Page C8 Wyoming Tribune Eagle Sunday, June 21, 2020

OPINIONWTE Editorial Board

Rory Palm Regional president

Brian Martin Managing editor

Rebekah Fitzgerald Community representative

Lindsey Hanlon Community representative

Jim Weaver Community representative

ESTABLISHED 1867

Stop attributing words to Khrushchev he didn’t sayCarol Matteson PascalCheyenne

Here we go again! I, too, remem-ber Khrushchev’s 1959 United Na-tions speech, as a recent writer to the editor claims he did “as though it were yesterday.”

It was a long speech, and the translation lagged, but it was all about disarmament and ending the Cold War. The prime minister did not say, in that speech, nor any-where else that can be verified, anything about gullible Ameri-cans, small doses of socialism or our children’s children living under communism.

In the past 60 years, this false-hood has been discredited time and time again: Lots has been writ-ten about it and is easy to look up. Several sources quote the entire U.N. speech in print and on the in-ternet, as well as all of the speech-es, press conferences and articles covering that visit. (Check out archives.org for one.)

Ezra Taft Benson claimed Khrushchev said it to him, then that it wasn’t said to him, but that he had heard it directly from someone who heard it three weeks before the U.S. visit, and then that he had heard someone say they had heard from someone who heard it from someone who thought it might have been some-one else who said it.

It’s even been said that Presi-dent Eisenhower said it about our-selves. I remember that a Los Angeles bank sent out postcards

with the quote, which they later had to retract. Just a couple of years ago, Michael Reagan quoted it yet again, proving that some lies have very long legs.

Nikita Khrushchev likely said some things we should decry, but this doesn’t happen to be one of them, and it is long past time to put the lie to rest.

Current admin has done a lot to help people of colorSteve LloydCheyenne

I am writing this letter in re-sponse to the Sunday, June 7, front page story regarding the rally against racism held at the Wyo-ming State Capitol.

I was not surprised to learn that one or more rally-goers implied they were going to help drive the vote for the Democratic presiden-tial candidate because the current administration has been divisive on race, but I think they may be ill informed.

The current administration has done much to help people of color including: record low unemploy-ment for blacks and Hispanics (prior to the pandemic, but jobs are coming back with reopenings); reduced poverty rates for these groups; criminal justice reform via the First Step Act that has ben-efited people of color in conjunc-tion with the pardoning of Alice Johnson, a Black woman given and excessive sentence for a first-time drug possession conviction; pro-motion of school choice in commu-nities where public schools are not

serving minorities adequately; creation of approximately 9,000 opportunity zones in economically depressed communities (some of which may have been subject to looting and burning in the recent riots); and permanent government funding for black colleges and uni-versities via the Future Act, which the president signed.

If these protesters are referring to the president’s efforts to secure our border, those efforts are not racist – they are an effort to main-tain the rule of law and not selec-tively choose which laws to enforce and which to ignore as Democrats do (read sanctuary cities).

Wyoming citizens given conflicting virus numbersDan BuchanCheyenne

Is the Wyoming Department of Health all of a sudden throwing in the towel? Is it caving in to the pressure of other interests like the health departments in so many other states have been doing lately?

According to the Wyoming De-partment of Health’s COVID-19 Dashboard of State Metrics, the number of new COVID-19 cases is “stabilizing” as of June 13. The word stabilizing is marked in the color yellow as if to show some sort of improvement.

Yet on a different page on their website, it shows the number of new cases has been increasing at the same steady rate since March 24, as reflected in the steady,

upward 45-degree slope of a line on a graph labeled “Lab Con-firmed Cases.”

In fact, the line on this graph has taken a noticeable turn upward in just the past few days. I think clas-sifying the number of new cases as “stabilizing” is misleading, is doing a disservice to the citizens of Wyoming and is undermining the integrity of the Department of Health, which, until recently – along with Gov. Gordon’s leader-ship – had done an admirable job managing the pandemic.

The citizens of Wyoming de-serve an explanation for this in-consistent reporting.

Dem policies failed to heal “America’s original sin”Mark RobertsCheyenne

Dear Marion Yoder,Being one of the 234 million peo-

ple that you’ve accused of being complicit in murder, I’m obligated to respond. Of the 328 million peo-ple in America, there were only four responsible for the death of the man in Minnesota. Those four have been arrested and charged accordingly.

I and the 234 million people that look like me are at fault? I reject that notion. After your accusatory letter, and a provable lie about peaceful protests, you come to the heart of what it’s all about for you!

President Donald Trump!Funny how over the course of

244 years since the founding of our country, the person who has only three years and five months in

public office, is more responsible for divisive race relations in America than anyone who came before him.

But, since the 1960s, this coun-try has been predominately gov-erned by leftists. Year after year, and election after election, they have promised new reforms and policies, all intended to heal “America’s original sin.” There have been six decades of Demo-crat policies that have failed. But it took a president who was only in office three years to lower unem-ployment for everyone including minorities, specifically African Americans, to the lowest it’s been in 50 years!

