Letters To The Editor
BUSINESS AND LABOR
Putting the bite on business travelers
As a business traveler to Spokane from Seattle, I’m constantly amazed at the upbeat and enthusiastic tone of the business community in Spokane.
It’s quite a contrast to see local news talking about new businesses opening and how many new hires it will mean for the area. But, it’s somewhat confusing to me why Spokane has one of the highest rates of taxation for business travelers in the state.
During my most recent trip to Spokane, I was taxed 15.17 percent on a car rental, plus an additional 10 percent as an airport tax! Seattle doesn’t charge anywhere near that.
Why am I penalized for renting a car? It seems unfortunate, as I would like to fly to Spokane, rent a car and drive to Montana, etc. But the car tax rate seems very punitive. This is on top of paying hotel-motel taxes, airport fees etc.
You don’t charge hotel guests who use a shuttle van. It seems ridiculous that you have singled out car rentals for this tax. Hopefully, your City Council will reconsider this issue. David Goren Seattle
Management thinking needs a lift
Opinion editor John Webster’s Nov. 5 editorial (“Resorts need snow and common sense”) is correct in claiming the the mountain adds “a valued piece of our quality of life.” We are fortunate to have skiing within 45 minutes of the center of town, as few large cities do.
However, Webster didn’t mention nordic ski trails rivaling the state’s best. The nordic skiing is so good that the best skiers in North America will assemble for two early ski races in December.
Yet, as the season’s first snows fell, a work crew started a new two-mile ski trail around Quartz Mountain. The proposed trail remained in the planning from May to October. Then, when the ski season was about to begin, out come the chainsaws and bulldozer.
There will no doubt be a host of reasons given for the delay. They will add up to no more than another thinly disguised excuse for ineptitude.
Although nordic and Alpine skiing techniques differ, management’s incompetence is similar. Current or previous operators of the downhill, depending on the upcoming decision, are out of touch with Webster’s “valued piece.” Some passionate Alpine skiers want good skiing, not excuses, and they’re fighting to get it.
I laud their efforts and only hope some of their concern will spread to the nordic trails.
A young Finnish woman put it best, when she saw the bulldozer working on the ski trail: “In Finland, someone would be hanging by their private parts in the town square for this.” Nicholas Bauer Spokane
PEOPLE IN SOCIETY
U.S. uber alles notions faulty
I’m distressed by a statement I keep hearing about our country. I hear it from our leaders, from the average John or Jane Q. Public and from our children. The statement is “America is the greatest country in the world.”
People who view our country this way no doubt feel a profound sense of patriotism toward the United States of America. However, when a sense of patriotism or love of country carries us to the point of seeing ourselves as the greatest in the world, it’s no longer patriotism. It is arrogance and ethnocentrism.
Who would think highly of, or would respect and want to listen to, a person who says to us that they are the greatest person in the room, school, company, or church? We would be put off by such an attitude.
Why do we then say this about ourselves, in relation to the global community?
A person who has a healthy outlook on life sees himself or herself as having something to contribute to the greater good, yet also recognizes both a personal need for others and the contribution those others make toward the good of the whole. This describes an attitude and awareness that values equality and mutual interdependence. We seem to lose sight of this in the global sense.
May we, as a nation that is great in many ways, come to see that our place in the world is not above, but alongside, everyone else. Douglas A. Segur Spokane
Dumb bias and even dumber bias
I once met a lazy black man. All black men are lazy.
I heard a white company employee denigrate a black person. All white employees of the company - no, all companies - are bigots and should be punished.
Is one of these statements more prejudicial than the other? The first reveals a white male who is too lazy to think, or who’s afraid of not measuring up, hiding from reality. The second statement reveals someone paid large sums of money by Knight-Ridder to write a column printed in this paper. Brett Danielson Spokane
Raise the bar on what’s ‘responsible’
A traffic tragedy was reported in “The Region” section of the Nov. 17, Spokesman-Review. It involved seven Oregon State University fraternity brothers returning home from a party in Corvallis, Ore.
The death of a 19-year-old is bad enough. What further churned my stomach was the comment by Lt. John Chilcote - supposedly a dependable authority on the subject - “that they were trying to be responsible with having a designated driver.”
Since when is getting drunk a responsible action? Does arranging for a sober person to drive you home equate to being a responsible father, mother, son or daughter, when you are dumped at your home for your loved ones to admire?
This venomous mentality - sadly endorsed by police authorities - is nothing more than a cheap cop out. In fact, it really says it is acceptable, sorry, “responsible” to get drunk, as long as you don’t drink and drive. There is far more damage, pain and tragedies caused by drunks after they get home than on their way home.
Anyone who abuses alcohol is a fool and irresponsible, whether he gets a ride home or not. Philip Zammit Spokane
MILITARY
Greater among equals are resented
I have no patience with authority figures who abuse their power. I find the abuse of women trainees by their Army cadre despicable. I hope those found guilty are suitably punished.
However, a nearsighted approach to dealing with such abuse of power can be counterproductive.
Staff writer Rebecca Nappi (“Military must adjust for women,” Our View, Nov. 14) outlined a multifaceted attack to stop future incidents of sexual violence against women in the military. However, the attitude reflected in her statements: “The new military is filled with women taking their places alongside men. In training. In barracks. In the academics. And in command positions,” exhibits by omission what we used to call cherry picking.
Cherry picking is a sports metaphor for hanging back, letting others do the tough, dirty work, then taking advantage of opportunities to make an easy score.
Notice that Nappi did not say with women taking their places alongside men in battles, foxholes and body bags. Does this mean women will be pilots, missile launchers and in command positions, while men fight and die in the dirt?
People act on what they believe. If a team believes cherry pickers are being forced on them, the perceived cherry pickers aren’t treated well.
