Letters To The Editor

Idaho viewpoints

Don’t rob the poor to benefit the rich

I attended the City Council meeting on March 21. What a spectacle! There were wealthy and middle income business men and women lining up at the public trough, extolling the virtues of the new welfare program for the rich. These people couldn’t wait to get their hands on public funds.

Only a couple of years ago, many of these same people were criticizing the poor, handicapped, single parents who relied on the dole. Now, they can’t wait to get their share of taxpayer’s money.

I didn’t hear any discussion of plans to provide for housing and transportation for poor people who have been and will be displaced by the downtown plans. The March 22 Spokesman-Review included an article about tax breaks for the timber owners. Recent papers have also discussed the Legislature’s consideration of giving the most tax cuts to the wealthiest minority of taxpayers.

I can keep silent no longer. This reverse Robin Hood, taking from the poor and giving to the rich, smacks of hypocrisy and greed. Come on, people! If we’re going to cut welfare, let’s cut welfare for everyone, not just the poor. Gary A. Edwards Coeur d’Alene

Officials seem to have spuds for brains

Good ol’ Idaho. Here we go again. Rep. Delores Crow’s (R-Nampa) tax cut would do everyone a big favor. Hey, “a mom could stay home” - $25 to $50 a year? This woman needs an IQ test.

How about dumping the tax on food and prescription medication? This would help all of us, not just a few.

Then we have Deputy Attorney General Michael “Happy” Gilmore. We will fire a few teachers so we can repair our buildings. How about building chain-link fences topped with barbed wire around all schools? They could be called prisons, receive proper funding and all of our kids would receive a 12-year penitentiary credit when they graduate.

I suggest we rename the state of Idaho “I-dumb-ho.” Everyone will know we are pro-education! Bill Knapp Pierce, Idaho

Highway helpers all show, no go

Typically when I drive from Coeur d’Alene to Spokane, the biggest nuisance I face is the grooves in the highway pulling my car back and forth. This last week, however, I faced a bigger nuisance: trash. Litter, strung out along the freeway all the way to the state line like a garbage dump.

What else did I notice? All these wonderful Adopt-a-Highway signs with local businesses and organizations advertising themselves. I guess what they don’t realize is that in neglecting their duty to keep their section of the highway clean, they look irresponsible and careless. Apparently, “Keeping Idaho Clean” is nowhere near their list of priorities.

I urge you to call these organizations and remind them of their responsibility. They are: Modern Glass, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Seltice Elementary, Harper’s employees, North Idaho Association of Life Underwriters and the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office. Stacey L. Rutledge Coeur d’Alene

See to it open spaces remain

As a citizen of Rathdrum for the past 20 years, I have seen many changes to the prairie. I have watched as grass fields have turned into subdivisions and industrial areas. I don’t blame the property owners for developing their property - they had to change their livelihood. I don’t want to look out over this area and see high-rise apartments or tall smokestacks everywhere.

I know the prairie will be developed but caution and concern need to be considered. Open space must remain, not only for recreation but to help maintain the oxygenation of our air. These open spaces also will be a part of protection of the aquifer.

We can’t stop progress but we can control it, and now is the time while the planning is still being done. Beverly Young Rathdrum

Over the line

It’s just a matter of time

Anybody want to take bets on when (not “if”) the first fuel spill occurs outside the “fail safe” refueling depot? With six tank cars unloading, six waiting to unload and six more coming, it is just a matter of time. These 18 tank cars are on a monthly basis, so that is 216 tank cars a year.

I’ll bet Burlington Northern Santa Fe cannot get through a complete year after the depot is built, before a tanker is on its side somewhere outside the containment area but over our water source. Dick Mellor Spokane

Keep working against fuel depot

I am most interested in all the comments concerning the decisions on the aquifer. I hope everyone will keep working on getting the Burlington Northern Santa Fe refueling station stopped before it’s too late.

I can’t even fathom what Kootenai County Commissioners Dick Panabaker and Dick Compton were thinking when they voted in favor of this horrible project. It’s evident now that they didn’t care about anyone or anything. Make sure you remember this at election time.

I figured there was a point of decency where even big business couldn’t buy off a politician when there was the possibility that lives could be at stake, but this one smells of big time pay-off.

The March 12 letter from BNSF conductor Bill Cleveland sure was a lot of garbage. What I got from his letter was, we beat you suckers, now deal with it!

BNSF had other places away from the aquifer where they could have built a refueling station. I believe they were just throwing their weight and money around to prove that they could get their way.

Now, BNSF, along with Panabaker and Compton, are banking on the public forgetting this and eventually just letting go. I hope that won’t happen. I hope Friends of the Aquifer pursue the lawsuit and the public keeps writing letters to the editor to keep awareness high.

The refueling station is such a threat to our drinking water. We shouldn’t risk taking chance on something that leaves any possibility - no matter how slight - that an accident could occur. Our lives could indeed be at stake! G.D. Davis Spokane

BN inspection reaction revealing

Re: Burlington Northern’s complaints about Department of Ecology criticism of its environmental record in Spokane and Pasco.

Their allegations as described in the article should give readers pause to wonder about BN’s environmental ethic.

