Voting people helping people

Letters Submitted

Dear Editor,

 

When I saw in a recent newspaper (Idaho Spectrum) this story: Incumbent Senator Crapo votes to defend rape; I went to the Senate Legislation and Records Home, to find what this statement meant. 

I find that Crapo did vote No on the Franken Amendment 2588 to H.R. 3326 (Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2010), along with 29 other Republicans.  Five Republicans voted Yea for this amendment, including both Senators from Utah. 

The purpose of this amendment is to prohibit funds for any Federal contract with Halliburton, or other contractors, if that contractor requires employees to sign mandatory arbitration clauses for certain claims.   Those certain claims include the news report: Jamie Leigh Jones gang-rape, by military in Iraq.   

I remember that story, but never looked to see how it was resolved.  The amendment passed, without the 30 Nay votes (68 Yea, 30 Nay, with 2 not voting).  The Nay voters said it was a political attack on Halliburton.  Maybe it was.  Maybe it was because all the Democrats voted Yea and the Republicans, therefore, had to vote Nay.  Maybe Crapo voted Nay because he gets money from Halliburton, as the newspaper article said.  I went to Crapo’s website, but could find only that he voted Nay. 

Why do you think the 30 Senators voted Nay?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear editor,

 

We live in a city where this mayor and council ran on a platform of reducing the spending of the former mayor and council, according to some people who voted for this mayor and council.  How much money have they saved?  You can ask them.  I do not know. 

I do know that this mayor and council paid $60,000 ($833 per page) for a wastewater study by Keller Associates, which did nothing to fix the wastewater problem.  I have repeatedly shown this mayor and council how to fix the wastewater lagoons for $50,000, which is $10,000 less than they paid for the study that did nothing.  That study says it will take $6 million to fix the lagoons.   

All the city must do to meet EPA requirements is to replace the surface aerators with bottom aerators. Those bottom aerators cost $22,000 and use less than 13% of the energy that the top aerators use now. 

After two workshops and dozens of times explaining to this mayor and council how to fix the lagoons, the councilmen, at their July 28 meeting, were still considering spending our money on the $6 million dollar plan.  We have to pay the $12 a month increase in our wastewater fee now.  Just watch for the increase that is yet to come. Keller Associates says our fee should be $33 to $36 per month for wastewater. 

Have this mayor and council done what they said they would do?  Is your base water-supply fee $30 and is your base wastewater fee $30?  What were these fees before this mayor and council?

 Do you remember the Jesse Creek water supply problem?  That cost us $6.25 million for out-of-town contractors.  And we are still paying for that.  Is the McKinstry $30 million school bond anything like these two water issues?

 When problems of water and schools arise, this city calls on so-called experts from out-of-town to come and fix our problem.  These solutions are millions of dollars, in these three cases.  What else could we do with $6, $6.25, and $30 million dollars?  We could look for solutions to these issues in our own home town.

 Don Stamp offered a solution to the school issue for $12 million.  Calvin Leman offered a solution to the wastewater issue for $22,000. Nothing happened in either situation.  Why do these elected officials think we must give a lot of money to so-called out-or-town experts to fix simple problems?

 

 

 

Dear Editor:

Nearly all of us know we are in deep recession.   Some of us know that the House and the Senate wrote bills to stop the finance industry from creating a recession like the one we are in.  A few of us also know that our senators Mike Crapo and Jim Risch voted No on the senate bill this month.  And our representative Mike Simpson voted No on the House bill last December.

These legislators did not offer a solution.  They just voted No for the solution before them.  Jim Risch told me that the Senate bill was too weak. He wrote:”The legislation does not protect taxpayers from bailouts nor does it provide measures to hold accountable companies and individuals who are responsible for the nation's economic problems.”

Making the Consumer Financial Protection Agency is a good part of the Senate bill.  But this will not stop the recurring recessions because it does not stop accounting fraud.

It gets worse.  The Senate and the House will now appoint a committee to reconcile the two bills. The finance industry will try to weaken the bill in the committee.  What do you think will happen?

 

Calvin Leman

305 Washington Street

Salmon, Idaho

208-756-4104

Herald Journal May 27, 2010

 Dear editor: Now is the time for Salmon tax payers to Act.

