Not safe
My heart goes out to Jena Lathen and all young people who want to attend school, but want to do it safely. As Jena said in her letter, to open schools with no mask mandates or social distancing is to pretend the pandemic doesn’t exist.
President Donald Trump recently declared teachers essential workers who can be called into the classrooms even after exposure to the virus. American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said this designation could be used to “threaten, bully and coerce” teachers into classrooms without proper safety considerations. ...
“ ...Teachers are and always have been essential workers, but obviously not essential enough for the science-denying Trump administration to commit the resources necessary to keep teachers and students safe in the classrooms during the raging pandemic,” Weingarten said.
Why are teachers and students like Lathen being denied the safety measures they deserve to have in place to be able to attend school reasonably safely? ...
To try to open area schools with no mask or social-distancing mandates is sheer lunacy, as has been amply demonstrated by schools and universities that opened across the country, then quickly were forced to shut down due to the virus. ...
Neither Trump nor any of his brain-dead followers, anti-science, and anti-mask and social distancing advocates ... care a damn about whether America’s students and teachers are safe in the classrooms. Their only concerns are that the stock markets continue northward and that they can wear their MAGAA hats for four more years. ...
Mike Epstein
Clarkston
Reorganize the city
At the Aug. 24 meeting of the Lewiston City Council, Councilor John Bradbury moved to table the reading of the city budget.
The chairman was correctly seeking a second to that motion, when City Manager Alan “Boss” Nygaard interrupted without being recognized to urge certain exigencies as the need for the reading.
A motion to table is not debatable. Once moved, it needs a second and a vote. And if that’s too fine a point of parliamentary procedure, then how about the more basic point of no motion being debatable (available for input and discussion) without being seconded?
Did Boss Nygaard quash a second by bullying his way into the proceedings? We’ll never know, but his disregard for propriety is shown in both his behavior and his “lawsuit-waiting-to-happen” budget.
Lewiston can get shed of its majority of subservient, dilettante councilors at the ballot box, but their power has been reduced to all but nominal status.
The 19th century Progressive dream is dead. Hired hands are just as capable of corrupt acts as elected officials. With holding going-out-of-business signs being the key job growth market under Boss Nygaard and with his non-governmental organizations cronies draining the taxpayers dry, it’s time to reorganize Lewiston’s city government.
Thomas A.
Hennigan
Asotin
High water
Once again we have high water on the Clearwater River from the North Fork downriver. How natural is that above the North Fork?...
Releasing water from North Fork has not helped the fish in 20 years. But it keeps ruining recreation on the reservoir by the drawdown.
If I would have known this what was going to happen, I never would have been in favor of the dam.
But we were promised recreation, flood control and cheap electrcity. But this wasn’t a treaty, only a promise, I guess.
The one thing that has worked is barging the fish down the river system. So they quit barging because it was cheap and produced some of the best returns in history.
But barging doesn’t allow for the multimillon dollar studies that have done nothing for returns except cost millions of dollars so some people can have something to do.
Use a little common sense and use the barging of fish. At least all the fish have to fight is the ocean, which is the biggest problem with returns anyway.
The ocean needs to be where the money is spent to help the returns.
Abel Workman
Weippe
