News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
News, views and advertising of the Grand Coulee Dam Area
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In the interest of transparency in government, the “SAVE Act” should be named the SCAM Act. It is a terrible solution to a non-existent problem. Undocumented people are in the country illegally. (A civil misdemeanor, but illegal nonetheless). They do not draw attention to themselves by registering to vote (which is also illegal). That would alert the government of their presence in this country, leading to deportation. With the exception of the formerly Confederate states, who aggressively discriminated against African Americans until President...
By any military metric, the actual ones not the rosy ones released to the media, we were winning the Vietnam war. Right up to the moment we lost. The problem was the North Vietnamese were fighting a different war than we were. It’s a shame that all Vietnam vets have aged out of the military, we could use a few. Daniel Wixman Grand Coulee...
If there was one positive thing that came out of this year’s legislative session in Olympia, it was the passage of House Bill 1960. As most of you are aware, several industrial wind and solar projects are currently being proposed here in Lincoln County. Regardless of where someone stands on the philosophy of “green” energy, there is one huge problem that should concern everyone. While these developments can significantly increase the tax base, under Washington’s current tax structure, they end up shifting a large portion of the tax burden...
The term “March Madness” was coined in 1939 by an Illinois high school official named Henry Porter, but it didn’t relate to the annual NCAA basketball tournament until 1982, when broadcaster Brent Musburger put it in play. Musburger was referring to the drama that comes with 68 teams competing in the single-elimination event, now underway. But here’s the real madness: Americans will legally wager an estimated $3.3 billion on the men’s and women’s tournaments. According to the American Gaming Association, it’s an increase of 54% in just the p...
March 26, 1997, San Diego County Sheriff deputies discovered the bodies of 39 members of Heaven’s Gate UFO Religious cult in Rancho Santa Fe. The members had participated in a coordinated series of ritual suicides that coincided with the closest approach of Comet Hale-Bopp. Their website had been updated with the message: “Hale-Bopp brings closure to Haven’s Gate. Our 22 years of classroom here on planet Earth in finally coming to conclusion, graduation from the Human Evolutionary level. We are happily prepared to leave “this world” and go wi...
In our current social climate, it is too easy to allow political concerns to overpower the sway of the most important values that hold us together. As The Star’s deadline day this week falls on St. Patrick’s Day, a remarkably pertinent message for us comes by way of a bit of timeless Irish wisdom, in a toast, as written in 1908. Come, send round the wine, and leave points of belief To simpleton sages, and reasoning fools This moment’s a flower too fair and too brief, To be wither’d and stain’d by the dust of the schools. Your glass may be pu...
First off, hello Grand Coulee and surrounding area; I would like to introduce myself. Tony Jaksa is my name and Safety/Environmental officer on a large project over at the Dam is my game. I’ve been working in this capacity for more years than I would like to admit but keeping workers healthy, injury free and alive is my Mission. The sad facts are that as hard as I and other safety folks work at an injury-free workplace, we still lose some 5,000 workers a year to incident fatality, for too many years. There is nothing more impactful and s...
When I was a kid growing up in Palouse, someone built a gym on Main Street. I was more interested then in what was scheduled in the gym than who built it. Lately have wondered who built the gym. My interest was in the events that were scheduled there. We had a town basketball team. All the towns had one, and they traveled around playing each other. I always thought that the members of our Palouse team financed the building of the gym so they could control how it was used. And most of them were farmers, so they could secure a loan for the...
Protecting the people’s right to know in Washington state is a constant battle that is getting even harder. That’s a tough message to deliver, especially during Sunshine Week. Sunshine Week is recognized nationwide from March 15-21 this year. It’s meant to educate, recommit and celebrate the fight for openness in government, believing it is the best way to ensure accountability and preserve public trust. It coincides with the birthday of James Madison, March 16, 1751. Madison was a driving force behind the constitutional convention in 1787...
March 23, 1776, Patrick Henry delivered a speech to Virginia’s Second Revolutionary Convention. He argued for his resolution to raise a militia to defend the colony. Henry said, “This is no time for ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery…” Henry, in part, closed his speech with, “Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! Is life so d...
All four local towns are suing each other. You could be forgiven if you didn’t know this; the biggest beef between them involves the spectacularly uninteresting subjects of their shared sewage treatment plants, which are spectacularly expensive by your and my standards. Which is sad, because that’s who has to pay for them. That seems obviously unavoidable, as sewer plants are one thing we don’t want to do without. But making them even more expensive than they already are by deciding to sue each other over disagreements regarding them just rubs...
Just as many November 2024 general election President Trump voters express that Trump’s cruel, lawless, racist tyranny is “not what I voted for,” the same is likely true of many voting for Michael Baumgartner as our 5th Congressional District Representative. Watching Baumgartner suck up to Trump lapdog Attorney General Pam Bondi during her histrionic, unhinged performance at Congressional hearings on opening the Jeffrey Epstein files was nauseating (Spokesman-Review 2/12/26). Then Baumgartner, always lapdog to House Speaker Mike Johnson, in tu...
