I-732 a threat to jobs

Yoram Bauman, co-chair of I-732, pleads for the desire to present accurate information to voters and then cites unnamed, nationally recognized sources for his claims. Please.

What is accurate is that an hourly workforce stands united with the Kaiser Aluminum Corp. in defending our much-needed living-wage jobs which help lower mankind’s carbon footprint while providing essential materials for the world. What is factual is that trying to correct a regressive tax system by adding more taxes on businesses and utilities that are among the cleanest and most efficient on the planet is simple fallacy.

The United Steelworkers and the salaried Kaiser employees who work in our aluminum rolling mill also live and raise families around that very mill. Our clean and responsible industries are already under attack from unfair competition overseas and cannot survive misguided internal attacks from people who mistakenly believe that shuttering our American manufacturing capacity will help global warming.

What is a fact is that voting for I-732 will lead to the loss of thousands of local living-wage jobs while increasing energy costs for everyone and encouraging foreign countries to actually increase carbon emissions. Vote no on I-732.

Ted Cummings

Chattaroy

Effects of Hillary Clinton win

When I am president:

I will increase the size of federal government. I will provide a free college education to all Americans. I will grant tax relief for those burdened by student debt. I will provide health care benefits to more Americans. I will solve global warming by putting coal and oil companies out of business. I will increase taxes on George Clooney, Brad Pitt and the rest of Hollywood. I will open the border to ensure that Americans have a source of cheap labor at taxpayers’ expense.

I will pay for all these programs by taxing large corporations, forcing them to go elsewhere. I will raise minimum wages on business regardless of their profit margins. I will socialize America. The rich will become the new middle class. The middle class will become the new poor. There will no longer be a three-tier system.

Do you really want Bill Clinton in the Oval Office fantasizing about the past and creating all new tabloid fodder?

Bruce Kaiser

Spokane

Trump best choice

Chris Powell’s Oct. 1 letter is typical of all the anti-Trump/pro-Clinton rants. Saying that the tea-party faction chose Donald Trump is laughable, as Ted Cruz was the tea party candidate. Equating the tea party to the extreme right-wing is a view only an extreme left-winger could believe. Informed people know that the tea party is about following the Constitution as it was intended.

The letter’s implication is that following the Constitution, the law of the land, is extreme. Is breaking the law acceptable? Apparently so to some people, which is probably why Clinton is considered highly qualified to many of her supporters.

Despite the extreme pro-Clinton bias of most of the news media, most people know that Clinton lies far more than Trump. People who ignore that fact in order to support Clinton are the ones who should be ashamed. I, too, aspire to something better than Trump, but it sure is not Hillary Clinton. She is the one who is far more dangerous to our freedoms and our economy. Despite his faults, Trump is the best choice, because all others are far worse.

Jay Logan

Spokane

Trump is like Helmsley

Leona Helmsley famously told her maid that only “little people” pay taxes. Now we have a man running for president who thinks paying no taxes makes him smart. No, paying no taxes means you are rich enough to hire smart lawyers and accountants who scour the tax code. It only means that you are incredibly arrogant, unethical and unprincipled – and proud of it.

What has happened that we could possibly consider electing such a man? I find no evidence that Trump has ever loved his country. Certainly he ran from any military service, preferring the night life of New York to the jungles of Vietnam.

Those who truly love our country and are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect it probably can’t afford to hire lawyers and accountants. Who knows, they may even think that paying their fair share of taxes is the patriotic thing to do.

Thank heavens we have enough “little people” who love their country to outnumber the people who think it is smart to enjoy the benefits of this nation without paying for it.

God forbid that we will ever elect as president anyone with the morals, temperament, arrogance and narcissism of Leona Helmsley.

Ivy Green

Cheney

Read up on candidate

I am not a Republican, but I have met many fine, honest, decent people who are. Therefore I would ask them before they consider voting for Donald Trump to read a recent book, “The Making of Donald Trump,” by David Cay Johnston, an investigative reporter who has worked for the Philadelphia Enquirer and the New York Times.

The book is fact-checked. If it weren’t true, Trump would have sued him by now, and he hasn’t.

