Letters To The Editor

WASHINGTON STATE

If Second Amendment goes, watch out

Was it coincidence that The Spokesman-Review placed a Sept. 12 article about Charlton Heston and the National Rifle Association in an obscure part of the paper? (“Heston targets media’s gun stance”) What a contrast to the front page mega-word articles from the anti-gun lobby.

Heston was lambasting the media for swallowing anti-gun propaganda whole. Amen, Moses.

Of the Second Amendment, Heston says, “Politicians scorn it. Media pervert it. Regulators defile it. Movies disgrace it. Publishers censor it. Teachers misrepresent it. And kids don’t get it.”

Heston wants to place a pro-gun-Bill of Rights president and Congress in Washington, D.C. He might find it easier to move millions of Israelites out of Egypt! And, parting the Red Sea may be much less difficult than restoring objectivity to the media.

Still, there’s hope. After part of the Brady Law was stuck down as unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Clarence Thomas pondered whether the Second Amendment might be “The palladium of the liberties of a Republic.”

In a recent Orlando Sentinel column, Charley Reese said, “You cannot have a government of the people, by the people and for the people that is afraid of the people and wants to disarm them. The Second Amendment is the canary of liberty. When it dies, it will be time to get real nervous about your future prospects as a free American.” The extremists promoting Initiative 676 want to kill the Second Amendment. Curtis E. Stone Colville, Wash.

Follow news to see need for I-676

Jini M. Wolski (Golden Pen, Sept. 29) is to be commended for her son’s training about the handling of guns. Unfortunately, most parents aren’t so dedicated.

Hardly a day goes by that one doesn’t read in The Spokesman-Review about a small child who has taken his father’s supposedly unloaded gun and shot his baby sister or about a youth dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, or a Barry Loukaitis who has taken his father’s gun and killed several people.

Initiative 676 addresses this issue with training and gun locks. Walter A. Becker Pullman

SPOKANE MATTERS

First, STA should make sense

I attended the Valley Spokane Transit Authority hearing on the proposed bus route changes and was appalled that one reason the bus routes are being pulled out of the neighborhoods is because of noise and safety complaints.

Those complaints certainly did not come from those who ride the bus. So, STA’s changes are serving the needs of nonusers?

How would you like it if you had to walk eight blocks along a heavily traveled, narrow, windy road with no sidewalks, no shoulders and no safety lighting to get to your car in good weather, let alone the dark of winter?

We purchased our house because it met 12 criteria, with the first being an STA bus stop.

Does STA really think that 15-minute boardings are going to pull people out of their cars when they have cut off the neighborhoods where people get on the bus? Doesn’t STA realize that not everyone lives on a major arterial?

Has STA forgotten the weather patterns of the Spokane region? Was one of their criteria to increase access to the malls? How is welfare reform going to work if people do not have transportation to their jobs?

Option A: Restore bus service to the neighborhoods.

Option B: Route all buses outside of an eight-block circumference of the major malls. That would save enough route time so that STA could pick people up in their neighborhoods again. And it makes about as much sense as their current plan. Joyce H. Weyrauch Spokane

Service should be top STA goal

Spokane Transit Authority buses benefit Spokane and its outlying areas several ways. Spokane has air quality problems, especially come cooler weather. Using buses helps with that, helps conserve fossil fuels and provides transportation to the elderly, students and lower-income residents.

I work at Eastern State Hospital and regularly ride the bus to work, rather than take my car. The hospital has tried to reduce the number of staff members driving to work by themselves. Incentives are offered to those who car pool or ride the bus.

Now, planned bus routes changes would end shift-change service for Eastern State Hospital, Lakeland Village and Pine Lodge Correctional Center. That change would make transportation more difficult for staff, students and the many hospital visitors who rely on the bus system as their only means of transportation.

STA has provided shift change service up to now without fiscal problems, even developing a surplus. Perhaps the problem is that STA does not recognize it is part of the community and that its services should address community needs, as opposed to increasing the fiscal bottom line. Georgia I. Cassell Airway Heights

Time for debate is past; Let’s go

The Spokane Chapter of the Washington Society of Professional Engineers’ board of directors voted unanimously to support the process and conclusions related to the Lincoln Street bridge project.

As with most major public works projects, there has been significant public comment and a diversity of opinion. Even within our membership, some favor the project and others do not. However, this project, more than any similar project in recent history, has had unprecedented public involvement.

