Letters To The Editor

WASHINGTON STATE

Speak up about tobacco money use

Not surprisingly, the tobacco lackeys in the Washington state Legislature are rushing to scarf up money from the new tobacco settlement for their pet projects. After fighting effective tobacco control for years and lining their pockets with tobacco money, they are now denying that the settlement money should be used to protect Washington citizens from tobacco’s harm and for providing health care to the needy.

Tobacco prevention and control should receive particular attention when the settlement money is allocated by the Legislature. Funding for smoking cessation programs also is needed, including supplying medications that have been proven to be effective. Particular attention should be paid to channeling significant funds into the Basic Health Plan in order to help subsidize health insurance for low-income residents of Washington.

It is predicted that these matters will receive considerable attention in the upcoming session of the Washington state Legislature. It is suggested that all citizens contact their legislators and voice their support for the measures suggested above.

Dennis W. Biggs Jr., M.D. American Cancer Society, Spokane unit

Stifled ambitions not what we need

Re: Jamie Neely’s Nov. 13 editorial about government limiting the amount of time worked by 16- and 17-year-olds to 20 hours per school week. “In the best of all worlds, these decisions could be simply left in the capable hands of parents and employers who care. But this is not that world.”

Sniff.

My son and his wife, both now 28, worked as many hours as they possibly could get scheduled while in high school (before the warm and fuzzy government intercepted). Wanna know their ugly fate?

They’re both honor-roll college graduates. He’s a Series 8 stockbroker-manager in a huge chain; his one office employs 1,500. She’s a manager in a national retail-wholesale chain. They bought a beautiful home at age 26 with no family aid from family. In other words, they worked - very, very hard.

Do you really espouse, as you say, “progressive states such as Washington that have made education a priority and written their own teen work rules.” Regressive is more like it.

Dang, my son and his wife could have been educated idiots if only they’d set their work ethic and standards a lot lower. A fine brain will not be rewarded without a passion to work. Why would you hope for government to limit the scope of what people of any age can attain? Laurie M. Kriet Spokane

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

Children, can you spell ‘kangaroo’?

Imagine for a moment, gentle reader, a courtroom in America. As your trial begins, the chief investigator, who has examined your life with seemingly unlimited resources, delivers a lengthy, detailed and unchallenged account of your alleged crimes, exposing every private action in embarrassing detail, building and weaving unremarkable sins into high crimes against the state, and finally against the very social fabric of America.

At the end of this daylong diatribe, a highly respected attorney mouths an adoring, worshipful speech in praise of the investigator, stressing his long service, his unwavering loyalty, his unshakable integrity. In response, the judge and half the jury give the prosecutor a standing ovation.

Would you then have even a small doubt of the legitimacy of this process? Doesn’t this impeachment process seem just a trifle too Kafkian? Dan R. Davie Spokane

My sentiments distorted

In his distorted Nov. 13 report on me, Spokesman-Review staff writer Bill Morlin states that I “circulate … literature claiming that the Holocaust is a Jewish myth that didn’t happen.”

I challenge Morlin and this newspaper to document, from any of my four books or hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, any such statement from me. In the very literature I distributed at Sandpoint High School and to which Morlin alludes, I wrote: “WWII itself was a ‘Holocaust’ for everyone involved, especially for the people of Germany, and WWII certainly happened. The concentration camps existed and Jews died … from combat, deprivation and disease … as in any religious or political war in history.”

As a professional historian, I doubt the specific allegations of homicidal gas chambers in Auschwitz. Morlin couldn’t report the truth about my views because accurate reporting would foster understanding and communication. Instead, he falsified them in order to generate sensationalism and enmity.

Moreover, I don’t merely “distance myself” from Aryan Nations, as Morlin claims. I have denounced Aryan Nations as a U.S. government-funded front group maintained in order to discredit legitimate critiques of Jewish supremacy and the de facto state religion which I term “Holocaustianity,” which has eclipsed all other massacres and atrocities, including the ongoing Israeli holocaust against the Palestinians, and the Jewish-Communist holocaust against Russia and Eastern Europe, about which we hear and read almost nothing. Michael A. Hoffman II Coeur d’Alene

A year ago, Scott was indispensable

I read with regret about the firing of Dennis Scott, our very qualified and honest public works director, of whom I know well. During a conversation with Commissioner John Roskelley a little over a year ago, I mentioned the many words of praise from local agencies and very prominent business leaders. All said the same: This county is sure lucky to have Dennis Scott. He’s doing a very good job. Scott managed by far the largest department, and had no assistant.

Also during that conversation, Roskelley said they wouldn’t know what to do without him.

One year ago is recent, isn’t it? How interesting! L.L. Julian Spokane

BUSINESS AND LABOR

Thankful, even during justified strike

Give thanks? You bet I do!

This is the first Thanksgiving my husband will be at home during the day to give thanks with our four children, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.

Would I rather he were working at Kaiser? Not under the contract offers they have made.

My husband is 54 years old. They proposed he work 12-hour shifts from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., three days on and three days off. They also want to do away with seniority. My husband has worked for Kaiser 29 and one-half years. He has paid his dues on the physical jobs and has earned the right to the less physical ones. And not without seniority.

Our daughter’s 17th birthday was Nov. 22. Christmas is coming. Gifts aren’t in the budget, but we are thankful.

I am thankful for our health. I am thankful we are still paying our bills. I am thankful his union hasn’t sold us out! Cheryl A. McPhee Spokane

Steelworkers exercise hard-won right

Re: Devon Alcott’s letter, “Sympathy for all but strikers,” of Nov. 19.

First, Steelworkers at the five Kaiser plants are exercising their legal right to strike in order to obtain a fair collective bargaining agreement. It’s not up to our employer as to whether or not we may do that.

Secondly, Alcott states that the average worker in this county would have to work 120 hours to make what a Kaiser Steelworker makes in 48. I miss Alcott’s logic. It is because of collective bargaining over the past 50 years that I and my union brothers and sisters enjoy a standard of living beyond our basic needs.

Lastly, the Steelworkers don’t want sympathy. We want Kaiser to bargain in good faith. The sheriff’s officers are not there at the request of the union and none of our union local’s officers receives anything more than the rank and file. Dave McCallum Spokane

Rot at the top doomed plant

Don’t be fooled by the company’s remarks that cutting union jobs will save Kaiser.

I recently lost my job of 14 years after the large corporation I worked for went under. It was not competitive enough in its marketplace. Believe me, it wasn’t because of all the nonunion, almost-minimum-wage production workers who made its product. Our plants were admittedly shut down by the waste and overpaid people with lavish benefits at the management level on up.

I know, I was one on the lower end. We had an engineer who was referred to as Gilligan and a logistics manager called Skipper. The CEO was the main problem. He was afraid to cut the fat and get rid of some of his friends who were literally driving hundreds of people out of their jobs. Ask Kaiser laborers if this sounds familiar.

I have known some Kaiser management people who were highly educated and presented themselves very well. But I think they were lucky to get a driver’s license. The only difference I can see here is that the failed business already had its production workers down to minimum wage and so couldn’t complain about high labor rates when management drove the plant under. Rick L. Nelson Mead