Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Councilman of no use to anyone

Although I still believe the initial attacks by the media toward Councilman Chris Anderson regarding his absence should have been focused on our outdated city charter, it is now apparent I was wrong in my evaluation of Anderson. This past Sunday’s town meeting was a shocking eye-opener. A line has been crossed - a line of credibility, integrity and responsibility.

Anderson’s logic is no longer logical. Frankly, it stinks. When an individual has to resort to name calling and insults, it’s a demonstrated character flaw at best. When he adds blind accusations that there are people successfully destroying his attempts to gain employment, then he better be able to back it up with proof or seek professional help for paranoia attacks.

A few people have said that Anderson represents them better than any other council member. Anderson points to his often lone dissenting vote as a voice for the people. So what? What does one dissenting vote do to benefit the citizens of Spokane? Absolutely nothing.

The true value of a council person is his or her ability to affect other council members in their actions and decision making. Council members must see that individual as credible, respected and persuasive for him/ her to successfully represent the people’s best interests. Anderson cannot do this. His value to anyone as a council member is nil.

Because of that he should resign. David Bray Spokane

Quit ripping us off and resign

Spokane City Councilman Chris Anderson is the first in line to feed at the public trough. He does not show up for work, but greedily cashes his paycheck. He complains that the job doesn’t pay enough.

Why then, Anderson, did you seek the job in the first place? You champion yourself as a fighter against government waste and fraud. Yet, you’re the worst example of a hypocritical politician serving self instead of the public. Quit ripping us off! You point your finger at the other council members, calling them “clowns.” You are the clown.

I, for one, don’t buy into any of your lies and rationalizations. Please, do us all a big favor and resign. Go away, and don’t take your unearned paychecks with you.

Logan Baldwin Spokane

Another case of bad planning

The city of Spokane intends to build at Hamilton and Foothills a citywide maintenance and operation facility. This facility would be located in the wrong place, as it appears the compost site was (“Odor control backfires, residents say,” Region, Sept. 6).

The maintenance facility is to be located at one of the three most congested intersections on Hamilton Street, in the Logan neighborhood. If citizens of our city let this project go unchallenged there is no doubt in my mind it will proceed.

I asked Dick Raymond, project manager, if the city’s proposal would be adequate considering that Spokane is projected to increase by some 50,000 people in the next 20 years. I was told that it would be adequate until the year 2010. When I asked what would happen at that time, I was told they would have to look at a satellite location.

Why not site the maintenance facility on property that has room to expand to in 10 years (four years being the time to complete the project as it is now proposed)? Raymond said there is one alternative site.

The above scenario should tell us this is not proper planning, now or for the future. This project is now under the direction of Phil Williams, with the city completing the traffic and environmental studies in October, when there will be a final public meeting. C.G. Timboe Spokane

Dumb enough to be city policy

How many of you believe the city cares about its neighborhoods? That it cares about the health of its citizens or the safety of its streets? That it cares about what we think or say? It’s been said that if it doesn’t make sense, the city is sure to do it.

It doesn’t make sense to create a city-operated slum in a close-in neighborhood. But city planners are charging ahead to create a 24-hour-a-day vehicle maintenance complex just down the hill from Gonzaga Prep at North Foothills Drive and Hamilton Street. This is an area of grade schools, retirement homes, religious institutions and family homes.

Hamilton is already 50 percent over capacity, already seriously polluted with carbon monoxide and has some of the most dangerous intersections in the city. Does it make sense to increase all this?

The Federal Clean Air Act mandates that the city reduce carbon monoxide and give quality of life first consideration. Spokane seems to be intentionally inviting federal sanctions through its disregard for this federal law.

Intelligent planning by business and corporations has created industrial parks outside city limits to consolidate their operations. Wouldn’t it make sense to create a maintenance park, away from neighborhoods, to consolidate city maintenance activities?

