Lower Columbia Area speaks up: Letters to the editor for the week of Mar. 28, 2025
- Updated
Our weekly round-up of letters published in the Daily News.
Trump's presidency is "Malice in Wonderland."
The “Wonderland” I am referring to is the imaginary Trump’s zero-sum world. The possibility of mutually beneficial transactions seems to be excluded.
As one of my favorite philosophers, Lily Tomlin, once noted “... reality is a collective hunch." But it is a widely shared hunch. A hunch that can be verified by actual data.
Not so with Trump’s view. He solves this problem by fantastical thinking. The verifiable content of his statements is usually zero. This is especially true with his magical views on tariffs.
Our last international trade war was in the 1930s and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were our weapon. After all sides joined the melee, world trade was greatly diminished. By 1933, U.S. exports had declined by 61%. World trade declined by almost 66% between 1929 and 1934. Economists and historians agree that this “war” deepened the Great Depression.
The inherent reciprocity in trade wars just enhances their negative effects. The shrinkage of markets assures that everyone loses. It is the ultimate negative sum game.
Combine this tariff policy with the promise of more tax cuts, and it is hard to avoid the inflationary fusion of these policies. It is a formula for a rerun of the 1970s stagflation.
This stagflation of rising prices and rising unemployment was very difficult to treat with orthodox monetary and fiscal measures, as they call for contradictory policies. Our extraction from that dilemma created both double digit interest rates and double digit unemployment rates.
Edward Phillips
Kalama
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
This is a letter I wish I could send to Elon Musk.
Dear Mr. Musk,
As a career civil servant, I received your email demanding I itemize five bullet points spelling out what I did last week. Here goes:
1. Wasted time receiving threatening email from a stranger asking me what I did last week.
2. Wasted time discussing this threatening email with my superior (who also received a threatening email).
3. Wasted time talking with my union rep about threatening emails coming from a stranger who is not part of our organization and has no idea of how we serve the public.
4. Wasted time talking with a reporter who heard about the threatening emails being sent by someone who apparently owns the POTUS.
5. Wasted time composing the demanded response to a threatening email (which you will never ever read).
Jump aboard one of your rockets Mr. Musk (paid for by the U.S. taxpayers) and good luck.
Wayne Winther
(not an actual government employee)
Kalama
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
The growing national debt is probably the greatest threat the United States faces.
Too many view the federal government as a cash cow with an infinite number of teats with always room for another suckling. This attitude is a significant part of the reason that the national debt has climbed to over $300,000 per taxpayer (Source: usdebtclock.org).
The spending of billions of borrowed cash daily will eventually collapse into a depression like none before. It has to stop and DOGE is on the right track.
To those who are howling about the cuts to programs, I have two questions:
1. Would they be willing to triple the amount of taxes they pay in order to save some of those programs?
2. If their taxes were tripled, would they want some assurance that the money was being spent effectively and efficiently?
I am certain that the answers would be NO to the first and hopefully YES to the second. Sadly, their perceived solution seems to be saying that the national debt is not really a problem or, if taxes need to be increased, just increase taxes on someone else.
Dan Myers
Kelso
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
The political right will continue to support the Trump/Musk shenanigans as long as the ensuing impact falls on faceless others.
However, once their 401k values tank, their social security payments are delayed or reduced, their Medicare/Medicaid is cut off, or the next pandemic costs the lives of their loved ones due to a poor or nonexistent Federal response, then and only then will you see how fast they change their minds about "TusK" (or is it "Mump"?).
The unempathetic couldn't care less until bad news arrives at their own door.
Jon Browne
Longview
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
The United Nations just released a report that says the Israeli occupation forces routinely tortured and raped male prisoners, and have intentionally targeted maternity care as well as the destruction of frozen embryos. Israel has blockaded food, water, medicine and electricity into Gaza.
Our Congress and president refuse to condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza despite the murder of 17,000 children and tens of thousands of Gazans. Congressional Republicans and Democrats rail against abortion but refuse to condemn the ongoing genocide by Israel.
