Letters To The Editor
HIGHER EDUCATION
Palouse universities first rate
As a University of Idaho student, I was quite disappointed in “Yearning to be accepted” (March 26). The statement that high school personnel have to find “the silver lining for those (students) who settle for state schools they applied to as a backup” struck a discordant bell with many University of Idaho students who attend this school as their first choice.
Contrary to the apparent beliefs of The Spokesman-Review, students like Mischa Guenther, who “ended up at Washington State University,” find a high-quality education both within and outside the classroom on the Palouse. Consider the following activities within one small sector of university life.
The University of Idaho was one of eight finalists for national “School of the Year” last year. That is the highest honor bestowed by the National Association of College and University Residence Halls (NACURH).
Last February, University of Idaho students hosted a regional leadership development conference with students from nine Intermountain states and provinces in attendance. WSU held a similar conference for students from seven Pacific states and provinces.
While these accomplishments show the strength of student groups at both campuses, individuals also excel. In the same two years, two Palouse students have held positions on NACURH’s national board of directors, and one student became national chairman.
I hope students who choose to attend Palouse schools don’t feel like second class citizens. Remember, this letter only addresses residence hall activities; clubs, fraternities and sororities all have won like awards that set them apart from their peers, and make the Palouse schools truly outstanding. Eben Sutton Moscow, Idaho
EWU administration overpaid now
Your recently published article (“EWU raises granted despite freeze,” March 28) regarding the salaries of Eastern Washington University administrators was startling.
I am presently enrolled at Eastern as a nontraditional student, which means that I elected to expose myself to the real world before entering academia. In all of many experiences during the 10 years I was out of school, I failed to encounter a more disorganized organization than the one represented by Eastern’s present administration.
I believe those in Eastern’s administration need to be reminded why they receive their salaries.
The administration’s purpose is to serve the university. The university exists to serve the students so that graduates can be an asset to the state and, ultimately, to the nation. It’s not the other way around.
Call me old fashioned, but wouldn’t it be nice if the people receiving these huge paychecks were to do something to justify receiving them? Christopher Smart Spokane
FEDERAL DEFICIT
Keep oinkers at bay
I have been watching in amazement as the little piggies swarming round the overflowing federal trough squeal and throw tantrums.
Embattled Democrats are standing at the lunch room door ready to ward off the terrible Newt as he rushes in to snatch the Twinkie from Junior’s mouth. Using children in this way is unconscionable.
Relax. I have a secret to tell you. The Republicans are using the same crazy budgeting methods as the Democrats do. It’s called base line budgeting. In this method, last year’s budget is used, automatically adding 10 percent to each item. Any cuts are in the 10 percent increase.
Democrats wanted to cut 4.5 percent from the school lunch increase. Republicans voted to cut 5.5 percent.
All this propaganda and yelling is over a 1 percent difference in opinion. Only in Washington, D.C., would an increase be called a cut.
If this baby step causes such a furor, we’ll never get a handle on our deficit. We have to do more cutting than this, folks. Write your congressmen and tell them to stand up to the piggies. Winifred Edwards Greenacres
FORESTS/ENVIRONMENT
GOP engineering total sellout
Thanks for J. Todd Foster’s timely article about the politicians’ plans to open up our public forests to massive logging (Spokesman-Review, March 27). The high-sounding titles of their proposals, “Forest Health and Restoration Act” and “Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act,” are smokescreens. Their true objective is to bypass environmental laws.
Republicans said little about environmental issues during the last election, but it’s very clear that hidden in their Contract With America were plans to dismantle existing environmental laws. Cheered on by the corporate sponsors of the so-called wise use movement and encouraged by the public’s and media’s initial silence, the perpetrators’ boldness became madness.
They’re attacking every environmental safeguard, including the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Air Act and every conservation act currently in effect. Should they successfully repeal or restructure these laws, they will surely lead this nation back to the days of Love Canal, burning rivers and “Silent Spring.”
Never have the Republicans made it so obvious that their party is for the rich and for big business. They want to cut all social services but let the benefits for corporate America stand. They tell us it’s good for the wage earners to keep a 100-year-old mining law and a forest management program that has cost taxpayers billions of dollars.
