Letters: Our Readers’ Opinions

A phony issue

In “even a broken clock” news Donald Trump was right, sort of, about crime under the current administration.

As crimeresearch.org explains, the FBI data used to “fact check” Trump is based on reported crimes. A different dataset, the Bureau of Justice Statistics’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), provides information based on random sampling (bit.ly/4e8h0y7).

Those data show the increase Trump was on about.

Crimes often go unreported and many locales don’t share their crime data with the FBI — or do so only in part — so its report is usually lower than the NCVS.

There’s no excuse for Trump not knowing and naming his data source but does he ever do that?

What’s more inexcusable is journalists’ nonfeasant, perhaps malfeasant, failure to inform the public of both FBI and NCVS data.

However, the best response to controversy over crime stats under the last two presidents is, “So what?”

There’s no causal relationship indicated in either agency’s dataset. Rather NCVS shows elsewhere (bit.ly/3BdOw7s) that presidential party affiliation has little to do with crime rates.

Even the sharp decline under Clinton resulted more from his “it’s the economy, stupid” mantra than his now infamous crime bill (bit.ly/47DfzoD).

At any government level the legal system doesn’t/can’t prevent crime. It defines crimes and punishes those deemed offenders.

It’s a phony issue. Let’s get past it. We’re voting for president, fer cryin’ out loud, not casting the lead in a remake of “Dirty Harry.”

Thomas A. Hennigan

Asotin

Compliments to the Trib

To check the Tribune’s slant on opinion, a count was made of letters, the editorial, columns and political cartoons in the Sept. 22 edition.

The result? It was as if Mark Zuckerberg had tipped off the Tribune that official bias would be monitored. Zuckerberg probably did no such thing; the decision to tally pro vs. con was not taken until after the Trib was printed.

The results? There were 11 letters, one editorial, five columns and four cartoons in the Sept. 22 Tribune.

Of the 11 opinion letters, six favored citizens, three favored government and two were neutral. The single editorial was by Marty “Get The Shot” Trillhaase. Three columns favored citizens, one was pro-government and two were neutral. But there was no neutrality among cartoons: two favored our rulers and two were pro-citizen.

Color me mystified. The result was probably an anomaly — no letters from the three Rs of far left wingery were published Sept. 22.

Regardless, compliments to the Tribune.

Bridger Barnett

Clarkston

They’re getting scared

Wake up, people. They’re getting scared: the elite, trilaterals, one-worlders, the Cheneys and the old, powerful politicians.

They know our builder/businessman will not be so naive this time around. He is going to clean house and drain the swamp and give our country back to the people.

They know they are going to lose their power and money that they have had for years.

What’s next, the Bush family?

Dave Daniels

Weippe