Letters to the editor: Risch, wildfire, paid leave
Risch
I am deeply offended and embarrassed by my senator’s (Jim Risch, R–Idaho) recent choice of when and where to take his nap the day after he tweeted: “Today we honor the life of the great Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. His deep commitment to justice and equality shaped our nation, and his legacy will carry on for generations to come.”
I urged him to have a staffer educate him about Deandre Somerville, the U.S. citizen who recently “served 10 days in jail for oversleeping and missing jury duty (P.R. Lockhart, Vox.com).”
Given the “checks-&-balances” and “separation of powers” implications to every future generation of American in the jury trial in which Sen. Risch literally slept through on my constitutional behalf, I have asked him to “please resign.”
I wanted to ask the Idaho Statesman if they would please educate us on: What’s the process of getting a recall election started here?
Greg Stone, Boise
Wildfire
Arson’s not the answer. Recently, a friend dismissed climate change as a main cause of the Australian wildfires by saying he’d heard “most were caused by arson.“ That claim is mostly fake news (but not without a slim bit of truth). About 7% of wildfires in California are caused by arson. In Australia, the BBC reports it’s about 11%. That’s still awful, but it’s the norm. What’s different this year is the combination of extreme heat, little rain and high winds that can make wildfires too hard to contain. Those three things are absolutely worsened by climate change. And, those same climate change conditions are happening in Idaho. If you want to avoid an annual smoke season, we must stop subsidies for fossil fuels and shift our economy to renewable energy. Check out HR763, the Energy Innovation Act. There is a climate solution.
Don Kemper, Boise
Impeachment
Senator Risch snoozes and Senator Crapo reads during one of the most consequential events in the Senate in our time and during their terms of office. Do you think their inattention means that they have made up their minds? So much for impartial jurors in this impeachment trial. No one should be surprised by their actions (should I say inactions) since they have been apologists for President Trump since he was inaugurated and they have demonstrated that they will support him in whatever chicanery he pursues.
Lynne Mattison, Boise
Republicans
When taking the oath to serve my country, I felt a strong sense of duty, despite being only 17 at the time. My family has served in every generation. Now I watch Republicans use not only the Constitution as toilet paper, but also my brothers and sisters in uniform as disposable wet wipes. Today I am reminded of why the oath says, “Against all enemies foreign and domestic.” As Risch sleeps through trial, I consider the message being sent. No oath has value and no law will be enforced. The blatant obstruction of Congress tells me no law exists for Republicans. Trump went so far as to literally brag about withholding evidence, stating “They don’t have the material, we have all the material.”
Despite minimizing our troops’ injuries, attacks on veterans, bragging that no law applies to him and raping our Constitution, Republicans still support the most disgusting man to hold the office of president. Why? They love money, the root of all evil. So build that 401K because nothing else matters to you! In my opinion, the most dangerous threat to our nation is the morally bankrupt Republican Party.
Carrie Huskinson, Mountain Home
Taxes
In a recent news report, Rep. Monks called property tax evil. Despite the fact that it pays for schools, roads, parks, and police, his solution to replace it with sales tax is diabolical.
Consider his argument “To me, it dates back to the dark ages...when the lords of the manor had to pay taxes to the Kings and the Queens otherwise they didn’t get to keep their land...”
Hiking the sales tax and eliminating the property tax is the equivalent of reducing the taxes on the Lords and placing the burden on the peasants. Does he believe that it is evil to tax the wealthiest Idahoans but not evil to transfer the tax burden onto everyone else? Where do his morals come from?
Here’s another example. Because it’s “evil” to charge people to drive their own cars we eliminate the gasoline tax. To make up for the lost revenue we charge a per-step tax on pedestrians and per-mile tax on bicycles. Voila! No more evil tax!
This is not the way morality works. His job as a “moral” representative should not be to comfort the privileged and burden the afflicted. Rather the opposite.
Richard Zuercher, Boise