Letters to the Editor

STATE GOVERNMENT

Otter needs to put more thought into his policies

I hope Gov. Otter is taking the same cuts in nonessential travel, meals, supplies and pay that other state employees are having to take. I disagree with his expenditures for new roads instead of alternative transportation, including bike paths. In Europe, the company that builds the road has to maintain it at their own expense for three to five years - so they learn how to build them right!

I also want my grandkids protected by passing the new day care regulations - they should have been in place all along.

There are many ways to use the stimulus money that will more directly help those that have been hurt by the recession. Give it more thought!

JULIA BULLOCK, Boise

Proposal to cut pay for state workers is mean-spirited

The March 21 Post Register reported that the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee voted to cut state workers' pay by 3 percent for fiscal year 2010. The committee rejected other proposals that would save the state money and ignored the relief to be provided by federal economic stimulus money.

Running the state's programs is a business, and JFAC has lost sight of the business principle that people (the "personnel") are our most important resource. Any smart business manager would tell you that.

This proposal is mean-spirited, punishing, and counterproductive. I hope the House and Senate will be smart enough to reject this short-sighted measure.

But if legislators choose, against all common sense, to support it, I expect them to fill in the gaps. Right now, the measure is incomplete - it doesn't include the salaries of the legislators and governor. After all, they are state workers, too.

ENID YURMAN, Idaho Falls

PHARMACY BILL

Legislation makes a mockery of public service

Medicine has no political affiliation. Nor does disease and illness have religious favorites. The Idaho House's reckless use of law to provide pharmacists with religious and political excuses to abandon the needs of a patient - i.e., refuse to fill prescriptions intended for abortions or other procedures selectively repugnant to the pharmacist - makes a mockery of a professional's supposed devotion to the public trust.

Americans have just ended eight years of shameful abuses of authority in the name of promoting anti-abortion and pro-life agendas at the public expense, leading to egregious misconduct. Justice Department lawyers were hired on the basis of their views on abortion. President Bush signed frantic legislation to keep brain dead Terri Schiavo hooked to life support, then in a display of cheap vaudevillian excesses, hopped aboard Air Force One to deliver the signed legislation to Washington.

Medical practitioners who are more moved and preoccupied with personal conscience than service to the sick and dying need to find other work where they can trifle on the job.

PAT MURPHY, Ketchum

ECONOMY

Elected leaders are creating more problems than solutions

Why do we, the American people, continue to believe promises made by candidates running for public office? If elected, they will become members of the government. This includes city, county state, local, federal, whatever - they become members of the government. The platforms they run on promise cures and fixes for the problems plaguing their "constituents" - a word they use to get your vote, and then they forget you existed if they are elected.

The problems they want to assure us they will fix are the problems poor government has gotten us into in the first place. Just dwell on that for a few minutes and realize that as long as we continue to allow the same people to serve, the problems will not be solved; they will merely create more problems.

Am I dissatisfied with government performance? You bet I am. How else could we get in another depression, have our country mortgaged to China, and have failing companies the government bailed out with our tax dollars paying multimillion dollar bonuses. God save America.

NICK BRIZZI, Boise

Maybe AIG's support for Obama influenced stimulus bill

Public anger at AIG is running pretty high right now. In addition to the anger over the bonuses paid to executives, some people wonder how AIG happened to receive an additional $30 billion from the U.S. Treasury just two weeks ago, with no apparent concerns about how the money would be spent. And they wonder how a provision that specifically protects bonuses paid to employees by companies receiving federal bailout funds made it into the economic stimulus bill the president and the Democrats in Congress pushes through so rapidly.

Part of the reason conceivably could be that while Obama was a senator, he was the second-highest recipient of campaign dollars from AIG, at $101,332. Only Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd got more from AIG, and he is the one responsible for the loophole in the bill that allowed bonuses to be paid to AIG executives. It's all totally coincidental, of course.

DON H. ADAIR, Boise

Speak up and help common sense prevail

Has America outsourced its common sense? AIG is giving out bonuses when it has received billions in stimulus funds and reported a loss for last quarter. Isn't it time for bad, greedy businesses to fail? Isn't it time they repay the taxpayers the money ill spent? Isn't it time for a company with sound practices to take over AIG?

States are receiving stimulus money. Is the money being used to permanently add jobs to the work force? Does road construction or building greenbelts really add long-term employment? Does saving millions of dollars in a rainy-day fund help the current job situation? Once again, common sense has lost out. Factories need to be opened; long-term jobs need to be a priority.

