Letters To The Editor

Idaho viewpoints

Gold panners tend to be trespassers

I read the article about the gold panners of Eagle City park with great interest. I don’t know how many local property owners were interviewed by staff writer Julie Titone but I was not one of them.

My wife and I own some property less than a half mile from the park. Both last fall and again this spring and summer, I have encountered some of the park members trespassing on our private property. It is prominently posted, “No trespassing.” the usual excuse i get is that they were “just a little ways” past the signs, about 200 yards, or they were lost or just looking for a friend. In all cases, they have gone right past an obvious no-trespassing sign. The park property is also posted and I have honored its signs, but these people obviously don’t think it’s necessary that they honor ours.

I have not yet filed a formal complaint of trespass but I will if this occurs again. D.F. Zabel Osburn

What about pre-1974 pollution?

Re:“Kids’ lead levels prompted campsite closings,” (July 9). As someone who was born in 1950 and raised in the Silver Valley, I often wonder why contamination of individuals prior to 1974 is virtually ignored. There was far more pollution around then than there was after 1974.

In those days and earlier, the South Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River and Pine Creek ran a dishwater gray, and the air often had a brownish gray fog (smelter smoke) covering the valley. Pollutants were seldom filtered in any way before reaching the environment. It’s hard for me and others to understand why the pollution became a problem only after the baghouse fire in 1974. Gary D. Williams Coeur d’Alene

Health care

Make way for the wrecking crew

Did you know that the mental health system in Spokane, just destroyed by County Commissioners Kate McCaslin and John Roskelley, provided services to more people for fewer dollars than any of the five large mental health systems in the state? That Spokane served a higher percentage of its minority population than King or Pierce county systems? That because of quality mental health care in Spokane, there are fewer people psychiatrically hospitalized in Spokane than in Pierce County, considered by the Mental Health Division to be the “managed care model” for the state?

And did you know that MHD has determined this West Side system to be the model for the state, even though its own data clearly shows that Spokane outperformed that system by almost every measure and has done so for 24 percent less cost than Pierce County?

Commissioner Phil Harris Former and former county commissioners have kept abreast of this data and have held firm against meaningless bureaucratic posturing from Olympia to keep our unique, nationally recognized, high-performing, economical mental health system whole. Unfortunately, McCaslin and Roskelley have determined that top performance and lesser cost to taxpayers are meaningless when compared to the wants, desires and opinions of their staff.

It will take a lot of effort to turn Spokane’s mental health system into a clone of others across the nation - a mediocre, cash-strapped, fragmented, bureaucratic bungle. But there is no doubt that McCaslin, Roskelley and their team are the right people to do it. Brenda J. Gramling Spokane

Wrong notions behind bad policy

Regarding the destruction of the nationally recognized, award-winning mental health system in Spokane County, County Commissioner Kate McCaslin and county staff reported that “hard decisions” had to be made because there wasn’t enough money to fund all of the services previously provided under the leadership of Spokane Mental Health. What bunk.

The amount of money available for mental health services in this biennium is at least equal to, if not greater than, the amount of money in the last biennium. SMH provided all of the now-extinct mental health services without any loss of jobs and for the same amount of money.

Why is it that a county full of rhetoric about how it must have a “better,” “more accountable” system of care “envision” a system that eliminates jobs, serves hundreds fewer people each month, contracts with the most error-prone information system in the state, contracts with a for-profit organization that has had very public problems everywhere it has done business and starts out this biennium’s budget close to a million dollars in the hole?

Most importantly, why does this debacle have the full, unwavering, unconditional support of McCaslin and Roskelley? I’m sure these commissioners feel very safe in granting the wishes of their staff people, (many of the decision-makers being former Spokane Mental Health employees) as these commissioners aren’t up for reelection until November 2000.

The destruction of a top-performing mental health system is the responsibility of two people: McCaslin and Roskelley. Terri Ann Fredette Spokane

In step with bad way to go

I am concerned and deeply saddened at the recent decision to close the Evergreen Clubhouse for adults with mental illnesses in Spokane. I urge reconsideration.

As a mental health worker in Washington state throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, I saw the Evergreen Club develop into a model for programs of its kind in the West. It has served as a stable, inviting community for hundreds of adults with mental illness, offering social skills, employment opportunities and much more. The mental health programming provided by Evergreen Club is sensible, humane and cost effective.

From a planning perspective, the alternatives are increased use of emergency medical and psychiatric services, increased social dislocation and increased risk to individuals and the community.

Sadly, it appears that “deinstitutionalization” is coming full circle, from state hospital to community mental health programming, to reinstitutionalization in jails and prisons. Just recently, a New York Times story reported findings from a Justice Department study indicating 16 percent of U.S. jail and prison inmates are mentally ill. The report “confirms the belief of many state, local and federal experts that jails and prisons have become the nation’s new mental hospitals.”

