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 my last thoughts shared in The Star, I mentioned that I had hoped that the upper brass in the GCDSD would start to be accountable for the downward spiral of dysfunction created by their superintendent. I love our local school district and I’m proud that all of my kids were Raiders, but this organization is at the lowest point I’ve seen in forty years. We need genuine leadership where people are valued and heard, and progressive change is made on necessary prioritized challenges. Instead, we have a pattern of selfish, reactive management whe...
"Miss Coulee", the first big passenger boat to go into service on the lake behind Grand Coulee Dam. - July 8, 1940...
Regenerating millions of western forested acres scorched by large wildfires is a herculean task costing hundreds of billions. However, healthy growing woodlands are essential to reducing atmospheric CO2 and providing abundant clean air and fresh water for people, crops, fish, and wildlife. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, nearly 3 million acres have already burned this year in the U.S., mostly in Arizona, New Mexico, and Alaska. By year’s end, that total may exceed 2019, w...
The Biden Administration must be held accountable for failing to serve Central Washington’s veterans. This weekend, details on a draft report from the VA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) broke news headlines, outlining that not only did the new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system rolled out at Spokane (and now Walla Walla’s) VA hospitals cause harm to at least 148 veterans, but that Cerner Corporation, which owns the contract for this system, knew their system was flawed and withheld that information from the Department of Veter...
This weekend will feature lots of smiles, as did last weekend. The difference will be in the fact that the average age of smilers will be reduced. Last Saturday, seniors graduated from high school; this Saturday kids get a chance to wear out their parents, or vice versa, at Kids Fest. Whether you love every activity presented is not really important, just remember to enjoy seeing all those smiles. Scott Hunter editor and publisher...
Some of us grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in school every day. The words “one nation, indivisible” are a potent memory. Are those words history? The thirteen colonies declared their independence from England on July 4, 1776. Congress adopted the name “United States” on September 9, 1776. In 1777, they designated June 14 as American Flag Day. The first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution were ratified in 1791. It is surely probable that the writers of those amendments would have been stunned by the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court decisio...
Gov. Jay Inslee and Sen. Patty Murray, both Democrats, issued a draft report which estimates that breaching the four lower Snake River dams and replacing their electricity and other benefits would cost between $10 and $27 billion. Meanwhile, the lone Idaho Republican, Congressman Mike Simpson, supporting dam removal---impoundments located in a neighboring state--is willing to pony up $33 billion tax dollars. That’s a lot of taxpayer money even today when President Biden and Congress toss around trillion-dollar spending programs like h...
My Aunt Voe used to put me up in an upstairs feather bed when I would visit. I don’t know what kind of feathers she used, but they made an extremely soft mattress and likewise the sleep. Voe was what you could correctly say “old fashioned.” Yet she was a counselor to many of the younger members of the family. She was the postmaster at the Palouse post office, knew everyone in town, and more about them than was necessary. Anyway, Voe had a foot in both worlds — one in the early 1900s and the other in what were then modern times. In additio...
A year and a half ago, when President Biden was sworn into office, gas prices were $2.39 a gallon. Today, gas prices have more than doubled, averaging $5.01 per gallon. The Labor Department reported Friday that inflation rose to 8.6% in the 12 months ending in May, its highest level since December 1981. Virtually no sector of the economy was left untouched. Electricity is up 12% from a year ago, groceries 11.9%, and rent 5.9%. It’s not rocket science; the policy decisions being made by this Administration have directly impacted the state of o...
There are always a few who know what they want to do after graduating from high school. My great granddaughter, Kaylee Landeros, has already been accepted at Eastern Washington University and soon will go to the campus to plan her schedule of classes for fall. I had no idea what I would do when I went through the diploma process back in 1948. I wasn’t alone. Several in my class loaded up and went to Walla Walla to work in the cannery. I remember we had 11-and-a-half-hour shifts, seven days a week. Low pay, but lots of overtime. Six of us r...
Our weather forecasts originate from the National Weather Service. How you get your weather forecast varies a lot. There are numerous weather phone apps. All television and radio stations provide weather forecasts, and there are the all-weather sites on the Internet. The data used is from the National Weather Service. What the weather service produces is in the public domain — it belongs to all of us. Weather Service data, as well as data from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (...
Prior to the corona virus outbreak, economies in the industrial world were moving along fairly smoothly — reliable supply chains with “just in time” component arrivals, predictable product deliveries, low interest rates, little inflation, abundant reasonably priced energy, and an adequate workforce in seemingly peaceful world. It was a setup for a perfect storm! That cataclysmic eruption two years ago slammed countries worldwide just like happened with World War I and the Spanish Flu plagu...
China has been buying up American farmland, and, for some reason, people aren’t worried about it. Maybe they’re unaware that China’s American agricultural land holdings have increased over tenfold in the last decade. Maybe they’re unaware that at the beginning of 2020, investments from China held $2 billion of American agricultural land. Maybe they’re unaware that 2021 was the 10th straight year America’s trade deficit with the Chinese eclipsed $300 billion. Maybe they’re unaware that China owns 50% of the global reserves of corn. But I’m...
