Editorial by John Hanron

Start thinking “crispy”

While there have been a few isolated wildfires in Okanogan County in the past couple of weeks, Tuesday’s surprise blaze at the west end of Twisp River Flats was a wake-up call: Things are getting crispy and it’s time to shift into wildfire season mode.

Watching the fire easily make its way up the trunks of trees into the canopy illustrated how dry things are here. Watching how quickly the bitterbrush and arrowleaf ignited when touched by burning embers showed how quickly things could get out of control.

Though as of press time Tuesday there was not a countywide burn ban in place, we hope that one will be imposed within the week. With temperatures in the 90s expected this weekend – along with some lightning Sunday and Monday – things are not getting any more moist. Add to that the variable of hundreds or more Independence Day visitors, some perhaps with illegal fireworks, and you have the potential for a busy weekend for firefighters.

Residents should be getting their homes ready for the potential for wildfire. Visitors need to know that things over here on the east side of the hills are not at all like they are on the west side. Things here are DRY, and fire spreads easily.

We only have to remember the Thirtymile Fire in 2001, in which four young firefighters were killed when the Chewuch blaze overtook their crew in a  dead-end canyon. That fire was started by a careless camper who left a campfire before assuring it was out. It does not take much to produce deadly consequences in these conditions.

For all of our sakes, be careful out there this weekend and for the rest of the summer.

No sacred cows

Should the town of Twisp continue to subsidize the Twisp Municipal Airport?

That question was posed by one of the members of the council at the governing body’s meeting last week, and the consensus apparently was “yes.”

One council member likened it to the town subsidizing the swimming pool and another compared it to property owners paying for the public schools, even though they may not have kids in school.

While the pool comparison may be applicable, the main difference is the number of people who use the facilities. Hundred of kids and adults – many of them low income – utilize the swimming pool, paying $2 to $5 for a session. Just 30 people – people wealthy enough to own an airplane – own hangars at the airport, paying about 50 cents a day for the privilege of putting up a building on publicly owned ground.

The school analogy is similarly flawed in that taxes collected for the school district serve nearly 600 children.

We applaud councilman Tom Mulgrew for raising the issue. It is the job of the council to make sure the town is moving responsibly ahead. They should not forget their charge when they come upon a sacred cow in the road.

–John Hanron

Letters to the editor

Canada's system works

Dear Ed.,

It amazes me still that people will send letters to the newspaper based on erroneous or incomplete information, and thereby further misinform the public.

I lived for just under 30 years in Canada. In that time I had regular visits with our family physician, saw specialists, underwent three major surgeries, and birthed two babies (having gone to government-subsidized prenatal classes) without having to wait a minute.

I paid a family monthly health care fee of $40. Doctor visits and hospital procedures were free. Hospital stays cost $5/night for a bed in a ward (four-bed room), $20/night for a semi-private. A private room costs more. The TV rental cost more than the room! Ambulance service is based on ability to pay. (These fees may have risen slightly since I left in 1997.)

“Extended health care,” covering dental, optometric, physiotherapy, massage and psychology services are available from the government at additional cost. Psychiatric service is part of the regular medical service, but is hard to obtain outside of a hospital setting.

Waiting lists do occur for certain procedures: organ transplants (true also in the USA), non-emergency heart bypass surgery, non-emergency orthopedic repairs to older adults. When MRI machines first were invented, they were scarce and scans were hard to obtain; not true any longer.

Patients with chronic or long-term illnesses such as cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, etc. can never be cut off from therapy. Pharmaceutical remedies are half the prices we pay in this country.

Doctors do not need to employ staff just to file paperwork with insurance companies. Doctors make a very good income, in the six figures, with much lower premiums for malpractice insurance. Canadians are not as litigious as Americans, and if malpractice is proven, settlements tend to be based on real costs of future care.

