Letters To The Editor

Washington state

For the disabled, disable I-745

Imagine no mass transportation in Spokane. It would be a detriment to Spokane’s commuters especially disabled riders who have no other transportation. In addition to this hardship, there would be more traffic, more vehicle pollution and more accidents.

Passage of Initiative 745 would restrict access to mass transit. Most people with disabilities wouldn’t be able to get to their job. The Spokane area would suffer a loss of dedicated employees who are disabled and who rely on public transportation system.

I-745 requires that 90 percent of transportation funds go to road construction and road maintenance, leaving only 10 percent for all other modes of transportation - regardless of local transportation needs. This 90-10 split doesn’t allow for real public transportation choices. For disabled users of mass transit in the Spokane area, this is unacceptable.

Spokane is growing and needs public transportation for disabled people to be included and productive. I-745 takes away the ability of local communities to solve their own public transportation problems by requiring that all transportation funds be sent to Olympia. A public transportation plan that works for Spokane may not work for Vancouver or Seattle. Communities know what works best in their area. I-745 will undermine local elections in which communities already voted to fund their local transportation systems.

The Spokane County Developmental Disabilities Board, of which I am a member, strongly favors people with disabilities being employed, being independent and being contributing members of society. Please vote no on I-745. Paul Clements Spokane

Public transit is transportation

Why isn’t transit considered transportation? Those who ride city buses mitigate automobile traffic congestion, reduce air pollution and ease the burden on the transportation network of arterials and freeways.

Initiative 745 will reduce transit revenues from state coffers to much less than half the status quo. This poorly conceived initiative, incredibly, chooses to define transit as not being transportation.

What category of government service should buses fit into? Environmental health? Social services? Historical preservation? Criminal justice? Parks and recreation? Fish and wildlife?

If citizens think bus service was slaughtered by Initiative 695 last year, that’s trivial compared to the mayhem that will result from the passage of I-745. John R. Downes Spokane

Enforce voters’ will with I-722

Politicians overreacted to Initiative 695 by raising taxes in 1999; 270,000 petition signers think that’s unfair. In the final months of 1999, politicians statewide increased many taxes and fees in an obvious attempt to get around I-695’s voter approval for tax increases requirement (which started January 2000).

They were premature.The Legislature prioritized programs previously funded by license tab fees and used part of the $1 billion tax surplus to help them.

Isn’t it fair for Initiative 722 to now get rid of those unfair increases? Voter-approved tax increases would not be invalidated.

If politicians think their tax increases are truly needed, they can reintroduce them and voters can decide whether they’re necessary.

I-722 also limits property tax increases to a fair 2 percent annual cap. Property taxes are simply skyrocketing in our state. Working class families’ incomes and senior citizens’ incomes can never keep pace with the outrageous property tax increases we see regularly. This is simply unsustainable. Unless we defuse this property tax time bomb now with I-722, only rich people will be able to afford a home in Washington state.

When voters overwhelmingly approved I-695 last year, they expected $30 tabs and voter approval for tax increases. I-722 is necessary to reaffirm voters’ intent: tax and fee increases imposed without voter approval are unacceptable. Please vote yes and tell the politicians to stop ignoring the taxpayers. Tim Eyman Mukilteo, Wash.

I-713 targets sport trapping

Editorial writer John Kafentzis is wrong about Initiative 713. It doesn’t ban gopher or mole trapping. In fact, I-713 explicitly permits trapping where human safety, private property, livestock or threatened and endangered species are at risk.

What I-713 does is ban the “sport” of trapping. Only 500 sporting individuals trap wild animals for their fur in Washington. Yet even this small group traps tens of thousand of beaver, marten, bobcat and other species annually - primarily for the fur. A fisherman told me that as recently as the 1950s, most creeks had beaver ponds where you could catch big fish. These ponds are now mostly nonexistent where I live because the beaver are trapped out.

Trapping is indiscriminate and inhumane. Dogs and cats are killed or injured in traps, too. Trapped animals suffer inestimable pain just so some city slicker can have a fur coat.

Kafentzis got it wrong. Voting yes on I-713 is the right thing to do. Susan K. Coleman Republic

Spokane matters

Fulfill our libraries’ fine potential

In 1990, Spokane citizens were asked to approve a $28.8 million bond issue to replace the Spokane Public Library system with new facilities and an updated automation system. The voters said yes, and the library board and administrators delivered on the promises. Spokane has a new downtown library (its reading room acknowledged as one of the 10 best in the country), five new neighborhood branches, a state-of-the-art automation system and the expenditure of an additional $3 million on library materials.

