HOLIDAY SHOPPING

Patriotism: the new spirit of the season

This year, we can do nothing better to put the spirit back into the holidays than to say “no way” to the big retailers and buy American, buy local and spend less.

For as long as I can remember, the big retail corporations have worked overtime to convince us that the more we spend in their stores, the happier we will be. Nonsense!

I’ve had it with fighting crowds to buy and fill my holiday list with stuff that is mass produced offshore in places like Communist China, India, Cambodia, etc. I’ve had it with supporting corporations that continue to send millions of American jobs and thousands of American manufacturing plants offshore so all Americans can afford are their cheap goods.

This year, combine your patriotism with the season. Spend where your money will stay in America, circulate in America and create jobs in America. If our Scrooge Congress refuses to create American jobs, show them we can, and have a wonderful holiday season doing it.

GRETCHEN BATES, Boise

THE DEFICIT

We must make painful choices

Financially, as a nation, we are like a train headed towards a precipice with the throttle stuck wide open. It may be too late even now to save this country from the disastrous consequences of past fiscal policy, but we must try.

Congress must pass legislation to cut our national budget. Not just cut planned increases in spending but cuts in what we actually spend and those cuts must continue each year.

A good place to start reducing expenditures is to reduce the size of all federal departments and agencies and eliminating some altogether.

We must also reduce and/or eliminate many federal regulations created by these agencies in order to allow our manufacturers and businesses to be competitive with businesses in foreign nations. By so doing we will be able to return many lost jobs to America.

The Federal Reserve (a private bank) must be eliminated and a system for sound money instituted which cannot be manipulated at will.

Cutting expenses by itself will not be sufficient but must be accompanied by increasing taxes to help in reducing our federal deficit.

Yes, it will be painful, but it must be done — the alternative will be much more painful.

STEPHEN CORDON, Boise

THE JOB MARKET

Labrador’s next meeting: an agenda

The Nov. 10 issue of the Statesman covered Rep. Raul Labrador’s meeting to hear a litany of complaints about how regulations are “hampering hiring, driving up costs and hurting growth.”

Yet another article reports Department of Labor data show over the last three years just two-tenths of 1 percent of layoffs are the result of government regulations. In addition, the leading problem facing small business is poor sales, as reported by the National Federation of Independent Business.

Perhaps a hearing on American jobs shipped overseas for cheaper labor, banks hoarding cash instead of lending, firms’ failure to reinvest in their operations, salary scales held to the lowest possible level, excessive bonus payments, and in some cases just lousy management would prove informative.

BOB FRITSCH, Boise

Politicians wage war on Idaho workers

Does anyone think Raul Labrador’s employment plan is suspicious?

Here is a guy who, before being elected, made a living selling immigration papers to migrants who, if they knew better, could have got them for free. Now he wants to make it easier for foreign workers to get into the U.S.

We have enough foreign workers. Some of us in construction can’t bid against the guys hiring illegals because we pay our employees right. Now with the construction slump they have taken over the fast-food industry. Idaho’s economy won’t grow with local money being sent to relatives in Mexico.

We also have labor director Roger Madsen trying to get the governor to turn down unemployment extensions from the government.

Our elected officials are waging a low-profile war on Idaho workers. Two immigration bills have been turned down because of lobbying and backroom deals from the big dairy and farming companies that count on illegal workers to turn a bigger profit.

Just think if Simplot, Ore-Ida, Meadow Gold, etc., backed this bill how quickly our officials would pass it.

Idaho unemployment will go down as soon as politicians get a backbone and not scratch their donors’ backs. Write in!

TIM HINTON, Garden City

POLITICS

Voting tips, other odds and ends

This month is election month, and even though this month’s elections are already over, I will give my election guide for next year’s presidential election along with other odds and ends.

1. Never ever vote for a Republican.

2. Vote for a Democrat only half as often as you would like.

3. Always vote for a Libertarian, unless they are a Republican in sheep’s clothing like Gov. Butch Otter.

4. Never forget there is no political office or issue too important to say, what the hay, I do not have a clue, so I will let the other bozo decide for me.

Now, for some odds. As a nonsmoker, I am all for banning smoking in public places, but banning smoking in tobacco stores? Give me a break. Those politicians voting for this should report to the nearest mental hospital. I am all for hiring only nonsmokers in public jobs. As for banning smoking in bars, I will leave that to the other bozos.

Now for an end. I will end with the final sentence from my last letter to the editor. Here is to the Kurdish Nation we have no intention of founding in the Middle East.

DAVID L. VALK, Boise

IRAN

Covert actions fool only Americans

In a recent GOP presidential debate, Republican contender Newt Gingrich outlined his strategy on dealing with Iran: “maximum covert … take out their scientists … all covert, all deniable.”

Covert action in Iran is not new. This has been our flawed policy towards Iran on and off since the early 1950s.

Most recently, both President Bush and President Obama have pledged money in support of covert operations inside Iran.

But covert operations are covert only in relation to the American people. Iranians connect the dots each time there’s an explosion and a scientist is killed.

Iranians were fully aware that the CIA was behind the 1953 toppling of Iranian Prime Minister Mosaddegh on behalf of British Petroleum, a fact unknown to most Americans until years later.

This was all covert, all deniable, but only for Americans.

Consequences from the 1953 CIA intervention in Iran reverberate to this day.

Covert operations keep us in the dark from the truth of our own conduct overseas.

Sen. Frank Church described covert action as nothing more than “a semantic disguise for murder, coercion, blackmail, bribery, the spreading of lies, whatever is deemed useful to bending other countries to our will.”

AZAM HOULE, Boise