Micron wants stimulus dollars. They have been given tax breaks for years but still continued to outsource jobs. Yes, we do need the solar panel factory - but maybe not managed by Micron. If they do receive our tax dollars, then it should be mandated that all jobs stay in the States.

Common sense can prevail if we let our voices be heard. So I challenge you to write or call your congressmen. Let them know what middle-class America wants!

KAREL CATTRON, Boise

Stimulus bill will lead to more government control

Barack Obama says he is not a socialist, but he certainly acts like one. Examples are many, but nothing shows this better than his hastily conceived stimulus package. I can't believe this unbelievably huge spending bill that had no time to be reviewed by Congress was nothing more than a vote based only on rhetoric and "hope." I believe the only stimulus this will create is more dependence on, and involvement in our lives by, the central government - a basic socialist goal. For the same reason, I opposed the Bush/Paulson stimulus plan, which has obviously failed.

I can understand the frustration of folks who have lost jobs. I've been through tough economic times before - unemployed for two years with a family of five, sold a house for about 85 percent of the original mortgage, and had my stock holdings drop to 50 percent of their value following the .com bust. Yet I survived and recovered. It will be tough, but the United States can do likewise without Obama's Democratic cartel destroying our basic foundations of a federal government and free markets.

SCOTT A. JONES, Council

BIKE LANES

Safe bike lanes would help all throughout Idaho

In response to Sen. Nicole LeFavour urging that bike paths/public transport be considered in forthcoming road building efforts, Wayne Hammon replied: "The future of Idaho is not contained in the North End. There are people all over this state that don't have the option of riding their bike to work."

Huh? There are people all over this state that have to ride their bike to work because they can't afford to take their car or they don't have a car. And the lack of adequate shoulders and bike lanes makes these commutes unsafe.

I live in McCall, where the highway is narrow through town and side streets are icy in winter. This winter, I routinely saw three people bike commuting. When it's 10 degrees out and the roads are perilously slick, these folks have likely made an economic decision to bike. Our citizens who bike should have adequate bike lanes to ensure their safety.

Bike lanes are much more cost-effective to incorporate into current road planning rather than adding them in later. These improvements will also encourage more people to bike, improve air quality and provide the community with a recreational asset all at the same time.

LESLIE FREEMAN, McCall

TRANSIT CENTER

Why does Downtown Boise need a transit hub?

Would someone explain why we need a transit center Downtown? All it would do is increase traffic congestion. There is enough traffic already, why add more?

Why not put it at the Orchard and I-84 exit? Easier on and off for buses and more area for parking.

Most people on the buses are not headed Downtown anyway. If needed for Downtown trips, run a smaller shuttle.

P.S. Why bother to put your TV listing in paper? Four hours is not worth it.

JOHN POTTER, Boise

STATESMAN

We don't need newspapers to tell us what to believe

Regarding your publisher's comment that it's up to the media to "save democracy," what I have observed is that rather than investigating and reporting the findings in an objective manner, there has been an inherent inclination to indoctrinate subjective biases by many of the newspapers that are in trouble. That is why I no longer subscribe to the Idaho Statesman. That is why I stopped subscribing to Seattle's Post-Intelligencer years before moving from that area.

We do not need you to tell us what to believe. We expect you to give us the facts, so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.

SHIRLEY KELLOGG, Nampa

THE BIBLE

Scripture is full of contradictions

You recently published an article about how people were led to read the Bible in 90 days. I believe that could be done, but reading and studying are two different things. I'm sure that in reading they would not have discovered the 610 contradictions they would have discovered in studying it.

Also, Jesus stated he would be in the tomb three days and three nights. Those who study would find that he was in the tomb no more than 30 hours. Easter is next month. Count the hours from late Friday eve 'til early Sunday morning. Three days and three nights?

CHARLES H. HOWARTH, M.D., Eagle

GLOBAL WARMING

Maybe Al Gore should investigate climate change on Mars

I recently read a Smithsonian article about the development of cameras to take photos on Mars. While comparing images from early cameras to those of the latest ones, they noticed changes that had taken place in the last few years. Small pits in the supposedly permanent polar ice cap (carbon dioxide ice) had grown significantly larger in only two years.

Mars is getting warmer. Wow, global warming on Mars! Since all the warming on Earth is man caused, I wonder which of our evil industries is shipping the carbon dioxide to Mars. Maybe we should send Al Gore to check it out.

LUCKY BRANDT, Kooskia