Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Serving Lincoln County for more than a century!
Sorted by date Results 53 - 77 of 1893
Navigating health insurance can feel overwhelming, especially when headlines are swirling, federal rules are shifting and new plan options are entering the mix. With so much noise in the headlines, it's completely normal to feel overwhelmed. Whether you're already enrolled in an individual or family plan or shopping through the Washington Health Benefit Exchange (wahealthplanfinder.org) for the first time, we've outlined the key updates and important areas to keep in mind...
Baumgartner is on wrong side of shutdown Rep. Mike Baumgartner’s current radio ads dissing the shutdown miss the point entirely (on purpose). The shutdown has occurred because Democrats are standing up for the rights of Americans. Terms of the current federal budget call for massive health care cuts, massive tax benefits for millionaires and billionaires, pitiful tax benefits for middle-income citizens, and zero tax benefits for low-income people. Mr. Baumgartner voted for this horrible budget, against the best outcomes f...
There's an old saying that hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue - and nowhere is that more apparent today than in the far left's latest crusade: the "No Kings" movement. These activists claim President Donald Trump - who won both the Electoral College and the popular vote in the 2024 election - is destined to rule like a dictator. They warn that American democracy will crumble under the weight of the "evil orange man's" ego. They rail against "authoritarianism" and...
The mood of the nation is ugly and getting worse. Deadly violence from guns, knives, fire-bombings and vehicles is rising. Social media is toxic. Things have to change for all of our sake. The tone of the discourse is hateful. For those of us who started as journalists in the late 1960s, we are left wondering if public trust can be restored and civility is again possible. Over the last 40 years our family has vacationed at the same place on the beach. While the buildings have been refurbished, the complex is still largely...
New legislation is unleashing a slew of new sales taxes on services, courtesy of Senate Bill 5814, designed to plug a self-inflicted budget black hole at the expense of hardworking entrepreneurs. From freelance IT consultants to mom-and-pop temp agencies, the ripple effects of this 6.5% (plus local add-ons up to 10.5%) tax increase on previously untaxed services like advertising, security and software development is already proving catastrophic. More than 90,000 businesses must now scramble to comply, but it’s the little g...
On Tuesday, September 30, 2025, while attempting to enter Peak Fitness for a scheduled physical therapy appointment, my wife tripped on the street-to-sidewalk curb and fell while using her walker. She scraped her leg and knee; we were fortunate it was not more serious. There is no wheelchair/walker-accessible curb ramp along the sidewalk in front of Peak Fitness. As a result, people with mobility challenges cannot safely move from street level to the sidewalk. Although there are curb ramps at the crosswalks at both ends of...
Federal cuts will affect medical costs It’s come to my attention that lots of people don’t know the impact of the new federal budget on our way of life. The upshot of this budget is that Medicaid is being cut horrendously so that millionaires and billionaires can have huge tax breaks. Middle-class and low-income folks will bear the brunt of this catastrophe by losing income and by paying higher taxes. Some clinics in the northeastern U.S. have already had to close because they are no longer funded by federal monies, whi...
Now more than ever, our young people need economic opportunities and the life lessons they offer. While we know not all jobs are meant to be careers, each one offers an important experience. Jobs provide our youth structure, accountability, social interactions, and an escape from their online world. The job of state lawmakers should be to foster an environment that enables employers to thrive and offer these opportunities. Unfortunately, policies from Olympia have pushed our state in the wrong direction. House Bill 1644,...
Like a lot of my generation, I am a movie fan. I grew up sitting in front of movies on the television and movies at kid’s matinees on Saturday afternoons. Because of this, movie lines will come to me at times that seem random and disjointed. A book lover may quote Hamlet’s “Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well,” when hearing about the passing of someone they knew. My head will fill with a scene of a handful of mobsters on a couch with an open package of dead fish on a bullet-proof vest and think, “He’s sleeping with the fi...
Letter to the editor, I would like to give a shout out to the doctors, nurses and staff at our Lincoln County Hospital! Years ago, when my kids were growing up, my husband and I frequently & unfortunately had many visits to the emergency room. You know kids, whether a bad flu, stitches, or anything that can worry a parent enough to travel for an emergency. As the kids got older and visits became fewer, I had forgotten how lucky we truly are to live close enough to a community with a smaller hospital. On August 11th I had an...
Two myths in agricultural labor continue to persist: H-2A visa labor is cheap and there are enough Americans to cover the needs of U.S. farms. The H-2A visa program, which provides legal working status to agricultural workers from abroad on a temporary basis, is a federal program administered by individual states. It is designed to be a last resort. The program requires farmers and ranchers to prove there are no local workers to fill available jobs in agriculture. First, Employers must advertise for a local workforce for a...
Water engines and sand batteries are novel ways to cut CO2 emissions and reduce China and Russia’s grip on vital energy materials. China, the world’s top miner and refiner of 17 rare earth metals (RARE), can chock off our supply whenever it feels it can leverage our country and allies around the world. It did so last June. Meanwhile, Russia cutoff natural gas and oil to the European Union (EU) when its army invaded Ukraine. To combat those embargos, Japanese automakers are devising ways to reduce the dependence on lit...
