Letters to the Editor

Increase funding for lab-grown meat

Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell have the opportunity to help alleviate a tremendous amount of nonhuman suffering by increasing funding for cultivated-meat research. For those who aren’t aware, cultivated meat is grown from animal cells, without slaughter. We can start to put the era of killing sentient beings for food behind us.

The private sector has made excellent progress developing this revolutionary protein, but public money is necessary to help bring it to market as fast as possible. One remaining hurdle is bringing production costs down so cultivated meat can better challenge the price of slaughtered meat. Our legislators should support this goal.

Jon Hochs-

chartner

– Granby, Conn.

Gazette stands for the truth

I would like to congratulate you and your staff for standing for the truth.

I get the Lewiston and Spokane daily newspapers, which are biased to the liberal Democrat party. You’re guest editorials are right on target with the real truth (i.e. truth about trying to remove the dams, to save a few fish and restore Indian rights). If we did that, our electrical rates would go sky high, not unlike the fuel costs when Democrats shut down the Keystone and other pipelines and coal mines.

Democrats say we need to prevent carbon in the air. Shutting the dams down would increase carbon, because all the logs and wheat would then have to be hauled to the coast by truck or train.

Last week’s guest column exposed the “Demorats” (whoops) for trying to tell us that we would be spending 2 cents more per gallon in the name of climate control when it will actually cost us $1.57 per gallon and more.

You also had a good column exonerating President Donald J. Trump a few months back. I consider Mr. Trump our greatest president ever and Obama and Biden the two worst we’ve ever had, and I was born in the early Roosevelt days.

Keep up the good work.

Duane Mickelsen, D.V.M.

– Pullman

Guns do kill people

Who has more mental problems – perpetrators of gun violence or congressional Republicans, including our own Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who lack normal compassion and regard for human life, even of young children?

Congressional Republicans have once again copped out of their responsibility to do anything significant to stop mass killings by effectively acting only on mental illness measures. At the least, their social-emotional development has been severely stunted.

Using the Second Amendment of the Constitution as their crutch, they ignore its original intention to make certain that southern colonies would join the union by assuring white militias for squelching slave mutiny. By their “well-regulated militia”, the founders undoubtedly didn’t envision the country-wide, out-of-control proliferation of expert killing machines that indiscriminately eliminate its own people.

Whatever the mental health of the perpetrator, using an assault weapon or high-capacity magazine hugely increases the number of people killed; so the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 to 2004 should be revived, at a minimum. Opposing that indicates a mentally unhealthy lack of compassion and regard for the sanctity of human life.

Yes, guns do kill people. Our extreme availability of guns make it the easiest method of killing people, guaranteeing the greatest finality. Contrast this with murder and mass killing rates in countries with stricter gun control laws. For example, recently the Japanese people were shocked that someone (former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe) could be killed by a gun; not surprisingly, it was self-made rather than purchased.

Norm Luther

– Spokane