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Posts published in January 2026

Anne Frank then and now

Anne Frank then and now

January 30, 2026

The Anne Frank Human Rights Memorial is set near the middle of Boise, just off Capital Boulevard not far south of the Statehouse, and on the banks of the Boise River. Founded in 2002, it is the only Anne Frank memorial in the United States.

Boise might seem an odd place for it, or would if you think of it rigidly as a memorial to human rights generically, or to specific events in Nazi Europe generations ago.

It should do more.

Anne Frank is known primarily through the moving diary she left behind, and if you didn’t read it in school (as I and many people have), here’s a summary. Of Jewish heritage, she was born in Germany four years before Adolf Hitler came to power. Reading the portents, the family moved to the Netherlands, which worked until that country was overrun by the Nazis in 1940. Jews there as elsewhere in Nazis territory were persecuted, grabbed by Nazi forces, and taken away, sometimes deported or sent to concentration camps. The air was drenched in a deeply justified fear.

Keeping a low profile became not enough, and the Frank family went into hiding, in a small dark space inside a building, helped by friends who kept them out of sight and supplied with food and other necessities. Anne Frank’s dairy centered on what that nightmare looked and felt like.

The Gestapo found them in June 1944. Anne Frank, with her sister, was sent to the Auschwitz and then Bergan-Belsen concentration camps; she died at the latter, age 15. She was one of millions of people who perished in the Holocaust.

How much of it relates to what’s happening now has become a matter of controversy.

There is unquestionable similarity at least in part. Here and now in the United States people are seized or forced into hiding not because of what they did but because of their ethnicity - or opposition to the powers that be in Washington. Networks of citizens are loosely organized to try to help them, people who signal when the officials are coming or provide food and medical assistance for those who dare not show themselves in daylight - who feel unsafe going to school or a store or even to seek medical help. We do have people shot to death in the streets.

We do have, in many communities these days, a growing atmosphere of terror, unlike anything America has experienced but something Anne Frank might have recognized from the Netherlands circa 1942.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz made the comparison explicit at a January 25 news conference: "We have got children in Minnesota hiding in their houses, afraid to go outside. Many of us grew up reading that story of Anne Frank. Somebody's going to write that children's story about Minnesota."

Or maybe - remembering the mass roundup late last year - in Wilder. Idaho is not exempt.

There are of course plenty of people who look at this differently, starting with the Trump Administration. There are nuanced reactions too. Deborah Lauter, executive director of New York’s Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights, who said “If people are upset about what’s happening in democracy, they can talk about authoritarianism and fascism, but making direct comparisons to the Holocaust crosses the line and we see it as Holocaust distortion, which, as I said, is seen as a threat to the legacy of the Holocaust. We don’t want to compare.”

She may not want to compare, but we must. What after all is the point of paying careful attention to Anne Frank’s and those of the millions of other victims of the Holocaust if we do not? If there is a point, it is in the admonition made by many Jewish people after World War II: Never Again.

No, this is not the Holocaust: It is not exactly the same, nor is it all that it was. But it sure echoes. What we have now should not have to check every box before we take action to keep  it from getting there.

Visit the Anne Frank memorial, and think about what we - and you - should do next.

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Grants

Grants

January 29, 2026

The news and the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare are trumpeting the billion-dollar, five-year grant to our state. This fiasco was shoe-horned into the One Big Beautiful Boondoggle that cut taxes and exploded our debt.

Our federal “Gang of Four” want credit for bringing the dollars home, while they cut Medicaid funding and ballooned our debt. Go ahead, slap them on the back.

Vote for them again. After all, they are Republican and Trump lackeys.

This grant required states to propose projects that would “qualify” in a narrow three-month window. How’s that for thoughtful expenditure of our tax dollars?

The projects had to be sustained beyond the five-year grant period by the state. Do you think the Idaho legislature is going to come up with $200M/year for Idaho healthcare when the grant runs out?

