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The rub

The rub

March 27, 2025

Here’s the rub. In the old days, local news got very interested when the legislature, and our local representatives were messing with us down in the marble halls of the State Capitol.

Here in Moscow, Idaho, home of the flagship University for the state, THE University of Idaho (Go Vandals!) those days are gone. Our local paper no longer questions our representatives. And our representatives no longer talk to us. So, if the shiv is coming to our backside, we have little warning in the chow line.

The U of I has long been the home for the first-year medical students of the WAMI->WWAMI program. In 1972 Idaho joined with Washington, Alaska, Montana, and later Wyoming to form a consortium to train MD’s.

Back when it meant a couple professors and ten first year students, it didn’t mean a lot of cash for the local economy. But the program has grown. There are now 40 first year students, and that many second-year students are in town for another six months. And the well-paid faculty numbers have grown. And many graduates have returned to Idaho. I’m one.

So why would one of our local elected representatives be working to move this cash cow elsewhere?

Brandon Mitchell has served this district for five years. He lives here. He claims to be a good friend of the Director of the Idaho WWAMI program. But he has consistently voted to dump WWAMI.

His first effort was back in 2021 when he supported the “No Public Funds For Abortion Act”. This modest bill prohibited any entity getting Idaho taxpayer dollars from, among other things, “Provide training to provide for abortions.”

So, the University of Washington, whom we have this WWAMI deal with must comply with Idaho law if they want to keep getting Idaho dollars and students.

Here’s the rub. And it’s a rub you should all know. It comes down to definitions. How do you define “abortion”?

This “Act” says: “the act of using or prescribing any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman with knowledge that the termination by those means will, with reasonable likelihood, cause the death of the unborn child.”

That might make sense to you but consider this. Under that definition, I should be in an Idaho prison.

There are some babies who are alive in the shelter of their mother’s wombs but will die upon birth. The doctor who delivers that baby, under current Idaho law is a felon, will lose their license. And Idaho required the University of Washington to not train our students how to care for these women.

Brandon Mitchell cosponsored this law. And he supports the current bills in the Idaho legislature to cut our affiliation with the University of Washington.

Honestly, I wouldn’t doubt the UW cares much. They state they regret the divorce. But why? Who wants a radical legislature telling them how to train physicians. According to many evaluators, WWAMI is the preeminent primary care program in the country. Why not build on the best?

And why send these dollars away from your local community to Utah, or BYU, or the private, for-profit medical school in Meridian?

These are decent questions our local paper should be asking of our elected representatives.

The U of I is also deflecting on these questions. They sound like a teenager explaining away their parents’ acrimonious divorce.

The U of I spends our taxpayer dollars to have a lobbyist, Brandon Mitchell’s predecessor, Caroline Nilsson Troy, in the Capitol. And we elect these clowns who want to shiv us in the chow line.

Why doesn’t the local paper cover this?

Do we even care?

I do. Don’t stab me in the back.

 

Quantum teleportation

March 25, 2025

Russian hacking.  Chinese hacking.  Iranian hacking.  We've been inundated with threats of internet hacking - real and dangerous - for many years now.

It's real, no matter the culprit.  Also real is the fact that American operatives have been doing the same thing to other nations and organizations.  We just don't talk about it.

We've repeatedly been made aware the Russians - and possibly the Chinese and others - have been electronically messing around in our national elections for several years.

But, what about our pitifully poor, exposed power grid?  What about military operations on which our security depends?  And our national data and other communications systems?  Anyone able to effectively block foreign hackers?

I'd like to be assured there are some very smart people developing really secure internet systems for our military, government operations, power plants, power grids and elections.  Problem is, if there are - and I'm sure there are - they can't openly tells us what they're doing.

But, some very smart people are telling us what's happening in other nations.  And their work is way over my head.  Yours, too, I'd guess.

In Holland, for example, the Dutch have created a secure trial link among three cities for data transmission using "quantum teleporation" and "quantum entanglement."  Not only is that a mouthful to pronounce, it's a science only a few really understand.

Regular internet transmission uses  "1's and O's."  Hackers have learned to intercept what's being transmitted.  But, using quantum physics, an atom, an electron or (for transmitting along optical cables) a photon of light, the "1's and O's" can be sent simultaneously.  It's called a "quantum bit" or "qubit."

