Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Vote your priorities

Several of Spokane’s main streets are in sad shape. Ask anyone who regularly drives on South Grand or North Monroe, Wellesley or 29th Avenue.

Many letters opposing the street bond express outrage at the signs identifying where improvements are likely to occur. Others believe our streets are in bad repair because the city has done a poor job of prioritizing. Still others accuse the city of conspiracy, of purposely doing a lousy job patching potholes to ensure passage of the bond.

However, none dispute the fact that several of our primary streets are in a sorry state.

We can sit and complain about what coulda, shoulda and woulda been. Or, we can step up to the fact that we have roads in need of major repair, and they will only worsen as time passes. Paraphrasing a famous TV ad: “You can pay me now or you can pay me a whole lot more later. But either way, you’re gonna pay me.”

Suzanne Knapp hit the nail on the head when she wrote, “If we expect our political leaders to do a better job of prioritizing, we had better let them know what our priorities are” (“What to cut? Speak up,” Letters, Aug. 16).

Communicate your priorities with the only really effective tool you have: your vote. A no vote communicates only what your priorities aren’t. A yes vote sends the unequivocal message that streets are a priority, along with libraries, fire stations and schools. Dan S. Kirschner Spokane

Manager just dealt with a menace

Re: Doug Clark’s Aug. 11 column, “Workers upset at boss’s alleged animal cruelty.”

I am a U.S. Postal Service employee. I am assigned to the vehicle maintenance facility under manager Joe Holub. Doug Clark doesn’t have all the facts concerning this case.

Was he informed that last summer an employee from the facility complained to the manager that a marmot had chased him out of the back lot and had even attempted to climb up that employee’s leg? Was he also informed that there was an article in The Spokesman-Review concerning marmots carrying some diseases that are harmful to humans? Was he also informed of the fact that when Holub called County Animal Control to handle this marmot problem last year that agency could not be bothered and said it was up to us to take care of it?

I suggest that Clark get his ducks (or marmots) in a row before he puts an article like this in print.

I feel that Holub did what he thought was best for the employees. Raymond L. Stewart Spokane

Marmots are not harmless

Marmot mutilation! Doug Clark’s Aug. 11 column related to allegations that Joe Holub, vehicle maintenance supervisor for the postal annex at Trent and Hamilton, beat a marmot with a broom and should be prosecuted makes me laugh.

While cute and furry, marmots have been known to carry and spread a virus sometimes fatal to humans. They not only chew up wiring in vehicles but shred upholstery. A quick drive east from Division on Trent will reveal a population explosion among the darling creatures.

Let’s spend our time coming up with a humane way to handle a marmot situation that could become dangerous to others in Spokane besides postal workers who meet up with teeth or droppings in dark vehicle storage areas.

Holub is doing a difficult job saving taxpayer money. He of course would not comment on charges made by his workers because their work records would be confidential information that could be the cause for grudges against a boss with high standards. Criticizing Holub without all the facts seems unfair. Marilyn E. Deneke Colbert

Strong mayor system has weakness

Recent discussions of the so-called strong mayor form of government call to mind some experiences with this concept in times past.

The strong mayor concept presumes that each candidate for mayor is a mature paragon of virtue, well experienced in municipal administration, labor negotiation, leadership and all other necessary attributes. But such is seldom the case. Once elected, a strong mayor would be in office for a stated period, probably four years, and not touchable during that time except by a usually complicated recall process.

An elected mayor, strong or weak, is a political animal and we have no guarantee that he or she will be able to handle municipal administration in an efficient manner.

Our current charter calls for a city manager with credentials that indicate his or her training and experience. And, if he or she is not doing the job, they are removable at any time by majority vote of the council.

It seems to me that what we now have is the best of both worlds. The Spokane area is a growing, viable area with a great future. We might better spend time and effort on amalgamation of the city and county government to better administrate what we have under a county executive. That, for Spokane city and county, would be real progress. Maurice B. Hickey Spokane

THE ENVIRONMENT

Forest management is pure chaos

Re: John Webster’s editorial, “Litigation logjam in need of thinning”: U.S. Forest Service Chief Jack Ward Thomas says we have a “forest health” crisis. The facts don’t support his contention.

