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Human Rights


published Wednesday, April 02, 2008   3791 Views

The winding down is never pretty. Last Monday, it looked like the legislature might complete its work by Friday if the majority leaders in both the House and Senate put petty differences aside, worked across party lines and worked with governor to resolve the final issues. But that was too much to ask. Senate and House majority leaders had a lot more turf battles to fight.
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published Sunday, March 23, 2008   3752 Views

First day of spring, competition blossoms. The Senate hightailed it out of town on Thursday. Ostensibly, they were frustrated with the House for holding up legislation they wanted. Some said they did not want to be in town when the final list of who is challenging them for election came out on Friday.
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published Monday, March 17, 2008   3800 Views

Making it appear like they are responding. Rapid growth has consequences: congestion, pollution and – as we saw tragically again this week – traffic deaths. In the Treasure Valley, community organizations, local governments and many civic leaders have worked long and hard to come up with solutions. In the 1970s, when resort communities asked for the option to invest in community assets using sources other than property taxes, the legislature granted them local option taxing authority.

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published Sunday, March 09, 2008   3857 Views

A special interest plane flight. Last week, Republican legislators cut short a public hearing on the public's business and boarded a private plane owned by a wealthy corporate executive to attend a fundraiser on the other side of the state. He made sure they made it back to Boise in time to vote for the bill he was lobbying for. When a reporter pressed legislators to explain what they were thinking, they all gave different answers.

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published Saturday, March 01, 2008   3942 Views

Infatuation with tax giveaways strikes again. On Thursday, if you walked by the House Revenue & Taxation Committee you would have seen a pack of legislators fawning over their latest corporate friend: a French corporation called Areva, Inc. A majority of lawmakers on the committee said a giddy “Oui! Oui!” to two bills that give away a big chunk of Idaho’s tax base to entice the company to build a facility in Idaho.
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published Monday, February 18, 2008   4761 Views

Roses and thorns by Valentine’s Day? This week, before legislators could start setting Idaho’s budget, they had to decide whether and how to adjust state employees’ compensation. Even in years of economic expansion, the legislature has told the thousands of people who work for us that Idaho does not have enough resources to invest in them on par with their peers in the private sector. “Someday, there’ll be roses,” they kept promising.
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published Monday, February 18, 2008   4661 Views

A week of Idaho political history. Two huge events overshadowed virtually every political story in Idaho this past week: the massive public response to Sen. Barack Obama’s visit to Boise on Saturday morning (over 14,000 people were in the arena and over a thousand listened outside) and the unprecedented turn out for the Democratic caucuses on Tuesday evening (over 21,000 people, breaking the record by more than four times). The fact that Idaho was hit by three more snow storms during that time did not dampen the sense that Idaho political history was being made. Yes, the legislature still met this week but according to several Democratic legislators their Republican colleagues were a bit jealous they couldn’t participate in the fun.
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published Monday, March 19, 2007   55953 Views

The latest on the skewed priorities of the Legislature...

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published Wednesday, March 07, 2007   41009 Views

Spokesman Review reporter Betsy Russell, one of the finest journalists in the statehouse, captured the tone of the debate on a narrow-minded bill to make English the "official language" of Idaho. We at UVI listended to the debate on line and were struck by the words of wisdom spoken by Sen. Edgar Malepaei of Pocatello in opposition to the bill.

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published Thursday, September 28, 2006   38037 Views

Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz died August 30.  His novels do much to further East-West understanding.

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