April 18, 2024
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Only one more week of campaigning remains, and then the numbers come in. Because of the large number of people voting early, you might expect campaigning to scale down just a bit in the week ahead.
Meanwhile, the big Northwest story of the week was the school shooting at Marysville, Washington, which left two dead and others seriously injured.
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Here’s what public affairs news made the front page of newspapers in the Northwest today, excluding local crime, features and sports stories. (Newspaper names contracted with location)
Problems in Idaho mental illness system (Boise Statesman)
Reviewing the Simpson-Stallings race (Boise Statesman)
Following up on Marysville shooting (Moscow News)
Caldwell council president Blacker dies (Nampa Press Tribune)
App helps voters find polling places (Nampa Press Tribune)
Reviewing candidates resumes for superintendent (TF Times News)
Freight fees hitting Idaho exporters (TF Times News)
Eugene considers adding 700 acres (Eugene Register Guard)
Benton-Linn college issue would upgrade sites (Corvallis Gazette)
Medford homeless shelter has bedbugs (Medford Tribune)
Story behind $95k architect's fee in Portland (Portland Oregonian)
Stability in Oregon unemployment rates (Salem Statesman Journal)
Salem considers water, sewer rate hikes (Salem Statesman Journal)
Another Marysville shooting victim dies (Seattle Times, Tacoma News Tribune, Everett Herald, Yakima Herald Republic, Olympian)
Cowlitz law enforcement seeks new gun range (Longview News)
Tulalip Tribe confronts shooting (Longview News)
Raises for state nonunion workers surprise (Olympian)
State high court hears charter school case (Tacoma News Tribune, Olympian)
Port Angeles chamber leader nears retirement (Port Angeles News)
Hospitals around WA compared on web site (Port Angeles News)
Reviewing Seattle smart parking system (Spokane Spokesman)
Feeder reail lines looking for help (Spokane Spokesman)
Breast cancer license plates ahead (Vancouver Columbian)
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BARRETT RAINEY Second Thoughts |
Donald Trump has been divorced more times than the number of people who’ve died of Ebola in this country.
I hate to do that to you but someone has to put the Ebola story in perspective. That statement alone is clearer than nearly any national media coverage these days. Or, most of the garbage emanating from the mouths of too many politicians. Seldom has this country heard more fear-mongering, baseless information and verbal garbage on any issue.
Just to be perfectly clear: one person has died of Ebola on U.S. soil. Well, Texas, actually, but close to U.S. soil. He died after contracting Ebola overseas and bringing it with him to a hospital that - through something close to medical incompetence - was where he died. One person. One!
National media coverage has been, more often than not, outrageous. Fearful headlines making otherwise respectable major newspapers and broadcasters look like tabloids at the market. Near-factless reporting from outside hospitals that simply repeated the same old minimal information over and over and over. Same crap - different faces.
The most absurd television “coverage” to me was the so-called “patient transfer” that consisted of nighttime chopper shots of an ambulance doing 25 mph with five cop cars ahead and five behind. For nearly an hour. No one had any proof an Ebola “patient” was inside and it really didn’t matter. Could have been two medics playing Gin, for all we know.
And the “news” conferences. Newsless in too many cases. The other night, Rachel Maddow wasted an entire hour showing many “continuing coverage” shots of an empty rostrum in New York where we were supposed to get an update on the latest Ebola patient. A whole hour. Not to be outdone, “Faux Neuws” did the same. That’ll show those damned liberals!
And the talking heads. Far too many have had no more to offer than what they’d read or heard in other media “stories.” Then, there were the two chiefs from NIH and CDC that literally raced from network to network for days to repeat the same comforting messages that things would be alright.
Of course, there were the politicians mouthing off without engaging brains. One in the House repeatedly shouted to all assembled he wanted all flights to this country from affected African countries halted immediately. It was days later he found out there are no flights directly to this country from that part of Africa. None.
