Watch your tongue if this bill passes
Warning to visitors and residents of Idaho: English may soon be the official language of the state.
The state Senate voted Wednesday to make it so. Can the state House be far behind? If it does approve Senate Bill 1172, take no chances, good citizens.
Do not go into a government building and ask anyone “¿Que pasa?” Don’t suggest that something be done “pronto.” Don’t say “Begorrah” even if it’s St. Patrick’s Day.
Don’t call a government official a schmuck or a putz, even if they behave like one.
Do not say “Adios” or “Sayonara” or “Ciao” when you leave, unless, in the case of the last one, you can reasonably claim you were talking about something to eat.
Don’t order a taco, a burrito, lasagna or macaroni in a government cafeteria. Order squid, not calamari, snails not escargot. Chop suey would be acceptable, because that’s really an American invention, not a Chinese dish. Pizza’s on the cusp: it’s a foreign word but an American way of making it.
French fries are OK, but French definitely is not. Forget about the soup du jour, or the pie a la mode. Nothing can be de rigueur. Maybe we’ll need to start calling those North Idaho lakes Heart of Needle and Earring.
Be careful in the courtrooms. Things like habeas corpus and res judicata may continue to exist in Idaho, but best not to use those foreign terms.
The Nez Perce probably have nothing to worry about, because they’re a separate government and can turn up their nezes at Idaho law. But counties named Kootenai and Shoshone and Latah are probably in trouble because those definitely are not English words, even if they are American words.
Come to think of it, if the official language is English, will we have to, like, stop talking like Americans, dude? And start spelling things like the Brits?
Small price to pay for putting Idaho at the centre of this linguistic labour of love.
Conventional thinking
Spokane and Seattle are competing to host the state Democratic Convention next year.
State Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz, who was in Spokane on Monday to talk to the Warren Magnuson Democratic Club, said the state Central Committee will select the site at its April meeting. He expects a fair amount of lobbying before that.
The Spokane County Democratic Committee has already printed up stickers with “Spokane in ‘O8 – Great!” slogans. That’s not bad, but the line above it on the sticker, “Bring the WSDCC 2008 Convention to Washington’s 2nd Largest City,” doesn’t exactly roll trippingly off the tongue.
State Republicans already have picked Spokane as the site for their 2008 convention, and there may be a good omen in that.
The Republicans and Democrats both had their state conventions in Spokane in 2000, and in 1990.
Way off on Wauconda
Last Sunday’s item about the proposed huckleberry limit incorrectly said Rep. Joel Kretz is from Wayconda.
No way. He’s from Wauconda.
The town name is misspelled in the state’s 2006 legislative directory, but that’s not a very good excuse. It’s an Eastern Washington town, so Spin Control should have trusted its first instinct and gone with a “u,” rather than the Olympia-produced directory. Or better yet, double-checked it somewhere else.
Go figure
Greater Spokane Incorporated sent word last week that Washington was 11th best in the nation for having a business-friendly tax system.
The local business group did not come to this conclusion on its own, but was passing on information from The Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., think tank which, like its name implies, studies taxes.
The foundation looks at a range of taxes that businesses face, and Washington does very well in some – like corporate income tax, because it has none – and pretty badly in others, like the sales tax and the gas tax, which are among the highest. Unemployment tax and property taxes are middling, when compared to other states.
When the federal tax burden is added in, Washington doesn’t do so well, but that’s in part because income levels are relatively high, and the federal income tax grabs some of that.
The formula is pretty well established, and things haven’t changed much for Washington over the years.
Still, having GSI, which is an amalgamation of the Spokane Regional Chamber of Commerce and the old Economic Development Council, brag about how business-friendly the state tax system is seems a little odd. Don’t their members regularly go to the Legislature and complain how we’re losing business to Idaho because of the dreaded and despised Business and Occupation tax?
The B&O tax, which is fairly rare, doesn’t figure into the foundation’s calculations. Idaho, by the way, ranks 32nd on the list.