Answering Crossfield
I’m responding to Bruce Crossfield’s June 5 request for input: Seriously? From liberals? On immigration and the border “crisis”?
Although you’re not going to like my opinion, Bruce — hell you already don’t — here goes :
l Immigration was the onset of the duping of American conservatives. Before the advent of the Trump phenomenon, the number of immigrants illegally entering the country and being arrested were at historical lows (NPR, CNN, Washington Post and many others).
l Knowing soon-to-be King Don’s educational shortcomings, his campaign handlers, in an attempt to give Trump a talking point, invented the immigration crisis and instilled in him the need for what he would soon call “a great big beautiful wall.”
l As a candidate, Trump first disparaged Spanish-speaking people fleeing for their lives, calling them drug dealing murderers and rapists while supposing a few exceptions. He then responded by disparaging hundreds of millions of even more brown-skinned people, labeling them all as terrorists, implementing the Muslim ban.
So, Mr. Crossfield, here we are with you holding up a Republican smokescreen called immigration — oh look, a shiny object — when people and children, living in abject fear of gun violence, cannot go to school, the grocery store, theater, church or just driving down the street. While they can’t feel safe, the Republican answer is more guns.
Pfft. Immigration, shmimmigration.
Jim Roach
Moscow
Innocent lives
In the Lewiston Tribune’s June 3 front page article titled “Action on gun control,” President Joe Biden was quoted as saying: “For God’s sake, how much more carnage are we willing to accept? How many more innocent lives must be taken before we say enough?”
His use of the word “innocent” is right on. We are all outraged and heartbroken when innocent people are murdered.
There is another group of innocent people who are murdered by the numbers every day in this country. They are small, weak, vulnerable and can’t protect themselves. Instead of raging against their loss, the president instead says “I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental. Roe has been the law of the land for almost 50 years and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned.”
Fairness to whom? Is it fair when forceps are used to crush an unborn baby’s skull and pull his or her dismembered body parts out of the uterus. What about that carnage? Those innocent people have no way of defending themselves from such an attack. Is that fair, Mr. President?
Our president is right to stand up for innocent people. This is a human rights issue. Why do innocent unborn humans have no human rights?
Michael Benedict
Clarkston
Formula for famine
I’d like to belatedly cheer Gordon Hoffman’s April 24 letter criticizing tariffs imposed by former President Donald Trump.
Voices as varied politically as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin and the Cato Institute agree.
Protectionism has many serious effects as seen in its role in the baby formula shortage.
Reason’s John Stossel correctly states one manufacturer stopping production shouldn’t cause a nationwide shortage of formula. In a free market, it wouldn’t be able to do so. (https://youtu.be/BGV8Cb6YCR4).
If government and industry are symbionts, that’s corporatism, not capitalism.
Federal purchases short the consumer market, just like tariffs, costing you tax dollars and inflating grocery bills.
The federal Women Infants and Children program buys 50% to 70% percent of U.S.-made baby formula on a rebate program. It’s pure coincidence, of course, that the formula industry, including suppliers, gets market protection from the government.
Reason’s Eric Boehm has noted that President Joe Biden’s formula-fetching “Operation Flyover” is only doing part of what free trade with Europe would do.
Meanwhile, private shipments to parents of banned European formula are being seized by customs and destroyed — all while children go without.
The European Union’s standards for baby formula and other foods are on par with ours. They might even be tougher.
As Stossel points out, some of the foreign baby formula is banned for labeling or other minor, meaningless differences.
The irony of a baby formula famine caused by the nanny state should be a wake-up call.
Babies don’t buy formula, adults do. Stop treating them like children.
Thomas A. Hennigan
Asotin
