Yahoo Movies The Idaho Way: Voters must support public education, if Republican legislators won’t
By Scott McIntosh, Opinion Editor
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Over the next several months, you may be presented with an opportunity to sign a petition from Reclaim Idaho to put something called the Quality Education Act on the November 2022 ballot.
If you get that opportunity, you should sign the petition.
If for nothing else, putting the Quality Education Act on the ballot would send a strong message to Idaho Republican legislators that they’re not doing their job when it comes to public education funding.
The Idaho Legislature has underfunded K-12 education year after year after year.
Even though Idaho residents send the message that we need more public education funding, the Legislature isn’t listening, just like they didn’t listen year after year after year on Medicaid expansion.
The folks bringing you the Quality Education Act, Reclaim Idaho, are the same ones who brought you Medicaid expansion. After years of the Idaho Legislature dragging its feet on expanding Medicaid, 61% of Idaho voters approved it, illustrating how Idaho legislators were acting against the wishes of their constituents. Public education funding is similar.
Please read our editorial here on why Idaho’s public education should be properly funded.
‘To promote the general Welfare’
The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution reads, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”
Please note that the Preamble contains much more than just the word “liberty.”
Correction on last week’s newsletter
Last week’s newsletter about a universal do not resuscitate order for cardiac arrest under Idaho’s crisis standards of care was inaccurate. It lacked the proper context that that portion of the crisis standards becomes a factor only if ventilators become scarce.
You can read the corrected editorial here.
Machiavelli for Women
The name Stacey Vanek Smith is one of those that seems to be ingrained somewhere in the back of my brain. As an avid listener to Marketplace on Boise State Public Radio, I can hear her name spoken in the voice of Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal. Vanek Smith was a longtime reporter and fill-in host for Marketplace and is now co-host for The Indicator from Planet Money.
It turns out she’s also from Boise and graduated from Boise High before heading off to Princeton. She was even on the Idaho Statesman copy desk at one time.
Now that she’s written a book, “Machiavelli for Women,” which came out this month, I had to interview her for a column.
Her book, subtitled “Defend Your Worth, Grow Your Ambition, and Win the Workplace,” is a book of advice for women to navigate through the world of implicit bias, confirmation bias, and outright discrimination against women and marginalized workers.
I highly recommend it — for both women and men.
Here is my column, along with a video clip of my interview with Stacey Vanek Smith.
Biden vaccine/testing order
This week, Sandpoint Mayor Shelby Rognstad shared a message to Gov. Brad Little about Biden’s proposal for a vaccine/testing order: We wouldn’t need a federal vaccine order if Idaho’s governor would act.
A letter from my hospital bed
Jerry Hayward, of Featherville, shared with me a letter he drafted to Gov. Brad Little from his hospital bed at St. Luke’s in Boise, where he had surgery for colorectal cancer. He shares what he’s seeing in the hospital and he has a message for the governor: Take a stronger stand on the COVID vaccine.
A real front-line doctor
Dr. Ashley Carvalho is completing her medical residency training in Boise. She posted a picture on her personal social media account of herself in tears at work. “I worried about coming across as dramatic, but the truth is, my colleagues and I have had enough,” she wrote. “The picture shows me during a recent night shift, after my second patient of the night died of COVID-19 complications. Another patient would die a few hours later, for a grand total of 14 that week, ages 25 to 79. Each of these deaths was from COVID-19 complications, and each patient was unvaccinated. They died from a preventable illness.”
Her message in a guest opinion piece: Please get the vaccine.
‘I am asking, even begging’
Dr. Richard Augustus, chief medical officer of West Valley Medical Center in Caldwell, has a similar message: ‘I am asking, even begging, you to get vaccinated against COVID-19.’
What you’re saying
This week, we’ve received letters on individualism, vaccine orders, Gov. Little, COVID restrictions and safety in schools.
You can read those letters and more by clicking here.
You can submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion by clicking here.
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