In order to pay for this level of health care, incomes are taxed at a higher level, and very high incomes are taxed at levels similar to the way we Americans used to be taxed in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

Incidentally, in Canada, snack foods are taxed but grocery items are not. Canadians take better care of themselves and live longer than Americans.

Carolanne Steinebach
Twisp

Slow fire annexation

The following letter has been excerpted from a longer letter sent to the News for publication.

Dear Winthrop Council, Mayor Acheson, and Fire Chief Waller,

As a property owner in the immediate vicinity of the proposed multimillion-dollar fire-training complex and fire station, I have a cautious and concerned response to the news that property has been purchased for a profoundly significant objective that has yet to be vetted by the public.

My limited understanding is that five acres have been purchased for the sum of $325,000 – possibly a lot of money given the current real estate market – with the hope that this parcel will be speedily annexed by the town of Winthrop and thus available to receive some of the benefits of the town’s long-term practical investments.

Chief Waller has made very clear that timing is of the essence if a FEMA grant is to be accomplished to pay the high price for providing a major facility to serve a comparatively small population. Should FEMA be less convinced than Mr. Waller, it would be the job of taxpayers to complete this objective by bond.

I am quite aware that volunteer firefighters work at high risk and for free, a profound demonstration of citizenship and sacrifice. I hope that none of my concerns are construed to deny this reality or to subvert my appreciation.

I ask that the process be slowed, despite the imminent potential for millions of dollars in grant money, because what the town of Winthrop might get for its haste is a mess of pottage instead of a far-reaching, more practical vision.

The duty of the fire district is to protect the commercial and residential infrastructure, but a large fire truck – after navigating a dangerous hairpin curve that services the industrial area of town, a road literally in the backyard of a quiet and residential family home development, and then getting across a crowded bridge with a hard turn – could have better strategic locations for immediate response to the town’s highly flammable commercial center.

The $325,000 might have been better spent on redesigning properties already at hand, or acquiring a less sexy but more appropriate property with less ambitious but suitable objectives.

Kamron Coleman
Winthrop

100 years of leaders

Editor,

Hear ye, hear ye! Calling all former town of Twisp mayors and council members…WE WANT YOU!

We are so excited about this summer and the upcoming celebration of Twisp’s 100-year birthday, and hope you are too! We would be so honored if all of the former mayors and council members of the town of Twisp would join us in this year’s Fourth of July parade.

If you are one of the many who have worked hard as Town officials in the past, please join us and be recognized. You can walk or ride! Just contact Vicki Hallowell or Jackie Moriarty at Town Hall at 997-4081 for details… or just show up on parade day and we’ll make a spot for you.

The annual Fourth of July parade kicks off this summer's centennial events and will begin on Saturday (July 4) at 11 a.m. Line up will be in the “Old” Forest Service complex and begins at 10 a.m.

Come join in the fun.

Vicki Hallowell and Jackie Moriarty,
Centennial Committee
Town of Twisp

Publish town agendas

Editor,

I have a suggestion for items to include in the paper. Many towns post town council meeting agenda items in the newspaper. It has been my opinion that the town of Winthrop is insufficient at informing the public about topics for discussion. I think the mayor does not like to call attention to the town’s decision-making process. It is time to put the “public” back into public service. The decisions that the town of Winthrop make affect the valley as a whole.

It seems to be a public service to tell the public what is going to be discussed at upcoming meetings (in Twisp and Winthrop). People find out about decisions after the fact and were sorry they didn’t know it was up for discussion so they could attend and voice their opinions. Couldn’t the newspaper find room to print upcoming agenda items? Also, I think if these items were included in the newspaper, in 10, 20 and 100 years down the road, they will make for interesting historical footnotes. 

Hilary Lyman
Winthrop

Editor’s note: While printing the agenda in the paper would be helpful to many, the nature of newspaper space is such that we could not guarantee that we could fit it in every other week. And we would be obliged to print the Twisp Council agenda, and perhaps the Twisp PDA agenda, the county commission agenda, the PUD agenda....

