Letters To The Editor
SPOKANE MATTERS
Mummey’s care, courage will be missed
You hear a lot of talk these days about great American heroes. Sometimes, we’re not that sure who should wear that honorable title. Pat Mummey truly was an American hero - but she would have probably laughed at the suggestion.
Mummey was Spokane’s first woman county commissioner. She stood her ground and did her job well for eight years.
Not everyone always agreed with her, but that didn’t matter. Mummey did what she thought was best for the people. She set an example and led the way for every woman, young or old, to follow. She served all of us with sincere concern for our welfare and our future as a community.
In the past couple of years I spoke with this great lady a few times. Mummey faced this incredible battle with cancer with an optimism that was uplifting to the most negative among us. You would have thought that cancer had no chance against the likes of this lady! I was convinced the “big C” was just another challenge she would overcome.
I will remember her for her words of encouragement - to get involved in the community, to run for office, to keep fighting for what’s right, to always listen and be eager to learn. I won’t forget those words, nor her indomitable spirit, quick wit, her smile or genuine caring for each one of us. Mummey never stopped being a nurse, a care giver.
A great American hero? You bet! I’ll miss her. David Bray Spokane
Benefits more than tonsorial
What a wonderful community contribution is being made by Larry Roseman at Larry’s Barber shop! (“Barber shop is a community asset,” Aug. 16).
The active support and example for so many youngsters, the high value placed on cultural identity and the maintenance of an environment conducive to civic debate - each of these enriches all of us in the Spokane area.
Staff writer Isamu Jordan produced a sensitive portrayal of a community institution little known outside of the African-American community in his article. Mary Jo and Jerry Harvey Spokane
View issue should be a non-starter
The Spokane City Council should encourage Leslie and Steve Ronald to build condominiums downtown! Downtown Spokane needs more city dwellers in order to stay alive and vibrant. And the “view” from the library ought to be into books.
For the city to pay for a view of the falls is ludicrous. Prudence W. Hoffman Cheney
Straighten out assessor’s office
Anyone who pays property tax - and we all do directly or indirectly - in Spokane County should be concerned about the state of the assessor’s office.
If you want to have your valuation explained, that is your right. To have your questions answered in a polite, professional manner is your right.
Unfortunately, those concepts seem to be foreign to many of the assessor’s personnel. I have spoken to several people who have visited that office and I frequently hear of intimidation and condescension from the staff.
In this newspaper you read about the poor job our assessor has done on the valuation of commercial-industrial properties, as well as the missing revenue from the backlog of property segregations. However, the appraisal of residential property is in a sorry state as well. We all pay a premium for the assessor’s mistakes.
We must insist on and communicate our expectations to our elected officials - city, county and state - that we expect and will accept no less than a fair and professional assessment organization for Spokane County. That is our right. Margaret A. Young Spokane
WASHINGTON STATE
Judge Cozza superbly qualified
There is an exceptionally qualified candidate for the office of Superior Court judge: District Court Judge Sam Cozza.
Judge Cozza has served for six years as a District Court judge where he has presided over 200 full-blown jury trials, not just juvenile bench trials. He has made decisions that have been adopted as statewide precedent by the Supreme Court and has been endorsed by nine current and retired local judges.
Cozza served as a deputy prosecutor for nine years, handling both adult and juvenile cases. Unlike the other candidates, he has served as the presiding judge of a court with a budget of nearly $3 million, almost 100 employees and a caseload of 105,000 case filings
Cozza understands the legal and administrative needs of a modern court system and is recognized by his peers across the state as one of the best legal minds among state District Court judges. Please vote for him on Sept. 17. Mick McDowell Spokane
PEOPLE IN SOCIETY
I am cautious woman walking
I am writing in response to James P. Johnson’s “Alive man walking” (IN Life, Aug. 18).
When I lived in Portland, there were beautiful greenways with miles of paved paths. I walked every day, enjoying the scenery, much as Johnson describes. One day a man came walking up behind me. As he started to pass me, he grabbed my right shoulder and tried to grab my arm.
I was lucky. My first response was rage. I’m a nurse. I punched him as hard as I could on the left side of his sternum, knocking the wind out of him. I kept punching, kicking and yelling at him until he ran away.
