Salvation Army Gets King's Building in Caldwell

It has been reported to THE GUARDIAN the old King's building in downtown Caldwell has been donated to the Caldwell Salvation Army.  No defined use for the building has been defined by the Salvation Army.

The back story on this is the Caldwell East Urban Renewal agency made a verbal agreement with the King family, (aka Sun Valley Properties) to purchase and convert the property to a parking lot for TVCC.  The reality of parking needs for TVCC did not materialize into a need for more parking and the City/URA backed out of the deal with the King family. 

Meanwhile, the King family had started unwinding their business in Caldwell and out of frustration, high property taxes and profits not paying the bills the King family finally closed the doors.  Property taxes on this building amount to over $8,000/year.

There Is No Cure For Old Age, Medicare Mills Sell False Hope

There is no cure for old age and most of us are in denial about our looming demise.  Medicare costs are going to force decisions a lot of people will not agree with as more and more people move onto Medicare rolls. 

I watched with a lot of disdain for how my own father made really bad end of life decisions and vowed to not do the same as I move closer to the end my of life.  For example, my father called me when he was 91 years old about his scheduled surgery to have both knees replaced.  Mind you he was taking no pain meds for his knee issues.  I asked him why he had opted for surgery over taking a few pills to control his knee pain.  I was not ready for his answer:  He was worried about the "long term" consequences of taking pills to control pain!  I countered his objection to taking meds and asked what his view of "long term" meant in his mind.  I won't go into the details of this discussion but it is a very good example of why we need some serious oversight of Medicare.  (Note: My father died two weeks after he turned 92 from congestive heart failure.)

The Republican Congress wants to raise the age for Medicare eligibility and ditto for Social Security.  I would offer the real opportunity lies on the back end and all of the bad decisions that may extend life but at what cost and quality of life.  Medicare and his Part B coverage stood ready to pay the bills for my father for his knee surgery and never mind that he was suffering from Congestive Heart Failure and only had about 20% of he heart capacity. 

At age 66, I am well into what I call the last quarter of my life.  I want Social Security and Medicare to be there for younger people so they can retire and enjoy a few years of what life they have left to live.  However, we have to get a system in place to address the fact we all get old and we all get to die at some point in time.  The options offered to my father as well as others when they are near the end of their lives have to undergo some cost benefit analysis.  Many health care options made by people today make no sense and cost Medicare billions of dollars.

There is no cure for old age and we owe it to our survivors to make a graceful exit.  Good decisions about our health care and when to recognize our time is up will be necessary to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent for future generations.  Life is short no matter how long we live.

Sen. Bernie Sanders May Have It Right We Need More Independents

Sen. Bernie Sanders from Vermont is one of those politicos most people can't recall ever hearing anything about. Turns out he delivered the last filibuster in the Senate lasting over eight hours over trying to get the Democrats and Republicans to agree to a deal on the budget.  He is also the sole Independent in the Senate.

Sen. Sanders gave an interesting analysis of party politics on Bill Moyers and Company this past weekend and it is worth listening to if you can muster up the 20 minutes or so that he spoke to Mr. Moyers.  The problem with politics today is the parties have become so extreme in their thinking and have devolved from center left or right along with all the litmus tests of parties nothing gets done. 

Sen. Mitch McConnell says his goal is not to get anything done in the Senate but to make President Obama a one term president.  He could care less about what is good for the country.  Pretty extreme stuff when poll after poll indicate most Americans are concerned about the economy, cost of health care, social security , medicare and ending the war in Afghanistan. Congress can't seem to do anything but argue and they get nothing done with respect to the business of the people.

Both Congress and the Senate are bought and controlled by PAC's, goofy pledges, six banking firms and a few rich families and individuals.  Sen. Sanders is an advocate of publicly financed elections in order to get people elected who actually represent the people of this country v. those will the money and PAC's and banks.  The system is fraught with waste and  fraud as it currently exists.  We are moving to an Oligarchy given the current state of election financing.

Maybe we need to scrap party politicos and elect more independents like Mr. Sanders. We need people in Congress who will address the pressing issues of this great nation ahead of party politics.

You have to ask yourself what NAFTA and the lopsided "Free Trade Agreements" done for the Middle and Working class people of this country.  Why haven't we seen legal prosecutions of the corrupt and fradulent actions of Bankers and Wall Street thugs who nearly put this country into a full blown economic depression.

Here's a link to the show if you missed it on PBS  http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-challenging-power-changing-politics/

Mayor Nancolas and Pioneer Irrigation District Eminent Domain Threat

The real issue here is about polluted run off, street waste water, along with all manner of pollutants flowing into irrigation ditches used for food crops.

