From the Panhandle
Driving Disaster in the Panhandle
By Cate Huisman, 4-25-11
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| Roads in Bonner County are sinking as much as road funding. | |
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Okay, it’s not just me. It really is worse this year. Our streets really are looking like they ought to be skinned and made into alligator handbags.
As the snow finally began to recede into memory this spring, it seemed to me that the roads reappearing from beneath it were showing more frost damage than usual. On those first frozen forays by bicycle, more potholes than ever seemed to beckon my newly reinflated tires.
And it turns out, it IS bad. It’s so bad that Governor Butch Otter has declared Bonner County a disaster area, along with Shoshone, Boundary, Nez Perce, Idaho, and Clearwater counties. Being officially disastrous, apparently, may qualify us for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to fix our roads. This would be nice, as the county doesn’t have anywhere near the funds it needs for repairs.
On the website where the Bonner County Daily Bee posted this news, however, comments from locals were skeptical. Didn’t people know, commenters asked, that it’s just a fact of life that roads around here get muddy and occasionally impassible in the spring?
I have to agree that, relative to the wildfires in Texas and the tornados in North Carolina, our miles of disintegrating pavement don’t seem so desperately in need of taxpayer assistance. And I hope, if we get the assistance, that it is focused on those roads that are damaged so badly they truly are impassible.
But given our state’s generally negative attitude toward the federal government, I’m not sure why Uncle Sam is willing to cough up. We complain about federal meddling in our right not to have health insurance and our desire to control our own wolves, but then we want federal meddling—or at least money—for our roads.
Maybe, instead, with all the money we’ll save on health insurance and all the extra tax dollars we’ll get from sales of livestock that aren’t hampered by wolves, we’ll generate enough cash to fill our own @#%! potholes.
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Comments
So you're saying all Idahoans travel through Bonner County and are jostled by the run down roads. Also the roads in Bonner County are a county issue, not a state issue. The state maintains the state highway. Maybe you'd be better off minding the state you live in which is a couple thousand miles east of Idaho rather than mealy mouthing against Idahoans as you so often do. People like you are blind, how many screw ups do the feds get, before you get it? Debt fiat currency is always the answer for everything in your world. Go for a walk in downtown Chicago at night, do us all a favor.
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You see, I continually hear about how we receive more tax dollars than we pay, well, the feds own more land here than we do. It seems only fitting that if they want control of the state's lands, they should foot the bill too. The feds and the eco terrorists have shut down this state's mining and logging, they have all but destroyed the hunting and the income received from that and have done their very best in making Idaho a dependent state through oppressive legislation.
If you create the problem, then be willing to pay for it.
Immer, perhaps you should take a look at Idaho's budget in comparison to your state's. Otter has done what was needed in these tough economic times without either bankrupting the state or by attempting to tax the people the rest of the way into poverty. The Keynesian project has once again failed, now the pain for attempting it is at hand. I am sure, you as one of the dependent, and entitled teachers believes that the people should bleed their last dollar into the government so that you will not have to adjust or suffer the consequences of your own failed beliefs. Sorry sweetheart, but you get to suffer right along with the rest of us now.
I am truly sorry, but we are over the top of the slippery slope at this point. Our currency is headed for planned destruction and our suffering is only beginning. By the time this plays out, potholes will be the last worry on anyone's mind. And half of you fools are just wanting to double down, good luck with that.
If Detroit is closer to that old house you live in with all the heat loss issues it no doubt has, please go hiking there, day or night is fine.
Idaho would have lots more money if the environmentalists would knock off of trying to stop all mining and timber sales. Loss of jobs and taxes is gonna kill you guys in the future.
There is a way to get the minerals out and log without messing things up.
You want your taxes to pay for roads, you need a tax base.
Here in Montana the californias who move in don't want to pay taxes for roads or schools. They also don't want locals having jobs.
Sad but true, roads cost money and the money has to come from somewhere.
Read with your good eye.
Methinks this impacts more Idahoans than wolves. Nothing about all Idahoans.
Nope sorry, Detroit, or near Detroit is not home.
Not mealy mouthing Idahoans, just Otter.
Roper, I'm not your Sweetheart.
Big Sky, Just using part of the article for my point. How was the ice fishing this year?
Actually the sweetheart comment was a compliment....I like my sweetie's a whole long younger and a lot less wrinkled. But if you want to be that way about it.....I take it back ;-).
And really Otter couldn't be any less your business. Like I said before, a little more attention to your own state would probably be a much better use of your time.
Reading with both eyes wide open one can easily find all of your slanderous comments in the cyber world against Idaho, and those living in Idaho where you most often spew your partially factual spun hate filled rhetoric. Chicago and Detroit were offered places more in the geographical vicinity of your not so mysterious whereabouts, thus one wonders why all the whining and bitching about Idaho when you should be looking closer to home to attempt to better the state of the continent, or in your case, go for a drive to either place and sacrifice your sorry self. I'll add a third vacation spot to the itinerary, how about walking through Milwaukee in the dark one nice evening. You do that, and I'll walk across Boise in one evening. I bet I make it. Just remember, those boys are just doing what wild boys do on any dark night in Wisco wimp land.
Listen to everyone, read everything, believe nothing unless you can prove it in your own research. You Immer have been led by others to your personal conclusions. You've put your faith into the research of others. You've slandered those of us, who have out researched you, and who are living here, seeing first hand the truth, which is not coming from part time back packers living in Pocatello City, Hailey City, nor Boise City, in fact having seen Ken in person I doubt he could run 100 yards without dropping dead.. Not even close. So keep on with your delusions, that's your right to believe that crap, it's our right to believe other wise and to refuse the religious drivel you claim is truth. All you are capable of is pointing to someone else's research and claiming you believe it. And one last point mizz know it all, never put down the research of others whom you've merely glanced at.
It is hard for those of Immer's ilk to understand the true nature of the delusion they have bought into, as you well pointed out, they never look deeper than the first level of their theory. For to do so, would lead to the conclusions they wish not to believe. They choose the rewritten history and ignore the truths that were given us by the facts. Immer, is perhaps the worst type, she herself is a purveyor of indoctrination of the innocent minds of the young, we have read her misguided beliefs and yet we also know she walks into a classroom and shoves it down the throats of the next generation.
"It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere" - Voltaire
She would love to present us as ignorant and uneducated simply because we have not surrendered to the very propaganda she sells.
So whom shall I believe? People like her or men such as Thomas Paine? Who declared - "It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from it's government".
There is such a wealth of real information out there to truly learn from, it is sad that none of it is presented in the modern education system designed to further the agenda of those who would love nothing more than to enslave you more than they already have.
Pay no attention to us Immer, we are but ignorant, inbred Idaho rednecks, but before you run back behind the censored walls of ralph's back patting and bed wetting blog, I give you this last thought to consider........
"Hold on my friends, to the constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6000 years, may not happen again. For if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world." - Danial Webster
Cui Bono
She is to blame, just as much as some of the Environmental groups for the hatred of the wolf in Idaho & other parts of the country! They remind me of the dog owner that continues to hoard the dogs at all cost until the society finally comes in and removes them because she cannot take care of them properly! We see evidence of why our GreatGrandparents and Grandparents seen fit that this animal does not live well around people!
Gopthers are out and the spring fishing has not produced yet....yet.