The Winthrop Town Council meets the first and third Wednesdays at 7 p.m. in the Winthrop Barn Hen House (as noted in the What’s Happening calendar every week). The town clerk typically posts the council agenda on the front door of Town Hall by the Friday before the next meeting. Additionally, the agenda is available online at www.townofwinthrop.com. There, you may also sign up to receive the agenda via e-mail.

Ridiculous paranoia

Dear Methow Valley News,

I’m just writing to thank you and Patrick Hannigan for introducing a welcome gust of humor to the wolf conversation. Although as a former resident of Idaho I am not unfamiliar with wolf hating, it still came as a bit of a shock when some of my usually progressive neighbors in the Methow Valley showed signs of the disease.

It is also good that Patrick points out the ridiculous nature of the paranoia by pointing out that deer pose more danger to the human population than wolves do.  His use of the word “hysterical” in describing the [Internet bulletin board] postings was well chosen.

The killing of the wolf was essentially a hate crime and we need to see it for what it is. But I still live in a valley where most people are more enlightened than that and I’m thankful. Just like I’m thankful that Christine Gregoire isn’t buzzing the hills above our home in a helicopter armed with a rifle and a tiny brain.

Jenifer Reinhardt
Twisp

Hard working team

Editor,

Windermere-ians know how to work!

Room One wants to thank the Windermere Real Estate team for their hard work on their second annual volunteer day at Room One. Bob and Delene’s crew came and weeded, painted and generally spruced up the place, helping to make Room One a welcoming place for the Methow Valley community. Their hard work is inspiring and helps keep us going at minimal cost. Thanks Windermere!

Adrianne Moore
Director, Room One
 

My Turn: A victory in national parks

By Todd Radwick

Finally, a ban on the legal carrying of a firearm, implemented in the Reagan era will be removed.

I’m not inviting a debate on whether someone “needs” a gun in the first place. I know many nice people around here who are quite content with their Subarus and environmentally friendly fiber-fleece outdoor wear and have never felt a “need” to carry a gun anywhere and that is their prerogative. If I choose to, I don’t want to be restricted from doing so. Like many gun owners, I think of it like a life jacket or seatbelt. I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

I’m writing to commend this overdue decision to stop violating our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, wherever that might be, including national parks.

What perfect timing for this column. My family and I just returned from the 138th annual National Rifle Association convention in Phoenix. We met a lot of nice, informed people and learned a lot. Also the Fourth of July is coming up – an annual reminder of the importance of private firearm ownership. Additionally, in the June 3 issue of the MVNews, Wayne Hare wrote an opinion piece called “You don’t need a gun to enjoy a national park.” I disagreed with what he had to say. 

He says voters need to let their public officials know the NRA does not represent them. It depends on who you’re talking about. They very much represent me and I very much represent them. The NRA’s strength and growing membership is no accident. Yes, gun owners are purchasing unprecedented amounts of guns and ammunition. Why? If nothing else we want to send a message. We vehemently oppose anyone’s attempts to dictate to us when or where a firearm is “needed” or what kind it is, how many rounds it holds or how effective the ammunition is. We simply refuse to be victims, i.e. “sheeple” in national parks or anywhere else.

Don’t think a gun is needed in the woods? Tell that to the family of the mother and daughter who were murdered while hiking on a trail in the Mt. Pilchuck area in 2006. I spent six years in law enforcement in Washington as a policeman and deputy sheriff. I know from experience that crime can and does happen anywhere. Remember, when seconds matter, an officer is only minutes away. 

As to Hare’s statement about no one in Obama’s cabinet has ever suggested placing a moratorium on gun ownership – this is totally false. Hasn’t Hare heard about the proposed ammunition rationing with no more than one box per person per month; and the requirement of micro-stamping of a serial number on each and every shell casing and corresponding bullet; an added 5-cent tax per round; the required registering of each box; and the forfeiting of any ammunition not already micro-stamped? Knowing our government, how efficient would they be at administering this quagmire anyway? It’s not a Republican vs. Democrat thing either. There are 65 Democrats who signed a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder to back off Second Amendment issues and concentrate on others, such as carrying out stiff sentences against drug traffickers. 

