April 2 Letters, Part 3: Our Readers’ Opinions

Taxpayers will pay

I think it’s kind of funny that Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, Catalyst Medical Group’s Valley Medical Center and Tri-State Memorial Hospital have voiced their opinion in favor of us taxpayers getting on board with the bond for a new Clarkston High School. This is especially funny, since none of them will pay anything for it.

Only Tri-State Memorial Hospital is located in Clarkston and they pay only a reduced property tax. That’s kind of like me telling my neighbor he should buy a new car.

Janet Driggs

Clarkston

Ignorant conduct

If you watch enough politics, you can surely see some butt-ignorant conduct. The latest to get my attention is U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan demanding that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appear before his committee and testify about Manhattan’s prosecution of Donald Trump.

The problem with this scenario is that Mr. Bragg is a state-level office holder, not federal. Consequently, Jordan can’t demand that Bragg do anything. What Bragg does is none of Jordan’s official business. Well, I guess he could ask Bragg nicely but that is not likely.

It reminds me, unpleasantly, of the repeated efforts by our ultra-right-wing Idaho legislators to pass laws purporting to overrule the federal government, whereupon the Idaho attorney general gets hauled into federal court and used as a pinata by the U.S. attorney.

This is simply nothing more than a bunch of people who are mistakenly overly obsessed with their own power.

By the way, if Trump gets convicted in a New York state prosecution, he can’t be pardoned by anyone at the federal level, only by the governor of New York. Trump is so widely hated in New York, it is hard to see Kathy Hochul granting Trump clemency.

Danny Radakovich

Lewiston

Fixing fish problem

Obviously the Biden administrstion is trying to cash in on the fish problem. By cash in, I mean Joe Biden wants money in his and his cohorts’ pocketbook. That would be goverment money and taxpayers’ money. They don’t want to fix the problem; they just want the money.

To fix it, start with the ocean. Anyone with common sense can see the fish are not getting back to the rivers. Commercial overfishing and pollution are the main problems which need to be fixed.

Predators are a big problem for fish starting upriver. That needs to be fixed. Gillnets are another problem for the fish. Tribes use modern technology with gillnets that kill all types of fish. They should be limited to the same type of technology with gillnets as when the treaties were written. People had none of this technology at that time. Fix it.

So: 1. Fix the ocean. 2. Fix the predators. 3. Fix the gillnets. Common sense tells you there will be more fish.

Abel Workman

Weippe

What about groundwater?

My truck has a sticker that reads, “Founding Member Coalition to Restore Lake Bonneville.”

I’m a Zion Curtain expat and — bumper-sticker sentiment aside — I’m disturbed by what is happening to the shrinking Great Salt Lake in Utah. The dried lakebed is contaminated with arsenic that blows as dust into the lungs along the Wasatch Front. Will they wear masks to survive?

Now, hundreds of miles away, that tragedy still is too close. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers thinks it’s OK for toxic waste to be dumped into surface water (what she calls “mud puddles”). McMorris Rodgers couches this bad idea under the confirmation-biased dog whistle, deregulation. Except the only people interested in deregulating surface water are industries with a duty to profit by polluting them without care.

Who owns the surface water seeping into our groundwater? Who owns the airborne evaporation from poisoned puddles? Sometimes there are floods that turn surface water into river feed. Other times there are droughts that turn puddles into toxic dust for the wind to blow and lungs to breathe. In this way, we all own surface water because we own the effects of the mismanagement. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ plan makes indentured servants of taxpayers for future cleanup as it throws our present health under her donors’ money buses.

I expect my government to ensure such basic human needs as clean water, breathable air and safe food supplies. At least one person (me) wants regulated, clean surface water. Clean mud puddles are always the best for splashing.

Janet Marugg

Clarkston