 To:                  Salmon City Council

From:            Calvin B Leman, PhD

                        208-756-4104

   305 Washington Street,  Salmon, Idaho

                                             http://votingpeoplehelpingpeople.com/

Date:              February 3, 2010

At our workshop on January 25, you told me that the wetland and agriculture solution, which I described for effluent from the lagoon, was a good idea.  You told me we had to find the land.  The land is available at Mike Overacker’s Ranch 208-756-2809, just across the street from the lagoon.  This land is not in the FEMA-designated flood plain.  Mike has the land available now and can use the water now.  That land may not be available, as it is now, anytime in the future. 

To make a decision, we need help from an engineering firm, who understands wetland solutions, who has built wetland solutions, and who can evaluate our specific situation, now that we have a location for the constructed wetland.

I have talked with Ron Crites (Brown & Caldwell 530-204-5204), Paul McGuire (Morrison & Maierle 406-542-4819), and will be talking with Larry Brown, from Ohio State University.  These engineering firms and university have experience with constructed wetland solutions.  Larry Brown was a part of the Wetland Reservoir Sub-irrigation System, which I am giving you as reference today.  Ron Crites wrote the document that I told you about at the workshop.  All of this information is on the website.

Arm-chair engineering, as we have been doing, cannot distinguish if a wetland is a common-sense way to use the wastewater from Salmon.  For example, from October to March, the effluent is about 1mgd, which requires 50 acres, if 10 feet deep.  That is about as far as we can get, without help from an engineer, who understands wetlands and can evaluate our specific situation.  We also need help evaluating if infiltration has any effect at all on a wetland solution.  Two reservoirs connected by a free water surface or subsurface wetland may be a common-sense solution. 

A wetland solution may not require fixing the infiltration, because other towns use wetlands for far more water than Salmon will ever generate.  What data or what guarantee do we have to show that fixing the infiltration will stop EPA violation notices, like Salmon received on October 8, 2008, for 120 violations?

The Natural Resources Conservation Service may match city funds to build a wetland.  Idaho Department of Environmental Quality may match city funds to evaluate this constructed wetland solution for Salmon wastewater.

The people elected you to take care of situations like this.  Now is your opportunity to take care of this wastewater situation now, with a solution for now and for the future. 

Recorder Herald  Feb 4, 2010

Dear Editor, We don’t have to make reports to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) if we don’t put treated wastewater into the river. 

We can put the wastewater into a constructed wetland and then to irrigation.  If we do, then we won’t have the threat of EPA penalties.  We won’t have the expense of operating the wastewater plant as we do now.  Estimates of savings are ½ to 1/8 the cost of what we are doing now. 

At the January 6 Salmon City Council meeting, I asked the council to explore a constructed wetland solution, and gave the council a written copy of this analysis.  Councilman Ken Gutzman told me they were not going to do anything for two years, apparently because he thinks the current EPA permit is good enough for now.  Mayor John Miller told me that the land for a wetland would cost too much.  Councilman Leo Marshall asked what credential I had for criticizing their plan.  I said PhD biochemistry.  The council voted unanimously in favor of the second reading of the wastewater tax increase, to pay the $4 million estimate to fix the lagoon system we have now.

Perhaps the council does not take EPA seriously, thinking that EPA will not fine the town for non-compliance, as the permit says.  A class I penalty is not to exceed $32,500 and a Class II penalty is not to exceed $157,500.  How will you feel if EPA does levy the penalty and the town uses our wastewater tax to pay these penalties?

Recorder Herald  Jan 14, 2010

 

 

Electing Our Legislators

Legislators need to listen to the people, not to the lobby groups.  Then support the people in all that they do.

People have common sense.  We must insist that our legislators use common sense.

This common sense shows us that the public relations industry runs election campaigns for both parties. The industry uses the same technique to sell candidates as it uses to sell toothpaste. Toothpaste advertising undermines markets by projecting imagery to suppress information.  Political parties use the same methods to suppress information. 

What solutions to the energy, environment, and economy problems have Risch, Crapo, and Simpson accomplished?  What solutions did their opponents in the last election offer? 

How much sense does it make to distrust congress and elect incumbents?  Ninety percent of elected candidates are incumbents.

December 12, 2009 Lemhi Web

 

Dear Editor: Healthcare and Voting

Some people say that they do not want the government running health insurance.  The government does run Medicare and almost everybody says it is a good deal.  Mike Simpson says he does not like socialized medicine.  As a legislator, we the people pay for his health insurance as we do for all other government agencies, including the defense department.  That too is socialized medicine, for government workers only.  That is the health insurance I had, when I worked at NASA, who paid most of my premium. 

