Letters To The Editor

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Return to isolationism now

In response to Debbie R. DuPey, president of the Spokane Chapter of the United Nations Association:

Rep. George Nethercutt is doing what I believe the majority of Washington state residents want, which is to get us out of the United Nations now, before the country is taken over by the U.N. forces.

The United Nations has no right to be in command of our armed forces. You know that the United Nations is not working for the good of our country.

I have two grandsons in the military. As a military wife of 25 years and now retired, I don’t want my grandsons killed in other countries. Pull all of our military out of foreign countries and bring them home. We are not the world’s peacekeepers. I’d be willing to bet that none of the United Nations supporters have sons or daughters in uniform or they wouldn’t be so quick to put our young people in harm’s way in their trumped-up world peace missions.

You should be ashamed of yourself for spouting all this garbage. Elaine M. Elliott Colville, Wash.

‘Hare-brained’ vote rightly condemned

Thanks to Debbie DuPey for her letter (“Nethercutt U.N. vote shows ignorance,” June 24) regarding Rep. George Nethercutt’s recent hare-brained vote to pull the United States out of the United Nations.

Nethercutt, who was elected by the National Rifle Association on a term limits platform, is changing his tune. He now wants to run for a higher office.

Nethercutt, get a life. Wells J. Longshore Spokane

Nethercutt U.N. vote justified

I must disagree with Debbie R. Dupey (“Nethercutt U.N. vote shows ignorance,” Letters, June 24) because the fact is, if you read the fine print in many of the U.N. resolutions, many of them lead to a dictatorial one-world government.

The United Nations would like to tell you how to raise your children, where to live and what kind of car to drive because they know how to run your life better than you do, of course.

The part of DuPey’s letter that really made me laugh was when she claimed that the United Nations has been an effective peacekeeping force. For instance, in Bosnia U.N. troops were relegated to helping people across the street while they were being fired upon. U.N. troops were not allowed to fire back and as a consequence, they not only did not keep the peace but many innocent people died because of this inaction.

Rwanda is another perfect example of U.N. incompetence. As told to me by a friend who was in Rwanda at the time of the killings in the early 1990s, the United Nations told the group of missionaries that she was part of that they would protect them. But when the shooting started, she said, the United Nations turned and ran, while the missionaries were left to fend for themselves. As a consequence, they barely made it out of the country alive.

I thank Nethercutt for voting the way he did.

While DuPey may belong to the Spokane Chapter of the United Nations, she is not telling the citizens of Spokane the full story on U.N. conduct. Justin B. Childers Spokane

China MFN: Follow money trail

The communist Chinese government imprisons, tortures and murders its people. It persecutes Christians. It has raped Tibet. It employs the slave labor of its people.

Our trade deficit with China is so imbalanced that U.S. tariff on Chinese goods averages 2 percent while China’s tariff on U.S. exports to China average 35 percent.

Why are we giving China most favored nation status and helping it with technology so it can build up its military, which some day may be turned on us?

Answer: Follow the money trail directly to the White House and Congress.

Then buy American. Alberta A. Murray Elk

China doesn’t deserve MFN status

The June 15 article, “China muzzles protest” is the latest in a long list of reasons why we shouldn’t extend most favored nation trading status to communist China.

The article said that China has already handpicked Hong Kong’s future legislature and has voted to give Hong Kong’s police broad new powers to ban even peaceful demonstrations. In typical communist fashion, Hong King will not have a government chosen by the people and the people will have no means of peacefully opposing Chinese tyranny.

Communist China today has a far worse human rights regime than the Nazis ever had. Religious persecution, slave labor camps, torture, forced abortions and murder are a way of life in China. Beginning July 1, they are going to extend that lifestyle to Hong Kong.

President Clinton again asked Congress to extend MFN trading status to China. Last year, export-import bank provided over $2 billion in taxpayer subsidies for corporate ventures in China, made possible by MFN status. With our stores overflowing with Chinese slave labor goods, it should be obvious that China doesn’t need our tax dollars to subsidize its trade. Steve Dunham Spokane

Will senators vote with sense, courage?

On June 12, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a constitutional amendment that would ban flag burning.

On June 14, which, ironically, was Flag Day in the United States, the Chinese communists voted to ban flag burning in Hong Kong. The law became necessary when they began the phase-out of freedom there.

The Constitution provides our liberties. The flag only symbolizes the liberties. Members of Congress are under oath to protect and preserve not the flag, but the Constitution. The vote was 310 to protect the symbol and 114 to protect the liberties.

If one exception to free political expression can be made, others can be made. The liberties are in danger of being undermined by the people who swore to protect and preserve them.