When a hacker tries to get into a stream of qubits, the quantum information downloaded is unintelligible and the hacker leaves a clear signal of its presence.

The Chinese are already using "quantum key distribution" (QKD).  They have a satellite called "Micius" to transmit quantum keys to ground stations in Beijing and Austria.  The keys encrypt data for even secure video between the stations.  Attempts to intercept would destroy the keys and the hacker would get nothing because the data couldn't be decrypted.

China has another such link between Beijing and Shanghai for banks and large companies using commercial data.

There are limitations.  Photons can be absorbed in the atmosphere or by the cable materials.  The data will only travel fairly short distances.  So, "trusted nodes" or relay boosters are used at various points to operate like repeaters.  Data is amplified and sent along to the next station.  Better than we commonly use, but still problems to overcome.

So, the Dutch are trying "quantum teleporation."  They've been successful and are still working.  But, the system they have up and running only goes 35-40 miles between stations.

So, there's good and not-so-good news.  The good news is it works and appears to be "hack proof."  The bad is, thus far, there are distance limitations.  But, you know the Dutch.  "Finger in the dike" and all that.  They're committed to the system.

I know all this "quantum-nodes-entanglement-teleportation" stuff is not your everyday conversation.  To most of us, it's just a lot of words describing almost impossible-to-understand activity.

But, just knowing that somebody - somewhere - is deeply invested in development of seemingly hack-proof internet systems can be comforting.  I have to think this country's scientists, engineers and electronic "think tanks" are similarly digging around in the photons and electrons to make our vast world of data more impregnable.

Who knows?  Maybe we'll finally get a national election system that's hack-proof.  Then all we have to do is work on improving the quality of the candidates.

 

Defending our vets

Defending our vets

March 24, 2025

Veteran programs are in the sights of Russell Vought, who currently controls America’s purse strings. The US Constitution gave Congress that crucial responsibility, but our present GOP Congress has largely given over its power to Vought, who is now the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the White House. While multi-billionaire Elon Musk is slicing and dicing governmental agencies, Vought is making the financial calls that guide both Musk and the Congress. The consequences are starting to show up both on the national level and here in the Gem State.

A little background provides insight into what America’s veterans can expect. Vought was an architect of Project 2025, which called for major changes to veterans programs.

The plan is to slash staffing, reduce the disability rolls and privatize many services now performed by the VA. Those changes are now being implemented by Vought’s OMB.

The chaos started with the firing of about 2,400 VA employees. That disrupted treatment studies for advanced cancer cases and interrupted patient care across the country. The effects were felt at the Boise VA Hospital, where 14 employees were let go. Some were mission-critical personnel, who provided direct services to veterans. A federal judge found that the VA employees were unlawfully terminated and ordered their reinstatement. It remains to be seen whether the VA will obey the order.

Those initial firings are to be followed with the termination of about 83,000 more VA employees. A significant number of those staffers were hired to administer the PACT Act. That legislation was enacted in 2022 for the purpose of providing health care and benefits to veterans who suffered cancer and other ailments from exposure to toxic elements dating back to the 1960s.

Following the First Gulf War, veterans began complaining about a myriad of health problems they attributed to breathing toxic fumes from burn pits that were used for disposal purposes. The VA routinely denied benefits unless the veterans could furnish proof positive of the service connection. That was virtually impossible without strong scientific evidence. Similar claims were raised by veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and all of those claims were similarly denied.

The service connection between the exposure to toxins and the resulting diseases was firmly established by scientific evidence in 2009, leading to the eventual passage of the PACT Act. The Act extended care and benefits to veterans with illnesses related to burn pit toxins, as well as those suffering from several types of cancer caused by exposure to Agent Orange, dating back to the 1960s.

Previous to the PACT Act, claims for pancreatic cancer were routinely denied. The Act presumes pancreatic cancer to be service connected where exposure to Agent Orange is shown. I mention that because I was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2017 and always thought it was related to my exposure to Agent Orange. I’d managed to beat the cancer and never needed or obtained VA help to get the job done. It cost about $750,000 to overcome the disease, mostly Medicare and private insurance, but I often think of veterans who did not have those resources available and could not get VA help. The country finally came through for them.

