The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
The Blackfoot Valley's News Source Since 1980
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Until recently, it seemed like you couldn't turn around without finding a headline lambasting the current Congress as the least productive ever. There was good reason for that, which we'll get into shortly, but it's worth noting that they've suddenly disappeared. Clearly, that's because of April's passage of the foreign aid package that includes significant aid for Ukraine, Israel and Gaza, and Taiwan, and a measure that attempts to force a sale of TikTok. There was a great...
Disagree Better. That's the name of an interesting initiative at the National Governors Association this year, spearheaded by the organization's current chair, Utah Republican Gov. Spencer Cox. The idea, in a nutshell, is to "reduce partisan animosity and foster healthy debate by modeling a more positive and optimistic way of working through policy problems," as the NGA puts it. It would be easy to scoff, of course. In this era of bitter political hostility, as we head into a...
Back in January, the Pew Research Center released the results of an intriguing set of focus groups they carried out last year. Ordinarily, of course, survey research organizations test the sentiments of registered or likely voters to check in on their mood. But these groups were voters who, in Pew's words, "look at the nation's politics as a topic better avoided than embraced." What those voters had to say is a sign of these highly polarized, highly politicized times. They're...
Wednesday, November 01, 2023 It would be a stretch to say that the US government came to a standstill after GOP members of the House unseated Kevin McCarthy as Speaker at the start of October. The Senate and the executive branch both kept working to move their priorities forward during the three weeks before the House finally found a replacement. Federal workers kept programs running and operations on an even keel. Yet the House's dysfunction had a clear cost: an inability to...
