Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Hospital, building separate entities

The Aug. 2 letter, “Hospital up to no good, again,” is a cheap shot and wholly untrue.

The letter implies that Sacred Heart Medical Center has an ownership interest in the Medical Center Building (referred to by the writer as the old Jimmy Crick Building) and that Sacred Heart would benefit financially from the construction of this skywalk to the hospital. This simply is not true.

There have been several owners of this building since its construction in 1946, but Sacred Heart has never been, nor is it now, an owner. It is currently owned by a group of doctors.

The most important question relative to the construction of this skywalk is what has priority, public safety and convenience or a glancing view of the city skyline. This is a decision for the City Council to make.

As one of the former owners of this building, I must say that Sacred Heart Medical Center was an excellent neighbor and is probably “up to no good again” - feeding the hungry and caring for the ill. Jimmy Crick Jr. Spokane

Sports physicals appreciated

On behalf of parents of Lewis and Clark High School students, I thank Group Health of Spokane for the doctors, nurses and staff members who gave their time to give free sports physicals to the community.

My husband and I are fortunate to have medical insurance, but the policy doesn’t include a very important sports physical. This exam is required by the school district before students can participate in sports. I hope other insurance companies will follow Group Health’s example to provide this service.

Our children are encouraged to participate, to build self-esteem, pride in their school and respect for their community. In a time when paying for an exam is a hardship for many parents, I thank Group Health. Yvonne Weiler Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

The people have been suckered again

The demagoguery about “welfare queens” and “ending welfare as we know it” has killed welfare - the system that’s protected the nation’s poor since the Depression.

With the political fog lifting, it’s growing clearer that the so-called welfare “crisis” was just another shell game staged for the rubes back home, to further the fortunes of the sleight-of-hand artists in both rings of the political circus. And the rubes fell for it.

Government spending on what most think of as welfare - Aid to Families with Dependent Children - is less than 1 per cent of the budget. We spend as much on aid to foreigners and countless billions more on bombs, bullets and bunkers.

The notion that welfare recipients are living the good life at taxpayer expense was just another political fast shuffle. In 1993, the average monthly check per family was $373; most of it went to children.

A Chicago study found that single mothers turn to welfare not because they’re pathologically dependent on handouts or reluctant to work, but because they can’t get jobs that pay better than welfare. Moreover, there may be eight applicants for every entry level job.

Soon, all those politicos who gave us all that ringing rhetoric about welfare will find that although welfare is dead, poverty remains. They’ll come face-to-face with the cold fact that the richest country on Earth has chosen not to deal with the worsening state of it’s poorest citizens. They’ll be forced to the difficult task they should have confronted in the first place: reform welfare, make it fair, make it work. Russ Moritz Sandpoint

Bishop, connect with working poor

In response to Bishop Skylstad’s criticism of welfare cuts, I’d like to inform him that it is the working poor who pay the highest taxes, relative to what they make. They don’t have the loopholes that many of his friends have.

It is people like me, not just Republicans, who are begging for tax relief. I’m retired, but when I was working, for the most part for low income, I was charged like a small business. I haven’t wasted my life and I sacrificed to raise my children. Never did I expect others to raise them for me.

I do not feel young families, legitimately married, should have to sacrifice their time with their children by having the mother work outside the home just to pay taxes to carry the ones who want to have the time to live any way they want. I really don’t think Skylstad has any idea how the rest of us try to make it. We all don’t live like a lot of his friends. Religious leaders seem to think we all have the Midas touch.

I think Protestant leaders have a better idea because more of them speak out against high taxation and its devastating effects on the family.

I think it’s time he finds out that it is the little people who make an effort to get off their backsides who are becoming the victims. Margaret Schuster Spokane

Why not stress birth control?

Bishop decries welfare tax and says “Don’t do it on the backs of the poor” (News, Aug. 2).

May the good bishop respond to the following: Has he ever visited the favelas in Brazil and Portugal, the slums in this country and Mexico, where all those good Catholics eat out of Dumpsters, with intolerable disease and suffering?