Passage of the Pact Act was not easy because Vought and his allies strongly opposed it. As head of OMB, he is in a position to completely defund it. All four members of Idaho’s Congressional delegation voted against the PACT Act. Senators Risch and Crapo voted against the bill on three separate occasions.

OMB Director Vought, Project 2025 and the Idaho delegation may have the last say in denying medical care and benefits to veterans who are suffering from exposure to burn pit toxins and Agent Orange. The continuing resolution to fund the government until September does not provide funding for the PACT Act. I sincerely hope Congress will deal separately with this critical issue in the meantime. If not, there will likely be a need for more military funerals in the next six months.

 

The weighted vote

The weighted vote

March 23, 2025

The premise behind two constitutional amendments proposed by Republican lawmakers is that it’s too easy to place an initiative on the ballot in Oregon.

Buried inside that premise is that idea that some Oregonians’ clout in the initiative process should count more than for others.

Both House Joint Resolution 3 and HJR 11 aim to change the number of petition signatures needed for initiative backers to win a spot on the ballot.

Now, Oregonians who want to pass laws at the ballot need to gather valid signatures from 6% of the total number of votes cast for governor during the last gubernatorial election — just more than 88,000 signatures. The threshold for citizen-initiated constitutional amendments is higher at 8%, or nearly 118,000 signatures.

HJR 11 would raise the initiative requirement from 6% to 8% — increasing the requirement by a third — and require  the signatures be “divided equally” among Oregon’s six congressional districts. For citizen-proposed constitutional amendments, the requirement would rise from 8% to 10%.

HJR 3 would require initiative backers to collect signatures from 6% of voters in each of Oregon’s 36 counties — an even more difficult mark to reach in a politically polarized state.

A March 10 hearing on both measures showed widespread opposition and, at the Legislature at least, limited support. HJR 11 drew 104 testimony submissions, with just 24 in support (and two neutral). For HJR 3, 78 witnesses submitted testimony — all in opposition.

The level of criticism shouldn’t surprise, given Oregon’s historical background with ballot issues.

Oregon was one of the first states to adopt the idea of developing legislation or constitution changes directly to the public. Throughout the state’s history, voters have decided 881 ballot issues (almost a quarter of them related to taxes), but reaching the ballot has been no guarantor of passage. Fewer than half (411) of the measures won voter approval, which has evidently given no one a slam dunk at the polls.

The argument that it’s too easy to place an issue on the ballot might have some currency if the number of initiatives on the ballot has been exploding. But it hasn’t: In fact, the number continues to fall.

After a large number of initiatives presented shortly after the method was started, the number of initiatives slumped in the mid-20th century, then grew in its latter third, to 92 ballot issues in the 1970s, 73 in the 1980s and 105 in the 1990s. Then, in this century, the number has fallen steadily, from 86 in the 2000s, to 39 in the 2010s and just 13 so far in this decade.

Besides that, significant numbers of ballot issue campaigns fall short of the ballot qualification even under current rules.

The stronger support for these new resolutions — at least to judge from the amount of supportive testimony received — seems not to be for raising the overall petition signature level, but rather ensuring that every county provides significant support for it.

Sen. Todd Nash, R-Enterprise, argued for example: “This should be more representative from all of Oregon to gather those signatures. Right now, we’re not seeing that shape up that way. It’s coming from one concentrated area.”

Eastern Oregon rancher Katie Baltzor said many ballot initiatives, “are crafted by extreme groups that have a specific agenda that would be harmful to specific livelihoods, such as ours. Many conservative and moderate Eastern Oregonians feel they do not have a voice in the legislative or initiative process. It is too easy for these groups to gather all the signatures they need for a ballot initiative by going to a highly populated area.”

Some of this ties into the Greater Idaho protest, or the idea that eastern Oregonians aren’t being adequately heard in Salem — and there’s a good argument that they sometimes aren’t.

In Idaho, because of legislative action, rural votes do count more because of per-county signature requirements, which have reduced the number of initiatives that hit the ballot. That, of course, has come at the expense of urban and suburban dwellers.

The core problem the Oregon initiative limitation backers have is simply the large number of people in the more urban and suburban areas, mostly in the Willamette Valley: They’re outvoted. The only way around that is to weigh some votes (or petition signatures) more heavily than others.

