Letters To The Editor

LAW ENFORCEMENT

Take a bite out of crime - only

Spike, the police dog with an apparent dislike for Beatles songs and elderly men, is finally on leave. One hopes his retirement includes a fenced yard and staying on a leash in public - measures we take to protect our dogs and fellow humans.

Spike certainly appears handsome and intelligent, and he no doubt thought he was doing his job in these biting incidents. We know, though, that his job was to track, capture and detain suspected criminals while following his handler’s commands, not to attack people who happened to be in the wrong place while he was exercised off lead.

Police department administration would do well to admit some measure of responsibility and not simply pass blame off to the victim for singing the Beatles rather than Garth Brooks.

If department procedure was not violated in these incidents it’s time to change the rules. Policy should be designed to protect the officers, dogs and public. We taxpayers face ultimate responsibility for the major liability issues arising from unsafe dogs or unsound dog handling. Such incidents unfortunately create a window for some to question faith in our police.

Even the best-trained dogs with skilled handlers won’t perform perfectly all the time. A 100-pound dog, trained to attack, creates exceptional hazards when allowed to run free in an urban area. A solid first step would be to require that the dogs not be allowed off lead except in a fenced area or when in pursuit of a suspect. Arthur Lund Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND WELFARE

Alleged gravy train a local freight

All the current hand-wringing by Republicans over the supposed drain on the economy by welfare recipients has left out one important factor.

Republicans, and some Democrats as well, would lead us to believe that once a welfare check or booklet of food coupons is issued, those funds are gone forever into some dark void, never to be seen again. Actually, just the opposite is true.

Consider this: Welfare recipients aren’t spending American dollars in the Bahamas or investing in foreign industry. They’re not sending their welfare checks to a secret Swiss bank account or to an overseas relative. Those welfare funds are being spent locally.

That money doesn’t disappear forever; it’s being spread out to the neighborhood grocery store and the gas station. The landlord gets a sizeable piece, as does the local power and gas company. Clothing stores and medical professionals share in the bounty, along with small businesses such as video rental stores and pizza parlors.

Everybody who ends up with a portion of a welfare check pays taxes to two governments. Rather than disappearing, welfare funds are merely redistributed to the public, and a good portion is actually returned to the government in the form of various taxes and fees.

The only ones who don’t profit from welfare are the recipients themselves. They merely send the money back from whence it came: the public. All the welfare recipient gets is substandard housing, the humiliation of using food coupons and the privilege of exposing every facet of his or her life to a case worker. Edward B. Hanson Spokane

How can such cheating go on?

“Welfare ripped-off big time” (Jan. 14) is an informative story that provides excellent insight into the incompetence of our welfare system.

In the example given, a dishonest family operates a successful business for four years while collecting welfare and evading taxes.

One can’t help wondering why, with all of its billions of dollars of computers, skilled operators and diligent investigators, our government can’t devise procedures and controls to prevent these occurrences.

“Investigators are swamped … backlog is growing” and the “majority on welfare don’t cheat.” If these are true statements and those who do cheat get away for years, then it is quite probable there are many more cheaters than the state Department of Social and Health Services realizes.

Vancouver legislator Mark Boldt would fix the problem by having the Office of Special Investigations hire more “gumshoes.” It might be a better idea to simply require more foolproof information from persons applying for business licenses and/or welfare.

If not, we should privatize these public services. Ralph Moreno Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Support Republicans on budget

I’m ashamed of the management our Congress has exhibited over the past four decades.

Liberal Democrats have given our country away in exchange for votes. That’s why the Democratic Party is pegged as the party for the poor. Republicans have refused to play that giveaway game so the Repuiblican Party has become the party for the rich.

I hear people say nothing has changed with this new Congress, that it’s just business as usual. I say they have done about everything they can do. Our new Congress has taken on a job liberals have refused to do: balance the budget. Republicans have done a good job until running into a stumbling block by the name of Clinton.

