CAPITOL BRIDGE
Treasured landmark needs a face-lift
The city of Boise is a great place for a nearly limitless list of reasons. One of those reasons is the Capitol Boulevard Memorial Bridge. This bridge is the gateway into Downtown Boise and our state Capitol for thousands of Idahoans and visitors every year. Its appearance, although in a small way, is a reflection of Boise’s greatness.
This once beautiful entrance is now in need of a good cleaning, sandblasting and painting. The last time it was painted, as best I can recall, was 1990, our centennial year and the same year this bridge was included in the National Register of Historic Places.
What a great legacy for your tenure, Mayor Bieter, to once again make this Boise treasure beautiful.
AARON HOWELL, Boise
IDAHO BEEF COUNCIL
Meat poisons the body:support Idaho farmers
After reading the Dec. 17 Statesman article titled, “Drug overuse in cattle raises alarm for human health,” I was reminded how shortsighted and backward our nation’s relationship with food has become.
I want to take this opportunity to remind readers that they have a choice when it comes to what they eat! The Idaho Beef Council would have you believe Idaho’s commercial beef industry is immune to the antibiotic epidemic, but don’t be fooled.
With each bite of commercial meat, you are poisoning your body and enabling a multimillion-dollar-a-year pharmaceutical arms race driven by profit over human safety.
Many grocery stores, including the Boise Co-op and Whole Foods, offer alternatives. Support local farmers, choose to live healthy, choose organic, hormone- and antibiotic-free meats!
ZACHARY JONES, Boise
TRAPPING
Here’s hoping Idahoans reverse election decision
I am both shocked and amazed that Idahoans voted to make trapping a constitutional “right.”
It was carefully bundled with hunting rights in November’s election in what could only be considered a ballot “rider.”
Many reading this have pets: cats or dogs. We accept them as family, bemused and often amazed at the intelligence and “soul” they show. We would not want them to be in a trap for even the smallest length of time.
The wild canines and felines of Idaho are not so far removed from the animals sharing out lives.
Behavior shared by dog, coyote, fox and wolf serve them well in their respective habitats. Cats are always cats. Yet we doom these animals, cousins to our pets, to grizzly deaths spending potentially days in a trap, slowly bleeding to death, dying of stress or exhaustion. Traps are also indiscriminate, killing or maiming any animal caught.
That we kill for sport is bad enough. Trapping for sport is abominable. I can only draw solace from understanding that what has been done can be undone.
I profoundly hope that a future electorate reverses this apparent validation of cruelty.
RICK HOBSON, Boise
OIL ADDICTION
Attitudes must change to clean up environment
We defend polluting the air and water with carbon and hydrocarbon emissions, and we justify fracturing our earth to suck the dregs of fossil fuels, in spite of our knowledge of the harm it has done (acid rain, etc.) and what it will do (rising ocean levels). This is exactly the same way an alcoholic seeks the last drip from the bottle or meth addict licks his last dregs from his spoon.
How can anyone continue to justify this deadly oil addiction in the name of jobs and the economy? We might as well give drug dealers community awards for keeping their runners employed and pot dealers farm subsidies for employing farmers.
It’s time for all oil-addicted people to stand up and admit they are addicted and get some help. There are other options, use them.
DALLAS BAIRD, Boise
OBAMA
President’s actions no match for his tears
No wonder Hollywood is so enthralled with President Obama. He can shed a fake tear better than real actors!
Has he (Obama) shed a tear for the millions of aborted children? Nope. Has he shed a tear for the Benghazi embassy personnel? No. Maybe one for Brian Terry? No. How about one for the former Marine rotting in a Mexican prison on a trumped up charge? No. Benghazi — Clinton’s watch, Obama’s command. Fast and Furious — Eric Holder’s watch, Obama’s command. Political show lies — Susan Rice on Clinton’s watch, Obama’s command.
The command structure is kaput! Hillary’s home boning up on the 2016 campaign rhetoric, with Bill? Obama dropped Susan Rice like a hot potato (Idaho pun). He really defended her by golly. I haven’t seen Pelosi, Reid or Biden taking a fall yet but, who’s left? Answer: All of them!
GILBERT BOLEN, Boise
ECONOMY
Middle class is keyto economic health
During World War II, we taxed the upper class income as high as 96 percent. After the war, people had money to buy homes, open up businesses and buy goods. A new middle class was established while America prospered. The prosperity continued up to 1973. Since that year, the male common worker, when considering inflation, has never again averaged as much income as in 1973. The opposite is true of big business.
Since 1973, CEOs and their boards have doubled their incomes 23 times, while the wealthiest 400 accumulated more money than the entire lower half of our population. The earnings of the wealthy are supposed to be taxed at 35 percent but tax havens and loopholes have reduced the figure to almost nothing for many of them.
Economists claim that the “crash” in 1929 was caused by too much money at the top. Today the top 0.01 percent of Americans have nearly 25 percent of the money.
Many claim that the wealthy create jobs. In reality, job creation comes through a healthy middle class. People need money to spend, which gets money revolving. If this doesn’t happen, we end up in a recession or a depression, as history proves.
WILLIAM A. KAATZ, retired history professor, Treasure Valley Community College, Ontario, Ore.
CAMPAIGN SPENDING
Spend more for common good, less for politics
The money (nearly $6 billion) spent on campaign ads could have gone to better uses. The candidates spent $19 million a week in early October, plus an astounding $70 million by the beginning of the week of Oct. 21. And $110 million was spent on Republican primary battlegrounds. The TV market saw three times the amount of ads it did four years ago. They achieved a new high in spending for campaigns. The money spent could have gone to better use as donations for Hurricane Sandy, our schools, or to help the homeless veterans, to name a few.
If our presidents were really worried about helping America, they should have stepped up and helped others. They decide to ignore the pleas for help and use the money to their advantage. These funds were overspent. Instead of buying so many ads focused against their fellow campaigners, they should have done some real good for hurting Americans.
JOSEPH LEE ANGEL MENCHACA, Boise
CATHOLIC CHURCH
Leaders seem more interested in power
The Catholic Church to which I have belonged for 70-plus years is certain it is right in all matters of procreation — birth control, abortion, etc. A recent editorial in the Idaho Catholic Register lambastes the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists for advocating dispensing birth control pills without a prescription — “another step in the Culture of Death.”
Interestingly, the same issue has a congratulatory photograph of four prominent non-Catholic leaders whose faiths allow contraception and abortion. Are these leaders considered members of the Culture of Death or the Culture of Life? The article doesn’t say.
Church leaders believe themselves to be central to the Culture of Life. Ireland is a “Catholic” country that does not allow abortion. Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian dentist developed complications in her 17th week of pregnancy. The couple was told she had miscarried, but the fetus’ heart was still beating. No abortion would be allowed. On Oct. 28, Savita, who was neither Irish nor Catholic, died of blood poisoning.
Culture of Life? I don’t think so. The leadership of the Catholic Church seems more interested in power than in people.
HAL NEWMAN, Boise