And there was Rep. Jason Chaffetz from Utah’s Third District, loudly disparaging the Obama administration for not having appointed a surgeon general to take charge of these catastrophic events. What escaped him was the President DID make a surgeon general appointment earlier this year. One that spineless senators killed at the behest of the NRA because the nominee wrote, some years ago, gun violence was a public health problem.
There were more. Many, many more examples of politicians and media speaking with no facts, using inflammatory and/or ignorant language, trying to make stories where there were no stories and spreading unfounded information. All of which added to the fears of many viewers and readers simply looking for facts while finding few. It continues today.
With the exception of the NBC News cameraman who contracted Ebola on assignment in Africa while working extensively around Ebola victims, all who’ve been diagnosed in this country were health care workers obviously not trained or properly equipped for treating the disease. The one death was that of a man who came in direct and prolonged contact with an Ebola victim in Africa and then brought his contagion to this country. Even his family members - with whom he lived for a week before presenting symptoms - were not infected.
We live in a society conditioned to believe the worst in nearly everything. We’ve become comfortable with what we know and fearful of learning. Too many have surrounded themselves with like-minded people and like-minded media to the exclusion of facts they don’t agree with or don’t even know exist. Or both. I call it the “Palin Syndrome” - “I know what I know and I don’t need to know any more.” Like a member of Congress blaming an administration for no surgeon general appointee who doesn’t know other members of the same Congress scuttled the named appointment.
Ebola is not going to be a national epidemic. And that’s a fact. (more…)
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RANDY STAPILUS Washington |
The tragedy of this latest school shooting, Friday morning at the Marysville-Pilchuk school, is as they all have been, a sad and appalling loss of human lives, and especially of human lives with so much potential ahead.
And yet one different kind of lesson seems to come out of this new shooting, and it is this: Don't lump them all together and imagine that all, together, stand explained.
We've had enough school shootings that a standard profile has developed. An outsider kid, a trenchcoat-wrapped loner with few friends at school and a fascination with guns and other weaponry, coupled with a super-heroic (or anti-heroic) complex, roars into the school like a would-be Terminator and opens fire with his automatic (or semi-automatic) weapon on whoever happens to be around, killing and wounding as many as possible. The mass murder is the point; the identity of the victims doesn't matter.
Little of that explains this case. The student here, according to numerous reports (including those from families of the victims), was Jaylen Fryberg, a freshman football player, voted class “prince,” sometimes a class comic, and popular with both other students and adults. He was pegged by adults as a prospective community leader.
His weapon was not an automatic or even a rifle, but apparently a small handgun. He did not fire randomly, and he did not fire at anyone in authority. Walking into the school cafeteria, he took aim at specific people, people he knew – the two boys he shot were cousins of his – ad his motive may have been very specifically personal – one of the girls shot had apparently angered him for declining to go on a date.
None of this lessens the tragedy or the loss, or the shock in the community.
But there is this: It seems a little closer than some of the other shootings to being at least somehow explicable, a little less random.
And maybe too there's this: Let's not assume that all these shootings are all the same. They are all distinctive and consequently none have been entiurely predictable.
Maybe that's just a little more true in this case.
