Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Stone’s assertions don’t hold up

After reading John Stone’s Oct. 27 advertisement letter to Spokesman-Review publisher Stacey Cowles, I was compelled to address a couple of Stone’s numerous inaccuracies, starting with the assertion that the HUD Section 108 loan was to the city for general use downtown.

As an architect and developer experienced with loans of this type, I can assure you they are project-specific and very difficult to qualify for. The structure for these loans requires that the borrower not only pay back the funds but also create, retain and document 676 jobs for this area. Stone might not shop at the new River Park Square, but he will have a good chance of finding a job there.

Stone refers to the East Market Village plan as an alternative and competing plan for downtown. This plan was a class project for Washington State University architecture and other students. While in college, I was involved with several class projects similar to the one Stone mentions. Our task was to conceptualize what would be possible if economic feasibility and real-world constraints were not a concern. The challenge was to expand our creative envelope.

If Stone believes in the East Market Village plan, or any other plan, he merely had to step to the line with money and commitment in hand and he, too, could have applied for a HUD Section 108 loan.

Our entire downtown area is important to the success of Spokane. If Stone, as a developer, has a viable plan he feels can add to Spokane’s vitality, I encourage him to bring it forward. Al French, architect Spokane

High-tech factor important also

The Oct. 26 column by publisher Stacey Cowles was a realistic assessment of his company’s role in downtown development and the value it will bring to the community.

I think, however, that he might have been even more optimistic about companies - especially high-tech firms - locating downtown. I believe that will happen and that many employees of these companies will live there, too.

Development of the Terabyte Triangle, including SIRTI and the Riverpoint campus, will compliment revitalization of Spokane’s urban core. Each area of development, with its own public-private partners, can build on the other.

It is unfortunate that a few developers are treating downtown revitalization as an either-or proposition and using negative arguments to oppose the River Park Square project. The example of other cities, such as San Antonio, Texas, and San Jose, Calif., shows that a vital, prosperous and modern retail sector is important in attracting high-tech companies and employees into downtown.

It is important to realize that high-tech companies’ most important asset is employee brain power. They must do all they can to attract the bright, creative people who will create their corporate future. A high quality of downtown life, with good retail stores as well as downtown arts and culture, will attract such people.

The naysayer approach will lead to a boarded-up downtown that will attract no one. Steve Simmons Spokane

HIGHER EDUCATION

Image makers’ folly ruinous for EWU

Eastern Washington University’s current financial and enrollment woes have been factually revealed by an $87,000 independent study. It’s sad to say that practically any retired EWU professor could have provided the same information out of their deep pockets of dedication to the place.

EWU’s problems are not original. They grew from the obnoxious certainty of faculty, administrators and board members who were enthralled by visions of image enhancement based on Shakespearean “vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself.”

George Fredrickson, former president, and board member Jean Bechel come to mind. The school was shoved off the precipice of its plateau of teaching-learning excellence by people who were motivated by Fredrickson’s “enlightened self interest” formulas.

One of the formula results was the creation of internal money laundering which saw departmental budgets being charged for painting and picture hanging by salaried maintenance workers. These charges then became the largesse of the administration to expend to athletics (football-image enhancement) as they were transferred from maintenance accounts to those with administration oversight.

Fake money for fake images.

Athletic recruitment efforts have surpassed those of general student awareness to the point that one out of three high school counselors don’t even know where EWU is. What’s to be expected? A school’s reputation can be enhanced and perpetuated one student at a time, forever, if the place is overseen by knowledge seekers rather than image makers. Charles W. Booth Cheney

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Bats are rabies exposure hazard

The Halloween article, “Debunking the myth,” sought to dispel excessive fear of scary animals. It went too far on bats, claiming that “Bats do not carry rabies any more often than any other wild mammal; at any given time, less than 1 percent of the bat population has rabies.”

In Washington state, bats are the only mammal consistently shown to carry rabies, unlike Alaska and portions of Canada, where foxes are sometimes rabid and the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest, where raccoons are also carriers.

