Letters to the editor: Tax cut, tyranny, budget surplus
Tax cut
How generous of our legislature giving us a tax cut! Not! I get a whopping $75 check! I hope the top 1% enjoy getting their $13,000. I also hope the corporations with their out-of-state shareholders enjoy all their massive tax cuts the GOP gave them.
What about property tax cuts? The other 99% of us are suffering as our house values increase and likewise our property taxes. We keep asking for relief, but the GOP is only interested in helping the mega-rich.
Some legislators have been hard at work to help the other 99% of Idahoans. But unfortunately, they are in the minority. They have been working on eliminating the tax on food, decreasing property tax, and actually funding our schools so our kids can have a chance in this world. In other words, they are working for us, not the privileged few.
Please contact your local legislators and let them know you want relief for the average wage-earning Idahoan.
Marji Bass, Garden City
Upside of COVID
The global pandemic has, in one regard, been a blessing. It has laid bare the tyrannical proclivities of national leaders once thought of as residing only in places notable for their absence of democratic standards. Times of crisis bring out the more fundamental natures of human beings. Politicians who once praised individual liberty have now unashamedly sacrificed it on the altar of public safety. But even that is a lie. Public safety places a distant second to their true motive: the acquisition and exercise of unlimited power. The leaders of Canada, Australia, and the United States have exposed their naked passion for power. That image has now been burned onto the psychic retina of those people who still hold individual liberty as a sacred thing and view the actions of their governments as unrecognizable in the context of freedom. Thanks to Covid, we are about to enter a new era characterized by a greatly diminished tendency to trust politicians and their elite toadies. And that is a good thing.
Richard Guess, Hagerman
Surplus
The majority of the Idaho Legislature are at it again, giving back “surplus” taxes collected without first spending it to take care of the many things on the to-do list for the last decades. They can’t seem to get the act of governing down. All they know how to do is cut taxes, and they are not doing a good job of that. Forget about foster homes, essential social services, additional judges, a new prison, maintaining facilities and highway systems, paying employees for services rendered, affordable housing, meaningful residential tax reduction. The to-do list continues to grow because the tax surplus phantom pulls them like a moth to a flame. Meanwhile, the actual RINO’s like McGeachin, Giddings, Ehardt, Nate, Palmer and other Idaho Freedom Foundation followers, appear intent on destroying the Idaho values of the past. True Republicans like Winder, Lodge, Syme and Chaney, find it difficult to move us toward a more perfect union with their personal belief systems, but they are not the enemy. Democrats are not the enemy. True Republicans and Democrats are simply people with differing political views, seeking common ground for the common good. The actual RINO’s, IFF followers, are bent on backing us all off the cliff.
Tom Newton, Caldwell