Letters To The Editor

FIREARMS

Government the bigger danger

For those who wish to see all our dangerous guns removed, I pose the following question: Do you really want to exchange a potentially dangerous weapon for a government which can be even more dangerous?

My wife recently conversed with a young man who had just returned from a month’s visit to China. In China, the young man observed public executions which took place every week. The young man said the public enjoyed the executions, which are by beheading. Furthermore, the Chinese people had become very likely to turn one another in to the government for things they had done or for unapproved thinking.

In our nation we have come to know about brutal actions on the part of our government people. The question is this: Do we wish to trade “dangerous guns” for a dangerous government?

In 1935, Adolph Hitler had full gun registration. He proclaimed: Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient and the world will follow our lead into the future!

Do we wish to follow the kind of future Adolph Hitler gave Germany? We must be very careful about tampering with the heritage of freedom our founding fathers gave us. If government has all the guns, can we trust our government? Or our politicians? Thomas Jefferson said something to this effect: Let us hear no more of faith in men, but let us bind them down with the chains of our Constitution. George Durkee Spokane

Gun owners’ rights need defending

Hillary Clinton deserves commendation for her stand against Chinese repression. Now, it’s time for Hillary, and Bill, to do some human rights damage control here at home.

The Clintons have declared war on guns, the Second Amendment and America’s 80 million gun owners. Indeed, even the tragic deaths at Waco and Ruby Ridge started over trivial, or suspected, gun violations.

Did the Branch Davidians really possess machine guns? It’s very likely. However, the NRA hired the prestigious Failure Analysis Associates, whose research uncovered the O-ring problems in the Challenger spacecraft explosion, to X-ray the firearms recovered at the Waco compound. Attorney General Janet Reno refused to allow the exam, and she wouldn’t let Failure Analysis present its carefully researched computer animation/ analysis of the four final gas assaults on Mount Carmel. So much for truth and justice.

Only the Republican victories last November have kept the Clinton administration from ending the private ownership of firearms.

The fine print in Clinton’s “cop killer” bullets proposal, bullets that were actually banned by NRA-sponsored legislation several years ago, would effectively ban all ammunition, which is its likely goal.

As a retired Marine colonel said recently, “The leftist elite obviously fears an armed citizenry, which is, of course, the sole barrier to tyranny.” Curtis E. Stone Colville, Wash.

SUBSTANCE USE AND ABUSE

Tobacco firms only care about profit

Your cartoon Sept. 11 was a gem. It depicts a mother saying to her child “Sorry, honey, we don’t have money for supper.” The next picture shows the loving mother sitting in front of the TV, a lighted cigarette in her fingers. Yes, she has an addictive habit and maybe something will happen on the food situation.

About a week ago, I saw a woman paying $25.53 in cash for a carton of cigarettes; and approximately $4 in food stamps for some groceries. Our legislators lack the guts to ban all advertising of cigarettes. We should plague them on this point.

I have in mind a personable, smiling man who is one of the best-paid executives in our country. He has fostered sickness and ruined the health of many of our people. He goes right on selling, encouraging youngsters to become addicted. Many children are undernourished because of the sale of cigarettes.

Yes, this man is the president of RJR National Biscuit Company, which is the front name for one of the largest tobacco retailers in the world - or is it Philip Morris? He’s one of the consciousless people who just don’t care a bit what they sell - just so there is money in it for them.

To hell with the interests and well-being of our nation and our children. Carlton Gladder Spokane

Drug laws an excuse for brutality

On Sept. 1 The Spokesman-Review ran an article entitled “Grandmother, 72, may lose home in war on drugs.” I was disgusted that such legalized brutality is so patriotically lauded. Criminally intrusive law enforcement has made American freedom a flaccid ideal and a hopeless impossibility. State-sponsored cruelty doesn’t work.

Why do people use marijuana? Because they recognize certain benefits in its use which aren’t available otherwise. After decades of official baloney, many people no longer believe the fear-inspired bleating of career public servants that cannabis is a “killer weed.” Marijuana doesn’t ruin lives, but a society which has grown intolerant of diversity will gleefully bludgeon millions.

Why do people use marijuana despite its illegality? Often nothing else works, and often the only way a person can assert his inalienable sovereignty is to break a bad law. The refusal of the government to behave with humanity disgusts and disheartens people all the more.

