Letters To The Editor
SPOKANE MATTERS
Lipe proposal deserves fair chance
What? Join neighbors and police officers together to form a community-oriented police substation on Boone in the West Central neighborhood? It will never work! How will it be staffed? How will it be paid for? The chief will never be support it!
Sound familiar? When the COPS program in Spokane was in its infancy, just a concept struggling to see reality, who stood up, took the bull by the horns and made it happen? Mr. and Mrs. Bob Lipe. The COPS program in Spokane is now modeled worldwide.
Now Mr. Lipe wants to spend his own money and use his own property to create a teen center in the West Central neighborhood. Yet the City Council, community center leaders and a few neighbors are adamantly against him.
These are the same people who wanted $10 million in taxpayer money, $400,000 per year in taxpayer subsidies and exclusive use of the Pavilion in Riverfront Park for the science center, “for the kids.”
Mr. Lipe, if the City Council lets you build it, they will come.
This teen center concept shows the same promise for success as your COPS program. Go for it! If not in West Central, other areas of town would welcome your civic patriotism and dedication.
The council is all too quick to label anyone asking questions or offering opposing viewpoints as “negative.” Well, now the shoe is on the other foot. Now who’s being negative? Ken Withey Spokane
School lunch management lacking
Re: your April 19 story on area school lunch programs.
It was stated more than half of students who eat school lunch get them for free or pay a reduced price. Food stamp eligibility is down to around 10 percent of the U.S. population. Calculating from your figures and based on the entire Spokane school population, lunch assistance is at 37.5 percent in grade school, 30 percent in middle school and 16.5 percent in high school.
We should reconsider eligibility requirements. In addition to the expense, isn’t it dangerous to make it so easy for so many students to accept public assistance as a daily part of their lives?
Second, why are up to 16 entrees being offered at area high schools? Food service director Rick Skinner discusses his subsidized program as if it were a business, justifying the number of entrees as providing his “customers” with choices so he can compete with their other options. Variety costs money. Economies of scale are lost, resulting in increased costs per meal.
If one discusses the lunch program as a business, one should apply sound business practices. Skinner’s methods bring to mind the story of two brothers who sell watermelons from their pickup truck for $1 each when the melons cost them $1.25. After two weeks of losing money, they finally determine that the only way to turn a profit is to buy a larger truck.
The sad part of the lunch program is that our money is buying the watermelons and the truck. Don McManus Spokane
Don’t dwell on past; Watch for success
Your coverage of recent Wismer Martin activities appears to be fair and balanced. Both the American economic system of corporate governance and the right of free press have been at work in this situation.
The Wismer Martin board has chosen to make substantial changes in the management structure. You have reported these events. The current CEO and president apparently had skeletons in their closets. Similarly, you have investigated, uncovered and reported these situations.
As the former CEO, I believe it is time for the current slate of officers and management to be allowed to apply their resources to run the company, service existing clients and sell to new clients. When their customers are well taken care of and employees are happy, shareholders will be handsomely rewarded.
The loyal outside shareholder base deserves a chance for increase in the value of their shares of stock. The current officers have committed results that will provide just that. Let’s give them a chance to do so. Support from the community will assist them in reaching goals they have publicly stated and reaffirmed: raising $2 million in equity and returning to maintainable profitability in the current quarter.
Although your reporting the events of their pasts is revealing and educational, Holden and Perez are accountable to Wismer Martin shareholders only for accomplishments at Wismer Martin. If they are successful, you will enjoy reporting the good news of their successes and your readership will find equal joy in recognizing them for their achievements. Stan Hatch Spokane
PEOPLE’S CHOICE
Sees no bombs on market shelves
Rep. Helen Chenoweth is puzzled by fuss over ties to militia? This certainly should be no surprise to anyone, as this is the same woman who couldn’t understand the fuss over dwindling salmon because she could still see canned salmon on the supermarket shelves.
A rocket scientist she is not. Ted Shepard Otis Orchards
Comfortable with stacked deck
Having attended Rep. Helen Chenoweth’s March 17 Congressional Task Force hearing on “The use of excessive force and the Second Amendment,” I find her attempts to distance herself from the Oklahoma bombing disingenuous, to say the least.
Look at the title of this Gingrich-appointed ad hoc task force. It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand the stamp of approval that Chenoweth and Gingrich tacitly give the extremist “wise use” groups and militias when they lump professional enforcement of federal wildlife and conservation laws with the need for citizens to take up arms against their government.
Chenoweth quoted Woodrow Wilson as an example of a respected statesman who supposedly believed the way she does. Wilson said that a government governs best if it maintains a healthy fear of its people. Chenoweth didn’t tell her audience the context of Wilson’s comments referred to the fear elected officials should have of the power of the ballot - not the personal threat of the ammo box.
The hearing presented only one extremist view of federal activities in the West. No balancing viewpoints were invited.
Testimony was limited to the Weaver incident, Waco and federal conservation law enforcement. Conspicuously absent were Hispanics and others testifying about the Immigration and Naturalization Service or other supposed “uses of excessive federal force.”
By supporting calls for state and local control of public lands and resources, Chenoweth fuels the most dangerous threat to our way of life since the Civil War. When will she open her eyes and recognize the Constitution she swore to uphold? Mark Solomon, vice president Idaho Conservation League, Moscow
THE ROAD LEADING TO HERE
Caught in the downside of progress
Our American ancestors believed in living life in proportion.
