Trailer chains help save pair dangling off bridge
Authorities say a set of camp trailer safety chains and quick, careful work by
emergency crews saved two people after their pickup plunged off a bridge, leaving them dangling above a deep gorge in southern Idaho.
Idaho State Police responded to the accident at
about 2:45 p.m. Monday, said ISP spokeswoman Lynn Hightower. A trooper found a man and a woman inside the pickup dangling, nose-down, off the side of the bridge spanning the Malad Gorge. The gorge is narrow but is roughly 100 feet deep below the bridge, about the height of a 10story building.
The only thing keeping the 2004 Ford F-350 from falling was the set of “safety chains” attaching the 30foot camper trailer, which remained on the bridge, to the pickup. A state trooper and local sheriff ’s deputy first used additional chains from a nearby semi-truck to help support the dangling pickupuntil additional rescuers could arrive.
Emergency crews were then able to rappel down and attach a harness to each occupant, allowing them to be safely carried back to the bridge. Two small dogs inside the pickup also were safely rescued.
The case remains under investigation, Hightower said.
CHESTER, Pa. — President Joe Biden turned up at a minorityowned flooring business in suburban Philadelphia on Tuesday to highlight how his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package can help small businesses and to put a face on those who have struggled throughout the pandemic.
The visit to Smith Flooring Inc. was Biden’s first stop in a crosscountry administration roadshow — also involving his vice president and his wife — designed to publicize, and take credit for, the virus relief package.
It “took some loud, strong voices to get this done,” Biden said, making a subtle dig at Republicans during his visit to the small union shop that will benefit from the relief. “And it’s not like it passed with 100 votes. It was close.”
While Biden was in Pennsylvania for his first stop on the “Help is Here” tour, Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff were reinforcing the small business theme Tuesday with stops in Colorado.
With Harris and Emhoff taking notes during a business roundtable in Denver, Lorena Cantarovici, who began making empanadas
in her garage after emigrating from Argentina, told of how her small shop grew over the years into three Maria Empanada locations, but then she was forced to lay off workers when the coronavirus struck.
She said 80 percent of her team came back through previous relief programs, but it could take two years to get back to full capacity and “recover all this loss.” Harris and Emhoff did their part by departing with empanadas in tow.
In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Smith Flooring had 23 employees during peak times but currently is employing 12 workers. It is using
the loan to help retain workers and upgrade technology. Borrowers are eligible for forgiveness if they meet certain requirements, including devoting at least 60 percent of the proceeds to payroll expenses.
In his chat with the owners of Smith Floors, Biden repeatedly asked “what else” they thought his administration should be doing to help businesses like theirs.
Biden is trying to showcase how the aid package will bring transformational change to the nation by halving child poverty, fueling record levels of hiring and pumping money to parents, schools and state and local governments. It’s a sharp turn from the start of the Biden administration, when vaccination goals were relatively modest and Americans were warned the country might not return to normal until Christmas.
The Biden administration estimates that 400,000 small businesses have closed because of the pandemic and millions more are barely surviving. His aid package includes a $28 billion grant program to support restaurants and drinking establishments. It also includes $15 billion in flexible grants.
Harris also held a virtual chat with the operators of a Fort Lupton, Colo., vaccine clinic.
Because of a mechanical issue with the government plane, Harris scratched her plan for her visit to the vaccine clinic, Plan De Salud Del Valle Inc., and instead spoke with the clinic’s staff over Zoom. She praised their work, making particular note of the clinic’s focus on helping minority communities get vaccinated.
“The president and I from the beginning of this have made it one of our highest priorities to make sure that we are taking into account racial disparities, and that we supply folks on the ground with the resources you need so that we have equitable outcomes,” she said.
The eyewitness account of the insurrection Jan. 6 — in print, digital and electronic media — is amazing. More than 300 people have been arrested for the hostile disruption of the certification of the Electoral College votes in Congress.
The mob overwhelmed police at the U.S. Capitol. The insurrectionists took selfies and videos and posted them online. Those who did were among the first to be arrested.
One alleged participant was the infamous “Qanon shaman,” Jacob Anthony Chansley — shirtless, sporting a painted face and wearing a bearskin headdress with horns. Videos show him with a police shield shouting, “Stop the steal!” Once he was tracked down and apprehended, a news story reported he was being denied his “special service needs” in jail. He does not eat anything that is not organic. To my disbelief, his request was accommodated.
Then there is Federico Guillermo Klein, also arrested in connection with the insurrection, who complained that any incarceration would require a cockroach-free facility because he was averse to cockroaches crawling over him. Otherwise, he would not be able to sleep. Talk about snowflakes — as Republicans often label their opponents.
Compare the mobocracy of 2021 with what happened 100 years ago in Rocksprings, about 140 miles west of San Antonio. A few weeks ago, the Express-news
published a book review of “The Injustice Never Leaves You: Antimexican Violence in Texas” by Monica Muñoz Martinez.
