Letters To The Editor

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Ailing veterans getting raw deal

“Gulf illness inquiry denounced” (Oct. 16) doesn’t only apply to the veterans of the Gulf War but to veterans of all wars. All veterans with disabilities have had the federal government and the Department of Veterans Affairs lie to them, misdiagnose them, give them medication to take, and pat them on the head.

Most times, they get a kick in the pants and are told to come back in three months, or longer, if the medication doesn’t help. If not, they’ll try another medication.

It’s so very true what Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., reported when he stated that the federal government has a tin ear, a cold heart and a closed mind concerning the illnesses and injuries of our men and women who were treated like guinea pigs for the sake of this government’s lethal experiments.

I myself, a Vietnam veteran disabled since 1991, while serving with a reserve unit out of Spokane, have been fighting the Department of Veterans Affairs for six years. Original misdiagnose of a back spasm has become four herniated discs and a neck out of alignment.

I’m unable to perform any kind of physical labor. I take six kinds of pills daily, need a cane to walk with (occasionally a walker) and I’m told it’s not service connected. My doctor at the VA hospital says it is, but will deny saying so.

It’s all a snowball affect, because the VA won’t straighten my spine. The agency also refuses to raise my disability rating of 20 percent.

The freedoms we fought to protect weren’t ours. The veterans lose all the way around. Daniel B. Boer Post Falls

Don’t use rifle scope to scan landscape

My dad showed me the article in the newspaper on “Hunters scope out the rite stuff” (Idaho edition, Oct. 26) and had me read it.

It said Larry Simms pulls his worn 7mm Mauser to his shoulder from time to time and squints through the scope. I hope Simms wasn’t looking through a scope with a loaded rifle. But since he was hunting, the rifle was maybe loaded.

I am 10 years old and went to a hunter safety training course given by Inland Northwest Wildlife Council to get my hunting license. I learned a lot on safety and was taught to use binoculars to scope out the land.

When I went hunting with my dad this season, we had a hunter point his loaded rifle at us while he scoped the land for deer. I felt very uncomfortable knowing that maybe we could be shot even if the safety was on.

Safeties are made by man, and I learned that what man makes can break. By me writing this, maybe other hunters will use their binoculars and stop this old practice and require all hunters to attend a hunters’ safety course before they get a license. Parker Bailey Spokane

Public should scrutinize vaccine use

A recent letter to the editor about vaccines urged reading the book, “Vaccination, Social Violence and Criminality; the Medical Assault on the American Brain.” I did read the book and found it informative and frightening.

If there are questions in the minds of the medical community about the children’s vaccination programs, surely this should be discussed and debated in every magazine, newspaper and in every doctor’s office so that action may be stirred for a closer look at the vaccination program. Angeline G. Hamilton Spokane

IN THE PAPER

Worker’s death underplayed

On Oct. 28, I looked to the front page of The Spokesman-Review for information on the terrible accident and death of a Kaiser Mead employee.I was very disappointed that there wasn’t even a subtitle. Nothing was mentioned until the very bottom of the Region section.

Kaiser Aluminum is Spokane’s biggest employer and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in the Spokane area. When a man loses his life on the job, the thousands of people affected don’t care about Wall Street, a small town in Idaho or all the overbilled political rhetoric smeared all over the newspaper. The Spokesman-Review and its editors need to get their priorities realigned. My thoughts and prayers go out to the Vandoren family. Bob P. Divine Spokane

Cartoon insults military women

As a former WAVE of World War II and a member of Inland Northwest Unit No. 140 of WAVES National, I protest the drawing by syndicated cartoonist Steve Benson on the Oct. 24 Opinion page. It dishonors the many women, past and present, who have served their country. The Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a proud addition with all the other memorials of dedicated service of all veterans. Florence M. Bobiak Spokane

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Divine right of husbands? Nonsense

I commend you on running “Keeping promises” (Oct. 25) and especially for direct quotes by the founder of Promise Keepers. Nothing is more entertaining than to watch somebody to proudly exhibit his stupidity.

Here is how Bill McCartney does it: When compromise in a family decision can’t be reached, the man has the final say. Why? “Almighty God ordained this.” We all know that in balanced, long-term relationships, the partners have their areas of responsibility and in those areas each has the final say. This works and makes for a good family foundation. In unbalanced relationships, the dominant partner calls the shots and the question of what “almighty God ordained” doesn’t even come up. The only real recipients of this silly message could be couples who still struggle with the question of dominance and decision making. Instead of advising them that to reach a consensus on how decisions are made is the first thing to work out if they consider a long-term relationship, a national figure tells them that the problem does not exist, that actually, God solves it for them. Peter C. Dolina Veradale

Reverse racism never lets up

I’ve had it up to my eyeballs with the constant innuendoes and unending sensationalistic charges of racism.

The Oct. 28 letter to the editor by Julie A. Askey started out as critical commentary about the Miss Spokane pageant. Then she slams home with her observation that the contestant picture in the Review didn’t include a woman of color. This, therefore, displays “obvious lack of cultural diversity.”

She assumes pageant organizers purposely and viciously excluded all nonwhites from the finals because only white women were in the picture.

I expect some official to go on the defensive, assure the public it was an innocent oversight, and, apologizing for their lack of sensitivity, promise never to do it again.

One concept of equality in this country is that skin color doesn’t matter and shouldn’t be a factor in hiring, making a team or being a pageant contestant. Pointing out that a group is not a representation of the whole simply because it lacks the right mix of colors, only perpetuates the notion that there is indeed something different about us. In Askey’s words, “What kind of lame message are we sending our children?” Robert K. Corrick Spokane