To dismantle an excellent community program like the Evergreen Club is an unfortunate, shortsighted addition to this trend. It seems to me absolutely penny wise and pound foolish. Robert L. Jackson, Ph.D. associate professor, Colorado State University

People in society

Feminism: the doctor’s out to lunch

I have to respond to Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s column about feminism. It reminded me some of the feminist troupe, Ladies Against Women, which used to regularly appear at marches in the late 1970s with their hilarious antics about women who hate other women.

I’ve been a feminist for over 30 years. Neither I nor the hundreds of feminists I’ve known and considered friends ever thought feminism was about irresponsibility, sexual or otherwise. The so-called sexual revolution was never about women in the first place.

The core belief of feminism is about equal opportunity in our society - in employment, health care, child care and in professional and personal relationships.

Opportunity and responsibility are interwoven - responsibility for oneself and a determined responsibility to work toward the betterment of others and society at large.

Abortion on demand is a myth. As a legal procedure, it is becoming harder and harder for women, particularly young and rural women, to choose to terminate a pregnancy. And until reproductive health care is equally available to all women, true equality cannot be achieved.

Instead of seeking only to place blame, I wish Schlessinger would focus on empowering women and men to accept responsibility for themselves and others, particularly the children they bring into the world. She, too, has a responsibility to inform her readers with tact, not vitriol and shame. Kris Mote Spokane

Marriage greater than one plus one

The July 12 editorial, “We must renew belief in our vows” (Opinion) was rather moving and inspirational. The statistic cited tells much of the story.

There is another perverse statistic I have read about - divorces are declining. Why? Because there aren’t as many marriages! So, fewer marriages, fewer divorces.

There are such other handy, shallow alternatives these days whose long-run negative consequences are often foreseeable, yet disregarded in favor of immediate gratification. In our thoroughly relativistic, anything-goes environment, the sanctity of that blessed sanctuary of home has been severely polluted - and the sacred marriage institution is historically the single most important means of social stability anywhere. And, in this age of high consumerism and super individualism, what matters is the self and the ego, often without regard for the suffering of others involved.

As the editorial points out, the most significant loss is that of innocent children and their future. And then we wonder why tragedies such as the Columbine High School massacre happen.

Infidelity is among the reasons for divorces not mentioned in the editorial. Thou shall not commit adultery and thou shall love thy neighbor are clear or implied marital commitments for most, regardless of one’s faith. Yet often, surrender to temptation is so easy. Someone once quipped, “Well, the two can be contradictory - loving one’s neighbor sometimes can involve adultery, so which one to follow?” A bit grotesque, I’d say.

I hope many people read this fine editorial. S.M. Ghazanfar Moscow

Other topics

Our freedoms are being perverted

On July 10, 1943, I was sworn into the U.S. Army. The exact words of the oath are long gone but I know I swore to be loyal to my country and to protect it from enemies, foreign or within.

On June 6, 1944, I was in the invasion of France, D-Day, H-Hour. On my “tour” of Europe, I saw, firsthand what the Nazis had done to so many good people.

When the war was over, we came home pleased that we had done a good job. We felt secure in the knowledge that never would that symbol of hate, the swastika, fly again.

July 10, Nazi scum, flying that infamous flag, got to march down Coeur d’Alene’s main street because of our First Amendment. Something’s wrong with this amendment, to allow avowed enemies of our system (people who harass and even kill our minorities) to exist here, let alone parade on our streets. It is a slap at those of us who served and an unconscionable insult to those who gave their lives. Gordon A. Spitzer Spokane

Howling about Burbank is revealing

Re: C.W. Burbank’s “Welfare and the Ideology of Power.”After reading Jonathan Martin’s excellent review of Burbank’s book, I again heard it mentioned - very positively - by some people in AA. With some difficulty, I finally located a copy at Auntie’s Book Store. I can see why it’s kept “behind the counter” and why it has generated angry letters to the editor from the liberal/humanist/secularist crowd. It is a dangerous book.

What impressed me about it is that the author is a self-professed recovered addict. He found a way out of his addiction and into a job at the welfare office, so he has some insight into the mindsets of addiction and dependency. These are primary traits within much of the welfare culture.

Be it dependency on a substance or on government for subsistence, addiction and dependency are debilitating to mind, body and spirit. Obviously, Burbank pushes some readers’ buttons. You’d think they would applaud him for getting his life in order and sharing his insights. That they condemn him instead for attacking their sacred cows with the tags given by the politically correct - insensitive, divisive,’ Christian conservative - tells me Burbank is on to something important. Robert G. Cardwell Post Falls