Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

No bottomless money pit here

I’m becoming convinced that our city manager and some of his colleagues live in a magical wonderland, where there are elves and fairies, and anytime they need money they just take it from the gnomes. Only problem is that this is Spokane and the citizens are the gnomes.

Let’s see now, my property taxes are going up, again. Parking meters downtown are going up, again. Utilities are going up, but we’re still lower than Seattle, Tacoma or Everett - what a relief!

Apparently our overpaid managers forgot that Spokane has an exceptionally high number of people on assistance, as well as the working poor, people below the poverty line and seniors on Social Security or fixed incomes.

The comparison with these cities is idiotic and a snow job. Until Spokanites have comparable income levels and wages, there is no comparison to be made! This is a pathetic attempt to rationalize Spokane management’s constant efforts to forever keep its hand in the peoples’ pockets until there’s nothing left to take.

We have some very highly paid people in city management. It’s time they stopped treating the people of Spokane like they were a bottomless money pit and swallowed a healthy dose of reality - like maybe a cut in pay across the board. There are plenty to take their place. David Bray Spokane

Goodwill makes a big difference

Because of my long-time involvement with Goodwill Industries of the Inland Northwest, I read with interest an article about the Portland Goodwill which appeared in last Sunday’s Spokesman-Review. I was very disappointed that this article only covered Portland’s Goodwill, since we have such an outstanding one right here in Spokane.

Since 1939,1 have been fortunate to see first-hand our Goodwill’s wonderful work in assisting people with disabilities and disadvantages toward their goal of self-sufficiency through training and job placement.

The retail stores in this area that support these vocational programs sparkle, especially the new BJ’s which is named after the president and CEO, Bobbi Johnson.

As a member of the Goodwill’s board of directors, I know how dynamic Johnson is, how talented her staff is and how hard they work to develop new programs and expand throughout the Inland Northwest, bringing services to areas that otherwise might not have access to them. The lobby of our Goodwill’s headquarters in downtown Spokane is lined with plaques honoring both vocational and operational excellence.

I hope your readers will continue to support Goodwill by generously donating and by patronizing local Goodwill stores. I am very proud of my association with Johnson and Goodwill and urge you to cover an organization that makes such a difference for so many. Helen Hazen Rymond Spokane

Human services needs more money

I responding to the letter by Wayne Lithgoe, (Nov. 11), which called for increased funding for police services.

The most common call to 911 in Spokane concerns domestic violence. Putting more police on the streets will not change what is going on in people’s homes. Instead of treating the symptoms of our area’s dirty little secret, the Spokane City Council must allocate more resources to human services. The city’s human services staff does a superhuman job with a pittance of the city’s budget.

Increased money spent on educating people on what the laws concerning domestic violence require, increasing treatment options for offenders and better funding for the YWCA’ s Alternatives to Domestic Violence Program and the Salvation Army’s S.A.F.E. Center (neither of which has received an increase in city funding in years - which is criminal), would decrease the need for more police, more courtrooms, more judges and more jail cells - and in an extremely cost-effective manner.

Please, concerned citizens, write or call your City Council and encourage them to spend the city’s money more wisely! David E. Spence Spokane

Was removing trees necessary?

Recently, we were shocked to discover that every tree on one side of the block near our home had been removed. These trees had cleaned our air, shaded our homes and added character to our neighborhood for nearly 100 years. They were victims of the city’s recent tree removal program, some of the nearly 1,500 chosen to be taken out throughout the city using federal grant money.

We feel the same terrible sense of loss that we felt in the aftermath of the ice storm of November ‘96, when the trees in our neighborhoods, parks and forests were devastated. The same grief we experienced the following seasons when many voluntarily cut their trees in the post-ice storm panic. And now - more trees.

Is this fiscally and environmentally responsible? While we acknowledge that some are diseased, many of these trees are not damaged beyond help, nor do they pose a public threat. Is there really a problem, or are we just using the funds because they’re there? And how will the trees be replaced to renew our city’s green spaces?

An official we contacted told us there is no plan to replace the trees. He said that while some chose to keep their trees, in general there is public apathy about our urban forest.