I purchased the book. One of the first harrowing stories covers an incident that occurred Nov. 2, 1910. A woman named Effie Greer Henderson was murdered in her home in Rocksprings. As word of the murder spread, a posse of family members, neighbors and local officers formed, and Antonio Rodriguez was arrested and jailed. The purported motive was that Rodriguez was a disgruntled employee.
The next day, a mob dragged Rodriguez from jail in the middle of the day and tied him to a tree. No witness testified. Cedar was gathered by participants and set in front of the tree, then everything was doused with kerosene and lit. Rodriguez was burned at the stake.
There was no investigation and no witnesses to prove Rodriguez’s guilt in the murder — no trial and no justice. And worse: No repercussion for the perpetrators of his death. Aside from doctored reports, the killing was presented as though it was a common occurrence.
Years later, there were oral histories passed on to succeeding generations. The rumor was that it was Henderson’s husband who murdered his wife. Oral histories now have their place in verifying stories like these and others.
The reason I bring up this historical case is mobs do their work with malice and without penalty. One wonders how the trials of so many of those involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection will end. Will the verdict favor the government or the plaintiffs? Will the truth come to light or be hidden away in an obscure footnote of history? Or will they end up like the Warren Commission report on the assassination of JFK, with no definitive answers?
We are all waiting to see if justice prevails in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who kept his knee on George Floyd’s neck for nearly 9 minutes until he died. Millions saw the miscarriage of justice in Floyd’s killing through media platforms — just as we saw the relentless mob attack the U.S. Capitol.
I only wish there had been a chance for justice for Antonio Rodriguez.
For decades, empowerment and reform-oriented conservatives have argued that tax burdens should be shifted away from families with children. It was a central part of what claiming to be “pro-family” meant. During the George W. Bush administration, the child tax credit was doubled from $500 to $1,000 per child. The 2017 tax bill doubled the maximum benefit of the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 per child and gave, on average, an additional $300 per child to families earning between $25,000 and $40,000 a year — thanks largely to the effort of Sens. Marco Rubio, R-fla., and Mike Lee, R-utah.
Now the Biden stimulus bill has gone a large step further — creating a credit of $3,600 for children 5 and younger, and a $3,000 credit for those 6 to 17. And because the credit would be refundable, it would even go to lower-income families who don’t pay taxes, in the form of a periodic payment from the government.
This measure should be supported on its merits. But it has accomplished something else that is profoundly hopeful. Rather than being lost in Twitter’s netherworld of inanity and insanity, Republicans are conducting a real-world policy debate.
Disagreement about family tax policy has a long history. At least since I was a policy staffer in the Senate during the 1990s, supplyside conservatives of the Wall Street Journal variety have argued that only cuts in marginal tax rates really matter, since those increase productivity.
Child credits, in their view, just give money away without improving the functioning of the economy. Compassionate conservatives responded that improving the functioning of families was also a valid public goal.
The other source of conservative opposition to the credit comes from champions of the work requirements contained in the welfare reform of the 1990s. They fear that the refundable child credit, which has no such strings, will encourage dependence and sloth, provide incentives for out-of-wedlock births and generally undermine the positive paternalism that nudges the poor toward responsible behavior.
Answering these concerns involves a more complex economic and social discussion (as you can see from a recent event highlighting the conflicting views among scholars at the premier conservative think tank, the American Enterprise Institute). As a general matter, the defense of bossy social welfare bureaucracies sounds strange from the mouths of conservatives. But the main argument in favor of child allowances is that the family — the primary mediating institution — is under serious economic stress. Though a refundable credit may have some influence on workforce participation among the poor, the effect is likely to be small, while the
overall help to struggling families will be large. And in some cases, enabling a parent to stay home with a young child is not an unwelcome outcome.
There are other good, conservative reasons to favor refundable child credits. They are likely to encourage greater fertility in a country whose entitlement system depends on a supply of young workers that can come only from births and immigration. These credits also partially redress the imbalance of a tax system that takes huge amounts of cash from younger Americans to subsidize entitlement programs for seniors. A government that encourages the well-being of families with children is investing in the future, not only honoring the promises of the past.
And there is a related argument that conservatives should not share with their progressive friends, lest liberals everywhere begin to have serious second thoughts about their support for the measure. A $3,600 benefit, paid in a check to a parent at regular intervals, would defray most of the cost of sending a child to a Catholic elementary school (which now averages about $4,800 a year). For many parents, a child allowance will be the functional equivalent of a school voucher — money they can use at any private or religious school. This is the fulfillment by liberals of a conservative policy dream.
The child credit in the stimulus package is just a temporary measure. Pro-family Republicans should work with Democrats to make it permanent. Sen. Mitt Romney, R-utah, has put together an alternative that bumps up the benefit to $4,200 a year for children younger than 6, eliminates Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and partially pays for his benefit by ending the state and local tax deduction. Democrats will certainly reject some of this approach (particularly the last part, which would effectively increase taxes on childless couples in blue states to pay for large families in red states). But Romney’s proposal is a good-faith starting point for negotiations.
Yes, stimulus legislation passed on a partisan vote. But this — the Democratic embrace of an idea with bipartisan roots, matched by a serious Republican alternative — is what a working democracy looks like.