Republicans crow loudly that all environmental laws must meet their cost-benefit analysis. But the result will only mean bigger benefits for big business at all costs. Johan Bahlmann Spokane
Facts lost in the woods
J. Todd’s Foster’s March 19 article is, at best, inaccurate and biased. Foster’s claim that the Forest Service receipts were $62.83 per thousand board feet on Boise National Forest land is false, according to the Forest Service.
The figure is more in the neighborhood of $250 per thousand. The timber sale planned cost is reasonably close at $65 per thousand but planning costs a few years ago were about $5 per thousand.
I’m not faulting the price of putting up a sale, but let’s just remember how the cost got so high. The forest planning Todd wants is very extensive, taking in all of the things he worries about, i.e. water quality, erosion, animal habitat, riparian areas and roads. All cost a lot of time and money. When you get exactly what you want, don’t complain about the price.
Let’s remember, too, the way the timber money is used: for school construction; road construction and repair; employment; and state and federal taxes, not to mention the benefit to the forest from removing the fuel load. The methods used in logging now bear little resemblance to logging methods of 15-20 years ago.
I don’t know where Foster found these smokejumpers who said salvage didn’t help prevent hotter fires. I’ve spent my share of time on the fire line and I can say from experience that it sure does make a difference.
This is just one more example of inner-city consumers who can’t stand the idea that in order for us to consume, someone has to produce. Gary M. Garrison Kettle Falls, Wash.
Salvage foe pushes hidden agenda
I see John Osborn is at it again (“Waste - what corporations plan to do,” Letters, March 30). After the devastating fires last summer - to which his Inland Empire Public Lands Council (IEPLC) contributed by blocking the salvage of dead and dying timber with appeals and lawsuits - I didn’t think he’d have the gall to make public statements about forestry again.
Most of the timber harvested in public forests, including salvage, must go to small business. Regulations require it. Even the part that goes to large mills is harvested and hauled by small contractors. Big timber companies like Plum Creek and the Inland Empire Paper Co. - owned by the Cowles family, which also owns The Spokesman-Review - have their own timber. They’re getting rich from higher timber prices caused by closing public forests even to salvage.
Salvaging timber will improve forest health and reduce fires. It will also help small contractors and consumers. It will actually hurt big corporations by reducing timber prices.
Osborn’s baseless charge is a smokescreen to hide something. His Forest Watch and IEPLC are funded by multibillion-dollar, tax-exempt East Coast, Seattle and San Francisco foundations to provide some people with fantasy fulfillment and a few with unlimited wilderness solitude, regardless of the harm to the forest or the people in the West outside the major metropolitan areas. Edwin G. Davis Spokane
Wilderness bill ridiculous
Thank you for alerting me to the tyranny of HR852 in the recent “Wilderness” supplement. It will give me the opportunity to contact my congressional representatives in protest.
I was shocked - but not surprised - that this bill was sponsored by a Democrat from New York. I hope everyone reads this piece of political propaganda and responds.
No one appreciates wildlife and forests any more than I do. We are amply blessed with both here in rural Stevens County. But let’s be reasonable.
In Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address there are two particularly notable passages: “… conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” (Note that all men, not all species are created equal.) And “…that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” The key word here is people. Not owls, not trees, not salmon.
Many environmentalists, while well meaning, have fallen victim to group-think philosophy as a result of constant exposure to only their skewed viewpoint. Those of us who see the danger of the federal government dictating to the states how resources may or may not be used and conserved need to be vigilant to protect our state from this form of totalitarianism. Patricia R. Abson Addy, Wash.
Paper wrong to oppose industry
The Spokesman-Review has given the anti-logging faction a very loud voice while portraying the timber industry as a bunch of greedy corporations that have no concern for the ongoing health of our forests. It would be nice to see a more balanced viewpoint.
I challenge The Spokesman-Review to do an in-depth study of the entire economic impact of salvage logging sales before portraying them as a bad deal for taxpayers. There’s never mention of the ripple-down economic impacts to our region and the country of making logs available to our region’s sawmills from the national forests.
The cost of a sale is only a small part of the total picture. Having logs available keeps mills running and keeps people employed. These people pay taxes. They buy goods and services. That keeps others in jobs. Those people also pay taxes, and it keeps on going.
Also, timber sales bring to our school districts money that would otherwise come out of our pockets.