Do we care? Do we continue to sit and watch as our urban forest dwindles to nothing? Or do we question ourselves, our neighbors and our city caretakers about our priorities? Does the crisis lie in the health of our trees or in Spokane’s attitude towards our forest? Kelly Corbin and Vicki Merrill Spokane

KAISER STRIKE

Strike affects whole community

I doubt most people understand that the United Steelworkers Union and their strike really affects every working person in this community. Indirectly, a large workforce like this affects the pay scale of everyone else. If this company is successful in reducing wages for such a large-scale operation, it will lower the standard for everyone.

What we are really talking about is whether more of the corporate profits should go in greater proportion to the stockholders (investors) or the people who actually work for a living.

Every wage earner really works for a “union” of some type, whether they know it or not. Everyone expects certain minimum standards that unions negotiated for over several decades (40-hour work week, Social Security, safe working conditions, non-discrimination, etc.). Unfortunately, the majority of workers in this country now rely on the “union of last resort” government agencies.

How can you support the workers’ efforts? Stop and give the picketers food or money. David Barlos Veradale

Picketers not criminals

Why are tax dollars used to keep round-the-clock sheriff cars on duty at the Kaiser plant? These people are not criminals but working people exercising their right to demonstrate for their cause. Request for surveillance of a level-three sex offender likely to re-offend and the standard answer is, “We can’t spare the officer and we can’t arrest unless they break the law.”

Does anyone really think that Kaiser has been negotiating in good faith? Kaiser was well prepared for this strike long before it occurred. Hiring scab replacements, narrowing down the space available to demonstrate, buying and erecting fencing, tarps, etc. to shut out the view of striking workers to avoid their seeing what was going on - all intended to intimidate workers and make things more difficult for them.

As a 75-year-old woman who well remembers when the 40-hour work week went into effect and I got to see my parents in the evenings and on weekends, I know how that and other benefits secured with union effort affected family life.

Now we are seeing the disastrous effects on our whole society where corporate and stockholder greed is eroding the gains made by working people who are trying to make ends meet.

Anyone naive enough to think decent wages and other benefits were the gift of kind-hearted corporations rather than the efforts of working people banding together in unions is living in a time warp. There’s no such thing as “corporate conscience”! Patricia C. Wilson Mead

IN THE PAPER

People need to be aware of Y2K

Chris Peck’s column on Y2K (Oct. 25) was irresponsible and does this community a huge disservice. I hope you guys are not playing games over there, whereby an article is written one way (in this case in the negative) so that you can generate letters to the editor and create chatter.

Y2K could be devastating. You should be writing articles encouraging people to become aware and then prepared. Instead, Peck writes a horribly ignorant article.

Once again I wonder about The Spokesman-Review being a serious news source, as opposed to just the funny pages. Gloria Finn Porter Spokane

Editorial right on the mark

Thanks for the excellent editorial by Jamie Tobias Neely (Nov. 6). Matthew Shepard and Dr. Barnett Slepian are just two of many people killed thanks to the atmosphere of hatred and intolerance created by conservative and religious leaders in our country.

To add one more to the list: Here in Hawaii, a man entered Honolulu’s most widely recognized gay bar, a place where anyone with the slightest shred of intelligence would recognize within seconds as being a gay bar, and there met Kenneth Brewer. The two men went back to Brewer’s apartment. Brewer was beaten to death in his apartment by this other man. He was eventually convicted of manslaughter and released a month after the conviction, his incarceration during the trial counting as time served.

His defense of the murder was that he felt threatened when Brewer made sexual advances at him. If every woman killed every man who made an unwanted sexual advance, there wouldn’t be a lot of men left alive. Ken Scott Honolulu, Hawaii

More research needed on this one

It gets tiresome to read editorials such as the one by D.F. Oliveria on Nov. 6. I quote, “Liberals who use the actions of fringe radicals to slime mainstream conservatives as hateful are in lockstep with U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who conjured guilt by association.”

If this gentleman would take the time to research his information, he would discover that all the people who the senator labeled were later identified as communists or fellow travelers. Ralph E. Hewes Colville, Wash.

OTHER TOPICS

Whose life is more important?

