News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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Michael Baumgartner is hostile to his constituents and generally all Washingtonians. He claims to be a “state’s rights guy,” as Republicans used to be until most congressional Republicans now cowardly won’t stand up against President Donald Trump’s wannabe all-powerful dictatorship. Accordingly, Baumgartner fell in line with House Republican colleagues by recently joining a letter from the House Judicial Committee to Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown (Spokesman-Review 3/31/25). The letter, in effect, claims that Trump’s extremely c...
Rep. Michael Baumgartner is, figuratively speaking, “all-over-the-map” about Ukraine — but effectively supporting Russia. He agrees that Russia clearly started the war and was/is the aggressor, and he’s assured Thrive International Ukrainian refugees that he opposes their deportation. But he completely undercuts that by his Ritzville Town Hall statement, “I don’t think [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy is doing a great job,” and by his outlandish calls for Zelenskyy to resign after President Donald Trump humiliated Zelenskyy. Co...
My message to our US Representative Michael Baumgartner, based on my email to him: Have you no nation-wide condemnation and world apology for how Donald Trump and JD Vance humiliated Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28? And your subsequent call for Zelenskyy’s resignation makes no sense given your statement that Russia clearly started the war and has been the aggressor — on second thought, it makes great sense considering your already evident cowardice in standing up to Trump, Vance, and Elon Musk. You certainly lack the spi...
On one of my recent volunteer activities with Spokane Public Schools, I was happy to hear first-hand a school employee’s personal immigration story very similar to many I’ve heard in my 88 years but more recently drowned out by cruel lies about immigrants. She recounted how her father, who immigrated with her mother from Mexico, followed the seasonal agricultural crops throughout the Pacific Northwest in order to obtain full-time work with long hours. But he insisted that she stay in one place throughout her childhood to get a good edu...
Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu won’t let anything stop their abhorrent killing of innocent civilians. Putin justifies massacring Ukrainians by gross disinformation. Netanyahu justifies annihilating Palestinians by Hamas’s horrific October 7 attack which, of course, deserved strong response. Any chance of stopping the two will probably have to happen internally. Internal resistance to Adolf Hitler’s atrocities was exemplified by world-renown German Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer who felt God’s calling to help assassinate Hitler. Author...
Carmela Conroy gives eastern Washington voters the unusual, important opportunity to elect a foreign policy expert as their US Representative. As Foreign Service Officer for 24 years, she served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Norway, New Zealand, and Tom Foley’s Japan office. US voters must weigh foreign policy experience much more heavily than usual in their 2024 voting decisions. Electing wannabe dictator Donald Trump would be a huge catastrophe for our national security by his policies towards Ukraine and Russia, with most congressional Republica...
Among Cathy McMorris Rodgers’s negative legacies she leaves as US Representative, her most impactful may be on immigration. However, she still has time to improve that. Donald Trump cares nothing about our country, just his election. Accordingly, he recently ordered all Republicans to scuttle the bipartisan, long-negotiated Senate deal supporting Ukraine and limiting immigration that would be a victory for President Joe Biden. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, an election-denier, obeyed Trump by withholding a full House vote, despite e...
I can’t remember when I agreed with her policies. And I definitely disagreed with her father and opposed his controversial actions. But Liz Cheney, with her new book, Oath and Honor, is certainly again My No. 1 Hero. She shows once more she is the rare prominent Republican who really cares about saving our democracy. And I totally agree with her that if Donald Trump wins the presidency in 2024, that may be our last election, or at least the end of democracy as we have known it. Cathy McMorris Rodgers refused to comment on the House GOP’s non-re...
No better example exists of congressional Republican degeneration than comparison of Liz Cheney with Harriet Hageman, who trounced Cheney in the 2022 Wyoming Republican Primary by more than 30 points. Cheney occupied the third-highest position in House Republican leadership before being ostracized by Republicans for becoming the rare congressional Republican to stand up to former President Donald Trump. Cheney should be the No. 1 Hero of anyone who wants to save our badly threatened democracy, whatever one’s political stripes. In contrast, H...
The federal debt ceiling crisis was averted but tax cheats benefited. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 contained $79 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); $45 billion of it was to audit individuals or businesses making over $400,000 dollars annually, to catch those not paying their taxes. Funding cuts for many years rendered the IRS largely unable to audit the wealthy. Currently, the amount in taxes owed but not paid totals nearly $7 trillion over a decade; three-fifths is held by the top 10% of taxpayers, more than one-quarter by...
President Joe Biden is seeking re-election. I wish he were younger and I might favor other Democrats — Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan Governor, and 2020 presidential contenders Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker come to mind. But Biden’s record is impressive and he may have the best chance of winning the presidency. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated openly, and Republicans have followed, a commitment to oppose everything Democrats proposed from the day former President Barack Obama was inaugurated, even if originally Republican...
H.R. 5, the Parents Bill of Rights, passed the House on Friday. A recent column by Sean V. O’Brien, Eastern Washington director of right-wing Washington Policy Center (WPC), “We must affirm parents’ rights, put students first” (March 22), explained the bill. Reading the “five pillars of H.R. 5,” one senses that in normal times this legislation, though unnecessary, would seem quite innocent. But these aren’t normal times and the second pillar, “Parents have the right to be heard,” is being greatly debased by many Republicans. Perhaps the greates...
Give President Joe Biden some credit for mid-term election Democratic successes when most everyone, including the media, predicted otherwise. Instead of focusing on himself, he quietly avoided states where he’s unpopular and helped Democrats win Pennsylvania where he grew up and is still popular. He presented us with our country’s greatest challenge: to save our democracy from autocratic ambitions of the MAGA faction that dominates the Republican party. He inherited a mess and time spent cleaning it up detracted from time for positive acc...
Who has more mental problems — the perpetrators of gun violence or congressional Republicans, including our own Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who lack normal compassion and regard for human life, even of young children? Congressional Republicans have once again copped out of their responsibility to do anything significant to stop the mass killings by effectively acting only on mental illness measures. At the least, their social-emotional development has been severely stunted. Using the Second Amendment of the Constitution as their crutch, they i...
In 1974 most congressional Republicans were patriots, forcing then-President Richard Nixon to resign when he tried to overthrow our democracy. Alarmingly, most current congressional Republicans are unpatriotic cowards, caving to former president Donald Trump’s attempt to do likewise. There’s good reason Trump trusted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s word over our own US intelligence: they’re very similar—both ruthless liars craving power. Fortunately, a few current congressional Republicans want to save our democracy. Especially powerful...
Recently, Chris Cargill, Eastern Washington director of right-wing Washington Policy Center, advocated for a parents’ bill of rights to improve our educational system. But how would that help? Shouldn’t students themselves, especially at high school level, have at least equal voice to their parents since their education most strongly affects their own lives? Maybe Cargill thinks students and their parents agree on what would improve their education, but is there evidence of that? Polls show considerable disagreement between high school-age stu...