If all impacts were considered, logging would be viewed in a different light.
The Northwest is a major provider of lumber and paper products to our country. The timber resource which makes this possible is renewable and, if properly managed, will be part of our economic backbone for many years to come. The economies of almost every community in the region are dependent on the timber industry in a large way.
The Spokesman can play a deciding role in how our local economy turns by reporting timber issues in a responsible manner. Mark Kobylarz Newport, Wash.
PEOPLE IN SOCIETY
Abortion not crime prevention
The excuses that all of us have heard to justify the act of abortion never cease to amaze me. E.P. Shields (Letters, March 26) uses the unproven excuse of crime prevention as a good reason to take the life of an innocent child.
Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, women have chosen to take the lives of more than 28 million babies.
There is a vast difference between an unwanted child and an unwanted pregnancy. Over 1.4 million babies are aborted every year. Fewer than 100,000 babies are put up for adoption every year. For almost every child aborted today there is a family eager to provide a home.
What is the real reason for abortion? I suggest that it is not the unwanted child but the selfishness of the unwanted pregnancy. Where is the choice of the child?
There are no facts to support the notion that the criminal of today was an unwanted child. Abusive parents will fight to keep their children.
Facts show that the answer to an unwanted child is adoption, not abortion. We cannot judge as to the positive or negative impact an unborn baby would have on the world.
E.P. Shields stated that he had made this choice and hadn’t lost any sleep over it. I find it very disturbing that he can exterminate the life of another human being so casually and without remorse. Crystal Clark Veradale
‘Legacy’ assumptions troubling
In response to “A legacy of violence,” by John Brennan (IN Life, April 2):
I become concerned when I see the perpetuation of misconceptions of the abused child/abusive parent syndrome. It is often based on the observation that when an abusive person is evaluated, it is usually discovered that that person suffered abuse as a child. Therefore, logic follows that abused children become abusers. This is a fallacy based on generalization. Using this logic, the fact that all roses are flowers would require all flowers to be roses.
Studies by Joan Kaufman and Edward Zigler, psychologists at Yale, concluded that approximately 30 percent of the time the abuse is repeated from one generation to the next. This belies the “simple truth” Brennan refers to, that we repeat the violence that’s done to us.
I also dispute his reference to the “jewels of denial.”
While denial is very unhealthy, one cannot assume that a forgiving statement such as “they did the best they could with the resources they had” means the victim is forgetting the abuse. I believe it’s just as unhealthy to be unforgiving and to carry hate and resentment toward the abuser as it is to deny it. The healthiest path to recovery is to forgive and remember.
Many formerly abused people are doing their best to be good parents and have healthy relationships. They perhaps spend more time reading, researching, counseling and working at mental health than those who grew up in functional environments.
Please don’t further victimize them with stereotypes and prejudice. Tisha Mattingly Spokane
PIZZA AND PROTECTION
Security at too high a price
For years I had heard from various family members and friends what a fun place Chuck E. Cheese is to visit. When my family was finally able to patronize this place, we found it every bit as amusing and fun as I’d been told.
What a shock to learn from Doug Clark’s column (March 27) of Chuck E. Cheese’s SS tactics of numbering all the inmates so that all within a particular group would be classified as belonging to that like-numbered group. Now I suppose some idiot will find some way of circumventing Chuck E. Cheese’s well-meaning but ill-placed security system of preventing kidnappings and stage an incident just to say, “fooled you!”
Well, as Clark said, what about grocery stores, clothing stores, the laundromat or even the doctor’s office? When will America wake up and see what is really happening to the consumers’ freedom?
Should I be afraid to come to Spokane to shop and eat and risk having some store or restaurant personnel point some device at me and ask my child if I’m kidnapping her?
So long, Chuck E. Cheese. We’ve lost our appetite and desire for your particular establishment. You Gestapos can have it. Constance L. Brenner Republic, Wash.
Don’t drop security for kids
I sincerely hope that Chuck E. Cheese does not discontinue its security check designed to protect our children because of one arrogant mother and a Spokesman-Review columnist who ridicules this security endeavor and who has insulted hundreds of Spokane parents and grandparents. He calls them “paranoid” because they appreciate Chuck E. Cheese’s concern for our children’s safety. Jim Nell Spokane