Letters

The secretary of Health and Human Services seems to have the idea that the use of government planes for personal use is OK. Lower-ranking government employees would be fired or prosecuted. There are prisons for people who commit such abuses.

So the two major domestic solar panel companies, owned by foreign interests, want to save 9,000 American jobs by having the administration impose tariffs on imported panels, perhaps doubling the price and crippling the growing solar energy program and threatening the jobs of 250,000 workers now employed in installation and operation.

Finally, the hot, smoky summer days are behind us and our children our back in school. I applaud the volunteers escorting them on busy street corners.

In the Sept. 28 article, "Brexit architect Nigel Farage lauds Trump, Bannon in speech at Davenport Grand Hotel," local Republican leaders sounded defensive as they struggled to dissociate Nigel Farage from the far right. Their defensiveness proves the protesters' point: Washington Policy Center invited an embarrassing, right-wing extremist, and they shouldn't do it again.

The Spokesman-Review has joined most of the "talking heads" on television by asking, "How do we pay for the proposed tax cut?" This question is based on the premise that current government spending rates are necessary and that there is not one red cent that can be cut from the federal budget. Moreover, cuts to the federal budget usually just mean a slower rate of growth not actual reductions.

Read the U.S. Constitution, Amendment 1: Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech.

Regarding the recent uproar over athletes and the American flag and national anthem, the following should be noted.

In her Sept. 25 column, Sue Lani Madsen provided some information about scientific literature to justify her position of denying human caused climate change. As a Ph.D and a university professor, I inspect literature carefully. I checked the information provided by Ms. Madsen and found many errors. The paper that she cited was not published in the Journal "Science and Education." It was published in the Journal "Energy Policy" as a short communication in 2014 (not 2013), and has only one author, Richard S. J. Tol, with five affiliations (not five climatologists!)

President Trump is getting all over the NFL and NBA players for expressing their First Amendment rights. He calls them SOBs and asks that they be fired.

How about a constitutional lawyer taking the whole 2016 election to court contending -- since it has been proven Russia meddled with our election -- there is no certainty Trump actually won. (Isn't letting foreign powers win treason?) As long as Trump is in office, chaos will be our destiny. This is what both he, and Putin in Russia want. Dictators find a way to take over when dissension among citizens becomes too chaotic.

I'll never vote for Donald Trump, but I'll continue to stand proudly for our flag. Farewell, NFL.

Here's how we could fix health care. Bring it into the free market. Allow employers to put what they pay for an employee's policy into a health care savings account in the employee's name. Allow the money to accrue indefinitely and not be lost if not used. That money could grow and pay for health care. That money should only be used for health care. You could then buy insurance with it or use it to pay your health care costs yourself.

When NFL player protests during our national anthem began, I thought players were out of line to use NFL games as their bully pulpit. My opinion has changed because of many intelligent, well-informed people coming out in support. Their protests have been done in a thoughtful way that does not impede on the rights of others.

In the early 1770s, all the founding fathers "took a knee."

I don't write to the Spokesman-Review editor anymore because it's like preaching to the choir but something about David Robinson's Sept. 26 letter made me want to add my comment. I don't think Cathy McMorris Rodgers is "smiling all the time" at all. To me she looks worn out and exhausted. I think it's time for her to do everyone a favor (herself and us) and give it up, go home and concentrate on her family.

Leaders, fellow citizens, can we now all turn from this foolishness of building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Those untold billions will be needed to help our people recover from the ever-worsening storms. A wall along the Rio Grande means no Americans can go to the river. We would be essentially ceding the river to Mexico.

My brother, Mike Cahill, was one of the heroes at Ft. Hood Texas massacre. He tried to take the shooter down and lost his life for it.

I have a simple solution to all the controversy and protests regarding the playing of our national anthem before NFL games. And it's an alternative that even Donald Trump would likely agree with. For those of us who are either tone deaf or have voices like a cement mixer, "The Star-Spangled Banner" is extremely difficult to sing anyway. So let's simply replace Francis Scott Key's 200-year-old standard with a more appropriate tune that summarizes the real American dream of players, owners and spectators alike.

The rain has come, and we can once again see the mountains from whence comes our smoke. The environmental foolishness has come home to choke us. What we have been blessed with from God — an abundance of forest and wood products — to provide for homes and untold uses, is now and will continue to decay or be smoke in our eyes. The policies that have stopped the road building and minimized the use of our forests is ludicrous and will be one more memorial to the generations to come of our foolishness.