Idaho Politics
Guest Column
Utah Lands New Spy Center; Idaho Doesn’t Come Close to Needed Infrastructure
Fueled by $180 million in federal stimulus money, the National Security Agency will build a one-million square foot data center outside of Salt Lake City. According to the Salt Lake Tribune:
Hoping to protect its top-secret operations by decentralizing its massive computer hubs, the National Security Agency will build a 1-million-square-foot data center at Utah’s Camp Williams.
The years-in-the-making project, which may cost billions over time, got a $181 million start last week when President Obama signed a war spending bill in which Congress agreed to pay for primary construction, power access and security infrastructure. The enormous building, which will have a footprint about three times the size of the Utah State Capitol building, will be constructed on a 200-acre site near the Utah National Guard facility’s runway.
Congressional records show that initial construction — which may begin this year — will include tens of millions in electrical work and utility construction, a $9.3 million vehicle inspection facility, and $6.8 million in perimeter security fencing. The budget also allots $6.5 million for the relocation of an existing access road, communications building and training area.
Officials familiar with the project say it may bring as many as 1,200 high-tech jobs to Camp Williams, which borders Salt Lake, Utah and Tooele counties.
Governor and Legislature Will Try Something Else
Idaho Task Force Will Consider Transportation ImpasseAfter a miserable legislative session dominated by fruitless disagreements over transportation issues, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has appointed a 15-member task force to consider how to resolve them. The task force was a provision of the agreement between Otter and legislative leadership which finally ended the second-longest legislative session in state history.
Lt. Gov. Brad Little will preside over the group, and meetings, starting in August, will be open to the public.
The governor’s press release describes the groups goals as “developing recommendations by December 2010 for sustainable road and bridge funding for the next 20 years. Task force members will study everything from fuel tax increases and registration fees to truck fees, targeted transportation-related sales taxes and other alternatives.”
A state budget backlog now over $100 million and possibly several times that is needed for road and bridge repairs and maintenance and road improvements. The governor and the state legislature have disagreed over the best way to raise the money for several years, with Otter favoring a gas tax and the legislature firmly opposed. The Republican-dominated legislature is so opposed to fuel taxes that they have established a different task force to determine by the 2010 legislative session whether the share of funding from the state’s 25-cents-per-gallon fuel tax that now goes to the Idaho State Police and the Department of Parks and Recreation should be replaced with some other form of user fee.
More Idaho Politics
Stars and Stripes Newspaper Unhappy with Army's Decision
Former Statesman Reporter Barred From Army Unit For Not Reporting Good News
Full disclosure: Former Idaho Statesman political reporter Heath Druzin, now with Stars and Stripes in Iraq, is a friend. I sometimes covered the Idaho State legislature while sharing the reporter’s room with Druzin and others. I consider him a talented and thorough reporter with the integrity and attention to the truth we expect from all journalists.
The mideast edition of Stars and Stripes, “the independent news source for the U.S. military community” has a story today on one of its own reporters, Heath Druzin. Druzin left the Idaho Statesman last year to report from Iraq.
“Officials said Stripes reporter Heath Druzin, who covered operations of the division’s 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team in February and March, would not be permitted to rejoin the unit for another reporting tour because, among other things, he wrote in a March 8 story that many Iraqi residents of Mosul would like the American soldiers to leave and hand over security tasks to Iraqi forces," says the story.
“Despite the opportunity to visit areas of the city where Iraqi Army leaders, soldiers, national police and Iraqi police displayed commitment to partnership, Mr. Druzin refused to highlight any of this news,” Major Ramona Bellard, a public affairs officer, wrote in denying Druzin’s embed request. Bellard was also unhappy that Druzin repeatedly asked Army officials for permission to use a computer to file a story when a blackout period was in effect. She said he “behaved unprofessionally.”
Opinion
Parma Research Station Must Remain OpenThe U.S. leads the world in agricultural innovation primarily because of research done at the nation's land grant universities. One of the most successful experiment stations in Idaho is located in Parma, but the UI has just announced that it will be closed at the end of the year. The faculty union and growers are trying to get the UI administration to reverse this disastrous decision.
Esmaeil Fallahi, a world renowned fruit expert at Parma, is responsible for the fact that Idaho now grows Fuji apples, table grapes, and white peaches. In the recent years, hundreds of thousands of boxes of white peaches and table grapes have been shipped to Asia.
Saad Hafez, another researcher at the Parma station, brings in $500,000 a year in research and service funds for Idaho agriculture. Because of Hafez's work the nematodes that destroy Idaho crops, farmers saved $8.1 million annually over a 20 year period.
