Letters To The Editor

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Crossing picket line a mistake

It should be no new news that the United Steelworkers of America are on strike against Kaiser Aluminum. It should also be common knowledge that the premise for this strike is nothing comparable to the strike just four years ago. This strike is much easier to explain.

A lawful, binding contract between the union and company was signed, ending the first strike in Kaiser’s 50-year history. Since that time, Kaiser has contracted-out union jobs, added to job descriptions and had replacement workers on the plant site in place to do union jobs before the last contract was up. Kaiser manipulated the contract’s language to make these issues borderline legal. Through politics, time has become a factor for the union to prove these unfair labor practices.

In the meantime, union members are on the picket line, showing our solidarity and our dislike for the replacement workers and businesses that support the company’s cause.

I can understand how someone might think that, as a replacement worker, Kaiser would be an appealing job opportunity. Please look at the big picture, though. Job security is what we are fighting for. Before you think about crossing the picket line, think about supporting our union’s effort to secure good jobs so that you can have consistent employment.

Your children will thank you for standing up and doing the right thing, for their employment might depend on your support for our unions as well. Aaron C. Bryant Spokane

Don’t let union hold you back

This is a letter to inform the uninformed.

United Steelworkers - are they keeping you informed? According to the media, nobody knows that there are some of us who broke the ranks of the sheep.

We are now enjoying what the law allows; the benefits (no more, no less) that we had under the expired collective bargaining agreement.

If you want to put your family above the “shirts” in Pittsburg, come and join us in gainful employment. How long can you afford to let the union tell you what to do? Kaiser will survive this. Will you? Kathy Landry Usk, Wash.

We all have a stake in union success

How would you like a $13-15 per hour job, with medical and a good pension? If that sounds like an option you’d be interested in, read further.

Remember this: If it weren’t for the unions, we’d all be getting minimum wage.

Our grandfathers and fathers fought long, hard battles trying to preserve the rights of employees. But during the last few years, big companies and people with power have been destroying everything they’ve worked for.

Some people seem to think it’s a crime to make a decent salary. I’ve heard things like, “They should be thankful they have a job” or “I don’t know why they’re complaining. They’re doing better than I am.”

I don’t understand this way of thinking. What people should be asking is, why don’t we have more companies paying a living wage? What can I do to make sure that one day I might have a job that pays $15 an hour, has a good medical plan and a pension?

If you’re at a point in your life that it doesn’t matter, think of your children.

Common sense tells me that if we all back the unions and people such as the striking Kaiser employees, it might just make a difference.

One day it might just open a window of opportunity for you. Judith D. Lewis Mead

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

Status quo the worst that could happen

It seemed unanimous among the candidates that our school system, at least K-12, should be under as much local control as possible. If there’s a better reason for needing a box on the ballot marked “none of the above,” I fail to discern it.

The current K-12 system is a Balkanized, overadministered mess. Every year, we sink farther behind the rest of the world and our children have to compete in that world. There are many good models for how to run a school system but we ignore them for one that is a century out of date. We are no longer a geographically static society composed primarily of small family farms but our K-12 policies, from overall structure to the school year itself, are based on an inaccurate memory of that bygone era.

Education is not about reinforcing the prejudices of grandparents. It’s about equipping children to go out into the world and be successful. We cannot do this when final authority resides with a local school board composed primarily of petty bureaucrat wannabes on a publicly subsidized ego trip.

We can have the kind of school system that will equip our children for the world in which they will live, but we can’t do it by doing more of the same. If a system doesn’t work - and this one doesn’t - it should be fixed. But no politician has the guts to even suggest it. Michael A. Carter Spokane

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Couple did their generation proud

A few weeks ago, a neighbor and friend was walking downtown, picking up his wife from work, and found a lady lying in the street. Due to the location of the incident, people were just going by uninterested, probably thinking she was drunk and had fallen down.

Karl and Laura Perron did care and stopped to see if they could help. The woman was trying to say something about her purse in the business across the street, so Laura went over and got her purse. Looking inside for information, they found out she was a diabetic and having a seizure. Karl kept talking to her while Laura called and got an ambulance there with help. The EMTs informed the Perrons that if they had not stopped and kept the woman talking, there probably would be another notice in the obituary section of the newspaper.