The process has been monitored by a technical advisory committee that includes representatives from 19 public and private organizations and citizens groups; the citizens advisory committee grew from eight to 25 members.

The type, size and location study was featured in local news media. Nearly 2,000 citizens commented.

Adequacy of the process and documentation was challenged, reviewed by the city hearings examiner and upheld, appealed, and upheld in Superior Court.

We have invested 25 years and more than $6 million on the project, including studies, field investigation, land acquisition and design fees. That would be wasted if the project were to be stopped.

Every issue currently being questioned has already been debated during the process. Decisions were made on a representative (not unanimous) basis. There was certainly no secret or hasty decision to proceed.

Preliminary processes are complete and the project is ready to proceed. It’s time to stop debating, accept the decision and move forward. Alan Gay, PE, president Spokane Chapter of the Washington Society of Professional Engineers

Vote yes on conservation futures

As major road construction is completed this year in downtown Spokane, I guess we’re all thinking a similar thought: The city is growing.

Having moved here from a large metropolitan city in the East, these changes are all too familiar to me. As cities grow, they become in a sense smaller. Open land inevitably is replaced by mortar, concrete, steel and brick. While this may be beneficial for local commercial statistics, the crowds in places such as Yellowstone, Glacier, Farragut State Park, Mount Spokane, the Centennial Trial and even the Little Spokane River increase in seemingly exponential proportions.

Pause for a second to thank people like Claude Morris and John Roskelley, who both have the foresight to try and reverse this “Honey, I shrunk the fun and beauty” concept. I suspect that if we will all reflect for just a moment, the vote for conservations futures on Nov. 4 will be among the few (if there have been any) recorded unanimous public decisions in history.

So be it.

The cost for Spokane County property owners to fund Conservations Futures is $6 per $100,000 of assessed property value per year. The fund has an advisory board that numerically rates local land parcels using a 13-step criteria format.

Kudos to county commissioners for approving this resolution in 1996.

It’s up to the voters to validate their initiative and Spokane’s future by voting yes on conservations futures. Buddy McManus Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Social Security funds managed well

I would like to answer the questions posed by Maurice Cauchon (Letters, Sept. 23) regarding the Social Security trust fund.

Congress has borrowed over $562 billion from the fund to date. In other words, the fund has “invested” its money in $562 billion of government securities. That investment earned over $30 billion for the fund in the past year.

Proceeds from the debt obligations are used for whatever the government uses money for. However, the government does use the fund assets as a bookkeeping entry in budget computations because the fund routinely runs a surplus each year, which helps balance other government outflows.

Concerns that money will not be available at payoff time for Social Security beneficiaries are the result of simple arithmetic: fewer people paying in compared to people taking out. Currently, there are only about three paying workers to each retiree drawing benefits and the situation will get worse.

Congress has no plans to repay the trust fund. Funds borrowed are very well collateralized. If the trust fund should need to cash in $100 million in bonds to pay retirees, the treasury will sell $100 million in new bonds in some other market and use the proceeds to pay off the trust fund.

I see no need to worry about this process. I think the trust fund trustees are doing their job. Richard T. Brown Spokane

Gorton out of line with amendment

It amazes me how ignorant some U.S. citizens are. We seem to have no problem allowing foreign citizens more rights than our own citizens can ever enjoy.

Individuals like Wayne S. Rawley (Letters, Sept. 21) and Sen. Slade Gorton have no problem placing blame of their shortcomings on the backs of Native Americans. Why? As a resident of the Colville Indian Reservation, Rawley should learn his subject matter.

If this amendment were to pass, what would be next? Local governments, state governments, county governments - where would it end?

As a Colville Tribe member, I’d like to know which laws I can pick and choose to obey. As a citizen of the Colville Indian Reservation, I not only obey the laws of the Colville Confederated Tribes but also the laws of Washington and the United States.

Colville Confederated Tribes is a government, with its own police, courts, education and social and health services systems paid for with Colville Tribe dollars.

Colville Confederated Tribes has an enterprise corporation that not only supports its government operations, but its own and surrounding communities, as well. Jointly, the Colville Confederated Tribes and its corporation employ more than 2,000 individuals, 15-20 percent of them non-Native American.

I applaud those who have taken Gorton and his amendment attempt to task. Our United States needs more individuals with the education, vision and insight to make justice for all, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness work for everybody. Harvey J. Moses Jr. Nespelem, Wash.

