Frank Bartel

Group Health Northwest of Spokane has become a player to be reckoned with in efforts to craft a national managed-care "Consumer Bill of Rights" as outlined in President Clinton's State of the Union address. A commission appointed by the president set forth a series of standards that would be legally binding on the managed care industry. Group Health Northwest has joined Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative of Puget Sound, its parent, and Kaiser Permanente, in backing a national consumer-protection push.

Miller

Is the American Association of Retired Persons effectively addressing the foremost issues facing older Americans? Is the 32-million-member special interest group doing a good job of informing and communicating with its membership? With the media? The American people? Politicians?

Robert Witter

Under cloak of the Republican revolution, big business is lobbying for a number of regulatory reforms which would serve no purpose other than to line the pockets of large corporations. Among the most treacherous, pension watchdogs warn, is one which would enable large employers to siphon off retirement fund surpluses. Proceeds could then be spent on anything management pleases - from a chauffeured limousine for the boss to a corporate takeover of the competition. It's been done before.

In the entry to a business next to the Spokane Transit Authority's new downtown transfer center, a loiterer snoozed on the sidwalk as security guards strolled past. The business operators complain they had to go to higher-ups in the transit system to get action. Employees of the business are not happy with the job the STA's security guards are doing.

People are getting as fed up with giant corporations as they are big government. Multimillionaire executives and attorneys for tobacco conglomerates have the arrogance to swear before Congress that nicotine is not addictive. Pick up a paper or click on TV, and some chief executive who makes umpteen million dollars a minute and just axed thousands of workers starts whining about how tough it is to run a business these days.

It's gratifying how many readers would willingly pay 25 cents or even a buck more for a burger, if that would wipe out the need for welfare supplements to the working poor. "I've always thought Big Macs were too cheap anyhow," declared one caller in response to a recent column on raising minimum pay to a living wage. The idea is to make it possible for everyone who works for a living to make a living at it.

The numbers are finally in, and last Christmas shopping season was not the merry old time for Spokane merchants that many predicted it would be, myself included. State Department of Revenue statistics show the dollar value of taxable retail sales in the city and the county combined edged up a paltry 1.1 percent. Even more disappointing, taking inflation into account, that translates to a loss of 2 or 3 percent.

A massive shift to managed health care that the experts say is gathering momentum makes wise choice of a primary physician more important than ever. Under managed care, the doctor - typically a general practitioner or family-doctor type - who is picked by a person as his or her primary physician becomes that person's gatekeeper. It is this gatekeeper who decides how much and what kind of health services the person gets within guidelines established by a board of directors whom the patient doesn't know and never meets.

As a percentage of total jobs, Spokane employment in manufacturing, which pays way higher wages and better benefits than other job sectors, lags behind the rest of the nation by nearly a third. But even in manufacturing, wages in Spokane fall far below state and national industry averages. Not surprisingly then, family and per capita income are way below the state and the country as a whole.

The latest round of retail news makes it abundantly clear that downtown Spokane is getting its act together just in time. Either that, or it is already too late. Another huge outbreak of retail sprawl looms.

Ulla Graham of Spokane recently took time away from her busy schedule as a homemaker to tackle the Social Security crisis. Young people are convinced the Social Security system as we know it today will crash, and they will get ripped off. They're right. However, it doesn't end there. Social Security is a ripoff of most Americans, young and old alike.

Merchants in downtown Spokane have finally gotten back control of the streets in front of their stores. But it will still take a bold effort by business, government and the community to clean up the mess left on the sidewalks behind a wall of big ugly smelly buses. For long years, a barricade of unsightly reeking buses lined the choicest business blocks in the heart of the core, dominating the streetscape and blotting out views.

Too many jobs aren't worth having. The jobs pay less than welfare. They lock the worker and the family into poverty.

For months this spring, politicians wrangled in Olympia over life and death changes in the state's landmark health care reform act. The debate was loud and long and rancorous. The changes enacted are profound. But the general public is still largely ignorant of either the outcome or the import.

The poverty rate in America is the highest in 10 years. A recent report shows a wider gap between the rich and poor than in any other industrialized nation. "People are working harder and not making it," laments U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "There are growing legions of working poor in this country."

'Why has Diamond been allowed to have a monopoly on parking in this city?" a reader in Spokane asks. Bess Hixson also wants to know how the parking giant can get away with charging $5 for a couple hours of parking across from the Opera House. And with such prohibitive parking rates around Riverfront Park, how can shoppers at the public market in the park be expected to lug purchases back to their cars "when watermelons are in season."

Construction is off sharply in Spokane. Retailing is soft. Employment is plateauing.

'A plentiful supply of jobs which pay a living wage can't be gained unless companies have the revenues, products, markets, and workers to make it possible." At first glance, this simple statement by economic policy analyst David S. Harrison of the University of Washington sounds almost too obvious to merit a second thought. Granted, an employer can't pay fair wages and benefits if income is inadequate. It goes without saying. So what?

'We are a light-house-in a sea of darkness," Peter Kerwien says of Washington Water Power Co.'s new motel in the Davenport Hotel district. Actually it's not exactly new. And the Rodeway Inn City Center doesn't in the least resemble a lighthouse. It's the old Lincoln Center Motor Inn, just across First Avenue from the Davenport. It is, however, enveloped by a "sea of darkness" at night, as all up and down the street, buildings lock up tight, turn out the lights, and the neighborhood blacks out.

The Republican revolution against big government continues its relentless advance, a mighty steamroller threatening to flatten everything in its path. The revolution is winning rave reviews from the nation's business sector. "Highly productive, refreshingly positive," declares the nation's biggest small-business lobby, the National Federation of Independent Business.

The Consumer Federation of America has offered a rebuttal of sorts to a recent column that decried the apparent popularity and obvious success of infomercials. On one hand, the federation seemed to defend these advertising atrocities as a cost effective and profitable way to peddle goods and services. On the other hand, the consumer lobby group offered to help redress the spread of "consumer illiteracy."

Nobody knows how much of our tax dollar is eventually spent for the purpose intended and how much is expended on overhead, wasted, stolen, misapplied or otherwise dissipated. Take welfare - for poor folks and for rich corporations. What percentage of the tax dollar deducted from a worker's paycheck ever makes its way to a needy neighbor or the business down the block, after passing through who knows how many middlemen's hands?