Letters to the editor: abortion bill, vigilantes, scapegoating unhoused and others
Abortion bill
The pending legislation regarding abortion in Idaho is abhorrent, unconstitutional and in no way reflects the values of Idaho. Giving people vigilante methods to control another person is unfathomable. This legislation must be vetoed. The state should instead spend any resources in providing childcare, all day kindergarten, expand WIC and Medicaid as well as provide affordable health care for women. No one voting for this bill actually cares about kids or they would institute paid maternity leave for all mothers, expand healthcare and childcare long after the child is born. Let’s not lie and say that this legislation is anything other than controlling women. I urge Gov. Little to reject this legislation.
Melissa Cortes, Boise
Vigilantes
That is a fair description of the individuals in the crowd who turned up recently at St Luke’s hospital, employing (yet again) their favored tactic of disrupting public business to get their way. Wrongly claiming the mantle of protesters, they resort to rhetorical, emotional, and occasionally physical violence to get what they want. Wait for the law? For them the law is what they say it is. For you, too, if they get their way.
Ammon Bundy (certainly no Rosa Parks) called his minions to “straighten this out”. You can hear the echoes of “It will be wild!”
The sad part of this is the tacit admission by these individuals that their ideas are too weak to carry a public debate. So they resort to threats and disruptions to get their way.
I know I run the risk of more threats and actual violence by challenging these vigilantes. So be it. But I for one will not be intimidated into standing idly by while the Bundy crowd dismantles civil discourse and American governance.
George Moses, Boise
Scapegoating unhoused
Gov. Little describes the protesting campers on the Capitol grounds as “a public health risk.” How is it that a few campers in the city compares as a health risk in light of the thousands of covid deaths over the past two years due to Republican leadership that refuses to listen to the science and discourages vaccines and mask wearing. Because the Republican leadership refused to listen to officials at St. Luke’s, Idaho hospitals had to resort to crisis standards of care. In Ada county, a Republican public health official described the life saving covid vaccine as “needle rape.” These are examples of threats to public health . But there are more; limiting women’s access to health care through restrictive abortion measures, abolishing the vehicle emissions testing which will lead to increased asthma and dementia, and attempts to prevent health care for transgender children. Does Governor Little truly care about public health or is he just looking for scapegoats by focusing on some unhoused individuals.
Eileen Schoenfelder, Boise
Modern McCarthyism
Republican leader Tom Luna, author of the infamous Luna laws, would have Idahoans vote strictly on the basis of republican political affiliation. No matter how extreme their views, anyone in Idaho (except Ammon Bundy) can pretty much be elected simply by claiming to be a republican. Political tribalism has resulted in our having elected legislators totally unfit for any deliberative legislative body. Democrats can rejoice that those amateurs, so ill prepared for public office, hooked their star to the Idaho Freedom Foundation and ran as republicans, when actually they are RINOs. Followers of the IFF introduce legislation to slay dragons without first determining if the dragons even exist. IFF RINOs like McGeachin, Giddings, and Moon, stand before us making statements void of any truth while attacking phantom dragons. Political tribalism and raw emotion carry their legislative proposals forward, encouraging lawsuits against teachers and criminalizing librarians, medical professionals, parents authorizing medical treatment for minors when that treatment is most beneficial, and business owners struggling to protect their employees and customers. IFF stars are not true Republicans.
Republicans of the 1950’s - 1990’s, pre-culture-wars Republicans, would roll over in their graves at the McCarthyite tactics of the Idaho Freedom Foundation
Tom Newton, Caldwell
Wise man
The translation of Homo sapiens is wise man, a painfully obvious misnomer given the failure of modern man to create social justice, live in peace, and care for our planet. However, we (some of “we”) are committed to keep trying because there are wise things, big and small, that we can do, and quitting equals failure.
The lower Snake River dams were sold to us on promises of abundant fish, affordable power, and prosperity. Spending $17 billion spent to save dams, while destroying cultures, economies, and ecosystems is not “affordable” and certainly not wise.
With some 2,000 river restoration/dam removal projects completed, at a 100% success rate, and others on tap, this nugget of wisdom has finally hit the mainstream: rivers are just as valuable as rivers as they are as whatever dammed rivers are. This was no secret to indigenous peoples.
Restoring the lower Snake would give us:
Clean, affordable, climate friendly power (hydropower is neither cheap nor clean)
Social justice, primarily, but not exclusively for native Americans (there are many who depend on the river and abundant sustainable salmon runs for their livelihood, and physical and emotional well-being)
Economic and Ecological sustainability, diversity, and resilience.
Pride and joy.
David A Cannamela, Boise
Reproductive freedom
Americans who value reproductive freedom —and that’s the majority of us — are going on the offense when it comes to draconian bills like Idaho’s Senate Bill 1309.
We’re telling Gov. Brad Little that if he signs into law the Idaho abortion-ban-and-bounty bill, we will boycott Idaho potatoes, Idaho’s top cash crop. And we’re asking all who want to protect abortion rights and American values to do the same.
We can do without Idaho potatoes. But our nation cannot prosper if it treats women with unwanted pregnancies as breeding machines, those who help them as criminals, and seeks to inflict the narrow tenets of a minority of certain religious Americans upon the rest of us.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, Madison