Opponents claim that the parks, now sanctuaries, will be rampant with crime such as poaching, and Wild West gunfights over camp spots. Similarly, when the citizens of Florida finally received the right to carry guns, concerns were brought up and yet the opposite happened – crime plummeted. No surprise here. 

It is maddening when one with a legal carry permit has to abandon his firearm by placing it in his locked vehicle before entering a gun-free zone. Cars are notorious for being broken into at trailheads by – guess who? – criminals. Worse yet, would you want to return to your car only to face your own gun in the hands of a criminal? In the middle of nowhere? Can you hear the banjo music of “Deliverance?”

When we share the national parks, you really have nothing to worry about because you are not a criminal – and neither am I. 

Todd Radwick, an NRA member for 20 years, lives near Winthrop.
 

My Turn: Wolves and cattle - an unnecessary conflict

By Don Johnson

The good news is a pioneer family is once again trying to establish a home in the Methow Valley.

In 2008, the Lookout Mountain pack of gray wolves picked a site in the Libby Creek watershed to try to re-establish a home for that Endangered Species Act-listed species in the Methow Valley. It is the first family of wolves to reside in Washington in 70 years.

In addition, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently awarded the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department two grants for land acquisition in Okanogan County ($2 million for the Methow Valley and $4 million for the Similkameen Valley) to protect threatened fish and wildlife species (gray wolves were listed as one of the species to be protected).

The bad news is that the site the wolves selected as the most satisfactory to “homestead,” although on public land, has also been determined by the U.S. Forest Service and a local cattleman as a place to produce beef this summer. The cattle-grazing permit for this area has been in “non-use” for several years and in their absence, the wolf pack found a place to live without conflict.

Unfortunately, the Washington Cattlemen’s Association, with the concurrence of the USFS, decided that the privilege provided by the permit issued earlier to graze 114 cow/calf pairs from mid-May to mid-July was more important than preventing potential conflicts between the wolves and the ranching economy.

The “rancher” (12 acres?) has recently complained that delay of “turn out” of the cattle from mid-May, as a result of wolf considerations, was costing him $240/day for feed. That’s of interest because the Forest Service approved turn out on June 4, but only nine cow/calf pairs were turned out on June 6 and the permittee reported the additional 100 cattle wouldn’t be available for seven to 10 days (they were turned out June 15.). That delay was not wolf-related, but may have been related to cattle-trading activities.

If the rancher is correct and his cattle consume $240 worth of forage each day, a month’s worth of grazing on public land is worth $7,200. A fellow valley resident suggested that given the federal debt, maybe we needed the grazing fee. He wasn’t aware that the USFS has spent tens of thousands on fencing, cattle guards and watering troughs, as well as salaries for staff to work on this project while the grazing fee ($1.35 x 110 “animal units” x two months) totals about $300.

For wolves and deer to utilize the high draws and slopes above valley floor roads, creeks and rivers, they must have adequate cover, food and water. Cattle utilizing those same resources on public lands limit the success of fish and wildlife. One surface spring was converted into a mudflow in less than 24 hours after the turn out of nine cow/calf pairs.

For fish and wildlife – as well as our economy – to prosper in the Methow Valley, public agencies and cattlemen should avoid conflicts over public land use.

Don Johnson is a retired professor of biology and resident of Libby Creek.

Mud, Dust, Smoke & Snow: Rethink this war with the greenies

By Patrick McGann

On my first day at the Lewiston Tribune, I ask my editor what turned a two-party Idaho, home of such stellar statesmen as Cecil Andrus and Frank Church, into the one-party home of shoddy products like Bob Sali and Larry Craig.

He answers with a single word: “Environmentalists.” And it’s true.

