Letters for Sept. 25, 2024

Baumgartner will get rid of the ACA

I was surprised to see a letter in the paper stating that Baumgartner prioritizes youth health. Granted, he did make a trip to the border. What else has he or his party done?

Carmela Conroy will support the ACA, Medicare and drug price controls. Baumgartner won’t. His party has voted many times to get rid of the ACA and consistently disparages Medicare and opposes drug price controls. Which seems so crazy to me. I mean, abortions dropped by 30% due to the ACA prohibition on denial of care due to pre-existing conditions. That’s right – an unplanned pregnancy was considered a preexisting condition and cause for insurance denial. I would think that would be important to young people.

If youth health is important to you, the person to vote for is Carmela Conroy.

Teresa Lowe

Greenacres

Kathy Dawes offers alternatives

We are being bombarded by flyers insisting state Sen. Dan Foreman is a great friend to education here in Idaho. That makes about as much sense as saying Chairman Mao was a great friend to farmers. Foreman has consistently voted against public schools and teachers, and even against the University of Idaho in his own district, a total no-brainer for any but the weirdest and most out of touch politician playing to the farthest right extremes. No wonder these people don’t want the open primary we will get when the Open Primaries Initiative passes in November.

Mao forced millions of Chinese into indoctrination and forced-labor agricultural camps. Foreman’s vision for education and Idaho’s future depends on diverting public tax dollars to fund private religious schools whose understandings of patriotism and citizenship are, to put it mildly, rather peculiar. And one supposes the number of kids who approach their parents asking to attend such places of indoctrination is approximately zero.

We have yet to receive similar propaganda offering equally nice but entirely false claims for Rep. Brandon Mitchell, but we expect it soon, thanks to the huge bonanza of out-of-state campaign money these fellows get in exchange for betraying their constituents.

Happily, Julia Parker – a mother and professional nurse – and Kathy Dawes – a mother, grandmother and career teacher – offer excellent alternatives to these two slick phonies. Register to vote using Idaho secretary of state’s official online registration tool: voteidaho.gov.

Chris Norden

Moscow

For hard work and dedication vote Fennessy

Superior Court judges maintain demanding calendars and are required to decide diverse, complicated cases in very compressed windows of time. The job requires hard work, dedication, diverse legal experience, sound legal judgment and compassion. Judge Fennessy possesses each of these characteristics.

When he was a practicing attorney, I dealt with Tim Hennessy both in the capacity as his adversary as well as his co-counsel representing the same client. Tim was a hardworking, well-prepared, fair-minded lawyer who treated his clients and colleagues respectfully and with a pleasant demeanor. He was an aggressive, tireless advocate on behalf of his clients.

After he took the bench, I argued before him in numerous hearings and tried an emotionally charged, difficult case to verdict before him. He is always well prepared, exercises sound legal judgment, even tempered and respectful of those appearing before him.

Notably, Judge Fennessy elevates the standard of practice in his courtroom by demanding that same level of preparation and professionalism of those who appear before him. In four decades of trial practice, I have argued to well over one hundred judges in many jurisdictions throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Judge Fennessy ranks among the best. Vote for him in November.

Carl Oreskovich

Spokane