I took a self-defense class and learned that my casual, ambling gait had marked me as an “easy” victim. Smiling and offering a friendly greeting also marks you as an easy victim. I adopted a large dog from the local shelter.
I still walk. Now, however, I walk fast and I always take my big dog with me. Do I feel 100 percent safe? No.
The other night I was out walking and a truck with several men in it stopped parallel to me on the street. They started to say something to me. I moved my big dog over to their side and said, “Watch ‘em.” The men moved on.
I was lucky. What if I hadn’t had my big dog? Vickie Hunt Spokane
Being a bully is never justified
Enough already about marmots being a menace and not harmless. Does that give any person a right to beat one half to death and then throw it away to suffer until it dies? No, it doesn’t. When the animals can carry a big stick and fight back, maybe.
Any bully can kill an animal just for the pleasure of it. I don’t know whether I would consider this “going ballistic” or if this is a new version of “going postal” but, as an animal lover, I think it is sick. Mary Buckmaster Mead
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Clinton values outshine Dole’s
Either columnist Joan Beck (“Dole really deserves women’s votes,” Opinion, Aug. 20) has gone bonkers or some editor pulled a trick and changed what should have read “Clinton” to “Dole.”
For example, do women want a president who understands the exhausting life of a working mother? Clinton certainly does. His hard-working wife carried on the dual load of busy attorney and mother of their daughter, Chelsea.
Next, Beck wondered if women want a president who isn’t threatened by a strong and successful wife. Clinton shows nary a hint of anything but pride.
Beck’s most egregious misstatement concerns a president who believes in “family values.” The Clintons agree that they have had a rocky period (what marriage hasn’t had one or more?) but they stuck together, their marriage was strengthened and Chelsea has been raised by her loving biological parents.
To the contrary, Dole suddenly announced to his wife of 24 years and mother of his daughter, Robin, that he wanted out and divorced her under an “emergency” procedure. She was a medical worker he’d met while in rehab. She played an important role during that period and, later, as a research assistant in his search for higher education.
Family values? In a comparison of the two, Clinton wins, hands down. Barbara Meyer Coulee Dam
Vote for character; Elect Dole
How better to judge the true mettle of a man than by what he believes and does, rather than by the slickness of his tongue.
Bob Dole is a true statesman and leader with character and integrity - qualities sorely needed and which will serve our country much better than any silver verse.
Let’s hope, for the good of us all at home and abroad, that the electorate has the wisdom to recognize this and puts Dole and Jack Kemp in the White House this November. Thomas M. Ryan Spokane
Performance tells the tale
Four years ago we were repeatedly asked if character was an important quality in a president, so let’s look at the past four years for our answer.
Bill Clinton made a great many promises during his campaign. Voters were told to expect greater economic growth, affordable health insurance for all, a balanced budget and a middle class tax cut, among other things.
The reality is that economic growth is 1 percent lower than when President Bush’s administration was blamed for a stagnant economy. Our much-touted tax break didn’t even last until Clinton’s inaugural ball, and then we were expected to believe Clinton had been given false information about the budget.
Health care reform was so radical that even Clinton’s cabinet ran scared before it was done. We heard so many time frames about the balanced budget that it seemed Clinton was unable to remember what he had said. Ultimately, Clinton vetoed the balanced budget passed by Congress, letting down the entire country.
When Clinton’s failures became apparent, the new Democratic president, with his Democratic Congress that had proposed to solve society’s ills, entered the 1994 political season with a list of accomplishments. These included NAFTA, a treaty Clinton took credit for, although Bush had negotiated the deal during his presidency; a growing economy; and more security for the elderly (Clinton established a tax on Social Security, and has admitted Medicare will be broke in five years if something is not done).
So, what about character? Stuart W. Hightower Spokane
Let supply siders do it again
When Bob Dole announced his tax-cutting plan, it was met with the usual, worn out, liberal response: It will blow a hole in the deficit.
The same bunch of Keynesian, anti-supply siders who advise Clinton, namely, Laura Tyson, head of the National Economic Council and Labor Secretary Robert Reich, were screaming the same things in 1981 about Reagan’s 30 percent tax cut. They wanted big tax hikes and more spending. This at a time of double-digit inflation and unemployment.
