Get involved
If you are truly interested in how your local government agencies operate, file public records requests to sharman@co.asotin.wa.us for county or vinelandcemetery@gmail.com. If you have questions for Chuck Whitman, Asotin County commissioner, email cwhitman@co.asotin.wa.us.
Example: Request any and all public records requests filed by me concerning the gates installed on county roads from both Stacey Harman and Judy Harris at Vineland. Also, contact Chuck Whitman, since I have emailed my complaint about the foregoing subject. There are so many issues the people don’t know about.
Ask the county how many change orders it has made since the original jail contract was approved. Ask about the Rudy Mendoza cremation project (copy of contract). Has it been finished after 11 years? See the runaround you will get.
Get involved. Don’t just complain. Any questions, contact me. Thank you.
Jim Griffin
Clarkston
Ripe with hypocrisy
As a “brave Republican,” I’ll continue to advocate for Department of Agriculture and National Institutes of Health funding for good science research for agriculture and I’ll work to help claw back the funds lost from the Agricultural Research Service that make sense.
I take offense to the admonishment by the Washington State University Regents at their recent meeting. It’s ripe with hypocrisy. The job of the regents of our public university is to oversee and protect the taxpayers’ and public funds that flow in and out ... . Over the past decade, the regents at WSU have been derelict in their duties. Their lack of oversight has led WSU to tens of millions of dollars of debt. They never said no to any capital building project that President Elson Floyd proposed, even when operating funds to keep the lights on weren’t available. They continue to add levels of bureaucracy at the administration level while failing to support basic services.
They also turned a blind eye to an athletic department that was spending money that was promised but never delivered by the Pac-12. You’re upset some federal employees lost their jobs, but where was your compassion when you fired employees who used their First Amendment right to refuse the COVID-19 vaccine? Maybe using a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer would be a better approach, but you must start somewhere.
Before you start throwing stones at those of us who voted for government accountability, maybe you should clean up your own house.
Art Schultheis
Colton
What stunt is next?
In late January, our randomly-bouncing-off-the-wall president ordered the release of massive amounts of water from two reservoirs in California’s southern Sierra Nevada mountains. Federal officials, afraid that speaking truthfully would endanger their jobs, spouted lies about the water being used for irrigation or fire fighting.
It’s winter, and the water was not used for irrigation. It ran into a dry lakebed. Not a drop could be used for firefighting as these reservoirs were never designed to supply the Los Angeles area and L.A. already had ample supplies of water. State officials were able to speak truthfully, revealing that this water was wasted and would not be available for the summer irrigation season, especially critical as the forecast is for a dry summer.
The only explanation is that it was the president’s publicity stunt. A stunt based on lies that produced absolutely nothing of value and will hurt the area farmers. A stunt that no reasonable person would ever try, a stunt that should have serious consequences and one that certainly would have serious consequences for an ordinary person.
What stunt will he pull off next? Remember, this is the person who has control over nuclear weapons. We need to move the president into an institution where he receives psychiatric care and is not a danger to civilization.
Stephan Flint
Pullman
Health economy grows
Why is Valley Vision focusing on attracting “businesses that sell products outside the area” when we don’t have the population to sustain them? No major manufacturer will relocate to an area with a declining birth rate, where two-thirds of high school graduates leave and never return, little family housing and that has effectively zero working class immigration.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor & Statistics “Economy at a Glance” for Lewiston-Clarkston, there is one growth market in the area — health — with an average monthly increase of 7.4% in jobs over the past 12 months. Or to put it another way, older adults and the services that sustain them. No other part of our economy even comes close to that level of growth.
Valley Vision was invited to nine meetings hosted by Interlink (a local senior-service nonprofit) from 2022-24 focused on how to prepare and capitalize on the growing older-adult population. They did not attend. I have serious doubts about any organization that refuses to acknowledge the bobbing waves of grey hair in the grocery store, on the roads and everywhere else.
The aging of the valley is a demographic certainty, 20 years ahead of the rest of the nation. Can we please stop pretending that the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley is a “working-class, family-friendly place where lots of people come to raise their families”? It may have been back in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, but it certainly isn’t now.
Loren Eugene Beauchamp
Lewiston
Considering his sources
After reading Mr. Richard Eggleston’s diatribes (Tribune, Feb. 23), I was left wondering whether to address any of them or consider his sources. I have decided to consider the sources.
1. Eggleston noted two of his sources where from The Epoch Times. Epoch Times is heavily influenced by the Falun Gong religious group. It is considered a hard right conservative political publication. Originally, it was against the Chinese Communist Party, but in 2016, at the direction of Li Hogunzi, the founder of Falun Gong, Epoch Times became an ardent supporter of Mr. Donald Trump.
It is hardly a neutral or disinterested media source.
2. The other source was from LifeSiteNews. Originally this was a Canadian anti-abortion site, but it too has become ultra conservative. Fact-checking website Snopes.com described LifeSiteNews in 2016 as “a known purveyor of misleading information.” Paul Moses wrote for Commonweal in 2021 that LifeSiteNews coverage “feigns journalistic accuracy, but misleads through omission.” The Canadian Anti-Hate Network described the website in a 2021 report as a “Christian version of Breitbart.”
3. Eggleston quotes Carlo Maria Vigano extensively. Problem is, he is no longer an archbishop of the Roman Catholic Church. He was excommunicated this past year for schismatic activities, primarily attacking the legitimacy of Pope Francis.
Yes, one has to consider Eggleston’s sources: ultraconservative, inaccurate, misleading and schismatic.
I rest my case.
Wayne H. Beebe
Pullman
A challenge for Trump
Donald Trump loves to state how he is a stable genius so I have a challenge for him if he has the guts to take it up, which I doubt.
I challenge Trump to a battle of wits on any subject he chooses with just one stipulation and that is, he cannot use his administration to do research ahead of time, thus making it a true one-to-one challenge.
I’m 71 so there’s not a huge age difference. I’m also transgender and an independent voter, both of which he abhors. I strongly oppose his deportation policies, as our country relies on immigrant labor to build our homes and harvest our crops.
Finally, I oppose extending Trump’s tax cuts or giving even more money to billionaires and corporations. I also believe we should reinstate at least a 40% tax rate on those making more than $1 million a year and reinstating Social Security taxes on everyone in that tax bracket or above.
So how about it, Donnie baby? You could show the nation how smart you are by going one to one with no previous research or you could refuse the challenge and prove that you are indeed a small-minded person with delusions of grandeur.
Jennifer Walker
Clarkston
Researching archives
Several years ago, I downloaded Mourer articles from the Lewiston Tribune archives, storing them away for a quieter time to fully use the 160-ish of them for research purposes. Recently, while enjoying the warmth and dry winter in Southern California, that time came to be.
The comprehensive reporting of day-to-day life in the 1950s through the 1990s is breathtaking. Reading the articles of “then” without concern of today’s “private/patient/addresses/traffic fines, etc.” information, was much like an archeological dig site, complete with the dust and excitement.
The narrative I had constructed through the lens of childhood memories has been utterly shattered, revealing itself as truly camouflaged as a quilt of convenience and self-beneficially conforming. So, I just want to take a moment to say thank you to the Alford family for the incredible gift I have found in the Tribune archives.
While the “truth” of yesterday was printed and preserved, knowledge of my family’s true past is now exposed and understood with important parts better and worse than I had conjured them to be.
Doug Mourer
Manson, Wash.