Most of the grant money will be for technology improvements. I have seen this before. Who gets that money? Not local communities. The big tech bros who sat behind Trump at the inaugural catch this effluent downstream. It will just wash through our depleted state.

The ACA (Obamacare for you Republicans) did the same thing. I was working on the IDHW budgets in those years. I asked my analyst (Hey Tater!) what the heck this money was doing. Indeed, it was all Federal money, from our federal income taxes. It was supposed to be moving clinics and hospitals to more electronic medical records. I asked him to look into it. He told me the money was helping. I shrugged and it got appropriated. That was stupid.

I had been through this in real life. I was in the first large clinic in Idaho to adopt electronic medical records. We were on the cutting edge. And we made the investment without any federal or state grants. We spent our own money. Why?

I learned we had different reasons for this investment. I believed that having our medical records in a searchable database we could study our practices and find out the best treatments, the best way to deal with the common problems we saw daily.

My partners had different reasons. We had five people working in our medical records department at the time. They were low wage but had benefits and retirement. After the million-dollar investment we had one medical records employee.

Three years into the “experiment”, long before Obamacare, I proposed leveraging this investment to my partners. Let’s do studies on our data. Let’s find out what our best treatment for a urinary tract infection is. We could find out how we are treating high blood pressure. We could improve our practice.

It was an impassioned speech. The group around the table was quiet. Don’t you want to learn how to treat your patients better, I asked. They were all quiet. I looked at the guy next to me. Don’t you? I asked directly.

He looked up at me, squarely in the eyes, and honestly said, “No.”

The allure of data, analysis, technology in medical care is a sham if there is no commitment from the professionals pulling the levers.

So we need to be asking ourselves some painful questions.

Why does Idaho need more doctors if they are just here to make themselves richer?

Do doctors really improve the health of a community?

What do you people want from healthcare?

We don’t have to answer these tough questions (though we should), but big money is asking and answering them while we pay the taxes, and the taxpayer funded grants go out the door.

The billion-dollar grant to Idaho will go to big tech companies who sell kiosks and apps to connect to a provider. The call you make will go to Islamabad, or more likely AI, and you might get the reassurance you need or not.

Will your community be better off?

I am sorry I shrugged with the ACA money for electronic records. It didn’t cost Idaho taxpayers. But it cost us all. We should be expecting more and getting more for the way too much we pay for this horrible health care system. This needs to change.

 

Domestic violence, homeless surge

Domestic violence, homeless surge

January 28, 2026

Imagine the desperation LaRita Shepherd must have felt three years ago, sleeping in her car or along the Boise River. And she had a 7-year-old daughter who was living somewhere else.

LaRita says that as bad as those days were, they still felt safer than staying with her abuser. She tried to leave several times, but each attempt ended with him finding her again. With a shelter feeling out of reach, her only “safe haven” became her car or the banks of the Boise River. In the chaos of survival, substance use took hold as she tried to cope.

“The summers were extremely hot and the winters were beyond freezing,” she said.

Along the way, someone told LaRita about CATCH, a nonprofit agency that helps homeless families find housing and get back on their feet. Now, LaRita and her daughter are living in an apartment in Boise. LaRita is off drugs, working fulltime and pursuing a career in cosmetology. Her daughter is thriving as a fifth-grade student.

And LaRita is a testimony about the value of CATCH.

“CATCH gave me the self-confidence I have today,” she says. “They’ve given me and many others a second chance at life. Life just seems to make sense now.”

LaRita’s is not the only success story, and she’s far from the only victim of domestic violence living on the streets. According to CATCH, nearly half of the families they’ve worked with over the past year (44 percent) were fleeing domestic violence. In Southwest Idaho alone, that amounts to 100 of the 227 families CATCH has served since 2024. It’s a pattern that Jeremy Blades, the organization’s director of housing services, says he’s seen again and again.

