But PUH-LEEZE! Get real people. It is just football. It is just a game and lots of people from travel agents to bartenders made lots of money off the player’s efforts. Coach Pete made lots of money.

HOWEVER. Let’s just go with the flow. Bask in the warm glow of an undefeated season and hope we can do the same next year. Go Broncos!

Get over the chip on the shoulder. We have a great team, a great university, a fine community that is suffering from growing pains and mismanagement. If we hear another cry of, “This game (team, coach, broadcast) put Boise and Idaho on the map,” we will probably blow chips.

Dr. Bob gushes over how this winning team will boost academics at BSU. Does he believe for a second that Michigan State’s agriculture research or medical school will SUFFER after the coach is fired and the team has a miserable year as they did this season? Football is football and in reality it has little to do with academic excellence.

It is a safe bet folks in Columbus Ohio or Ann Arbor, Michigan are not crowing, “We are in the national spotlight with TV coverage. It put us on the map!”

Grow up! We are good people and we do good things. We have a growing university, and media hype won’t make or break us. Getting on TV or being mentioned in the “national media” is not a big deal. When killers cut heads off their wives or a guy gets on “The Apprentice” we get in the national spotlight as well, but it doesn’t make a difference in the quality of our air or the traffic on Eagle Road.

No more inferiority complex. We’re from Boise and proud of it. PERIOD.

How did GUARDIAN readers see all the contests of local TV reports? Did KBCI even have a crew in Arizona at all? What will the media kids do with no football…always the legislature to predict and explain to us.

The Daily Paper had a great story on page one Wednesday detailing all the evils of weather inversion and related health risks. They had charts, graphs, and quotes from officials who predict more bad air alerts.

Below the inversion story was a teaser for a made up story from Farmers Insurance ranking the “most secure” places to live and to no one’s surprise the Boise-Nampa area topped the list!

We found the insurance story on-line, but not in the paper as promised. Even so, there was no mention of the constant drive by shootings and killings in the Nampa-Caldwell area. The problems with downtown drinkers was ignored. No mention of the daily traffic jam on I-84 and deadly crashes on that highway. And of course no reference to the the meth crises and cost of new jail facilities.

A weather service guy told the Statesman, “Besides a yearly inversion, spring floods and fire season, the Boise-Nampa area is safe from extremes.”

So why is the GUARDIAN exercised and how is a secure feeling linked inversions? Read on!

We did a little Google News search to see who else bit on the Farmers made up promo. First up was the CENTRAL VALLEY BUSINESS TIMES from Stockton, California which proudly proclaimed three cities in the Central Valley to be among the “most secure.” With more than 100 areas on the insurance company’s made up list, chances are pretty good FARMERS will be mentioned in at least 50 of them–along with Boise.

Then comes the kicker. The California paper’s story had this line, “The Boise City-Nampa, Idaho, area topped all large metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or greater. Nestled against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, the area is shielded from severe weather and has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the Farmers study.”

No wonder so many people are moving here we can’t breath! Thanks to gullible mainstream media that is proud to report a “survey,” we can plan to suck even more dirty air into our lungs.

The mug shot can be viewed at http://www.adasheriff.org/ArrestsReport/wfrmDetail.aspx

Officers from Boise PD made the DUI pinch Saturday night. He is to appear in court October 16.

Look for a serious weekend anchor looking into the camera saying, “We have some unfortunate news to report tonight about one of our own. Mark Johnson was arrested last night by police and charged with Driving while under the influence.”

In all fairness, when media stars get popped for tipping too many, it puts the outlet in a difficult position. They want to be first to report the incident to avoid community backlash, but if the newsie worked anywhere else it would go unreported. At least it didn’t happen when they were taping episodes of “COPS”–bad boys, bad boys, whatchya gonna do?

The shift from property tax to sales tax may not be good news to retailers and consumers, but big business and homeowners will get SOME tax relief. If the GUARDIAN got the decimal in the right place we figure the owner of a $200,000 house with a homeowners exemption will see a tax savings of about $425. On the downside the INCREASED sales tax on a $25,000 car will be $250.

The “proposition one” slated for the November ballot to raise sales tax another 1 percent for schools is probably doomed. Supreme Court of Idaho has pretty much given the legislators free rein to repeal ANY law passed by citizens anyway.

The increase in sales tax could prompt consumers to head west to Oregon for high end purchases. A $1,000 bill spent in Oregon means you save $60 in Idaho sales tax. Technically you aren’t supposed to do that, but you are also supposed to tell the Idaho Tax folks you bought your new GPS on the internet and saved 6% taxes over the Cabela’s store price.

That may be unlikely given the “NEWS” reports print and broadcast media devoted to new store openings like Costco and Cabela’s. You’d think Krispy Kreme had come to town! The daily paper’s outdoor team will have a rough time being taken seriously in the future after turning tricks at Cabela’s.

With a softening of the housing market we could see an end to increased values–and taxes. The speculation continues forever, so let’s hear from some “experts.”

Newspapering makes strange “bedpersons” in the case of the local daily in Boise where a 35-year-old “veteran” of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune has just been appointed as publisher.

Mi-Ai Parish takes the helm after Mike Petrak jumped ship over the weekend. If the McClatchey group can get news in the paper as fast as they switch publishers there is hope for the local daily which has had more publishers and owners in the past year than it did in the previous 10.