Instead of letting these good Catholics breed like flies, wouldn’t the good bishop be better off promoting birth control clinics to help eliminate these problems and help stop a young American girl from getting a baby just to be on welfare? I don’t get it. Perhaps you can enlighten. Bob J. Starr Spokane

Bias mars commentary

Re: Richard Fritz’s reaction to Catholic Bishop Skylstad’s Aug. 2 comments regarding welfare reform (Letters, Aug. 5):

Fritz is entitled to his opinions regarding welfare reform. Believe it or not, some Catholics have difficulty with some, or all, of Bishop Skylstad’s comments on this subject. But Fritz was unfair in his portrayal of Catholics in general and of the clergy in particular. I have known hard-working, decent people of different races and religions. All are worthy of respect.

Fritz would do well to separate his political beliefs from his prejudices. Dave Schultheis Spokane

Problem not with God or Catholics

In response to Richard Fritz’s letter of Aug. 5:

People of the Catholic faith are not trying to “overpopulate” the world. The only reason overpopulation is perceived as a problem is because of choices humans have made. We have enough resources for everyone, but we use them selfishly and irresponsibly. God has given us more than enough for all our needs.

Read the books “Food First: The Myth of Scarcity” by Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, and “May All be Fed: Diet for a New World” by John Robbins to find out why and what can be done. The trouble comes not from the size of our planet, but the size of our hearts.

Some clergy members are out of touch with reality, but they don’t have an exclusive on that. Most people who have chosen a life of service are dedicated, sincere individuals. And I have gotten excellent parenting advice from people who aren’t parents. Having a child doesn’t make you an automatic expert.

All of us - institutions and individuals - need to spend wisely and practice good stewardship with what we have. Sometimes that includes investing in the future of people so they can someday be in a position to help others. I have been glad to receive help when needed and have also had the privilege of helping.

We all need to be ready to help because the churches can’t do it alone. No one can do it alone. Lynn Waterbury Spokane Spokane

BELIEFS

Creationism provides perspective

By putting creationism in the same boat as astrology, witchcraft and alchemy, Jack DeBaun (“We can make enlightenment optional,” Letters, July 31) has not only done a great disservice to the Christian community but shows his inability to understand his subject matter.

Unless our worth is rooted and grounded in something objective and outside ourselves (which evolution is not) we are of value only to ourselves and can never rise above the impermanence of our short lives. Creationism helps us see the transitory universe and that God’s love for us gives a value which transcends not only ourselves but our finite universe.

DeBaun’s skeptical criticism of creationism is not only baseless and unsound thinking but, given the opportunity, I could present evidence based on many hours of careful study that would prove his thinking is disproved by archaeological discovery and events.

This is why if creationism were to be taught as the only true science we would not have so many commentaries such as DeBaun’s that erode the thinking of so many people and create so much confusion. Rev. James Fiorito Spokane

Many scientists believe in creation

Jack DeBaun (“We can make enlightenment optional,” Letters, July 31) states that most people find it easier to believe the simplistic tales of ancient religious storytellers than the intellectually challenging theories of modern scientists. He denies the fact that these same scientists offer overwhelming evidence supporting creationism and the God of the Bible.

He also denies the fact that many of the world’s top experts in quantum physics, big bang cosmology, biology, paleontology, archeology, relativity theory, etc. are Bible-believing Christians who literally with all their soul trust in the simplistic tales of ancient religious storytellers. Many of them became believers because of their scientific discoveries.

Several leading paleontologists admit to several persistent and nagging problems for counts of evolution. Many leading scientists admit they would never use the fossil record as evidence supporting evolution theory, as opposed to special creation. Most evolutionists admit to lots of guesswork and supposition. David Sanders Spokane

Evolution is indisputable fact

When people like Wayne Lawson dismiss evolution as being a theory and nothing more, you should remember that in scientific vocabulary, theory means a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomenon (Ninth Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary).

