Vanhorn’s rant
I greatly enjoyed the foam-at-the-mouth tirade by Joan Vanhorn in the Sunday Opinion page. As a proud Republican I only have one word for Vanhorn: projection.
Look it up, sweetheart.
Linda Nuxoll
Clarkston
Started out poor
I told my wife that we have a rental empire. She was upset that I had not informed her of such. It was news to me.
I think what Dan Aherin was thinking was when I owned one duplex on First Avenue. Actually, it was our first house. It was an old house we paid $26,000 for. The rent in the upstairs apartment was $55. To tell you how bad the place was, the gentleman took our car for the down payment. Then we didn’t have a car. Sigh.
In 1982, my tax returns showed I made around $5,000 for the year.
To say I am anti-poor due to a statement in the Idaho House in which I said I have never had a poor person offer me a job.
That comes from my past experience of being so poor I could not afford the basics. But through hard work, a little good fortune and faith in God, my wife and I became people who have paid hundreds of thousands in taxes and employed hundreds.
My hope is that everyone has the opportunities I have had.
Taxing the job producers to the point they cannot hire or expand is not a policy Idaho should endorse — which is what the debate in which I spoke was about.
Thank you for letting me clarify.
Mike Kingsley
Lewiston
Robbed of our rights
Senate Bill 1110, recently passed by the Idaho Legislature, is a prime example of the weakness of representative government. The bill, designed to restrict the public’s ability to put an issue on the ballot when its elected representatives refuse to do so, is not supported by a majority of the people of Idaho and is, in reality, designed to put us in our place after Medicaid expansion was put onto the ballot using the current initiative process.
Those in power did not like the idea of the people taking matters into their own hands and they now have passed a bill to see to it that it never happens again.
They have, in fact, used their legislative powers in these troubled times to fix a problem that did not exist, except for elected officials refusing to listen to the majority. And polls show the majority of Idahoans are not in favor of SB 1110, but it passed anyway.
The Declaration of Independence, signed by men sick and tired of a government that abused them, famously states that “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are rights that all of us have. It goes on to claim “That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it.”
In a very real way, SB 1110 has robbed us of that right.
This is what happens when the average citizen just trying to get by in life leaves the voting up to those willing to elect special interest candidates or ideological ax grinders who represent plans and ideas instead of we the people.
Mike Ruskovich
Grangeville