The question is, do we get behind this Congress and get the budget balanced or just continue to borrow money and raise the debt limit, taking everything we can get from the government and leaving to our children and grandchildren a bankrupt government facing dictatorship?

Please, folks, don’t wait until it’s too late to cry. Let’s leave our offspring a chance at opportunity like we’ve had. Bert Clute Spokane

Government at root of problems

Americans should be celebrating that we now have a Congress that is attempting to manage our country in a responsible manner. Instead, big-government Democrats and the media shamelessly distort the information in order to frighten and pander.

The media were given special status in our Constitution, primarily to protect the people from their government through accurate reporting. Naturally, this concept is invalid if these people are uninformed and/or disingenuous.

Fact: In 1955, total taxes and fees for a middle income family were less than 20 percent and health care cost approximately 1 or 2 percent. The infrastructure worked. Health care and college education were affordable. Today, total taxes and fees are nearly 40 percent and health care is another 5 to 10 percent.

Government is the single greatest impediment to our personal and economic growth. During the last 30 years we’ve created a huge industry for bureaucrats and recipients through the transfer of public money. Most of these programs have failed.

Government size and cost could be reduced by at least 25 percent (compare 1955 and 1995 telephone directory listings for government). This would return several thousand tax dollars to middle income Americans annually and provide expanded opportunities for employment. Businesses would be more competitive and more jobs would remain in the United States.

Add to this formula a flat tax and intelligent investing of Social Security and most everyone would be financially independent by the time they were 50. The country would have the money to care for the really needy.

It’s so painfully simple, yet so elusive in our special interest political climate. Dave Hamer Spokane

Repeal the 16th Amendment

“Supply siders see equity in a flat tax” is so biased it should have been on the editorial pages.

In one paragraph the author states that people with incomes below $15,604 would see their tax burden rise 80.9 percent. Yet a few paragraphs later he admits that all flat tax proposals exempt income of up to the first $36,000 for a family of four. This author needs a calculator.

Furthermore, the claim that the government will collect less in taxes may seem logical, but it doesn’t take into account the freeing-up of money from a less oppressive and burdensome tax system. This cash will flow into the economy, creating new jobs and businesses.

A flat tax is a fairer tax, but not fair enough. The fairest course of action would be to repeal the 16th Amendment and get the government out of our personal business altogether. Why should the government know what I make or what I pay an employee?

Further, why should it be able to dictate a minimum benefit from a contract between a business and its employees? That should be a private matter.

This repeal would unleash the entrepreneurial creativity for which Americans are famous. No other country in the world would surpass us.

With what would we replace it? A tax on states, apportioned according to population. The exact reverse of the 16th Amendment. Responsibility would fall to local governments where citizens have the most control.

If this country fails, it will be from the weight of federal bureaucratic regulation. Atara Clark Spokane

Elect Gramm, you invite trouble

I just read “GOP rivals vow to kill guns laws” and I strongly disagree with Republican presidential candidate Sen. Phil Gramm. Gramm pledges to repeal the Brady handgun law if he is elected.

This action would allow more gun-related deaths to occur in our country. Too many people are being killed today needlessly in our schools, on our streets and accidentally in their own homes. Gramm may be an experienced hunter and a gun collector, but all gun owners don’t have the same respect as he does.

There is no middle ground on this issue. You can never say one person has the right to own a gun and another doesn’t.

As a high school student, I cannot vote. Adults, it is your job to look out for the future of this country. By electing Gramm and others with similar viewpoints to office, you will make America’s future worse than it already is. Natilee Johnson Spokane

Use recorders, not reporters

Give me the facts, please! Who, what, where, when and how are news. When a reporter writes his or her opinion on those issues, it is editorial comment.

Editors and staff writers for The Spokesman-Review don’t seem to understand this basic concept. There have been too many examples in the past to enumerate, but two recent articles have raised my ire.

Last Friday, Rep. George Nethercutt gave a 45-minute speech to 300 members of the Chamber of Commerce. Saturday, the Review “reported” it with approximately eight short paragraphs in the Region section.

