PUBLIC EYE
Tamarack Resort No money, mo problems.
Best Reason to Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
Tamarack Resort Tamarack is snake-bitten. A bench warrant remains for Jean-Pierre Boespflug, its former owner, who hasn’t been spotted in Idaho since 2011. An Eagle businessman faces federal charges for allegedly bilking investors as part of a $40 million scheme to buy the Valley County resort. And oh, yeah, Bank of America ripped out one of the main lifts from the mountain as part of its foreclosure. But here’s the good news: Tamarack homeowners are expecting the snow to be white this winter. But no one is holding their breath.
Best Lame Duck
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter If it looks like an Otter, walks like an Otter, but quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Or a lame duck, to be pr cise. Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter has been somewhat of an enigma, jetting off to exotic locales like Maui, Florida and Las Vegas (the latter to attend a rodeo competition) while leaving the heavy lifting to Lt. Gov. Brad Little. Combine that with the fact that Otter, just more than a year-and-a-half through his second term, has had a helluva time getting his pet projects through the Legislature, and it starts to look a little like the Guv is phoning it in. First, it was roads in 2008 and 2009, when lawmakers balked at bills that Otter pushed to modernize Idaho’s transportation infrastructure (he vetoed several bills and threatened others in response, to no avail), then Idaho GOP delegates went against his wishes and ousted party Chairman Kirk Sullivan at the 2008 convention. Since then, Otter has run up against opposition to a number of his initiatives and seems to have resigned himself to saber rattling over the federal Affordable Care Act and writing love notes wooing businesses from other states. When he abruptly announced in December 2011 that he plans to run for a third term in 2014, it looked suspiciously like trying to remind people that you’re the governor ... by running for governor. WWW. B OISEWEEKLY.C O M
Best “Really?”
Idaho Education Association endorses Rep. Mike Simpson over Nicole LeFavour Politics makes strange bedfellows, but perhaps the oddest pillow talk came when the Idaho Education Association gave a ringing endorsement to Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s re-election bid. The most gobsmacked was Simpson’s Democratic opponent, Nicole LeFavour, who was quick to add that Simpson had regularly received poor grades from the National Education Association, the parent agency of the IEA. In a bizarre feeding-the-mouth-that-bitthem, the IEA is supporting a man whose own political action committee pumped cashed into the 2010 political campaign of Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna, whose education reforms the IEA opposes.
Best Fetus Comparison
Earthquakes in Payette As if natural gas exploration in Payette County couldn’t get any stranger, the latest shake-up (and they mean that quite literally) involves something called “vibroseising,” which will create mini earthquakes, sending seismic waves through the Earth’s crust, ultimately creating a 3D image that will direct geologists on where to start drilling. Not bizarre enough for you? Well, to assist their demonstration to Payette County farmers, geologists displayed giant images of fetuses, stating, “The picture of this unborn baby uses the same type of seismogram as we use in creating the 3D images of the subsurface. We’ll record sound waves the same ways.”
BOISEweekly | SEPTEMBER 26 – OCTOBER 2, 2012 | 47