Who gets the delivery fees?
In reviewing my Lewiston Tribune subscription bill, it is as follows:
One-year subscription — $163.70; state tax — $9.82; local tax — 0; delivery cost — $225.48; total — $399.
Then on the payment stub, you have a place to tip the carrier. My carrier is the local U.S. Postal Service employee and I asked her if she got any reimbursement from the Tribune for delivering the newspaper. Her answer was a definite no.
How do you justify these delivery fees and who gets them? Your answer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.
Deanna Hasenoehrl
Culdesac
The “delivery cost” includes U.S. Postal Service charges and other fees the Tribune incurs to deliver the newspaper six days a week from Lewiston to Culdesac
Dam breaching is stupid
It is stupid to aim a loaded gun at one’s own feet and pull the trigger. Breaching dams is equally stupid.
Hydroelectric energy is the safest, cleanest, cheapest source of energy ever invented anywhere and is 100% green and renewable. The liberals who dislike our dams are shooting themselves in their feet. It boggles the mind to try to come up with a reasonable answer as to why.
Why do Democrats want to eliminate the cheapest, cleanest, safest and most renewable (green) energy source? The carbon emissions from hydroelectricity are zero. The benefits of river navigation, recreation, inexpensive electricity, shipping, tourism, flood control and irrigation are enormous.
Why are Democrats opposed to dams? It makes no sense at all. Many Democrats are well educated. Why do they support such abysmally stupid ideas like dam breaching?
How many Democrats limp around with holes in their feet?
Keith Borgelt
Kamiah
Truth about salmon decline
Marvin Dugger and I want to thank Richard Scully and Rick Williams (Turnabout, Jan. 12, Lewiston Tribune) and the Tribune for this opportunity to share facts and the truth with your readership. Marvin is one of the founders of the Citizens for the Preservation of Fish and Dams. I was a fish and wildlife biologist for the Corps of Engineers, Walla Walla District, and a consultant on fish passage issues in the Columbia Basin for more than 50 years.
Given that Scully/Williams were allowed nearly 1,500 words to spread their misinformation, I will only say that if you want the true facts about the causes of the decline of Idaho salmon, go to the citizen’s webpage, cfpfd.org. While 16 million salmon may have historically sent a billion or more smolts downstream, by 1939 only 682,816 adults were allowed to return over the new Bonneville Dam. Not until 2001 did the harvest management agencies allow the Bonneville fish count to exceed 1 million salmon, and in 2015 more than 2.4 million salmon crossed over Bonneville.
But what happens when adult returns trend upward? The harvest management agencies allow more harvest and catch-and-release fisheries, even upstream to hatcheries and spawning areas. Theoretically, the wild fish are released unharmed, but 2024 research out of British Columbia indicates 1 in 5 catch-and-release fish die without spawning. What happens to endangered Snake River salmon when you play them out, have your picture taken, then release them to spawn?
John L. McKern
Walla Walla
Resistence is imperative
Joseph Roth was one of the few writers in Germany to understand the attraction and inevitable rise of fascism. In his essay “The Auto-da-Fe of the Mind,” which addressed the first mass burning of books by the Nazis, he counseled fellow Jewish writers to accept that they had been vanquished: “Let us who were fighting on the front line, under the banner of the European mind, fulfill the noblest duty of the defeated warrior and concede our defeat.”
Blacklisted by the Nazis, forced into exile and reduced to poverty, Roth did not delude himself with false hopes.
“What use are my words,” he asked, “against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voices of this world of Babel ... ?
“It will become clear to you now that we are heading for a Great catastrophe,” Roth wrote to Stefan Zweig in 1933, about the seizure of power by the Nazis. “The barbarians have taken over. Don’t deceive yourself. Hell reigns.”
But Roth also argued that even if defeat was certain, resistance was a moral imperative, a way to defend one’s dignity and the sanctity of the truth.
“One must write, even when one realizes the printed word can no longer improve anything,” Roth insisted.
Dictatorial scum like ... Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu et al. bask in the perceived glory of their omnipotence. But time has a way of showing this omnipotence, like them, to be a sham.
Mike Epstein
Clarkston
Improve students’ skills
Before he died in 1996, Carl Sagan, astronomer, scientist, educator and author of “Cosmos,” “Pale Blue Dot” and “Billions and Billons,” reminded us of something Thomas Jefferson taught.
Jefferson taught that democracy was impractical unless the people were educated. No matter how stringent the protections of the people might be in constitutions or common law, there would always be a temptation for the powerful, the wealthy and the unscrupulous to undermine the ideal of government run by and for ordinary citizens. Sound familiar?
We need to do better in improving students’ (and others’) skills and understanding in science, math, civics and civil discourse.
Bert Kulesza
Clarkston
