Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Unleashed dog can cost you plenty

The Spokesman-Review regularly reports that the leash laws are about to be enforced on the Centennial Trail. The law is generally flouted and I’ve yet to see even the slightest enforcement. In an informal survey July 14-15 between Harvard Road and Maringo, I saw 11 dogs and three were leashed.

For the considerate folks who kept their dogs leashed, thank you for making the trail safer.

For the rest of you inconsiderate louts, the law was not enacted to deprive you or your dog of precious freedom. It was enacted to protect the other people who walk, run, bike or Rollerblade the trail. Yes, I know that your dog would never cause a problem but I have a revelation for you. Your dog is not a person, it is a dog! It doesn’t think, it reacts. And when it reacts, bad things may happen.

A very nice couple made that serious judgment error one recent morning. Just as my riding partner and I passed them and their unleashed dog, the dog decided to chase a rabbit, something “the dog never did before.” The dog ran into my friend, causing an ugly crash. Fortunately, my friend was wearing a helmet so his injuries weren’t as serious as they could have been. He did spend the morning at the hospital with a concussion. The dog owners will be lucky if his medical bills and other expenses are less than $1,000.

Let your dogs roam, as long as you can afford the damages it may cause. It seems to me that a $6 leash is much cheaper than a lawsuit. Charlie Matthews Spokane

Picture moving, memorable

If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, then the heart-wrenching image captured in the lens of photographer Brian Plonka of fire victim Sue Herman is truly priceless. Her crater lake eyes reflected all that was lost; any hope of retrieving even the smallest of personal items settled in a cavernous hole of despair.

I will forever remember her whenever I have that selfish moment of despair. E.A. “Liz” Morig Spokane

WASHINGTON STATE

We mustn’t make tantrum pay off

I am in full agreement with D.F. Oliveria’s July 13 editorial. The actions of the owner-player conglomerates have exceeded good taste and common sense.

These team owners conduct their demands and business in ways akin to ransom or extortion attempts. Telling the public if it doesn’t pay for the new stadium, the team - and I use that term loosely - won’t be able to play in the old one and will just have to move to another city. In this case, if we don’t pay for the cost overruns they had already been contracted to pay for, the team just might not be able to afford two of its biggest babies to play on the team.

When they’re told that no, we the public will not pay for the team’s part of the contract, the company begins to whine and produce veiled threats about bringing in their lawyers to find a loophole that will force us to cover the overruns.

Our stand should be (and should have been from the beginning of this fiasco) that if they threaten and act like a 3-year-old throwing a tantrum, we will treat them like a 3-year-old and ignore them or let them leave. We’re probably better off without such a bunch of spoiled, overpaid primadonnas anyway.

If, on the other hand, they recognize we’re not about to be blindsided again and understand “no,” reward them by letting them stay in their new playhouse. Sooner or later, they’ll learn that tantrums get them no rewards. Robert W. Thompson Cheney

Vote the cash-strapped a break

Gov. Gary Locke, the Republican Party and other big government proponents are worried about what Initiative 695 will do to the state budget. They don’t seem to care what high taxes and license tab fees do to the budget of a single working mom or a locked-out Kaiser worker.

It’s the toil and sweat of working people that creates the money in question but the politicians seem to think our wallets are bulging with endless cash for them to use on “more important” things.

Politicians think it’s more important that a Vashon Island white collar professional gets a subsidized ferry ride to Seattle every day than for an Eastern Washington working-class family without health insurance to get a break on their license tabs.

People all over this state are making hard choices about their personal budgets every day. How do some of them manage when a $100 or $200 tab tax comes due all at once during the month? If you’re on the edge already, it feels like a punch in the stomach.

I think these arrogant politicians should take some inspiration from their recent pay raises and see if they can be as creative cutting the state budget as they were when they found funding for the Seattle Mariners baseball stadium. We all know that government is horribly inefficient. Maybe with the voters’ I-695 boot in their backside, the politicians will find a way for the state to trim some fat while retaining their precious government programs. Greg D. Holmes Spangle

HEALTH CARE

Conspiracy aimed at saving lives

I have concerns about your July 18 headline, “Dentist sees immunization as evil.”

