Letters to the editor: Negative attention, voter fraud, COVID deaths

Negative attention

The “Black Lives Matter” movement focuses on redressing grievances suffered by racial and ethnic minorities across the country — including Boise. Unfortunately, passion for change sometimes results in actions contradicting a movement’s basic aims.

The BLM-led protest at the home of Boise City Council President Elaine Clegg is a perfect example. Outlines of bloody bodies chalked on sidewalks near her home, and raucous bull-horns in the early morning quiet, may draw attention to a cause — negative attention, doing little or nothing to advance a movement’s goals.

Clegg and council members recognize their responsibility to assure the Boise Police Department’s ability to operate in the public interest — at the same time debating changing current policies and operations. Neither goal should be pursued in exclusion of the other.

Elaine Clegg is an intelligent, committed, experienced public servant, a lifelong Boise resident who takes seriously the “servant” part of that definition.

The best chance BLM members have to achieve their goals is not to alienate elected officials trying to balance current operations with future changes. Clegg will continue working toward needed policy improvements, law enforcement and otherwise — despite the recent crude, misguided assault on her privacy, not because of it.

Steve Ahrens, Boise

Voter fraud

A 2005 commission led by President Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush’s secretary of state James A. Baker III concluded (absentee) ballots “remains the largest source of potential voter fraud.” Thousands of ballots have been sent out by the Clark County (Nevada) Election Department to inactive voters. A former judge of elections in Philadelphia has been charged and pleaded guilty to illegally adding votes for Democrat candidates in judicial races in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Philadelphia Dem elections judge admits taking bribes to inflate vote counts. Deceased Dogs Sent Voter Registration Forms in Swing States. New York will count many mailed-in ballots even if they’re not postmarked by the deadline, or postmarked at all. Las Vegas Officials Sent 223K Primary Ballots to Wrong Addresses. Voter Fraud? What Voter Fraud? Fauci says there is “no reason” Americans can’t vote in person in November

Mandatory vote by mail? Not so fast!

Galen Kidd, Boise

Cause of Death

Recently a neighbor said to me, “Have you heard that people who die of other causes but who also had COVID were recorded as dying from COVID.”

Then I see the articles about the 45-year-old nurse in Caldwell who had died, and some were saying that she really died of a heart attack, not the COVID she contracted while at work. To me, this is like saying the man who fell off a 20-story building and landed head first on the sidewalk, died of a weak skull. Gravity might have had something to do with it, but it was obviously due to weak skull bone issues.

And one more thing. I read a letter to the editor in the Statesman, and it said, Patriotism means throwing your mask in the trash. And I see people on the news saying, “A mask takes away my freedoms, is inconvenient and extremely uncomfortable.”

I think of the men I read about who on D-Day lay on the beach wounded and dying calling for their mother. That was real patriotism. We sure have come a long way, unfortunately, the wrong way.

Jim Thaner, Meridian