That’s 100 of 227 families served by CATCH in Southwest Idaho since 2024. Jeremy Blades, CATCH director of housing services, has seen this story play out many times.

“The moment a survivor chooses safety, they often lose their housing, financial stability, social support and legal protection all at once,” he said. “Leaving your abuser often means leaving everything behind.”

Stephanie Day, the executive director of CATCH, has seen homelessness from all angles, but she was surprised by the numbers that recently were released. The reality doesn’t match some of the myths – that unemployment, alcohol and drugs are the leading causes.

“I was shocked,” she said. “I’ve been a social worker for 20 years, and we didn’t have a good grasp of how rampant the problem was with domestic violence. I think much of the community will be surprised with those numbers, too.”

According to Betsy Bowling, a regional director for housing services, domestic violence survivors – such as LaRita -- require specialized support.

“We typically start with safety planning – they often can’t live just anywhere. Domestic violence victims lack resources and require more time with case managers as they rebuild safety and stability.”

Blades says that finding housing can take anywhere from a few months to a couple of years.

“But waiting doesn’t mean waiting alone,” he says. “Through our network, more than 40 partner organizations, families receive immediate support including shelter placement, food assistance, healthcare and other vital services while they wait for more safe and stable housing.”

Of course, housing – and money – don’t grow on trees. The holiday season is over, but the needs are glaring for an organization that last year provided housing for 440 people. That includes 105 families and 208 children. Donations can be made through catchidaho.org.

“When you support CATCH, you’re not just helping families find housing,” says Ryan Den Heuvel, director of development. “You’re helping families rebuild, regain stability, and write a new chapter – one where their future is defined not by crisis, but by hope that can reshape their families’ trajectory for generations.”

LaRita Shepherd, for one, is an example of where “new chapters” can go.

Chuck Malloy, a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist, is a volunteer writer with the Idaho Community Foundation’s Nonprofit Center. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

 

Across the divide on housing

Across the divide on housing

January 27, 2026

Bet you couldn’t come up with a controversial topic which finds President Donald Trump and Oregon’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley on the same side. Well, more or less.

And not only one, but one with implications for the Oregon Legislature.

But here we are: Concern about mass big-money purchases of residential property.

President Trump on Jan. 7 said something widely unexpected (in itself not a rarity): He would support a ban on big institutional investors buying single-family houses, as an approach to apply downward pressure on housing prices. His proposal was not much more specific than that. It has not been followed up since, and the administration has been mostly silent about it.

Some members of Congress said they were interested. At least one Republican senator, Bernie Moreno of Ohio, said he would propose legislation in the area. But more Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, said they have been pushing for limitations on big-money buys of housing stock for some years, often meeting Republican resistance.

The senator most identified with the issue, though, is Merkley of Oregon, who for several years has focused especially on mass buys of real estate by hedge funds.

In October 2024, he offered a proposal that “bans hedge funds from owning single-family homes and forces hedge funds and other large private investors to sell their inventory of single-family homes to families who don’t currently own a home. If the hedge funds don’t, they are required to pay a substantial tax penalty that funds a down payment assistance program.”

How much impact corporate, institutional and wealthy buyers are having on the cost of housing has been hotly debated. Institutional investors (including hedge funds) may account for less than 5% of purchases according to some studies, but investors of other kinds may represent a quarter or more of all house buyers in expanding markets. Some studies in places like Atlanta have put the number as high as a third.

Of course, many people who live in the houses they buy also own them in part as a long-term investment, but that’s a different category and tends to have less effect on raising prices.

The effect of corporate and other big-money buying comes not just from adding to competition for houses, but more from driving up prices, since such investors could afford much higher prices — almost the sky’s the limit in some cases — than average home buyers could manage.

Only a small percentage of middle class home buyers can afford house prices a half-million dollars or more, but those sales points have held in place, and in some active markets continue to rise. Wealthy investors and institutional buyers are among the few market segments that can afford them; absent them, some of those higher prices might drop.

