Letters To The Editor

WASHINGTON STATE

Who are these people representing?

Perhaps I was naive, but I was actually optimistic when our legislators headed to Olympia this month. With all the talk of budget surplus, targeted middle class tax relief and addressing key issues like the crumbling transportation infrastructure, I saw the potential for great things.

Needless to say, I was extremely disappointed when I read about Reps. Duane Sommers, Mark Sterk and Bob Sump’s attendance at the Conservative Caucus’ meeting with Bob Larimer. In the session’s first week, they chose to minimize the needs of the working men and women of this state and pursue personal agendas that target people of color, women, gays and lesbians, divorced people and reading teachers. It makes me wonder just whose interests these legislators represent. Craig A. Peterson Spokane

Illogical measure should be killed

The Spokesman-Review recently reported that a bill has been proposed to the Legislature stating that public school students may ignore the conclusions of science regarding the origin of life because there were no witnesses to the event.

I suggest that the Legislature first consider a bill providing that no one in the state of Washington may be convicted of a crime unless the prosecutor produces at least one reliable eyewitness. The principle is exactly the same: regardless of other evidence, unless there is an eyewitness, the accused’s involvement in the crime is “just a theory.”

After all, the Legislature is responsible for policies regarding crime in the state. It has neither responsibility nor competence in matters of science. Walter K. Bonsack Spokane

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

Vote to pass bond and levy

Demonstrate your support for Spokane students and their education by voting yes on the facility improvement bond and operational levy Feb. 3. The cost to each voter is negligible (about $3.92 per month per $100,000 assessed home value), but the impact is substantial.

The bond will defray the cost of modernizing or replacing classrooms built prior to 1913 and intended for smaller enrollments. Science rooms without running water or enough electrical outlets, safety and traffic revisions outside an elementary school, and additional instructional space for overcrowded schools are just a few of the carefully crafted list of priorities generated by parents, community leaders and school staff four years ago.

The levy funds the basic operations essential to any school’s effectiveness: textbooks, materials, instructional aides and student enrichment activities such as band and drama.

Voter apathy is the bond and levy’s greatest foe. Twenty-six thousand voters are required. Please exercise your right to vote and support Spokane’s children and our future. Susan Hammond Spokane

Avail yourself of great opportunity

As a parent, a professional and a concerned citizen, I urge everyone to vote “yes for kids” Feb. 3. This vote is essential for several reasons. Paramount is that this is our opportunity to make a difference in the lives of so many of our community’s children.

This vote is for better facilities, technological necessities and operating money for teaching materials and adjunctive services like elementary school counselors. While no one wants to pay more for anything, we must from time to time agree to pay more for worthwhile projects. This is clearly one of those times.

A yes vote will touch the lives of all public school children in our community in a positive way. We rarely get to do that. Please, seize the opportunity. Carl F. Greenberg Spokane

Gutting - it’s not what you think

In various public forums, including your recent article about Lewis and Clark High School, the word “gutted” has been used to describe the interior work.

Many LC patrons have expressed concern that “gutting” means wholesale demolition of the interior and replacement with finishes out of character with the building’s traditional materials and details. This will not be the case.

Many obsolete heating, plumbing and electrical systems will have to be gutted and fully replaced. However, the charge given by the LC Community Study Committee and accepted by the school district is to preserve the historic character and integrity of the existing building.

This means the marble wainscoting, terrazzo flooring, staircases, wood features - all the finishes and details emblematic of LC’s character - will be retained and enhanced to the greatest extent possible.

There’s a rich heritage connected to this school’s rooms and hallways. Maintaining the building’s interior character is as important to LC patrons as preserving the building’s beautiful exterior. Steve McNutt, co-chairman Lewis and CLark Community Study Committee, Spokane

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Preventative measures lacking

Now that as many as 20,000 of us may have been exposed to hepatitis A, perhaps the Spokane County Health District will stop sitting on its bureaucratic hands and begin to deal with the situation.

Why, when they first became aware of an outbreak, were not all food handlers required to be vaccinated? I suspect that this may have been a purely economic decision, and a poor one.

My wife and I will only dine at establishments where employees have been vaccinated against hepatitis A. Perhaps, if everyone chose to do the same, this epidemic could be halted, despite the bungling of local health officials. Donald R. Larson Spokane

Immunization should be required

I am one of those unfortunate people in line at the County Health Clinic last Wednesday morning only to be informed that the amount of people already in the building would consume all of the available doses of immunoglobulin for that day.