Neighborhoods are the strength and vitality of a city. They should be protected, not destroyed. Intelligent planning should preserve them. Margaret Hurley Spokane

WHERE THE BEEF IS

Meat industry has unfair advantage

I was not surprised, but very dismayed, to see that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ Chris P. Carrot was banned from two Spokane elementary schools (“Anti-meat message unpalatable” News, Sept. 13). We allow the meat industry to proffer pro-meat literature to our classrooms in the guise of nutrition education, when there is proof that a vegetarian lifestyle is far better for our bodies.

School officials say parents should discuss vegetarianism with children but the meat industry can influence the classrooms of America? When the opposition would like to give a healthy, cruelty-free alternative, we prevent them from entering our schools. Shouldn’t we give children a choice?

The number of vegetarian kids is rapidly growing around the world without adverse effects. They’re not having nutritional problems, as Cynthia Lambarth would have you think.

Any diet that’s not “done appropriately” is harmful to one’s health, especially those that are high in cholesterol and fat due to animal product consumption. In fact, most vegetarians are healthier than their meat-eating peers.

We give names to meat once it’s become a “product” to disguise from our own conscience (and our children’s) what we’re eating. When was the last time you told your child you were having a pig or cow for dinner?

As Mel Morse, former president of the Humane Society of the United States, says, “If every one of our slaughterhouses were constructed of glass, this would be a nation of vegetarians.”

We send our children to school to think as independent individuals, but we are controlling their thoughts by filtering what they can be exposed to. Deanna Knudsen Spokane

Keep PETA ‘antics’ away from school

Shame on both People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Roger Dudley for turning our children’s schools into a circus.

Our children have enough to contend with when they are in the schoolyard (drugs and weapons come to mind) without being told that they are eating their friends.

Our children have enough anti-eating material thrown at them without being told that there is one more thing that they cannot eat.

Eating habits are established in the home by the parents, not by elementary school children. Your “educational” ploys should be addressed to them in a more appropriate setting. Please take your antics away from the school and let our children do what they are they for - learn. Wendy Cox Spokane

A shod-dy example, that carrot

A great observation is made by looking at the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals lady standing next to her “carrot” on the front page of the Sept. 14 issue.

According to PETA, we should eat vegetables only because we break up cow families, but it is interesting to note she is wearing leather strap sandals. How did that cow’s family feel?

Tsk, tsk, tsk, animal rights activist. Jim McClain Spokane

Give equal time for ‘baloney’

A modest proposal to address the Chris P. Carrot controversy: The Weiner Mobile can equally access the concerned schools and Little Oscar can explain to the children how baloney is really manufactured. John Hagney Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Ultimately, we must wean from oil

Much of the oil for the United States and Europe comes from the Middle East and there is little doubt that Saddam Hussein, tyrant and murderous dictator of Iraq, has ambition to control this whole area - perhaps as much of the world as his ego can imagine.

With Saddam in control of much of the world’s oil, is there any doubt gasoline could go to $5 per gallon, and the supply be shut off at any time?

Some say we should stay home; the U.S. is not the word’s policeman. Just who do you want for the world’s policeman? There are plenty of aspiring Hitlers out there anxious to take on the job.

Obviously, we cannot police the whole world. But where there is such a blatantly evil and dangerous character as Saddam, it is well to beat him down, hard and fast.

This leads to the long-range problem of energy and the need for our government to finance and foster development of solar energy from our Southwest deserts. As the world’s supply of fossil fuels diminishes, there is no choice but to go to solar energy, which is free from pollution and in everlasting supply. Charles M. Wolfe Coeur d’Alene

Senate avoided bad ramifications

Before joining the hand-wringing over Congress not giving homosexuals federally protected status on the job, let’s consider what would happen if it had.

In that case, every firing, regardless of reason, could potentially be contested with a $1 million lawsuit in federal court claiming discrimination.

This, in effect, would put heterosexuals at a disadvantage. If an employer needs to cut back employment and is faced with litigation for dismissing a homosexual, naturally, he or she would unconsciously or consciously find a heterosexual to dismiss instead.