Members of Congress like Merkley and Warren have been interested in the subject for a while, but it is not the only place action could take place. It can happen, and might even be more locally effective, at the state level.

Housing prices last year became a hot campaign topic in one of Oregon’s border states, Nevada. It might yet find its way across the border.

In Nevada, a Democratic legislature has proposed a string of ideas aimed at limiting housing costs, several of which were vetoed by the Republican governor. The subject has become a centerpiece in the 2026 gubernatorial campaign there.

Late last year, Nevada legislators proposed Senate Bill 10 which was intended to set a ceiling on all corporate purchases of homes in the state to no more than 1,000 total. Advocates noted recent studies showing connections between high number of investor purchases of homes and rising home prices.

The bill failed by a single vote, but the idea is sure to return before long.

The same concept could be picked up in Oregon, as early as this year’s short session. Odds are that no such complex legislation would make its way through to passage so quickly, but it would be put on the table, for review over the year (and in campaign season) and teed up for more thorough action in 2027.

Such measures would not not be a complete fix for the problem, of course. The sheer amount of residential housing in Oregon needs to be increased (something the state has been working on), and that’s an essential element to providing more affordable housing for more people.

But houses are unlikely to become more affordable if big-money buyers with few limits on price keep putting higher floors under housing prices. It’ll be up to the legislature to do something about that.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

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And the wreckage continues

January 27, 2026

Television coverage only hits the highlights and newspaper coverage concentrates on the new atrocities without following up on the continued development of earlier practices and the devastation that is following it. This means that things are even worse than one might imagine, and with no respite in sight.

Trump has placed incompetents in charge of most of the agencies. The criteria for appointment is loyalty to Trump rather than knowledge or understanding of the work to be done, and actual experience is immaterial.

Trump changed the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and placed an incompetent in charge. The new secretary is performing as expected. He is demoting and running off women, blacks and Jews from all levels of military leadership, reversing the steps to eliminate discrimination in the military that have been placed into effect during the last 100 years.

Further, Trump has gutted the Department of Education and eliminated large chunks of the Department of Health and Human Resources. He is ending programs for treatment of a list of life threatening maladies and has reversed the government support for early inoculation of children against the worst of childhood diseases. He has turned the Department of Justice into a personal weapon by bringing some of his personal enemies into court on “Trumped up” criminal charges. Over loud objections, he changed the name of The Kennedy Center to the “Trump-Kennedy Center,” with the result that a number of entertainers pulled out of scheduled appearances.

His domestic efforts to seize and deport any foreigner found anywhere in country has astonished and appalled a great number of us.  Contrary to his campaign promise that he would only seek out criminals and similar undesirables for adverse immigration efforts, he has instead tasked the immigration forces to proceed against the easiest of targets. Long-time residents and business owners, fully employed workers found in their workplaces, children, students, and the aged make easy targets for horrendous treatment by what has become a modern gestapo.

We have known for years that our immigration laws and procedures are broken and in desperate need of a massive overhaul. And yet, as the years go by, our Congress has failed to reach a solution that will satisfy the two major parties. The result has been a deadlocked Congress with a broken system of immigration that continues to grow worse each year. This has resulted in a huge number of immigrants in the grey area of incomplete process living in our country and being within Trumps’ target area for summary deportation.

The hardships befalling the hapless families occasioned by the summary deportations is appalling. Trumps’ actions in this area have generated huge demonstrations in all areas of the country, with the massive indications of disapproval falling upon deaf ears. There is no solution in sight, nor any indication that Trump intends to let up on his actions.

Despite the experience of the 1930s, and the cautionary warnings of every one of Trumps’ economic advisors, Trump is beginning to impose general tariffs on all imports. He continues to claim that these tariffs will be imposed upon the foreign shippers in the face of the plain fact that tariffs are always paid by domestic payees – initially by the domestic importers and passed on to domestic user through higher prices.

