Letters for Feb. 10, 2022

The commissioner’s pick

By not including a medical doctor on the Spokane Regional Health District’s Board of Health, Spokane County commissioners are not providing adequate representation of the 400,000 plus population that the SRHD serves. Additionally, the mission of the SRHD to “protect, improve, and promote the health and well-being of all people through evidence-based practices” is in jeopardy without the voice of a medical doctor on the Board of Health. We must do better, Spokane!

Melissa Madsen

Spokane

Let’s follow the math

Thank you for publishing David Barnes’ letter to the editor on Feb. 9 (“We are no longer a serious nation”). I find Mr. Barnes’ extraordinary grasp of statistics quite interesting.

Mr. Barnes, I would like to challenge you to put your keen grasp of statistics to the test: Using the same model you wrote about in your letter, what is the statistical probability that we have always selected the most qualified candidate having only elected one African American president in our nation’s history? No women? No Latinos? No Native Americans? Etc.? What is the statistical probability that we selected the most qualified president every time, given that 44 of 45 presidents have been white males (which represent 31% of the current U.S. population, never more than 45% – granted there have been some significant changes to demographics over the years – but Black people comprised 21% of the U.S. population in 1780, currently 12%)? You can calculate this using your model.

Regarding the Supreme Court, what is the statistical probability that we have always placed the best Supreme Court justices on the bench, with four of them being female? Two African Americans? One Latino? What is the statistical probability that the best Supreme Court justices were always selected, given that 107 of 114 have been white males.

As a white male intensely interested in racial and gender equity myself, I am wondering if you can comment on these probabilities. To quote your own letter, “math suggests the odds are slim.”

Charles Christian Anderson

Spokane

Ready for big insurance increases?

They are coming on your next renewal of auto, home and tenant insurance! Only, of course if you have a good credit score, ha!

State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler, in this position for the last 22 years, thinks we need to make our state a socialist one, where you take from folks who have conducted their lives responsibly and give it to those that have not.

Kreidler has disregarded a previous court ruling and now “mandated” companies to NOT consider credit scores when calculating costs since it gives good score folks a cheaper price and folks with bad ones a higher price since history shows they are more likely to have claims.

Maybe Kreidler should also dictate providers to not consider one’s age, where you live, tickets, value of insured item, too? Perhaps one flat rate for all? On the other hand, we should really let the insurance companies decide what to charge and if you do not like it, find another one?

I have lived in Russia and seen the effects of socialism. Once you have equalized everyone’s assets, it reduces motivation to work, standard of living and your life becomes terrible since the good times previously had will be over!

Since it will affect us all, regardless of party, contact your state representative and ask them to over-turn this crazy one person’s mandate. Also tell them to get this guy out of office some way. Maybe starting with “term limits” for folks in our state government?

Gordon Hall

Colbert

The pot is calling the kettle black

A letter from Mr. Steve Blewett (“Book banning,” Feb. 6), retired journalism professor at EWU, expresses anger at parents and school boards for having the audacity to assert their wishes on what their children are taught in school. He goes on to state that “our students … deserve the best educational system possible, not some watered-down caricature of education …” I agree with his statement, but I’m having trouble understanding how transgender and gay studies, and gross exaggerations to outright lies about our history have anything to do with what our children should be learning in classrooms.

Our education system, once the envy of the world, is now a sad caricature of what it used to be. Our test scores in math, English and science fall far below many other countries.

Mr. Blewett goes on to ask what we are afraid of. We aren’t afraid of anything. We are outraged that instead of providing an education that will help our children earn a living and contribute to society, you and others are teaching an ideology; and it’s one that the vast majority of parents in America do not favor.

Parents are free to speak to their kids about sexual mores and historical racist viewpoints in their own homes. They neither wish nor expect teachers to provide alternate points of view. Teachers at all levels need to re-evaluate their core curricula and return to educating our children, not indoctrinating them!

Hal Dixon

Spokane