These two parents are in their early 30s, as were three men who stopped to help the hunter as reported in the Friday paper. We do have some caring and helpful 20-and 30-year-olds out there. Let’s give them credit when due. Datha Aguilar Spokane

Soon enough, you’ll be middle aged

Re: the concert review, Oct. 29.

“Party animal” Winda Benedetti is really the one “most shameful” in her continued inconsiderate elder bashing. At least this time she wasn’t bashing the “dinosaur” performers (she was suitably impressed by the Godfather of Soul), but rather the audience, i.e. “pale-faced, white-bread, middle-aged party poopers … only in Spokane.”

Excuse me, but the Opera House is not a dance club or a party palace. It wasn’t just the “palefaces” calling for those rude and selfish kids to sit down in front. I saw one poor woman, both overweight and pregnant, who was crying because she couldn’t see at all, even when she could stand up, which was obviously difficult for her. She and her husband eventually had to leave early. I sure hope they got their hundred bucks back.

My gal, five feet short, had to stand on her seat in order to see the show. My own middle-aged knees and ankles were aching a bit after having to stand so long. Ah, but “children are cruel,” someone once said. Ain’t it the truth!

Have a care for your decrepit elders, little girl, and for the disabled. You yourself will one day no longer be a young punk and it will be much sooner than you think.

I think that James Brown would agree with that “dinosaur” Jack Palance, who said, “Getting older … it ain’t for sissies!

You’ll find out soon enough, when the next generation of perverted idiots starts disrespecting you. Vance A. Johnson Spokane

What’s missing is tolerance

Although I respect Paul Henry’s opinions, I must disagree with him on several points in his Oct. 24 letter (“As ever, homosexuals are in the wrong”).

First, I believe the Wyoming incident had little to do with religion, the Christians or “pagan left.” The issue is hate - not as he defines it, but the hatred of one person toward another for being who they are. This does not take “Christian extremists;” it can be anyone.

The issue is not whether homosexuality is changeable or morally right; it is tolerance, at the very least. A person cannot go around harming others because of what they believe. This would simply lead to more witch hunts and crusades.

Although I do not believe homosexuality to be a sin, I think perhaps the phrase would be, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” One does not have to like how another lives to like the person.

Secondly, about that statement of how the “pagan left” is largely responsible for today’s “violence and moral degeneracy.” Throughout my life I have seen nothing but friendship and love being taught by the “pagan left.” How many times does a person hear about pagans going out and beating people to death? I have not yet heard of a case.

It does not take a religion to harm a person, though. I do not believe religion to be the issue. It takes a person to harm a person. Emily E. Dahlgran Moscow, Idaho

Generational contention wrong

I defend The Spokesman-Review - of the 1960s - and disagree with Rebecca Nappi’s “Dreaming big sparks greatness,” an editorial that is completely untrue, is ignorant of a time that is connected to us directly through continuity.

Nappi misrepresents today as one of culture enlightenment and through distortion places values and prejudices on a past generation that doesn’t deserve them, except in a college liberalism class. In Nappi’s unscientific study to prove her 1990s correct values, she says there were only six women pictured in the newspaper that day in 1962. Tell us how many men were pictured. Is it possibly that because it was John Glenn, who happens to be male, that there might have been more male pictures? Better would have been an actual average for the month of February or March 1962 to prove her point. What’s the average number of women and minorities pictured in today’s newspaper?

There is no jump-start in culture. Today is much as it was 36 years ago. If citizens weren’t trying to change some of America’s shortcomings then, and even earlier, the picture of 1962 or of 1998 wouldn’t have happened. Where and when does the editorial board think the changes of today came? Possibly a spiritual conception in the 1970s? And the poor newspaper, held siege by liberals for 25 years, must regret its past.

I see little improvement in the character, morals and ethics of this generation over the past. The examples for this are so mind numbing today that many in our culture and at our newspapers count them as normal. James C. Allen Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Spend space station cost down here

On TV today I saw that Sen. John Glenn was having fun in space. He was asked if he had ever imagined the space program being where it is today. He said yes, but he was disappointed that the space station was not already aloft in space, orbiting our planet Earth.

The reporter commented that the projected cost for the space station would be somewhere around $100 billion. I’m assuming this did not include yearly maintenance and upgrade (got to have those).