Our trading partners are beginning to impose counter tariffs, as expected, which will worsen the impact of it all upon our population. The tariffs and counter tariffs are beginning to produce the expected result of shortages in certain critical areas, the failures of smaller importers and exporters, increased prices in most areas, and widespread panic and uncertainties everywhere.

In his latest endeavor, he has announced an intent to acquire the island of Greenland. This huge and largely desolate area is mostly within the Arctic Circle and uninhabitable. It is at present a protectorate of Denmark. Denmark has indicated no interest in giving up their interests and Trump has threatened the imposition of punitive tariffs unless they comply with his wishes. The result is an expected tension between the United States and all of its European allies, especially those within the North Atlantic circle of countries.

All have responded to Trumps’ threats of increased tariffs with promises of counter tariffs, placing. domestic shippers in an uncertain future. Foreign trade is grinding to a standstill, bringing seaports and  large areas of trucking to a halt and with other results beginning to flow through the system into all levels of the economy. Some might say that one cannot imagine how the situation could become any worse.

But all one had to do to fully expect what is happening to us all is to have listened to Trump before the election. None of what is happening today is any surprise. Trump announced every one of his actions in advance and during his campaign. All one had to do to understand where he is coming from now is to have paid attention to what he promised during the campaign.

What to do? Does anyone believe that the disastrous consequences are going to stop on  their own, or that Trump will change direction in any area where he is presently looking?

The only recourse now is impeachment. But unless a sizable handful of Republicans in the Senate agree to jump ship, the action would be a waste of time. Only if the Senate changes in a substantial manner is impeachment a practical solution.

At the present time, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Republican majority in the Senate is a complete block to any vote on impeachment. It takes a two-thirds vote to convict, meaning 67 Senators. On the best of days, it is unlikely that enough Republicans would join he Democrats to provide this many votes to impeach. A decent majority may be expected with a few Republican votes, but not a two thirds majority.

Even if the Democrats take control of the Senate in the next general election if 2026, and reach a majority of the Senate, there still will not be enough Democratic senators.to assure a two-thirds majority. Some Republican Senators will have to step out of their party stance and join the Democrats if Trump is to be impeached
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What’s that you say? Fat chance?

Probably true. There are few Republican Senators expressing any interest in jumping ship and joining the Democrats in their endeavors. While a Democratic congress will slow Trump down, it will still take a new election to chase him from office and set up any real relief.

Stay tuned. It is going to get much worse before it gets any better.

 

Rendezvous with the 25th

January 26, 2026

You have to ask yourself–what’s going on in our commander-in-chief’s upper story? His obsession with getting the land title to Greenland, even if it breaks up the NATO alliance, is absolutely bizarre. The U.S. can already use Greenland for just about anything we want–military bases, mining its minerals to our heart’s content, whatever. But Trump won't be satisfied until he has a deed to the property because, as he said, it is: “Psychologically important to me. Now, maybe another president would feel differently, but so far I’ve been right about everything.”

Trump has not ruled out military action to get what he wants, saying he can do it the “easy way” or the “hard way.” That echoes the threat he made before sending the military to snatch President Maduro of Venezuela. He has now threatened to impose tariffs on eight of our NATO allies–Germany, Britain, Norway, Sweden, France, the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark–who oppose the unlawful land grab. The tariffs will start at 10% on February 1 and increase to 25% on June 1, until the nations cry “uncle.”

This is in addition to the tariffs agreed upon just last year.

Our European allies are considering possible retaliatory moves, some of which could possibly devastate the American economy. The principal measure, often called the EU’s trade “bazooka,” deserves an explanatory column of its own. This and a variety of other off-putting actions against some of our staunchest traditional allies have caused massive efforts to forge new trading relationships between and among them, as well as stronger ties to China, our major adversary.

