Letters To The Editor

RESTAURANTS AND SMOKING

Servers’ health risk discounted

In reference to the Oct. 27 editorials on smoking:

Your interactive editor seems to have forgotten people who are forced to interact with smokers in bars and restaurants. These people are low-wage service workers who can least afford the negative health consequences associated with secondhand smoke. Should Spokesman-Review employees enjoy a smoke-free working environment but not the waiter who serves them lunch?

I believe that most smokers do not realize how offensive their habit is to many nonsmokers. Banning smoking in restaurants and bars would take the decision on where and when to smoke in public away from people who, at least where their health is concerned, have poor decision making skills.

Dan Covey Pullman

Why bother with smokers’ rights?

Here are three points concerning the debate over banning smoke in restaurants and similar privately owned establishments open to the public.

First, such establishments are also workplaces. While clients have freedom of choice to enter, employees, especially in low-paying restaurant jobs, often have limited choices about where to work. Furthermore, our society has long mandated safe and healthful working conditions, regardless of whether employment is discretionary.

Second, like staff writer Rebecca Nappi, many of us count smokers (some now dead) among our acquaintances, friends and family. If we truly care about them, we ought to discourage, not facilitate, their suicidal habit which endangers others as well. It’s because we like the drinker that we confiscate not his bottle but his car keys. We don’t want him to kill himself or others. So it should be with smokers.

Seizing cigarettes would be going too far. However, creating inconvenience for the smoker while protecting nonsmokers is acceptable and responsible.

Finally, we don’t seem to find a constitutional problem with banning recognized carcinogens, toxic substances (e.g. carbon monoxide), and fire hazards from private premises open to the public. Identifying and eliminating such perils is the mission of several government agencies. Why then, do we agonize over a perceived constitutional right for smokers to introduce these exact threats into the environment of publicly patronized businesses? Michael M. McCarthy, M.D. Spokane

LANGUAGE

Let Quebec separatism be a lesson

The close vote in Canada over the secession of Quebec is an example of trying to maintain two languages and cultures in a vast country. Certainly, you can’t have an economy based on the country as a whole being upset and divided every few years. We all know the famous maxim that a country divided cannot stand.

The secession of Quebec would be devastating to Canada, economically and socially.

We have the seeds of this type of conflict in our own country, by forcing the American people to accept bilingualism in our schools and workplaces, and even in those pesky phone recordings, asking us to choose Spanish or English. This country’s bonding force is its language. To compromise it in any way is undemocratic, unnecessary and unconstitutional.

If immigrants continue to benefit from our economy and social system, they should learn the English language along with everyone else or suffer the consequences. Certainly, the immigrants of the past realized this and were not hampered in any way.

We should continue to hold dear our ideals and our language. Don’t create the hole in the dike that can become a flood, as has happened in Canada. James A. Nelson Spokane

Gingrich analysis ‘silly’

It’s silly of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others to think that the reason Quebec wanted to secede from Canada was because Quebeckers speak French and the rest of the country speaks English.

That’s analogous to saying parts of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California and Colorado want a separate nation because many who live in those places speak Spanish. That’s not to mention parts of New England, Minnesota and Wisconsin where German is spoken by many. What about the Oriental languages spoken in parts of Southern California, Oregon and Seattle?

Maybe Gingrich would rather live where only English is spoken. If so, I don’t know where he could go but I’m sure people have an idea. Wallace Baucom Colville

THE MEDIA

Security of e-mail not a problem

I feel that a point was glaringly absent from the Nov. 5 article on e-mail. While it is true that plain e-mail sent over the Internet is insecure and can be intercepted, there are many ways that this can be avoided.

First, with the billions of pieces of e-mail that fly across the Internet daily, it would take someone who has enough computer knowledge and who knows what they are looking for to find your letter to Aunt Sadie in the flow of data. Trying to find a certain bit of information on the Internet, given the volume of e-mail, would be like tapping phone numbers at random.

Second, many encryption (coding) programs are available for making e-mail transfers secure. The best and most unbreakable one that I have seen is called PGP, standing for Pretty Good Privacy. It’s such a good coding scheme that the government is trying to ban its use in favor of a code the government could break.

In short, e-mail used with proper precautions is far more secure than U.S. Postal Service delivery or telephones, especially cellular and cordless telephones. Tony Kolstee Greenacres

Clark, you’re no Mr. Wizard

Normally I enjoy Doug Clark’s columns. There’s always something that can be appreciated. I did enjoy reading the article Nov. 2 column, “Sly jailbirds have night out behind bars,” regarding inmates at the jail going on their drinking binge.

Clark did make one mistake. He taught all of our young children how to make pruno.

Granted, if they wanted to know before they could easily find out. But now they don’t need to go to all the work of researching it. Clark did it for them. Thank you, Doug Clark and The Spokesman-Review.

Where were the editors? To who’s benefit was this printed? I do feel that you owe an apology to everyone. Shelly A. (Clayton) Potesky Spokane

Cartoon promotes stereotypes

I’m disappointed with The Spokesman-Review for allowing the printing and publication of the Oct. 25 comic strip, B.C., by Johnny Hart.

This particular edition promotes negative stereotypes against Mexican-American people.

The definition of “Zero” as presented in Wiley’s Dictionary, is another effort to fuel up animosity and racism against Mexican-Americans. Clearly, people who practice and promote negative stereotypes and racism against any particular group of human beings are mentally ill. How else do you explain their anti-social and anti-human mentality.

By promoting negative stereotypes against MexicanAmericans, they’re expressing their hate for humanity. Obviously, their objective isn’t to only commit character assassination on Mexican-Americans, but to promote evil and social disharmony as well. Their racist mentality, attitudes and deeds are totally opposed to those concepts we understand as respect, dignity and goodness. Miguel Sebastian Cortez, counselor/recruiter Eastern Washington University

Loons alive and well in Spokane

In regard to the article on loon lovers: Years ago the loons found an elusive home in Spokane. On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings on, Channel 5, you can see and hear them in the wild. Washington Water Power Co. nurses and feeds them. There are two hatch areas in Spokane that are wildlife protected grounds: Spokane City Hall and the Spokane County Courthouse. These are the breeding grounds for the loons. Dave Darlow Spokane