Serving Franklin County, WA
Serving Franklin County, WA
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It's my great honor to endorse Jerrod Sessler for the United States Congress. During my time in public life, I have gotten to know and work with many people in or people seeking office. I don't lend my name to candidates or causes that I don't believe in, but when you come across a candidate of Jerrod's caliber it makes that decision easy. This is especially true when we have all gotten to see how far out of touch with his constituent's Jerrod's opponent, Dan Newhouse, has become. Because Dan and his campaign handlers know...
The 2024 election is the most consequential election in our lifetime. It will, starting with the next 4 years, determine the path America will take nationally and globally. We vote for politicians, who's agendas are conflicted, and we think/hope they are working in the best interest of the people. Many are not. Nationally, we've lost many of our freedoms, privacy and are being overrun with people who are not American and will over time change our culture, values and way of life. Whether you live in the city or county, it is...
I am requesting the attention of all Washingtonians, but especially Christians. Please vote in this year’s election. The issues we face are serious. Transgender ideology has infected our children’s schools. Grocery bills are painfully high. Christian values are being silenced and slandered. My current home, Texas, is being trespassed by violent criminals being allowed into our country daily. And my home state Washington, you too are among the victims — especially women and girls. We should be outraged. But the sad reali...
We know President Trump’s four-year track record — no wars, secure borders, energy independence (selling oil instead of buying from our enemies), lowest unemployment in decades, highest employment of black persons, fulfilled promise to bring U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, built up our military, initiated Space Force to help protect America and still fighting for America despite getting shot and a second attempt on his life by Democrat operatives. And that’s only a partial list. We also know Kamala Harris’ track record. As Cali...
Carmela Conroy gives Eastern Washington voters the unusual, important opportunity to elect a foreign policy expert as their U.S. Representative. As a foreign service officer for 24 years, she served in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Norway, New Zealand and Tom Foley’s Japan office. Voters must weigh foreign policy experience much more than usual in their 2024 voting decisions. Foreign policy expertise is also prerequisite for ending the tragic Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Trump has accepted uncaringly. Like retiring Rep. Cathy M...
Let’s have a look at the benefits of dams to human life with a special focus on Grand Coulee Dam. It is the largest hydroelectric producing facility in the U.S. and provides enough electricity to power about 2 million households every year, 68% of all Washington state households. Please keep in mind too, that it is just one of 145 hydroelectric dams in the state. Grand Coulee dam prompted the creation of the “U.S. Bureau of Reclamations Columbia Basin Project” which converted 670,000 acres (over 1,000 square-miles) of forme...
“Polluters pay. People get a carbon cashback” sums up the impact that the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act would have. The EICDA was re-introduced in the House of Representatives last September and is currently languishing in committees. Briefly, the EICDA puts a price on carbon at the source of the fossil fuels – the well, mine, or imported tanker – therefore making it simple to administer and uniform across sources of greenhouse gases. It would take the revenue from the price on carbon and distribute it to every i...
As climate disruption becomes more evident, more people are empowered to advocate for climate mitigation. This advocacy is positive, but climate advocates must choose their words carefully for their message to be most effective. Advocates need humility because we don’t have all the answers. For instance, while the climate science fundamentals are well-established, it is a relatively new field and probably still holds plenty of surprises. Humility is necessary because renewable energy development will make mistakes, just l...
Monumental Dam has a concrete fish ladder. Its lock works for barge. Rather than breach the dam – or others on the Lower Snake River – how about using a tunnel-boring machine to notch an on the side an additional zig-zag fish ladder? The answer is cooperation or compromise – not contempt or hard-headed, extremism on breaching. Sen. Murray, Gov. Jay Inslee and President Joe Biden need to step back and look at the whole picture. Errol Kramer Odessa/Ritzville...
Persons who have dwarfism (also referred to as “little people”) frequently experience employment discrimination. Although they can perform any job task well – often needing only a stool – employers frequently reject them during interview. Bars and strip clubs exploit the resulting financial problems by hiring “LPs” for dwarf-tossing events, where bar patrons pay to physically throw an them in front of a crowd of laughing and jeering customers. LPs very frequently have skeletal (especially spinal) issues requiring multiple su...