It may not have occurred to Trump that the U.S. Supreme Court is currently getting prepared to issue an opinion on the lawfulness of Trump’s use or misuse of the constitutional power of Congress to impose tariffs. While the Court must rule just on the case before it, the vote of individual Justices can be swayed by extremely troubling current events. This naked misuse of power to coerce our closest allies certainly can’t convince members of the Court to let Trump run roughshod over the Constitution.

If this were the only inexplicable action of our nation’s chief executive, it would be bad enough. In combination with a steady stream of unhinged actions, it is truly frightening. The man behind the nation’s wheel appears to be in serious need of mental help.

Let us briefly consider just a few of Trump’s recent actions. One that has not gotten nearly enough attention is his encouragement of demonstrators in Iran and promise  that “help is on its way.” Help was definitely not on its way. In fact, the Iranian regime used Trump's intemperate statements to convince many in Iran that the U.S. was the instigator of the riots. That, in turn, intensified the violent suppression of the riots.  Iranian dissidents now rightfully claim that Trump betrayed them.

Or, how about his latest imperial decree—that no other college football game can be aired at the same time as the Army-Navy game. He’ll be in attendance and is setting aside an “EXCLUSIVE 4 hour Broadcast window” for the game, and “No other Game or Team can violate this Time Slot!!!”

Here’s the guy who cajoled Maria Corina Machado, the rightful president of Venezuela, into regifting him her Nobel Peace Prize, when he had initially given her the cold shoulder. He looked genuinely thrilled with the undeserved boost to his ego. It did not take long for her to figure out that continual, unremitting praise is what fuels him. His sycophantic cabinet members heap adulation upon his slumbering presence until it surpasses the gag reflux level. He is certainly the neediest president in our history.

What I’m driving at is that Trump has exhibited a lust for power and praise that is becoming practically insatiable. In the old days we called it megalomania. A megalomaniac is a person who has an excessive belief in their own importance, power, or abilities, often leading to delusions of grandeur and a lust for power. Nowadays, the symptoms are associated with narcissistic personality disorder. Dr. John Gartner, a distinguished psychologist, has offered an intriguing explanation of how Trump seems to fit the profile of what he characterizes as a malignant narcissist. He posits that Trump may not be able to serve his full term as president because of the malady.

If Gartner is correct, there should be serious consideration of invoking the 25th Amendment. It provides authority for a majority of the Cabinet to declare the president disabled, making the vice-president the acting president. The president can contest the declaration, leading to a Congressional decision. This is an issue that must be addressed before a major catastrophe befalls our beloved nation.

 

Trump in Idaho, segmented

Trump in Idaho, segmented

January 23, 2026

Idaho is a Trumpy state. You won’t easily find anyone to argue with that. I certainly wouldn’t try.

But things are rarely quite that simple, as a new poll subtly suggests.

Before we get to that, you have to consider the evidence of Donald Trump support. In the 2016 general election, he received 59.2% of the Idaho vote. In 2020, he got 63.8%. In 2024, it was 66.9%, winning 42 of 44 counties. So the percentages have been growing.

Such abundance doesn’t come without its cost, though.

Anyone who’s worked in or around a legislature will tell you that a small majority is easier to lead or unify than a very large one. Big legislative caucuses have a way of fracturing in critical moments; it’s happened from time to time in recent years in the Idaho Legislature, so heavily dominated by Republicans. The reasons are simple and common through human nature; we’re all a little bit different, and the larger any group of people becomes, the more differences, over time, are likely to arise.

This point comes up in the context of a poll commissioned by the Mountain States Policy Institute, which describes itself as a think tank but one which has reached its conclusions from the outset, in favor of “ free markets and limited government.” So you would expect that if it runs and releases the results of a poll, it’s unlikely to release results running counter to its stated purpose in life - which as a matter of practice, albeit not official statement, is apt to favor Republicans, at least most of the time. Any bias in the other direction would be truly shocking.

(Don’t confuse this survey with the annual Boise State University poll which covers some of the same topic areas; it’s differently set up and conducted for different purposes.)

