Letters To The Editor

Sat., Nov. 21, 1998

SPOKANE MATTERS

System needs to work for clients

Chris Peck said if the system ain’t broke don’t fix it. How does he know the system isn’t broken? Because he was told so by Spokane Mental Health - or by agencies financially dependent on them.

What does he know of the validity of the client satisfaction surveys Spokane Mental Health produced? I suspect he knows what they told him. That’s all the paper reported. Did anyone survey their dissatisfied clients? Who knows. Were the fears of their vulnerable clients manipulated in order to induce their testimony? How can we tell under the system.

I was formerly the director of an agency that proposed to Spokane Mental Health a way to provide neighborhood mental health services in our least affluent neighborhoods. It would have required their sharing the money they control. I was turned down. How do you know if what I’m saying is just sour grapes? Under the system you don’t.

County commissioners, the system is broken. Your priority needs to be on our most vulnerable citizens, not our most powerful bureaucracy. I’m confident that Spokane Mental Health will survive. It’s the mentally ill who need our attention. Robert M. Stevenson Spokane

Mayor will be ready despite trip

I agree with much of Jonathan Swanstrom’s letter (Nov. 15), pointing out some ways that Spokane is screwed up. But I do not agree with his implication or the overt charge by Anne Ashley, whose letter follows Swanstrom’s, that the taxpayers paid for Mayor John Talbott’s trip to Romania. If I recall the news report (in the Good Paper, I think) correctly, Talbott’s trip was paid for by his church, along with personal funds.

As far as his being gone during the budget presentations, I do not think that any votes have been taken as of yet, and the departments have to also present their budgets in writing. The mayor, no stranger to working hard and absorbing written material, will read the budget materials presented and can call on the staff to answer his questions. He will be ready for council debate and to vote. Charles E. Latimer Spokane

FIREARMS

Laws won’t eliminate crime

Thanks to interactive editor Rebecca Nappi for her article about a group of women, including our beloved Debra Wilde, who recently visited a Spokane shooting range (“Trigger happy,” Nov. 15).

Photographer Kristy MacDonald, who admits that she had been “militantly anti-gun,” discovered what many of us have known for years: shooting is a lot of fun!

Sadly, guns are about to go the way of the dinosaur. Firearms, especially handguns, may soon be severely restricted or completely unavailable.

Some are equating firearms with tobacco. Several large cities which refuse to deal with career criminals, felons and gangs, are filing multi-million dollar lawsuits against the various gun manufacturers. Like other gun control measures, the lawsuits will have no impact on crime and violence. Instead, they’ll disarm the law-abiding, making them even easier prey for the bad guys.

Guns have saved thousands of lives, and could have saved thousands more. They have thwarted hundreds of thousands of crimes, put food on the table, they fund our conservation and wildlife programs and provide safe recreation for millions. Can the tobacco industry make similar claims?

Owning firearms has been a privilege which Americans have long enjoyed. And most modern scholars believe that it’s a constitutional right. As the bumper sticker says, “It’s not about guns, it’s about freedom.” Curtis E. Stone Colville, Wash.

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Support will still be there

We have the right to assemble, meet peaceably and strike. This means on the picket line and/or car rallies. We’ve been informed that “excessive horn honking” is a violation and that we will be given tickets. We gather together to show support for our strikers. Honking is our way of doing this.

If they have enough sheriff’s deputies to catch those thieving horn honkers, then I know they must have enough manpower to catch a real criminal, robber, rapist, serial killer, etc.

We will find another way to show our support to the strikers at the Mead and Trentwood plants. Becky E. Pope Spokane

Pattern is emerging

I love the creative timing of Kaiser. On Sept. 30, they spent million in preparation for a strike, then they initiate one by offering a contract that is certain to fail. The reduction in standard of living over a five-year period after inflation is factored in, lost jobs and contract out work shifts liability to downtown vendors.

On Oct. 28, they announced the possibility of more job cuts than originally offered. Then sent out to employees a sample form letter on “How to resign from union.”

On Nov. 15, “Time for change” was printed (half page - more money) just prior to the negotiation meeting on Nov. 18 and 19. Is this a pattern? I can only imagine what’s next. Ray Milchovich talks about responsible leadership, yet his work force is not working. John Walker says the employees did not get a chance to vote, yet I tell you we all have voted more than once, and each time we walk the picket line. And how about “apply modern management practices?” Good try Wayne Hale, but there isn’t anything modern about it. Remember Charles Dickens (1843) and that famous character Scrooge. That dragon, “corporate greed” rears its ugly head once again. Hope you all sleep well Christmas Eve. Bruce Orr Coeur d’Alene

Kaiser rhetoric hard to swallow

Re: Kaiser’s “Open Letter to the Community” (Nov. 15).

Hale and Walker were “extremely disappointed” a strike was called by the United Steelworkers of America without allowing a vote. Walker, Hale, quit your disingenuousness. In Kaiser/USWA’s 50-year history, there’s never been a ratification vote by employees before a tentative agreement has been reached by the formal negotiation committees. Collective bargaining protocol explicitly prohibits the kind of vote you mourn.

