Don’t stir this pot

I have a few comments in regard to the legalization of pot. Evidently, the pot experts feel it would be a $560 million business in the state of Washington. I do not doubt the author, but want to say there are some costs that extend beyond the purchase price of the drug.

My experience with contractors who tolerate marijuana use by their workers on a construction job is they risk the chance of a bad accident, poor workmanship, a poor attendance record and inferior quality of the final job.

There is no doubt that the continued use of the drug is habit-forming, and oftentimes leads to use of stronger and more expensive narcotics. It also has a debilitating effect on the user.

We have a $15 trillion and growing debt handed to us by our current president. Better we should look to how we are going to handle that.

Leon E. Carpenter

Spokane

Rants are set in Stone

Reading Curtis Stone’s latest diatribe in the March 25 Spokeman-Review (“Democrats are the extremists”) takes me back to days of translating Cicero, which shows how old I am. I remember a famous question from Cicero’s oration against Catiline: “How long will you continue to abuse our patience?”

You do so with these seemingly endless rants of fear and loathing that roll on like a tsunami: “… threat to freedom … most anti-gun president ever … may soon erase the Second Amendment … regard the Constitution as toilet tissue … hate the Second Amendment … Southern Poverty Law Center … a communist front ….”

All of which brings to mind another line, this one from Will Shakespeare: “Oh judgment, thou hast fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.”

Mike Huff

Colville

Pothole season ahead

As spring approaches the people of Spokane get to play dodge-a-pothole again. Or how long can I go without a front-end alignment due to pothole damage? It’s clear that the method they are using to repave our streets isn’t working. You would think that with all the engineers and managers on city staff someone could come up with a plan to repave our streets. We are not talking rocket science here.

Take arterial “A” and figure the “X” amount of traffic for “Y” number of years, and it should need repaving in “Z” amount of time. Every time I ask someone at City Hall why they can’t do a better job on repaving, they moan and wring their hands and say street funding comes from the general fund and they don’t have the money.

They need to take a clue from the sewer and water departments, and come up with a street utility fee to pay for repaving streets. If Mayor David Condon wants to be re-elected, he needs to step on some toes and kick some butts and get ’er done. Otherwise the people of Spokane need to take up pitchforks and torches and march on City Hall.

Rick Johnson

Spokane

Council steps out of bounds

The mayor and the City Council only have such authority as authorized by the Washington state Constitution and the laws of the Washington. Nowhere does the mayor or the City Council have authority to engage in activities that are solely for the benefit of one economic entity over another. Such is not part of the governmental game.

Our new government believes it can use the power of the people of Spokane to benefit a particular group to the detriment of another group. This is wrong. Worse, it is illegal.

Spokane seems intent on engaging in conduct that is not only wrong, but is corrosive of the strength and goodwill of our good city. Mayor David Condon, Council President Ben Stuckart, and the council members who voted in favor of opposing the Spokane Tribe’s legal development efforts should be roundly chastised and questioned.

Stephen Eugster

Spokane