That’s not to say the polling is off base. Its new poll also notes for example housing affordability as a top concern among Idahoans, which seems obviously true. It certainly offers useful material to work with.

The 2026 Idaho Poll, conducted January 2 through 9 of 800 Idaho registered voters, asked a question about Trump’s approval in the state, and the details are worth parsing.

It asked “Do you approve or disapprove of the way President Trump is performing his job?” The bottom online was 59% favorable and 39% disapproving (with 1% “not sure”). That’s clearly favorable, but if accurate, represents a big drop from the vote a little more than a year ago.

The more interesting piece was the breakdown between those “strongly” or “somewhat” approving or disapproving. It showed 26% strongly approving of Trump and 33% just somewhat; more soft support than hard.

And more interesting than that, while just 11% said they “somewhat” disapproved of Trump, 28% strongly did - more than strongly approved of him.

As a point of comparison, another set of highly localized data from the monthly Strength In Numbers/Verasight poll puts Trump’s Idaho approval number at 56.8%, third highest in the nation (behind West Virginia and Oklahoma); by comparison, in the city of Portland (they really don’t like Trump) approval is at 14.4%. Approval in Ada County was listed as 38% while, obviously, it was much higher in the rest of the state (highest in central Idaho).

What conclusions might we draw  from this?

One I would suggest is that Trump voters or supporters (in Idaho) are not all alike. That group of 26% strong supporters are the hard core true believers, the unshakeable backers. But the group of softer supporters are another matter. Most of them probably have a hard time with the thought of voting Democratic, but they’re not entirely comfortable with Trump either. His actions over the last year seem likely to have shaken their support to a degree.

The Trump support is in shades and degrees.

Monoliths never look as monolithic when you look at them more closely.

 

Allow me

Allow me

January 22, 2026

So the Idaho legislature is in session, and we should all be paying attention. For we elected these clowns. Maybe a clown show is what we want.

I don’t. So allow me some suggestions.

It seems Idaho wants to increase the number of doctors who practice here. The legislature even spent our money so these clowns could get together and consider some recommendations. They say we need 1400 more docs just to be “average”. And they have their $recommendations$.

Allow me, as a retired, worn out, possibly criminal Idaho Family Doc to comment. Do you need my bona fides? The years I worked in our small-town seeing patients in the clinic, delivering babies, covering the ER, taking care of ICU patients and sometimes calling the helicopter? If you do, let me know.

If this interim committee looking into the need for doctors in Idaho might have had lunch with the other interim committee calling themselves “DOGE Idaho” maybe there might have been some synergy. But that’s probably a “woke” concept in our state.

DOGE Idaho has decided it would be best for Idaho to drop Medicaid Expansion coverage. To be honest, I wasn’t surprised. Idaho legislators have had their shorts in a twist ever since Idaho voters told them to quit clowning around.

Idaho voters understood the numbers and the injustice of the “Gap” people in the ACA= Obamacare mess. Some folks can’t qualify for Medicaid, and they can’t go on the exchange to buy insurance. They were in the gap. Idaho voters solved their problem with a righteous and compassionate vote.

So it now costs our Idaho taxpayers about as much as we spend on private school vouchers. 50,000 people get your tax dollars to send their kids to a private school, and 90,000 Idahoans get access to health insurance.

Please allow me to square this circle.

Idaho legislators have driven doctors from this state. These clowns created this mess.

Twice in my weak career I performed what the Idaho legislature now call a criminal act. I did things to cause the delivery of two fetuses I knew would not survive birth. And Idaho legislators call that a crime.

So you want more doctors in this great state? Maybe you should quit calling them criminals for giving care.

You already require all doctors supported in their medical education by Idaho taxpayers to return here and work for four years.

Maybe you should make the schools they send their kids to exemplary.

Maybe you should make this a state doctors want to practice in.

