Letters To The Editor

NURSING CARE

Criticisms utterly groundless

This is in answer to Steven Stoddard’s letter of July 22. He is a certified nursing assistant (CNA) who complained about Holy Family Hospital nurses, their lack of bedside manner and lack of quality care for patients without expensive health insurance. He also thought the difference in pay scales for registered nurses and certified nursing assistants was out of line.

I am a CNA who had major surgery, outpatient surgery and innumerable trips to the emergency room at Holy Family last year. I also went through major surgery at Sacred Heart this year. Because of my medical problems, I am on public assistance. I think I am well qualified to answer Mr. Stoddard’s charges.

I had the finest in nursing care from both hospitals. Were I to be offered $1 million to find one nurse to complain about, I could not in honesty do so. The fact I did not have expensive health insurance had no bearing on my care.

Finally, Mr. Stoddard, your training as a CNA took approximately one month. Nurses go through a minimum of two years training, and most continue their education throughout their career. Given their responsibilities, which you do not have, it’s clear their salaries are well earned. I am not devaluing your contribution to patient care, Mr. Stoddard. But look at your title: certified nursing assistant. Linda Valentine Spokane

Attack on nurses uncalled for

After reading Steven Stoddard’s letter (“Nurse assistants undervalued,” July 22) about the nurses at Holy Family Hospital, I feel certain items need to be clarified.

I, sir, am a nurse at Holy Family and I do not have a rude bedside manner. Nor do I have the time to eat popcorn all day, as you seem to think.

I am busy providing the best patient care possible. I spend my days running from one patient to the next, from one crisis to the next. Maybe a scared child in for sutures in one room, an elderly man who’s just had a stroke and isn’t able to communicate in the next, a bad fracture in the third, asthma attack next, or maybe we’ve just had a cardiac arrest come in. If I am able to even get lunch or a break, then we’ve had a good day.

You say that you do three quarters of the work. I find that hard to believe. Can you pass medications, start IVs, watch cardiac monitors, take doctor’s orders, do treatments, run codes, defibrillate patients or draw blood? Do you have to attend continuing education to keep your license, pass state board exams and have three to five years of college? We do.

Since when do nurses have anything to do with whether or not you have insurance? I don’t ask for that information, nor do I care.

You, sir, were unjustified in your attack on Holy Family’s nurses and we deserve an apology. Sue McCoury Airway Heights

CNAs’ situation not as stated

This is in response to the letter by the nursing assistant who is very misundervalued:

Apparently, this individual did not quite understand what he was reading regarding the nurses at Holy Family. You really have to look at the whole picture.

I am a certified nursing assistant at Holy Family Hospital. I can most definitely say the registered nurses do not make four times my pay. CNAs do a lot of work, but at Holy Family we are well taken care of. We have lots of benefits, to boot.

I figure, if you are not making the money you choose to make, look for employment elsewhere. Nursing homes in the Spokane area do pay barely over minimum wage; I know, I was there just eight months ago.

Only each individual can benefit himself by going to school. The higher the education, the better the job. RNs deserve what they have asked for, to benefit us all at Holy Family.

Also, the quality of patient care at Holy Family is of the highest level, regardless of a patient’s race, color, ethnic background or insurance. It upsets me someone would write such a letter because he is angry over his pay. He is telling the wrong folks. T.A. Shields Spokane

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

We salute Cobra coaching staff

We have two girls, ages 10 and 12, who played softball this season in the Spokane Youth Softball Association. This letter is about their experience.

There do exist in this community role models and heroes. We are referring to the Cobra’s coaching staff - a father and daughter team by the name of Jim and Liz Rupprecht, and their assistant, Gary Benjamin. These folks are great leaders, teachers and role models.

They teach good softball fundamentals and team spirit. They help each girl build self-confidence and self-esteem. But much more than this, they teach the good character of doing the right thing. They put good sportsmanship before good skills. They put the group ahead of the individual.