The United States is clearly complicit with the mass deaths in Gaza. Our Congress and president should stand in the dock at The Hague with the Israeli president and defense minister.
Michael Phillips
Kalama
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
Upon the recent ascension of President Trump to the White House, a litany of changes to federal policy have been implemented — the most visible amongst them being the massive reductions to domestic spending programs.
While such cuts have been deemed a necessity by many fiscal conservatives to balance the nation’s woefully illy balanced budget, many are justly concerned about the consequences of such actions.
Perhaps the most alarming cut was announced March 7 when states were informed that the USDA’s Local Food for Schools Program would be suspended.
This program provided funding for states to purchase locally grown food to be served in schools.
The absence of this program will not only yield a decline in income for our local Southwest Washington farmers, but also worsen food insecurity for children across our schools.
Our government often speaks of the need to “make America great again,” but I fail to comprehend how a great country could institute a policy that strips away funding to provide our children with food. Is greatness watching children starve and local farms (the backbone of our rural economies) go bankrupt?
Ensuring that our nation’s youth have access to adequate supplies of food should not be a partisan issue, but one that brings us together. It is my hope that the big-city billionaires making these cuts recognize the importance of the Local Food for Schools Program to our children and farmers and promptly reverse course on this ill-advised idea.
Nicholas Marty
Vader
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
For my first time this spring, I was excited to take part in one of the oldest fishing traditions of the Columbia River Basin: eulachon smelt dipping.
But alas, after a disappointing three hours of unproductive smelt dipping, and the soggy realization that I had a hole in my waders, I went home empty-handed along with, as far as I can tell, every other recreational smelt dipper in Cowlitz County during the 2025 smelt season.
While following the progress of the season on social media to see if I wanted to try again, I was dismayed to see the angry and ridiculous comments of anglers who seemed convinced that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife was somehow conspiring against them to steal their money through licensing and maliciously setting the harvest times to purposely prevent anyone from getting fish.
It is well-documented that the eulachon smelt fishery collapsed almost totally in the 1990s, and the inter-agency management plans imposed shortly thereafter were written with conservative harvesting limits to ensure the species never faces the same sort of catastrophe ever again.
With wildly fluctuating annual runs that scientists still don’t fully understand, the management of this tasty species is inevitably going to be bumpy during this stage of recovery. The policies enacted by wildlife agencies that may seem inconvenient to us now are actually enacted to ensure the smelt stocks survive and thrive for us all to enjoy well into the future.
Andy parks
Longview
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
Olympia is now pushing for $78 billion in tax increases.
Liberal elite slush funds are being depleted by DOGE shutdown of USAID and ActBlue dollars.
So now they need to be replenished from your back pocket.
Grab your socks and hide your wallets, my hard working friends. Ferguson going to take us for a ride.
Robert Crocker
Chehalis
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln concluded his address to Congress with these words:
"Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We...will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.'
Speaking after Shiloh, after Antietam, but before Gettysburg, the Wilderness campaign, and Cold Harbor, through those bloody years our nation held firm, preserving the Union, and while leaving the freeman and women to the mercies of the unrepentant slave society, ended their chattel condition and stopped this horrid system from expanding.
Even before December 1941, our nation stepped up in honor to support those on the frontline against the resurfaced monstrosity of evil. And when war came to our doorsteps, America, including my father, answered the call.
And against the tyranny of the Soviet Union, our country again honored its commitment to democracy, and with the alliances it helped forge and maintain the free world stood firm, and with the fall of the Soviet Union welcomed the freed states into the western family with America serving as the City Upon the Hill.
Until now.
For on Feb. 28, in the White House Oval Office our current president and vice president marked our nation down for dishonor for generations.
Slava Ukraine.
Heroyam Slava.
John Andrechak
Longview
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
More like this...
Trump's presidency is "Malice in Wonderland."
The “Wonderland” I am referring to is the imaginary Trump’s zero-sum world. The possibility of mutually beneficial transactions seems to be excluded.
As one of my favorite philosophers, Lily Tomlin, once noted “... reality is a collective hunch." But it is a widely shared hunch. A hunch that can be verified by actual data.