The city is claiming past practice and the right to dump this waste water into Pioneer's canals.  The problem is this simple... once these canals received water from farms and adjacent fields.  Now, there are thousands of homes on what was once farmland.  The city mis-managed the storm water issue and is stretching the parameters of the Clean Water Act of 1972. 

Mayor Nancolas and city officials failed to follow the example of other cities that have been in compliance with controlling polluted runoff from residential and commercial property for years and years.  In their zeal to be more than accommodating they never bothered to concern themselves with the aspects of subdivision pollutants flowing into waterways used for irrigating food crops.

Now Mayor Nancolas is headed down the path of even more costs for litigation after spending $2million on all the current legal bills in this goofy battle with Pioneer Irrigation.  They screwed up and now citizens of Caldwell are looking at another battle via the eminent domain scheme proposed by our Mayor.

Keeping pollutants out of storm drains is the topic of public service spots on TV all the time.  Keeping pollutants out of irrigation waterways should be a no-brainer.  The problem is how does the city of Caldwell fix the poor decisions made in the past.  THE GUARDIAN does not see litigtion as the answer anymore than the pending threat of eminent domain takeover of PID's city of Caldwell  irrigation water users.

Here's a link to the sequence of actions and reactions posted on the Pioneer Irrigation website   http://pioneerirrigation.com/litigation.html

Here's another link in the IPT Sunday edition:  http://www.idahopress.com/members/time-to-end-caldwell-water-fight/article_869afcae-f3c5-11e1-a855-0019bb2963f4.html#user-comment-area

Reader Board Flap Explained by Maurice Clements

The following is  a Guest Opinion by Maurice Clements that first appeared in the IPT today.

The recent message on Ralph Smeed's Reader Board in Caldwell has sparked responses from all over the nation.  The committee that manages the messages thought it appropriate to respond.

Let me begin with a point of clarification.  The reader board is the sole property of the Smeed Estate (co-executors Dan Symms and Maurice Clements).  It is not part of the Ralph Smeed Private Memorial Foundation.

The left side of the sign showed a picture of James Holmes, with the words :Kills 12 in movie theater."  Caption below his picture reads "everyone freaks out".

The right side of the sing shows a picture of President Obama, with the caption "Kills thousands with his foreign policy."  Below Obama's picture is the caption "wins Nobel Peace Prize".

The aim of the message was to point out that the nation was outraged by the massacre in Aurora, Colorado and rightly so.  And yet there seems to be no equivalent outrage for the thousands of American Soldiers who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan and the countless innocent civilians who have perished as collateral damage of these wars.  Our nation has tuned out to the massacre in the Middle East and seems to have become numb to the carnage occurring there.

When President Obama promised to bring the troops home during his campaign of 2008, someone should have asked him in which decade he intended to make good on that promise.

Our Nation has been led into illegal wars for years by presidents.  We are told what the given reasons are but the real reasons are not clear.

Our Consitutition says only Congress can declare war.  Yet presidents including Harry Truman (Korea), John Kennedy (Vietnam and Bay of Pigs), Lyndon Johnson (Vietnam), Richard Nixon (Vietnam and Cambodia), Ronald Reagan (Lebanon and Grenada), George Bush (Panama, Iraq and Somalia), Bill Clinton Somalia, Kosovo and Hati), George W. Bush (Iraq and Afghanistan), and not Barack Obama, the Nobel Peace Prize winner with the wars in Libya and Syria and the continuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan all have violated Article 1, section 8 of our Constitution.

We have become a nation with perpetual wars, a long list of dead and maimed American soldiers and millions of innocent civilians sacrificed as collateral damage.  And for what purpose?  Give me a break.

Our message on the reader board was designed to elevate the outrage for this worldwide slaughter. To that purpose, I think we have been somewhat successful.

I agree we migth have said it better. Hindsight is always 20/20.  To the extent our message to attention. I think it was a tremendous success.

We respect the loss and grief suffered by the families in Colorado.  Our intent was to encourage some critical thinking and create a discourse on how to put an end to the perpetual state of war  that our politicians, regardless of party, seem to perpetuate.

Maurice Clements, Nampa, Idaho

Idaho Center Another $300K In The Red

It has been reported to THE GUARDIAN today the Idaho Center is another $300,000 in the red.  The folks running will be asking the Nampa City Council to approve the money ASAP as checks have already been written for the money they are asking approval.

