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Posts published in August 2025

Numbers

August 5, 2025

Though statistics more often than not make dull reading, once-in-a-while some come along that need our attention.

The U.S. Census Bureau folk postulate about 390,200,00 of us are living border-to-border and coast-to-coast in our nation.  That's an increase of about 25,000,000 since the official census in 2010 and works out to be only about four-percent more for the period.

One of those "got-my-attention" numbers from the Bureau was this.  As a nation, we're experiencing a birth about every eight seconds and a death about every 12.  Net migration is adding one person to our population total every 33 seconds.  So the combination of births, deaths and migration adds a new face to feed and house every 16 seconds or about four a minute.

Another set of interesting numbers.  If asked to name the four most populous states in order, could you?  Well, there's a surprise there.  Of course, California is the largest at about 38.8 million souls.  And Texas is second at about 27 million.  But the attention-getter is Florida which passed New York as it grew to 19.9 million - adding about 803 residents a day.  Poor old New York slipped to fourth at 19.7 million.  Each of the ten fastest growing states are in the South or West.

Now that you know about how many of us there are and where most of us live, "How are we doing financially," you ask?  Well, those numbers are both a bit surprising and a bit grim.

Major credit card and credit rating companies did a new survey of 4,000 Americans and found more than 18 percent expect to be in debt the rest of their lives!  Those 65 and older totaled 31% of folk believing such.  Younger respondents were more positive.  But, also less experienced.

Another sampling of citizens nationwide, done by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, showed numbers that have become one of our national shames.  Student loan debt rose from an aggregate of $390 billion at the end of 2005 to $966 billion at the end of 2012.  Just seven years!  No surprise that student admissions applications are tapering off substantially.

Next, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) says Americans are drowning in uncollected medical debt.  Some 43 million are carrying heavy medical red ink and - complicating their problem - a difficult maze of systems to collect that debt makes it almost impossible for consumers to come out with a clean credit report.

CFPB Director Richard Cordray said "Getting medical care should not make your credit report sick."

The Bureau's examination showed the process for medical care can be confusing and the system for reporting overdue medical bills is haphazard at best.  That could explain why half of all overdue debt shown on credit reports is for medical bills.  One-in-five reports now carries a black mark for overdue medical expenses.

The Federal Reserve has also been doing some field work and concludes the Great Recession has not ended for millions of us despite improvements in major portions of our economy.  Because of a sluggish labor market, stagnant wages and rising living costs, 25% of respondents said they were "just getting by financially" and 13% believed they were losing ground.  In fact, looking back five years, 34% said financial conditions were worse.

The University of Arizona has been polling students and graduates on financial matters each year since 2007.  One of the most disturbing current findings: only 49% of participants have full-time jobs two years after graduation!  Less than half!

There are more numbers out there.  Billions of 'em.  But you get the idea.  As I said, sometimes statistics need our attention.  These are some I've come across recently that do.

The sum of all these surveys seems to be: there are more of us - we're leaving the traditionally larger Eastern states for the West and South - previous and continuing medical costs are overburdening too many of us - we're paying too much for a college education that, too often, results in employment not justifying the expense - the middle and lower levels of income in our national economy are not sharing in any "recovery" while still counting their losses in home values and jobs over the last few years.

New news?  Probably not.  Will the folks in our Congress do anything to make the numbers - and conditions -  better?  Probably not.  Most assuredly not.  They could, you know.  But statistics are just not that interesting to most of 'em.  Except the ones tied to their own personal employment. Those numbers always get their attention.

 

Attacking judges

August 4, 2025

Brent Regan, the Board Chairman of the ill-named Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), is at it again. After barely failing to destroy North Idaho College with a culture war campaign, Regan is trying to discredit Idaho’s judiciary. Judges make good targets because they are unable to respond to unfounded attacks against them.

Just a few weeks after Governor Little appointed Coeur d’Alene lawyer Regina McCrea to a district judge position in Kootenai County, Regan has launched a scurrilous attack against her. It has little to do with McCrea’s legal qualifications, which are excellent.