During a meeting with Parma faculty and staff on June 16, John Hammel, dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, was hammered about the closure decision and his mismanagement of the station.
Ron Mann, founder of the Idaho Table Grape Association and former advisor to President Reagan, asked Hammel why the growers were not consulted. Mann offered several viable alternatives to save money short of closing the station. In a phone conversation with Mann, he told me that the UI administration is "inept in the management of people and budgets."
Column: Politics
We Need Better Words to Describe Monsters Like the Holocaust Museum Killer
We need new terminology for animals like James von Brunn, who murdered a guard at the National Holocaust Museum in D.C. on Tuesday. von Brunn, who is 88, has a revolting history of anti-Semitism which is well documented.
Though it’s academically accurate, according to standard political ideology scales, to call people like von Brunn “extreme right-wing” - the SLPC calls them “radical right” – I propose that we called them what they are: hate terrorists. Not only does the term emphasize their vile psychological makeup, it removes any hint of an association with very conservative Republicans. Unfortunately, many members of these radical groups identify themselves as Republicans, but no Republican I know claims them, and it’s a wildly unfair association which suggests an alliance with terrorists. It’s also unwarranted to help legitimize hate terrorist groups as some sort of generally-acknowledged political party. We should abandon the “right-wing” term in naming these monsters.
PLANNING IN THE WEST CONFERENCE, JUNE 17-18 IN BOISE
Adjusted Development: Saving the World with Sustainable Growth
Why should towns in the West change the way they grow? And why should planners design healthier, greener communities?
Because if they don’t, they’ll suffer and fail.
Dire as that answer sounds, it's sparked something worth celebrating: a planning revolution and a move to sustainability across the West, according to land-use and green planning expert Christopher Duerksen.
Column: City Politics
TJ Thomson Declares for Boise City Council
Boise City Council races are surprisingly lively. Even when there's no challenger, Boiseans love to wave their political energy around during a council campaign.
Most of Boise’s state legislative seats are in Democratic hands, and with the landslide election and re-election of Democratic mayor Dave Bieter, the core of the city is a liberal island surrounded by a sea of conservative districts. (The mayor’s seat is technically nonpartisan, but nobody believes that anymore, if ever they did.)
The City Council, now centrist with a sight tilt left, has six seats, one of them held by Jim Tibbs, who spent 34 years with the police department, most of them in leadership roles, including interim police chief in 2003. He is on the board of the Human Rights Task Force and has won, among other honors, a human rights award.
Business and Technology
Making Boise a City Where Innovative Business Can Thrive
Boise’s summer is about to enter its annual phase of desert heat, but it’s already blazing with business events and ideas to promote innovation.
In his State of the City speech this week, Boise Mayor Dave Bieter announced that the city will open a building downtown called Green House, designed to help entrepreneurs get up and running.
The Watercooler, a nonprofit project which opened in 2008 in the growing Linen District, is already open. Its stated mission is “to create a building and community to house a business development center for synergistic, emerging businesses and interests in Boise’s creative economy.” Boise City is one of the investors in the Watercooler, and Bieter doesn't think the Green House competes with the Watercooler.
Last week, local nonprofit coalition Kickstand held its fourth annual IdaVation conference on innovation and have more similar events coming up. Kickstand’s stated mission is “to empower entrepreneurs and innovators by providing access to a community of peers, resources, industry leaders and critical information to help emerging and high-growth companies network, learn and grow.” Lt. Gov. Brad Little attended the conference and even Tweeted the event while it was happening, a “very encouraging sign,” said board president Chris Volk.
Column
Fischer Was the Go-To “Conservative” for Idaho MediaEditor's note: Ms. Fisher's column is a companion to mine, here.
What was good about having Bryan Fischer here? And what is bad about having him leave?
1. Like it or not, he represents the views of a number of Idahoans. We in our vast left-wing echo chamber don’t listen often enough to opposing viewpoints, and we couldn’t escape his, including his strange fascination with and seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of homosexuality and deviant homosexual practices. Heck, he even had a blog devoted to deconstructing his missives.
2. He did a good job of promoting himself and his views, no matter how reprehensible some of them were -- including to other Christians. I believe he’s the person who came up with the “nonprofit” dodge that we’ve seen a number of other Idaho conservatives espouse, where they set up a nonprofit front with themselves as the primary beneficiary of donations, and which allows them to look like they represent an entire organization, rather than just themselves. He has a web page, he’s on Facebook (where I’ve been his friend, incidentally), he’s on Twitter. He worked it.