Although people who read the whole article got enough information to realize that Leonard Horowitz, DDS, is putting forth kooky ideas, those who just glanced at the page and saw the featured quote (“I am a scientist. I am a researcher. I dig up facts and then I, based on the facts, have to draw conclusions.”) may well have concluded that immunizing their children is a risk to their health.

Ironically, just a week earlier, The Spokesman-Review ran an article (“Exemptions hike risk of measles,” July 11) that showed that children who are not vaccinated against measles are 35 times as likely to develop the disease as those who have been protected.

Eastern Washington and North Idaho are areas with higher-than-average rates of unimmunized children. Your writers need to keep that in mind before they write feature stories about those who believe in far-flung medical conspiracies. If there is a national conspiracy, it is that all responsible health professionals and government officials are conspiring to rid our country of diseases that killed thousands of children annually just 50 years ago. Henry S. Berman, M.D. fellow, American Academy of Pediatrics, Spokane

Don’t destroy services that helped me

I don’t understand how people could think that by eliminating intensive outpatient care and the Evergreen Club that money would be saved.

Both of these Community Mental Health programs benefited me. I have been part of the system for 17 years. My children became wards of the state. In Child and Family Services, we had three days of group sessions. Because of my mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, I failed in all aspects. I used to be committed to the state hospital, sometimes twice a month.

Of all my suicide attempts, two were critical, being in a coma and on life support.

After lots of blood, sweat and many tears, I got involved in intensive outpatient care. I hated its ideas but I attended classes. Something clicked, finally. I attended classes on anger management, crisis prevention, self-esteem and more. They gave me tools and I was ready to use them. I finally entered the Evergreen Club. I gave it the benefit of the doubt.

I feel good there. I am useful and I am someone. I was hoping to gain tolerance of the outside and working world. That foundation has been zapped away. How many times must I start over? I was doing well in this program. How are my peers going to be? Our strong support system, there seven days a week, is all being taken away.

When we benefit, everyone benefits. Why throw away something that works?

I guess the idea that money is more important then people hurts and disappoints me. Annmarie Dowd Spokane

Wrong people making bad decisions

Why do people who don’t really know anything about mental health services - county commissioners - make decisions about what is best for the consumer? Why are the people who control the money for mental health services - RSN - who claim they have the consumers’ best interest in mind, mislead and not let the consumers have a say in what is going on with the changes?

Is money more important than quality of care? How long will we let local government and the people who control the money and big managed care companies decide what’s best for the consumers?

What will happen to the 255 members of the Evergreen Club now? Ross Manes Spokane

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Help end special status mischief

The City Council, in October 1998, decided to add two words, “sexual orientation” to its nondiscrimination statement. It pledges fair, impartial treatment to people, without bias due to age, race, gender, religion or marital status. This decision was then used as authority to open a human rights office to monitor homosexual issues, including housing and employment. The city’s motive was not fairness but special interest.

Two misplaced words have increased the expense of city government by $5,300 this year. Its operation costs are expected to broaden and increase each year. A policy statement has become a budgeted procedure statement. A dangerous precedent is set. Unless the city removes those special interest words and the office funded by them, our city shall be expected to separately fund an office to monitor each of the other categories of its nondiscrimination list. Homosexual “sexual orientation” is not a class but a behavior status. It doesn’t belong in with the other terms of nondiscrimination.

Do we want gamblers, porn dealers, drug pushers and criminals to also lobby for inclusion on the nondiscrimination list? Please sign the petition to remove “sexual orientation” from our city’s nondiscrimination list. Then vote yes to restore our community integrity when this comes to our ballots. Bruce C. Wakeman Spokane

Odd views for `born-again Jew’

It occurred to me in reading Laura Schlessinger’s column of July 17 that if one substituted the words “white race” wherever she used the words “American families,” and “Jews” wherever she used the word “homosexuals,” you would have a document that could have been written by Richard Butler, head of the Aryan Nations.