Trump claims to be a multibillionaire, but this should be taken not with a grain of salt but a full shaker. If he had to repay all the people he has defrauded, his fortune would be vastly depleted. He keeps lawyers to delay doing that as long as possible, one of whom was Roy Cohn, of House Un-American Activities Committee infamy, who had ties to the Mafia.

Hillary Clinton has been vilified over and over and has been acquitted of committing any crimes. But if she were a bank robber, she’d still be a better president than Trump.

Dorothy Carter

Spokane

Debate resolves nothing

My opinion on the big debate: Donald Trump was his old, stumbling, unpresidential, unpredictable, egomaniac self who boasted “smart,” because he doesn’t pay federal income tax like the rest of us do, who want to have good highways and schools, etc.

Hillary Clinton was a know-it-all, smug, insulting in her big you-gotta-be-kidding-me grin when Trump tried to justify. I hate people like that.

I pictured during the debate (that sounded like quarreling newlyweds) – Hillary with her high-pitched, know-it-all vocabulary, and Trump’s stunned ignorance – either one dealing with world leaders ready to push the nuclear button.

The debate did solidify my choice in voting: I will vote, but as to my choice on president, it will go blank.

Lillian Moore Lind

Coeur d’Alene

Clinton finally exposed

The true Hillary Clinton has finally been exposed. Watching the first presidential debate from Hofstra University, I was struck at just how heartless and icy Clinton really is. Lacking warmth and compassion, she is like an ice woman. Her fixed, plastered smile reminded me of the Jack Nicholson role in “Batman” when he played the Joker. His painted smile looks just like her smile.

Her lack of caring for the unborn, the Benghazi fiasco and her cruel lies to their family members and the list goes on and on is classic Hillary Clinton. Now I understand why she is such a skillful liar. She is more robotic than human.

As I sit in my home, I keep asking myself this question: Why isn’t she sitting in some prison for her crimes? Obama is protecting her so she can continue his progressive social-democratic platform. God help us all if we have four more years of this freedom-destroying type of rule.

Helen Garrett

Veradale

Taxes stunt economy

In the presidential debate, Hillary Clinton thought it a jab at Donald Trump that if he had paid more in taxes maybe the country could build more bridges and roads. The fact that so many people attach righteousness to paying taxes, which means taking from the private sector resources to support the wasteful public sector, is truly sad.

What is so bad about keeping the money out of the hands of politicians, who will only use it to boost their own power while pretending to care about people? Doesn’t it make more sense to keep as much of our own money in the private sector, where it provides jobs for people who wish to earn it, instead of accepting the meager handouts the government issues in order to keep them in poverty forever? Who really enjoys being on the dole? Who prospers from government programs?

It certainly is not the people who are on them. The people who benefit the most are the politicians and the bureaucrats and government employees who run the programs. Hillary Clinton wants more of the same, while Trump wants to get government out of our way so we can make America great again.

Rob Leach

Mica

‘Sully’ is uplifting

Yesterday I saw the movie “Sully.” It was very realistic and good. At the end, I felt like standing up and shouting out, “give God the glory, too.”

This was a miracle on the Hudson, which was accomplished by many people working together so well.

Jane Cumming

Spokane

Ban assault weapons

I was upset reading the story of Caleb Collier wanting to make Spokane Valley a Second Amendment Sanctuary City. Then the following day I read about five people killed at a mall north of Seattle.

The proliferation of guns only adds to the senseless killing of people in our country, and because of it we are less safe, not more safe as the gun-wielders suggest. The police can attest to that.

No city in the state has made a similar proposal because Washington law makes it unnecessary. Since Collier’s proposal was in response to a possible ban on assault weapons, using the proclamation as a lobbying tool in the state Legislature, as Ed Pace suggests, would indicate that Spokane Valley residents want more assault weapons available for people to kill other people. That is the only purpose of assault weapons: to kill people.

Let us at least support a ban on the sale of these weapons that create so much carnage. It does not impinge on our Second Amendment rights, which refers to a well-regulated militia, not a number of individuals who would use assault rifles on other citizens whenever they feel like it.

Linda Greene

Spokane