I am writing to express my concern regarding the lack of attention given to non-partisan candidate Anthony Hudson in your coverage of the presidential race. As a blue-collar man with a message that has resonated with over 60 million people, Hudson represents a significant portion of the American population that deserves to be heard. It is disheartening to witness the prevalence of media bias in the current political landscape. While the media plays a crucial role in informing the public and shaping public opinion, it is...
The Israel/Hamas situation is a perfect example of how losing touch with our religious and political traditions makes all of us sniveling idiots. Religion gone bad is the reason Jews and Muslims are at each other’s throats today, and the reason why American Christianity is complicit with all the inhumanity. Israel’s lop-sided military holocaust in Gaza is a flowering public relations disaster for democracy, Israel, Joe Biden, American Jewry, the American war industry, monopolist media companies, religion, the Republican par...
The Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply (BIG WIRES) Act is a promising bipartisan bill in Congress that offers a wide range of benefits: reducing the risk of electrical power outages, lowering carbon emissions and energy costs, and increasing national security. The recent gas pipeline rupture in our region gave many of us a taste of how a blackout in winter would feel. Extreme weather events damaging power stations and overloading the grid are on the rise. The bill will require each U.S....
Physicians and health-care workers across the state have experienced unprecedented stress and hardship over the past several years. Despite this, physicians in Davenport and Odessa took and continue to take the time to help train medical students. We are thankful to the extensive network of physicians throughout Eastern and Central Washington who believe in “paying it forward,” because of the training they received from preceptors and mentors when they were medical students. We’ve learned that despite added layers of complexi...
Our problem is not that there is too much “fake news.” Our problem is that too many people believe it. Fortunately, there is an “antidope” — epistemology , the theory of knowledge or “how we know what we know.” Epistemology is a good solution because it has validity tests to distinguish between justified belief and opinion. And this distinction is central to most disagreements. Epistemology has simple and clarifying definitions, e.g., Truth has the property that corresponds with facts and reality. Can you imagine how m...
Early in Barack Obama’s presidency, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced his most important achievement would be to make Obama a one-term president. Ever since, McConnell has opposed anything Democrats have introduced, even if originally Republican-proposed (e.g., Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health plan predating Obamacare). This includes blocking legislation Obama and subsequent Democrats continually propose to rescue lower- and middle-income workers, many unjustly left behind. Lately, McConnell has...
Solomon Asch performed some exceptional psychology experiments in the 1950s. His experiments showed the power of conformity when people sometimes agree with a group’s opinion, even when shown evidence the group is wrong. In the 1950s, Asch could not determine whether his subjects consciously changed their views or whether social cues unconsciously skewed their perception. In 2005, Gregory Berns answered this question by repeating Asch’s experiment with brain scans. Berns found the brain’s visual center changed what it perce...
Why should Americans sit on our hands while fast food companies push late-night feasting with messages like “Give in to your cravings.” Late-night eating is against all good sense and medical advice. Unregulated advertising is one of the reasons why our morbidly obese people cannot work for a living and cannot easily participate in democracy. We need to return to truth and responsibility in advertising. Kimball Shinkoskey Woods Cross, Utah...
Why should Americans sit on our hands while fast food companies push late-night feasting with messages like “Give in to your cravings.” Late-night eating is against all good sense and medical advice. Unregulated advertising is one of the reasons why our morbidly obese people cannot work for a living and cannot easily participate in democracy. We need to return to truth and responsibility in advertising. Kimball Shinkoskey Woods Cross, Utah...
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which allocated $386 billion for clean energy, is a major breakthrough in our nation’s struggle to address climate change. The IRA can decrease our carbon emissions 40% by 2030, putting us within general range of our targeted 50-52% emissions reduction by then. But unless we speed up the permitting process for the transmission lines needed to convey the clean energy, we’ll realize only about 20% of the projected reduction, according to a Princeton REPEAT Project study. It now takes 4.3...
President Joe Biden is seeking re-election. I wish he were younger and I might favor other Democrats — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer 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 has opposed everything Democrats proposed from the day former President Barack Obama was inaugurated, even if originally Republican-proposed. And Republican opposition has...
When Americans go to the polls, we most often don’t know who or what we are voting for. We have little knowledge of candidates or of history, problems our founding fathers and mothers did not have. Our ancestors read serious books of political science, history, and law, and read sophisticated newspapers daily. Not even our college graduates do these things today. What those books would teach us is a sense of responsibility to participate in government well beyond just voting. Turning the country over to the American e...