These fine people teach and coach much more than youth ball; they teach life skills and fundamental right. The girls on this team will all be better people because of them. They are heroes. The Cobra girls now have the basic life skills and the proper attitude to make them all first place in life. Patrick and Robin Meacham Spokane

POLITICAL CARTOONISTS

Priggee - Is he necessary?

I don’t understand the Milt Priggee cartoon on the July 25 Opinion page. Is he insulting a jury or the jury system of justice? Does he know that juries don’t pick themselves, the evidence they see or the instructions they are given and must follow?

Does Milt Priggee know anything at all?

This cartoon could not possibly make any sense to any rational person. Why do you print these things, anyway? Is having an in-house political cartoonist an absolute necessity for The Spokesman-Review?

Please go back to what you were doing before Milt Priggee, and just wait for someone with talent and intelligence to come along. I really don’t think anybody will object. Mike Schuler Spokane

‘Hatemongering poison’ intolerable

Saturday’s inane pollution from Milt Priggee asserts that to be a Republican who questions affirmative action is to be a member of the repugnant KKK.

What about the noted philosopher-economist Thomas Sowell, a black man. Is he too now a Klansman because he believes affirmative action inimical to his race?

What about the wonderful 104-year-old Delany sisters, former slaves, who speak out against affirmative action. Does Priggee now dress them, too, in dunce-capped white sheets? I can think of no more despicable and undeserved insult to the courageous life of these extraordinary women.

The publishers of our Spokesman-Review, by printing such hatemongering poison, place themselves arm in arm with the likes of the Klan, Aryan Nations and other cultural assassins.

Our community should not permit the publishers of the Review to hide behind the assertion that the opinion is Priggee’s, not the paper’s. The Review is the publisher of venom. The Review becomes the instrument of Priggee’s assassination.

Anyone can destroy. It takes leadership, perspiration and courage to build. It is an unworthy abuse of its monopoly that our community’s only newspaper finds such profit in mean-spirited destruction when it has every opportunity to ennoble itself and ennoble our community by working toward building understanding and enlightenment.

There is an honest debate that affirmative action may in the long run hurt most those it seeks to help. I invite the Review to purge itself of venality and join responsible adults in the debate. Rich Kuhling Spokane

Quit blaming it all on cult

Milt Priggee’s July 26 cartoon was extremely irresponsible.

Ever since the raid and siege at Waco there has been an attitude that the Branch Davidians were the cause of the entire disaster. The evidence is now very clear the federal government brought this bloody siege to a fiery end. To say or imply otherwise is to grossly misrepresent the facts.

The fire was caused by the second application of tear gas. The first was administered by tanks with booms attached. The second application was in the form of small football-sized canisters launched from U.S. military bradly vehicles. Every time these canisters, called ferret rounds, have been used in closed spaces they have erupted violently into flames.

The government agents may or may not have known this. But one thing is for sure: the people who set that awful fire were not the Davidians, as Milt Priggee would imply.

We need to address the fact that there are people in the U.S. government who are out of control. Ruby Ridge and Waco are two examples. The public needs to know the truth about what happened in both of these instances.

Milt Priggee’s cartoon propagates a myth that clouds what really went on at Waco. David Rea Spokane

Asay work witless, omnipresent

I left Colorado Springs two years ago and thought that I was finally free of, among other things, Chuck Asay’s maddeningly imbecilic political cartoons. In my four years as a subscriber to the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph, I can’t say that I ever found any of his work to be even humorous, even though I agreed with some of the points he attempted to make in his own witless and uninspired way.

Imagine my surprise to find him a regular feature of your fine publication. Is there no escape? Graham Whitehouse Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Social Security only needs adjusting

Ulla Graham overlooks some important factors in her analysis of Social Security (Frank Bartel column, July 23). Social Security is an insurance program, not just a retirement program. It insures against loss of earnings due to death or disability as well as retirement. Monthly checks are received by 3 million children, 2.8 million disabled workers, 5 million widowers/widows and 31 million retirees.