When we say we don’t want the government running health insurance, are we really saying that we don’t trust the government?  Yet we must trust the government to run wars and to levy our taxes fairly.  If the people were running the government, then April 15 would be a time of joy, as we pay for the services we create. 

You did not vote last time?  Was the election stolen in 2000?  Why don’t we care if the election is stolen? The reason is that we don’t take the election seriously in the first place. We react about the way we react to television ads for tooth paste.  We know it is a delusion, so we ignore it.  If we go to the kitchen while the commercial plays, does the commercial affect us?  If we try to ignore a political commercial, does it affect us?  The party that wins is the party with the best delusion, just as the company with the best delusion for tooth paste sells the most tooth paste.

There is an alternative, and that is to elect the candidates, who explain the issues that concern them.  If we agree with the issues the candidate explains, we may just elect that candidate.

December 12, 2009 Recorder Herald

 

 

Dear Editor,

 Have you thought about the issues that concern you?  Then looked at how your legislator voted on your issues? 

 At the last election, what issues did you use to choose your candidate?  If you voted for how you felt about the candidate, stop here.  We are all paying for that now.

I don’t know anybody who thinks we can spend money that we don’t have, indefinitely.  Yet that is what the finance industry did and is a cause of this recession. 

Why did Senator Crapo vote for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act?   That is the same as spending money you do not have.  Why did Senator Crapo not know better? Eight other senators did know better.  Senator Crapo is a ranking member of Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, a ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions, and is on the Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment. 

Is he voting with our best interest in mind, or is he voting with the best interest of the finance industry in mind?  The finance industry is his biggest donor.  

Or does he just not understand?

Calvin Leman
305 Washington Street
Salmon, ID 83467
208-756-4104

December 3, 2009, Recorder Herald

 

 

 

Elite and Common People

The elite, who control the country, use the two political parties to control the people. We think we are in one party or another.  We really are all in the same party: the people.  We make up 99% of the population and get 16% of the income growth, since 1989.  The elite make up 1% and get 55.6% of the income growth.   The upper tenth of one-percent of the elite get 1/3 of the income growth.  Why do our legislators cause this inequity?  Why do we elect them?

The bickering we do, the bickering our political parties do, and the bickering our legislators do is one way the elite (through media) control the people.  Fear is another tool the elite use. They took our fear after 9/11, used Iraq and 9/11 in the same sentence, and then added mushroom clouds to scare us into war.

Where are these elite?  We find them at the top of corporations, including the finance industry, which we bailed out, and the military industrial complex, even though Eisenhower warned us. 

When our legislators move from public office to corporate office, these legislators join the elite.  When Robert Rubin moved from treasury secretary to Citigroup, he became the elite.   That is the revolving door we read about and that our legislators do nothing about.

The elite control our legislators by giving them money to get elected.  The finance industry is Senator Crapo's biggest donor; corporations pay Senator Risch and Representative Simpson.  Butch Otter gets his money from corporations too, including the finance industry.

Our legislators are not normally in the elite.  They just think they are.

December 24, 2009 Post Register

 

 

The political system operates to render policy irrelevant. The public relations industry focuses voter attention on style and personality—anything but the issues that are of primary concern to us. This is the same public relations industry that sells tooth paste.

 

Letters We Are Writing

Dear editor: Can we do better than capitalism?

The reason for this economic crisis began in the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and the American people were forced to work more, add family members (mom and kids) to the work force, and then borrow money to keep up their standard of living. 

The government bailouts, stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not stop the real causes of the crisis.  Republicans are right.  The stimulus has not helped the people; the stimulus has helped the finance industry.  The government now owns most of them.   Far more fundamental change is needed to avoid future catastrophes.

Besides the 1929 crash and this one, we have had twelve other crashes in the last 75 years.  Each of these crashes causes many people to suffer.  According to our government, our current crisis began in December of 2007, when unemployment was 7 million.  Now unemployment is 15 million.  Our problem really started in the late 1970’s when wages stagnated: wages  are the same now as they were then.

We need to stop doing what we are doing.  Workers need to have a say in how the business, where they work, is run.  Workers need to have a say about how the business surplus (profit) is created and who gets the surplus.

 

 

 

New People Running for Office

Dear editor:

New people are running for public office.  In Lemhi County, Cindy Phelps and Barbara Miller are running for county commissioner.  For Idaho governor, Keith Allred is running.   In the federal government, Tom Sullivan is running for senator.