Dan Meek of the Independent Party of Oregon offered an analogy: “If HJR 11 is a good idea, then let’s apply it to votes in the Oregon Legislature: In order to pass, a bill must be approved by members of the Legislature representing every CD. If the 10 state representatives and 5 state senators who represent districts within any of the 6 CDs do not provide majority votes in favor of a bill, then the bill fails. Thus, representatives and senators within each CD get to veto every bill. That is equivalent to the system proposed by HJR 11.”

People cast votes, and make other decisions in state politics. Land acreage doesn’t. Most likely, the Oregon Legislature will factor in those directions when it comes to these two resolutions.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

From Church to Risch

From Church to Risch

March 22, 2025

On Feb. 17, 1965, Frank Church, a 41-year-old United States senator from Idaho, became one of the first senators to openly question U.S. policy in Vietnam. On that same day, George McGovern, a 42-year-old senator from South Dakota, expressed similar reservations. The Senate speeches were reported, among other places, on the front page of the New York Times under a headline “Johnson Asserts U.S. Will Persist in Vietnam Policy.”

In their Senate speeches, Church and McGovern warned against the administration of President Lyndon Johnson becoming involved in what each correctly viewed as a post-colonial war of national liberation. Vietnam was, in fact, of little strategic importance to the United States. As the war intensified over the next 10 years, criticism of Church and McGovern increased, even as others joined their critique of what famed journalist David Halberstam pronounced at the time “a quagmire.”

The Senate action by Church and McGovern, Democrats from traditionally Republican states, marked the beginning of what became a sustained debate in Congress of Vietnam policy. That debate ultimately spilled over to street protests in many cities and on the campuses of its colleges. Pursuing the war would eventually claim more than 58,000 Americans and as many as 2 million Vietnamese.

Sixty years later, the historical consensus holds that Church and McGovern were right about both the war and Vietnam’s lack of strategic importance to the United States. Yet, political prescience aside, and measured against the fraught and divided politics of the country today, what remains fundamentally important about the stands made by the two was their principled criticism of the policy of a president of their own party.

Privately and with selective leaks to reporters, Johnson berated both senators for their stand. “But Frank Church spoke out,” as the Washington Post noted in Church’s obituary in 1984, “even as joking staffers wondered when President Johnson would send the Army Corps of Engineers to begin dismantling Idaho’s dams.”

Johnson viewed the young Idaho senator as a protégé and had engineered Church’s appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee, a plum assignment then that has become less plummy in our time. Johnson used the celebrated “Johnson treatment” on both the senator and his wife, Bethine, flattering, cajoling, praising, threatening, while always angling for public support.

When Johnson campaigned in Boise in 1964, he laid it on particularly thick, calling Church, “your eloquent and able young senator and his charming wife who helps Frank do such a good job.”

“I have always agreed with the people of Idaho on your choice of Churches,” Johnson said. “There is no senator that Washington respects more, and none that the nation needs more, and none that your president values more, than Frank Church.”

Yet, weeks later Church was pointing out the flaws in Johnson’s Vietnam policy and suffering for doing so. As his dissent became more intense, Vietnam became a central issue in Church’s reelection in 1968. His Republican challenger, Congressman George V. Hansen, slashed Church for being a “dove” providing “aid and comfort” to Communists.

Church biographers LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer detail the almost slapstick story of a St. Maries dogcatcher, Gene Mileck, who led a recall campaign against Church. Mileck’s efforts were supported by the John Birch Society, the far right of the Idaho Republican Party and wealthy out-of-state millionaires, in large part because of Church’s stand on the war. The recall effort was clearly unconstitutional and eventually collapsed, but the constant attacks on Church took a political toll, even as he proved he could fight back. Using language that might well resonate with some in Idaho today, Church said, “I think the people of Idaho have too much sense to allow this state to be taken over politically and economically by carpetbaggers from California.”

Church would go on to win four terms in the Senate — he defeated Hansen in 1968, winning 60% of the vote — becoming a leading advocate for a foreign policy based not on military intervention in the world’s revolutions but squarely focused on the nation’s vital interests. Church’s historic investigation into the abuses of the nation’s intelligence agencies remains his enduring legacy. Late in his last term, Church assumed the chairpersonship of the Foreign Relations Committee, a lifelong ambition.

