Letters To The Editor
SPOKANE MATTERS
I’m an attorney, not an ascetic
Since February 1996, I have served as a deputy prosecuting attorney for Spokane County. During these years I successfully prosecuted hundreds of criminal cases including driving under the influence, domestic violence, burglaries, major economic crimes, robberies, assaults and murders.
I enjoy my work immensely and I take great pride in serving Spokane County and its citizens. However, I have decided to accept a position with the Clark County prosecutor’s office. I can no longer afford to continue my career in this community.
I’m not alone in this regard. Since January 1999, 10 criminal prosecutors have left the office to accept other positions, many with other prosecutor’ offices within the state. This has resulted in a very significant turnover rate of 20 percent among criminal prosecutors in this county. Most of these former colleagues indicate they were satisfied with the office and the work they were doing. The primary reason for leaving is the low salaries paid by Spokane County.
I didn’t become a prosecutor to earn high wages. I knew as a prosecutor I wouldn’t make as much money as I could in other areas of legal practice. Much of the compensation for performing this kind of work is the satisfaction of knowing that I’m providing a valuable service to my community. However, it’s in the citizens’ best interest to provide competitive salaries. This would make it possible for Spokane County to retain skilled and experienced prosecutors, which is a vital component in any effort to combat crime within a community. Anthony F. Golik Spokane
Oh, what you left out
Top of the morning to you and question of the day.
How could a writer named Kelly, writing on St. Patrick’s Day about the best corned beef sandwiches in town, totally ignore O’Doherty’s Irish Grille’s version of “Hooligan’s and Hannigan’s,” arguably the best in the West? Jack Geraghty, president Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, Spokane
Aesthetic cellular tower available
Zoning for cellular towers apparently lacks comprehensive city-county planning. It is important not only that such towers be aesthetically pleasing but that there be enough of them to provide good coverage.
There are six, soon to be seven, cellular/PCS carriers in the greater Spokane area, with a combined user penetration of almost 40 percent. If each company were to construct multiple towers for saturation coverage we would indeed have a serious problem.
However, there is a better solution. A single, handsome structure used throughout the United Kingdom can service all carriers. Such towers are now available in the United States. On this aesthetic structure can be obliged all cellular/PCS carriers for a particular area.
It is in the interest of good government, of cellular coverage and of a beautiful city that City Hall encourage cellular/PCS providers to cooperate in using these, the newest, least obtrusive towers available. John E. Sonneland Spokane
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
There’s no hypocrisy on my part
Re: Bottom Lines, March 19.
Twice, since my announcement to run against Rep. George Nethercutt in the 5th Congressional District, you have portrayed as somehow hypocritical my promise to serve five terms when I am critical of Nethercutt’s promise to serve only three terms.
This is not about length of service and never has been. I told Nethercutt during the campaign of 1994 that I felt he was wrong to limit himself to such a short tenure. But it was his promise and it was the deciding issue which allowed him to defeat House Speaker Tom Foley. Now he says he has “changed his mind,” as though he was ordering a pizza.
This is about honoring your contract with the voters and keeping your word. If we don’t stand up now and say enough is enough, what message do we send those who would seek office in the future? Say whatever you want because we will re-elect you anyway?
I have limited my proposed service for two reasons: I want to know my service has an end date so I will aggressively pursue the business of the 5th District now instead of waiting for the leadership to throw me a few crumbs, and I have other things I want to do in life, which I fully intend to do. If you want a career politician, look elsewhere.
Should I break my promise at the end of five terms, then you could easily make the argument that I am a hypocrite. Until such time you are jousting at the wind. Richard Clear GOP candidate, Spokane
Choices poor but there is hope
What I dreaded might occur has occurred. We are now faced with the awful choice between Gore the Bore and Bush the Tush.
Considering the past voting record of the American people, I am not surprised. We seem to have a knack for voting the least qualified men into the presidency. It seems that Eisenhower was the last of the true presidents.
However, there is hope after all. John McCain, by withdrawing from the presidential race instead of dropping out altogether, has offered a ray of hope. I could now see the opportunity for change in the electoral process.
If a candidate is forced to drop out due to lack of funds, he should merely withdraw for the moment. However, he should continue his efforts to raise money during the interim period. (Primaries are nothing more than a war of attrition between nominees. This is not fair to some of the candidates.) The nominees would then reactivate their campaigns about a month before the national convention. This would possibly lead to more than two nominees appearing at the convention. This would be true democracy at its finest.
With Bush and Gore the only representatives of their respective parties, why hold the conventions at all? I have had all I can stand of the usual silly antics of national conventions. However, with a full array of candidates present, the conventioneers would be faced with the serious task of choosing the right candidate to represent their party. J.J. Orlando Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Goodman makes breakthrough, sort of
Ellen Goodman (“’Whateverism’ stymies understanding?” March 17) finally admits it, that the tolerance she preaches shouldn’t be extended to people of other faiths or scientific facts that dispute her virtually religious commitment to Darwinism. Interestingly, she does so while finally agreeing with me on the detrimental effect that relativism has on the search for truth.
She accuses those who “think they have a lock on the truth” of the Crusades and the Inquisition. Of course those religiously committed to Darwinism forget the conflict between the “Ethno-Cultural Darwinists” (or Nazis) of Hitler’s Germany and the “Socio-Economic Darwinists” (also called communists) of Stalin’s Russia that cost millions of lives (not including the millions of their own populations they exterminated).
In our own country people religiously committed to Darwinism have eradicated a third the millennium generation through abortion. Now they are pushing for euthanasia and stem-cell research on a scale that would have made the Nazis proud.
Goodman’s religious commitment to Darwin blinds her to the fact that there are serious scientific problems with the theory (not law or fact) of evolution. There is credible scientific evidence that the cosmos is not billions of years old. And there is significant evidence that creation has to have had a guiding intelligence for it to exist as we see it today, whether you call it Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Gaia, Brahma or “whatever.”
One plus one does equal two. And school boards facing a science curriculum still must choose between science and religion, creationism and Darwinism. Michael Liljenberg Spokane
Those are really slot machines
On March 19, Editor Chris Peck endorsed the Coeur d’Alene Tribe’s electronic coin-in, script-out “video pull-tab machines.” When it comes to gambling issues, as usual, The Spokesman-Review has missed the point. The question is, is the machine a video pull-tab machine or is it a slot machine?
This machine is a slot machine. Pull-tabs are sold for a set price. In Washington state-licensed facilities, that price ranges from 25 cents to $1 per tab. Each tab has one to five chances to win. In the tribes, tabs can be sold at higher prices.
However, the machines used by the Coeur d’Alenes are slot machines, all 1,000 of them, because they offer the player the chance to bet multiple levels of one to eight coins per single play and opportunities to win on up to eight levels. Only slot machines allow you to bet on multiple levels.
In Idaho, as in Washington, slot machines remain illegal. The machines currently in operation at the Coeur d’Alene casino should be declared illegal. They are not an electronic version of pull-tabs! Don Kaufman Spokane