Do you suppose that these candidates will change the income inequality this country has seen these last 30 years?  Since 1989, the top 0.1% of households got 34% of the income growth, while the bottom 50% got 16% of the income growth. This means that the top 0.1% of households got more than twice the income growth as the bottom 50%. 

Each of these candidates is in the bottom 50% of households, as we all are.  Most of the top households are in the finance industry, which is 40% of GDP now, up from 7% 30 years ago.

If these candidates are running to help themselves, these candidates will also help the rest of us, because we are all in the bottom 50% of household incomes.  The elite, those households in the top 0.1%, are in control of our government now.  None of our legislators is in this top 1%.  They do act as if they are, because these legislators are controlled by the elite.

That control starts with the elite giving money to candidates for election.  And it continues as the elite give money to legislators to vote in the best interest of the elite.  That is how the elite got to be the top 0.1% of household incomes and that is why worker income has not grown these last 30 years, while productivity has continually increased.  The elite got all the income growth from this increasing productivity.

The elite are happy to see the squabbling of republicans and democrats in the legislature and on Main Street.  While the people squabble, the elite stay in power.  If republicans win the election, the elite give them money to vote in the best interest of the elite.  If democrats win, the elite give democrats money.  What do you think these new candidates will do?

 

Calvin Leman

305 Washington Street

Salmon, Idaho

208-756-4104

 

 

Dear Editor: Why do we follow the Clean Water Act?  We don’t have to. I

In the 1890 decade, wetlands were a part of wastewater management in southeastern USA.  About this same time, Idaho was becoming a state, on July 3, 1890.  Over the next 50 years water pollution became enough of a problem to pass the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948.

Salmon’s first wastewater collection system started about the same time and was placed where it is now in 1970.  No wonder Salmon has inflow/infiltration problems with this wastewater collection system. 

Amendments to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act were in 1972 and in 1977, when this water law became known as the Clean Water Act. This is the act that Salmon has to meet now, with the aerated lagoon that was built in 1987.  The Clean Water Act regulates that lagoon, ONLY because it puts water into the Salmon River.

If we don’t put our wastewater into the river, we don’t have to follow the Clean Water Act, because the Act only regulates natural water systems.  EPA reported 120 violations of the Clean Water Act in Salmon, from October 2007 to July 2008, on a notice of violation on October 7, 2008.  Some of these violations are caused by the ingress/infiltration-leaky pipes-in our wastewater collection system.  Other violations are caused by the city not following the requirements of the EPA permit.

We can put our wastewater into a constructed wetland and then to irrigation.  This will help farmers and will help the people of Salmon, because we won’t have to spend $4 million dollars to fix the wastewater collection system and the lagoon we are using now.  Why do we subject ourselves to federal law, if we don’t have to?

 

 

 

 

What happened in the last century that was good for the people? 

People ended the Vietnam War because it was immoral; people guided the government to respect Human Rights, Civil Rights and Women’s rights, because it is wrong not to respect those Rights.   People guided the government to clean up the water and to clean up the air, because people were being harmed by the air and by the water.

When the Clean Water Act was passed, the federal government used our taxes to build sewage treatment plants.  In Salmon, that plant is now out of compliance and has been since 2001, according to the EPA Fact Sheet.  We have no information that the facility ever was in compliance, from 1987 when it was built.  EPA did not come to Salmon between 1987 and 2007. The federal government has pushed the clean water expense onto the states, which have no money.  Now the people have to pay our federal taxes and our city for clean water.  The elite have cheated the people again.

Because people are not guiding our government in this century, so far, we are in two illegal wars, have tortured people, have terrorized other countries, have lost our homes, have lost our jobs, and have driven 13.2% of us into poverty.

We know when we are cheated, when we are hungry, and when we have no place to go.  Why do we allow the elite and the government to cheat us?

 

 

 

Dear editor: The city is planning to double our wastewater tax.

They don’t need to.  They could lower our wastewater tax.

When the city reacted to EPA and the Clean Water Act in 2008, they contracted with Keller Associates to study the problem.  For more than a year Keller and the city missed the solution to wastewater that EPA has been publishing for 40 years.  Wetlands can be constructed to clean wastewater.  In Salmon, the effluent from the constructed wetlands can irrigate fields.  No longer must the city chlorinate the water going into the Salmon River, because no water will go into the river.  No longer must the city pump air into the lagoons, because wetlands do that job with plants.

