Be an educated voter
It is campaign season for the 2022 midterm election. The issues that face our nation and state are often perceived as insurmountable from the media perspective, but in truth they are not. To tackle our problems, we have to meet them with our boots on the ground, one issue at a time. More often than not we see a name on a signboard and that sticks in our mind so we end up voting for that person. That kind of voting is how we got ourselves into the seemingly insurmountable mess we find ourselves.
I encourage you to find out about the candidates any chance you get. Visit websites. When you see that candidates are in your area, go talk to them, ask them questions, find out what they think. Ask incumbents about their voting records. Knowing the candidates will tell you far more than sound bites you get from campaign signs.
Right now the GOP hardliners have a stranglehold on Idaho politics and they need to be held accountable. That is our job as voters. The big problems are solved at our front door one vote at a time. Educate yourself on the candidates and vote.
Brian Potter
Potlatch
Lefty in name only
He tosses out insults like a toddler in a sandbox. He has an unjustifiably high opinion of his value to society. And he knows better — just trust him, he knows better — than anyone with actual expertise.
Is it Donald Trump?
No, it’s Professor Pompous — the first LINO ever identified outside of the laboratory. And we, readers of the Daily News, are exposed to his brilliance every 14 days.
What a blessing!
Bill Brock
Pullman
They’re still at it
Atrocities against the Iranian Baha’is have been renewed, the international Baha’I World News Service reported last month. At the United Nations, Special Rapporteurs “on the human rights situation in Iran, freedom of religion …, and on minority issues” stated Iranian authorities must “end the persecution and harassment of religious minorities and the use of religion to deny fundamental human rights.”
As a Baha’i for more than six decades, I’ve heard multiple first-hand accounts from Iranian co-religionists of persecutions that they and their families have suffered since the Baha’i Faith’s earliest days in 19th century Iran.
Earlier last month, The New York Times reported on the latest example of ongoing Baha’i persecutions.
The Times called it “a sweeping crackdown on its Baha’i community, a long-persecuted religious minority.” According to residents, rights groups, and the government itself, “dozens of people” were arrested, and Baha’i properties were destroyed.
Bani Dugal, Baha’i International Community representative to the United Nations, said that Iran had “arrested 52 Baha’is in July, raiding dozens of homes, closing businesses and demolishing properties.” In June, 26 Baha’is in Shiraz were sentenced to prison terms from two to five years by Iran’s Revolutionary Court. They were charged with “conspiracy to disrupt internal and external security.”
Reuters quoted Iran’s intelligence ministry as having arrested “a number of adherents of the banned Baha’i faith for links to a center in Israel and for proselytizing in schools and kindergartens.”
This baseless statement claimed detainees “had been carrying out extensive propaganda missions to propagate Baha’i teaching” and to “infiltrate various levels of the educational sector across the country, especially kindergartens.”
Baha’i teachings themselves forbid such activities.
Iranian policy mandates dealings with Baha’is such “that their progress and development are blocked.”
Pete Haug
Colfax