Not so with Trump’s view. He solves this problem by fantastical thinking. The verifiable content of his statements is usually zero. This is especially true with his magical views on tariffs.
Our last international trade war was in the 1930s and the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were our weapon. After all sides joined the melee, world trade was greatly diminished. By 1933, U.S. exports had declined by 61%. World trade declined by almost 66% between 1929 and 1934. Economists and historians agree that this “war” deepened the Great Depression.
The inherent reciprocity in trade wars just enhances their negative effects. The shrinkage of markets assures that everyone loses. It is the ultimate negative sum game.
Combine this tariff policy with the promise of more tax cuts, and it is hard to avoid the inflationary fusion of these policies. It is a formula for a rerun of the 1970s stagflation.
This stagflation of rising prices and rising unemployment was very difficult to treat with orthodox monetary and fiscal measures, as they call for contradictory policies. Our extraction from that dilemma created both double digit interest rates and double digit unemployment rates.
Edward Phillips
Kalama
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
This is a letter I wish I could send to Elon Musk.
Dear Mr. Musk,
As a career civil servant, I received your email demanding I itemize five bullet points spelling out what I did last week. Here goes:
1. Wasted time receiving threatening email from a stranger asking me what I did last week.
2. Wasted time discussing this threatening email with my superior (who also received a threatening email).
3. Wasted time talking with my union rep about threatening emails coming from a stranger who is not part of our organization and has no idea of how we serve the public.
4. Wasted time talking with a reporter who heard about the threatening emails being sent by someone who apparently owns the POTUS.
5. Wasted time composing the demanded response to a threatening email (which you will never ever read).
Jump aboard one of your rockets Mr. Musk (paid for by the U.S. taxpayers) and good luck.
Wayne Winther
(not an actual government employee)
Kalama
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
The growing national debt is probably the greatest threat the United States faces.
Too many view the federal government as a cash cow with an infinite number of teats with always room for another suckling. This attitude is a significant part of the reason that the national debt has climbed to over $300,000 per taxpayer (Source: usdebtclock.org).
The spending of billions of borrowed cash daily will eventually collapse into a depression like none before. It has to stop and DOGE is on the right track.
To those who are howling about the cuts to programs, I have two questions:
1. Would they be willing to triple the amount of taxes they pay in order to save some of those programs?
2. If their taxes were tripled, would they want some assurance that the money was being spent effectively and efficiently?
I am certain that the answers would be NO to the first and hopefully YES to the second. Sadly, their perceived solution seems to be saying that the national debt is not really a problem or, if taxes need to be increased, just increase taxes on someone else.
Dan Myers
Kelso
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
The political right will continue to support the Trump/Musk shenanigans as long as the ensuing impact falls on faceless others.
However, once their 401k values tank, their social security payments are delayed or reduced, their Medicare/Medicaid is cut off, or the next pandemic costs the lives of their loved ones due to a poor or nonexistent Federal response, then and only then will you see how fast they change their minds about "TusK" (or is it "Mump"?).
The unempathetic couldn't care less until bad news arrives at their own door.
Jon Browne
Longview
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
The United Nations just released a report that says the Israeli occupation forces routinely tortured and raped male prisoners, and have intentionally targeted maternity care as well as the destruction of frozen embryos. Israel has blockaded food, water, medicine and electricity into Gaza.
Our Congress and president refuse to condemn the ongoing genocide in Gaza despite the murder of 17,000 children and tens of thousands of Gazans. Congressional Republicans and Democrats rail against abortion but refuse to condemn the ongoing genocide by Israel.
The United States is clearly complicit with the mass deaths in Gaza. Our Congress and president should stand in the dock at The Hague with the Israeli president and defense minister.
Michael Phillips
Kalama
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
Upon the recent ascension of President Trump to the White House, a litany of changes to federal policy have been implemented — the most visible amongst them being the massive reductions to domestic spending programs.
While such cuts have been deemed a necessity by many fiscal conservatives to balance the nation’s woefully illy balanced budget, many are justly concerned about the consequences of such actions.
