Letters for January 17, 2019

Bringing the wars home

How many deaths in mass killings does it take for our so-called leaders to stop this business of war?

War teaches so much and none of it good. Problems can’t be solved by fighting. No one wins in a war. Two recent mass killings, one [at a Pittsburgh synagogue]. Hate is taught. It is a learned event. What have the Jews done to deserve such hate? And the second, a bar killing, brought on by war. Post-tramatic stress disorder is hate. These soldiers hate what they are doing. But it’s what they are taught. As long as war continues, so will we have mass murders.

Helen Howe

Sun Valley

Miami Vice as a source?

Different thoughts occur to me when hearing various news reports at present.

The claim that “most illegal drugs, come through the normal entry points” lacks credence, if given a casual glance. Do the drug mules fill out a bill of landing form upon crossing likely both the Mexican and Canadian border, in the dark of the night? The tunnels we keep hearing about? The cartel has scales on this side, and a report goes to the DEA? No cocaine came in by fast boats back in the Miami Vice days? It all came in by wayward flight stewards in the flight luggage, and the customs guys found it?

That’s basically the implication the left is making.

I have distant relatives in Colombia. They report that the facts are that a couple of thousand infants are starving to death in Venezuela each year!

Like the old proverb, “Socialism works fine till you spend all the other guy’s money.”

Is the Democratic party really that brain dead, that the mouthy extremist ones get all the headlines? This group makes John F. Kennedy seem like John Wayne waving the flag. He would be considered a “nationalist” by today’s bunch.

And I thought the Reps needed to cut loose some of the old deadwood.

Ron Ryder

Fallon

Editor’s note: The source of statistics on where most illegal drugs are seized is—the Trump administration. Specifically, it’s U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Arizona Daily Star obtained the statistics compiled by Customs through a public records request and the Star reported, “CBP statistics show 81 percent of the 265,500 pounds of hard drugs caught at the U.S.-Mexico border from fiscal year 2012 to fiscal year 2016 were stopped by customs officers at ports of entry, rather than by Border Patrol agents working in the desert and wilderness between ports.” In addition, in its 2017 National Drug Threat Assessment, the Drug Enforcement Administration said the “most common method” of drug smuggling into the U.S. “involves transporting illicit drugs through U.S. ports of entry (POEs) in passenger vehicles with concealed compartments or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers.”

Pester the Republicans

I do not blame Trump for this shutdown. He’s a shyster in over his head, and he’s not the deal-maker he tries to pretend to be.

No, I blame Mitch McConnell. He’s not intellectually handicapped in any way, and he definitely knows what he’s doing, not doing and why. As leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell could allow a vote at any time on any number of veto-proof solutions that have been proposed by his own party. But he won’t because party power supersedes any other consideration for this hard-line Republican.

But if enough noise is made by his own party, this actually could present a way out of this mess that doesn’t create a constitutional crisis. It’s is not unprecedented for Congress to override a presidential veto and it’s why the forefathers included that provision. It preserves the democracy when there is stark disagreement between the branches of government, in this case, the president and the majority of everyone.

If folks want to help end this shutdown, I suggest contacting your Senator and Mitch McConnell directly. Put the pressure on for that co-equal branch of government and Mitch in particular to finally do something for America, not just for party and self.

Michel Rottman

Virginia City Highlands