Today, the United States faces a foreign policy challenge as existential as Vietnam proved to be in the 1960s: How does the country confront the ambitions of a brutal Russian dictator who aims to recreate much of the former Soviet empire and end American leadership of the most successful military alliance in the history of the world?

While the circumstances of America’s role in Vietnam and its posture in Ukraine are vastly different, the role of the United States Senate in helping shape American policy — or at least demanding debate of foreign policy issues — has all but disappeared. And today, another Idahoan helms the Foreign Relations Committee, a position that — would Sen. James Risch use it — could help define and shape U.S. policy in central Europe and elsewhere.

Risch has been silent as the Trump administration has demanded concessions from Ukraine while browbeating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. While Trump wages a tariff war against Canada and threatens Canadian sovereignty, the leader of the Foreign Relations Committee says nothing. Threats to NATO, senseless posturing on Greenland or Panama, nothing prompts the least bit of pushback from Risch.

Risch, who seemed steadfast in support of Ukraine before Trump’s return, might use his position to conduct hearings on U.S. policy, drawing on the expertise and experience of diplomats and military leaders, much as then-Foreign Relations Committee Chairman J. William Fulbright did in the 1960s or Church did in the 1970s.

Instead of hearings or speeches or even an interview with a reporter, Risch actually blocked a Senate resolution last week that condemned Russian action and demanded an immediate end to the war. In doing so the Idaho senator’s particular brand of arrogance was on full display, lecturing Sen. Bernie Sanders – the sponsor of the resolution – that he didn’t know what he was talking, while make the preposterous claim that the only person “on the planet” who can end the war in Ukraine is “Donald J. Trump.”

Watch the video of the exchange, but you might consider doing it on an empty stomach.

The senator’s posture is a case study of the dreadful decline of influence of the U.S. Senate as an essential institution shaping the nation’s foreign policy. When Idaho and the nation requires a Church, it has a Risch. History will remember one for independence and another for carrying the briefcase of a president apparently determined to hand Vladimir Putin the first of what is likely to prove to be many victories in the heart of Europe, while frightening and alienating allies that have been with America for decades.

It would be sad if it were not so dangerous.

 

For you, too

For you, too

March 21, 2025

I don’t do a lot of predictions. But odds are good for a particular news story happening in Idaho soon, and with a reasonable set of probability about where it will happen.

Though it could happen anywhere - or to anyone.

This thought grows out of a pile of recent news stories around the country about activity by federal (and sometimes state or local level) immigration forces. A wrapup by Pro Publica said “Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps.”

It’s not that prior administrations never grabbed citizens and treated them, in the immigration system, as they shouldn’t have. It’s happened before. (If you’ve never seen the Cheech Marin movie comedy Born in East LA, it’s not a bad introduction - informative as well as entertaining.)

But things are moving into a whole new level under the Trump Administration.

The agencies even have been given arrest quotas; the pressure is coming on to ramp up those numbers. There seems to be less concern about making mistakes than about failing to hit the targets.

In making its assessment, Pro Publica of course had receipts. They cited a Philadelphia car wash employee who was handcuffed and facing the business side of a gun before he could demonstrate that he was, in fact, a citizen.

The news site went on: “In Utah, agents pulled over and detained a 20-year-old American after he honked at them. In New Mexico, a member of the Mescalero Apache nation more than two hours from the border was questioned by agents who demanded to see their passport. Earlier this month, a Trump voter in Virginia was pulled over and handcuffed by gun-wielding immigration agents. In Texas, a 10-year-old citizen recovering from brain cancer was detained at a Border Patrol checkpoint and eventually deported to Mexico with her undocumented parents and other citizen siblings in February.”

As a side indicator, there’s the case of an academic from France headed to a professional conference in Houston who was detained by customs, his phone seized and himself deported to France - because messages critical of Donald Trump were found on his phone.

Much of the recent activity has been happening toward the southern border states. But not all of it, and more will be coming north.

Won’t be long before Idaho sees some of this action - meaning I think it highly likely it will show up in news reports - if it hasn’t already. When large-scale “sweeps” happen, their agents tend to be not especially picky about who is seized.

Is this likely to happen more in some parts of Idaho than in others? Probably.

