“I’m looking forward most to the day we get Medicaid Expansion up and running.”
January 7, 2019
EYE ON SUN VALLEY
Karen Bossick
This year’s legislature will also be under the gun to try to improve the Department of Corrections, which sends a thousand inmates to Texas because Idaho prisons are busting at the seams. The Department of Corrections wants $500 million to build a new facility without doing anything about why it’s busting at the seams, Stennett said.
“If someone’s caught with small amount of marijuana, do we really want to spend tens of thousands of dollars to incarcerate them, while rendering them unproductive, rather than enroll them in a good drug program?” she (Sen. Michelle Stennett) asked.
Stennett also warned that many taxpayers may take a major hit on their tax bills this year because no one told them to change their W-4s what with personal and dependent exemptions being eliminated and most itemized deductions being eliminated or capped.
“There’s going to be a lot of outrage,” she predicted. “I’d suggest people go to Idaho State Tax Commission and find out how new tax structure will affect you.”
Stennett praised Blaine County for having the highest voter turnout in the state with 90 percent of registered voters going to the polls. Stennett noted that Democrats gained one seat in Senate, meaning seven of 35 senators are Democrat. They lost one Senate seat by 11 votes but gained three seats in the House.
“We went from 17 percent to 20 percent of the legislature. It doesn’t sound like much but I’ll take every bit of it,” she said.
Stennett said Blaine County residents can put themselves in any committee room via PBS livestream.
“But if you can, it’s can be powerful to be there in person,” she said. “The committee is where the real work done. And it’s where citizens can have their say. Once a bill hits the floor, you can be in the gallery. But you can’t say anything.”
Rep. Muffy Davis will serve on the Judiciary, Rules and Administration committee, as well as Transportation & Defense and Health & Welfare. Davis hopes to put out 2- to 5-minute videos every Friday before she comes home for the weekend.
“I’m looking forward most to the day we get Medicaid Expansion up and running,” she said. “That’s why I got into this to begin with.”
Contact:
Rep. Muffy Davis at mdavis@house.idaho.gov or call 208-332-1174.
Rep. Sally Toone at stoone@house.idaho.gov. Or, call 208-332-1032.
Sen. Michelle Stennett at mstennett@senate.idaho.gov or call 208-332-1353.
Rep. Muffy Davis and her daughter Elle at the Idaho Inaugural Ball.
Ezra Klein
Too few named journalists have a thorough and deep knowledge of American history, even brilliant contemporary journalists, like Ezra Klein, which he acknowledges in this important podcast with Jill Lapore.
Jill Lapore’s new book, These Truths, A History of the United States [2018], is a one volume tomb far more complex and contemporarily contextualized study of American History than Howard Zinn’s well-known and beloved A People’s History of the United States [1980]. Recommending this book and podcast.
From Ezra:
Jill Lepore is a Harvard historian, a New Yorker contributor, and the author of These Truths, a dazzling one-volume synthesis of American history. She’s the kind of history teacher everyone wishes they’d had, able to effortlessly connect the events and themes of American history to make sense of our past and clarify our present.
“The American Revolution did not begin in 1775 and it didn’t end when the war was over,” Lepore writes. This is a conversation about those revolutions. But more than that, it’s a conversation about who we are as a country, and how that self-definition is always contested and constantly in flux.
And beyond all that, Lepore is just damn fun to talk to. Every answer she gives has something worth chewing over for weeks. You’ll enjoy this one.
Recommended books:
Fear Itself by Ira Katznelson
A Godly Hero by Michael Kazin
The Warmth of Other Sons by Isabel Wilkerson
The principle of causation.
Read in current political context.
Every act carries with it a sequence, bringing the result of this action back to the self. This is what is meant by Karma, for Karma means the fruit of action.
Emerson called it the Law of Compensation.
Jesus proclaimed the same in his teaching that as we sow, so shall we reap.
Kwang-Tze tells us that he more we give to ohers the ore we have.
Walt Whitman also refers to this when he says, “The gift is most to the giver and comes back most to him”
This all means the return of the self to itself. The great apostle did not tell us to forget the self; he merely told us to also remember everyone else.