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Here’s what public affairs news made the front page of newspapers in the Northwest today, excluding local crime, features and sports stories. (Newspaper names contracted with location)
Reviewing job of a coroner/death investigator (Boise Statesman)
An overview of Idaho’s mental health system (Boise Statesman)
Lead poisoning at gun ranges, from Seattle Times (Boise Statesman)
Inside the problems of Odyssey Charter School (IF Post Register, TF Times News)
Reviewing the Simpson-Stallings race (IF Post Register)
Wine returning to the Lewiston area (Lewiston Tribune)
Voters guide for Canyon County (Nampa Press Tribune)
Superintendent of Public Instruction race roars on (Nampa Press Tribune)
Big fossil found near American Falls (Pocatello Journal)
Talking to ministers on gay marriage (TF Times News)
Governor candidates talk about education (TF Times News)
Some parents opt out of Common Core (Eugene Register Guard)
Kaiser plans expanded health at Eugene (Eugene Register Guard)
What to do on fire-damaged forest acreage? (KF Herald & News)
Parties battle it out for legislative control (KF Herald & News)
A look at big-campaign finances (Medford Tribune)
More reviews of weed killer spraying (Portland Oregonian)
Another look comparing Merkley and Wehby (Portland Oregonian)
Oregon the center of the GMO label battle (Salem Statesman Journal)
The genealogical society looks for home (Salem Statesman Journal)
Reviewing the Marysville shooting (Seattle Times, Spokane Spokesman, Everett Herald)
Cowlitz homeless population may be dropping (Longview News)
Local impact of classroom size ballot issue (Longview News)
Assessing impact of Marysville on gun initiatives (Seattle Times, Longview News)
Looking at effects of gun initiatives (Tacoma News Tribune, Olympian)
Drawing out the numbers on crime’s impact (Vancouver Columbian)
What about tax free tobacco on reservations? (Yakima Herald Republic)
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RANDY STAPILUS Idaho |
Think for a moment of political news, background and impressions, falling from the skies upon the electorate, like rain. It may be the rain that soaks you and makes you wet and miserable or it may be the rain causing flowers to bloom and crops to grow. Depends on your perspective.
A good deal of such rain has fallen in Idaho’s campaign seasons this year. From the batch of scandal-like problems associated with Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter (private prison, broadband for schools and more), to the financial issues attached to Treasurer Ron Crane, to the personal assessments of Secretary of State candidate Lawerence Denney, to the many missteps of Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate Sherri Ybarra, and others too, there’s been a lot, especially of the negative kind. Republican candidates, who are the kind that almost always, in the last 20 years, have emerged winners in the November elections, have provided a lot of it.
This rain of bad headlines, gaffes, missteps and so on has been seized on by people watching Idaho’s elections, and with reason. Such problems have, in years past, derailed any number of Idaho candidates, and some of the complaints and criticisms have been serious enough to go to the heart of the jobs these people are seeking.
A meaningful political analysis has to go one step further, though. Even flood-level amounts of rain won’t make the crops grow or the flowers bloom if it does not fall on receptive soil. Rain falling on concrete simply runs off, at least in the short term.
Idaho’s electorate (to carry the analogy one uneasy step further) used to be gently rototilled, open to new information and ideas and news, willing to adjust its views. It has become less so in the last couple of decades - much more hard-packed, less receptive, than it used to be.
People looking for changes in, say, the governor’s race, need to look not just at the rain but at something that would churn the hard-packed soil, to make it more receptive to changes in the environment.
Maybe it’s there and just not very visible, but so far I’m not seeing much change on the ground. Nor am I picking up many indicators of it.
To explain this a little further, here’s a small plot of Idaho political ground where conditions may be more receptive: The race for Superintendent of Public Instruction. One factor is the many problems Republican Ybarra has faced, and the steady campaign of Democrat Jana Jones. (more…)
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The overwhelmingly dominant news story today was the high school shooting in Marysville, one that seems to break the usual pattern of these events: The shooting apparently was not random or aimed at a large number of people, but was specific and personal, a more conventional murder. That will not make it less shocking.