Rather, Regan is steamed because McCrea refused to bend to the demands of his culture war minions to ban books during her tenure as a trustee on the board of the Community Library Network (CLN) in Coeur d’Alene. Regan conducted a vicious campaign against McCrea and another trustee in 2022, causing both to lose their positions. They sued for defamation and the matter was confidentially settled out of court last year. Regan has rekindled his hostilities against McCrea as she readies to assume her seat on the district court. He has enlisted a chorus of extreme IFF voices across the state to unjustifiably tarnish McCrea and the Idaho judicial system.

The IFF is apparently unaware that Idaho judges do not bring a political agenda to their work on the bench. Regardless of their previous political affiliations and views, judges are ethically bound in our state to consider and decide cases in an informed and even-handed fashion. Idaho judges are selected in a manner to elevate those who place their emphasis on following the law wherever it takes them. We select candidates based on their legal competence, not their political history.

Former Governor Butch Otter often said that governors from around the country remarked about the excellence of Idaho’s judicial system. It has remained so to the present day. Decisions are made on their legal merits, not on politics.

Regan and his IFF cohorts want a court system that will serve their political agenda. The State GOP platform calls for the election of judges in a “partisan election” process, despite the fact that the Idaho Constitution requires nonpartisan judicial elections.

Regan’s latest screed against judges and the judicial selection process is riddled with misinformation. He claims that district and appellate court judges run in “retention elections.” That is simply untrue. Magistrate judges, who are appointed by officials and citizens in Idaho’s seven regional judicial districts, run in retention elections where they are uncontested. District and appellate court candidates run in elections where others can run against them. Contested elections are uncommon because judicial salaries are low, compared to private practice lawyers. Even marginal lawyers can make more money in nonjudicial legal positions. If salaries were substantially increased, more candidates would run for judicial positions.

The IFF Chair claims district and appellate court candidates “are prohibited from campaigning or to seek any endorsement.” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They can and do campaign. Both times I was elected to the Supreme Court, I campaigned across the state even though I did not have an opponent. I thought the voters were entitled to see and hear who was running. During my first campaign, I gathered a wide range of endorsements and that is rather common where there is a contested race. You are just prohibited from seeking or accepting an endorsement from a political organization. A judicial candidate may not personally solicit or accept campaign contributions, but a committee appointed on his or her behalf may do so.

Getting back to Regan’s animus against Regina McCrea, he reiterates the falsehood that she allowed kids to have access to sexually explicit material in CLN libraries, which is simply untrue. He then states that her “duties will include hearing cases in Family Court.” This is more misinformation from the IFF guru. Magistrate judges handle family issues, while district court judges, like McCrea, handle felony prosecutions and higher-dollar civil cases. McCrea has deep experience in those cases and will undoubtedly do a good, even-handed job in deciding them.

The only point that Regan did not get wrong is that there should be some way for voters to learn more about judicial candidates. Where there is an election contest, voters can listen to the candidates and make an informed decision. When there is no contest for a judicial position, it is hard for voters to evaluate the only name that appears on the ballot. I’ve often thought that the Idaho State Bar could help fill in the information gap. Regan and his IFF minions are certainly not up to that task. They do not even bother to check the facts before spewing out their uninformed opinions.

 

The politics of standing apart

The politics of standing apart

August 3, 2025

Here are some recent headlines from a Substack column by an Oregon elected official:

If You Think SNAP and Medicaid are for Freeloaders, You Might Be Talking About Me. This concerns the broad social benefits of those programs and the help they gave him as a recipient.

The Walkout Cult Isn’t Defending Liberty—It’s Burning It Down. The column was a thoughtful, more than angry, takedown of the efforts in recent years by Republican state legislators to deprive the Legislature of a working quorum.

We the People… Unless You’re the Wrong People. The writer considers the discussion about constitutional rights applying to people who are in the country illegally, and concluding that they do and should.

A legislator of either major party might be pilloried for this one: Elected Officials Don’t Swear Loyalty to Their Party.

The twist is who wrote them: A Republican state legislator, albeit one whose recall is being sought by members of his own party.

He is Cyrus Javadi of Tillamook, and he said his columns, striking as they are coming from a 2025 Republican, are intended less to stake out an ideological position than to foster a broader conversation, a discussion about ideas that extends beyond bumper stickers and snarky memes and slogans. “We try to cram everything into 30-second sound bites,” he said, and actual communication calls for more than that.

