This past week saw reporting from Daniel Walters, with InvestigateWest, uncover that a top Republican Party official is recorded offering $1.1 million in campaign support, but only if Idaho Freedom Caucus members “get with the program” and vote even more their way.
More revealing is the source of the funding: a Texas-based dark-money (meaning they don’t disclose who is funding them) national advocate for drug legalization: legal pot, legal opioids, and legal “psychedelics” like LSD. You know, the policy that was so successful in Portland.
The first installments of this massive million-dollar “investment” in Idaho started hitting mailboxes in recent weeks, postcards blasting slanderous lies at conservative legislators. This prompted the Twin Falls newspaper to editorialize that these out-of-state interests would burn down everything Idaho is today.
“But if burning it all down doesn’t sound like a great idea,” they write, “be skeptical of the negative and misleading attacks and ‘voter guides.’”
“Remember that they know the right buzzwords, like ‘liberty’ and ‘conservative’ and ‘freedom.’ And they are counting on Idaho Republicans to respond to those words like Pavlov’s dogs.”
“But also remember what Inigo Montoya said in The Princess Bride. ‘You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’”
Freedom definitely doesn’t mean being “unable to survive without your next fix of Chinese opioids.”
Could Idaho’s government return closer to the core principles of the U.S. Constitution as advocated in 1776? True conservatives say “yes” but in doing so we must recognize that our Republican leadership since the mid-90s is taking us in that direction.
Idaho’s tax burden is low. The National Tax Foundation (which Wiki describes as “conservative”) calculates sales, property, and income taxes imposed by states and municipalities and divides that by population. The result is “tax burden per capita.” Idaho has the lowest of all western states.
Idaho’s regulatory burden is low. Very low. In fact, the lowest in the whole country. Using the methodology employed by the Mountain States Policy Center, a self-described think tank for “free markets and limited government,” Idaho imposes on its citizens the fewest words of regulation of any state in the nation. The metric actually measures the quantity of red tape language promulgated and applied to regulate the lives of Idaho citizens.
Idaho is getting one heck of a great deal on our state’s education. Do we have the nation’s highest scholastic achievement? Unfortunately, no. But we don’t have the worst. When looking at testing scores from Idaho students, we’re more “in the middle of the national pack.”
And yet we are frequently dead last in tax dollars spent per student. The nation’s flagship of conservatism and President Trump’s favorite D.C. think tank, the Heritage Foundation, rates Idaho as getting the nation’s best “bang per buck” in K-through-12 schools.
On all the elements of “liberty” that don’t involve “freedom to destroy your brain cells with LSD,” Idaho is already a beacon in a floundering nation. Our state budget is always balanced, our employment rate is above the national average and our welfare rate is well below it.
The men and women who achieved these results do not need to club you over the head with “how conservative” they are. It is very “Idahoan” to talk less and do more. Results speak louder than the words printed on an out-of-state drug lobby’s postcard.
And for efficiency, help the legislators who have done this good work keep doing it, and free them from spending all their time raising money and campaigning.
You can do that at the bottom of the ballot, by picking a local party worker who will rally support, get the rest of your entire ballot elected, and then remind elected officials that they owe their position, not to wealthy donors, or to powerful political action committees, but to you, the voter.
(3) comments
The democrats smoking weed all day will probably be an improvement........they'll forget to vote. God hippies suck.
Trent is a pathological liar at this point. When this state legalizes weed, it will be because he elected a bunch of leftists to run the Republican Party like Sean Colletti and Stephanie Mickelson, who he is backing in these PCC races.
People who are curious about the "Dark Money" funding these Christian Nationalist theocrats should watch the documentary "Bad Faith". It exposes the Christian Nationalist movement and how it became the most powerful anti-democratic force in the country. It might cost a couple of bucks to stream it, but it's very informative.
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