Ten percent of bats sent to the Washington state laboratory test positive for rabies. This proportion did not change during the last season, even though the number of bats sent for testing increased markedly.

All humans who died of rabies contracted in the United States in recent years had known bat exposures or their deaths were due to bat rabies virus strains. These included a death in Washington state.

Bats are clearly environmentally beneficial and do not warrant our fear. But they should not be handled even when dead. The risk of contracting rabies, a universally fatal brain infection, is too high. Kim Marie Thorburn, M.D., MPH health officer, Spokane Regional Health District

Safe hunting requires safe hunters

I was pleased to read your Oct. 26 front page story on hunting. I was shocked, however, to read about the dangerous practices of the hunters your reporter was afield with.

A hunter should never use the scope on a rifle to scan hillsides or spot game, as your article stated. A rifle should be shouldered only after the game has been correctly identified. Binoculars should be used for spotting and scanning.

Basic safety errors such as this are what cause accidents that are not mitigated by use of so-called safety orange clothing. It’s never been proven that orange clothing has reduced the number of hunting accidents in any state where such legislation has been enacted. Hunter error, bad judgment and improper gun handling cause accidents. The hunters in your article need a refresher course in a hunter education class.

It’s not the car, it’s the driver. It’s not the color, it’s the gun handler.

Point a weapon at me and you’ll be eating it. Edward Schneider Coeur d’Alene

HEALTH CARE

Patient’s expectations unrealistic

As a partner-owner of three urgent care clinics in Spokane, I was very concerned about the recent letter to the editor titled, “Don’t get sick on a Sunday.”

The writer presented at one of our clinics, stating he had a migraine headache and needed a shot. He was quite upset and said he was not going to fill out any paperwork. (Our receptionist actually filled out the paperwork for him while he rested in a darkened room.)

When he arrived, we were quite busy with six other patients who had signed in before he did. These patients had ailments ranging from bladder infection to depression to second-degree burns with infection. The patient with the migraine actually left our clinic approximately 30 minutes after he entered.

Most of the patients we treat at our urgent care clinics are very satisfied with their care and thank us over and over again for being open seven days a week, seeing them without an appointment and having them in and out of the clinic within 30-60 minutes, on average.

Unfortunately, some patients have unrealistic expectations and demands. We cannot meet these if we are going to remain ethical, fair and professional. Craig A. Olson, M.D. The Med Centers of Spokane

GENETIC ENGINEERING

We will pay dearly for tinkering

The recent spate of articles in The Spokesman-Review regarding cloning, genetic manipulation and designer organ donor fetuses lead me to conclude that scientists have no concept of what they’re doing. They are acting as if playing with genetics is just another sort of human alchemy, and the results will soon prove tragic.

If the species Homo sapiens is to continue to exist at the top of the food chain, the scientific meddling in gene splicing and the like must stop. The scientific interference with human development will eventually end up proving Darwin correct: only the strong, those not genetically altered by splicing or overuse of antibiotics and useless vaccines, will survive.

After all, soon after the cloning of the sheep named Dolly in Scotland, didn’t President Clinton state that human cloning wouldn’t be allowed? And now the geneticists have developed a method by which human embryos could be manipulated to produce organ donors: headless, legless, armless, factory production replicas meant only for harvesting.

We’ve seen the result countless times in breeding pets. If the genetics are too closely related, leading to inbreeding, the consequence is the same: birth abnormalities, inability to fight off disease, and early death. What happens to puppies and kittens will soon be happening to more humans than ever as we lose the ability to heal ourselves without the next, more powerful wonder drug.

Science is wasting its time on attempts to genetically engineer humans and our food. God created a wonderful organism known as the human body that is empowered with the innate ability to heal itself. Matthew Watrous Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

President peddled U.S. security

Consider this about the Clinton-Gore-Democratic National Committee campaign finance scandals: The laws that were broken are not cloudy or vague, as others would have you believe. They are quite clear, in fact, regarding what is prohibited and that those prohibitions extend all the way to the president.