Nappi’s multifaceted attack may be well served by working toward cultural acceptance of the fact that giving women the plum jobs in the military, while treating men as expendable cannon fodder, is a recipe for trouble. Too many men have been butchered for God and country for it to be otherwise. Francis E. Kent Four Lakes, Wash.
Pay heed to precursor of violence
I would like to respond to a recent letter about spousal abuse. There were several instances of half truths and undocumented information.
While it may be true that women use weapons more than men, there is a logical explanation for this fact. Most woman weigh less than men and are not as physically strong as men are. To defend themselves, they may use a weapon.
On the surface it may seem that men and women abuse each other at the same rate. However, research shows that often, women, after a buildup to tension, will start a fight just to decrease the tension and get themselves into the “honeymoon stage” of the violence cycle (Marden, Rice, “The Use of Hope as a Coping Mechanism in Abused Women,” Journal of Holistic Nursing, March 1995).
The woman knows the violence is coming and the tension is very high. She may feel she will do anything to get that tension down.
It would be far better if society would pay more attention to causes of the tension that leads to violence and develop strategies to help families cope with that tension and decrease it. Mary O. Marden Spokane
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Unborn not on Clinton’s radar
The hypocrisy of President Clinton and his administration continues to amaze me.
In his acceptance speech, Clinton said he wanted all children to have the same opportunity he had. He apparently forgot to mention, or to even consider, the many unborn children in their mother’s wombs who will not have any opportunities because of his re-election and continued support for letting women choose to have abortions of any kind, for any reason.
Clinton’s re-election is a tragedy for the more than 1 million children who will not be born each of the next four years. They will have no chance to share in his dream of opportunity. It is an equal tragedy for the mothers, fathers and families, not to mention the economic impact of the murder and loss of over a million potential consumers each year.
Perhaps it is best summed up by a recent statement from Mother Teresa, a great lady and protector of the poor, whom we can all acknowledge with respect. She said, “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the unborn child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another.” William C. Schumacher Deer Park
Clinton deserving of respect
It deeply concerns me about the state of mind of some of our young people when I read a letter like Angelique Utley’s (“Choice, as it is, has been made” Letters, Nov. 11).
It’s hard to believe a 16-year-old can spread such venom at a person she does not know, one who holds the highest office in our land.
Does Utley know President Clinton is the first president in our history with the courage to take on the National Rifle Association and the tobacco industry, knowing full well that doing so could have cost him the election?
Has Utley heard from the Bible, “Judge not that you be not judged” and “Let him without sin cast the first stone”? She could learn a lot from President Clinton about compassion, fairness and, notably, forgiveness.
With 379 electoral votes and 40 million-plus votes by citizens, it should be apparent to all that the people have spoken. We should all now support our leaders for a better tomorrow for all Americans. Gladis Johnson Spokane
BELIEFS
Fundamentalists, your petard awaits
Ellen Craswell’s candidacy created controversy. That a theocrat who believes only Christians should run the state should garner so many votes unnerves those of us who believe in democracy.
Many conservatives looked beyond Craswell’s religion to her economic promises and voted purely on bottom-line conviction. They ignored her religious notions the way union men ignored Adolf Hitler’s racial theories. German workers concentrated on Hitler’s economic ideas as Jews, then Gypsies, then Catholics were silenced. The unremorseful saying in those days was, “Well! He fills the lunch pail.”
To this Jeffersonian Deist, the debate has fallen into the dregs, to debating all the fallacies in the Bible with acquaintances who are Bible literalists and who will understand it no other way. Every biblical detail is literally true to them, no exception. I can see why our forefathers wisely separated church and state while our elders advised against arguing politics or religion.
I had just about given up on convincing literalists of their foolishness until one of my interlocutors inadvertently gave me biblical evidence of why these people are as they are. In my stubbornness, I give it to your readers.
In Corinthians 1:25, Paul wrote, “For the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
Well, the creator, who I’m in awe of, is neither foolish nor weak. But, perhaps I shouldn’t understand the Bible literally? George Thomas Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Let’s clarify seeming inconsistency
In a Nov. 13 letter (“Will someone make a grain of sense?”) Dave Beine points out an apparent conflict between an Associated Press article on world population and the food supply, and a July 1996 Newsweek article, then asks who we are to believe. Good question.
The answer is both, and the key is the different time frames of the two sources.
The Newsweek story concerned the period 1961-94. During most of that time there were large increases in the world food supply from the green revolution, an outcome arising from the development of more-prolific plant varieties coupled with greatly increased use of fertilizer. During the 33-year interval discussed, population almost doubled.
The November AP article concerned only a six-year timespan in the 1990s. By this time, almost all the green revolution gains in food supply had been made and there was very little additional increase. And, of course, in this shorter length of time the population increase was correspondingly less.
So, there is no basic disagreement between the two accounts. Food supply grew substantially in earlier decades but is no longer doing so. Meanwhile, world population growth continues. In many countries, including China, the amount of arable land decreases as more land is taken over for urban expansion.
Also, poor countries cannot always afford enough fertilizer to ensure high yields. The outlook is not bright. Robert Forman Colville
Pet Mania made people happy
Recently, at the Convention Center, Spokane was privileged to host Pet Mania ‘96. This exciting, hands-on experience for children of all ages featured over 40 major exhibitions.
The children’s happiness as they saw, touched, and hugged the many animals, from tiny chihuahuas to curious llamas, was reward enough for the many breeders for their share in the show.
Congratulations to Lilac City and Spokane Dog Trainers the Spokane Sheriff’s Department, Leader School for the Blind and the many other hard-working groups that demonstrated the important part animals play in our lives. Millie F. Williams Spokane