Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Available money being ignored

The city is in a quandary: Where do we find more funds?

For the last eight or nine years, my occupation has required me to travel through Browne’s Addition on the average of five days a week. I see a parking enforcement vehicle at least once a day. It’s always moving - I have yet to see it stop for the operator to ticket a vehicle. Yet, I dare anyone to go through that neighborhood, day or night, and find fewer than 20 percent of the vehicles parked illegally - i.e., on corners, at bus stops, on the wrong side of the street. Drive by some day and see for yourself.

I’ll start paying attention to all the fiscal crying when the city decides to have its personnel enforce the rules and regulations already on the books and collect the funds it has coming to it. M.B. Schieche Spokane

Look up ahead, Valley city foes

Interesting news in the Aug. 6 issue of the downtown paper: Section B, Page 1, tells us the city of Spokane is running out of cash. Page 6, all wrapped in a multicolor full-page ad complete with stars and stripe, tells us that underneath all this is a huge tax base waiting to be “tapped” in the Spokane Valley.

“Oh, ye suckers,” to the 8,922 who voted against a new city in the Valley. The city of Spokane is primed to get money through annexation or county-city consolidation. As far as the Valley is concerned, both are the same.

Is this what the 8,922 people wanted? Bob Anderson Veradale

Roskelley will protect attributes

It’s up to Spokane citizens to elect people committed to maintaining the quality of life we enjoy here. As our county grows, we are faced with decisions involving values based upon past references in daily living. We know who we elect will represent our concerns for clean air, clean water and wise land use.

You can be certain from John Roskelley’s personal values that he will bring the same beliefs for his love of the Spokane community to the race for county commissioner.

Vote for John Roskelley in September. Mr. and Mrs. Mandius C. Lundal Spokane

Street cleaners wasting time, money

I thought our city was in financial crisis. I also thought, as a result of a recent poll, street cleaning was last on the list of priorities.

Why, then, at 9 a.m. Thursday morning, is a street cleaner wasting time, money and manpower on such a redundant project? If corner drains need cleaning, do it.

Seeing a team of street cleaners on our streets isn’t appalling only because it’s misguided energy, but it’s also an ecological misuse of resources. M.L. Sandberg Spokane

LAW AND JUSTICE

Let agents pay Weaver for loss

Now that the government is going to pay off Randy Weaver for its wrongdoings, I want to know who is going to pay the bill.

Are we the people going to foot the bill through our tax dollars or will that $3.1 million be deducted from the paychecks of the people who were involved in the massacre? I feel that if the people who gave the orders, shot the guns and actively participated in this whole mess were held financially responsible for the cost, we would see a lot fewer Rambo actions by government agents.

Instead, the agents involved are on paid vacation until things cool off. And yep, folks, you’re paying for their vacation, too.

Have you noticed how many politicians have jumped on the Weaver bandwagon? Where were they when the shooting was going on? I didn’t see them speaking up then.

Recently, I heard someone blaming Attorney General Janet Reno for the Ruby Ridge massacre. That mess was at the end of 12 years of Republican rule and four years of George Bush’s war on the American people, so don’t blame this one on Janet Reno. We really can’t blame Waco on her, either, since the FBI still was running rampant, lying to everyone, as it did all through the Reagan-Bush era.

If you or I were involved in a wrongful death, we would be paying for that mistake with our pocketbooks. Government agents should have to do the same. Joy Bittner Clark Fork, Idaho

That’s it - blame the victims

With the conclusion of the Waco hearings, I’m certainly convinced our president and his flower-child administration handled everything just swell.

I mean, if this guy David Koresh was a child molester, he and everyone within 100 yards of him needed killing. To hell with all that constitutional-rights crap. We need to take this concept a little further to really clean up this cesspool of a country. If it’s a crime to live with a pervert, why stop there?

Think about Randy Weaver. Let’s make it a felony to be married to or the child of a criminal. Or to be his friend. Or his dog. Then we could just send in the goon platoon and dust ‘em all!

Terrorist bombings? No problem - just make it a capital felony to be on an airplane with a bomb on board. Hey, this will work with hijackings, too. Make it a felony to be a hostage. Next time some guy with his pj’s around his head hijacks a 747, we respond to his ransom demands with a heat-seeking missile.

Who says the Democrats aren’t the law and order party? Mike Nelson Mead

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Government-phobes, think again

Letters from readers routinely castigate the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and government in general. None of them has yet commended the ATF for recovering 400 pounds of explosives stolen recently from a North Idaho mine.

I guess these letter writers aren’t bothered by the possibility of their families getting blown up next time they venture near the courthouse in downtown Spokane.

Now I read on Aug. 13 that an industrial solvent has polluted Coeur d’Alene’s ground water and is making its way toward Post Falls and Spokane. Who do your readers think, besides the EPA, is going to protect them? David Koresh?

Have any readers ever lived in a foreign country? I have. I’ll take my American government and all its branches any time, every time. Bill Leong Spokane

Breakfast protesters mislabeled

I was a member of the group protesting Rep. George Nethercutt’s breakfast fund-raiser. I don’t consider myself a keeper of the “status quo,” as Jim Camden reported in his Aug. 10 article. An examination of Camden’s word choices shows he made mistakes and may indicate political bias.

First, persons such as Nethercutt (R-Wash.) and U.S. Rep. Steve Largent (R-Okla.) who wish to return to values of the 1950s and the unregulated industry of the 1920s or earlier aren’t revolutionaries, but rather, persons who wish to go back to past actions. This makes them reactionaries.

Secondly, people who wish to retain the status quo are conserving what presently exists. They’re known as conservatives. Many of the people marching in protest don’t fit this label either.

These people also want changes in our society. They want a national health plan, a cap on escalating health care costs, a livable minimum wage as a way of reducing welfare and a reduction in the defense budget, rather than the increase voted by Republicans.

These people want an improvement in the human condition in our country, not a return to past actions. Unfortunately, the reactionaries of the country have reduced these people to defending the present system. Dave Daugharty Cheney

Middle class needs a tax break

Your coverage of the protests at the Nethercutt-Largent fund-raiser was excellent!

Years of federal subsidies have created a vociferous contingent of malcontents who say they can’t survive without tax dollar handouts. Evidence suggests they’d do just fine if they undertook productive enterprises with the same vigor as their gale-force shining for more subsidy dollars.

The advocates of more and more federal handouts always say the tax burden should go to the “fat cats.” But the reality is Congress, controlled by Democrats for decades, never found enough fat cats to pay for its gold-spangled spending. Accordingly, the total tax burden of the average family of four rose from less than 5 percent in 1950 to 25 percent today.

In George Nethercutt, we finally have a congressman who recognizes the middle-class family’s tax burden can’t rise forever. P. Norman Nelson Colbert

No slack for campaign fund cheats

In reference to the Aug. 9 story, “Illegal campaign money already spent”:

Why should (state Senate Republicans’) statement that “half the money has already been spent” have any bearing on this case? They took the contributions illegally.

They should pay it all back and apologize to the public, individually. If they don’t, treat them as I would be treated: Arrest, charge and prosecute them. Russel A. Hadley Moses Lake