This has stalled since the virus from communist China caused the self-imposed house arrest for an entire nation.

Here are some facts that speak for themselves, that only require a Google search. No need for propa-ganda web sites.

Mayors and police chiefs since 1960 in Washington; New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; Min-neapolis; and every major city in America – they’ve all been pre-dominately run by leftist Demo-crats for more than 50 years.

Contrast President Donald Trump’s 31/2 years with 29 con-gresspeople and their 717 years, and you want to talk about a divid-er in chief? Barack Obama has 11 years as a senator and as president.

The murder of anybody in police custody is a tragedy and a crime, but blaming 234 million people just to clear your con-science of your confessed racism is wrong!

Legislators need to break out of 6-step budget cycleW

yoming legislators have what they obvi-ously think is a fool-proof plan to avoid

ever having to address Wyoming’s state budget crisis, and they’ve been enacting it for years.

Here’s how it works:Step 1: Avoid talking about taxes

or any other way to raise revenue in an election year. Say some vague things about “cutting excess spending” and “making the gov-ernment more efficient.”

Step 2: Wait until the January, after you’ve been safely elected or re-elected, to start acknowledging the problem of an “all cuts, no new revenue stream” budget.

Step 3: When the legislative ses-sion starts in February, complain that everything has been rushed and you can’t possibly be expected to enact legislation to fix the prob-lem without having enough infor-mation and time to really understand it.

Step 4: Call for a study or report to be done.

Step 5: Carefully file away and ignore the study or report, then run out the clock on the non-elec-tion year.

Step 6: Start campaigning in the election year again and repeat all previous steps.

It’s an effective way to talk about the budget crisis we’re in without ever having to take personal re-sponsibility to solve it. Lawmakers say all the right things to show that they’re concerned about the situa-tion, but never have to sully their voting record with any specific ac-tion, and they sail into the next election cycle with the dreaded word “taxes” never passing their lips.

It isn’t so much kicking the can down the road as it is placing the can in a hamster wheel so that the can is constantly moving without ever getting anywhere.

While it’s been working for the past decade or so, it is obvious that it can no longer work – not with bud-get deficits predicted to be as high as $1.5 billion over the next two years. But apparently no one has told the legislators that. Because even while we’re facing a deficit of unimaginable proportions, our current leaders are trotting out the same old game plan. It’s clear that they were hoping to never have to come to this point and are unpre-

pared now that we’re here.No one could have foreseen the

double-whammy of COVID-19 and the bottom falling out of the oil market. But people did foresee the looming trouble of an economy based on the diminishing returns from the mineral extraction indus-try, and the cycle of Steps 1 through 6 has occurred for de-cades, as each legislator hopes that they can wring just one more ses-sion out of the electorate before they are asked to make the most unpopular choices. They return again and again to the old favorite: the spectre of a bloated, misappro-priated government budget and an admonition to “trim the fat” from the spending.

Well, as any rancher knows, there is only so much fat on an ani-mal before you hit something vital. We are long past the point where being more mindful about our paper clips and decreasing travel budgets for training would suffice as a stopgap measure. We have cut the fat from the budget, and now that COVID-19 has hit, we’re al-ready cutting into the meat. We are seeing the fallout of sparse budgets being asked to cut even

more – people losing their jobs, vital services being left unfunded and infrastructure needs going unaddressed.

When lawmakers are talking about budget cuts now, they aren’t talking about inefficiencies. They’re talking about people. Peo-ple who have important jobs that will be left unfilled. People who contribute to our local economies who will have no money to do so. People who are part of our com-munities who will have to move in order to find new positions. They are talking about deliberately weakening the pool of talent, skills and creativity that we can draw from to find new solutions to problems.

We need those new solutions now more than ever, and we’re in-creasingly disappointed when we turn to our government officials for answers. COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on our economy, but it is only worsening an already dire situation.

A few weeks ago, we asked can-didates to present us with clear, specific policies and action items that would help us through these hard times. So far, most of them

have responded with Steps 1 through 6. They are not only refus-ing to make the hard choices, they are refusing to even talk about making them.

They will not consider obvious steps that will help both the econo-my and the health of citizens like Medicaid expansion. And they are refusing to draft bills that will prompt important discussions like a small increase in property taxes, let alone vote on them. Instead, they insist on chasing the mirage of revitalizing the extraction in-dustry, as if our state halving min-eral service taxes (budget crisis who?) will miraculously turn around a global market force.

The mineral extraction industry was a fantastic provider of both jobs and revenue for many years, but those years have long since passed. It is time for legislators to take responsibility and do their jobs, even if that makes them unpopular.

We’re tired of Steps 1 through 6. Either legislators need a new plan, or we need new legislators.

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