Spokane has the first-class library voters agreed to build and support, but access to it will be limited unless funds cuts from the library budget are restored.

Citizens are currently paying for the project; the bonds have not yet been retired. However, with the current schedule of open hours, library users will not be able to enjoy the full benefits of their investment.

Libraries are a public good, essential to a democratic society.

Jane Jacobs, author of “Death and Life of American Cities,” describes libraries as people places that bring people downtown, that provide “eyes on the street” and bring activity and movement. The downtown library should be open on Saturday and all library facilities should have evening hours. Libraries are an important part of downtown and neighborhood life.

We voted for the new system. We are paying for it. The City Council can make it possible for us to make maximum use of it. Toni Savalli Spokane

Sterk `a loose cannon’

Sheriff Mark Sterk has become a loose cannon on the county payroll. First, he attacks Commissioner John Roskelley for his support of the sheriff’s office. That is, Sterk admits Roskelley has supported the sheriff but for the wrong reasons. In other words, it’s not enough to support your local sheriff, you also have to have reasons that will please the sheriff.

Then he accuses Roskelley of making “public safety a partisan issue.” What on Earth does the sheriff think he has just done?

I voted for Sterk in the last election because I felt he had the credentials to be an excellent law enforcement executive. I still think so. I still support my local sheriff. I just hope he thinks I have the right reason. Tom Cameron Spokane

McCaslin overlooked a big detail

The front page of the Oct. 18 Spokesman-Review pictures the story of Robert Yates’ crimes, his family and his victims’ families.

In a lower column of the same page, Commissioner Kate McCaslin smilingly extols her own governing style - “hard, grinding work and paying attention to the details.”

But the detail she was willing to overlook several weeks ago was the adequate funding of the Sheriff’s Department, which succeeded in its conscientious service without benefit of her early funding of its requests. Now we should thank her? Alice Sprow Spokane

Law and justice

Tucker exercised sense, compassion

I believe in the death penalty, but what Prosecutor Steve Tucker did by plea bargaining for life rather than death took courage. Without this plea three murders and the whereabouts of Melody Murfin would not have been solved. These families would have waited for answers that would never come.

Tucker gave them the answers. He showed that the families of Murfin, Susan Savage, Patrick Oliver and Stacy Hawn mattered just as much as the others.

If you believe these families didn’t need answers, then, yes, Yates should have gotten death. But I think Tucker showed compassion and heart in his decision and for that I applaud him. Vicki Nicodemus Spokane

Wrongdoers victimize their own, too

Regarding Robert Yates’ guilty plea: Many, many people live with the knowledge that someone they loved and trusted is not who he or she said they were. An event such as this evokes a reliving of our own personal horror when we learned the man we married molested our child or the woman we snuggled up with every night had brought home a sexually transmitted disease.

The self-deprecating thoughts, such as, “How could I have not known?” pour in on the soul and a piece of our heart wants to believe that all of the evidence is somehow wrong. Too few of us have the definitive closure Linda Yates has experienced. We must live with the struggle of looking the facts in the face or clinging to the delusional hope that somehow he or she will be found innocent.

Our community is full of people today grieving for their own experience of betrayal by a loved one. But as we look at Yates and see how normal he looks, it’s a good reminder to all of us that people who hurt other people don’t often look like they are capable of such cruelty. They are deacons in churches and team coaches. All outward appearances indicate they are normal, nice people. Anyone can be fooled by one of them. Linda Yates is undoubtedly an intelligent, kind and thoughtful woman who no more deserved this betrayal than anyone else does. My heart goes out to her and her children in this time of intense pain. Alicia M. Thompson, M.S.W. health educator, Spokane Regional Health District

Hate crime laws inherently unjust

As one who values liberty, I oppose hate crime laws for the following reasons:

There is no epidemic of hate crimes. Racially motivated murders make gripping headlines but they are rare. FBI hate crime statistics primarily consist of acts of vandalism and intimidation, and they show a downward trend.

These laws are vague and harm people they’re intended to protect. If a nonracist black man robs white people because he believes whites have more money than blacks, is it a hate crime? Several prosecutors have successfully argued that it is. While this example runs counter to the law’s intent, this is how it is being applied.

These laws embody double standards. Is it worse for a white man to kill a black man because of bigotry than to kill another white man because of greed? If the outcome is the same, why does one act deserve greater punishment? Isn’t the act equally wrong, regardless of motive?