While many elected officials nationally have focused increasingly on speaking to or with solely their base — when they do at all — Javadi has engaged with opposition in both parties, at length. He was driving through Tillamook recently and encountered a No Kings protest against the Trump administration. It was several hundred sign-carriers strong, and Javadi stopped to talk with the people there for close to an hour.

He wrote of it later: “Some people were surprised. Some didn’t know who I was. Some did, and weren’t thrilled. One man wouldn’t shake my hand. One woman cried (tears of joy). Another asked me about reproductive rights. Most said something along the lines of: ‘Thank you for being here. It means a lot.’”

Is this approach — something many Americans say they want from their elected officials — exportable? And even for Javadi, is it politically sustainable?

A dentist by profession, Javadi differs from most Oregon legislators in that he represents a politically divided district. His 32nd House District has a few more registered Democrats than Republicans, but more non-affiliated voters than either, and its votes for major offices have been closely contested in recent elections. He won the general election in 2022 with 51.2% of the vote, and in 2024 with 52.1%, both among the closest Oregon legislative races in those years.

In his successful race in 2022, Javadi’s enthusiastic backers included Katrina Nelson, who commended him as “coming into this national battle for freedom with an open mind and an open heart.”

This year, the Clatskanie resident is spearheading a recall drive against him, arguing in her petition, “First, he’s out of touch with the majority of his constituents as evidenced with his vote in favor of keeping porn in school forever, (SB1098). Second, he voted in favor of HR3, in support of recognizing black drag queens. Which does not reflect conservative moral order and values.And third, he has failed to clarify his position on the biggest tax increase in Oregon history HB2025.”

Javadi responded that the first two comments misrepresented the legislation in question, and he had no chance to vote on the third (the transportation funding bill).

But the tone of Nelson’s statement and the contrast with her earlier endorsement suggests a sea change in local Republican attitudes, and Javadi did acknowledge “I’m off the reservation at this point.”

Whether he’s “out of touch with a majority of his constituents,” as Nelson contends, is another matter. He probably has run afoul of many Republican organizations, but he may be on track with the majority of the registered voters in the district who are not Republican.

That may indicate he would fare well in a recall election, if it happens, and in the next general election, while the next primary — which could generate an in-party contest — could be competitive.

Javardi may have a strong asset even there, though.

“People can sniff out when you’re not being authentic,” he said.

That still may be harder to pull off in a district more heavily dominated by either major party. In a more competitive environment, it might be enough.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Just beginning

August 2, 2025

It’s going to be a wild ride --

My fear is that even if we run Trump off, there will be no return to “the good old days.” In the first 100 days of Trump’s second go at running things, he has already brought shambles to the entire structure of our historical form of government – inside and out, and top to bottom.

The second election of Trump, the constant stream of changes he is instilling upon us, and his astonishing view and methods he is promising for the future may well mark the demise of our grand experiment. There are many who are convinced that our former style of government will never return. Consider:

We were taught from grade school that our system of government was the best in the world. What began as a clear experiment in government has worked for over 250 years, surviving  the iron fist of King George III, and enduring the curious entreaties of the rest of Europe swirling around us during the early years, prevailing in a civil war and rebuilding the country with a strong measure of success in the middle years, and withstanding two world wars to g row to a position of unrivaled prosperity in the latest years.

In patting ourselves on the back over the successes we have achieved, we must remember that for most of our history we enjoyed huge economic growth from developing the vast lands of the new world. In more recent times, with no new lands to develop and the rest of the world watching our every move, we seem to be facing continual failures in our attempts to export our version of democracy to other parts of the world.

Now, with the sudden onset of change dramatically sweeping our own national government, coupled with a growing awareness of potential weaknesses that already exists in our model for government, the potential for international failure is suddenly and dramatically a real possibility. While what Trump is proposing might be considered horrible by many, what he is and has been tearing down to get there may no longer be viable if we ever regain the opportunity to return. We may find that many attempts to return to “the old way of doing things” will prove to be impossible.

Trump’s lies have become so common they have been given a special term -- “alternative facts” cloned by one of his political operatives in an earlier campaign. For reasons completely concealed clear to the present time, Trump’s mendacity has not been considered a disqualifying trait of fundamental proportions. What will become of this sudden change in political attitudes when the same traits are found in future candidates remains to be seen.

