Letters for Tuesday, Nov. 24

Need an intelligent government

Our Founding Fathers would be saying “I told you so” if they could see their republic today. James Madison worried about an executive branch with tyrannical control over the other two and where a president could be manipulated with bribery. Alexander Hamilton worried about the potential for “servile pliancy” (cowardice) among legislators (like Baumgartner) to resist that control. George Washington worried about divisive political parties that would invent fake emergencies and open a pathway to demagoguery. Thomas Jefferson worried about mixing religion with government, causing a degradation of civil rights. Benjamin Franklin worried about the potential loss of press freedom. John Adams worried about oligarchy where wealth is confused with wisdom, and American exceptionalism is fabricated.

Rather than continue on the aspirational journey toward recognizing all people as created equal, Trump and Baumgartner want to cruelly separate the deserving from the undeserving, eliminate our famed freedom to disagree and curtail our internationally acclaimed social mobility. How does that benefit the working class?

Addressing the root causes of working-class anger, requires a new social movement that balances the pedantic, out-of-touch idealism of the Democrats with the paranoid, anti-intellectual negativism of the Republicans. We need an intelligent government that drastically reduces financial inequality and expands opportunity so that all urban and rural citizens have access to good paying jobs, job training and meaningful opportunities for advancement. We need affordable food, housing, health care, childcare, higher education and small business loans. If we’re not all for the common good, our noble experiment in democracy will crash, vindicating the Founders’ worst fears.

Cris Currie

Mead

‘You’re welcome, in advance’

Have those charged with authoring the daily Washington Records column to come up with a heading “Restitution of Premises” and listing just the Plaintiff and Defendant … heck, you could save enough in ink costs to give your entire staff a 10% raise!

You’re welcome, in advance.

Herb Limbaugh

Veradale

Dining out in Washington is not affordable

Great, again Washington State is number one! Hooray! We have the highest cost related to dining out in the country! Add that the minimum wage is also the highest among the 50 states, and rising to $17.13 a hour Jan. 1, along comes a proposal to add a downtown parking tax!

Downtown businesses are already struggling dealing with the safety and homeless issues, affordability is the number-one issue people are worried about, and here comes another blow to small and large downtown businesses.

We passed a parks bond, built a downtown sports arena over the objections of a poll that wanted the stadium built on the site where Joe Albi stood, mainly due to parking! Now here comes a tax that will raise parking rates! Brilliant.

How are the people that go to ONE Spokane Stadium and Riverfront Park, already strapped by the cost of parking and dining out, dealing with the safety and homeless issues, now going to deal with adding cost to already expensive parking, especially event parking?

Thank you for your consideration.

Steve Hintyesz

Spokane