Thomas should take some time from his busy schedule working Capitol Hill and read his own agency’s reports. In particular, the July 1994 report compiled by W.B. Smith of the Forest Service shows that mortality on the national forests is .57 percent - less than 1 percent of the national forests are dead or dying. In the Pacific Northwest, this number improves to just .37 percent.

Where’s the crisis? What needs some thinning out is the truth of the matter. I empathize with anyone who tries to decipher what the heck is going on with our public lands. Consider that the Forest Services’ budget has been set by precedent over time and is dependent on timber cutting. Congress made it that way years ago.

Thomas is also chief lobbyist for the Forest Service. His job is to bring home the bacon. The Forest Service is overloaded with logging-focused managers. The agency has a tremendous wealth of knowledge about the land, but it’s hamstrung by Congressional manipulations. Agency professionals who step out of line and speak up are relegated to the quiet seat.

The salvage rider and the Sen. Larry Craig-orchestrated forest health hoax are a ruse to get at low-cost federal timber supplies that belong to all of us.

We are all for sustainability, including pure water, abundant wildlife and fisheries. However, this isn’t what “enlightened forestry methods” have brought us. Timothy J. Coleman Republic, Wash.

‘River’ series valuable contribution

Congratulations to The Spokesman-Review and reporter Lynda Mapes for the most in-depth examination of the issue of endangered to which the Northwest has ever been treated (“River of no return,” July 28-30).

Mapes has established herself as a keen investigative reporter who has exposed never-before discussed issues.

As Northwest citizens, we should all be indignant that the salmon crisis has bred excesses and incompetencies on the part of our fisheries managers and federal and state governments. The public has a right to know how its money is being spent, particularly when it comes to such an emotional issue as endangered salmon recovery.

Our region must be allowed to develop scientific, common-sense salmon recovery measures. We have been stymied, however, by the confusing layers of bureaucracy, programs and special interests that have so far driven the issue’s decision makers.

I hope that every newspaper in the region follows the The Spokesman-Review’s example and critically examines the history, science, finances and future of the salmon recovery issue. Bruce J. Lovelin, director, Columbia River Alliance Portland

Protester ignorant of basic things

Forrest Gray’s brain is missing. The story of the student from Virginia arrested in Idaho after chaining himself to a logging road gate made front page news (“Homework lands protester in jail,” Aug. 15). Gray’s lack of common sense was the only newsworthy thing in the story.

In the article, Gray equates a dying mining town in Virginia with struggling timber towns here in the Northwest. Maybe his parents, who seem so proud of their son’s activism, should explain to their son something that all his schooling failed to teach him: the difference between trees and rocks.

Then they may wish to contact Antioch University to find out how civil disobedience (a.k.a. breaking the law) can be considered community service. Steve Merryman Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Convention’s low ratings deserved

In Cal Thomas’ Aug. 15 commentary, “Big media highly biased against GOP,” he insists the big media (corporations like GE, Westinghouse, TCI) are at fault for the low TV ratings of the 1996 GOP convention. He cites examples of how “liberal” the coverage is of an intolerant, scripted, exclusively conservative event.

My impression is that the low TV ratings are due to the fact that Americans are sick of being sold “goods.” Americans are sick of the advertising and marketing the corporate media make their money on by manipulating the public.

Now we have the Republicans trying to sell themselves to America, nightly, and few drones care to watch. That makes sense to me. N.G. Hannon Spokane

Story left out Dole promises

On Aug. 16, following Bob Dole’s nomination speech in which he laid out his plans for the country, the coverage was minimal. It included a small bit of information on the front page and a box on page 14.

The Spokesman-Review was filled with phrases such as “He also sought to portray the Republican Party as ‘broad and inclusive.”’

Who cares what a reporter thinks “he also sought to do”? Why isn’t the population encouraged or even allowed to read what he actually said?

There was not one word about his pledge to ask for a constitutional amendment to balance the budget. Not one word about the 50 percent capital gains tax cut. Not one word about a 15 percent cut in taxes for everyone, and not one word about his pledge to have a flatter, fairer tax. Not one word about his promise to go after both the IRS and teacher unions. Not one word of his insistence on vouchers and school choice.

These things are too important to be excused by a rationalization that not everything can be covered. Foster W. Cline Sandpoint

Chenoweth rightly opposes U.N.