Perhaps the most alarming cut was announced March 7 when states were informed that the USDA’s Local Food for Schools Program would be suspended.
This program provided funding for states to purchase locally grown food to be served in schools.
The absence of this program will not only yield a decline in income for our local Southwest Washington farmers, but also worsen food insecurity for children across our schools.
Our government often speaks of the need to “make America great again,” but I fail to comprehend how a great country could institute a policy that strips away funding to provide our children with food. Is greatness watching children starve and local farms (the backbone of our rural economies) go bankrupt?
Ensuring that our nation’s youth have access to adequate supplies of food should not be a partisan issue, but one that brings us together. It is my hope that the big-city billionaires making these cuts recognize the importance of the Local Food for Schools Program to our children and farmers and promptly reverse course on this ill-advised idea.
Nicholas Marty
Vader
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
For my first time this spring, I was excited to take part in one of the oldest fishing traditions of the Columbia River Basin: eulachon smelt dipping.
But alas, after a disappointing three hours of unproductive smelt dipping, and the soggy realization that I had a hole in my waders, I went home empty-handed along with, as far as I can tell, every other recreational smelt dipper in Cowlitz County during the 2025 smelt season.
While following the progress of the season on social media to see if I wanted to try again, I was dismayed to see the angry and ridiculous comments of anglers who seemed convinced that the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife was somehow conspiring against them to steal their money through licensing and maliciously setting the harvest times to purposely prevent anyone from getting fish.
It is well-documented that the eulachon smelt fishery collapsed almost totally in the 1990s, and the inter-agency management plans imposed shortly thereafter were written with conservative harvesting limits to ensure the species never faces the same sort of catastrophe ever again.
With wildly fluctuating annual runs that scientists still don’t fully understand, the management of this tasty species is inevitably going to be bumpy during this stage of recovery. The policies enacted by wildlife agencies that may seem inconvenient to us now are actually enacted to ensure the smelt stocks survive and thrive for us all to enjoy well into the future.
Andy parks
Longview
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
Olympia is now pushing for $78 billion in tax increases.
Liberal elite slush funds are being depleted by DOGE shutdown of USAID and ActBlue dollars.
So now they need to be replenished from your back pocket.
Grab your socks and hide your wallets, my hard working friends. Ferguson going to take us for a ride.
Robert Crocker
Chehalis
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln concluded his address to Congress with these words:
"Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We...will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.'
Speaking after Shiloh, after Antietam, but before Gettysburg, the Wilderness campaign, and Cold Harbor, through those bloody years our nation held firm, preserving the Union, and while leaving the freeman and women to the mercies of the unrepentant slave society, ended their chattel condition and stopped this horrid system from expanding.
Even before December 1941, our nation stepped up in honor to support those on the frontline against the resurfaced monstrosity of evil. And when war came to our doorsteps, America, including my father, answered the call.
And against the tyranny of the Soviet Union, our country again honored its commitment to democracy, and with the alliances it helped forge and maintain the free world stood firm, and with the fall of the Soviet Union welcomed the freed states into the western family with America serving as the City Upon the Hill.
Until now.
For on Feb. 28, in the White House Oval Office our current president and vice president marked our nation down for dishonor for generations.
Slava Ukraine.
Heroyam Slava.
John Andrechak
Longview
Letters to the editor policy:
Letters should be original and no longer than 250 words. Letters must include the author’s name, street address or telephone number for verification. The newspaper does not share that information with third parties. Only the name and city of residence are published. One submission can print per month. All submissions are subject to editing for length, spelling, grammar and clarity. Send submissions to letters@tdn.com or The Daily News, PO Box 1666, Longview, WA 98632.
More like this...
Most Popular
-
Report: Woman raped in Oregon Way Tavern parking lot
-
Update: 1 dies in Longview stabbing, while suspect at large
-
UPDATE: Longview police: At-large stabbing suspect knew victims
-
Cowlitz County restaurant inspections | Longview sushi eatery cleared to open
-
Masked officers in unmarked cars detain man in Longview