Wednesday was the last day that I could receive the shot, as I had eaten at Players and Spectators on New Years Eve.

I do not place any blame on Players and Spectators as it was following the rules that are in place for Spokane County food workers. I do question the policies of Spokane County in this situation. In a service area of nearly 500,000 residents, I am shocked that the county had so few doses on hand.

What concerns me even more is that food service workers are not required to obtain the immunization against hepatitis A when obtaining their food service permit. It would seem logical that part of the procedure for obtaining this permit would be a test for hepatitis A and the immunization to prevent a food service worker from contracting this illness.

I support the ownership of Players and Spectators in promoting the immunization of all food service workers in Spokane County. I will eat there again, as I experienced only the highest quality of food and service. Linda L. Walters Spokane

Diners need oversight of cleanliness

H.T. Higgins of Players and Spectators wants to help make our community a safer place to eat. He has called on all area food establishments to begin a program of vaccinating their employees against the hepatitis A virus.

I applaud his efforts.

According the Spokane County Health Department, more than 50 are people infected with the hepatitis A virus in Spokane County.

Players and Spectators has handled this outbreak in a very professional way. It is probably one of the safest places today to enjoy a good meal. My concern is, what are other restaurants doing to prevent this from happening?

I frequently dine at places along Sprague and on Sullivan Road. At Subway, I know the policy is to wash hands after handling money or going to the back room, and to change gloves for each customer - I’ve seen them do it.

While eating at another sandwich shop, I saw that the guy who took my money was the same one who cut and wrapped my sandwich. He neither washed his hands first or wore gloves.

I wonder what the policy is at all the other places I go to to eat? Can’t there be an easy way for me to know if someone’s employees have been vaccinated? I don’t want to eat somewhere where they don’t wash their hands after touching money or using the bathroom, where they don’t wear gloves and aren’t vaccinated.

I wish there was some way to know, as a customer, whether or not a business is following these standards in preparing my food. Jeff Rice Veradale

Players sure to be safest place

The recent exposure to hepatitis A is a serious matter, and my sympathy goes out to anyone who has had to endure the worry and inconvenience of immunoglobulin shots.

As a regular customer of Players and Spectators, I also was potentially exposed. In spite of that fact, my family and I will continue to patronize what I believe to be the cleanest, best managed restaurant in town.

Through many years of travel on the job, I have eaten in hundreds of restaurants where this level of sanitation was not evident. I am proud to bring customers and business associates to a facility this nice, and to support an establishment run by a family that has done so much for our community. Now, with a fully immunized staff, it will be the safest place around.

See you on prime rib Tuesday. Roger V. Green Spokane

PEOPLE AND ANIMALS

Rodeo animals are valued assets

The Jan. 16 Roundtable included three letters protesting rodeo. The main theme was that rodeo is cruel and inhumane. One writer even tried to weave child abuse into the point they were making.

As a younger man, I rode bucking horses and can say from firsthand experience that all stock used in rodeos are treated first rate. Many of the horses and bulls are worth many thousands of dollars. Roping and bulldogging steers are from Mexico, and are expensive to import. The contractors have a lot invested in these animals and the animals are treated accordingly.

For abuses, every association I belonged to imposed very stiff fines on the guilty party. Jim D. Fitzgerald Spokane

Rodeo skills part of America

I was surprised to see the negative letters about rodeos. Can’t people understand that while it is a sport and a form of entertainment, it is also a way of life for many of the athletes who perform for us?

Many of the men and women in rodeos also have ranches. The skills that they perform in the ring are needed skills on their ranches. I would like to see someone opposed to rodeo go out on some range land and ask a calf to stand still while it’s being given the much-needed vaccinations and ear tag or brand for identification.

Come on, folks. Rodeo doesn’t promote child abuse or cruelty to animals. It does promote hard work and a part of America. If you don’t like rodeo, don’t go. Please don’t put down the people who work hard at what they do. It is a way of life that is important to them.

