Published in the Post Register.
Where do we put our focus? To hear some local politicians, you’d think the most pressing issue we have in Idaho is George Soros funding drag queens in schools.
Of course, most of us know that George Soros probably doesn’t know what’s going on in Idaho—and certainly isn’t spending any money here. On top of that, rather than drag queens in our schools, we have a rather large teacher shortage.
If we could attract more teachers to Idaho, we’d be in a better position to hire qualified teachers, never mind what they do in their free time.
We know that Idaho teens have a high suicide rate, but rather than addressing mental health and providing adequate support, our so-called leaders are looking for ways to further marginalize already vulnerable teens. They pass ridiculous laws that don’t hold up in court while our children suffer.
They watch as extremists in northern Idaho threaten librarians and try to distract us by creating scapegoats out of a relatively small portion of our population. I’m not sorry to point out that actual extremists issuing death threats to librarians are a true threat to our republic (which is classified as a type of democracy). Meanwhile, our current “representatives” would create a false moral panic around drag queens.
Give me a break.
Rather than addressing the 2016 property tax exemption mess the legislature created, they’d rather shift the blame to city and county governments—while restricting what our municipalities can do to solve problems. One of our current “representatives” spent time at a recent forum telling engaged and informed citizens that they didn’t know anything. She then proceeded to justify why it’s fine that commercial properties only bear 30% of the property tax burden while 70% falls on residential homeowners.
Our current crop of “representatives” is good at kicking the can down the road and shifting blame. They refused to take advantage of Medicaid expansion dollars from the federal government, only implementing this benefit for Idaho citizens after we demanded it through a ballot initiative. They refused to do the right thing and adequately invest in education—until, again, they were threatened with a ballot initiative.
Can we trust these same people to do the right thing with this education investment? The legislature is supposed to allocate the funds during the next session. But will those funds support the requirement in Idaho’s constitution to uniformly fund public education? I have doubts. They’re already talking about diverting money from public education and giving tax breaks for private education. Plus, basing it on sales tax? The last time the legislature based education funding on sales tax, they cut it back almost immediately.
Our “representatives” have a history of grandstanding, making bad policies for non-existent problems and trying to distract us with a made-up culture war.
It’s time to invest in Idaho, its people and our communities. Our focus should be on holding elected officials accountable for their extremist views and policies, not letting them distract us with non-issues.
Miranda Marquit is a nationally recognized financial expert, writer, speaker and podcaster. She is the chair of the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee and a candidate for state representative.