Letters for Sunday, Dec. 3, 2023

We must call it out and resist

Recent Republican spasms of outrage about our national debt should leave a bad taste in your mouth. They complain about a self-inflicted wound. Take away the Republican tax cuts of Reagan, Bush and Trump and there is no national debt “crisis.” Those tax cuts were unnecessary and irresponsible, contributing massively to national debt and primarily enriching the wealthy and corporations. Since the 1980s, 90% of Americans barely treaded water economically. “Trickle down” wealth turned out to be trickle down income disparity.

The results: a withering middle class and an economically excluded underclass which we can’t sufficiently help. Decades of tax cuts have weakened our support for education, health care, child care, housing, food security – essentials needed to help those left behind. For them, the American dream is a false promise.

Now Republicans want to solve the debt problem by defunding social safety nets, thus further penalizing those they’ve disabled economically. Even worse they’ve recruited their disenchanted victims to MAGA’s political crusade of grievance and outrage – blaming the suffering on scapegoat falsehoods, touting white nationalism, and promoting misdirected rage, cultish loyalism and “justifiable” violence.

It’s a frightening transformation. What began 40 years ago as unhealthy coziness with greed has descended to poisonous depths. The malcontent created by Republican policies of social neglect is now being exploited by its MAGA faction to cultivate fascism. We’ve seen this before: toxic political opportunism right out of Germany in the 1930s. We must call it out and resist. Otherwise, we’ll passively forfeit American freedoms to this malignancy.

Steve McNutt

Spokane

Dangerous disinformation campaign

Rep. McMorris Rodgers’s dangerous disinformation campaign about the Israel-Hamas conflict has reached a new low.

Framing this issue as “people who support Israel” against “antisemitic people who support terrorism, rape, and murder” is fallacious and intellectually dishonest. Many who support a ceasefire are Jewish folks in the diaspora. They – and the majority of Americans – want to see an end to human suffering, war crimes, genocide, and are speaking against the Israeli government, not Jewish people.

While the suffering of Israeli civilians cannot and should not be dismissed, using unverified claims and outdated figures to justify committing atrocities is unconscionable. 15,093 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces, at least 10,000 of whom are women and children; 36,000-plus are injured, and 6,800-plus are missing. Over 7,000 Palestinian prisoners are in Israeli prisons at this moment, including children, many of whom are held without charge and without trial.

Shortages of food, fuel, drinking water, and medicines have worsened in Gaza. One U.N. spokesperson described it as a “hell on earth.” The number of premature births has risen by almost a third over the past month, according to Oxfam.

Heedless of context, misrepresenting the facts, and deliberately misunderstanding calls for Palestinian freedom from Israeli occupation, oppression, and violence, McMorris Rodgers has no credibility to define or represent moral courage or clarity.

A call for ceasefire is a call for peace, and the people of this community will not be convinced otherwise by disingenuous rhetoric from a partisan warmonger.

Corinna Donnerberg

Spokane

MultiCare failing Spokane

I have been a health care worker for 29 years. Our current staffing crisis is unprecedented. Fallout from the global pandemic has revealed an astonishing truth. In our wonderful city of Spokane, wages are higher for some jobs outside the hospitals. This has resulted in a mass exodus of critical experienced workers.

Then the cost of living exploded, but MultiCare has not met the moment. From the service worker preparing and handling dietary requirements, to the housekeeping staff cleaning the rooms of terminally infected patients. From the surgical staff sterilizing the instruments between procedures, to the scrub personnel using aseptic technique on an incision. From the imaging staff using the appropriate amount of ionizing radiation for the X-ray image, to the interventional staff handling wires, balloons and stents to open an occluded coronary artery. From the transporter handling the patient, bed and IV pole loaded with pumps, lines and critical life-healing fluids, to the respiratory staff managing ventilators and breathing treatments. From the lab tech collecting blood samples and noticing critical lab values, to the pharmacy staff handling medications and chemotherapy agents. From the supply personnel restocking and ordering necessary equipment, to admitting staff who properly identify patients and procedures.

Recruitment and retention are becoming more and more challenging in the health care arena. Wouldn’t it behoove MultiCare to keep experienced workers? Wouldn’t it be helpful to recruit workers and keep them here in the Spokane community? MultiCare needs to invest in its staff, meet living costs for workers and retain us.

Karla Lautenbach

Spokane

End these repeated cycles of violence

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers’ simplistic take (Nov. 26) on the latest Israel-Palestinian war is offensive. Her so-called “moral clarity” offers no sympathy for nearly 15,000 Palestinians (the majority of them women and children) killed in Israel’s scorched-earth retribution for the brutal, Hamas-inflicted deaths of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.

The New York Times cites military experts who call it “surprising” that Israel has chosen to use U.S.- made, 2,000-pound bombs in Gaza’s dense urban setting. It is not. Israel deliberately used this tactic (the “Dahiya Doctrine”) in its 1982 invasion of Lebanon, crushing Beirut with massive bombs provided by the Reagan administration. 19,000 people, including 1,600 men, women and children at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, were killed.

Israel has used other tactics to prevent a Palestine partition envisioned by the United Nations in 1947. Mossad agents have assassinated Palestinian leaders. Israel secretly funded Hamas, founded in 1987, to undermine the Palestinian Authority. While blocking a two-state solution, the Netanyahu government has armed Israelis living in disputed West Bank settlements, who reacted to the Hamas attacks by killing and displacing hundreds of Palestinians.

If Israel is to continue to receive $3.8 billion in annual “aid,” aka lethal weapons, from U.S. taxpayers, it should come with a condition: an insistence that Palestinians are granted land and self-determination. Real “moral clarity” would be to use our considerable leverage to end these repeated cycles of violence and heed Gandhi’s words: “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”

Karen Dorn Steele

Spokane

Cathy, just what were you thinking?

Our new Speaker of the House is Mike Johnson, R-La., nominated by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, among others. Each year, U.S. News & World Report ranks America’s 50 states, using eight different metrics. Their most recent ranking places Louisiana at the very bottom of the heap. No. 50. Here are Louisiana’s rankings using the eight metrics used to rank each state:

Ranked 50th in Crime and Correction

Ranked 50th in Economy

Ranked 46th in Education

Ranked 38th in Fiscal Stability

Ranked 45th in Health Care

Ranked 49th in Infrastructure

Ranked 49th in Natural Environment

Ranked 48th in Opportunity

If this is what Mike Johnson has done for (or to) his constituents, imagine what plans he has for the rest of us. Tell us Cathy, just what were you thinking?

Bruce Market

Spokane

Ill-informed tirade

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers’ ill-informed tirade against those who would question, and protest Israel’s bombardment of Gaza is offensive, simplistic and inaccurate.

For example, I have always supported Israel’s right to exist, and due to my profession, have many Jewish friends whom I have always loved and supported. I, too, am horrified by the massacre of Oct 7. I am also well versed in the history of Israel and Gaza. I question if CMR has done her homework reviewing the complicated history of Israel and Palestine.

That said, I will continue to exercise my “moral clarity” in pressuring the government and my elected officials to work toward a complete ceasefire in Gaza. Too many civilians are dead, and a majority of them are women and children.

Cool your jets, Cathy. You can’t claim the moral high ground any more than one of your constituents. Save your name calling of antisemitism for extreme right-wing groups, not for those who care about the horrendous loss of life in Israel and Gaza.

Robin Davis Abell

Spokane