Letters to the editor: Transition team report
Transition team report
Retired law enforcement, I’m guessing, does not fully adhere to the 200 in their ranks who claim an alliance of law enforcement wisdom. The “Code 3-to-1” account of “mistakes” elsewhere dog whistle fear-mongering and bad analogy-making against long overdue aspirations that do not, as the letter wants us to believe, automatically take us all down the drain. Its rhetoric and symbolism prove nothing, reading instead like a familiar variation on white flight.
The mistakes this letter sweeps under the rug created the experiences cited in the letter: economic disparity, militarized responses, racism. The Minneapolis killing of an innocent black man by “front-line” police is but a recent case showing that we should give more credit to a public document from any city that aims to be more inclusive and humane, including ours.
The trenches never grant special authority for claiming the truth of things or the correct path(s) to follow. They do express experiences to put in a mix of considerations. But reliance on personal experiences is insufficient to claim omniscience and “reason” to “fear” policies to consider outside the trenches. Any single case — even multiplied by 200 — requires more knowledge than front-line experience offers.
Ed McLuskie, Boise
Test balloon?
People are losing confidence and trust in their government. The response received was predictable. From a reader’s perspective one would believe that the mayor was aware of the contents of the report. She chose the committee members, so she, without a statement to the contrary, must agree with the contents of the report. Had the mayor handled the release of her transition report properly, it wouldn’t have been taken as a manifesto. A brief explanation with reasoning behind the report would have eliminated the majority of the blowback. Surely the mayor was aware of the consequences of releasing the report without any accompanying explanation. Was this a test balloon? If so, the firestorm it generated makes a definite statement.
Richard Henning, Boise
Disturbing report
Thursday’s article regarding the report from the transition team put together by Mayor McLean was truly disturbing. It looked like it could have been written by the leftists who have run California into the ground over the last several decades. Or maybe her transition team is just blind to the fact that people are escaping California in droves to move to a state that more closely mirrors their core views and beliefs. It is not the people who created the disaster that is present-day California that are moving; rather, it is the citizens who believe in the same ideals that the majority of Idahoans believe in that are making this great state their new home. I would be willing to bet that they are just as disturbed by this report as are native Idahoans.
To compare California to a third-world country is wrong, mainly because it is an insult to third-world countries. But apparently the transition team has their own agenda. Maybe it’s time for the mayor to transition to a new transition team.
Charles Wohlfeiler, Eagle
McLean agenda
Thank you Mayor McLean for disclosing your true agenda. We all know now that you are a Democrat Socialist Progressive Communist. Mayor McLean has definitively announced that she wants to put Boise on the same collectivist path that destroyed San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. It is time for people who value freedom, legal equality, property rights, public safety, economic vitality and common sense, begin a recall movement ASAP before the cancer of progressive socialism destroys our great city.
Marc Seeley, Boise