Letters To The Editor

IDAHO VIEWPOINTS

Vote to pass supplemental school levy

Nearly every two years, patrons of the Coeur d’Alene School District are asked to pass a levy that will maintain educational programs and facilities. Simply put, this action occurs because pressing demands for school operation and services exceed available revenues. The track record for passing these levies is extraordinary high because citizens have taken the times to understand the issues and have voted accordingly.

Until the Idaho Legislature develops a reasonable solution to adequately fund fast-growing districts like ours, we have no choice but to pass a supplemental levy. I plan to vote yes on May 18. I urge all concerned citizens to do the same.

Sue Thilo Coeur d’Alene

Reasonable bill foolishly shot down

Contrary to the media’s editorializing, the recently enacted Idaho legislative bill pertaining to possessing firearms in or near public schools (HB 137), which your ilk successfully bluffed Gov. Dirk Kempthorne into vetoing, would not have authorized new opportunities for students to bring firearms to school.

Current Idaho law allows concealed weapon permit holders and other law-abiding adults to carry firearms on school property. HB 137 would have repealed the portion of the law that allows possession on school property by adults who don’t have such permits, bringing Idaho law into conformity with current federal law.

Idaho law also allows students to carry firearms “on or about their persons” if they’re attending a firearms safety course or participating in a school-approved program involving the use of a firearm. They also may keep unloaded firearms in their locked motor vehicles on school grounds if they plan to go hunting or shooting after school. HB 137 would have made a slight change by requiring that firearms thus “lawfully possessed” be secured in the students’ vehicles in an “unobtrusive manner,” in closer conformity to current federal law.

All of this information a responsible, objective journalist could have published for the benefit of Idaho citizens. But that would have meant forgoing an opportunity to sling undeserved mud at the National Rifle Association, which, incidentally, didn’t “lean on” any legislator in this instance. Who among liberal “journalists” could pass up such an opportunity, just for the sake of a well-informed electorate and the selfrespect of a coddled and much indulged free press? Leonard C. Johnson Troy

Facts escaped bill basher

Tom Akren (Letters,April 25) must have never read or is not able to comprehend the text of the bill dealing with concealed weapons on school grounds. This bill would not have allowed anyone to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds, only those who had passed a strict background check, were free of serious criminal record and were over 21 years of age and possessing a concealed weapons permit.

Let’s stick to the facts. If it wasn’t for the liberal social engineers who allow and encourage the likes of Marilyn Manson, Dungeons and Dragons, etc. in our schools while pushing God out, we might not have had a Littleton, Colo. John F. Weyant Priest River

Dysfunctional kids not NRA’s doing

Syndicated cartoonist Steve Benson depicting the National Rifle Association as the villain (April 23) in the Littleton tragedy is cruel, libelous and unproductive. The NRA, in existence for over 100 years, has always been proactive in firearms safety and education. It is no more responsible for schoolyard violence than is an explosives manufacturer responsible for an airline bombing.

School violence is a product of a dysfunctional society. We have dysfunctional people becoming parents who in turn produce dysfunctional children. Our society regulates everyone from physicians to beekeepers, but any dysfunctional, illiterate, drug-addicted sociopath can team up with a like member of the opposite sex and produce a future dysfunctional member of society.

I suggest that we look at the schoolyard killers and the environments they were raised in. How many were from traditional families? How many had one parent whose full-time job was raising children? How many had parents who abused drugs and/or alcohol? How many had spiritual influence in their lives? How many were latch-key kids? How many had restrictions placed on where they went and with whom they associated? How many incidents happened at private, military or parochial schools?

Some may say that returning to traditional family mores of 40 years ago is a step backwards. Look at the alternative. How many schoolyard massacres did we have under a functional society where the family was intact and kids spent their evenings under proper supervision?

Blaming guns and the NRA only postpones facing the reality of our failure as a society. Bill Litsinger Sandpoint

Response to cemetery vandalism lame

The Greenwood Cemetery board in Kellogg is offering a $1,000 reward for information about those responsible for recent vandalism at the cemetery. Information should be given to Kellogg police or the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Department.