It is not conjecture and has none of the uncertainty that the older meaning of the word has. It is a statement based on a massive body of facts that have withstood numerous attempts to disprove it. To dismiss evolution as just a theory, you must also dismiss electricity, gravity, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, thermodynamics and astronomy as just theories.

Evolution is a fact. That evolution has occurred has not been in dispute for over a century. It is the central unifying theme of biology and one of the best proven facts in science. It has as much evidence in its favor as the theory of a sun-centered solar system.

I recommend that everyone interested read “Science on Trial,” by Douglas Futuyma, which summarizes the evidence in favor of evolution, as well as rebuts all of the anti-evolution arguments that have been presented in this page.

Please note that these creationists have not presented a single fact to support creationism in their letters. They have only presented arguments against evolution, all of which are answered in detail in Dr. Futuyma’s book. Bill D. Gilliland Spokane

Debate really beside the point

I’ve read with interest the recent discussions on creation vs. evolution. Another way of looking at this is that exactly how we got where we are right now may not be as significant as why we are here.

None of us were present during the time of our advent as a human family but we are present now. How we live our lives now is important. Present living challenges us to be loving, nonjudgmental, happy, joyful and having peace as our center in the midst of all circumstances.

I find that centering on these virtues keeps me so busy that I do not have the time to think about or debate as to just how I got here. Tom Durst Spokane

ABORTION

Wilson position vacant of morality

Gov. Pete Wilson is right about one thing: the title of his editorial, “Abortion isn’t the father of all sins.” It’s the immoral idolatry of a Wilson and this nation that have led us to the acceptance of abortion.

There’s something terribly disconcerting about a man who supports 1.6 million mothers in their “choice” to kill their pre-born children lecturing us on what’s moral. By his seeming ignorance about the true watershed nature of the abortion debate on the whole scope of human ethics, Wilson hardly seems qualified to tell us how we ought to be “recasting our culture.”

If it’s morally acceptable for a mother to kill her own child, and if that “choice” has no moral reference point other than the mother herself, who does Wilson think he is in telling teenage girls it’s wrong to get pregnant unless they have a father for the child? If there is no transcendent moral obligation to value human life, where does Wilson get a “moral obligation to prevent pregnancies” through contraception?

Wilson is lost in a moral fog without a guiding beacon. His little flashlight of “personal choice” and “private morality” continues to be proven woefully inadequate for the crushing ethical and social needs of an increasingly disintegrating society.

Our nation’s “best answer for curing the social pathology of a fatherless America” is in dethroning our cultural idol of personal choice. God has established the moral framework upon which all truly moral societies must be built. Having abandoned that foundation, people are simply reaping what they have sown. John S. Repsold Spokane

IN THE PAPER

Stop heralding the long-since obvious

In reference to the endless stream of stories and commentaries on the 1996 Olympics being a platform for the liberation of female athletes - get real! Only in our society would a Carla McGhee or a Rebecca Lobo give themselves credit for “knocking down a lot of walls for women.” (“It was the games the women came to leave their mark on,” Sports, Aug.)

I can’t speak to other sectors of our society, but these Olympics are not the female revolution you keep printing.

The walls came down a long time ago with Title IX and Scholarship Equity (funded by male-dominated sports programs). That’s why people like McGhee and Lobo are being quoted. Fans, television networks, and journalists were paying attention because we’ve changed as a society. Let’s give our society some credit and stop beating a dead horse. It wasn’t the ‘96 female Olympians that knocked down walls, it’s a society that has developed and grown.

We enjoy athletic competition and achievement on all levels, regardless of sex. Big deal. Let’s stop talking about male and female and just enjoy athletics and achievement, free of sexist sensitivity. It does work both ways. Greg W. Schultz Spokane

Blanchette did a superb job

John Blanchette’s coverage of the Olympic Games was excellent. I especially enjoyed his insightful columns on sideline activities and people who were not in the headlines. His description of events and people was free-flowing and extremely interesting. He brought the Olympics home to Spokane. Good job! Ted McFaul Spokane