Here’s what public affairs news made the front page of newspapers in the Northwest today, excluding local crime, features and sports stories. (Newspaper names contracted with location)
Gas prices fall at Lewiston area (Lewiston Tribune)
Two dead in Marysville school shooting (Moscow News)
More reports of sexual assaults at WSU this year (Moscow News)
Candidates closing in on last campaign days (TF Times News)
Action speeds up on I-5 cable barriers (Salem Statesman Journal, Corvallis Gazette)
Two dead in Marysville school shooting (Portland Oregonian, Eugene Register Guard, Corvallis Gazette, Pendleton E Oregonian)
Much debate over drivers card issue (Corvallis Gazette)
Barnhart decries ads on killers early release (Eugene Register Guard)
Klamath Trail Alliance digging at Spence Mountain (KF Herald & News)
Property taxes rising at Klamath (KF Herald & News)
Jackson sheriff defended in campaign fraud case (Medford Tribune)
House district 58 candidates both from little Cove (Pendleton E Oregonian)
DuPont Pioneer funds $4.6m against GMO issue (Pendleton E Oregonian)
Analysts look at predicting legislative races (Portland Oregonian)
Two dead in Marysville school shooting (Seattle Times, Spokane Spokesman, Tacoma News Tribune, Everett Herald, Vancouver Columbian, Yakima Herald Republic, Bremerton Sun, Olympian, Longview News)
Three new mental health facilities planned (Bremerton Sun)
Reviewing tornado damage in Longview (Longview News)
Pot ad features King sheriff, blasted by other sheriffs (Longview News)
Lacey budget maintains staff, programs (Olympian)
Ridgefield bans marijuana sales (Vancouver Columbian)
GOP officials filing ethics complain on funds transfer (Vancouver Columbian)
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DAVID BOND Rant |
Being a second-generation Republican – Dad served the 6th District of Washington State as an “R” in the House for many terms, and was deemed a “troglodyte” by that state's (also Republican) governor for his obstinance over raising taxes and his opposition to motorcycle helmet laws (“If the fools want to kill themselves, why is that our business?”) -- this is a tough thing to say:
We are pulling a straight Democrat lever come next month's county and state elections. Apologies to Butch and Lori Otter, who we respect and admire: If we thought our vote would matter we would throw it Butch's way. But the reality is that loonies are running the asylum, and it's time to kick the bastards out.
Never in Idaho politics has extremism so suffused Idaho's governance. The Religious Right ought to re-think its agenda. They're acting a lot like intolerant Muslims, and they are downright vicious. Toss 'em out.
There is so much cronyism going on in Shoshone County with this lot that your public profession for your love of Jesus Christ trumps your ability to run a calculator. If we may quote from the book of Matthew, it was Jesus himself who said:
“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Once again, let's toss the Pharisees out. If we have to replace them with Democrats, sorry Dad, so be it.
On to Zipperheads, the rude bicyclists who infest our community in summer, buy nothing, and drive their bicycle-hauling Volvos and Priuses down Moon Pass at 50 miles an hour. Our column in the Shoshone News-Press was killed by an ex-Californian who is one of them. Forty years of reporting in northern Idaho silenced by this bozo, who has run for ever paying public office and never been elected.
We were feeling a tad chastened by this – maybe we got something wrong about these moochie, earth-loving humanoids – until breakfast this morning at the Snakepit on our way back from Spokane.
We were warmly greeted by the morning waitress who said, “We loved your column about rude bicycle riders.” Apparently, the Snakepit has to deal with these people every day, being a trail-head for the Trail of the Coeur d'Alenes. All these cyclists want is free water from them. She points them to the cooler, where the bottled water is, at a buck a pop.
Lastly, on to Wal-Mart. It's a place everybody wants to pick on. Let us step aside from that noise. (more…)
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W. SCOTT JORGENSEN Conversations with Atiyeh |
Last January, former Oregon Governor Vic Atiyeh was the keynote speaker at an event put on by the North Clackamas Chamber of Commerce at Happy Valley City Hall. Attendees included elected officials such as Rep. Julie Parrish (R-West Linn), Rep. Bill Kennemer (R-Canby) and Sen. Chuck Thomsen (R-Hood River).
Gov. Atiyeh was introduced by Verne Duncan, who has the unique distinction of having served in both the Idaho and Oregon legislatures. Duncan had worked as Oregon Superintendent of Schools during the Atiyeh administration.
The theme of Governor Atiyeh’s speech was “How to Use Statesmanship and Compromise.”
Atiyeh described the circumstances surrounding his initial decision to run for a seat in the Oregon House of Representatives.
In his remarks, Governor Atiyeh provided much useful advice for the elected officials and would-be, potential and future officeholders present at the event.
Governor Atiyeh shared many of the principles that contributed to his success in the nearly three decades of public service that he gave to Oregon and its citizens.
The full transcripts of his remarks that day make up an entire chapter in my new book, Conversations with Atiyeh. It can be ordered by clicking here.