We may have been compromised by the foreign money grubbing of the Clinton administration, as shown by the radical policy reversals toward Indonesia and China, two of the world’s most repressive nations, and one, China, which is an avowed enemy of the United States.

Some of this administration’s decisions are as follows.

Indonesia:

1. Reversal from no to yes on sale of F-16s.

2. Arbitrary creation of a national monument in Utah, tying up one of the world’s two largest enviro-friendly coal deposits. Guess where the other one is!

3. Most favored nation status.

China:

1. Sale of highly sophisticated, military-capable technology. China catches up on 10 years and promptly sells this technology to such countries as North Korea and Iran.

2. Backing of rental of an ex-naval shipyard to a Chinese government-controlled shipping company that was caught smuggling 2,000 automatic weapons into the United States.

3. Most favored nation status. Have we been compromised? What do you think?

Haven’t we had enough of such excuses as “everybody does it” (everybody doesn’t, “I don’t recall” (please!) innocent snafu, etc.?

How pathetic, to try using others as an excuse for breaking the law. We expect more from our children than we do from the president of the United States. Charles L. Herrmann Sagle, Idaho

Government has gone into business

Remember when the North American Free Trade Agreement was going to be good for us? Now, the government is providing money (you and I pay) to create jobs lost to NAFTA.

How can this be good for us? It isn’t.

Who is it good for? American big business. The corporations get their products made for less in Mexico and sell them here without all those pre-NAFTA import-export problems. Big business wins, we lose.

Why would our government do this to us? Because our government is the American big business we’re discussing here, and it made big money when it sold our jobs.

Our government is making war on us. When will we respond in kind? Or do you want to learn to speak Spanish? Dave Henderson Spirit Lake, Idaho

Nethercutt correct about air standards

In his Oct. 20 letter, “Nethercutt backs lower air standards,” Steven R. Laney claims that Congressman George Nethercutt is not representing his constituents by backing the Klink-Upton bill that counters the new stringent EPA standards.

I applaud the congressman’s stand on this issue and believe that, by backing this bill, he is representing the people of the 5th District.

Under President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, the EPA is beginning to turn America into a police state by making the standards so tough that farmers are no longer allowed to burn their grass stubble, costing farmers and the community millions in lost revenue, and by setting emissions standards so high that older cars either do not pass or rarely pass.

This is just plain wrong, because whether Dr. Steven Laney realizes it or not, we live in a mobile society and we always will. The size and shape of the United States dictates that people are always going to do a lot of driving.

In the 1960s and ‘70s, the government ordered car manufacturers to install the catalytic converter, and this did cut pollution rates substantially. But now in the 1990s, the liberals have a police state mentality that no one should drive, or burn in their own fireplace.

Nethercutt is doing the right thing by backing this bill and we can only hope that other representatives will do the same. Justin B. Childers Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

There are lies, damned lies and polls

It is frustrating when news organizations use polling data as news, particularly as headline news.

Have we not learned anything from the last presidential election? The polls predicted a huge popular margin for Bill Clinton. The final results showed a huge electoral victory, but not a huge popular decision.

Polls are not news. Polls are only a gauge to how people feel at the time. Polling data do not need to be rushed to the front page of a newspaper without checking out all the facts. Poll results can be slanted very easily by how the questions are worded.

I was polled during the last election by a polling firm that must have been working for the Democratic National Committee. The questions were very leading and would tend to influence the answer to that of the Democrats if someone was undecided or unsure.

In an attempt for journalistic integrity, the entire question that was asked should be shown beside any poll results. This way, the reader can judge for himself the validity of the poll. Craig M. Tilleman Moses Lake

Phonics put-down uncalled for

I normally love the Mallard Fillmore cartoon, but I did not like the one you ran on Nov. 1 Both phonics and the whole language method work to teach reading. I know this from experience as a teacher. Jean Ranta Spokane