In an episode straight out of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, Boise has a couple of midwerst ladies at the top of the local publishing game who were once crosstown competitors in Minnesota’s Twin Cities. They have apparently followed the advice of Horace Greeley–“go west young lady. Go west.”

Vicki Gowler is Executive editor at the Statesman and only a few months ago she was competing head-to-head with her new young boss. Gowler was an editor at the St. Paul Pioneer-Press and Parish held a similar post at the Star-Tribune.

Gosh! Newspaper brass are joining their TV cousins as being the highest paid most attractive migrant workers in town. We give Parish a month before she gets courted by Dr. Bob at BSU and invited to join hospital, charity group boards, the Airid Club, etc.

Insiders at the local paper are encouraged that Parish has a background in news. She has not worked in advertising, circulation, or finance. All we want is decent news coverage anyway, so who cares?

They had three owners in less than a year and changed the format to compete with YAHOO web sites. With top editors on well deserved vacations, those who read the local paper are treated to reruns of two year old stories, no local follow up on national stories, mix ups on which “target editions” get what stories, and young reporters who don’t know Boise from Garden City.

We noticed Wayne Hoffman”s front page puff piece last week about official Idaho birds, horse, flowers etc. This week Hoffman, the P.R. guy for the Idaho Department of Agriculture, is featured on the editorial page carrying the water for Republicans. If they like his work so much, they should have offered him a good wage to stay. But then again, they don’t have to pay him at all now.

Like car dealer rebates, the local paper is giving itself away to entice subscribers otherwise unwilling to sign up. One of the prime motivations for the GUARDIAN was the lack of intelligent and timely coverage of Boise news. We figured if we could be a little “in your face” the locals would jump on good stories. We still hold out hope. Chartering a plane for aerial shots of the explosion in New Plymouth was a nice touch.

“I don’t know if Dope Awards cross state lines, but this is classic Dope Award behavior. The story is from the Associated Press in Cleveland.

A television news cameraman paid a $145 fine after police said he enticed three teenagers to ride their bikes through waist-high floodwaters.

The boys told police that Gary Abrahamsen of WEWS-TV in Cleveland offered to put them on TV if they rode through the water on a bridge, according to a police report. They said A REPORTER WADED INTO THE WATER so they would be riding behind her in the video.

Police cited Abrahamsen with misdemeanor disorderly conduct June 22. He paid the fine June 28, according to Norwalk Municipal Court.

AP reports the station has no comment. No word if the reporter was wearing a yellow shirt and hard hat.”

Not even with our twisted sense of absurd humor would we run a picture of a horse’s patute–with tail raised no less–under the headline, “STILL SINGING OF IDAHO AFTER 116 YEARS.”

This may the first time in journalistic history the once proud Boise daily newspaper has published a photo featuring a horse’s ass that wasn’t running for office or a member of a political party!

TV KUDOS

The GUARDIAN was deprived of TV Dope Award potential Monday as the first wildfires of the season made news in the Foothills of Boise. Both KTVB-7 reporter Ysabel Bilbao and KBCI-2 reporter Michelle DeGrand appeared on camera dressed like professional news reporters sans yellow shirts, hard hats, and grimy faces so common of TV-actors.

Three headlines in the printed paper Thursday demonstrate a certain “dope reporter “ mentality. They detail a problem with vehicle air pollution in one story and even acknowledge growth as a cause. The story below crows about 14% growth in Meridian and describes Boise’s .2% growth as “anemic.” Obviously they think growth is “healthy”–even if all those new people can’t breath once they get here!

They also offered a headline saying white water rafting is “still a hit” despite a couple of recent fatalities. That story went on to say folks died despite wearing life jackets and helmets.

Conclusion: Growth is good even if you breath poisoned air and rafting is fun even if some people die. Statesman gets a “Dope Staff Award” on Thursday’s paper.

The story about a report to be released by a regional panel on the subject of air pollution was full of irony.

One of the plans is expanded emission testing, according Peter O’Neil, chairman of the panel appointed by former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne. Ironically the staffers at the regional COMPASS planning agency said growth in the valley will soon overwhelm any benefits of an expanded testing program.

The true irony is that O’neal is one of the biggest developers and growthoholics in Boise and has brought us most of the rooftops along the river and especially Surprise Valley” which has all those crowded dwellings near the Highway 21 bridge east of Boise. Each of those homes has a car or two or three pushing pollution into our air.

The GUARDIAN has a simple answer which should appeal to any self respecting growthophobe. A simple law which says: “THOU SHALT NOT POLLUTE”.

Testing does nothing to create clean air–it only costs money for those who have newer cars which have converters and computers. “Old Smokeys” are exempt along with a bunch of others like tractors, big trucks and lawn mowers.

We think modern testing methods set up along major roads–just like radar–would serve to catch and fine polluters. That way, ANYONE from ANYWHERE would be subject to the rules. Proceeds go to more enforcement and pollution abatement.

We certainly don’t allow out-of-county drivers to speed through the county. We test them with radar and fine ‘em if they violate. Same with drunk drivers. A big rig dripping a pint of insecticide could close the freeway and tie up traffic traffic for hours, but the same diesel truck could belch smoke into the air from Mountain Home to Nampa with no complaints from local regulators.

The other pollution solution is to simply slow or stop the developments.