Letters: Welfare shouldn’t be a career. It’s time for this Idahoan to get a real job
Why do Idahoans keep doing the same thing over and over and expect a different result? Idaho needs to take a good look at our political landscape, and you will find that it is full of weeds, not flowers. Cheat Grass comes to mind. It seems to me that some political Round-Up is needed because the weeds are running amok in our flowers. Just be careful what we spray; take a good look, we may have a late bloomer amid the weeds.
We don’t need tax cuts; however, we do need our infrastructure fixed and improved. The State and county have already taken the taxes and should use the revenue to expand, repair/replace our failing roads, bridges etc.
Crapo has been in office for 24 years and it seems like all he has accomplished is refining the art of complaining about the other.
There is a pattern here that is alarming to me; both at the Federal and the State level. Our political weeds need to be pulled.
No one should be allowed to make a career out of government welfare (Political Office).
Ray Stokes, Eagle
Legal vs. ethical
There is a subtle theme present in several entries in the Oct. 24 edition of The Statesman, namely, legal vs. ethical. First the Representative Fulcher story: He paid his daughter $305,000 as his campaign manager, fully a third of his entire campaign budget, more than any other campaign manager in Idaho’s Congressional races. I’m sure Representative Fulcher researched the legality of such an outrageous misuse of his supporters’ money and found that he was on solid legal ground. Did he consider the ethics of such a massive payment of his constituents’ money to a family member? Knowing his history in government, I doubt it. Then there’s Senator Mike Crapo who paid his wife almost $20,000 to stuff gift bags for campaign events. Legal? For sure. Ethical? You decide.
In that day’s editorial board endorsement of Tom Arkoosh whose ethics are beyond reproach, the piece points out his opponent’s (Raul Labrador) admission that if he is elected he will run the attorney general’s office as a political vassal of our extremist right-wing Legislature, not the legal arm of the people of Idaho and all the branches of state government. Legal? Probably. Ethical? I think not.
Dick Bennett, Boise
Crapo’s ads
Misrepresentations abound in Mike Crapo’s ad claiming Biden and Pelosi “supersized” the IRS. The IRS has been starved of funds for years. Do you realize that there used to be regional IRS offices with auditors in Idaho. Did you know they used to train front desk persons to help taxpayers. Have you ever tried to get help or even just clarification on the meaning of a cryptic notice from the IRS recently? We have. It took months to resolve and travel to Washington state. And it was due to an IRS failure in data entry. Crapo apparently wants to keep this new inefficiency. Adding more funds to the IRS is not adding fat, it’s restoring the agency.
Cheryl Halverson, Tensed
Climate change
The opinion recently published in the Statesman warned us to beware climate change extremists. The author acknowledged that climate change is a problem; then he dismissed efforts to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. Adaptation and nuclear energy are his answer. This is not the “new normal”. We are on an upward track of greenhouse gas emissions and warming temperatures to a projected 6.4 degrees Fahrenheit warming at the end of the century. CO2 emissions are not declining across the globe, and the CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise to the highest level in 800,000 years. Ecosystems cannot adapt to this, and neither can we. It is extremism to experiment with the only livable planet we have and hope future generations will somehow manage to survive after we have deeply disrupted the living systems on which we all depend.
It’s true renewables can’t solve the problem alone. We should begin pricing greenhouse gas pollution, along with our trading partners, to immediately increase the economic incentives to keep fossil fuels in the ground. Instead of guessing about climate solutions, the author may want to check out the MIT EnRoads climate solutions simulator. The stakes are too high for off-the-cuff solutions.
Nancy Basinger, McCall