Reagan ignored them, and with the help of Jack Kemp and William Roth, forged the Kemp-Roth plan. According to Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute in National Review (March 1993), “By late 1982, the Keynesians joyfully began to write the obituary for Reaganomics.” They ignored supply siders like Paul Craig Roberts, who said the full implementation of Reagan’s tax cuts wouldn’t be felt until 1983. But, “virtually every liberal in the economics community announced that supply-side economics was a proven fraud and there was no hope for the economy’s resuscitation.”
Guess what happened? The “implausible” Reagan recovery took off. It lasted 80 months, created 18 million jobs, doubled revenue from half a trillion dollars to $1 trillion and produced $2.5 trillion worth of economic growth.
As Reagan put it, “Funny, they aren’t calling it Reaganomics anymore.”
Don’t listen to these failed pessimists. They were wrong in 1981 and they’re wrong now. No wonder Bob Dole is “the most optimistic man in America.” Mark Duclos Spokane
Unions lie about pension reform
What breathtaking lies the unions tell! In their latest big lie, they take a vote that everyone should applaud, and one that Rep. Helen Chenoweth must count among her most important, and turn it into an attack ad of the lowest kind.
The vote on pension reform started as a Clinton budget proposal. After President Clinton’s good idea became part of the Republican budget, it then became a “bad” bill.
In essence, what happened was a provision that allowed pension plans to redirect that portion overfunded by more than 125 percent into other employee benefit programs - child care, health care or other related benefits.
No one should believe that Bill Clinton would propose a pension fund raid. No one should believe that any member of Congress would vote for such a thing and no one can believe that our new lion of Idaho would somehow be part of anything that would harm the working man. It is just another big lie and the big unions should be ashamed.
There was a time when the working man could depend on the unions and look to the Democrats for the truth. Today, we get slick advertising, slick politicians and slick excuses. What we want is hard work and honesty. In Helen Chenoweth, that’s what we get. Donald F. Morgan Post Falls
THE ENVIRONMENT
There are standards for peer review
Among the most difficult things for the layperson to interpret are reports of conflicting scientific evidence or interpretation. That’s why, within the scientific community, the usual place for published debate is within the pages of the same peer-reviewed journal that printed the original article.
This continuity ensures that apples are apples and oranges are oranges - that each other’s work is judged by the same standard.
In the instance Paul Lindholdt cites in his August 4 commentary, “Lies, distortions and counter science,” regarding the environmental availability of 165 billion pounds of heavy metal contaminated sediments on the bed of Lake Coeur d’Alene, the mining industry reviewer chose to publish his review of the original article in a journal published by a consortium of regional universities, not the originating journal.
The U.S. Geological Survey scientists’s findings were published in the international journal Hydrological Processes. It was further selected by the journal editors as one of the outstanding articles to be reprinted in their special anniversary edition.
As T.F. Pedersen wrote on August 21 (Letters), I “want to see good science be the cornerstone everywhere of well-formulated public policy.” By printing his rebuttal in a different journal with different criteria and reviewers than the original, internationally acclaimed journal chosen by the USGS, Pedersen does the public and the scientific community a disservice. Mark Solomon, executive director Inland Empire Public Lands Council
Developments keep salmon hope alive
Recently, this newspaper ran a series of in-depth articles regarding the return of salmon runs to the Columbia and Snake rivers. The large scale and complexity of such a project were detailed and although no agreement had been reached about a solution, hope has not been abandoned.
That these problems may be solved was evidenced by the opening of a sockeye salmon season on Lake Washington this year - the first time since 1988.
Now there is a plan to return the Elwha River to its native state as a spawning grounds for five species of Pacific Salmon. The Elwha has its headwaters in Olympic National Park and is located about five miles west of Port Angeles.
The plan calls for the removal of two dams. The best news is that the plan has been approved in Washington, D.C. Both Sens. Slade Gorton and Patty Murray have lent their support, with Murray spearheading the effort. Success in this effort would be a lasting monument to both senators, as well as an example to motivate others to clean and restore our environment. Leo F. Daily Spokane