Letters for April 18

Senate bill protects pensions

On April 3, as financial markets fluctuated wildly, the Washington state House Appropriations Committee voted to raise the expected returns of public employees’ pension assets. This budget action was not motivated by economic optimism, but rather to move $1.7 billion in state investments away from supporting public employee retirement accounts. The money could then be diverted to various other state programs. The House also advanced a bill that transfers another $3.3 billion of pension assets into the general fund. While struggling to balance the current budget deficit, these bills will remove money from accounts designated for Washington retirees. This will dramatically increase pension obligations for future state budgets.

There is a better proposal. The Washington state Senate budget eliminates all pension debt by merging historically underfunded and overfunded plans together. This action would save taxpayers billions of dollars in the long term. As the final budget is negotiated, urge the legislature to adopt the Senate bill as the preferred approach to solving the current state budget deficit.

Patricia Owens

Spokane

Baumgartner doesn’t understand Ukraine

Michael Baumgartner is, figuratively speaking, “all over the map” about Ukraine – but effectively supporting Russia.

He agrees Russia started the war and was/is the aggressor, and he’s assured Thrive International Ukrainian refugees he opposes their deportation. But he completely undercuts that by his Ritzville Town Hall statement, “I don’t think (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelenskyy is doing a great job” and by his outlandish calls for Zelenskyy’s resignation after President Donald Trump humiliated Zelenskyy.

Does Baumgartner have such short memory or is he so misinformed as to be ignorant that Zelenskyy is widely credited with saving much of the free world? Immediately after Russia attacked Ukraine, when Ukraine was considered no match for Russia and would quickly surrender, Zelenskyy bravely stood up against Russian President Vladimir Putin while inspirationally rallying Ukrainians behind him.

Democracies owe great debt to the bravery and sacrifices of Ukrainians and Zelenskyy. No amount of support for Ukraine can repay that debt.

Baumgartner should abandon his cultish political ambitions – incredibly loyal to 34-time convicted felon Trump – and show some U.S. patriotism by strongly supporting Zelenskyy and loudly opposing the Trump-Elon Musk-Putin autocracy alliance

Baumgartner must hear two-time Legislative District 6 candidate Michaela Kelso. While she admitted that Baumgartner’s Spokane town hall was unduly unruly – Baumgartner later slandered the opposition as “unhinged lunatics” – Kelso countered, “It was needed given the dire situation the country is in. I’m from Germany. I know what fascism looks like. We are rapidly approaching 1939 (when Nazis invaded Poland).” (Spokesman-Review, March 18).

Norm Luther

Spokane

Facts to consider about Snake River dams

Concerning the Snake River dams removal debate, the following points should be, but may not be, undisputed.

1. The Snake River dams have reduced the salmon runs.

2. At the same time salmon runs in all Washington rivers, including the Snake River, have been reduced because of ocean warming.

3. Today, what reduction in salmon in the Snake is caused by the dams compared to ocean warming has not and probably cannot be determined.

4. The Snake River salmon are being substantially reduced because of unnatural predation. Sea lions and birds gather in unnatural numbers at the mouth of the Columbia, where they are allowed to consume untold thousands of salmon smolt.

5. The same people who promote dam removal oppose removing these predators.

6. Today, how much of the salmon reduction is caused by predators compared to caused by the dams compared to ocean warming has not and probably cannot be determined.

7. Removal of the dams would increase ocean warming. River transportation would be replaced by fossil fuel powered heavy trucks, causing incalculable damage to our highways and expense to remedy.

8. Today, how much ocean warming would be increased by removal of the Snake River dams has not, probably cannot be determined.

9. Silt erosion into the Snake River kills salmon eggs. Removal of the dams and the resulting draw down would leave hundreds of miles of dirt shoreline unprotected against silt erosion. The proponents of dam removal have not explained how this problem would be solved nor the enormous expense the effort would entail.

10. The Snake River dams produce the cleanest, greenest energy at the lowest price of any energy produced in the United States.

Timothy Esser

Pullman

Midstokke deserves high praise

If Ammi Midstokke’s April 10 column (“Water can’t help but go with the flow”) doesn’t prove she’s deserving of a Pulitzer Prize, it’s impossible to imagine what would.

It could’ve been even more perfected only if she’d made reference to the nuclear weapons and nuclear power-motivated uranium mining industry’s effectively permanent Navajo Reservation groundwater poisoning (“Yellow Fever,” America Reframed documentary, 2015) and the suppressed story (Harper’s, February 2025) of routine radioactivity in fossil fuels – especially fracked-sourced – documented in “Petroleum 238” (Karret Press, 2024).

If no one else will nominate her, I’m willing. It’s amazing the likes of the New York Times haven’t snatched her away from The S-R.

On separate matters, it’s incredible Democratic-majority legislators and Gov. Ferguson haven’t learned lessons from California’s 1970s property tax unfairness to the nonwealthy (Roskelly column, April 6). If state Democrats want to be booted from power for decades, they’ll simply perpetuate timidity about targeting wealthy persons’ and corporations’ incomes for progressive taxes.

Eliminating all state taxes except those against wealthy incomes would lead to the most popular and fairest outcomes for everyone.

Rob Ethington

Spokane