Wetlands are cheaper than conventional facilities in the capital investment and in the operation of cleaning municipal wastewater.  Some estimates are 2-fold to 8-fold cheaper.  All of the analyses show that constructed wetlands treatment of municipal wastewater is cheaper than what we are doing now.  Go to votingpeoplehelpingpeople.com and click on Municipal Wastewater to see some of the EPA documents.

 

People and Democracy

If you think 20% of us are interested in issues and 80% just want someone else to take care of everything, then you agree with Walter Lippmann from the last century.  If you think the world is more complicated now than it has been, it may be.  What does this have to do with democracy? 

Democracy can only work if everybody participates in government.  If 80% of us want someone else to do everything, we can’t have democracy.  That is how the Vietnam War started.  Eighty-percent of us were not watching our government.  When we started paying attention to the war, we stopped it because it was morally wrong. 

Even when we were watching, the Iraq War started, because our president told us of weapons of mass destruction.  We got into the Afghanistan War because our president told us that the culprits that killed 3000 of us were in Afghanistan.   All of us now know that the weapons of mass destruction did not exist.  And none of us has done anything about it.

Twenty-percent of us believe that we are in Afghanistan because of a pipe line.  We now have a president telling us that we are in Afghanistan to get the culprits that killed 3000 of us.  That is what the last president told us.

 

Barbara, in reference to your letter:

People will get involved if we think it will make a difference.   What stops people may not be human nature as you say, but rather that governments determine, select, shape, control, and restrict people, in order to serve the interest of the dominant elite groups.  City, county, state, and federal legislators and employees may be doing this. 

If this condition exists, should the people, who want to do something to help, do it themselves?  Don Stamp tried to volunteer for a building committee.  When the administration told Don that they were no longer needed (he is quoted in the December 10 Recorder Herald), he did it himself. 

When I saw Central Idaho Resource Advisory Committee to Reorganize, I gathered information to see if the people in Salmon can submit a proposal to the Resource Advisory Committee.   When I asked Kent Fuellenbach about the proposal, he sent me to Forms for the Project.  I am trying to find if people want to help with a proposal to improve the Salmon Municipal Water District.  Senator Crapo says this law is to help people, because we don’t have trees to cut. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Your Vote Count?

Do you think your vote does not count?  Consider what may happen, if we do nothing and the country slides to riots and other reaction to repression of the people by the elite.   Elections for candidates and for toothpaste are the same.  Public relations firms run campaigns for toothpaste and for candidates.  The better campaign of deception sells toothpaste and elects legislators.  That may be why we think our vote does not count.

Candidates should run on issues and the people should vote on the issues, not how they feel about the candidate.  How to make that happen?  I am working on that now.

The groups of people we have are not either republican or democrat.  The groups are the elite and the common people.  The elite make up 1% of the population.  Why are they in control of the government?  Because elections are not about issues.  In Iran, the candidates are vetted by the religious leaders.  In the USA candidates are vetted by the finance industry and other corporate powers. 

Aristotle, Adam Smith, James Madison, and Walter Lippmann make the case that the elite must govern the common people.  The bubbles, depressions, recessions, wars, and divergent wage-productivity show that the elite can’t govern. 

Our more civilized country is a result of the people making the country civil, not the elite.  That an African American and a woman ran for president and the Vietnam War ended because it was morally wrong shows that the Civil Rights, Woman’s Rights, and Anti-War movements have made this a more civilized country, not the government and not the elite.  Noam Chomsky explains why here: http://vimeo.com/7194947

The Internet may be the way for a mass movement, rather than marching on Washington.  Howard Zinn marched with students in the 60s and 70s.  He is still saying how to fix this broken system.  I don’t see students taking an active role in anything right now.  That is what the elite want.  The elite have designed the system we have.

 

 

 

 

 

Two Groups of People

  

We think we have two political parties: Republicans and Democrats.  The two groups of people we really have are: the elite and the common people. 

The elite have power and common people have no power.  The elite have a lot of money and the common people have a little money.  The elite can support their families.  The common people barely can. 

How does this happen?  The elite make up about 1% of the population.  The common people are 99% of the population.  We do have elections.

 Why do we have a government that creates elite and common people?  Why do we elect 90% of the incumbents, the legislators who are creating this condition?

 If it takes money to get elected, what chance do common people have?  Mike Simpson’s main contributors were corporations; Mike Crapo, the finance industry; Jim Risch, individual contributions, from corporations. 

 Barack Obama got most of his money from individual contributions too.  The biggest individual contributors were mostly corporations and the finance industry.