What an exercise in futility. Neither of these departments has demonstrated any inclination toward apprehending the persons responsible. If either the police or sheriff were interested in locating and holding responsible the persons who committed this crime, they would have taken fingerprints from the headstones immediately after the crime was discovered. I don’t doubt that the scum who committed this crime either has, or soon will have, fingerprints on file.

I wonder if the police are pursuing, or have ever pursued, any investigation of this crime. Every crime, regardless of severity, should be investigated with the same professionalism we’ve come to expect from those who are paid to protect and serve. Fred Gerrard Cataldo, Idaho

THE ENVIRONMENT

Scientists cite ocean changes

There was a meeting in Anchorage of fishery scientists from Alaska, Canada and U.S. universities. The general conclusion was that ocean conditions were the major factor in the overall decline in salmon along the West Coast.

The ocean has had a strong climatic regime shift starting in the winter of 1976-77. This shift, which has lasted over 20 years, has meant higher water temperatures, significantly lower zoo plankton populations and much lower levels of sea birds, halibut, shrimp and small fish. Salmon stocks have declined in both numbers and size of fish off the coast, from California to Alaska, in streams where no dams exist, in wilderness areas where habitat has not been degraded and harvest was reduced. Their conclusion was that for now and into the foreseeable future, ocean conditions will continue to depress salmon populations.

The recommendations include cryopreservation techniques to maintain genetic material from the weakest stocks, protecting healthier stocks by reducing harvest and obvious predation, reducing hatchery releases to lower food competition, rehabilitating spawning habitat and concentrating efforts in streams where egg to smolt to ocean outmigration survival will be the highest.

Northwest biologists should have been there but were not. Why? Hobart G. Jenkins Bayview

At long last, a turnaround

Hallelujah! Can it be that some Idaho agency has actually acted in favor of the environment? In the most conservative Republican state in the Union, dedicated to representing only the cattle ranchers, miners, loggers and developers (witness our big-money-minded legislators, Rep. Helen Chenoweth, Sens. Larry Craig and Mike Crapo), can it be that the Idaho Supreme Court has actually made two decisions friendly to the public and not the private interests? Do conservation of the natural resources of our beautiful state finally matter?

In two important decisions, the court, by a large majority, opened bidding for some public lands to environmental, not just private business, interests. And apparently, the State Land Board has been curbed in its rights to dispose of public lands, willy-nilly, to private business development buyers. The last judgment should begin the protection of such Idaho gems as Priest Lake.

Finally, it seems that Idaho public lands might be provided with some measure of protection from the ravages of the rich and powerful. Perhaps the sensible and environmentally responsible policies of Cecil Andrus and Frank Church may be used to promote the public, not just the private, interests. Robert R. Ward Sandpoint

REMEMBRANCE

Plant a columbine

We should all plant a columbine in memory of the children in Colorado who didn’t have a chance to grow into full bloom. Where they are now they are blooming with a radiance of all time.

My heart goes out to the families. If you have a columbine in your yard and you see it every day in bloom, hug your children and say a prayer for the ones who will never be forgotten. Minnie M. D’Aprile Spokane

VIOLENCE

Various factors contributed to tragedy

The shooting at Columbine High School has occupied my thoughts since I first heard about it. What occurred there in that microcosm of our society painfully illustrates the ills of the society at large.

People will say that guns are the cause. Others say that only criminals kill with guns and that it is not the guns’ fault. I say that the availability of guns in this country is a major contributing factor to those violent deaths. The two student killers were not violent criminals until they shot the first person. If they had only used their fists, they wouldn’t be criminals and they and 13 victims wouldn’t be dead right now.

People say violence on TV, in movies and videogames is the cause of teenage aggression. Again, I say that is part of the problem. It is, luckily, only a minority of youths who actually act out the mayhem they see. Most of us have self-imposed societal constraints that keep us in line.

A major problem in our society is that our children are constantly exposed to adults behaving in antisocial and unacceptable ways. Adults are shooting one another in movies, on TV and in real life. Adults do not always treat each other with respect. Lack of empathy and respect for one another, name calling and derogatory speech are far too common in modern dialogue. Adults are the role models for our youth. How can we expect our kids to behave if we can’t? Susan Thorpe Macleod Garfield Bay, Idaho

What happened won’t change anything

The latest slaughter of teens mixes sadness with disgust. A whole class of citizens lining up to take control of their futures were snuffed out.

