Letters To The Editor

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Drugs for seniors not only issue

Every senior will get prescription drugs? Am I missing something here? The most powerful leader in the world might be elected because he promises to give prescription drugs to anyone who can prove senior citizen status.

I don’t dispute the importance of medication for many of our citizens. I’m sure I already help pay into federal programs which help the needy. The way I understand Vice President Al Gore’s program is that any senior can get drugs. There must be a limit to how much we are going to pile on our children.

Another key issue is Social Security. If ever there was a failed program, this is it. The forecast is incredibly bleak for it. An average person of 65 has paid $161,300 into this system. They will take out $255,000. A person of 45 will pay in $222,000 and take out $254,000. My 1-year-old will pay in $474,000 and take out only $277,000. If that 1-year-old could invest his money in the free market it would be worth $1,435,000.

Our young people are going to be swamped in debt. To add another entitlement like prescription drugs is a slap in their face - all to get a vote.

This pandering by politicians and the votes it brings shows how selfish our society has become.

Some praise Gore for being specific about his plans. I am offended by his political pandering. His truth stretching (lying) is also a red flag for me. Ted Farr Spokane

Gore’s do-nothing approach risky

This political season, Social Security and prescription drugs are top political subjects.

The latest example of these combined issues comes from a 79-year-old retired ex-United Auto Worker’s representative who has to recycle aluminum cans to feed herself because her prescription drugs cost so much. This retiree from Iowa gets two very small monthly retirement checks, $782 from Social Security and $159 from the union. She pays about $230 monthly for prescription drugs. This poor woman would be able to afford her prescription drugs if she had a good retirement plan.

Every election year the Democrats brag about the mismanaged Social Security system that could go broke in just a few decades. Vice President Al Gore claims that investing a small part of Social Security in the stock market to help younger workers is a risky scheme.

With Gore’s do-nothing approach, younger workers will get little to nothing from Social Security when they retire

Democrats know that federal employees have a retirement system that is based solely on investments in the stock and bond markets. Federal employees can, for example, invest in a professionally managed higher risk/higher return stock fund or a very safe bond fund. These employees do not call their retirement plan a risky scheme.

Unlike the choice federal employees have, younger workers must pay into Social Security without any choice or hope of getting anything back for their own retirement. To me, Gore’s do-nothing idea is truly a risky scheme for my 16-year-old daughter. Mark H. Springer Spokane

Ask yourself what comes after lies

Inventing the Internet, prescription medications his mother and dog share, traveling to Texas with people not even aware he was there - what will Al Gore claim next? Perhaps it will be his influence that ends the crisis in Yugoslavia (just before the election), or maybe he will profess to struggling through a financial blow that puts him on eye level with all the working class Americans he claims to care about so much. Does anyone else notice a pattern here?

I was planning to vote for Gore, but lie after lie you have to wonder what is down the road. If a politician will lie to you about trivial things, what could convince you that they would be truthful about issues that really matter? How can we vote someone into office who can smile while they lie to us and tell us how much they care? We wouldn’t allow people in our personal lives who treated us with such disrespect and dishonesty. So how can we even consider trusting our country, money and futures to someone who thinks that we’re too stupid to notice what’s going on? And if we do vote for him we’re only getting what we deserve in the end.

It reminds me of a fellow named Bill who admitted having lied before we elected him. Then later down the road when he was caught lying again, we opened our eyes in surprise and said, “How could this have happened?”

I’ll tell you how it happened - we got what we paid for. Jeff Carlsen Spokane

Leo’s research lacking

Columnist John Leo should have researched his subject better before writing an “Al Gore quiz” (Opinion, Oct. 3).

Leo ridiculed Al Gore, wondering about the farm chores he had mentioned while in Iowa. Gore has said, “My parents never owned a home in Washington. All of their savings were put into the farm or the house in Tennessee. Every spare moment, we went back there.” In the same article, “The many sides of Al Gore” (Aug. 11) by Jill Lawrence of USA Today, she said that “Gore’s father worked his son hard on the farm..”

What else was wrong in Leo’s Al Gore quiz?

At least Leo didn’t claim that Gore was taking credit for creating the Internet, as George W. Bush did in a TV ad. The Gore quote about the Internet was taken out of context when Gore was discussing having created legislation in the Senate that helped with the development of the Internet. Sharon Leon Spokane

ENVIRONMENT NMFS information against breaching

I am a fishery biologist retired from the Corps of Engineers. For over 29 years my primary concern was the safe passage of salmon around the Columbia and Snake river dams. I spoke last week at an Idaho workshop on “Practical Paths to Salmon Recovery.” I said the Snake River dams should not be breached.

My conclusion is based on current scientific information presented by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in their biological opinion for the Federal Columbia River Power System. NMFS said juvenile salmon survive in-river passage at a 40-60 percent rate. If they are collected and transported around the dams in barges, they survive at over 98 percent. Over half the fish are transported, and the rest migrate in-river and survival to the estuary is over 90 percent today.

For in-river survival, if 75 percent survive the lower Snake River and 75 percent survive the lower Columbia River, 56 percent survive to the estuary. If the Snake River dams were breached, survival there would increase from 75 percent to 96 percent. But breaching would eliminate fish transportation. The 96 percent that survived the lower Snake River would pass through the lower Columbia River at 75 percent survival. Survival would be 96 percent times 75 percent equals 72 percent. Breaching the dams would reduce survival of juvenile salmon 18 percentage points.

Advocacy groups that claim breaching is the only salvation for the salmon rely on obsolete information and unproven assumptions. NMFS information shows that breaching the dams is not right. John McKern Walla Walla

Demos real danger to dams

I have a question for those of you with “Save our Dams” bumper stickers on your cars: Save our dams from whom? From George Bush, Slade Gordon, Doc Hastings or John Carlson? Will Republicans jeopardize our Northwest hydroelectric, irrigation and barging capabilities? Are liberals in the Republican Party pandering to environmental extremists at the risk of our Northwest economy and way of life?

Of course not! There are no liberal extremist environmentalists in the Republican Party; the Democrats own this one!

Al Gore and Gary Locke both promise that economic disaster is not an option in the salmon recovery plan, but considering Gore’s flip-flops and persistent difficulty with the truth, and Locke’s tendency to walk lock-step with the administration, I won’t bet our future on their words! With a stroke of the pen we lost local control of the Hanford Reach during Gore’s last trip to Southeast Washington state. What’s next?

Gore and Locke are liberals; of course they will behave like liberals while in office. Voting these Democrats back into office forfeits your right to complain when electricity rates skyrocket as our agricultural based economy crumbles.

A more accurate bumper sticker would read, “Save our dams from your Democrats.” Todd Blackman Pasco