I could think of a lot of ways to spend $100 billion. One-hundred billion dollars could fix a lot of woes here on Space Station Earth. We are worrying about what will happen to our society if everything that is computer-run goes down or ceases to function. But, we’ve not thought about how many problems $100 billion could solve by the year 2000 on things that are already broken. Let’s stop and think about this for a while. Without Space Station Earth, why worry about the future? Jose Luis Ocasio Spokane

Most Americans are anti-abortion

I’m responding to the rantings of Ellen Goodman and her pack of lies regarding abortion.

The majority of Americans do not think that abortion is acceptable or a right. A right, as set forth in the Constitution, is endowed by our creator. And among these rights, first and foremost, is the right to life. If the “pro-choice majority of Americans” honestly were pro-choice, abortion wouldn’t be unavailable in 84 percent of all counties!

The truth is, abortion is only necessary as a means of saving a woman’s life in a minuscule number of pregnancies. And no woman worthy of becoming a mother would choose to save her own life at the cost of murdering her child.

As for the butchering abortionists who dare call themselves doctors, they had better reflect on this section of the Hippocratic Oath: “I will prescribe regimen for the good of my patients, according to my judgment and ability, and never do harm to anyone. To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug, nor give advice which may cause his death. Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But I will preserve the purity of my life and my art…” Patricia Wolford Wallace, Idaho

Consider how Arabs feel

To put the newly overt and “legitimized” CIA role in the Middle East into proper perspective, imagine that the Mossad, the Israeli counterpart of the CIA, opens a branch office on Riverside Avenue. Now, imagine that the Mossad operatives have the blessing of the U.S. government to detain, interrogate and arrest any U.S. citizen who strikes them as even slightly suspicious. And, if this prospect makes you uncomfortable, imagine how the Palestinians and Lebanese feel. Margaret E. Koivula Spokane

Bolster fine mental health service

After reading the newspaper articles and letters to the editor from professionals and mental health advocates, I offer my perspective as a consumer-client of Spokane Mental Health.

A decision to privatize this vital community resource simply appears to again place profit motive over patient care.

I was hospitalized last year for a profound and severe depression at Sacred Heart Medical Center. After treatment, I was referred to SMH for outpatient classes and transition. In retrospect, I can most assuredly state that I was in no position to make a choice of care providers. Please understand that a seriously ill person of my type may not have been capable of assessing various programs. I wasn’t even willing to ask for help.

That is precisely why I feel SMH was so well positioned in the Spokane community. Referrals were made, medications handled, funding and financial assistance pursued. The staff at SMH is professional, compassionate and knowledgeable. I was treated with respect and dignity - even before I possessed those qualities in myself.

After care has consisted of referrals for housing, job placement and education. I consider myself extremely fortunate and grateful for the quality of care received.

SMH serves as a case study for other cities nationwide. Students and future professionals pursue studies there. Any changes to this highly effective and attractive system should be approached from the perspective of further support and enhancement. Richard J. Anderson Spokane

Voters made un-Christian choices

It’s hard to be optimistic in the wake of Tuesday’s elections. We had opportunity to protect the innocent and, at least, express our disapproval of the guilty. We did the opposite.

By our votes we reaffirmed the right to viciously execute babies in the birth canal. By our votes we signaled our president that it’s OK with us that he cheat and lie (and who knows what all else) so long as his job performance benefits us.

What has happened to our values? Have we gone mad?

The prophet, Isaiah, severely admonished those who “call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20). New Testament writers describe the “last days,” among other things, as a time when people will be haters of good, lovers of money and pleasure rather than lovers of God, mockers, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, etc. (2 Timothy 3, James 5:3, 2 Peter 3:3, Jude 18). These symptoms sound ominously familiar.

With sadness we realize that this communication will fall mostly on deaf ears. But while America’s flame flickers dimmer and dimmer, there is yet great hope for those who have ears to hear. In his uncompromising righteousness, justice and love, Jesus Christ still saves lost souls, one by one. And He’s not subject to voter indiscretion. Paul and Bonny Peterson Spokane

‘Burning cold’ how does that work?

Re: the front page article on La Nina (Nov. 5).

I’ve heard of freezing cold but would ask Mike Prager to define “burning cold.” Can I get a sunburn from burning cold? Can I cook a turkey over burning cold?

What should I tell my students about usage when they read “burning cold” in a newspaper that’s actually managing to become a “good paper” without printing that obnoxious phrase next to the nameplate? Andy Hoye instructor at Boeing, SCC and NIC, Spokane