Meanwhile, more harmless people you know and care for will have their lives ruined by armed thugs wearing badges and swinging court orders. For every person arrested and dispossessed for growing or smoking a natural herb, there are instantly dozens if not hundreds of their friends, relatives and acquaintances whose opinion of bad law enforcement drops even lower. People who love and respect the “felon,” and whose hearts are ruthlessly rent, not because of the herb, but because of the state’s dehumanizing and vindictive treatment of a loved one.

How close to home does this brutality have to get before people refuse to tolerate it any longer? Rodger Stevens Moscow, Idaho

HEALTH AND WELFARE

We need Medicaid protection

Several weeks ago The Spokesman-Review talked about the impact of reductions in Medicaid funding in regards to health insurance. Yes, reductions will lead to an increase of uninsured in Washington state. What wasn’t discussed was the impact of a proposed 33 percent reduction in Medicaid spending over seven years on long-term-care populations.

In the past, Medicaid has been the safety net for persons who require long-term care, either in a nursing home or their own home. It doesn’t take long for most people to become financially impoverished with nursing home care costing in excess of $30,000 a year. Medicaid has offered protection when people have spent down their own resources. Medicaid has also offered protection against spousal impoverishment.

All of us are at risk when it comes to long-term care. A child could be born disabled, a young adult could suffer a severe head injury, we could all grow so old that we might not be sick, but we might become frail with age and need some assistance to continue to live independently in our own homes.

I question the wisdom of a Congress that proposes a $186 billion reduction on Medicaid and yet offers a tax break to persons with incomes in excess of $100,000 or appropriates more money to the Department of Defense than was even requested. All civilization is judged by the way it treats its children and elders. More public dialogue is called for before these massive cuts remove more than 85,700 Washington state citizens from this safety-net program. Judith Ross Spokane

Children need protection

Rachel Carver would still be alive if Washington State recognized that the 16-year old who was almost raped by Uncle Jason Wickenhagen a few weeks before Rachels death was also a child.

Adults sexually prey on children. Ask young adults how old their first sex partner was: surprisingly, overwhelmingly, it was an adult at least 2-4 years older than they were. The younger the teen was when they first had sex, the older their partner. (Study by Mike Males, University of California, 1994).

At 18, young people can get married, but are considered sexually emancipated at 16; they can get contraception, abortion and STD treatment after age 12 without parental involvement. State Sen. James West, R-Spokane, tried to address this issue several years ago without support of the paper or other legislators.

If you really care about Rachel Carver and the 16-year-old girl, support legislation to give adults the message that anyone under 18 is not fair “game.” As long as society won’t protect 16 to 18-year olds from sexual predators, expect 9-year-olds to die. LeAnna Benn Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Employers should fight casual dress

Reading “Casual impressions, employers adjust to society’s urge for informality,” (Aug. 27) I don’t know who “society” is, as referred to in most reporting. However, it’s not the majority of people.

Restaurants aren’t adjusting to informality - that compromises health. Casual, or ‘degage’ suggests free and relaxed - disengaged. Employers don’t want employees who are “disengaged.” Employers should use the money from employees who wear casual clothes on Fridays, (assuming they pay as honestly as coffee fund participants), to hire employees who promote the company. Employees should treat their employment as if they owned the company. The successful “dress for promotion.”

“It’s nice to not have to fix up in the morning and just be able to pull on a nice sweatshirt.” The two days off during the week are called “weekends.” If dressing for “home,” the attitude is toward “home” behavior.

“Employee bonding” sounds like employees should be as familiar with each other as a babe suckling it’s mother’s breast. Employees don’t have to “bond,” just “work” together.

There are books describing proper dress code for professions. These should be referred to a job applicant during the interview, then there would be no surprise, if violating the code, they are asked to reconsider their attire.

Instead of “work” four days and “casual, relaxed, bonding, play day” the fifth day, employers could pay employees four days and give them the fifth as part of their “weekend.” The employees would be relaxed - bonding perhaps - until the money they earn started making a difference in attitude. “Need” always seems to pull one up the one’s own boot straps. Joyce Courser Greenacres, Wash.