Democrat advances big brotherism

It’s disconcerting that the public continues to elect Democrats who do all they can to infringe on citizens’ freedoms and increase the power of government.

They usually accomplish this erosion of freedoms by waiting for an unforeseen difficulty, whipping up, with the press, public concern and using that as a jumping-off point for more and continued regulation of everybody.

Ashley Jones, age 12, was competently caring for five little kids who were asleep when she was murdered by a burglar. This would, of course, unfortunately have happened if she was in the home alone, sitting one kid or a dozen. But immediately, Washington state Sen. Margarita Prentice, D-Seattle, suggests legislation to limit the number of children that can be baby-sat in a home. Her sentiments: “Why not regulate something like this? Obviously, that is too many kids for too young a kid. Common sense tells you that.”

Common sense tells me that when the government starts regulating how Americans handle their baby-sitting needs inside their own homes, it really is all over. Generations of families of a dozen or so in the past had the oldest child baby-sit younger siblings.

All over the world, in Third World countries, kids care for whole families. As a child psychiatrist, I have known many 12-year-olds who could competently handle five younger kids. I have also known a bundle who couldn’t handle themselves.

The sad thing is that the citizens themselves are no longer concerned as their rights are inexorably removed, inch by inch. Foster W. Cline, M.D. Sandpoint

Independent counsel needed

The evening news recently reported that President Clinton has just concluded another successful, multi-million dollar fund-raising tour of California the last in a long, long line of multi-million dollar fund raisers.

In fact, no president has ever spent more time on partisan money matters and less on the peoples’ business than this man. He has rented out the Lincoln bedroom, sent fund-raising faxes from Air Force 1, allowed a Lebanese fugitive to buy time in the White House by subverting career CIA operatives. A joke making the Internet circuit posits that the reason Chelsea Clinton went to Stanford instead of Georgetown University was so her bedroom could be rented out.

Liberals protest that everyone does it and call for reform but the facts are blunt and ugly: The White House is for sale in a way never before contemplated. No one has ever run a money machine even faintly resembling this.

It’s time for Congress to call for an outside, independent counsel. And if high crimes or misdemeanors are found, an impeachment hearing must be called for. If not, every subsequent president will see this one’s conducts as sanctioned. The White House - the people’s house - will be up for sale again and again.

Clinton’s unwholesome legacy will last for years unless he is stopped. Call your senators and representatives and demand answers now. Donald F. Morgan Post Falls

Be realistic - and back reform

Pardon me while I laugh at all this righteous indignation about Democratic Party fund raising.

Is anyone in this country actually naive enough to think that no previous president or vice president has ever made a fund-raising call? I don’t think so.

The cost of campaigning is getting as far out of control as salaries in the NBA. And the hard, cold fact is that John Q. Public is not financing campaigns. If citizens think that big campaign bucks come from $1 raffles, think again. Huge sums of special interest money fund campaigns. And let’s remember that, as a rule of thumb, Republicans outspend Democrats by three to one. That’s not from bake sales.

Until there is campaign finance reform and until we the people all kick in a small amount for campaigns, money will continue to talk as it influences legislation. Sally M. Jackson Spokane

Much ado about very little

Well, I see the kindergarten children are at it again. This time, they want to investigate the possibility that a technical law has been broken, one so arbitrary that, under normal circumstances, its violation wouldn’t cause a passing glance or comment.

When partisan politics are involved, common sense goes out the window along with responsibility toward the citizens of this country. It’s unfortunate, but even new legislators with ideals and common sense are almost immediately swept up by the tide of partisanship. I would like to see an independent counsel appointed to investigate the independent counsel they want to have investigate phone calls made by Clinton and Gore. Sounds like an awful lot of investigating to me.

This will undoubtedly cost millions and take months, and who knows what sinister plot will be uncovered? Comical isn’t it? It’s like the pot calling the kettle black. It’s terribly sad.

Come on, kids, grow up. Show some responsibility and above all, a little common sense. Or is that expecting too much from adults? James A. Nelson Spokane

Helms’ conduct dictatorial, wrong

Sen. Jesse Helms’ stonewalling of former governor William Weld’s ambassadorial nomination is as far from an example of democracy as one can get.

When one person has all the authority, it’s still a type of dictatorial system. Committees are not meant to do as dictated by the chairman but are to work collectively and collaboratively. The fear Helms has instilled in every politician in Washington, D.C., is shameful, undemocratic and anti-American. John Martinez Veradale