The Social Security trust fund is invested in interestpaying government notes earning over $30 billion in interest in 1995. The suggestion that some reserves be invested privately to earn a higher return is worth consideration.

Radical overhaul isn’t necessary. Some suggested options, each sufficient to ensure the long-term financial solvency of Social Security, are:

1. From 2010, gradually increase the payroll tax each 10 years to 7.4 percent in 2070 for each employee and employer.

2. Beginning in 2000, gradually reduce benefits for high and average earners by 16 percent, increase wages subject to tax from a projected $76,000 to $114,000 and increase the portion of benefits taxed at 85 percent for individuals with incomes of $25,000 or for couples, $32,000.

3. By 2000 increase the number of work years in benefit calculation 40. By 2027, complete rise of normal retirement age to 69 for workers born after 1943.

4. Accelerate phase-in of retirement age to 67 by 2015. Beginning in 2020 increase payroll taxes to 7 percent. In 2000 reduce initial benefits slightly for high and average wage earners. Make a one-time .5 percent COLA cut. Increase the portion of benefits taxed to a maximum of 85 percent for singles with an income of $25,000 or for couples, $32,000. Stan Robinson, president Senior Legislative Coalition of Eastern Washington

Turn back ban on Freon

There’s a heat wave going on. Hundreds of people are dying, many for lack of air conditioning. How many more would have died if there wasn’t air conditioning?

We better think about that seriously because air conditioning and refrigeration units use Freon. Federal law bans the manufacture of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) after the end of this year.

The U.S. government would ban CFCs in spite of the lack of scientific evidence to justify such a disruptive and expensive move. The price will skyrocket even more once the ban on production goes into effect and the remaining supply dwindles.

Consumers will be forced to have older equipment adapted for new substitutes or purchase new equipment. Older model cars can’t use the substitute Suva, for instance, unless the air conditioning system is adapted to accept it - a cost of $300 to $1,000. The rising price of Freon has spurred a black market in the chemical. Law enforcement officials say it has become the most lucrative contraband after illicit drugs.

There is hope. More states need to follow the lead of Arizona, which passed a bill allowing possession, use, manufacture, purchase, installation, transportation or sale of CFCs in Arizona. Arizona argues it’s lunacy to ban CFCs without have demonstrated the ozone layer is being depleted or that manmade CFCs have had a discernible effect on the amount of ozone in the stratosphere.

Contact your elected representatives and demand the rest of us will be able to have air conditioning and refrigeration at a cost we can afford. Betty L. White Tonasket

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Find and enjoy your own way

When will people begin to worry more about their own lives than about the lives of others? I don’t see the answer within my lifetime, not even beyond.

If people would put as much time into concentrating on their own lives as on the lives of strangers we would have an improved value system along with a well-rounded group of people on our fine, although morally diminishing, earth.

I am a firm believer in pro-choice in most every circumstance, although I become concerned when directly affected by another’s behavior. Self-worth along with personal goals are what give our lives the momentum to seek a future.

I find it unthinkable to develop anxieties because of individuals I have no connection to. I am very satisfied with the direction I have chosen in life and am satisfied knowing others have chosen different paths. This is indeed what makes the world go around. Our differences and idiosyncrasies keep us interested in life and the pursuit of the perfect dream: utmost happiness.

So the next time you feel your stomach start to knot over another’s path, stop to be thankful for the wonderful people who do have a positive connection to you in your life and try to forget the lives of others. After all, to each his own.

So go on your merry way and enjoy your life and the lives of your dearly beloveds; to brighter, happier and more fulfilling lives. Stephanie Baker Medical Lake

It’s a matter of competition

Vaughn Simmons (Letters, July 26) claims affirmative action is discrimination, saying it is very difficult for a white man to get a job.

It is, indeed, more difficult for white men to find jobs because they now have competition from women and nonwhite men - something nearly unheard of 30 years ago. Carol May Spokane