We are to view ourselves each in the other and behold God in all.
-Ernest Holmes
Apropos?
Man is all ready to come a god, and instead he appears at times to be a zombie.
A temperamentally angry man may be more inclined to anger than another. But as long as he remains sane he is still free not to be angry. His inclination to anger is simply a force in his character which can be turned to good or evil, according to his desires. If he desires what is evil, his temper will become a weapon of evil against other men and even against his own soul. If he desire what is good, his temper can become the controlled instrument for fighting the vile that is in himself and thus helping other men to overcome the obstacles which they meet in the world. He remains free to desire either good or evil.
-Thomas Merton
Focused on 2019.
The first woman to head CBS News announced.
NPR: “The legendary CBS News producer Susan Zirinsky will replace David Rhodes as the president of CBS News in March, the network announced Sunday evening.
Rhodes’ decision to step down follows a tenure of great change and great turmoil, marked by shifts in personnel and formats, along with bumpy ratings and searing scandal.”
“The world we cover is changing, how we cover it is changing, and it’s the right time for me to make a change too,” Rhodes wrote in a statement.
“Zirinsky, most recently the senior executive producer of the true-crime-driven newsmagazine 48 Hours, will be the first woman to head CBS News. She has held significant roles at almost every element throughout the news division. She was a producer of CBS Evening News and has led the network’s coverage of the White House.”
NYTimes: “The surprising announcement was the latest major personnel change for CBS, which also forced out Leslie Moonves, the company’s longtime chief executive, in September after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct.”
[…]
“In a Sunday night email to the staff, the acting CBS chief executive, Joe Ianniello, said that Mr. Rhodes “decided the time is right to move on to new opportunities.”
“Of Ms. Zirinsky, he wrote, “I can think of no one more equipped than ‘Z’ for the job, and we are delighted she has welcomed these new responsibilities.”
[…]
“Ms. Zirinsky, 66, has been with CBS News for more than 40 years and has touched almost every part of the division, from its morning show to its evening newscast and its coverage of the White House before joining ’48 Hours’ in 1996. She was the inspiration for Holly Hunter’s character in the 1987 movie ‘Broadcast News.'”
Journalist Jay Rosen:
“Over the last few days, it’s become clearer and clearer to me that, without intervention, coverage of the 2020 campaign is likely to be a disaster for everyone except DT and his core voters, who want to watch it all burn anyway.”
POLITICO [Twitter]:
“How does Elizabeth Warren avoid a Clinton redux — written off as too unlikable before her campaign gets off the ground?”
Community Cafe: “By media/publications writing better perspectives than this one. You guys didn’t learn much. Be better. Compassionate. And wise.”
Warren battles the ghosts of Hillary
“In interviews with POLITICO, advisers and allies project confidence that perceptions of her as cold or aloof will fade once people see her campaign.”
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/31/elizabeth-warren-hillary-clinton-1077008
Jay Rosen: “Hallelujah. @chrislhayes on campaign journalism in the 2020 election: ‘It is our job — all of our job — to do better this time around.'”
Community Cafe: “Thank you, Chris. Excellent. We must.”
#
Tag. You’re it.
“One guy, he had nothing to do with the movies, but I’ve taken a lot of direction from him. That’s Bucky Fuller. Bucky, he’s most famous for the geodesic dome, but he made a great observation about these oceangoing tankers. And he noticed that the engineers were particularly challenged by how to turn this thing, you know? They got this big rudder, it took too much energy to turn the rudder to turn the ship. So they came up with a brilliant idea. Let’s put a little rudder on the big rudder. The little rudder will turn the big rudder, the big rudder will turn the ship. The little rudder is called a trim tab.
Bucky made the analogy that a trim tab is an example of how the individual is connected to society, and how we affect society. And I like to think of myself as a trim tab. All of us are trim tabs. We might seem like we’re not up to the task, but we are, man. We’re alive! We can make a difference! We can turn this ship in the way we wanna go, man! Towards love, creating a healthy planet for all of us.”
-Jeff Bridges, accepting his lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes.
Newseum
The Newseum in Washington DC displays more than 2,000 newspapers worldwide each day. Just follow the link below.