Grass burning needs alternative

The reason the grass growers burn their fields every summer is simple. They do it to remove the chaff or residue left over from harvesting the seed. It’s not because burning some how magically “shocks the plant into producing better yields,” as they would lead us to believe.

There’s no scientific proof whatsoever that this is true. They simply burn because it’s the easiest, most cost-effective way to remove the thick blanket of chaff that, if left on the ground, would choke the grass back and prevent it from producing at top efficiency.

At one time they almost had me convinced. I didn’t like the smoke, but I was sympathetic. But no more. Now that I understand burning is simple expediency and economics, it makes it a different ball game.

The idea that we “downwinders” should suffer the great, billowing palls of choking, stinking, dangerous smoke, just so a handful of growers can take a shortcut for better profit, is appalling. If they can’t be innovative and devise a better, more environmentally safe system of chaff removal, then maybe grass farming should go the way of the horse and buggy. Bob Riddle Hayden Lake, Idaho

Sports coverage ignoring girls

The Spokesman-Review and sports editor Jeff Jordan owe the GSL girls volleyball and soccer teams a huge apology. Has the Review forgotten this is the ‘90s and the sexes are supposed to be considered equal? Comparing boys high school preseason football coverage to the girls preseason volleyball and soccer coverage is a joke.

Every football team receives an individual summary, including the ‘94 record, coaches, years coached, coaching record, top returners, top newcomers, “quick kicks,” coaches comments plus a schedule for their league.

The volleyball article included a write-up on a top player, and a small capsule combining all nine GSL teams together. You didn’t even print a schedule. You picked Ferris to finish first in the league. How did you arrive with your finishing order? There was no explanation. Was it because Ferris beat Gonzaga Prep in the jamboree? Your coverage of soccer was the same.

On Sept. 7, I opened the sports page to find a big article on Drew Bledsoe’s brother who plays in Walla Walla. There’s also a full page on six Northeast B and three Souteast B, eight-man football teams. It’s quite obvious your paper considers B football and Drew’s brother more deserving of coverage than AAA girls volleyball or soccer.

The GSL has always had some of the strongest girls volleyball and soccer teams in the state. This year’s no exception. Check out all the state championships and top five finishes these teams have brought home in the past.

Mr. Jordan, your bias is showing. Remember, women got the vote, we play the game, we deserve equal coverage. Ken and Leslie Brown Spokane

Don’t judge reforms too fast

It’s regrettable that some opponents of well-founded educational reform will extract a piece of the jigsaw puzzle and claim it’s the entire picture (Gloria Clark letter, Sept. 7).

Clark is right. It’s difficult to create meaningful assessments for Essential Learnings. What she doesn’t say is that it’s equally difficult for her “… academically sound disciplines.” She avoids noting that the first Essential Learning for Social Science is defined by five subsets in which ” … history, geography, economics and civics” - along with other social studies - are listed as fundamental components no fewer than 50 times.

The latest drafts of the Essential Learnings - are prominently labeled “Draft” and “Work in Progress.” They are the hard work of parents, teachers, students, business people, professors, assessment specialists, and politicians - essentially anyone pushing for improved student learning - that is, anyone willing and able to devote a year or more of their weekends to working on a very real problem. For those who can’t directly join the Subject Advisory Committee, there are annual meetings in Ellensburg to which all are invited. Additionally, there are many local meetings at which anyone may speak.

Remarks and criticisms do find their way back to the commission and into their work, a fact to which I can attest and to which the drafts of their work in progress bear witness. Michael A. Page Spokane

Overhaul salmon recovery effort

The Sunday Associated Press article on page B7, “Salmon Backers opposed to salmon recovery cap” caught my eye. The salmon backers have the view that unlimited amounts should be spent on salmon recovery.

My view is that any money spent on salmon recovery must be spent in the most effective way. In other words, direct salmon recovery resources to those areas that would result in largest salmon return.

Currently, prevailing powers in the salmon recovery effort have misused the Endangered Species Act by directing enormous resources to areas where little salmon recovery could be expected.

I’m for a new approach to salmon recovery efforts. Only scientific and economically effective recovery methods should be pursued.

My utility bills reflect salmon recovery efforts. However, the recovered salmon are hard to find. Mark E. Booker Othello, Wash.