Marital fidelity in Presidential candidates has had a spotted reputation. Roosevelt openly kept a mistress and was reportedly in her company when he died. The press largely ignored the illicit relations, apparently conceding that marital infidelity had nothing to do with competence in running the country in times of war. When Bill Clinton’s episode with a staffer came to light, Republicans came close to bringing him down; although he managed to survive, his entire second term was largely marked by the ongoing Congressional investigations into his alleged marital affairs. In other times a single misstatement upon this subject by a candidate has led to the candidate's immediate undoing – witness the rapid decline of the candidacy of John Edwards when the claim of his marital fidelity was unwound. And does anyone even remember Eliot Spitzer, the up-and-coming New Yorker who disappeared completely in a single weekend once he acknowledged his preference for high priced hookers.

Given these spotty examples, the nonchalant reaction to Trump’s casual attitude towards the truth and towards his misadventures in the arena of sexual misconduct is still astounding. Three marriages, multiple assignations, relations with hookers, and to top it all, hundreds of thousands of dollars paid by Trump to the various paramours – whether professional, amateur or accidental -- to keep the true nature of these adventures silent. And when anything does surface, Trump makes no attempt to explain or excuse. If anything, he brags.

Trump refused to concede Biden’s victory in 2020 when he was defeated after his first term in office -- the first Presidential candidate in history to fail to do so.  The Presidential concession had been an act that over history has marked the peaceful transition of power, a tradition unique to the U.S. way.

Instead, for the first time in history, the transition of power from one party to another was marked by extreme violence. Following Trump's defeat in the election, and on the day Biden’s name was to be certified by Congress as the incoming President, a riot erupted in the nation’s capitol, swarming through the Capitol Building and causing millions of dollars in property damage, numerous injuries and several deaths.

Elections in the United States have never fostered riots of this magnitude. It remains to be seen if the nation can ever return to the traditional and peaceful ceremonial events demonstrated in history as stemming from the transition of power from one party to the other without any display of violence.

In January of 2024, over 1500 individuals were arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced for various federal crimes in connection with the Capitol riots. Despite repeated promises by Trump that he would not do so, on the day he was sworn into office, Trump pardoned every individual who had been charged or convicted of any to you crime on the day of the Capitol uprising.. His pardon included over 700 individuals convicted of serios personal crimes including physical assaults, batteries, violent conspiracies and other related criminal activities. The crimes were felonies, and carried sentences in some cases of many years in prison.

In my memory of over twenty Presidential elections, giving us fifteen Presidents and dating back to Franklin Roosevelt’s fourth election in 1944, Trump is the first one who refused to concede a losing election to his opponent, the first one to not attend the inauguration of his opponent, the first one to refuse to separate himself from his personal fortune while in office by means of a blind trust or other mechanism, the first one to fail to disclose his private earnings while in office, the first one to refuse to reveal his income tax returns on prior earnings for a reasonable period before his election, and the first one to put members from his entire family on the public payroll in one form or another, since his election.

Previously, Presidents have declined personal gifts from foreign dignitaries and have immediately turned over to the government all official gifts received. Trump appears to expect large personal gifts in exchange for dinner invitations and has announced that a mid-east oil nation is donating a Boeing passenger jet to him, worth upwards of $300 million or more, which he has indicated he intends fly as Air Force One while in office and then take with him as his personal aircraft when he leaves office.

Past presidents have sought out individuals with knowledge and experience for high level agency appointments. Appointees often included presidents of major businesses, college professors, governors of states, and Congressmen and Senators, all with demonstrated expertise in the agency’s field. Trump’s sole criterium appears to be loyalty to him, with actual experience or expertise in the appointee’s job being unnecessary. In a curious program invented by Trump, Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur designated to head an ad hoc agency with the mission of reducing government, promised to cut billions from the federal budget. Then he reduced his goal to several hundred million. Then he reduced it again to less than a few million. Then he abandoned the agency Trump created for him and left the government. Now Trump and Musk are in a word battle as both men trade insults over the various media sights.

After months of creating complete havoc within a substantial number of agencies, many of the wholesale budget cuts have been substantially restored and the personnel actions are being abated or rescinded. The cuts and personnel changes that are still outstanding are in the subjects of over 150 federal lawsuits with restraining orders entered in most to preserve the status quo  while the litigation proceeds.