While he’s right about the diverse energy portfolio the state of Washington boasts, and about the necessity of an all-of-the-above energy solution, for now, Rep. Dan Newhouse would better advance the goals of energy independence by not including the divisive rhetoric he seems to think is necessary at every turn. We include his column on this page because he represents us in the U.S. House of Representatives, but even a piece about his bringing members of Congress to his district to show them local energy solutions obligatorily starts with an a... Full story
Andy Clark is an LR alumnus and was a very talented Raider and UW Husky track athlete. At LR he was coached by Randy Spotts, who was the best high school distance coach around. Randy was very organized, methodical, expected the best from his athletes and coached several state champions and medalists. Coach Spotts always kept things fun with his bizarre sense of humor. Even when his runners were tops in the state he would yell at them to run “Faster, faster, faster.” Then when their events were over he’d tell the coaches jokingly, “Boy, could I...
“Mass shooting” is defined as four or more people shot. A list of the number of those mass shooting events by year is cited below. 2022: 249 as of May 24. In all of 2021: 671; in 2020, 611; 2019, 416; 2018, 336; 2017, 346; 2016, 381; 2015, 335; 2014, 269. The number of people who were shot and the number who were killed is given by the following website, and it also reports the date and location of each event. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2021/may/27/us-mass-shootings-database On Oct. 1, 2017, one individual shot 471 peo...
Memorial Day can be a special occasion. It is meant to be a day of remembering family members and close friends who have passed on. It is a time when you can reflect on the good times enjoyed with those who have been closest to you. When I return home to Palouse, which I plan to do in a few weeks, the first place I always go is to the cemetery where my parents and grandparents are buried. There are a number of others that were close to me buried there. How fortunate we are that our society sets apart a special day to do this. At my parents’ g...
Over the past year and a half — under the Democrats’ one-party rule — rural communities like ours in Central Washington have been harmed by the failed, anti-energy policies coming out of our nation’s capital. Gas prices have hit all-time highs, and American families are facing high inflation and supply chain interruptions thata threaten our way of life. It is more critical than ever that our nation establishes a strong, reliable, all-of-the-above domestic energy portfolio. Fortunately for us in Central Washington, we have a prime example...
Electric City is making the correct move in considering whether it should plan for expansion to its south. Like the rest of the country, the local area is running short of housing, and that’s a major obstacle to progress for a better community. Local employers have trouble recruiting employees to the area when they can’t find a place to live. Our largest employers in the Grand Coulee Dam area — the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and Coulee Medical Center — run into the problem repeatedly. The hospital keeps eight rentals of its own just to have a...
The cartoon in the May 18th edition of The Star newspaper depicts the issue of abortion as a political one. It is a huge disservice to our communities to infer abortion is a political issue. It is not. It is a moral issue. A woman cries out it is her body, therefore, her choice, but what about the little girl or boy who is torn to pieces by the abortion? Why does she or he not get a say in what is going to happen to her or his body? To hear what happens to that little girl or boy, listen to Dr. Anthony Levatino. In October of 2015, he...
People that fly complain about how much time it takes to get to and clear security at the airport. Just getting to the airport can be just as difficult. I was staying at the Mandarin Hotel, which is located on Hong Kong Island. I had a fairly near flight departure and asked the guy at the desk to call a taxi for me. He explained that there were no taxis at that time, but the bicycle taxi people gathered at dawn at a location nearby, he said. Maybe I could get one there. You would think that one of the world’s prime hotels would have a better h...
As Memorial Day approaches each year, I reflect on the debt that each and every American owes to the heroes who have fought to preserve our freedoms. Throughout our history, more than one million Americans, in Lincoln’s words, “gave their last full measure of devotion” in our nation’s defense. This Memorial Day will be the 155th in our nation’s history, and rather than simply marking the beginning of summer, as Americans we should take the opportunity to honor those who have given their all. This year is especially memorable for Central W...
The 1938 high water of the Columbia River tops the upstream spillway blocks and floods the blockouts left for the outlet works gate installations at EL. 934. The maximum flow for 1938 was 361,680 second feet. May 28, 1938...
Imagine the nation’s hospitals besieged by pressure to set aside most of what medical science has learned in the past half century. Individuals needing care would receive attention, but from physicians wary that implementing contemporary practices and ideas could have consequences for their careers. Public health would diminish even more. This is the challenge faced by history educators in many states and school districts across the United States right now. Radical organizations, prompted and prodded by marketing professionals and political i...
After a few decades of interviewing high school students two or three times a year, certain traits start to seem universal, including eager optimism mixed with a little nervousness about the unknown coming up. Last week, I had the absolute pleasure, once again, to talk with a few local seniors, one on one, about their plans for the future and what high school has been like for them. Whether they hoped to go to college, pursue a certain career, or begin a new adventure, these young adults — vibrant, bright, and hopeful as they are — carries at...