If I were to bet on the next Idaho occurrence, I’d go for Canyon County. About 26% of its population (more than 50,000 people) is Hispanic, according to census information, and Caldwell is thought to be the third most Hispanic city in the state, with Nampa coming in seventh. That could put a major bullseye on that area.

But consider too the northern Magic Valley. Here are the other cities topping that list of Hispanic populations: Rupert, Jerome, Burley and Hailey. Jerome County’s population is about 38% Hispanic - the closest in Idaho to a majority-Hispanic county.

It’s immediately followed (at 37.5%) by Clark County, which is Idaho’s smallest-population county, but might be attractive to immigration forces looking to simply swamp an area.

The point there is that if large numbers of people are swept up in these areas, they easily can include citizens as well as non-citizens.

If you’re thinking to yourself: I’m a citizen, I have every right to be here, or even ‘I’m not Hispanic’ - don’t get too comfortable. If you’re caught up in a sweep, none of that may matter until after your life already has been turned upside down.

You’re not safe now. None of us are.

 

Sucking in Idaho

Sucking in Idaho

March 20, 2025

Fred knew he was on the bubble. Federal workers all knew that, and he was a newbie, on probation since he’d been hired here in Canyon County from the station back east. His expertise was grass and range and he thought this should be the promised land.

He loved meeting with the producers in Owyhee County. They had their acres and cows and knew the seasons, the grasses, the problems. He knew the invasives, the problems, and they had good sense. It was simpatico. He thought they deserved some support. Heck, they’d been there for generations.

He sometimes didn’t like the Canyon County requests for government money.

There was the Ethiopian lady raising vegetables for the local market. She needed a hoop house to get her plants started early. It wouldn’t cost much, and he thought she’d be helping out the local markets. He tried to explain to her the forms she’d need to fill out.

That was his job. He had to approve requests for government funding to improve the production of their land.

In Canyon County, “rangeland” required quotation marks, since these applicants’ raised alpacas or show horses. A center pivot funded by federal dollars to have more Clydesdales. Well, that was his job.

But today he had to go to Ada County. Somebody wanted to get federal dollars for their fifty acres on the hills above the Capitol. Ada County sucked. And federal dollars can be the fire hose.

Fred got his papers on the front seat of his rig. This government issue vehicle might be soon dispatched, he knew. As might be his job. He sighed and drove into the pit.

The site was up in the foothills. A McMansion and asphalt showed him where to park. Down in the Owyhee, it was dust and tire tracks he followed.

“Hello, Mr. James, I’m Fred from…”

The big bellied applicant cut him off. “Yeah, you’re from the government and you’re here to help me.” He grinned and crunched Fred’s hand.

Fred tried to hide his wince but now figured just how this was to go. “So, you have this application,”

Big belly cut him off. “Yeah, my accountant told me I could get you guys to pay for my fencing and irrigation on this rangeland I have here.” He swept his arm out beyond the 3000 square foot mansion to the sage brush slope. “See, I think with some water this could be beautiful grassland. And I need a privacy fence all around it. Damn mountain bikers are all up in here.”

Fred knew this was not going to go well, but he did his best.

“We give grants to promote improvement for livestock…”

Belly cut him off. “Hell, you federales give grants to promote transgender livestock. Why can’t I get some of your money to drill a well and build a fence?”

Fred looked at the face. He was a belligerent, grinning man. He was sure he was right. He just wanted the government’s money that Fred was in charge of.

Fred took a deep breath. He looked Big Belly in the eye. “Mister. Your application for federal grants cannot be approved. I can give you all the reasons, and I can cite the federal laws. But that will be in the report I send back to you.”

Fred drove back down through the Idaho capital and out the connector to his single wide in Canyon County. He didn’t think this interaction would help his performance evaluation.

Fred got some really good pupusas at a truck in Caldwell before he went home.

He checked his work email as he opened a Budweiser on the kitchen table.

So, he now had to look for work.

 

Salinas at the town hall

Salinas at the town hall

March 18, 2025

Every congressional town hall seems worthy of note, and attendance, so our household was there when Oregon 6th district Representative Andrea Salinas showed up this evening at McMinnville High School.

Around 300 other people seemed to have the same idea, making this turnout somewhere around six or seven times the normal size for a U.S. representative town hall in these parts, and a good deal more boisterous as well.