In his talk, Nethercutt explained in great detail the reasons for Congress’ stand on the budget impasse. This was not reported. Half of the article was about 12 environmental protesters who appeared on the street. A great opportunity to inform readers was missed.

I then looked to the front page to see what more important news was covered. A story about a quarantined dog appeared. What’s more important, this dog or the national budget?

I don’t care if you agree with Nethercutt or not, hearing the who, what, where, when, why and how about his voting is important.

The second example is Rich Landers’ environmental babble in the Jan. 18 Sports section. When he makes numerous editorial comments it stops being news, becomes opinion and belongs on the editorial page.

Let me make an informed opinion of my own. Give me all of the facts. Don’t leave anything out, don’t color it, just report it. Steve Boots Liberty Lake

Past time for civility, respect For those of us who have wondered why the political arena has evolved into such a nasty, name-calling forum, we need look no further than Bill Klein’s letter of Jan. 10, “Democrats won’t capitulate.”

If Klein is any indication, I believe that our elected officials and their unseemly conduct at election time are true reflections of how intolerant and disrespectful of one another we have become. Unfortunately, Klein can’t conceive of the idea that there may be more than one valid, educated position on the same issue.

We may not all agree on how thing should be done, but it is important to concentrate on the many common goals and concerns we all share - balanced budget, crime control, better education, economic-environmental balance, etc. - and try to come up with compromises that will get us there. There should be mutual respect for differing opinions formed on a basis of research and knowledge.

A stubborn no-compromises attitude reflects the arrogant viewpoint that there is only one way to accomplish a goal, allowing for no improvement or variance even for good reason. A monarchy could do just as well.

We should all be able to see the necessity in a democracy for treating each other with respect and searching for a suitable compromise that can satisfy both parties. Colleen L. Owen Spokane

Investigation lawyers’ gold mine

Day after day I watch on television as expensive Washington lawyers play their lawyer games at our expense. Whether one likes or dislikes the Clintons, I doubt this is the best way a country deeply in debt needs to spend its tax dollars. If you have hired a lawyer lately, you are aware that they charge $125 per hour and up. Washington hot-dog lawyers get $300 to $500 per hour.

They have been spending our hard-earned money digging through 10-year-old files, reading people’s notes, and now I guess we will hear what they dig up in the e-mail files. We have congressional lawyers asking questions of White House lawyers who are represented by lawyers telling them what to say or not say. This is getting obscene.

They have been at this ever since the Clintons arrived in the White House. How long are we going to allow this kind of waste? When will we tell Congress enough is enough, get on with the people’s business? Bill Shawl Spokane

ABORTION

Why point finger at China?

New York Times columnist A.M. Rosenthal (Opinion, Jan. 10) relates the tragic story of coerced abortion and starvation of unwanted “surplus” people in Red China, and asks whether we have the right to mourn.

Rosenthal claims that greedy, profiteering corporate America has caused the Clinton administration to overlook this profoundly immoral behavior on the part of the Chinese government. However, we are dealing here with a chief executive who couldn’t wait to get from his inaugural ceremony to the Oval Office, where he could take up his pen and sign every executive order in sight that would advance the goals of Planned Parenthood Inc. and other abortion profiteers. This despite his professed aim of making abortion “safe, legal and rare.”

President Clinton’s unseemly haste to do radical feminists and abortion profiteers’ bidding was not compelled by corporate America’s supposedly unseemly quest for profits.

We Americans stand on a very shaky moral base when we presume to criticize China’s coerced abortion policy. After all, we are citizens of a representative democracy. We freely elect our legislators and the presidents who appoint Supreme Court justices. Yet every day in these United States, on the average some 4,000 innocent infants die at the hands of abortionists.

This is an abomination upon which we, collectively, have conferred legal approval. As justification for these crimes against our own humanity we claim not overpopulation or material shortages, but usually nothing more compelling than personal convenience. Leonard C. Johnson Troy, Idaho