As the excitement mounts for the upcoming Deutchesfest I wanted to take the opportunity to speak a little about this amazing German festival and how you can stay safe and have fun. After 54 years of authentic German food and drink made from the original local descendants it’s amazing it keeps getting better and better. So good it’s enough to knock your lederhosen off! You can stay safe by walking on the sidewalks and obeying all traffic laws. We need to remember Main Street is still a Hwy and you should be cautious cro...
News of Charlie Kirk’s murder reverberated through the nation like thunder warning of storms to come. Kirk was an iconic superstar, a self-taught young man with endless energy, a quick wit and a charming, boyish smile that attracted massive crowds at college campuses. His trademark was to sit behind a table with a microphone and “debate anyone.” Students would challenge him on everything from hot-button topics like abortion, transgender policies and DEI to his support for capitalism, his religion — even which Star Wars se...
In a recent press conference, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson expressed grave concerns about the potential economic fallout from President Trump’s proposed tariffs, citing their threat to affordability and economic stability for Washington families and businesses. Ferguson’s rhetoric about the potential tariffs — projected to cost Washington residents $2.2 billion over four years and potentially 31,930 jobs by 2029 — rings hollow when viewed against Washington’s own fisca...
This time around, it’s classified employees in Southwest Washington’s Evergreen Public Schools refusing to do work they chose and for which taxpayers pay them. The Evergreen workers who are striking belong to a union that includes part-time paraeducators, bus drivers and other service workers who work fewer than eight hours a day, 180-190 days a year, as well as some full-time workers, such as mechanics, maintenance and information technology workers who work eight hours per d...
As a father of five, nothing beats the end of the summer; school starts, and so do fall sports. Whether your children are college athletes, high school athletes, or even young athletes, few things bring a parent-or a grandparent-more joy than watching their children-or grandchildren-compete in their favorite sport. It is also a time where we're reminded that youth sports aren't just games on a schedule-they're one of our region's best classrooms for life. Ask anyone who's...
Hopefully, American and Chinese leaders' meetings to resolve trade differences will not breakdown and result in a new rift over reciprocal tariffs and export restrictions. Central to those discussions is China's worldwide dominance of rare earth minerals markets. China currently controls over 60 percent of global rare earth minerals mining and more than 80 percent of refining. Rare earths are important for their unique magnetic, luminescent, and electrochemical properties,...
I addressed the House Natural Resources Committee to sound the alarm on a crisis that's hitting rural America especially hard: fentanyl trafficking. From Colville to Yakima, drug cartels are targeting rural areas and tribal lands with deadly precision. This isn't just a problem for rural and tribal law enforcement. It's a public emergency in our own backyard. In late July, a Mexican national was sentenced to 19 years in prison after federal, state, local, and Tribal law...
When I was running work for my subcontractor boss in the construction field, he gave me some very good advice. He said, “Keep a journal of everything that happens every day. Just take fifteen minutes at the end of every day and log everything important that anyone did or said. Don’t discuss it with anyone, keep it private but be sure to keep it. Then if you need to make a claim about what the General told you to do or not do or when things were ordered and delivered etc., you will have a record which you can refer to at tha...
Our state Legislature's march toward secrecy is speeding up, despite lawsuits, massive public outcry and even a ruling that was largely against them from the state Supreme Court. In the latest move against government transparency, the public records officer of the Washington House of Representatives sent an internal email in July to members outlining a restart of a 30-day email auto-deletion system and a guide on how to get rid of other emails even faster. This action will...
In a shocking 8-1 ruling, the state Supreme Court has given its official blessing to a secretive process that allows the offers and counteroffers leading to more than a billion dollars in taxpayer-funded compensation to remain secret until after the state budget is signed into law. By failing to uphold the clear intent of Washington’s robust public records law, expect more labor unrest, not less, as a result of this ruling. For example, Washington state employees walked off t...
During summer, it isn't a surprise to see higher gas prices. But Washington drivers face a burden not experienced in other states. That burden is the added cost to fuel created by the Climate Commitment Act, a law passed by the majority party in the Legislature in 2021. (I voted with other Republicans against that bill.) The CCA is an environmental law that has turned greenhouse-gas emissions – carbon dioxide – into an expensive commodity by allowing the state to create and...
As salmon restoration ramps up on the Columbia River above Chief Joseph Dam, it is important to establish balances between those fish already in reservoirs behind dams and salmon being introduced. Completed in 1942, Grand Coulee Dam became the largest U.S. hydropower plant. It generates enough power to supply about 2 million households with electricity for one year. Water stored in Lake Roosevelt, which is 150 miles long and as deep as 375 feet, reduced downstream flooding....
Last week those of us who live in North-Central and Northeastern Washington were reminded of the devastation wildfire can bring. As several thousand acres burned in scattered fires across our part of the state, the smoke hung over Stevens County, where I live, almost like it was 2020 again. Except it wasn’t. It was a pale reminder of the agony we faced several summers ago, as wildfires dozens of times larger raged across the state, and smoke filled our skies through August a...
