Letters to the editor: federal debt, gun laws, dam breaching and supplemental levies

Federal debt

Our federal government is debating whether to approve $5 trillion or only $3 trillion in new spending. That’s an astronomical amount of money, and they’re discussing it as if it were nothing. If we were to line up $100 bills, end to end, $3 trillion dollars would reach 2.9 million miles. That’s enough to reach to the moon and back, six times.

All of that spending will need to be paid for either by raising our already-high taxes, or by taking on additional debt – for which we will be paying the interest. The federal government is clearly addicted to our money.

Fiscal conservatives have tried for decades to rein in our spendaholic government through elections. At best, we’ve only slowed the growth of our federal debt, which currently stands at $29 trillion. Elections are not fixing the problem. We need to try something new.

We need our states to conduct an intervention on the federal government to stop this insanity. Article V of our Constitution includes a provision for states to propose amendments. We desperately need our Idaho State Legislature to work with those in other states to impose fiscal restraint on Washington DC with a constitutional amendment.

John Green, Star

Gun laws

Scott McIntosh thinks that people who commit non-violent felonies like shoplifting a $301 television should forever lose their constitutional rights. Not all of their rights. Just the one he doesn’t like.

Because one murderer killed two people, McIntosh believes we should rewrite our gun laws to restrict the rights of the other 1.4 million adults in Idaho who didn’t commit murder that day. Perhaps he thinks the rest of us are as “unhinged” as that murderer.

Does McIntosh actually believe that the murderer would have open carried a firearm in the mall, Walmart, or in the Capitol building if prohibited from possessing firearms? Would he have dared police to arrest him while carrying a gun illegally? Would he not have committed murder? Believe it or not, most prohibited felons and murderers try to avoid contact with police when carrying firearms.

Yes, we could rewrite our so-called “lax” gun laws to become more like Illinois, the home state of the murderer. Never mind that Illinois’s homicide rate is five times higher than Idaho’s. That’s just the small price you have to pay to have strict gun laws.

Don Fleming, Pocatello

Dam breaching

I read the letter to the editor that breaching dams on the Columbia River would not be in the interest of a huge majority of society, I had the thought: What a huge inconvenience it would be for a small segment of society to dial down their air conditioners and thermostats, turn off lights in rooms not in use and not unnecessarily illuminate the night sky. Dams, that in the scope of things, produce very little power. Their elimination would save a species and ecosystem that has developed over millions of years. As if any of us has a right to eliminate this species in such an unnecessary, self-serving manner, how pathetic and shallow we have become that this is even up for debate.

Dennis McDowell, McCall

Supplemental levies

When I was about five, I remember telling my mother that I wanted to chop down all of our trees so it wouldn’t be windy anymore. I saw the bending trees as the cause of the wind, not an effect of the wind.

Perhaps Sen. Jim Rice is making a similar mistake with his proposal to do away with supplemental levies. We pay for levies through property taxes. Everyone would like to see property tax relief so, let’s just stop supplemental levies, right?

In fact, those levies are the effect of decades of poor education funding on the state level. They are about the only tool local school districts have to make up for that lack of attention from Idaho’s Legislature.

Let’s not obsess about the effect. Let’s instead focus on the cause. If the state of Idaho adequately funded education, your local school district could put the well-worn tool of supplemental levies away.

Rick Just, Boise