Thirty-four U.S. senators can prevent this unnecessary tampering with the Constitution, if they’ll risk punishment at the polls for their courage. John M. Smerer Spokane

Democrats can’t stand tax cuts

The hysteria and outright lies from the left have started. Just days after Rep. Bill Archer (R-Texas), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, announced an $85 billion tax cut over five years, which includes a $500 tax credit per child under 17, reduction of capital gains and inheritance taxes, etc., Democrats are screaming that it’s a tax cut for the rich and that the poor are being shafted. It’s the class warfare argument all over again.

First, an $85 billion tax cut is nothing compared to the two largest tax increases in history: 1990, $300 billion; 1993, $350 billion. If you total these two increases they amount to $650 billion for Democrats to waste and redistribute.

Second, poor people (those whose income is $20,000 and below and qualify for the earned income tax credit) pay minimal taxes. Why cut taxes for people who don’t pay any?

What the American people need to remember is this: Democrats believe that any tax cut is unfair for them and takes money out of their pockets. When the Democrats raised taxes to record levels in 1990 and 1993, they never asked how we were going to pay for it. But if only $85 billion is cut to put money back into our pockets, they go nuts. Their hysteria should be ignored and the Republican proposal should be supported. Albeit small, it is a step in the right direction. Mark E. Duclos Spokane

Republicans fool fewer and fewer

The eminent House Speaker Newt Gingrich recently advocated a tax cut that will allegedly allow the average worker to work fewer hours with more take-home pay. Boy, that’s a switch!

How do you spell hypocrisy? Only a short while ago, Gingrich and his colleagues voted down a minimum wage law that could help in that same direction.

Any time he and his cohorts advocate cutting taxes for the lower income brackets, you know the small print in the bill is going to much more greatly aid those in the middle to higher level brackets than those he’s courting.

The GOP is becoming more obvious in its actions as well as its legislation. Every important bill sent to the president is loaded with care packages for the affluent by reducing inheritance taxes, lowering capital gains taxes, etc.

When Clinton vetoes those gift packages to the affluent, he then becomes “unfeeling” to the needs of the people living in flood- or hurricane-damaged areas.

The GOP is now retreating from its Medicare cuts as even its own constituents can see the handwriting on the wall. They, too, find that every dollar removed from entitlements is used to offset the inheritance and capital gains tax cuts.

Even many lower-middle-income Republicans are beginning to see how they, too, are being manipulated. Someone better remind Gingrich of the old adage that says you can fool some of the people some of the time, some of them all the time, but you can’t fool all of them all of the time. Not even Republicans. Andy P. Kelly Spokane

Reaganomics effectiveness proven

Vern P. Stevens claims 17 years of Reaganomics has been unjust (“GOP still bleeding the middle class,” Letters, June 24).

Perhaps he’s not old enough to remember, but the Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress and the presidency as recently as 1992. In 1993, the Democrats enacted a huge tax increase but didn’t dismantle Reaganomics. Why not? Because Reaganomics works.

Reaganomics is based on two simple principles:

1. Citizens understand how to spend their hard-earned money better than government bureaucrats do.

2. No nation in world history has ever taxed itself into prosperity.

During the 1970s, under the Carter-Democratic economics, America had double-digit inflation, unemployment and interest rates. Within a few years, Reaganomics metamorphosed the dismal Carter economics into the powerhouse economy we are still enjoying today. Lee W. Gobroski Spokane

Greed drives U.S. economy, policy

Re: Dary D. Leipert’s letter of June 25: The United States has a war-based economy. In order to justify spending $258 billion per year on defense, which is $40 billion more than the combined total of the rest of the entire world’s, the United States needs an enemy. Since the demise of communism, the new enemy being put forth is the Arab world. After all, the Arabs have the audacity to charge us for oil.

The United States coerced Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait. It’s the basic principle of “divided, they fall.” The U.S. military knew exactly where the chemical weapons storage tanks were. This is the same military that deliberately ignored Saudi Arabian and Swedish warnings that the U.S. barracks near Dhahran were vulnerable to attack. The more heinous the enemy, the more money the military can extract from the taxpayer. Furthermore, the United States wanted Iraq to “control” the Kurdish population, since the Kurds are a thorn in the side of our good friend, Turkey.

The Vietnam war was fought over oil in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Soviet Union collapsed because oil was discovered in Siberia. NAFTA passed because Mexico has oil. People are starving to death in the Arab world because the United States has a junkie oil habit and refuses to pay fair prices for oil. Margaret E. Koivula Spokane