Letters to the Editor for the week of 1/8/20
Guidelines for letters
All letters must contain an address and phone number. Only one letter per week per person will be published; only one letter per person per month regarding the same topic will be published. Feather Publishing does not print third-party, anonymous or open letters. Letters must not exceed 300 words. Writers responding to previously published letters may not mention the author by name. The deadline is Friday at noon; deadlines may change due to holidays. Letters may be submitted at any of Feather Publishing’s offices, sent via fax to 283-3952 or emailed to [email protected]
Thank you
A great big thank you to the boys and girls in the charter school in Taylorsville. What a group of nice young people. It’s a pleasure to have such nice “kids” in our town.
Again, thank you!
With love to all.
P.s. Thank you Ryan.
Velda Krafft
Taylorsville
Support Grant
I am writing this letter of support for Michael Grant who is a candidate for the District 2 Supervisor. I recently retired from the Plumas County Sheriff’s Department after approximately 29 years of service, of which the last five years were as the Assistant Chief of the Office of Emergency Services.
I have both professionally and personally known Mike for almost 30 years. Since the first day I met Mike, he was all about service to the community. Besides being a Deputy, he also commanded the Plumas County Search and Rescue Team. He might not have created Search and Rescue, but he has made it what it is today for Plumas County, a top-notch well-trained group of volunteers. Mike responds 24 hours a day 7 days a week, in all types of weather condition and all types of emergencies. I have worked with Mike over the years in federal and state grant funding opportunities. Mike was always my go-to person when I needed help up and until my retirement. His knowledge and experience in working with all levels of government assisted me greatly in doing my job.
Over these past weeks, the public and I have had the opportunity to observe and evaluate the perspectives and agendas of the various candidates in the upcoming elections. Michael Grant’s honest, pragmatic and hopeful insight into our community’s problems and needs and his willingness to examine the issues and listen closely to the public’s questions and concerns, sets him far apart from the other candidates’ expected techniques and talk and so I am writing today to express my support for his campaign and my intention is to spread word to others of the value of his policies and abilities.
Nicholas Dawson
Sparks, Nevada
LaMalfa needs civics lesson
I had the opportunity to listen to a little of the debate before the House impeachment vote. How lucky that our own Representative LaMalfa weighed in while I was listening. He chose to use his time to spew nonsense like the articles of impeachment were “hysterical, made-up charges.” He also gave a little civics lesson: ” … we’re a republic, not a democracy.” As if the two were mutually exclusive!
I’m not really sure what his confusion about our form of government had to do with the debate on the articles of impeachment, but these are direct quotes from your Representative in Congress. Perhaps Mr. LaMalfa needs his own civics lesson.
Yes, we are a republic, but we are also a democracy. At least I thought we were, unless our democratically elected representatives decide otherwise, apparently. How can this be? Perhaps Mr. LaMalfa’s civics lesson would have been more meaningful if he had continued on to explain that in actual practice these days, with “representatives” like him in Congress, we are governed by a plutocracy (governed by the wealthy). That’s what happens when citizens don’t participate.
The Baby Boomers inherited a democracy, and we’re passing on a dysfunctional government run by greedy plutocrats to our children. How do we explain our complacency to them?
Leslie Mink
Quincy
My vote
Mark Mihevc for President!
Crikit Smither
Portola
Moral injury
Let me begin with the following:
Pity the fool who always cries foul. “I did nothing wrong. I did nothing wrong!”
Pity the ones who circle around. “He did nothing wrong. He did nothing wrong!”
Pity us all if this carries on for he has done many things morally wrong.
What is moral injury?
