Letters To The Editor
SPOKANE MATTERS
Humiliation, hurt cause absence
I pride myself on telling it like it is, and “Marlton’s AWOL from Courthouse” (Nov. 1) by J. Todd Foster hit the mark.
As someone who spends a lot of time tracking City Council members and county commissioners, I know Commissioners Phil Harris and Steve Hasson have really been putting in a lot of time recently.
On the evening of Oct. 30, I was talking with Commissioner Hasson a few minutes after 5 p.m. and he showed me his stack of messages. He must have had at least 20 messages to go through before he intended to go home for the evening.
It’s true that Marlton has been lacking in attendance, but I consider him a good man and a friend. He is a very caring and loving father who often calls his daughter during commissioner meetings to let her know what time he will be home.
The Spokesman-Review (Sept. 15) really hung Marlton and me out to dry when it linked me, Sen. Bob Packwood and Marlton following the courthouse fiasco. So I can understand the reticence toward returning to a bitter memory every day.
A lot of people love and respect George Marlton and we wish him well in all he pursues in the future. David Elton Spokane
Unions, don’t run businesses off
I am not anti-union as long as they use common sense. But, remember how glad we all were when Boeing decided to come to Spokane? Remember how many applied for those jobs and how disappointed people who didn’t get hired were?
Also, remember how glad we were when Don Barbieri decided to save the Broadview Dairy and save all those good jobs as well as the local dairy farmers.
I hope the unions will work with these companies so they will want to stay here and other companies will follow. R.M. Kirkpatrick Elk, Wash.
Is there no antidote to juvenile crime?
How about places to play, places to work, some Junior Achievement-type challenges in a broad area of skills - useful skills such as mechanics, carpentry, gardening, sewing and cooking?
Introducing budgeting in elementary grade arithmetic, along with how to use (or not use) a credit card would fit nicely. There is a veritable army of retiree volunteers capable of helping to staff such a program.
“Time is a kind of river,” said Marcus Aurelius. I would add that it’s a river of no return. Children are a river of humanity - likewise, a river of no return. Crime is a dam that traps them from the free flow of maturation.
Instead of just building more facilities to house them when they fall, why not challenge them with a free flow of opportunity to grow, to learn to live, in the full sense of adulthood?
Supporting a tax increase that buys something of value would be a much more attractive choice than providing a wastebasket for our failures. Community participation is part of the teaching process. Kathryn Epton Spokane
IN THE PAPER
Rush to judgment helps no one
In regard to the recent cartoons about children who have been murdered by their mothers’ boyfriends:
I am glad there has been so much attention brought to this case, but these cartoons are uncalled for.
Danette York, the mother of Chelsey York, is a good friend of mine. She would never have left Chelsey with Mike Rydholm if she had thought Chelsey was in any danger. Danette loved her baby more than anything, and I see her grieve for her every day. She is in no way like Susan Smith.
The people who drew those cartoons weren’t there to see Chelsey on life support or at the funeral in her coffin. I was, and I know the effect it had on Danette and her family. She donated Chelsey’s organs in the hope that other families wouldn’t have to deal with the death of their child.
We were all in shock that this had happened, since Rydholm has a 6-month-old baby himself and knew what the effects of shaking and throwing a baby would have. It worries us that his wife, a teacher, would help post his bail and ask the court to let him return home with her and their baby. We thank the judge for his decision and ask people not to judge those you do not know or have all the facts on. Tamie Kolterman Spokane
DRUGS AND THE LAW
Celebrate humane court decision
On Nov. 15, citizens from all across Washington will gather on the steps in front of the Capitol in Olympia to commemorate the recent legal decision that has moved marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2 in Washington state.
We will applaud the triumph of reason and compassion represented in the ruling by Pierce County Superior Court Judge Roseanne Buckner, which result in medical doctors being allowed to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes in Washington state.
Ralph Seely, the lawyer in the case, will be among the many speakers if he is not in surgery.
I encourage everyone who supports this decision, or who wants to learn more, to meet us on the front steps of the Washington state Capitol Building for a 90-minute flashlight vigil. Tom Hawkins Coulee Dam
War on Drugs: We can do better
Drugs are an obvious blight on our society. Yet, it’s the conditions that lead to drug abuse that need a remedy.
Sentencing drug addicts to prison accomplishes absolutely nothing except to further break down the family structure and cost taxpayers huge sums of money. Our War on Drugs is costing taxpayers billions of dollars, with little positive return. I suspect that even trillions of dollars will make no difference.
If we were to lock up all the drug abusers in this country, we would have to build thousands of new prisons. Imagine if we were spending these big bucks on education, parent effectiveness training, inner city renovation, youth programs, employment opportunities, quality child care, fighting racism, safe and clean neighborhoods, and on community-oriented policing.
I bet we can name several future drug abusers and several future criminals. Why? Because we all know the root causes of crime and drug abuse.
Our task? Get involved in our community and schools. We are all in this together, no matter how far out of town we try to move. Craig Coppock Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Bible does refer to spirits
Claire Safran (“Taking the supernatural out of Halloween is misguided,” Perspective, Oct. 29) claims that people of the religious right “object to ghosts and witches because they are not in the Bible.”
Has she never read 1 Samuel 28:7-25, where King Saul meets the witch of Endor who then calls up the spirit of Samuel so Saul can speak to him? The spirit world is very real and only a fool would deny its existence.
By the way, if restricting demonic themes at Halloween is censorship, then what is it called when school children are forbidden to celebrate Christian themes at Christmas time? Esther Trusler Colville, Wash.
Taxed to the nines and then some
A caption in one of the financial papers to which I subscribe contained a headline posing a rather ominous innuendo: “Is The U.S. a Nation of Victims?” The article continued, enumerating race, gender, etc.
I consider the existing tax structure the most victimizing of all government mandates. First and foremost, of course, is the personal income tax, which, although the most obvious, is really only the tip of the taxing iceberg. The federal tax bite alone has risen more than tenfold since 1950. Records show that local and state taxes have tripled since 1960, and according to a newsletter, Strategic Investment, the annualized weekly wages for the individual worker peaked in 1972 and are now below 1956 levels due to the overall taxing structure.
Just what does our tax burden buy? Yes, it buys national defense and, hopefully, a moral justice system. It also buys us legions of regulators that increases our misery. It provides awards for citizens among their army of nonproductive participants. Mostly it buys the enforcement apparatus necessary to levy fines against all who are productive, and with a sliding scale that punishes the more productive with proportionally higher fines.
At this juncture in our country, we are taxing our industrial base and our economic freedom into oblivion through the tyranny of taxes. Lee C. Barton Colville, Wash.
Prison costs must be cut
Gov. Mike Lowry argues that the high cost of running the prisons dictates a need for lighter prison sentences. This is a classic example of a liberal getting things turned around.
It costs $26,000 per year to incarcerate a prisoner in this state, versus $8,000 less in Oregon. Gov. Lowry can’t dismiss this as Republican claptrap. It’s a conclusion of the bipartisan legislative budget committee.
We need to elect a governor whose first instinct isn’t to turn more prisoners loose, but rather to cut the bloated prison budget. P. Norman Nelson Colbert