Letters for March 27, 2022
Benefits of Frontier to our family
As you drive north on Division from Third Avenue toward the railroad underpass you’ve probably noticed people heading to the Frontier Behavioral Health building near First and Division. One of those people is my 32-year-old son. He has schizophrenia and for the past six years he has depended on Frontier for his psychiatric services and other needs.
Not a lot of doctors in town have in-depth experience with schizophrenia. His doctor does; he has been in practice over 40 years. Our son also worked with a case manager for five years who helped him successfully connect with the Spokane Housing Authority. He was able to move into an apartment of his own over a year ago.
Frontier Behavioral Health has been a lifesaver for our son, and my husband and I are deeply grateful. This nonprofit behavioral health organization is now under pressure. I have seen experienced staff leave for higher paying jobs – our son’s had three caseworkers over the past year. Each of you reading this has seen increases in people needing mental health services; any underpass downtown tells that story. But the needs of many people who would benefit from services are invisible to the rest of us. They could be a neighbor or a student, or anyone. It is clear that some of the mental health needs in our area can only be met through increases in funding. Please help by sending that message to leaders in our city, county and state.
Linda Williams
Spokane
Keep cops away from kids
To Chief Meidl and the FBI: Lay off the Spokane Public Schools. Throwing troubled teens in to the criminal justice system is counterproductive. I know putting juvenile offenders on a path toward desperation and incarceration as adults is job security for you, but I’d rather see trained educators intervene before that is necessary.
Michael Stanger
Spokane
Idaho freeloaders
It is long past time for Washington/Spokane to start charging the Idaho freeloaders that come to Washington for work, pay no taxes, and Idaho benefits from their income tax revenue.
Washington needs to implement an income tax on “foreign” workers who benefit from our taxpayer-funded infrastructure. For the Spokane area probably 10-20,000 Idaho residents commute to Washington each day because jobs are better and pay more in Washington. However, they pay no taxes for the services and infrastructure that Washington residents provide for them. Idaho collects possibly $30 million in income taxes from this.
It is time for Washington to implement an income tax on nonresidents. Let them pay their fair share for the better opportunities they see in Washington.
Jim Jopson
Newman Lake
COVID-19 funeral expense tip
Did you know…
Someone among the 971,086 people who died of COVID-19 could have their funeral expenses covered. Contact FEMA COVID-19 Funeral Assistance at (844) 684-6333, 6 a.m.-6 p.m. It is worth the call.
Cathy Gunderson
Spokane
The top of the world
How simple and easy to climb to the top of the world and survey all its savagery and misery, all its cruelties and inequalities, all its eroded beliefs at war with the far less occluded visions of science.
The rise of the technocrat, whose position and function in society was first ventured by John Kenneth Galbraith, must be followed by the rise of the scientist him or herself. Carrion-encrusted beliefs from thousands of years ago cannot forever plague us with their present-day adherents’ delusions and mania, not when they are armed with automatic weapons, drones, and multiarmed nuclear missiles.
At the top of the world, at its very center, resides a fuse like a thick-bodied snake which runs into the world’s powder keg. And a mighty and quite fearsome powder keg it is.
For a time our anxieties concerning the chance or even the likelihood of nuclear war and the biological annihilation which would surely follow from radiation poisoning had fallen into a temporary quiescence, alarming to those who had never forgotten its possibility because of the equally temporary silence. But now with a psychopathic president in the Kremlin bent on restoring medieval Russia into a high-priced whore’s 21st century grandeur, this anxiety has resumed within the hearts of many of us.
Ordinary people can do nothing about this dreaded possible horizon apart from raising our voices against it, as I am doing now, not in a useless plea to be saved, but as a demand for peace and disarmament.
Don Stacy
Spokane
Inconvenience
My mom and I went to the Social Security office, to get a paper she needed only to find out that they were closed. And have been for two years. The guard in turn hands her a paper with information on how to get a verification letter. It ended up being a complete waste of our time.
Tried to do it online, must have a password and username. Tried to create an account with no success! Claimed it could not verify the information. So she decided to call. Only to have her wait for hours it seemed. Then she tried to spell her name, it kept getting it wrong. Still nothing! After all of this nonsense she gets another recording telling her to call at normal business hours. And hangs up.
All of this could been avoided if the office was open. Nothing accomplished and still no paper!
Angela Jensen
Spokane
Pleased to see pushback on VA
I am pleased to see the pushback against the VA downsize plan. The VA is one of America’s favorite socialist organizations.
Socialism is government management, ownership, or funding. Examples are public schools, postal service, Medicare, Medicaid, fire and police, military, road repairs, food stamps, fossil fuels, etc. It is time to stop claiming we’re against socialism!
Societies that are the most vibrant blend a strong socialism with a strong capitalism. We do that!
The Soviet Union collapsed because it leaned too heavily on socialism even for the production and distribution of simple resources like soap, toilet paper, food, etc.
That is called economic communism, or “communal,” an extreme form of socialism. Economic communal or communism alone simply does not work as is also true for capitalism alone!
Also do not confuse these economic distinctions with governance which can be, on a continuum, very autocratic to very democratic no matter whether that nation leans too strong towards socialism or too strong towards capitalism.
The World Happiness report measures many factors such as life expectancy, crime rate, and health care. The happiest nations in the world are strong on both socialism and capitalism. Finland is tops. The United State ranks high at 19th.
Though both can be improved, let’s celebrate our socialism (which can rescue us from an excessive gap between the rich and the poor), and our capitalism!
Robert P. Crosby
Spokane
No compromise with Monaghan statute
One word, “savage,” and Bart Preecs (“Monaghan statue,” March 15) wants a statue removed. Ivan Urnovitz (“Rebuttal to Monaghan statue letter,” March 22) wants a compromise, change the plaque, remove the offending word. I disagree.
That statute plaque reads: “During the retreat of the allied forces from the deadly fire and overwhelming number of the savage foe, he alone stood the fearful onslaught and sacrificed his life defending a wounded comrade Lieutenant Phillip W. Lansdale, United States Navy.” Ensign Monaghan died on April 1, 1899, at Vailele on the island of Upolu, Samoa.
It is not difficult to learn how Pacific Islanders conducted war. John Williams, an eyewitness in 1830, wrote – “The wars of the Samoans were frequent and destructive …” John B Stair, “Old Samoa” 1983 writes: “Before an engagement the women and children, with old and infirm people, were always conveyed to a place of safety, called an ‘olo.’ ” If the enemy overcame this camp – all captives were “slaughtered without mercy by the conquerors.” There is more if you study actual history.
Concerning Vailele, from the Samoa Weekly Herald, 8 April 1899 (seven days after the battle): “Shortly afterwards Tamasese with some friendly natives got on the field and recovered the bodies of the officers and sailors who had been mutilated; the officers heads were decapitated, and the ears of the sailors were cut off, 2 British and 3 American.”
Is that an act of a civilized foe?
Warren Walker
Spokane