We don’t have to look far for a reason. It’s us: our insistence on keeping guns in our homes; recording industries’ greed, promoting works of despair, revenge, suicide and murder; movies depicting violence as a rewarding way to get attention; religious fervor that spouts righteous divisions between us, rather than ties that bind; school systems so afraid of mentioning values that any such talk must be discouraged, in the name of “separation of church and state”; fear that a smile and an encouraging remark or even a reassuring hug can be grounds for a sexual harassment suit; the everyday practice of exclusion, based on race, ethnicity, education, gender, body type - you name it.

These murderers didn’t want to know about consequences. They never learned that an act of random kindness can have a profound ripple effect in any society. They were inundated with messages that blared the seductive message that they should strike rather than stroke someone, that they could lie and even kill and get away with it.

Read carefully the numbers. They increase each time an even more high-tech weapon is brought into the home for “protection” from our government and other intruders in our lives.

This is our future. James McArthur Spokane

We all share in responsibility

As has been the case in other school shootings, the issue of gun control and safety issues are being debated. I agree gun availability may be part of the problem but please remember that guns have been a part of our society since the country was formed. What we didn’t have was the wanton disrespect for one another and the lack of conscience we see today.

We all must take responsibility for this destruction. Parents must learn to put their kids first. They have to find the time to be with the kids and know when they are lonely or distracted. If we see our kids becoming obsessed with destructive hobbies or behavior, we cannot brush it off as a phase they will outgrow.

The kids need to take responsibility for the tragedies too. How many times have you snubbed a fellow student or neighbor because he or she doesn’t dress quite to your standards or talks different? The gawky kid, the quiet kid or the kid who just doesn’t measure up doesn’t deserve to be treated any differently than you expect to be treated.

Somehow, we’ve lost sight of right and wrong. If we allow killing to be entertainment in our lives through games and movies, kids no longer are sickened by it. If we snub others because of their color, income level, where they live or how they dress, the kids see no wrong in doing the same. Jean L. Plue Sandpoint

Behind it all, no-account parents

Problem: Children out of control. Cause: Parents who don’t care, never did and never will.

Solution: None.

That’s about the gist of it, plain and simple. Won’t do any good to come up with, “Well, we will just take away the bad movies and the bad videogames.” Sure, we can for our kids. But the parents with the “uncouth youths” won’t be doing that. They don’t care. Get it? They didn’t care when Johnny was 4 years old and they don’t care now that he is 16 and making pipe bombs in the garage and wearing Nazi insignia.

And they are out there in every city, in every state.

The sad, sad thing is, these kids could have probably been good kids if raised in a totally different home. A home where a mom and a dad gave a damn about them.

We can’t monitor all the homes and we can’t tell people when they get married, “Please, don’t multiply; you are definitely not parent material.” All we can do is go through life, love our kids and pray you don’t ever have to face the nightmare of what happened in Colorado.

As for the rules of the schools - what rules? Their hands are so tied, it is pathetic. I could really launch into that but I have used up all my space. Jeannie U. Greene Spokane

Lack of conscience behind massacre

Rebecca Nappi’s (April 24) editorial about high school cliques is astonishingly simplistic. Those two boys who shot up and bombed their classmates in Colorado had no conscience. That is a problem that stems not from their banishment from cliques but from the teaching of moral absolutes being banished from our homes and educational systems. Genny McKinley Cheney

Look to what really matters

Journalistic photographers are missing the opportunity to show a picture that profoundly symbolizes what we all need to know. In our homes, churches, communities, schools or in Kosovo, if we all practice tolerance, understanding, compassion and respect for each other, maybe then these massacres would stop.

The picture is of the father who lost his son, Isaiah, and the young boy who lost his sister, Rachel, in the Columbine tragedy. Their hands, black and white, are entwined and become one in pain and heartbreak.

Surely when God sees us, he is not looking at the color of our skin, our faith practices, gender,interests, sexual preferences, appearance, etc. He’s looking beyond all of that at our souls. We can do that, too. C. L. Auvil Chewelah, Wash.