Denying inspectors access to their place of business during business hours, interrupting an investigation in process, and failing to have knowledgeable workers on site when the inspectors arrived was the behavior cited by Ecology. And BN’s defense is that Ecology didn’t give them “enough warning” of inspections in order to have knowledgeable people on site and that, after all, a hired contractor who spilled fuel was subsequently fired.

Where did BN get the idea that they should be warned of impending inspections? Any operator in the business of handling hazardous materials should require every worker on site to be knowledgeable about safety and environmental protection measures. And there should always be someone on shift who can answer an inspector’s questions.

If BN’s “knowledgeable employees” are off-site during regular operations, who’s minding the store? Isn’t the point of an environmental program to prevent spills, not just react to them? Does firing a contractor after fuel has been spilled over the aquifer undo the damage?

Inspections aren’t about punishing wrongdoing but about correcting mistakes so future damage is avoided. From this article, it doesn’t appear BN officials understand this. And there’s the real problem. Jim Wavada Spokane

Inspectors aren’t equally savvy

If reporter Zaz Hollander thinks employees at Burlington Northern’s Pasco railyard were wrong to turn away environmental inspectors, she should contact several of our area’s major businesses and ask what they would’ve done. Where I work, instructions posted in every department advise employees what to do if inspectors like OSHA show up.

We invite inspectors to wait in our break room while company management is called to the site. Having our top people accompany inspectors does two things: it ensures the safety of inspectors who might unknowingly wander into dangerous areas or ignore our safety rules; and it prevents legal disputes by allowing our management to witness firsthand the inspector’s discovery of any problems.

Federal Railroad Administration inspectors are familiar with the many safety rules governing railroads and know how to conduct themselves on railroad property. Environmental inspectors, on the other hand, are far less aware of railroad safety rules and would be putting themselves and the railroad in jeopardy if they walked around a rail yard unescorted.

Kootenai County Commissioner Ron Rankin expressed concern about the Pasco incident. Why doesn’t he also investigate the truckloads of solid waste that have been buried beneath many of the new subdivisions and commercial sites being built on the Rathdrum Prairie? These deliberate acts of pollution sit right above our precious aquifer. Bruce Kelly Coeur d’Alene

Government and politics

Bush’s past not all that lofty

Re: “Bush would move us to a higher plane.”

Colleen Grove, (Letters, March 20) writing as a young person, might bring to mind the morals and values she respects in her friends, and then consider how the young George W. Bush would match up.

Bush has refused to deny using cocaine, admits abusing alcohol and obviously used influence to dodge the killing, maiming and actual fighting that the less privileged had to face in Vietnam. If this is not the kind of person you associate with, why would you want such a one to be your president? James W. Bradford Spokane

Refuse deals with ungodly Chinese

Should you help the ungodly and love those who hate the Lord? God says we shouldn’t in 11 Chron. 19:2 but our Congress for the past 19 years has said we should by extending most favored nation trading status to the most evil and ungodly nation the world has ever seen, the People’s Republic of China.

Rep. George Nethercutt reasons that if our stores are filled with “made in China” by slave labor goods, then the slavemasters will stop their wicked ways. It hasn’t happened.

Suppression of religion and free speech, forced abortion, torture, murder and the millions in the slave labor gulag system has not changed. China’s defense minister, Gen. Chi Hoatian, is threatening to invade Taiwan and recently said war with the United States is “inevitable.” This is the same general who ordered the tanks into Tiananmen Square and was honored at the White House by President Clinton.

Now China has offered to buy Northwest wheat and hopefully enough congressional votes to get approval of Clinton’s plan to grant China permanent normal trade relations status and entry into the World Trade Organization. If this happens, China will have permanent access to billions in taxpayer-subsidized trade loans which will eliminate more U.S. jobs.

If you want to obey God and not have to permanently support evil, tell Nethercutt and Sens. Slade Gorton and Patty Murray to stop this plan. Steve Dunham Spokane

Business and labor

Kaiser ad full of distortions

I read the misinformation that Kaiser CEO Ray Milcovich put in his ad and, as the wife of a Steelworker, felt I had to reply.

My husband was offered a vote on what was supposed to be a contract offer. He and the vast majority of the Steelworkers voted to have their leadership continue the current course. The company hired and trained replacement workers months before the contract expired and had them waiting on buses to enter the plants before the strike.

At Trentwood, the company would set productions goals and the workers would not only meet but often exceed them. Kaiser was making a good profit before the strike. How is it doing now? Steelworkers haven’t had to spread false rumors with Kaiser customers. Union members have volunteered that Kaiser is having problems with quality and on-time delivery.

Milcovich is not going to accomplish anything positive by continuing to distort the truth about the company’s poor excuse for a contract offer. Please, Milcovich, convince the powers that be to sell the company to someone who knows how to run it properly. Steelworkers are tired of having to give up wages, benefits and time off so you can siphon off the profits to elsewhere. Barbara A. Prete Chattaroy

Figures don’t square with the facts

I want to meet this $70,000-per-year Steelworker. Is he a machinist or a pipefitter?

As one of the higher-paid Steelworkers, I grossed $45,000 in 1997 by working massive overtime, and if I cost the company $25,000 per year in benefits, Kaiser needs to do a better job of benefit shopping. The benefits I received consisted of small discounts on overpriced services. If Kaiser is paying Group Health and that cheesy vision plan one-third of my pay, somebody is making a killing at my expense. J. Steven Dodge Spokane