When Al Gore calls the very real crisis of climate change an “Inconvenient Truth,” we rural folk know it is more inconvenient for some than for others.

Rural America makes its living on natural resources. And for 30 years we’ve been told we can’t do that. Or at least that’s how we see it: Rachel Carson shut down our mill, and who cares if salmon go extinct. If it’s green, we’re against it.

That’s a problem. Rural America has by rote gone to war with science and the environment, planting itself like a Maginot Line in the path of everybody else.

That is a war rural America cannot win.

Case in point: the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, which just passed in the U.S. House and is moving through the Abominable Compromise Factory known as the U.S. Senate.

Urban Democrats (most of them) and eight urban Republicans, including Rep. Dave Reichert from western Washington, voted for it. Rural Republicans (most of them) including our own Cathy McMorris-Rodgers and 44 rural Democrats voted against it. It passed 219-212.

Three facts.

One. China sold a million new cars last year and most of them to people who didn’t own cars last year. That’s a million 12-gallon gas tanks that didn’t exist before, filled once a week this year and the next and the next. The Chinese will buy more cars next year. That’s a lot of gas tanks. The same thing is happening in India and the rest of the developing world.

Forget “drill, baby, drill.” Just forget it. The drain is bigger than the shrinking faucet and getting bigger all the time.

Two. We fought two wars on the Arabian Peninsula because our vital interests were threatened by malicious Islamic dictators weaponizing oil, which we are addicted to like a toothless meth-head with a cheap pistol.

Which is more plentiful: Mideast oil or malicious Mideast dictators?

Three. Rural America is not going to be riding in electric trolleys or tractors any time soon. For as far as the eye can see, we will be burning wood and driving alone insanely long distances using diesel and gasoline.

You can huff and puff and blow yourself blue denying climate change, AND pretending that more holes in the Alaskan tundra will keep gas prices below $3 a gallon, AND hoping that by some miracle if we do nothing the gas in Twisp will be cheaper than it is in Tacoma, AND hoping that the sheiks and ayatollahs will sell their oil cheap... but you cannot escape the simple math of 1+1+1.

If urban areas don’t shift to clean, renewable and independent energy sources (in which I include nuclear energy, which the Republicans are right about), we in the sticks are screwed.

I don’t buy for one second that the interests of rural Eastern Washington were best served by a no vote on this bill.
I know the Palouse wheat farmers are afraid this legislation will raise their production costs, but there are enough loopholes, dividends, rebates and set-asides that this is far less of a concern than doing nothing. Doing nothing has no loopholes.

Waxman-Markey is rinky-dink law and a wonky piece of work. But it is better than nothing. Basically, it is an incentive/disincentive program to transition America away from oil and “dirty” coal. (Since it is based on emissions, it allows for the possibility, however political, that coal can be clean.)

Republicans, in full no-mode, are claiming it will cost $1,500 per household. It will not. The Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency say the average household cost will be a tenth that. And even that is an average between coal-fired eastern states and Washington, one of the 10 states with the lowest carbon footprint. Our cost will be less because we are closer to where we need to be.

Republicans claim it will cost jobs, and it might in some areas, but it will create them in others. Where? How about Spokane? Commuter Cars Corp. stands to win big. It makes a funny looking little electric car called the Tango that goes like a scalded cat, topping at 120 mph, slicing the quarter in 12 seconds and going from 0 to 60 in four.

All Commuter needs to become a major player is something like Waxman-Markey to start working and most urban centers moving toward electric vehicles. Real jobs. Right here.

Rep. McMorris-Rodgers – and many of us in rural areas – need to make peace with science and the environment and realize that our enemy is “no” and our friend is “how.”

Hello?: Playing health care insurance Lotto

By Solveig Torvik

We shouldn’t be surprised that it could come to this: a lottery to decide who has health insurance.

