Letters for May 22, 2024
History lessons might help
Let’s hope Anthony Meyers’ “funny” remarks will not be the high-water mark in his young life.
Perhaps he should pursue a career in history education. There he will uncover the origin of the Black race in America. There he will also discover what the white race has done to America in the past 532 years.
Serious reflection will no doubt make him ponder how it is that humans have lived in what we call America for over 8,000 years with hardly a trace that they were here, until the white man came. Let’s hope no one will need to shout this at him.
Michael Walters
Spokane
Keep McMorris Rodgers’ hand off everything
I had hoped, with the announcement that Cathy McMorris Rodgers was not going to run for re-election, she might actually use her remaining time in the office to do something useful for her constituents. Instead, she wastes her time and our money on H.R. 6192, the Hands Off Our Appliances Act.
McMorris Rodgers states that President Biden is trying to ban gas appliances, which is not true. Per the Washington Post, the Energy Department’s rules require modest energy efficiency requirements for gas and electric stoves, part of an effort to curb planet warming emissions from household appliances. These standards would apply to stoves manufactured in 2028 or later. The improved efficiency would save consumers on their gas and electric bills. Per the Energy Department, “Consumers will still be able to buy the same cooking products.”
What McMorris Rodgers fails to disclose is the health hazards of gas stoves. An article published in the Scientific American estimated that gas-burning stoves are responsible for 12.7% of childhood asthma. Gas stoves emit nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter when they are turned on, sometimes at levels that exceed guidelines from the EPA and the WHO. They also release other harmful air pollutants that are known or suspected to cause cancer and can even leak those chemicals and others (such as benzene) when turned off.
It would be nice if McMorris Rodgers would spend her remaining time actually doing something that would help her constituents.
Carrie Cadenas
Spokane
Protesters lack logic
According to quotes in The Spokesman-Review, recent demonstrators against Israel at Eastern were shocking in their ignorance and irrationality.
The accusation that Israel is a “colonial” occupier of Palestine is, of course, historically true. Only it happened about 3,500 years ago. Palestine/Israel was then “colonized” by Assyria, Babylon, Persia, the Greeks, the Romans, the Ottomans and, finally, the British. Little late on protesting an Israeli occupation.
The Native Americans participating in the protest seem particularly confused. What do they not understand about Jews returning to their “ancestral homeland?” Israel established itself as a nation that existed off and on for over 1,200 years. Where is the sympathy for a dispersed people whose experience in many ways mirrors their own?
African Americans sympathizing with Palestinians rather than Jews is also hard to fathom. After being enslaved, confined to unwanted areas and regularly killed at will by majority populations, their experience is the history of the Jews for more than 2,000 years. As seen particularly in the spirituals they sang, African American slaves identified strongly with Jews. What happened to that connection?
The most chilling comment, however, was the young man who justified the murder of the Israel civilians as “resistance.” Isn’t that exactly the definition of a terrorist? I certainly hope the university is taking note of this talk. What is to stop a person with this mentality from carrying out such behavior here against those who oppose his view?
I find all this more than a little frightening. Shouldn’t we all?
Jim Becker
Spokane