Re: “Most Americans are anti-abortion” by Patricia Wolford (Letters, Nov. 9).

While I, too, wish that there was no need for the killing of unwanted and unloved babies, Wolford’s comment that “no woman worthy of becoming a mother would choose to save her own life at the cost of murdering her child” shows her to be ignorant as well as insulting to women, especially those who have had ectopic pregnancies.

I know two women who had to suffer, knowing that the child they carried and desperately wanted could never be born. If they did not have an abortion, they both would have died. To say that these two women and the many others who have had to choose to abort or die are unworthy mothers is a slap in the face to both them and their already born children. The child they were carrying was going to die, either because of the abortion or the death of the woman from internal bleeding.

Is Wolford saying that the never-to-be-born child is more important than the life of the woman carrying it? Tamara M. Cumlander Spokane

Raise won’t do seniors much good

Social Security recipients, rejoice! In January you will receive a whopping 1.3 percent increase in your cost-ofliving adjustment. Never mind that Congress receives a 3.4 automatic COLA increase every year.

When the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is figured, it fails to include the extra medical costs that most seniors will eventually incur. Since the cost of health care rises every year, such a small COLA increase can’t begin to compensate for the overall cost-of-living to seniors. Many seniors and the poor cannot afford health insurance.

It is suggested by some economists that the CPI understates the senior CPI by as much as 1 percent annually. Alberta Murray Elk

City doesn’t deserve award

I read in the Coeur d’Alene Press and The Spokesman-Review that Anti-Defamation League Northwest regional director Bruce Kort will be presenting a human-rights award to the city of Coeur d’Alene for its response to the July 18 Aryan Nations Parade. I vehemently disagree with this award.

I am a lifelong resident of Coeur d’Alene. I was arrested at the parade for picketing against the Nazis. I was charged with “obstruction.” My crime was carrying a picket sign with a wooden handle. My jury trial court date is set for Feb. 2.

Many of the 22 people arrested at the parade were innocent bystanders and not even protesters. They were arrested for jaywalking or riding their bicycles too close to the parade route or standing on the grass in front of Duane Hagadone’s Coeur d’Alene Resort by private security police, even though the grass was on city property. The protesters arrested weren’t doing anything criminal. They were objecting to the police violating their constitutional rights by subjecting them to illegal, unconstitutional searches and seizures.

In my opinion, the city of Coeur d’Alene did exactly the wrong thing in their response to the Aryans. They urged the citizens to leave town and to close their businesses. History has shown that these types of concessions led to the Holocaust and the Nazi takeovers in Europe after 1933.

Because of Coeur d’Alene’s response, the Aryans are back again demanding another parade on July 10. Coeur d’Alene became a police state without constitutional rights on July 18, 1998. The city does not deserve a humanrights award. Gary A. Edwards Coeur d’Alene

Whaling tradition Makah’s right

Re: “Makahs should leave whales alone” (Letters, Nov. 6).

Shauna M. Enterline is entitled to her opinion, however misinformed it may be. She may be interested in the Nov. 6 article, “Makah’s rights unquestionable.” Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques Cousteau said, “the right of the Makah to preserve their culture is unquestionable.” He then says, “There is no excuse for even thinking about touching this culture.”

The gray whale was taken off the Endangered Species list in 1994. That was four years ago.

Furthermore, the Makah’s whaling tradition is a right guaranteed by an 1855 treaty with the U.S. government and upheld by the Supreme Court. A treaty is a legally binding arrangement. A written and sealed obligation, by which the U.S. is bound.

We also feel Enterline’s use of the word primitive, in regards to the Makah’s traditional way of the life, is insensitive and insulting. Synonyms for primitive are: wild, savage, rude, barbaric, uncivilized and uncultivated. Is Enterline insinuating that the Makah are any of these terms?

Also, does Enterline realize how ignorant her statement, “…do some dancing, hold a ceremony …” is? How does she know if dancing is even a part of their culture? She knows nothing about their culture and yet presumes to tell them how they should remember it.

The Makah, like all first nations people, would prefer not to remember their culture but to preserve it and live it! Krystal A. and Katrina Q. Moomaw Spokane