Letters to the editor Aug. 30

Insulting letter

Congratulations to Lana Batts for her Aug. 26 letter to the editor in which she manages to insult almost everyone, while changing no one’s opinion. And she wants the Daily Inter Lake to censor anyone who disagrees with her. She ought to go to work for Google or Twitter.

I’m curious how she knows so much about the intelligence (or lack thereof) and habits of people living in southern Alabama that she feels the freedom to insult them.

I’m also curious how it’s my fault that she and her husband, being fully vaccinated and masked, managed to contract Covid, considering that these two actions are considered by her ilk to be the magic elixir for staying Covid-free. On the plus side, now that she’s had Covid, she, like me, is pretty safe. Time to toss the mask.

—Doug Adams, Whitefish

Medical cronies

I would like to reply to Lana Batts letter Aug. 26 expressing her wrath at unvaccinated people in Flathead County. Since she ignores basic human rights, informed consent and the Nuremberg Code, perhaps I could refer her to openvaers.com, a website that publishes reports about adverse reactions to vaccines. This morning this website reported 13,068 attributed deaths and serious reactions, including bell’s palsy, anaphylaxis, heart attacks, permanent disability, etc.

Of course, professionals tell us this data can’t be trusted, because anybody can make this stuff up and post it. In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that these are being faked. Studies I’ve read suggest that only up to 10% of adverse vaccine reactions are reported, because the doctors are just too busy (or whatever).

If she is so inclined, she can visit medscape.com in which comment is limited to medical professionals. Here they detail their own personal experiences with the vaccine, trying to help each other figure out how they can possibly mitigate some of these horrible side effects.

These vaccines have made the people who stand to benefit from them (not you) multi-billionaires. We cannot continue to let our corrupt government and medical cronies push us into panic, while withholding the simple cures that can overcome the virus.

Maybe Lana should move to southern Alabama where she might find that most people are smarter than she is.

—Peggy Mathiason, Somers

[Editor’s note: According to the CDC, “Hundreds of millions of people in the U.S. have received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine. The majority of reports to VAERS after Covid-19 vaccination have been non-serious adverse events.” People with questions about Covid-19 or the vaccine should talk to their physician or a health care professional at the health department.]

Daines’ deficit hypocrisy

Sen. Steve Daines:

You voted against the bipartisan infrastructure bill written by five Democrats and five Republicans, including Montana’s Senator Tester.

Montana newspapers reported this bill contains $2.8 billion for Montana highways, $144 million for Montana airports; funds for Montana broadband and Montana wildfire reduction, $1 billion for Montana water projects, more.

You cited the deficit…without mentioning your vote for the tax cut in 2017. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimate of the impact of the Trump tax cut on the deficit: $1.8 to $2.3 trillion over 10 years. CBO’s estimate for the impact of the infrastructure bill — that you cited as unacceptable — $250 billion over 10 years.

Those tax cuts lowered taxes for incomes over $1 million by about 30%, and for incomes of $20,000 to $50,000 by about 2%. Over 60% of the benefits went to the top 20% incomes. Far from the promise that it would more than pay for itself in growth, tax revenues decreased by about 16%, substantially upping the deficit. In 2019 the economy grew — before Covid — at the same rate as it did in 2015 — 2.9%.

Senator Daines, who are you working for? Clearly not the thousands of Montanans who will get good jobs for fixing our highways and more.

There is a word for citing the deficit to vote against Montana jobs while ignoring the roughly to times larger impact on the deficit of your vote to cut taxes for the rich — hypocrisy.

—Kayle Jackson, Bozeman

Freedoms have boundaries

The Declaration of Independence tells us that our creator has endowed us with rights that human beings cannot take away. The first of these is the right to life. Liberty and the pursuit of happiness follow this essential right. In short, one cannot have freedom and enjoy life if one is not alive.

There seems be a fundamental misunderstanding of this principle in our community. Many people imagine themselves to be autonomous bubbles floating through space, never intersecting with other autonomous bubbles. We’d all enjoy it if that were true, if our choices had no impact on other people, and we could just do what we want. But all freedoms have boundaries and limits. Freedom cannot be absolute or else each of us would be free to murder or steal from our neighbor.

In local schools at this time, liberty and the pursuit of one’s personal happiness are being placed above the right to life. Someone recently posted this on Twitter: “Why is the ability to spread disease more of a right than protecting children who have no other protection than masks?” That is it exactly. Those under 12 only have masks.

So-called rights defenders in our community brazenly declare their right to infect my kid and yours, their right to make us go back to remote school when schools have large outbreaks and many in quarantine, their right to make parents miss work to care for sick kids, their right to overwhelm hospitals and health-care providers. And for some, their right to terrorize anybody who tells them no.

They may have some power right now, but they do not have these inalienable rights. They are seizing what is not theirs to seize. And they are not thinking of the legal liability they are exposing schools to due to negligence.

—Rebecca Miller, Bigfork