I have only scratched the surface with a few of the obvious management changes Trump has engineered coupled to a brief, general look at what is occurring in the nation’s capital while we sleep. The uncertainty this is causing in the business community can be seen in the wild swings in the stock and bond markets, as investors react to the dizzy changes coming out of Trump’s administration. It is not likely to end soon.  The Congressional elections might alleviate some of the problem if the Congress swings Democratic. But if Congress remains in Republican hands, things will get worse, not better.

What then? A return to normalcy within either the Republican or Democratic party will see a successor to office with the monumental task of having to rebuild close to every governmental agency from the ground up.

The wild ride is just beginning. There is no let-up in sight.

 

‘Christians’ and others

‘Christians’ and others

August 1, 2025

Last week’s column included a reference to a legislative proposal for daily mandated Bible readings in public schools, House Bill 162, which said the reading must come from “the King James version, the new King James version, or the revised standard version of the Bible.”

That sounds specific but it’s actually not. Nor is it likely to be welcomed by all Christians. (The bill failed to pass in the last session.)

I thought of this as I looked up at my bookshelf to my copy of the King James and, next to it, a version of the Bible called “The Way” (which I’ve read more often), written in more modern English, which I was given back in the 70s and now is relatively obscure.

There are multiple versions of the King James (first published in 1611, ordered up by the king in part because he thought an older Bible was insufficiently supportive of his divine right of rule), and it has been revised from time to time over the centuries since. What the bill means by the “revised standard version” is unclear, because there are many versions. Many Protestant churches use the New International Version (1978), or the English Standard Version (2001) or the New Living Translation (1996). But some Protestant churches have been known to use others as well.

The Bibles of the Catholic Church (Idaho’s second-largest) typically include 73 books rather than the Protestant 66. The Douay-Rheims Bible has been described as “the Catholic equivalent of the King James Version,” but the New American Bible is thought to be more popular, while some prefer the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition.

Many Orthodox Christians like the Orthodox Study Bible (2008), while the Septuagint (LXX) is considered a basic text.

Many more options are available, of course. Such as: “One of the most significant developments in the digital age has been the creation of Bible apps. Among the most popular is YouVersion , commonly referred to as the Bible App. Launched in 2008, this app provides users with access to hundreds of Bible translations …”

Of course, many people of faith fall neatly into none of these categories, which brings us to the large variation in people of faith even, yes, in Idaho.

Put aside for a moment the significant numbers of Idaho’s atheist, agnostic and “none of the above” people  - estimated as high as 40% of the population in one 2023 study, though that seems high - and look just at religious groups in the state.

According to the Association of Religion Data Archives, about 70 have a presence in Idaho, and more report no local adherents but do cite "congregations."

The largest by far, unsurprisingly, is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (which uses the Book of Mormon as a key text), whose members account for 47.6% of all religious adherents in the state. The next largest is the Catholic Church (21%). From there, the numbers by denomination are much smaller.

Non-denominational Christian churches accounted for about a tenth of all adherents, but those churches cover a wide range of approaches. The Church of Christ and Assemblies of God together add up to just under 6%, but others, the dozens of other Christian organizations, are all small in size and many vary a great deal in how they worship. The variety may come as a surprise: In Idaho, there are congregants of the Church of the Brethren, Salvation Army, Serbian Orthodox Church in North America, Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia, Ecumenical Catholic Communion and the Coptic Orthodox Church, among others, alongside the better-known Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians and more.

Remember too the adherents of non-Christian faiths (whose rights specifically were defended by the nation’s founders) are found in Idaho as well. There are Muslims (six congregations estimated), and Hindu, Reform Judaism, Baha’i Faith, Theravada Buddhist, Vajarayana Buddhist, and Mahayana Buddhist.

So whose Bible, and which strand of faith, among so many choices, gets the state’s seal of approval?

Select any one, as you must under the terms of this kind of legislation, and you’re demolishing freedom of religion: The right of everyone to believe and worship (or not) freely, as they see fit, with none advantaged over another.

It’s not freedom of religion, but its destruction, that the new religion advocates are trying to push.

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