Like psychological trauma, moral injury is a construct that describes extreme and unprecedented life experience including the harmful aftermath of exposure to such events. Events are considered morally injurious if they “transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations” (1). Thus, the key precondition for moral injury is an act of transgression, which shatters moral and ethical expectations that are rooted in religious or spiritual beliefs or culture-based, organizational and group-based rules about fairness, the value of life and so forth. Source: https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/treat/cooccurring/moral_injury.asp
The Nation newsmagazine, online version dated Dec. 30, 2019, has an article by the Rev.Dr. William J. Barber II and Jonathan Wilson Hartgrove that discusses the reaction to Mark Galli, editor of Christianity Today magazine’s article supporting the President’s impeachment. Not only do they pray for the safety of the editor but also they discuss the importance of “the revolution of values we need to revive the heart of democracy today.” It also contains the following, “If Trumpism has unveiled white evangelicals’ willingness to accommodate a dangerous Christian nationalism, it also presents an opportunity to learn from those communities that have always read the Bible differently. “ Woe unto those who legislate evil and rob the poor of their rights,” the prophet Isaiah says. In addition, “Prophetic Christianity also states that faith is always political and, whatever the party in power, must advocate for the poor, the immigrant, and the vulnerable.”
There are many suffering from moral injury in our country. The draining of the swamp has unleashed a miasma of moral decay. We can do better. We must do better.
Laura E. Rodriguez
Quincy
Different source of information
Prior to the holiday cease-fire, one LTE contained some interesting interpretations of information gleaned from Psychology Today. I’ve picked some definitions from a different source of info.
Democracy: from the Greek terms, demos people + kratos strength, power; government by the people esp.: rule of the majority.
Authoritarian: Characterized by or favoring the principle of blind obedience to authority.
Autocracy: government by one person having unlimited power.
Rationalize: to make something irrational appear rational or reasonable.
Republic: a government in which supreme power is held by citizens who are entitled to vote.
This info was gleaned from the eleventh edition of The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, which I purchased for four bits from the local thrift store. You might find an equivalent at Nifty-Thrifty, or at a Friends of the Library book sale.It’s a much better bargain than Psychology Today.
Gene Nielsen
Crescent Mills
Trump
Everyone who knows American history understands that what we are experiencing today was almost inevitable. The Russia-collusion hoax, Ukraine-gate, Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation circus, all of the non-stop, relentless attacks on Donald Trump and his administration from the day he was sworn in were bound to happen.
What we are seeing today is vicious regime politics. This is a struggle over who is really in charge of this country’s governmental agencies. The duly elected president of the United States or players inside of that administrative state. You’ve got to include the mouthpieces found in the mainstream leftist media too.
None of these absurd fairytales of collusion were ever really about actual suspicions that Trump was somehow tied to Putin. (though certainly many Socialist Democrats still buy that story). The breathless, nonstop, reporting by the corporate leftist media can be explained by one of two possible causes either they are too stupid to understand what is actually taking place (a perfectly reasonable argument) or they are part and parcel of the attempted regime change from the start. “Saul Alinsky’s” rules apply here.
The only surprise is that we didn’t reach this moment sooner as a country. It took an outsider — someone not from Washington, D.C. and not from the ruling class — to be elected president.
Trump was never “read into” how it’s “all supposed to work,” how “things are done in D.C.” No, he had the temerity to show up and think that maybe, just maybe, we are still a democratic, constitutional republic in which power still flows from “We the People” to our president and other elected officials. In response to this sensible and very American view of things, the ruling class and administrative state emphatically said, “We don’t think so.”
Trump’s retort (parenthetically), “I’ll drain the swamp.” Bless your pathetic hearts.
Trent Saxton
Lake Davis
Jobs
There was a time in which the point of the old, sad joke about a son who killed his parents, then claimed lenience as an orphan, was obvious to all. Today, for a large corporation to lay off 10,000 workers and essentially dump them on our society’s social welfare program, then claim that those on welfare need to get a job, is hypocrisy at its worst.
When the CEO of a large corporation buys a smaller company, then proceeds to strip it of its valuable assets, lay off its workers and file bankruptcy on the remainder, that CEO will often receive a bonus through the corporation’s accommodating board of directors. Even a CEO who is totally incompetent is apt to receive a substantial bonus. We have come to regard this as business as usual. Those of us who are not on welfare (stockholders, for example) tend to denigrate those who are.
We should be condemning those who put them there. Have we become so weak and apathetic that we allow today’s robber barons to utilize a foreign nation’s cheaper labor force, then wallow in the term ‘cheap products’ as though it makes up for our vastly greater loss? Or, are we so fixated upon our own greed that the word ‘cheap’ is sufficient to blind us to the real cost of uncontrolled corporate greed?
Wallace B. Eshleman
Quincy