Letters to the editor April 28

Roundabout the wrong solution

I travel U.S. 2 during the morning and evening rush hour five days a week. I rarely see more than one car waiting to enter U.S. 2, if any. A roundabout would disrupt the flow of traffic for every vehicle whether it was needed or not.

A traffic light, like the new one at the intersection for Woodland Park Drive and Flathead Drive with U.S. 2, would only disrupt traffic when needed. The delay is less than 30 seconds and everyone would have safe entry to U.S. 2. A traffic light wouldn’t cost millions of dollars, take 12 months to install, or require rearranging the landscape. A “be prepared to stop” sign would alert traffic to the upcoming light. Why make things more complicated than necessary?

— Kim Carter, Kila

Immigration problems

The immigration problem in this country is clearly out of control and getting worse by the minute. Most of the fault for this problem lies with Congress unwilling or unable to deal with this issue. Some of these southern countries are apparently emptying out their prisons and psychiatric hospitals and putting their patients on the caravans heading north. Their illegal immigrants have absolutely nothing to offer us. Almost all of them are illiterate and have no job skills. There is one very dangerous aspect of what they are bringing with them - their diseases. Because of their massive numbers and the inability to handle the load, our government is dumping thousands of them into our southern cities. I hope that Americans are ready for the crime and plagues that is certain to erupt with this incredible situation. Maybe our government should consider putting the people on trains heading south leading to their original countries. We also should close our southern border. I can live without guacamole. Mexico currently allows these people free passage through its country to the U.S. This must stop!

— Sinowa Cruz, Kalispell

National news

The Daily Inter Lake does a wonderful job reporting on local news around our beautiful Flathead Valley and surrounding areas. I can’t say the same for the news articles it includes relative to our national issues.

Recent Associated Press articles regarding immigration and the Mueller report are prime examples.

The article (editorial) “President who cried Wolf” on April 18 clearly shows the effect of indoctrination on Jill Colvin, the Associated Press reporter who was trained at the Columbia University journalism school of far-left thought. Her animosity of President Trump shines throughout amplified by her emotional statements, subjective judgments and outright lies. For example, she states that it is President Trump who has refused to negotiate on the immigration issue when, in reality, it is the left which will not engage for fear of giving the President another triumph. This article is just pure propaganda promoting the agenda of liberals.

The AP article regarding the Mueller report is so obviously biased it is hardly worth reading. It gives the impression that our President indeed did something illegal or, at the very least, wrong. Of course, the president tried to curtail this investigation by doing everything legally in his power because he knew there was no reason for it. His statements that there was no collusion or obstruction were proven correct even though Mueller included in his report enough innuendo to keep the “wolves” howling.

If the Daily Inter Lake attempted to be fair they would include articles like the one from Kimberly Strassel from the Wall Street Journal which gives a much different viewpoint — no there was no collusion or obstruction. And as she says, unfortunately, there was no investigation into the obvious collusion between Hillary and the Russians or into the illegal conduct inside of the DOJ and the FBI.

Perhaps the person responsible for picking these Associated Press articles on national news is a liberal who enjoys reading such tripe. But it makes it hard for people like me to continue to let my subscription fees be used for such propaganda without having any countervailing articles which present the other field of thought. Perhaps the best advice would be, “if you are so prejudice you can’t find anything good to print, then maybe it’s best not to print anything at all.”

—Mark Agather, Kalispell

Habitat Montana works well

I have spent most of the past 30 years both working and playing on Montana’s public lands. For all that time, the Habitat Montana program has been wisely used to spend hunting license dollars to purchase more than 600,000 acres of conservation easements and fee-title lands to conserve and improve critical wildlife habitat across the state. This program is popular with hunters, anglers, hikers, birders and many others who enjoy our abundance of wildlife and natural lands.

For some reason, many in the Legislature can’t stand to see any money spent without their fingers in the pot. Even though these are not tax dollars, they have tried over the last couple of legislative sessions to stop or alter the Habitat Montana program. This year they managed to get HB265 passed on a party-line vote. This bill will force all Habitat Montana easements to be approved by the state land board, a blatantly political body.

These easements increase and improve our precious wildlife habitat and are completely vetted through a public process that can take up to two years before being approved by the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission. There is no need to interject politics into the process by requiring that the easements go before the partisan-controlled land board. HB625 would add another messy bureaucratic layer to the process and, in effect give veto power over mutually agreed-to transactions to politically-appointed hacks with alternate agendas.

Habitat Montana does not need help from politicians. It has worked just fine for many years and will do so well into the future if we don’t turn the process over to partisan sycophants who have more interest in sectarian power games than in public lands.

—LaVerne Sultz, Kalispell