Thanks, cowboys and cowgirls. I appreciate what you do. Brian L. Ellis Moscow, Idaho

OTHER TOPICS

Writer good on facts but not logic

Fred A. Fischer (Letters, Jan. 17) is to be congratulated on the knowledge of history he displays in arguing that organized religion is a “mixed blessing.” The facts he offers us are beyond dispute. The fatal flaw in his argument comes not from his history, but from his logic.

Fischer’s whole argument rests on a sophistry that was known to philosophers five centuries before Jesus. It claims that when one event occurs before another, the earlier one is necessarily the cause of the latter. If an officer of Ford Motor Co., who is also a Shriner, were to run a red light, Fischer’s logic would demand we blame the corporation and the lodge, not the individual.

Fischer admits that the members of all sorts of groups do awful things to other people.

The individual is culpable for his actions, not his church or club. Edward B. Keeley Spokane

Abortion: No reason to celebrate

The Jan. 12 article by Tracy Ellig, “Roe vs. Wade celebrated,” brings to mind several points. How can one “celebrate” the deaths of millions of innocent unborn children and the resultant pain, suffering and violence that have followed since the Roe vs. Wade decision 25 years ago?

Abortion hurts women, too; many of pro-life’s strongest supporters are those who have learned this first-hand. They find nothing to celebrate in Roe vs. Wade.

Contrary to Nugent’s comments reported in the article, Christian opposition to abortion is not a recent agenda item set by fundamentalists. It has always been part of Catholic Christian belief. Recognizing that human life begins at conception, the church from it earliest days taught that “thou shalt not kill” also means “thou shalt not procure abortion” and “thou shalt not commit infanticide.”

Abortion may be a choice celebrated by “many religious people,” but it is not a Christian choice. Mary E. Thorson Sandpoint

Immigrants reaping the benefits

Re: “Ending the myths,” Region, Jan. 11.

Demetrios Papademetriou’s admonition to “look past half-truths on immigration” was itself contaminated by prevarication.

The National Academy of Sciences study he cites in fact found that the overwhelming share of economic gain from immigration accrues to immigrants, and that benefit to U.S. natives is negligible.

Papademetriou says of immigrants, “most of them do jobs that few of us would want.” Who is “us”? Guys with advanced degrees working at tax-exempt foundations?

Immigration policy “should enrich America’s economic, scientific and cultural life”? It’s hard to believe that the director of the international migration policy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace doesn’t know that family reunification has been the leitmotif of U.S. immigration policy, leading to a steady widening of the education gap between natives and immigrants for at least 17 years. This may explain why immigrants are more likely to be on welfare than American-born citizens. They’re also more likely to be incarcerated for felonies.

Papademetriou concludes, naturally, with a call to “embrace diversity.” Such is the topical sanctity this term has attained that its mere utterance is supposed to cause every knee to bend and every voice to be stilled. But it’s no myth that where diversity is found (as in Bosnia, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, Kurdistan, Fiji, Chechyna, etc.) there’s also bloodshed.

By 2000, the U.S. population will be almost four times what it was in 1900. This country now admits more immigrants legally than the rest of the world combined. In the interest of balance, will The Spokesman-Review publish the work of scholars who are critical of the establishment position on immigration? Robin Corkery Spokane

Headline grossly misleading

The Spokesman-Review completely misled the public with the Jan. 14 headline, “If we must merge, let it be with UW, says EWU faculty.” The implication is that most Eastern Washington University faculty members support a merger, and furthermore, merging with the University of Washington over Washington State University.

Emphatically, arithmetically, this is not true.

Jeff Corkill, United Faculty of Eastern president, simply states that 41 percent of UFE’s members support a merger with UW. There are 560 faculty at Eastern. Only 133 are union members. The UFE hardly represents the majority opinion of EWU’s faculty. Of those 133, only 46 (34.5 percent of union membership and 8.2 percent of all faculty) responded to Corkill’s unscientific survey. Of those 46, 41 percent (19 respondents) support a merger with the University of Washington. These 19 faculty represent only 3.3 percent of the faculty at Eastern - hardly warranting a headline implying that Eastern’s faculty supports a merger with UW.

The Review is the only daily newspaper in town. This status places a grave responsibility on its reporters and editors - a responsibility continually ignored.

I urge readers to look further than the front page of this newspaper for an accurate assessment of the current status of higher education in our community. Meryl R. Gersh professor of physical therapy, Eastern Washington University