Letters To The Editor

Spokane matters

Bonds shouldn’t offset faulty choices

Re: “It’s now time for positive vote” (editorial, Sept. 12).

Most Spokane-area residents are not against expanding our parks or updating our firefighting equipment. The problem is misappropriation of existing revenues. The current political method of spending revenues on unnecessary items and forcing bonds to be passed in order to support what should be the primary expenditures is a disgustingly deceptive maneuver.

I have often heard it said that if our government was a business, it would be broke. This is the wrong analogy. It should instead be compared to a family budget. It is a large-family budget. Therefore, it should be prioritized.

First, you fund the necessities. Second, you plan for the future. And lastly, you may have money left over for luxuries.

The fire department is not a luxury expenditure. The condition of our roads is a monument to the misappropriation of public money. There must be some way to force our elected officials to spend our money on the necessary things first. With a legislated mandate to prioritize spending they might even learn to be frugal. Thomas S. Lowerison Spokane

Give it up for an afternoon

It deeply saddens me that anyone can be so addicted that they cannot refrain from smoking for just a few hours in the afternoon to attend the county fair.

My grandfather smoked until he was 50; he has numerous lung problems now that plague him at age 85 and have sent him to the hospital several times. He’s lucky he stopped when he did. But imagine if he had never smoked at all.

Every day at school, I look outside during lunch and see many of my peers committing suicide as they inhale cigarettes across the street, or in the alleyways nearby. It pains my heart, because one of my best friends is out there every day. I would like to eat lunch with those friends, but have you ever tasted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a lungful of smoke? It just doesn’t taste the same.

This is my wish - no, my plea: Stop smoking now, while you still can. I know many of you don’t plan to live past 40 or 50 but how do you think you’ll feel when you get there? I can assure you, you won’t be ready to give it all up. But you may have to. Wouldn’t you rather at least have the choice?

Support the Spokane County Fair and, at the same time, support your own health. Resist for one afternoon and go to the fair. Then resist for good. It’s time to stop making excuses. Josh D. Silverstein, 16 Spokane

Secondhand smoke is dangerous

Re: Scott and Lynn Messmer’s Sept. 13 letter, “Support will go to another fair.”

Not one of the situations mentioned is harmful to anyone. Smoking is harmful to the nonsmokers around. The U.S. surgeon general said, “It is now clear the disease risk due to inhalation of tobacco smoke is not limited to the individual who is smoking.” In 1993, the Environmental Protection Agency declared secondhand smoke a human carcinogen. Each year about 3,000 nonsmoking adults die of lung cancer resulting from breathing smoke of others’ cigarettes. Secondhand smoke causes an estimated 35,000 to 40,000 deaths from heart disease as well as 150,000 to 300,000 lower respiratory infections in children.

There are more than 4,000 chemical compounds in secondhand smoke. So, even though the Messmers mentioned behaviors they or others may find offensive, none of the behaviors will harm us or our children. Secondhand smoke will. The two million to five million asthmatic children in this country are at risk of more frequent and more sever attacks due to secondhand smoke. So, if you must smoke at the fair, just don’t exhale. Keep it to yourself. Mark W. Harry Colbert

Business and labor

Show Kaiser the door

As a lifelong resident of the city of Spokane, I have seen many things that I have disagreed with. But lately it has been wearing thin my ability to keep silent. This issue affects every man, woman and child. The issue is whether or not Kaiser Aluminum should continue to do business in the state of Washington.

Kaiser workers have had legitimate grievances against the company, negotiated in good faith, agreed to go back to work during negotiations and subsequently were locked out so they could not work, had nonunion (scab) replacements brought in to take their place.

If, in the next two months, Kaiser does not settle with the men and women who work at Kaiser then it is up to the citizens of the City of Spokane, Spokane County and the state, along with our elected officials, to stand up and tell the Kaiser to take everything it has that’s not nailed down and leave. We cannot have or allow corporations that are not good corporate citizens to do business in this state. Lawrence Schuchart Spokane

Opinions of the uninformed worthless

Re: “Strikers are just pushy slackers,” (Letters, Sept. 2). Chris Zornes, The Kaiser Expert, evidently has no clue as to what he’s writing about. As usual, most people have been misinformed or are just too ignorant to understand.

It is not about money.

I am the wife of a locked-out Steelworker who dedicated 21 years of his life to Kaiser, until Sept. 30, 1998.

Too many times in 18 years of marriage, I have seen firsthand all that the Steelworkers have given up just so the company could get on its feet. Now that the Steelworkers are asking for what’s fair, the company basically says screw you due to these four very important issues:

Preservation of our seniority.

Protection of our jobs from outside contractors.

A secure retirement.

Equality in the aluminum industry.

So, anyone who is not an expert for one or the other should not advance opinions on matters they don’t fully understand.

As for all the scabs working at Kaiser, do they even know the meaning of “lockout”? It means Kaiser guaranteed these locked-out, striking Steelworkers their jobs. I hope it was all worth it in the long run because, either way, scabs lose. Denise Zook Post Falls

In the grip of corporate giants

Some recent letters to The Spokesman-Review have blamed all of our culture’s ills on liberals and socialists. One letter even heartlessly urged that striking Kaiser steelworkers stop whining and find jobs.

Historically, most of the benefits people today take for granted have come from the more liberal wings of our legislative bodies - things such as the 40-hour week, time-and-a-half pay for overtime work, worker safety and our minimal environmental safeguards.

I suggest that most of our troubles come from a brutal quest for profit from massive corporations, which are the real leaders of our country. Their tactics have degraded the once prosperous middle class and have sown seeds of dissension which tear our social fabric in every area of life.

With profits soaring, the Dow Jones Industrial Average at a record high and jobs fleeing to third world countries, the corporate giants have no desire for anything but maximized returns. Human life, unless it is theirs, means very little to them.

It is in the interest of the ruling class to keep the rest of us calling each other meaningless names instead of working together to build better lives. Many readers are falling for the gimmick. “When the poor give to the rich, the devil laughs” is an old Italian proverb. Fred Glienna Coeur d’Alene

Events

Today is Constitution Day

In celebrating Constitution Day, Sept. 17, we are reminded that this is the 210th anniversary of the formation of the federal government as we know it today under our Constitution.

The Articles of Confederation which preceded our Constitution and which loosely bound the 13 original states was not a satisfactory solution to national government. The economy was depressed, taxes were excessive, foreclosures were a regular occurrence and many were living in poverty. In order to deal with the economy and the political and social unrest, Alexander Hamilton led a campaign to convene a constitutional convention for the purpose of reorganizing and strengthening the national government. The convention met in Philadelphia in May 1787. A new Constitution, designed to replace the Articles of Confederation, was drafted. It outlined the powers of the national government, leaving all other functions and powers with the individual states. It created three separate but equal branches of government - the executive, legislative and judicial branches, each having the power to check the others.

The judicial branch was to hear all cases arising under the federal laws and the Constitution, with the power to enforce the same through a framework of national courts presided over by federal judges, and with the support of the U.S. Marshals Service. The Constitution was ratified and the new government came into being in 1789.

Under the Constitution, our citizens enjoy a government of laws, not of men, and the courts have the duty to fairy and equally apply the law.

We as federal judges are proud to assume the responsibility of honoring and upholding the Constitution and to see that the fundamental rights of all American citizens are protected. Wm. Fremming Nielsen chief U.S. district judge, Eastern District of Washington, Spokane