<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Courtney of today's (December 7, 2012) Lewiston Tribune.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">-------------------------------------</div><div><iframe src="http://stats-newyork1.bloxcms.com/lmtribune.com/?title=Otter%27s%20trying%20-%20The%20Lewiston%20Tribune%3A%20Opinion%3A%20cheers%20%26%20jeers%2C&referrer=http%3A//lmtribune.com/opinion/article_0606b67c-1b58-56a8-ae11-f7b64847532b.html&domain=lmtribune.com&uri=/opinion/article_0606b67c-1b58-56a8-ae11-f7b64847532b.html%3Fmode%3Dprint" width="0" height="0" frameborder="0" style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; position: absolute; width: 0px; height: 0px; "></iframe><h1 style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Otter's trying</span></font></h1><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><strong style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Marty Trillhaase </strong></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Idaho's Constitution binds Otter, as the state's chief executive, to "see that the laws are faithfully executed." Chief among those is this Idaho constitutional mandate: "... it shall be the duty of the Legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools."</span></p><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In a frenzy of tax-cutting, GOP governors and legislators have presided over a 23 percent - or about $550 million - cut in the share of Idaho's personal income devoted to public schools.</span></p><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The man who uncovered that trend is Otter's former chief economist, Mike Ferguson, who now directs the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy. Wednesday, Ferguson stood up before the annual Associated Taxpayers of Idaho legislative gathering and put Otter on the spot. He asked: Is Idaho meeting that constitutional mandate?</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Initially, Otter stammered: "I'm not prepared to answer that question."</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Next he tried to parry: Has the state ever met the constitutional standard, he asked Ferguson.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Finally, Otter conceded: "I would say that we're probably not (meeting the constitutional obligation), but we're doing the best job that we can and we're going to continue to do the best job we can."</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Where does Idaho's Constitution extend the governor a pass for trying "to do the best job we can"?</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">It doesn't.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Idaho's chief executive just admitted the Constitution is being violated. On his watch. Why isn't Otter doing something about it? Would Otter be so cavalier about doing "the best job we can" to secure constitutional guarantees of free speech, gun ownership or states' rights?</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">The brainchild of Ohio physician Earl Morse, the Honor Flight network enables World War II veterans to visit the National World War II Memorial at Washington, D.C., a trip many might not otherwise be able to make.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Jenifer students raised this money by going door to door, conducting candy sales and circulating pledge sheets to businesses and neighborhoods. Helping them in that effort were the students and faculty of five Lewiston elementary schools - Camelot, Centennial, McSorley, Webster and Whitman - who generated $1,500 in donations.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the four years Jenifer students have joined in the Inland Northwest Honor Flight program, they've raised $20,800 - more than enough to fly an entire 36-passenger plane of veterans to Washington, D.C.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Coming on the 71st anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack that launched the U.S. into the second world war, the school assembly will honor two vets who symbolize bookends of that conflict: Don Irby, who manned a .50-caliber machine gun aboard the USS Maryland during the Pearl Harbor raid, and Mike Mitchell, who four years later steamed into Tokyo Bay on the USS Cumberland Sound to witness Japan's formal surrender.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">JEERS ... to Congressman Jim McDermott, D-Wash. Relying on records compiled by the website LegisStorm, Roll Call reported McDermott and his senior legislative aide, Jessica Lee, traveled to Bali and Jakarta at a cost of $45,000. That's $21,000 for McDermott; $24,000 for Lee.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Chemonics International, a private development company that contracts with the U.S. Agency for International Development, paid for the trip.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since 2007, Congress has tightened restrictions on how much privately provided travel a member of Congress or a congressional aide can take.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Roll Call says McDermott and Lee set new individual expense records in the post-ethics reform era.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">McDermott told <a href="http://seattlepi.com/" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; ">Seattlepi.com</a> he was busy promoting democracy as well as Washington apples and cherries to Indonesia: "Absolutely not! I did not have any fun."</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Really?</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">JEERS ... to Sens. Jim Risch and Mike Crapo, both R-Idaho. They joined their party's lunatic fringe this week by helping to defeat a United Nations treaty to ban discrimination against people with disabilities.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In the United States, that's been the law ever since President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">In fact, the U.N. treaty merely proposed to use the American template for the 153 countries signing it.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And why shouldn't American values light the path of the world? Why not protect the rights of disabled American service people and civilians living abroad?</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Try as they might, critics could not find a sound reason to vote against it. The treaty would not change U.S. disability law. It would not cost American taxpayers or business owners any money. It would not jeopardize parental rights. It had nothing to do with gun ownership or abortion.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But wheelchair-bound former Sen. Bob Dole couldn't change their minds. Neither could more than 250 American disability organizations, 21 veterans service groups or 26 faith organizations.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">So it goes. When a treaty bears the imprimatur of the United Nations, reason and conscience go out the window.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">His appearance at the commission's annual forum Tuesday marked how much progress has occurred in the three years since his predecessor, Royce Chigbrow, stepped down amid accusations of sweetheart deal making with corporate taxpayers.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content" style="outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left; "><p style="text-align: -webkit-auto; outline: 0px; float: none !important; margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; background-image: none; "><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Since then, the tax agency has exceeded state legal requirements by involving all four commissioners - as well as professional tax auditors - in corporate compromise and close agreements. Receipt of previously uncollected tax payments are up $52 million thanks to a new compliance initiative. - M.T.</span></p></div></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">-------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Not only has Crapo voted against the United Nations treaty to ban discrimintion against people with disabilities, he also voted against the Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Well, that explains where Crapo stands on veterans and the disabled. What next? The elderly?</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Maybe not the elderly, maybe just the retired people. Perhaps the next demographic that Crapo will attack is the retired population. </div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">If only there were a group, maybe an association, of retired people; not necessarily global retired people, just the American segment. If only Crapo could identify an American association of retired people that he could pursue in denying them entitlements.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Are any of you fine V-Peeps aware of such a group?</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br><div>Seeya round town, Moscow, because . . .</div><div><br></div><div>"Moscow Cares"</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div> </div><div><div>Tom Hansen, CPL (Commie Pinko Liberal)</div><div>Moscow, Idaho</div><div> </div></div></div></body></html>