Nampa has already funded the Idaho Center to the tune of $1.2MM this year and with the addition of this additional request for $300K makes the new total $1.5MM in the hole to keep the doors open.  We have another two months plus before the end of the fiscal year before the books are closed.

Caldwell Drone Waste and Spend Redux

THE GUARDIAN did an earlier post regarding the waste and spend "drone" deal  costing taxpayers a mere $35,000 for a drone vehicle with a 500 gram payload.  Also in the deal was the cost to send four people to Canada for "training" on this new toy.  All this foolishness was done with "HOMELAND SECURITY MONEY" and no thought given to alternatives to this expensive toy.

Today, THE GUARDIAN read with interest an article in the Wall Street Journal about a whole series of remote control fliers with a costs as low as $45-$300!  It begs the question:  What were the local HOME LAND SECURITY wonks thinking when they shelled out all that money on their toy drone.

The AR. DRONE 2.0 costs a mere $300 and is equipped with an on board  high-def camera that will beam video back to a smart phone.  The footage can be saved and put into video format if necessary.  All of this just goes to show the most costly option is not always in the best interests of the taxpayers. 

But the real question here is why would local officials buy something with taxpayer money they would never buy out of their own pocket.  It would be intersting to note just how many times the "drone" has actually been put into service and for what reason.

Here's a link for more cheap drone info:  http://ardrone2.parrot.com/
and here is a video of this cheap drone in action: http://ardrone.parrot.com/best-of-user-videos/2012/06/25/fire-coming/

All of this nonsense is just one more example that it takes no particular talent to spend other people's money by governmental agencies.

Caldwell City v. Pioneer Irrigation

It was interesting to see the summation of the agreement/disagreement between the City of Caldwell and Pioneer Irrigation in the Sunday edition of the IPT.  One side claims years and years of past practice and the other is claiming trespass on their canal without any authority to do so.

The reality is what worked when Caldwell was a small rural farm community does not work when we are now at 46,000 people living in houses that were once farms.  Rather than put the burden on developers to pay for the expenses of growth and respect for a precious commodity, (the water we all take for granted), the city proclaimed it OK to put citified runoff into canals used to irrigate farmland and crops.

At first all of the bickering seemed like petty arguing about trivial issues.  The reality is much different.  Would you go and water your home garden with water taken from gutter run-off water and drainage from streets and other city hard surfaces?  Probably not as they contain all manner of contaminants from gasoline, oil and other crud along with all manner of toxic byproducts from city residents.

We all need to figure out how to be better stewards of the land and water resources we  have in this valley.  It all boils down to a food safety issue and keeping pollutants and toxins out of our food supply.  Dumping hardscape waste-water into irrigation canals just isn't a very good plan.

Too bad it took millions in ligtigation to arrive a this conclusion.  Caldwell taxpayers and Pioneer Water users got stuck with the bills for this lack of agreement and understanding of what was probably not the cheapest solution but the most responsible course of action.

Nanobrewery Wants to Locate at 10th and Grant in Caldwell

THE GUARDIAN received a very nice letter today inviting me to attend a meeting to review and discuss a proposed "nanobrewery" project at the corner of 10th Avenue and Grant Streets.  The meeting will be held at the Caldwell public library at 3:00 PM on Monday August 6th. 

Those familiar with brew pubs know they are not just another beer joint in a community, they are more restaurant with a limited high quality menu and they serve up equally high quality micro brews.  The few that I have been in are family friendly, have a relaxing atmosphere and generally the perfect mix of good food served in a clean environment at reasonable prices.  This could be a nice addition to the Fairview Golf Course, sort of a 19th hole environement.

THE GUARDIAN owns property in the vicinity of this proposed project and will attend the meeting in support of this project.  The letter we received was signed by Josh White of Tay's Inc. 

This meeting is part of the process in getting permits and approvals from the city of Caldwell P&Z and final approvals from the City Council.

Loud, Noisy, Disagreable and Mayor Dale Gets to Decide

There is a very good article on the workings of Nampa City Government and what the addition of Councilman Bob Henry has brought to Nampa's City Council in the Idaho Statesman today (Sunday).

The Nampa City Council is no longer a rubber stamp for the the Mayor and various departments of Nampa City.  Councilors Henry and Kren have demonstrated a parsimonious defense of their view of spending citizens tax dollars v. the opposite attitude  demonstrated with Councilors Pam White and Martin Thorne.  Mayor Dale is having to weigh in with tie breaking votes that generally affirm the votes of White and Thorne.

It is a very good read written by Kristen Rodine of the Idaho Statesman and you can get it all at: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/07/22/2197573/nampa-council-often-divided.html