Politically incorrect and proud of it
Idaho needs license plates with a new catch phrase. Our
nomination is "Idaho, Politically Incorrect."
It’s time to face the facts. It’s time to admit that
Idaho’s image has little to do with imported wackos. Instead, it has
everything to do with the folks in power in the Legislature.
All year long, the Department of Commerce has fretted
about the state’s image with new businesses and visitors it wants to
attract. It’s fretted about developing a public relations campaign to
counteract the reputation that a handful of neo-Nazis gave the state. Now
it’s got more on its hands than a few skinheads.
The part-time Legislature has been busy the last eight
weeks giving the state new black eyes.
It’s embarrassing.
Consider yesterday’s 10-9 vote by the House State
Affairs Committee to hold a bill that would result in the removal of the
word "squaw" from Idaho place names. The word is a derogatory
reference to female anatomy that Idaho’s Native American tribes want
removed.
Changing the offending place names is no wild-eyed idea.
It’s an act of respect for the descendants of the West’s first
inhabitants that has been undertaken by other states, including Montana,
Maine, Minnesota and Oklahoma.
The Idaho Senate had passed the bill with just one
dissenting vote. But the House committee folks stopped the bill in its
tracks.
They wrung their hands over the expense of the changes.
They said they feared they were stepping onto a slippery slope of
"political correctness." Where, they wondered, would it all end?
So, they stopped the bill cold.
Whack! A new shiner for the state.
Other self-inflicted wounds this winter:
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Arranging to spend $64 million on remodeling the
state capitol and endorsing a tax cut while leaving Idaho schools to rot—literally.
The Legislature offered only low-interest loans to poor school districts
to help construct new schools to replace old and dangerous ones.
-
Allowing a proposed law to masquerade as one that
requires that farm workers be paid minimum wage—when it really doesn’t.
-
Refusing—again—to meet requirements of the
federal Clean Water Act by designating the state’s pristine rivers as
Outstanding Resource Waters.
Nice record for a few week’s work. There’s no chance
anyone may think the Legislature is politically correct. It’s on the
record in favor of offensive names, insensitivity to minorities, decrepit
schools, poverty and dirty water.
That’s Idaho—politically incorrect and proud of it.