Regarding productivity, corporate newsletters of the past are replete with accolades. “Experienced workforce obtains world class results in antiquated facility” and “goals once thought impossible not only reached, but exceeded,” are sentiments often expressed. What do we believe, Hale and Walker? Are corporate newsletters bunkum, or is your “open letter” rhetoric more disingenuous chatter?

Alcan and Alcoa work with the USWA, fostering mutually beneficial alliances. Conversely, Kaiser chooses to alienate itself from the USWA, and more importantly, from its employees. Employees, Hale and Walker wrote, “without whom our existence today would be in doubt.” Maybe this substitutes for the “thank you” employees have been waiting for since 1985, when they saved Kaiser from bankruptcy.

Lastly, tell the public who’s hiding behind the once respected name of Kaiser - Charles Hurwitz’s Maxxam Corp. In 1987 after a leveraged buyout, Hurwitz gutted Kaiser and buried the remnants in debt. He’s accused of slashing senior citizens’ pensions, bilking Texas savings and loans, clearcutting old-growth redwoods and driving Pacific Lumber - which practiced sustainable logging before Hurwitz arrived - out of business. He’s the puppeteer dominating Kaiser - and its employees’ futures. Daniel L. Hagerman Colbert

Keep profits at home, Kaiser

What a world! Have sex with the president or cut down the redwoods and you get rich. Work half your life in an aluminum plant, ask for a fair contract, and you get a kick in the ribs.

None of the current problems at Kaiser are new to me. For the second time in my life, I’ve been struck down by a bolt of corporate greed.

I worked 13 years in the potrooms at Alcoa in Vancouver, Wash. When contract negotiations failed in 1986, we, too, found it necessary to go on strike. Alcoa management decided to permanently shut down that plant rather than reach a fair settlement. More than 450 union workers lost their jobs. All this happened not long after Alcoa spent millions to build a new aluminum plant in Brazil.

Now, after having worked 11 years in the potrooms at Kaiser Mead, I can see the same thing happening again.

Recently, Kaiser attempted to buy some aluminum plants in Venezuela. Although that deal fell through, Kaiser’s intentions are clear. Like Alcoa, they want to take corporate profits earned by their American workers and invest them elsewhere.

We constantly hear that if we are to compete in the global economy we must cut jobs and wages here in America. Well, who created that so-called global economy? Corporate America, that’s who, using profits produced by American workers.

Come on, Kaiser, dare to be different. Get rid of your high-priced anti-labor consultants and their “how to bust a union” manuals. Return to the bargaining table and negotiate a fair contract with the people who created you. Do the right thing. David C. Knutson Spokane

ENVIRONMENT

Preserve Northwest salmon

It is no question that salmon are a part of the Pacific Northwest’s heritage. Sadly, they are on the brink of extinction. Since dams have been built on the Columbia River, the number of salmon has gone from 16 million to roughly 2 million. It is not a secret that hydroelectric development is the number one killer of salmon on the Columbia and Snake rivers, but very few people seem to care.

Grocery stores are abundantly stocked with fresh salmon, airlines serve it as a main course and almost every restaurant has a salmon dish. If salmon are almost extinct, there is a clear problem if they are being hauled in by the truckload to be sold at every neighborhood grocery store.

It is too late for the Coho salmon, which is already extinct because of the hydroelectric dams. However, there is still time to save the salmon that are so precious to the Northwest. Transportation methods through the dams need to be augmented so that they can benefit the people and, more importantly, keep the salmon alive. Matt R. Brown Spokane

Questions raised for fish

In response to the front page article, “Fish finish second to jobs in Lewiston” (Nov. 10), I pose three questions.

1. How much sense does it make to have a “seaport” 300 miles (and four dams) inland?

2. Does anyone really believe that Palouse wheat or Potlatch paper can only get to market via barge? (Hint: Railroad: very efficient and cost effective.)

3. Is “recreational boating” adequate justification for the extinction of a species? Susan J. Cummings Pullman

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

System is confusing

The more I see of the American justice system, the more confused I become.

Here we have a draft-dodger president who has engaged in numerous sexual affairs for years and has lied about them to his wife and the American people under oath. But he is still with us!

On the other hand, we have a county employee who has had an affair with a subordinate and used the e-mail system to have intimate comments with her. But he has been fired!

Somehow that just doesn’t seem fair to me. Hayes M. Sanderson Spokane

Will Congress follow commission?

There were two news stories on the front page of the Nov. 14, newspaper: “County fires public works chief” and “President settles with Jones.”

In the first story, the county chief of public works was fired by the county commissioners because of an affair with a subordinate. The commissioners stated that they and the public have to have someone in that position who has their absolute trust and confidence.

The other story was of the president paying $850,000 to Paula Jones to drop her sexual harassment suit for alleged wrongdoing that occurred when she was a state employee. The president neither admitted guilt nor apologized, but it is implicit that he acknowledged guilt by offering such a huge amount of money to make the allegations be withdrawn.

One can only hope that Congress will be as resolute as the county commissioners. Cal Modisett Spokane

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