Here are the same adjectives, “sick, deviant,” the same accusations, “conspiracy, militant activists,” and the same lack of evidence to support a single statement.

There is a great irony in this, since Schlessinger proudly proclaims her “born-again Jew” status as the foundation of her judgmental and moralistic stances. Interestingly, her positions on most issues are in line with Christian fundamentalist views and those groups are certainly her great champions. But her positions have little to do with Jewish theological priorities as I understand them.

Contrast her opinions with those of two other Jewish columnists frequently appearing on the same page, Judith Martin (Miss Manners) and Ann Landers. In those columns, a reader finds intelligence, humor, common sense, and compassion - qualities sadly lacking in Schlessinger’s writing.

If you must give her space to generate hatred toward certain groups, be fair. Give Richard Butler and Louis Farrakhan column space as well. We certainly would not want Spokane to get a reputation as a city of tolerance and diversity. Gregory M. Presley Spokane

Bashing is not loving thy neighbor

This is in response to the recent rash of criticisms of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by various clergymen of local churches.

It’s funny how, in a day when the Aryans march in Idaho, and regardless of how much others publicly despise them, we all insist it’s their right to believe as they do, as the First Amendment guarantees. However, as the Mormon faith grows, people insist we need to boot these heathen, would-be Christians out of here and save their souls. I ask all the priests who have written your paper stating this to consider this obvious hypocrisy.< Mormons are certainly not Aryans but let them believe as they please. Christians are taught to love thy neighbor as thyself. I don’t believe loving one’s neighbor entails relentlessly bashing them for being members of a separate faith. Jake A. Kruse Spokane

IN THE PAPER

Mad magazine, move over

I really must congratulate The Spokesman-Review on your sense of humor as portrayed on the July 19 Opinion page. On a single page, one passage above another, you printed two of the greatest howlers I’ve read this year.

First, you put tongue firmly in cheek and printed a piece that lauds one of the most divisive, hateful and destructive political movements of the century, “feminism,” whilst it blasts two of the very few remaining public defenders of morality and fairness, all in the name of “inclusion and equality.”

You followed this up by awarding the Golden Pen to the hysterically funny letter from J.R. Hart blaming family values and private gun ownership for the Holocaust and World War II.

This was classic sarcasm and irony, of Monty Python genre and caliber, and I spent several minutes in healthful laughter. Then, on the off chance that you just might be serious in such an editorial position, I called up a certain toll-free number and joined the National Rifle Association. Alexander P. Brown Spokane

Death no joking matter

I have spent years loving-hating staff cartoonist Milt Priggee but I have never been so sickened as I was by his July 20 depiction of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s arrival in what I assume is heaven. Priggee aside, I am appalled that this newspaper would print such an insensitive “cartoon.” Death and tragedy are not a joke. Janis K. Gilson Spokane

Cartoon a lower-class slam

Re: June 29 Opinion cartoon, The Ten Commandments are part of the Judeo-Christian ethic, which not only includes the religious right but Jews, Episcopalians and others of like religious faith. Depicting the religious right using ammunition to destroy the Constitution is class baiting because many in the religious right are of lower fundamentalist classes. There would be political repercussions if Jews, Episcopalians or Catholics were depicted in such a light.

Even though the collateral issues of church-state separation involving the use of the Ten Commandments in the classroom is a touchy and debatable issue, it seems inappropriate in such a form to attack a particular religious viewpoint. Prior to the emergence of the religious right, the Ten Commandments were on display in the classroom with no objection from Jews, Roman Catholics and upper middle class religious adherents. The cartoon is at best merely ignorant and at worst filled with hate. Intolerance is not what liberalism is supposed to stand for. Rev. Richard F. Lee Spokane