And here’s a hint. It comes from a retired, washed-up old family doc. Doc’s like getting paid for what they do. And you now want to take away that payment?

There are lots of folks with “real” insurance, like all you clowns in the Idaho legislature have at our expense, but insurance is how doctors get paid. Don’t get me started on the stupidity of this ACA/Obamacare system.

But you clowns are considering two stupid things to be spending our taxpayer dollars. You want to cut off payment to doctors and hospitals, and at the same time spend money to bring more doctors to this state. Can’t you see?

Doctors don’t like Medicaid. It pays much less than your gold-plated insurance. But it pays something.

Idaho DOGE should have spent some time on this one. Why do most private insurance companies have >15% overhead and Medicaid and Medicare, the government insurances have overhead costs below 5%? Shouldn’t we be trying to lower overhead costs?

You have been generous. You have allowed me to call my state legislators “clowns” and you have let me get into the weeds of health care policy. I apologize about the clown’s thing. But please, don’t stop thinking about this health care mess we are in. We need to solve it.

 

A wish list, not a budget-buster

A wish list, not a budget-buster

January 21, 2026

One thing seems certain about this year’s legislative session. With a daunting budget shortfall lying before them, it’s a good bet that trimming budgets will be high on the lawmakers’ “do” list.

That means saying “no” to a lot of heart-wrenching causes in state government and, perhaps, to nonprofits as well. Kevin Bailey, who heads the Idaho Community Foundation’s Nonprofit Center, is well aware of the challenges and lends a sympathetic eye to legislators who have to make hard decisions.

“It’s a difficult job,” he says. “There will be around 700 bills introduced, along with dozens and dozens of special interests making requests.”

The community foundation is one of the groups with a “policy agenda” for this session, but it’s one than legislators might be receptive to in this cost-cutting environment. Nonprofits receive almost no general-fund dollars.

“It’s largely maintaining appropriations for grants that are paid with federal dollars, such as Meals on Wheels for seniors,” Bailey says.

The center’s wish list includes maintaining property tax exemptions for nonprofits, supporting appropriations that enhance nonprofits’ ability to provide essential community services and keeping the federal and state tax codes friendly toward charitable giving. The agenda also backs initiatives that promote increasing the supply “of high-quality affordable childcare, policies that allow for innovative/pooled employee benefit solutions, and policies that ensure a stable and affordable health insurance market for employers, which affects all businesses (nonprofit and for-profit alike).”

Bailey says that Idaho legislators generally are supportive of nonprofits, and for good reason. “Idaho runs on nonprofits,” he says.

He makes a good point. Something I have learned in my 10 months writing about nonprofits is that this state is full of good people doing good things – with minimal, if any, help from the government. And this is what Bailey sees every day in his job.

“I think about it from the aspect of my own family life,” Bailey says. “Nonprofits are places of worship, after-school programs, childcare, places we send our kids for summer camps, the discovery center, the performances we see at the Morrison Center. Nonprofits are like oxygen … we take them for granted, but people will notice if you take them away and our communities will die off.”

For conservative-minded legislators, nonprofits help keep government small by providing social services that substantially are not paid by taxpayer dollars.

“Nonprofits are a good deal for the taxpayer because in many ways, they save the state from having to create its own programs,” Bailey says. “Not all nonprofits are perfect, certainly there are exceptions, but nonprofits are local, generally small and are well managed. Almost all have 10 to 25 board members who make decisions about the community and organizations that they shepherd. If that’s not democracy in action, then I don’t know what is.”

As with other groups, Bailey says, there are advocates at the Statehouse lobbying for the center’s policy agenda and other issues of interest to nonprofits. As Bailey sees it, there’s a critical need for having that presence.

“Nonprofits should be at the table when it comes to public policy,” he says. “If you are not at the table, then you’re on the menu.”

Chuck Malloy, a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist, is a volunteer writer with the Idaho Community Foundation’s Nonprofit Center. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com