Letters to the editor

ECONOMY

What kind of bailout is it?

A "bailout" as seen from a seaman's perspective means to remove water that threatens the sailors' lives and the sea-worthiness of the boat.

An aircraft "bailout" means for the crew to abandon the doomed and disabled plane.

The media meant for the public to interpret the financial "bailout" as the former, where the sailors (citizens) and the ship (of state) are rescued.

I see the latter scene. The financiers have pillaged the craft, robbed the citizens, taken the new funds as their "golden parachutes" and "bailed out." Now the financial czar (former Goldman-Sachs employee Henry Paulson) will assist in future pillaging "without oversight" from anybody. The fox is in the hen house! Media tricked again!

Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo and Rep. Mike Simpson voted for this phony "bailout" while Rep. Bill Sali voted against it. Thank you, Bill Sali.

Financier Goldman-Sachs donated over $691,000 to the Obama campaign and $208,000 to McCain. Both candidates voted for the "bailout" to rescue bankster gangsters. Prediction: More of the same, no matter who wins the election.

ROLAND WOLFE, Boise

Bank failures call to mindmemories of Depression

Born in 1927, I lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although too young to understand the economics, I witnessed the poverty and joblessness. We lived in downtown Meridian. Vacant lots were everywhere. Among chief businesses were the Creamery, fruit packing sheds and Meridian Sale Yard's weekly auction of livestock and furniture.

Many neighborhood men were unemployed and hung out at the pool hall. Most married women stayed at home. We had the traditional outhouse with its swarm of flies. Kalsomine was the interior paint used. Near our house was our chicken house and cow barn.

Every evening for supper, day after day, our family had potato soup made with milk. For 25 cents mother could purchase from Chinese-American merchants at Meridian Sales Yard enough vegetables to last our family of six for one week.

I remember seeing Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor, drive through Meridian in their motorcade in 1936. Meridian grade school students assembled at Pine and Main streets to greet them. FDR gave America Social Security and FDIC bank insurance.

President Herbert Hoover and Republicans are blamed for the Great Depression. Under the current Republican President Bush, we witness bank failures, reminiscent of the Great Depression.

RICHARD J. NOURSE, Meridian

TRAFFIC LAWS

Obey the speed limit

As a Boy Scout, I have been taught how to be a good citizen. A good citizen obeys the law. If a good citizen doesn't like a law, he or she should work peacefully and lawfully to change the law. I have observed many citizens disobeying the traffic laws in our city, especially the speed limit. Speeding is dangerous for the driver as well as innocent passengers and other vehicles sharing the road. If there are passengers in the speeding car, they rely on the driver to be safe and obey the laws.

I urge the citizens everywhere to drive within the speed limit and obey all the laws so everyone can be safe.

JACOB ROBERTS, BSA Troop 36, Boise

POLITICS

Our lazy nation doesn't seem to care about truth

I'm compelled to speak out about all the stupidity in our world. People need to take off the blinders of hatred or they will never see clearly what is happening in our world today. Finger-pointers need to look into the mirror. Our crises didn't start with our current administration, it started a long time ago. Facts seem to have been forgotten, or people don't give a darn about truth anymore. We are about to go down a dark, dangerous road without headlights. We need to put the brakes on and really think about where we are taking this country.

The corruption that has exploded through our media is incomprehensible. The need for control and power is moving our world away from truth and sanity. Our children are misguided by many in our schools and our so-called entertainment world. Through this ignorance, we have stopped looking for the truth. It has become hard work, and we have become a lazy nation. God help us.

LIZ PENNINGTON, Boise

PERSONAL FINANCES

Credit scores shouldn't carry so much weight

When a person has a financial crisis and pays a bill late, his or her FICO score goes down. Then the credit card companies and banks charge higher interest rates - like the banks are the mafia, except they don't break legs or beat you up; they put you out on the street for the taxpayers to take care of. Also, employers are able to use your FICO score to decide whether to hire you. How does one ever recover from a financial crisis?

Why do we have just three companies figuring our credit rating? Why do they have so much power? I think we should find a way to revolt against the whole FICO business.

VIVIAN MILLER, Cascade

DEFENSE BUDGET

Urge lawmakers to cut U.S. military spending

I bring this to your attention: Congress quietly passed the defense bill while the economy is failing.

Defense spending does not create jobs or increase productivity. We are now the world's biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to influence the world on the basis of military power alone. Here is what the USA urgently needs to do: reverse the inequality of people, begin to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, and cut from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to national security in 2008.

It was believed that the United States could afford both a massive military establishment and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full employment. Now we know this is not true. Nuclear weapons furnish a striking illustration of these anomalies. Between the 1940s and 1996, the United States spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the United States possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs.

The end of the American way of life is coming. Please tell our legislators that we, the people, want to stop these dangerous government activities.

CALVIN LEMAN, Salmon

STATESMAN

Stop filling the paper with such stupidity

What a tragedy. The country is in a meltdown, millions are losing jobs, retirees' are losing their pensions - and you have to feature on the front page a female materialistic shopper, who shops till she drops. Plus, she's showing off her tattoos.

Disgusting! Cut such inane articles from your paper in the future.

Send your reporter out to St. Luke's and Saint Al's to find out about the wonderful elderly people reaching out to "be their brother's keeper," serving humanity with dignity and human grace, to build a better community for the future's children.

Send her to high schools to explore what wonderful things young adults are doing to contribute to this democracy of ours.

Write articles about our nation reaching across the ocean, about our role in the globalization of the planet.

You should be ashamed, filling the paper with such stupid articles.

KATHLEEN LONG, Boise

Movie reviewer shows a liberal bias

I learned a lot from the newspaper recently. Thank you for the Voters Guide and the readers' forum. From the latter, it seems one reader thinks a stamp costs more than gas to go to the polls. Another thinks this country could have survived free without wars, and that people could somehow live without corporations to supply jobs.

In Scene magazine, I found that the movie reviewer Roger Moore is not without bias, and like most liberals he can dish it out but can't take it. He even had to malign the father of our country, without whom we might not even have a country. Slavery was corrected by a horrible war, remember? So why condemn George Washington for what was legal - though not right - at that time? Apparently, it is more OK to make fun of George Washington than to make fun of Michael Moore (relative?).

I found "An American Carol" very funny and, like all satires, full of truth. Maybe we could use more flag-waving.

MARTHA WENDT, Boise