My feeling is that employers care about performance on the job, not bedroom preferences. Granted, sexual preference protection would cause an unwarranted expansion of federal power. It would force the creation of a special federal office for enforcement, and would further ensnarl employers with paper work. Litigation would be on a guilty-until-proven-innocent basis. Employers would have one more reason to replace people with machines.

I suspect Sen. Patty Murray has never had responsibility for meeting a payroll or she might have reflected on this.

Finally, millionaire plaintiffs’ attorneys would be further enriched at the expense of the public. P. Norman Nelson Colbert

All society lost out

The headline “Gays Lose in the Senate” is extremely inaccurate. The loss on the Defense of Marriage Act bill and the failure of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act bill represents a greater loss for society as a whole, since it exposes the hypocrisy of a nation whose Pledge of Allegiance says. “… with freedom and justice for all.”

For a society that perpetuates the myth of gay and lesbian promiscuity to deny these people the right to form legally recognized partnerships is unconscionable. Of course, this is the same society that perpetuates the myth that gays and lesbians are wimpy, yet denies them the right to openly serve their country in the military.

It only seems fair that the government would lessen the tax burden of gays and lesbians, since they have fewer legal rights in this country than heterosexuals.

Oops, I forgot. That argument is predicated on the assumption that most heterosexuals act fairly. My mistake! Craig Peterson Spokane

Baker’s a fine one to complain

Where was James A. Baker III’s leadership when Kuwait was run over by Saddam Hussein? To get Saddam out it took several young men and women, and many were sent home from Desert Storm with unknown diseases.

We have leadership now that will take the bull by the horns and keep Saddam where he belongs. If Baker had done a complete job in the first place, we would not have to put up with Saddam now.

Talk about the mess Baker left for the incoming administration. We have by far more peace now than when he left. Frank L. Peterson Greenacres

OTHER TOPICS

Naturalist’s views misstated

My father, the American naturalist and forester Aldo Leopold, wrote at length about how fire has an important natural role in maintaining the forest ecosystems of the West. His name has been seriously misused.

In an Aug. 21 column, logging industry sympathizer Bill Coates argued that Leopold - whose ideas the writer lauded - would have supported the so-called Forest Health bill before Congress.

In fact, the legislation runs exactly counter to Leopold’s published ideas about national forest stewardship, for the bill would promote dubious “salvage” logging practices in the name of forest health.

Written by logging industry lobbyists and rammed through committee without adequate input from scientists or the public, Sen. Larry Craig’s bill, S391, would permanently undermine important environmental laws and restrict the public’s ability to challenge destructive logging practices.

Decades of unrestricted logging and fire control have created unnatural, unhealthy conditions and increased fire risks in several national forests in the West.

A June letter to President Clinton signed by 111 scientists and researchers concluded salvage logging “increases susceptibility to catastrophic fires and insect outbreaks.”

Congress should reject Sen. Craig’s poorly conceived bill that pretends to aid forest health but in fact serves the interest of short-term timber industry profiteering.

We need a different approach, one that looks at specific regions and problems, including ecological use of fire, and that advocates methods to restore the health of the entire ecosystem, not just trees with commercial value. This idea would fit well with Leopold’s vision and philosophy - maintaining our national forests as international treasures. Luna B. Leopold, professor of geology University of California, Berkeley

Column rightly pegged nuisances

Re: Fred Glienna’s Sept. 7 column (“Here’s another bad thing about the television age,” Street level).

The subject in general struck home, but more particularly, the reference to James Earl Jones’ “Othello” of 1971 at Mark Taper in Los Angeles. I was in that cast.

We had many instances of people not six feet from the actors talking as though in front of the television set. One night, Jones stopped the show and said to a couple in the front row, in his best Jones voice, “Shut up.” They did.

This occurred in other shows I did there. The next year, in “Richard II” at the Ahmanson, a woman sat in the front row with a turned-on midget television in her lap. She did turn down the sound. I’ve worked in intimate dinner theaters with people discussing their clothing and jobs - just about everything - while the show went on.

Folks, if you want to do that, save your money and stay in front of the idiot box. (I don’t own one!) Lee Corrigan Rathdrum, Idaho