Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Let emergency vehicles through

This is a plea to drivers in the Spokane area. Please move to the right and stop when you see and/or hear an emergency response vehicle approaching (from the front or the rear).

As the driver of a paramedic squad in the Spokane Fire Department, I have numerous occasions to respond “code” to medical and fire emergencies. During a response I must not only drive safely, I must also consider what sort of situation I am going into. The safe driving part of my response is hampered greatly when traffic stops in the middle or left lane (downtown), runs red lights or the driver is otherwise oblivious to the situation around them.

I realize that every time an emergency response vehicle turns on its lights and siren, it becomes a distraction to otherwise normal driving. But otherwise normal driving is what defensive driving is all about.

Thank you to all of the drivers who yield to emergency vehicles. You make it safer for all of us during our efforts to provide service, protection and care to those in need. Mike Dawson Spokane Fire Department

Policy reversal a mistake

Re: “Fair policy up in smoke” (Region, Sept. 14).

I was extremely disgusted by the county commissioners’ reversal of the smoking ban at the Spokane Interstate Fair, just because of a few “nasty letters” and the possibility that the ban might be affecting the fair’s gate receipts. Are all of the commissioners’ decisions dependant on either public opinion or money?

I was overjoyed to see the strong stand previously taken in favor of the rights of non-smokers not to be subjected to secondhand smoke against our will. If I and a few of my friends write “nasty letters,” will the commissioners reduce my property taxes? Or if the commissioners decide that a few dollars can be saved, will they repeal laws intended to protect the rights of ethnic minorities, religious groups or women from discrimination?

Perhaps the commissioners should have considered whether the lower turnout was the result of the exorbitant prices charged for admission, parking, food and rides. Or perhaps it’s due to recent adverse publicity associated with injuries and deaths from carnival and amusement rides.

Even if the smoking ban is responsible for the low turnout, what a sad commentary on our society that parents would deny their children the opportunity to attend the fair just because they were unwilling to go for a few hours without lighting up a cigarette.

Thank goodness my family was able to enjoy the fair when the ban was still in effect. If the commissioners choose to kowtow to the economic interests of smokers next year as well, they may find that many more people like myself will put the health of our children before anything else, resulting in even further reductions in fair turnout. Carol Ann Christnacht Spokane

WASHINGTON STATE

I-695 irresponsible, unworkable

With respect to Initiative 695, there is probably some value to what the promoters of this change have to say, but thinking voters must realize that the law of motion - every action has an equal and opposite reaction - applies here.

As much as we might like to cut the motor vehicle license fee, we must be ready to locate other sources of revenue or the state budget system will not survive. Throwing rocks at politicians for their spending processes is like painting everything in sight with the broadest of brushes.

As far as the second part of the initiative is concerned, having a vote every time a tax is raised, reduced or altered amounts to legislation at the ballot box. This is not a good idea now and never has worked where it has been tried.

Ideas such as these need to be thought through. These ideas are not. Thinking voters will see this initiative for what it is. A no vote on I-695 is absolutely necessary. Maury Hickey Spokane

WSP spouses can end up shortchanged

President Clinton and other presidential candidates are making it known that they are trying to make it more secure for the elderly. I wonder if Washington state readers know of a present injustice within our own state Legislature.

After 39 years of marriage and 25 with the Washington State Patrol, my husband divorced me. I was informed that ex-wives do not have a survivor benefit. It all ceases upon his death. During the last legislative session, a bill was passed that does cover law enforcement officers and firefighters’ ex-wives who are in this predicament. But nothing has been passed for the WSP retirement benefits system, which comes under another code of statutes.

WSP wives should know this is in their future and that they can do something about it. They can contact their state senator or representative to see if we can get a similar bill through for retirees. It’s only right. These people do not belong on the welfare rolls. They belong under the state retirement fund. Helen D. York Spokane

FIREARMS

Guns not why country’s going to hell

Here we are once again, in the midst of a random shooting - this time, at a Baptist church in Texas. We can only wait now for the U.S. government to begin shoving new gun amendments down our throats.

I hate to spoil their agenda but the government and its people need to understand that the guns are not the problem. It’s the people behind the guns that need to be addressed.

We live and breathe in a very disturbed society which is not based on anything anymore, let alone standing for anything anymore.

Take a look around your homes, schools, workplaces and entertainment, and you will not have to look any further. The answer lies there.

The family unit is no more. The schools are pushing “choices” instead of education and you can obtain everything from pornography to mutilation in the entertainment industry - whatever sells at whatever cost.

If this country doesn’t begin looking for solutions in its own back yards and re-establishing the foundation that our forefathers wanted for us, then we can only pray that God will deliver us from the evil that is yet to come. Jeanie Defrancesco Spokane

Sidelining study par for Clinton course

After the Waco debacle, the National Rifle Association hired the firm that had investigated the Challenger spacecraft explosion to conduct an independent investigation of the Waco disaster.

In subsequent hearings, Attorney General Janet Reno refused to let the firm present its findings. Why? Perhaps the firm’s conclusions didn’t jibe with the Clinton-Reno version about what happened at Waco. Now, Reno says she wants the truth. The Clinton-Reno cabal has been deceiving us about guns, too. Clinton banned thousands of firearms as “assault rifles” when, in fact, none of the guns were assault rifles.

Clinton’s Justice Department told the president that so-called “cop-killer” bullets were nonexistent. That study was quickly shelved because of its potential interference with Clinton’s plan to disarm the populace.

The latest Clinton lie is that the NRA, gun manufacturers, gun dealers and gun shows are selling guns to kids and felons. We’ll never hear the truth until the Clinton gang is, thankfully, out of office. Curtis E. Stone Colville, Wash.

OTHER TOPICS

TV industry spreading sickness

Our entertainment industry lives in a fantasy world, a world that too often becomes too realistic to many of its viewers. Unfortunately, this industry lives with fantasy morals and lifestyles that have tragic consequences for many of the unstable in our society. They create trench coat Mafias and love affairs between 13-year-old students and their junior high school teachers - an unnatural relationship by anyone’s standards. Then they take this sick, lustful act and try to create a wholesome Romeo and Juliet situation out of the birth of their actions.

You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. How truly sick our entertainment industry has become. To all the producers, directors, actors and sponsors of this travesty, I can say only one thing: click. James A. Nelson Spokane

Mining royalties are rip-offs

The Sept. 15 editorial by Opinion editor John Webster was an excellent and concise statement in support of mining in the United States.

However, the notion that a royalty is justified is not supported by the facts, and the industry has been bludgeoned into approving some kind of royalty to appease the environmentalists, whose agenda is to stop mining - period.

I witnessed the almost hysterical diatribe of the environmentalists at last week’s meeting. There is no more justification for a royalty on mining on public lands than there is to propose a royalty on every new invention developed in the United States. Unfortunately, it is a complex issue not easily explained by short statements. But those are the facts. Andrew W. Berg Spokane