They hunted only for food. Clothes were made of cured hides. Bones were used for needles. They did not believe in wasting anything. The people lived in harmony and balance with nature.
Then the white man came and hunted the animals for profit, cut the trees, burned the fields. It did not stop there and it has gotten worse. Our groundwater is in danger. Our forests are being butchered and species of animals are becoming extinct. We cannot trust the food we are eating anymore because the meat is loaded with growth hormones and vegetables are being sprayed with chemicals.
We have mountains of garbage that we cannot get rid of and we are accepting more from other countries.
The worst is that in the pursuit of total power over mankind, we invented a bomb which could destroy everything alive on this planet. This deadly weapon did not come cheap to us. Nuclear waste, seeping into the ground, lies buried all over the country.
However, we do not have the money to clean it up. We also do not have the finances to protect future generations from birth defects or cancer. The money gets lost on its long bureaucratic way to the cleanup people.
Living has gotten too complicated. A return to the old ways is not possible. Too many people are dependent on their matching washer and dryer sets, their self-cleaning ovens and microwaves. Sofie Leonard Greenacres
Stains of blood red and dollar green
Robert Root (Letters, April 29) delivers a powerful truth about violence, suggesting the Oklahoma bombing brings home U.S. terrorism to our innocents. Thank you, Mr. Root, for speaking as a veteran with an eye to bloody truth.
Our fighting men are no strangers to terror, torture and mass murder of innocents, in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Panama and Iraq. Root urges Americans to admit first our own inhumanity.
Robert McNamara’s introspective book is another instance in U.S. military history where a former combatant’s conscience rises to denounce America’s addiction to imperialist war, capitalist greed and criminal merchandising of arms. Who’s the major weapons producer for the world in 1995? It’s American workers slaving for business maggots sucking off corpses of foreigners’ children.
Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler shattered orthodoxy in 1935, publishing his brash thesis that “war is a racket.” Butler contemptuously names corporate capitalists getting rich from conflict in Cuba, the Philippines and World War I.
In 1965, Marine Gen. David Sharp offered his belief that, “If we had and would keep our dirty, bloody, dollarsoaked fingers out of the business of these nations so full of depressed, exploited people, they will arrive at a solution of their own.”
I thought McNamara was a fascist war criminal in 1966. In 1995 I respect the man for renewing the hope of aroused conscience. Just say no to U.S. imperialism. Chuck Armsbury Greenacres
ANIMALS
Special time to be kind to animals
May 7 is National Humane Sunday and the start of Be Kind to Animals Week.
Why not decide to do something beneficial for your pet? Or, if you don’t have one, perhaps do something for a neighbor or friend’s pet.
Are you “littering”? Spay or neuter your pet if you have been procrastinating, or help with the expense of altering another’s pet or one that is homeless. Take it in for necessary shots, such as rabies, or for a dental checkup.
License your pet and purchase an ID tag so it can be returned quickly and safely. Decide to be a more responsible pet owner now. Feed your pet good-quality pet food. Take time for some basic training and proper grooming. Include your pets in your family’s leisure activities.
Let’s each do our part toward a better environment for our animals every day. Carol Spainhower Spokane
Make sure your dog rides safely
If you have a pickup truck and a dog, please think twice before letting your dog ride in the back of the truck.
I was following a truck recently that had a beautiful German shepherd in the back. The dog seemed restless and was running back and forth in the truck bed. Suddenly, he jumped over the side in front of oncoming traffic.
Cars honked and stopped. The driver of the pickup finally stopped and the dog limped around between my car and the pickup. He was dragging his right hind leg, which was probably broken.
I realize it can become pretty crowded in the cab with two people and a large dog, but isn’t a little discomfort better than taking a chance of getting your pet badly hurt or killed?
Also, such an incident can pose a traffic hazard, causing other cars to get into rear-end collisions due to sudden stops trying to avoid hitting the animal. Alberta Murray Elk
LAW AND JUSTICE
End irrational marijuana ban
What if I told you that there was a plant that could stop deforestation, meet our need for paper, supply food and medicine for the poor and dying, produce fiber for clothing and has countless other uses?
You’d probably say, “Great! Where can I get it?”
Well, you can’t. The plant I speak of is hemp, a.k.a. marijuana. Every two minutes, another one of our otherwise law-abiding citizens is arrested for possession of this wonderful plant. All the negatives and ills you’ve been taught are based on propaganda and lies. It’s time to come together and speak out against the senselessness and bigotry of this 60-year prohibition. Let’s get wise and re-legalize. Judah Larson Spokane
Disability for felon: How? Why?
It is unfathomable that William Gentry, a city police officer, can commit rape and blame his actions on job stress. Does his conviction allow his pension plan to provide disability compensation for his actions? This seems to be a bonus for a felony conviction.
When I retired from Spokane County, I was severely disabled due to repetitive use syndrome. Both hands and wrists were affected and I subsequently had to use only one hand for my computer work. My disability compensation amounted to $2,000 while I was still employed. Since retiring, I have gained little use of my left hand and can no longer use our home computer or hold a book or magazine without suffering excruciating pain or losing all sensation in my hands. No compensation was paid to me for being injured while doing honest work. I will suffer the rest of my life.
Will Gentry continue to rape all the rest of his life and receive a disability pension for doing so? Marion A. Potvin Spokane