The state that brought you Lotto is considering a more cruel lottery, this one to dump 36,000 Washingtonians from the rolls of Washington’s Basic Health Plan, the state-subsidized insurance program for our state’s working poor. Enrollees pay $36 a month for coverage and have a $150 annual deductible; we taxpayers ante up an on-average additional $209 per month, which comes to a $300 million a year taxpayer subsidy. Because of the budget crisis, the legislature cut the program’s funding nearly in half.

So, Basic Health administrators have been mulling options to reduce the number of insured from 100,000 to 64,000: raise premiums, eliminate enrollees based on enrollment date, use “involuntary dis-enrollment,” change qualification criteria ($36,000 a year income for a family of four) or resort to what they call an “elegant” solution, a lottery.

It’s long been self-evident that our nation’s approach to health insurance has failed. Health insurance costs too much; premium costs double every nine years, increasing three times faster than our wages. Health care costs too much; the United States spends twice as much per person as other developed nations on health care for the same, or even inferior, health outcomes. (Twenty-eight other nations are more successful in preventing child mortality, for heaven’s sake.)

The majority of us who can afford insurance say we’re satisfied with our medical care. We know we’re lucky. Though we smugly advertise the United States as the world’s most socially advanced nation, nearly 50 million of us have no health insurance.

Now President Obama wants to end the insurance industry’s stranglehold on the system by introducing meaningful competition to drive down insurance costs. He’s proposing taxpayer-subsidized insurance coverage for those who want it. Those who don’t would be free to keep what they have. Isn’t choice and competition the American way?

Maybe not. Predictably, insurers are howling. For decades, they’ve had nearly unfettered reign in shaping the nation’s health care system to their own financial advantage. They, not doctors, routinely dictate what level of care and treatment we’ll receive at what cost.

Yet opponents of a government insurance option argue that “the government” – our own employees, mind you, answerable to us – must not interfere between patients and their doctor. But it’s perfectly OK if insurance companies interfere. We’re asked to believe that, bereft of political accountability and motivated only by profit, insurance companies are more trustworthy than our own employees.

Hello?

“I think the American people understand that, too often, insurance companies have been spending more time thinking about how to take premiums and then avoiding providing people coverage than they have been thinking about how we can make sure that insurance is there, health care is there when families need it,” Obama said during last week’s news conference.

He scoffed at the notion that a government option would destroy private insurers. “Why would it drive private insurance out of business? If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal, then why is it that the government – which they say can’t run anything – suddenly is going to drive them out of business? It’s not logical.”

Lots of sticky problems are yet to be solved, such as how to deal with employers who offer insurance. And where to get the money for a very costly government-subsidized health insurance option?

Oh, here and there. The system’s padded with waste and abuse. To wit:

“If we’re spending $177 billion over 10 years to subsidize insurance companies under Medicare Advantage when there’s no showing that people are healthier using that program than the regular Medicare program, well, that’s not a good deal for taxpayers,” Obama said. “And we’re going to take that money and we’re going to use it to provide better care at cheaper cost to the American people.”

That Obama has the public on his side is evident. The latest New York Times/CBS poll shows that most Americans want a government insurance option and are willing to pay higher taxes in order to insure everyone.

Here in the Fifth Congressional District, though, our own personal lawmaker, Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, opposes a government insurance option. She warns that it’s “a first step toward a government takeover” of health care and mouths the industry’s tired line about delivering health care “without interference from government bureaucrats.” No mention of interference from insurers.

Still, she says she wants to hear from you while she’s in the district this week. So take her at her word. Today (July 1) at 7 p.m. you can join her telephone conference call on health care reform if you register on her website, (www.mcmorris.house.gov). Or call her Spokane office, (509) 353-2374, to instruct her on how to vote on insurance reform.

Some argue McMorris works for the insurance industry, not her constituents. That charge may yet prove unfair. After all, nothing so wonderfully concentrates the mind of a politician as the prospect of grievously misreading the will of the voters.
 
Solveig Torvik, former Washington, D.C., political reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, lives in Winthrop. Her column apprears monthly.