing Yearbook 2012 is now available, covering all of the last year.

Ordering information is in the box above. It is available now.

Unlike the regular Briefings, the book is available only (for now) in print version.

It takes in a wide range of territory, the same as the weekly Briefings (which also, separately, cover Oregon and Washington). We have reports on politics, federal, state and local government, legal and law enforcement action, business and the economy, the environment, health and education, transportation, communication and culture in the state. There are also calendars and reports on milestones of people - arrival and departures, including deaths, during the year.

If you want to know what happened (that's of importance) in Idaho last year, the Yearbook is probably the best place to start. Let us know what you think.

Idaho’s down to three members of Congress

rainey
Barrett Rainey
Second Thoughts

One of Idaho’s two congressional districts will be missing in the U.S. House this year. And next. The Republican fella who normally sits in the chair reserved for Idahoans from Boise North – Raul Labrador – will likely be a non-entity. And those 650,000 or so people he’s supposed to represent will have to get along without him handling their interests for about 24 months.

In another moment of his usual detachment from political reality, Labrador assured his exile by not voting for Speaker John Boehner’s re-election. He’ll chose to call it a “matter of conscience.” The rest of us will call it what it is: a “matter of betrayal of constituents.” If you want to fly your own single-seat plane into a cliff for personal reasons of conviction, that’s “conscience.” When you take 650,000 people with you, that’s betrayal. Not actively supporting your leadership when leadership needs your support is the closest Raul will get to piloting his own plane again. He’ll disappear from Boehner’s radar for about every purpose.

As for Boehner, he’ll spend the next two years in an even more ineffective role than the last two. He can’t speak for all of his own caucus. In fact, 16 of his members voted against him to keep his job and, if another 15 had changed their votes, he wouldn’t have made the first ballot cut. Messages there? You bet. Boehner will be able to do nothing the nutty right fringe doesn’t allow unless he gets some Democrats to go along.

And former Speaker Dennis Hastert – on Fixed News – had an experienced warning about such coalitions for ol’ John: “Maybe you can do it once; maybe you can do it twice. But you start making deals when you have to have Democrats to pass legislation, you’re not in power anymore.”

Then there’s this. While more than 82% of Americans disapprove of Congress and what it’s been doing – or rather, not doing – the evidence is overwhelming members don’t care. It used to be such polling numbers would send those folks home to apologize and promise they’d never do again whatever it was that put them in such disfavor. Now, they don’t care. (more…)