God Bless the United States of America, and God Bless President Donald J. Trump. I love my country, and I respect and honor our President. He is a brilliant man and has our country and her people in his every thought and action. He also has the strength and fortitude to fight every step of the way for the sole purpose of doing what is right for our country and us. What a shame and a disgrace the Democratic Party has tried and continues to inflict on him and us because of their hate or fear of him. I truly believe it is the latter! I believe...
Ah, St. Patrick’s Day is upon us — a fine time to restore our sense of humor. More than 20 years ago, British sociologist Christie Davies wrote in “The Mirth of Nations” that Americans were becoming as nervous about swapping jokes as people once were in communist Eastern Europe — a warning he issued well before cancel culture. Which makes me long for the jokes my dad and Uncle Mike — a child of Irish immigrants — shared on Sundays, such as this one: “Mike,” says Pat, “If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you like most to be wit...
March 13. 1962, a Memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was titled – Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba. The Memo had three parts. Pretexts which would provide justification for U.S. Military intervention of Cuba. Recommended preliminary submission suitable for planning purposes and seek inputs for developing a time-phased plan. Lastly, it assumed a single agency will be given primary responsibility for developing military and para-military aspects of the basic plan. The Top-Secret document w...
My thoughts are with the U.S. Military, Foreign, and Civilian service members and American citizens across the Middle East as news breaks that the United States and Israel have launched preemptive strikes on Iran, and Iran is retaliating. When American lives are on the line, we must lead with steadiness - not impulse. Failing to seriously consider the moral and legal justifications for attacking another country costs the aggressor blood, treasure and reputation, and earns the enmity of the people attacked. Having worked with survivors of armed...
I’ve lived in many public school systems around the country and all of my nine children attended the public schools where my family lived. I can tell from talking to hundreds of people here in the Grand Coulee area, that the schools here are not high quality and are not meeting the needs of children or their parents. I lived in a similar school district in Texas and after trying to change the local school from within, I ultimately moved my family to get my children into a better school. I’ve met only a few people in this school district who...
I’m sharing these thoughts as a taxpayer. My heart goes out to the army of staff and administrators who have been giving accurate, emotional testimony to our GCDSD School Board. Some of their closed sessions should have been in public. Trust is now lost in the organization. They were warned several times over the last few years that this multi-faceted crisis would evolve, but they ignored the evidence and facts. This crisis is showing a significant lack of preventive fiscal oversight, transparency and actual leadership. There is justified n...
Recently, the Washington State Association of Counties released its 2026 County Fiscal Health Survey. The results confirm what many of us have been saying for years: county governments across Washington are under significant and growing financial pressure. Out of 39 counties, a majority report significant or severe General Fund pressure. Twenty counties say state mandates are the primary driver of their budget problems. Twenty-one report moderate reductions or delays in public safety services. Nearly two-thirds say long-term sustainability...
Thank you, Anna Kirk, for your support, and your letter was right on. I received several thanks for the letter and even a phone call from Wilbur in agreement for the letter to the editor. Jamie Holman If you cannot see what the Democrats are doing in Congress and Senate you are very naive about what is going on with the criminal illegals. Some city Democrat mayors are cooperating with Ice & border patrol with no problem. But most of the Democrat Cities are not cooperating like Minnesota and calling the ICE officers Gestapo, Hitler Brown shirts...
I chose a week’s stopover in Taiwan because I had special arrangements set up with the government there. My congressman at the time was Lloyd Meeds. He had some influence there because his wife was Chinese and knew a lot of government officials. I was set up in a very Chinese hotel with a car and driver at my disposal. I didn’t know at the time that I would land there in the midst of the Chinese New Year celebration. It was The Year of the Horse and the capital was jammed with traffic. It apparently is the custom to pay your debts with “Fu...
February 26, 1919. The United States Congress passed an Act establishing the Grand Canyon National Park in the State of Arizona. The park is composed of over one million acres of Northwestern Arizona, including the spectacular are of the 277-mile canyon cut by the Colorado River. The region is still home to Native peoples. The Hopi, Navajo, Zuni, Paiute, Havasupai and Hualapai. Prior to the middle of the 19th Century, little was known about the geography of the Grand Canyon. Spanish explorations were in the general region. Vasques de Coronado...
There’s a lot of hatred in the world today. For a while, starting from when I was a young girl, it was classless to openly display your bigotry. People would whisper among themselves about “the others,” and epithets were spoken at cocktail parties and behind closed office doors, but people were savvy enough not to come to work wearing white sheets. Lately, however, that has changed. I’ve already talked about the damage being done to our Jewish communities by the blatant antisemitism displayed by anti-Zionists of all stripes, including other J...
We continue to enjoy The Star every week. Please continue our subscription for another year. Your editorials have been “spot on”! So glad to see small town folks marching for democracy! We continue to march and speak up in the Tri-Cities. Darlene Price...
While reading Letters to the Editor in The Star, I am reminded that change often comes one funeral at a time. Some can’t come too quickly. Gloria Carroll Coulee Dam...