In some contrast to the events held by the state's U.S. senators, this one had a distinctly partisan feel to it, and Democrat Salinas periodically made references to how Democrats should respond to the whirlwinds centered on the White House. While a few people clearly disagreed with her take,  the overwhelming majority - this in a county that voted for Donald Trump for president, three times - expressed disdain or anger toward the Trump Administration.

Often loudly.

"I am really outraged at the behavior of our president right now," she said in her opening. "We have a president who wants to make himself king."

That got loud applause.

As whens he talked about the sweeping cuts and policy changes of recent weeks: "This is absolutely not what the people voted for." She said she was hearing that from Republicans, often privately, as well as Democrats.

As there was move approval when she talked about walking out during Trump's recent address to Congress; she was one of a small number of Democratic legislators who did that. She said she was prompted to do by hearing repeated "fantasies" from Trump over the long speech.

Salinas was fiercely critical of the vote by Democratic Senate leader Charles Schumer, who voted in favor of adopting the recent budget bill approved by Trump and House Republicans but opposed by most Democratic senators.

She focused much of her talk on Medicaid, and to some extent Medicare and Social Security. "He is clearly not the right person for this moment on the Senate side," she said. "I'm not in the Senate, thank God."

Most of the questions were sympathetic. The closest to a challenge came from one audience member who accused Democrats of engaging in "lawfare" - lawsuits filed in court - against some of the actions Trump had taken. She noted that the courts have become essential backstops to keep a president from going too far.

Another town hall of a piece with many others around the country. Which makes all of them the more remarkable.

 

Who needs it

Who needs it

March 18, 2025

Not many of us can say we know much about Greenland, the rather large, frozen island belonging to Denmark.  It's even harder to find someone who's been there.

I've been there.  Spent all of 1960 there, on a mountaintop 12 miles from Thule Air Base on the Northwest side of the island.  Tough duty when you have to say you went to an end-of-the-world spot like Thule Air Base for "R&R."  But, that's what we did.

I was a USAF noncom living in a small Army Nike Hercules missile outfit on the leeward side of the mountain.  Ran an Armed Forces TV station from our little perch on top of that mountain.  All programming on film, long before days of satellites, video tape and digital formatting.  All network programs ran about three weeks after showing in the states.

Donald Trump has been talking about "buying" Greenland from Denmark.  Trump talk for "If they won't sell it to us, we'll take it."

What little civilization there is in Greenland is mostly on the Southeastern edge.  Some 60,000 "Greenlanders" live there.  North Atlantic fishing is the main occupation.  But, millions of dollars have recently been spent on a new state-of-the-art airport in that locale in hopes of bringing tourists to the area.  We'll see how that pans out.

Most of Greenland is just one huge icecap - totally uninhabitable.  But, the landmass is unique for its military usefulness, though not everyone can put up with 150 mile-an-hour winds and minus 60-degree temperatures.

The U.S. operates an early warning radar system up there that "looks" over the Northern horizon for signs of Russian aggression.  Now, with the invention of early warning satellites above, the ground operations may be less important.  Still, we have invested hundreds and hundreds of millions in the name of security so even the reduced mission on the "ice"is currently deemed high priority.

About 50 miles East of Thule, there are teams of scientists operating on "the cap."  Several countries represented.  All in the name of research.  Wonder what they're researching.  Wonder where they go for R&R.  Denmark, I'd guess.

The current operating arrangements apparently work for all involved.  But, Trump seems to covet Greenland for its vast mineral deposits and areas that can be developed for one reason or another.

Whatever value he sees in Greenland, the fact is it belongs to Denmark.  If he intends to expand this country's role in that territory, he's going to need permission.

For most of his adult life, Trump has been a real estate developer.  As such, his job has been to find available property, find someone who wants it, help with financing if need be and do the "packaging."

In this case, it may be that's the old Donald talking.  However, there is still the question of ownership.  And, that may be beyond his reach.

It would seem - from a national security viewpoint - satellite operations would be more useful than increasing our national footprint in totally inhospitable conditions near the North Pole.  But, Trump is Trump.

As for renaming the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," c'mon now.  We don't need another international territorial battle on our hands.  Just leave it alone.

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