Boise Blues and Electric Shock Therapy

Just when it appeared that the furor over Mayor McLean’s flying of the Rainbow flag honoring the GAY COMMUNITY in Boise and the city council’s approving it as the official flag of Boise another shoe drops. It appears that our capital city mayor is once again under fire but this time by the Trump Administration’s Department of Homeland Security which has issued a list of 500 cities and Boise appears on a list as a sanctuary jurisdiction. McLean has not yet received clarification on why the city was put on the list but the Department of Homeland Security says that each jurisdiction will soon receive formal notification detailing its non-compliance. This announcement appeared to take our mayor by surprise this past Thursday as The Department of Homeland Security put out a news release titled, “DHS Exposes Sanctuary Jurisdictions Defying Federal Immigration Law.” As of the writing of this article, we have not found any response from supposedly conservative Governor Brad Little on this designation of our capital city.

The designation comes on the heels of McLean declaring the pride flag an official city flag and trying to slam Boise residents with the maximum property tax hike of $10 million. This mayor and the radical leftists on the city council want to take money from hardworking Boiseans to fund their far-left, open-borders agenda, and don’t think for a minute that there are not a substantial number of illegal immigrants in our capital city.

In 2019, McLean and her liberal city council declared Boise a Welcoming City as listed on the website here: https://welcomingamerica.org/welcoming-network/network-directory?listing_network_category=certified-welcoming

Cities and counties that have been certified welcoming have created policies and programs that show its commitment to immigrant inclusion. They assess the cities efforts to include and welcome immigrants from all areas of civic, social and economic life. The question is as a Welcoming City has Boise violated any of the immigration laws and if so what were they. The Trump administration’s listing of the city as a sanctuary jurisdiction implies that the city is defying some federal immigration laws.

Idaho, being a highly agricultural state, would certainly have a bent toward hiring illegals in the Ag industry but I haven’t seen many crops growing or cows roaming the streets of Boise lately. We have asked the question for many years about the number of illegals in Idaho and we doubt that any kind of a real survey has ever been taken. Depending on which resource you use there are between 35,000 and 58,000 illegals immigrants in Idaho but no one really knows for sure. What we can be sure of is that during the four years Biden was president whatever the number was has increased.

You will not find it easy to check how much Illegal Immigration costs U.S. taxpayers and the most you will get from state officials is that the illegals contribute to the local economies. Unfortunately, that is not always the case and if you look at some of the figures put out by FAIR you will find that illegal immigrants cost literally billions of dollars. The numbers have become far larger than most people would imagine with costs for housing, food and medical care. If you want to see some real numbers please go to FAIR’s website to get an idea of just how much we are paying for Bidens open border. https://www.fairus.org/issue/publications-resources/fiscal-burden-illegal-immigration-united-states-taxpayers-2023

Boise under Mayor McLean’s leadership has taken a sharp turn to the left and it doesn’t look like it is going to change any time soon as she continues to push her agenda to turning Boise bright blue in hopes of it catching on as it has in my old neighborhood of Meridian. I have said many times in the past that the liberals now have a foot hold in our capital city and to be sure they have a strategy to change every city in the Treasure Valley. Ron Nate president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation pushed for House Bill 11, which would have criminalized illegal entry at the state level, allowing Idaho to finally secure our borders and work with federal authorities. But Big Ag interests watered it down, leaving you and your families vulnerable to the illegal invaders that have poured into our state. If you think it is only happening in the Treasure Valley think again because living 120 miles north in New Meadows we are finding more and more illegals working in construction, landscaping and retail stores.

WAKE UP IDAHO! Only 13% of the registered voters showed up for the May 20th elections for school bonds. If Idahoans don’t show up to vote for conservative legislators in the next election, I fear that we may be past the point of no return. Just look at the powerful tech companies like META, which is now a member of IACI along with Google; they are moving into our state, building these huge data centers on what used to be farmland. They will create a minimal number of jobs but will suck up lots of our resources like water and electric.

By the way, folks, Idaho Power is already planning for a big rate increase in 2026 as they are requesting a 13.09% hike in its overall rates, according to an application the company filed with the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. The average residential customer using 900 kilowatt hours per month would see their bill rise by about $21.66 or a 17.35% increase. Intermountain Gas also filed a request with the PUC to raise its base rates. Residential customers would see their monthly bills rise by 11.46% while commercial customers would see their monthly bills go up by 5.16%. This would increase Idaho Power’s revenues by just under $200 million. Idaho Power has also proposed hiking the residential service charge by $15 to $20. They say this will make fixed cost collection more equitable for residential customers. Don’t believe a word of this malarky. Let us not forget that over the past two years, each January, Idaho Power customers have received rate increases.

By the way, let me remind you that the 3 largest liberal investment companies own over 25% of Idaho Power’s stock. I only mention it alleged that this group has been instrumental in driving power companies to use more renewable and less coal generated energy. In 2008, 46.1 percent of Idaho Power’s energy came from coal. In 2024, coal generation is down to 9%. Just for your information a Nuclear power plant is 33% efficient while coal comes in with the same efficiency of 33%. However, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Transformative Power Systems Research Program is working on concepts to develop small, flexible, low-emissions coal plants that could achieve 40% to 45% efficiency. A simple cycle natural gas power plant efficiency rate tends to be lower, ranging from 33 to 43% while Hydro power is 90% efficient. Wind, on the other hand, is 33 to 35% efficient when the wind is blowing and solar is 22% efficient. Why has Idaho Power invested so much in renewable energy like wind and solar if they are so inefficient while raising our rates?

“When will it be too expensive to turn the lights on?”