Letters for Oct. 19, 2022

Cathy doesn’t care

CMR has demonstrated by her voting record that she doesn’t think climate change will bother her voters. She is worried about immigration when Spokane should worry about climate migration from wealthier costal areas, rent prices should skyrocket.

Spokane has been labeled a “low wage community,” making community college education free could elevate a lot of peoples’ work opportunities. She has not supported this.

Working moms are essential to many families financial health, but child care is sabotaging this. She has not supported subsidizing child care.

She has supported Trump’s Big Lie and supports voting restrictions by not speaking out against them.

She has not championed a woman’s right to control her reproductive life, Republicans say they are the “party of the people” while they are setting up barriers to voting, taking away women’s basic rights, demonizing minorities, be it immigrants or LGBT. Their biggest achievement under Trump was to make the federal government be gutted of professionals and be replaced by Trump loyalists. The other was tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

If she is re-elected she will head a committee that funds health care. Beware, she doesn’t care about you.

Paul Piper

Spokane

No plan Smiley

Trump hugger Tiffany Smiley, Republican senate candidate, has released her energy/environment agenda.

Fossil fuels. Drill more, burn more.

Deregulate the nuclear industry.

Keep the forest floor tidy to prevent fires. Ignore climate change.

Kill salmon.

Smiley ignores big oil, giving the middle finger to Biden’s request to uncap idle wells and boost production without new drilling. Big oil said … “We like our pricing plan … And gave no thought to consumers.” Big oil profits jumped $75 billion last year. Big oil sets the price of gas. Joe Biden does not set the price of gas.

Unleash the nukes? A brilliant idea with zero consideration of the time it takes to build a plant and the utter lack of any method to deal with lethal nuclear waste.

Snake River salmon, just keep killing them with dams. Smiley can preside over the extinction of a species. What a legacy that would be!

Smiley doesn’t have a plan. She has a death sentence for our planet.

Don’t give Smiley a position of power.

Ed Parents

Spokane

A simple question

There are 166 million women in America, 69 million Americans on Social Security and 62 million Americans on Medicare. The Republican Party is hell bent on betraying ALL of them if they get their way.

Many within the GOP like to think of themselves as devout Christians. Ask yourself then, “what would Jesus do?” The GOP’s plan for America places a bullseye on the backs of the vast majority of Americans.

The traditional understanding of public service is to leave your constituency better off than when you took office. The GOP’s plan for America demolishes that notion, once and for all. Can your choice this November be any clearer?

Bruce Market

Spokane

Bohman for commissioner

I have known John Bohman his whole life. He was born and raised on a farm and continues to farm. He participated in and led his Troy High School FFA group, attended the University of Idaho with emphasis in agriculture and business, became an active community volunteer including being the volunteer fire chief in Troy. John has an awareness of the economy of Latah County and the needs of the residents. He recognizes the importance of quality education, practices responsible fiscal and agricultural methods and participates in several community and state level organizations. He has a grasp of the importance of the varied needs of Latah County in the blending of agriculture, education and business growth.

I urge you to join me in voting for John Bohman for Latah County commissioner.

Marie Vogel

Former mayor of Troy

Troy, Idaho

She’s always a politician

A line in a Billy Joel song, “She’ll carelessly cut you and laugh while you’re bleeding.” That’s basically the way Cathy McMorris Rodgers behaves around her constituents. I know, I am a constituent having visited McMorris Rodgers in her D.C. office, twice. I am also a retired union representative and wanted to know why she doesn’t represent workers in Eastern Washington. Simple answer is if it’s not extremely profitable for the businesses that support her it’s no good and she doesn’t care.

Politics? Nope! It’s more than that. Because she can maintain her subservient position by donation dollars.

Now her true religious colors are on display with her voting to end all abortions and a woman’s freedom no matter the circumstances. Look at how she votes not what she says.

Lately her smile is brought on by saying the Democrats are raising taxes on all Americans. Shame on her. A blatant lie.

It’s time for big corporations to pay taxes and the IRS to go after all tax cheats. As the song goes, “She takes care of herself.”

Stuart Smith

Spokane

A dangerous distraction

The ability of Trump and extreme followers to maintain a high level of national attention since the last election constitutes a dangerous distraction from the fact that he won 72 million votes. That level of support of a person such as Trump is primarily an indication of an underlying social sickness. Simply getting rid of him will not treat the underlying social sickness which has produced him and his followers. The tendency is to direct attention toward the symptom rather than the cause.

The cause is the story of who we have become as a society. Trump and his boosters are the unfortunate byproduct of that society. As long as Trump and cohorts continue to successfully direct attention to themselves, we can neither become sufficiently aware of who we have become nor do anything remedial about it.

Aside from those few whose cynical support of Trump was and is for personal gain, the vast majority of his voters not only sincerely approve of him but often with a devotion blind to truth. These millions are not simply ignorantly enthralled or delusional. They are citizens who, having bought into a culture in which only winning counts, are the losers. Unable to tolerate the pain of that self-realization, they seek relief by blaming and seeking to punish “others,” accusing them of cheating, misleading, supporting despised practices and ideologies. Only if we as a society can inculcate our citizens and children with a different value system can we rid ourselves of this cancer.

Peter Grossman

Spokane

Murray election campaign ads

Do-nothing Sen. Murray and her campaign ads are pathetic. In the last two of her nearly 30 years in office, she has been nothing but a reliable rubber stamp for the disastrous Biden-Schumer-Sanders progressive agenda that has caused record inflation, environmental policies that have crippled American energy, opened our southern border as a floodgate for human and drug trafficking, and emboldened criminals to re-offend without fear of punishment until our streets and parks are no longer safe for families and children.

Is anyone better off now than two years ago? It’s easy to see who’s responsible for this precipitous decline in America’s stature and quality of life, and Patty Murray has been a rock-solid supporter of every single piece of Democrat-passed legislation that has spent trillions of borrowed dollars, wrecking our economy and hurting the very people her ads claim to help. With only a record of failure to run on, all she can do now is try to scare voters by falsely claiming that Republicans want to completely ban abortion, while also disparaging Tiffany Smiley as an “extremist” for holding views that roughly half of the country (and this state) agree with – only further dividing the nation. Using an Army veteran in her TV spots is especially ironic given the Biden administration’s abandonment of Afghanistan, and Smiley’s personal history as a veteran’s advocate. We deserve better than a career politician, and Tiffany Smiley is the right alternative for all of Washington.

John Lyons

Spokane

Yates for county commissioner

As a retired judge and former defense attorney, I have been in a unique position to personally observe the deficiencies inherent in our current criminal justice system.

On the bench, I was tasked with making release decisions for those charged with crimes, sentencing them after conviction and listening to the often horrific stories of harms committed upon innocent victims. Sentencing options often fail to achieve the goal of reducing recidivism and protecting our community. Compounding the issue is the failure of leadership by Al French and others, which has resulted in increased crime rates, growing jail population not only in numbers but in racial disparity, unprecedented numbers of homeless and the gutting of programs designed to improve outcomes by offering offenders an opportunity for rehabilitation.

We deserve strong, smart leaders, who understand this multifaceted issue and are willing to listen and to lead the reform efforts required to reduce crime and increase safety here in our community. Maggie Yates is precisely the leader we need. I have worked closely with Maggie in her former role as the Spokane County Law and Justice Administrator. Maggie brings fresh perspective based upon the real facts and data, and has a true determination to this cause. I urge you to cast your vote in November for Maggie Yates.

Judge Maryann Moreno, retired

Spokane