Letters: Our Readers’ Opinion

Truth about Prop 1

Here’s the simple truth about Proposition 1: Its sole purpose is to give more of a voice to Democrat voters at the polls.

If you want more Democrats to be elected to office, you need to vote yes.

If you want to move Idaho away from paper ballots and hand counting, you need to vote yes.

However, if you want to keep Idaho in Republican control and our elections simple and secure, you need to vote no on Prop 1.

Skip Brandt

Kooskia

Grab a cup of coffee

Having read the Sept. 29 Tribune opinion piece by Richard Eggleston and the letter to the editor by Mike Epstein you would think that these two guys have diametrically opposing views, but they ought to go have a cup of coffee with each other because there is one thing that they do agree on and it’s the Jews.

Eggleston starts out his barely coherent and rambling piece on George Soros and the vast conspiracy that this one man has perpetuated, and here I thought that George Soros was a Hungarian Jewish businessman who barely escaped being murdered with his whole family by the Nazis and then escaped the tender mercies of the Russians to go to school in England after World War II and start his business career.

Mike blames most of the world’s miseries on the Jewish lobby and how unfair it all is that the Jews have settled illegally in Israel, thereby causing such awful strife.

Maybe the two should catch up and realize that they have a lot in common. It must be the Jews.

Brian Hensley

Lewiston

Won’t support Harris

Listening to Vice President Kamala Harris and going out and looking at her policies, I am still not sure what they are.

She wants to raise taxes on corporations by 7 percent, that raises the price of whatever they sell by 7 percent. She wants to stop price gouging in grocery stores; they operate on a 1.5% markup. I wouldn’t invest my money in anything giving me a 1.5% return. She says she will end the Donald Trump tax cuts. My wife and I make less than $100,000 a year; it would cost us $2,000 in taxes if she does. That’s a lot of money to us.

The Democrats are in favor of open borders. They have not only allowed people from all over the world to come in and receive benefits from our government, but they have also flown people in at taxpayer expense. In some Democratic-controlled states, they are allowed to vote in elections. The current Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Alabama for removing noncitizens from voter rolls. Do you really want people from around the world deciding who our representatives are?

The Democratic Party has allowed more than 13,000 convicted murders into our country, and more than 15,000 convicted rapists. They have lost more than 350,000 children.

I will not support a party that allows other countries to empty their prisons into America, allow children to be put into slavery and encourage noncitizens to vote.

Dan Long

Clarkston

Would imitation work?

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” — Oscar Wilde.

It appears one of the presidential candidates not only craves flattery, his methods deserve consideration for imitation. My 2020 campaign for Idaho County commissioner was mediocre, a self-funded independent with three issues. If “trickle-down” economics works, why not political campaigns?

Immediately after the 2020 election, I should have declared victory, slammed the process and demanded that the county clerk find me 2,000 votes. When the commissioners met to certify the results, I should have incited some open-carry independents to storm and desecrate the courthouse.

Then, I should have run again this year, taking steps to undermine public confidence in the election and to declare that my opponent was mentally unstable and mentally incompetent.

Using sincere imitation, I coulda been a contender. I coulda been a commissioner.

Joe Cladouhos

Grangeville

Understanding Israel

To understand Israel’s actions we must see it as another Western settler-colonialist project inflicting the same kinds of genocide, ethnic cleansing, theft and abuse on its Indigenous populations that other Western settler-colonialist projects like Australia, the U.S. and Canada inflicted in previous centuries.

Israelis are indoctrinated from birth to view the non-Jewish Indigenous populations of the region as less than human, because it provides a moral rationale for preferential treatment of one ethnic group and mistreatment of others, and justifies the Zionist invasion of Palestine against the wishes of the inhabitants of the land.

In “Lobbying for Zionism on Both Sides of the Atlantic,” Ilan Pappe writes “over 150 years, Zionist lobbying groups in the U.S. and U.K. have transformed Israel into an untouchable state, a magisterial history of the most successful advertising campaign the world has ever seen.”

The news media constantly frames Israel as the victim in whatever violence it chooses to engage in. Our politicians frame Israel as our friend, and anyone who criticizes it is our enemy, while Palestine endures a Holocaust.

The Western political-media class lies to us about every Western war, and about Israel being a crucial component of the Western war machine. That’s why this settler-colonial project is supported by the Western empire.

That’s why we’re continually bombarded with pro-Israel propaganda supporting a vicious genocidal apartheid state which has inflicted genocide on its Indigenous populations for more than a century and constantly wages war against them.

Mike Epstein

Clarkston

Vote no on Prop 1

We will soon be voting on Proposition 1. Proposition 1 states “Second, the measure would require a ranked choice voting system for the general election.” This proposal has received little attention, and little to no scrutiny. Experience proves why this is a dangerous voting method.

In 2009, Burlington, Vt., used a ranked choice system for electing a mayor, with disastrous results (see “How Not to Be Wrong,” Jordan Ellenberg, 2015, pages 384-387). The candidate with the most first place votes did not win; the candidate with the most overall votes did not win; the less preferred candidate, Bob Kiss, won.

Elections are too important to conduct an experiment, by replacing a well-established method of electing officials with one that is demonstrated to have poor and unrepresentative outcomes. While there are no guarantees, an official elected by plurality voting (one vote per candidate) is likely to be competent. However, a ranked choice vote guarantees that a less competent, less favorable individual could win an election.

Vote no on Proposition 1 so we can avoid potentially disastrous results.

Sandy McDowell

Hailey, Idaho