Competition Good For The Soul And It’s Entertaining, Too
One of life’s small joys this summer will be watching the competition between the North Idaho Business Journal and the new Independent Business Record. There will be no love lost between the competing business tabloids. The Hagadone Corp. publishes the first, which until recently was written and edited by staffers such as Ric Clarke, now running the Independent Business Record. Hagadone’s tabloid already has responded to the competition by publishing a second edition monthly - much like the Coeur d’Alene Press’ decision to publish seven days a week after The Spokesman-Review established an office in Coeur d’Alene 12 years ago. Competition brings out the best in all of us. I’ll be particularly interested in how the dueling journals refer to each other. The Coeur d’Alene Press generally calls us “an out-of-state newspaper,” though its parent company is incorporated in Carson City, Nev., not Idaho. I’ve been known to dismiss the Press as “Brand X.” It’s good fun. Stay tuned.
Term limits’ time has come and gone
Idaho Gov. Phil Batt is having second thoughts about term limits - now that the U.S. Supreme Court says that states can’t use them on Congress. You should, too. Idaho doesn’t need them. We habitually use the ballot box to control political pests at the state and local levels. For example, only one Coeur d’Alene mayor has won two four-year terms - Ray Stone. And the voters gonged him when he attempted to make it three. Then there are small local governments, such as the Plummer/Worley Joint School District, that have few takers for their thankless elected positions. Plummer/Worley officials have tried vainly for a year to fill a trustee spot from their northernmost zone. Voters in such districts should be allowed to keep qualified people as long as they want - if they can find them. Idaho’s term limits law needs to be repealed.
Vandals deserve own place at City Park
Vandals annoy more than other petty criminals do. They destroy and deface simply out of spite - not from some need or greed. The creeps who tore up a 5-year-old flowering plum downtown early Saturday morning are good examples of this breed. They crawled out from under their rocks in the dead of night and savaged a beautiful tree that had graced our revitalized downtown. I’d loved to see these vandals placed in stocks at City Park so we all could tell them how much we appreciate their handiwork. Of course, civil libertarians would howl about “cruel and unusual punishment.” But they don’t have to clean up the mess vandals leave behind.
, DataTimes MEMO: “Hot Potatoes” is a feature of the Tuesday and Thursday Opinion pages.