These laws punish thought. While bigotry is repugnant, it is an opinion. A free society must not use laws to punish opinions. For laws to dictate that crime tinged with bigotry is worse than “normal” crime is to criminalize thought - and that is a slippery slope to tyranny. Hate crime laws are a bad idea. Rife with unintended consequences, they threaten liberty and the principles of fairness. We must return to unambiguous laws against specific criminal acts and apply them equally to everybody. John M. Lemon Veradale

Government and politics

Two-party monopoly must end

Ralph Nader was denied entry to the campus of Washington University recently by the Commission on Presidential Debates, despite the fact he had a valid pass and was scheduled to be interviewed by WUTV, the campus television station. That marked the second time in two weeks that the commission, in association with local law enforcement, unlawfully denied Nader access to a university campus hosting a presidential debate.

This Commission on Presidential Debates must be stopped. The League of Women Voters did an exceptional job hosting the debates for years. During the last cycle the League made the mistake of opening up the debate to Ross Perot and the Reform party. That was evidently too much Democracy for the Democrats and Republicans to handle, so now we have this commission, totally controlled by the two major parties.

What are we going to do about it? Are we content to allow our elections to be controlled by the two parties or do we take back control? It’s time for Jimmy Carter to step in and monitor this corrupt process. Roger Wyssman Spokane

Negativity `gets on my nerves’

I am a sixth-grade student at University Elementary. Lately, on TV, I’ve seen only negative ads about people running for office. I can’t vote yet but it gets on my nerves. A large percent of the people running for office are only talking about the bad things associated with the other candidate, rather than what that person would do to help our society.

I think it would be more beneficial if the candidates would just tell the public, in their ads, what issues they feel strongly about and what they stand for. Chris D.J. Sothen, age 12 Spokane

A familiar face in the White House

My two children have often heard me talk about Bruce Reed, Coeur d’Alene’s man in the White House who was spotlighted in the Sunday Spokesman-Review. Reed was my classmate for many years and was the brightest, most dedicated student in our 1978 graduating class. He was unfailingly modest and kind, and he had a great sense of humor. It’s wonderful to be able to tell my kids that yes, real people work in the White House. It’s even better to be able to tell them that a person with great integrity is there.

Thanks, Reed. You (and Al Gore) have my vote. Janet K. Cline Mead

Other topics

Nonscientific take still lacking

As evidenced by Howard Stetson’s guest column (Oct. 7), neo-creationists are no longer promoting the canard that Earth is only a few thousand years old. Furthermore, in the face of overwhelming evidence, they must now admit that substantial evolutionary change has occurred throughout Earth’s multibillion-year history.

As Michael Behe, whom Stetson identifies as an authority, acknowledges in “Darwin’s Black Box,” “I find the idea of common descent (that all organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing and have no particular reason to doubt it.”

Still, neo-creationists like Behe cannot envision how natural processes could account for certain so-called irreducibly complex biological systems. While seriously underestimating the power of natural/cumulative selection, they insist these systems must have been instantly produced by a supernatural designer. They appear blissfully unaware that, while supernatural explanations are appropriate for religion, they are invalid for science because they can’t be tested or verified. Scientists not suffering from the neo-creationist’s lack of imagination and insight have developed plausible naturalistic explanations for these phenomena (search for “irreducible complexity” at www.talkorigins.org).

Stetson correctly notes that a foolish idea is still foolish, even if advocated by millions. By the same token, he should recognize that an ill-founded argument peddled by any number of evolution bashers who improperly mix science and religion remains utterly worthless from a scientific standpoint. Jack R. Debaun Sandpoint

Student’s point was valid

Praise to Shadle High School student Dylan Lodge for the courage she showed in defense of her people’s image, being portrayed by the Lewis and Clark High School band’s rendition of “The Death of Custer.

The entertainment community has pictured Native Americans as savages. Seldom has true history leading to the Custer battle been presented. For a high school reenact the violence on the Little Bighorn River, out of context, is unacceptable.

Those who have defended this program, are you aware of the U.S military’s action against the Northern Cheyenne people, prior to Custer’s death, on the Greasy Grass? In the dead of winter, Northern Cheyennes - men, women, children and old folks - were forced to flee their tepees, amongst a volley of rifle fire, to the hills and watch their homes, belongings and winter’s food supply being burned. They, against the elements of a Northern Plains winter, fled many miles to the shelter of a Sioux camp.

Lodge has spoken for our people. We have overcome many hardships since Custer’s music, “Gary Owen,” was played as he rode from Fort Abraham Lincoln in May 1876. Native peoples’ plight should be told accurately, respecting what they represented: many nations of native people defending their homes, families and hunting lands. Dee Biegler Spokane