RATING: Look at the bottom line

I am grateful to S. Schad for describing the KCRCC “rating and vetting” process. It seems very thorough, and I commend KCRCC for going to the effort. It is a fine thing that KCRCC works hard to identify conservative Republicans.

There’s just one problem: it doesn’t work. 

This should be abundantly clear considering the Community Library Board — where overtly conservative Christian sensibilities have been used to direct library policy (e.g. closure on Sundays). While obviously violating the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, it also penalizes our neighbors who are Jews, Muslims, and even Seventh-day Adventists, none of whom celebrate their Sabbath on Sundays.

Perhaps more dramatically, KCRCC “rated and vetted” candidates dominate the Board of Trustees at North Idaho College. In the case of NIC, it is not so much that the KCRCC Board Majority has imposed “conservative” values upon NIC — it is their sheer incompetence. The Board Majority has undertaken a number of actions which endanger NIC’s accreditation, have gotten NIC sideways with the law, spent well over a million dollars to cure errors of law and lost civil lawsuits, and arranged to pay a presidential salary to someone for at least 18 months … to do exactly nothing. Bryan Adams of the Idaho Statesman has remarked that Coeur d’Alene is paying an incompetence tax due to the NIC Board majority: he’s not wrong.

In the mid-1800s women giving birth in hospitals suffered Puerpueral Fever, frequently leading to death. No matter what the doctors did, the women were dying in droves. However, a doctor named Ignac Semmelweis conducted an experiment: “Let us have the doctors thoroughly wash their hands before assisting in each childbirth…” …and the maternal death rate plummeted. 

So: I don’t know what is going wrong with the KCRCC, but until we can figure out what is wrong, it might be best for North Idaho to wash its hands of them.

JOHN D. SAHR

Otis Orchards, Wash.