Rep. Helen Chenoweth knows the United Nations is bad for the United States. Although President Clinton is a puppet of the United Nations, it’s likely that he and his puppeteers are acutely aware of the voters’ wrath that would befall them should the United Nations have overstepped U.S. sovereignty to prevent the New World Mine near Yellowstone. So, he moved in and did himself.

It is easier - and politically safer - to sell the idea of trading away public lands than to admit that the U.N. can control issues within our borders by listing Yellowstone as a “world heritage site in danger.”

The U.N. is about relinquishing national sovereignty. GATT, which created the World Trade Organization, gave away our sovereignty. This is not surprising; the United Nation’s Commission on World Environment and Development recommended in 1993 “the redistribution of production throughout the world.”

This is easily accomplished through these agreements and through control of natural resources by using world heritage site listings. Add excessive government regulation and environmental restrictions, and Idaho resource jobs can be kissed goodbye. The United States will import more and more petroleum, minerals and timber products. Our jobs have been redistributed.

Chenoweth knows the adverse affects of U.S. membership in the U.N., which is why she, with Rep. Joe Scarborough, R-Fla., is co-sponsor of a bill to withdraw the U.S. from the U.N.. She refuses to relinquish Idaho jobs without a fight. She has the best interests of Idaho and the U.S. at heart. John W. Malloy Post Falls

BELIEFS

Advice heresy, for a sick society

I am responding to Carlton Gladder’s Aug. 15 letter, “Keep religion out of politics.”

Our country was founded and based on Christianity and freedom some 200 years ago. Our Pledge of Allegiance says, “one nation under God.” Even our currency says, “In God we trust.”

Gladder wants us to “use our own judgment” and “do our own thinking.” Over the last two centuries and especially the last 50 years, all we have been doing is our own thinking. We have systematically removed God from our society and look where we are because of it: trillions of dollars in debt, drugs rampant in our schools and Beavis and Butt-head are better known by our young people than is Jesus Christ.

Do our own thinking? Gladder, in the name of Christ, open your eyes. We have become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. Same-sex marriages and abortions are OK? That is exactly why God erased Sodom and Gomorrah from the face of the Earth.

It is time we stopped doing our own thinking and put our future in God’s guiding, loving and forgiving hands. Our only chance at freedom does not come from this Earth. Jesus Christ said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32). Scott Burkhardt Spokane

Contraception wrong for good reason

Bob Starr (“Why not stress birth control?” Aug. 10) concluded his letter with, “Perhaps you can enlighten.” I would like to enlighten anyone who is interested.

The Catholic church has always argued that contraception is unnatural and contrary to God’s law.

Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference in London, as recently as the mid-1930s, changed their doctrine on contraception, declaring it lawful. Shortly afterward, many other churches followed their lead.

I well remember reading in the 1960s that this decree would open the door to unlimited abortion, since, if contraception failed for whatever reason, the easy solution would be abortion. We are living the consequences of this decision.

Contraception is wrong for good reason. Marriage and the marriage act are our maker’s plan for procreation, the continuation of his creatures through the human family. Couples who frustrate this sacred purpose are deciding for themselves who will be conceived and who will not; eventually, who will be born and who will not.

God is always wise and just. If a young man and woman wait for true love and freely and honestly vow their lives to each other, they will realize the trust and fulfillment to be found in faithful, joyful family life as God intended it to be. Judy Raykovich Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Kids need mother, father together

Per article of Aug. 4, “Children of loss”:

We are deeply concerned about children losing loved ones to death, but how concerned are we when they “lose” a parent or parents through divorce or non-marriage?

The hurt of loss goes just as deep or deeper, whether the children knew them or not. It’s a void in their soul that may last a lifetime. We were meant to have both a mother and a father.

It’s no wonder the young are striking out through violence, drugs, disobedience, etc. just to quell the hurt, or to forget it. Gen Anderson Spokane

Aluminum tabs are needed

Ronald McDonald House collects the beverage tabs (pop tops) off of aluminum cans, not paper pulltabs. Obviously, The Spokesman-Review is very well read, as our house has had offers for contributions of paper pulltabs.

The aluminum pop-top tabs we collect are recycled by Spokane Recycling and help to offset the cost of our $10 per night room rental fee. Pop tabs can be brought to the Ronald McDonald House located at 1015 West Fifth Avenue. Julie Moyer, director, Ronald McDonald House Charities Spokane