Letters To The Editor

GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Pay attention to GMA now, people

Articles about the Growth Management Act, and interim urban growth areas as recommended by the Growth Management Steering Committee, have given little attention to the impact these measures will have on people.

There was a brief mention about how our lifestyles and wages will be affected in the Dec. 14 article about IUGAs. In the countywide planning policies, one goal is to establish a mass transit system. It’s stated that for a mass transit system to be effective, we must have an urban density of eight to 12 units per acre. We currently have two to three units per acre.

Wake up, Spokane! You’ve heard about GMA being about preventing urban sprawl. That’s true. But is an urban density four times greater than what we have really going to preserve Spokane’s lifestyle?

The Growth Management Act is being used in a manner that most residents, if they knew what was going on, would not agree with.

The relative few who have their slice of heaven on Earth will do anything to stop others from sharing in that experience. Apparently, they’ve forgotten what it’s been like around here during economic downturns.

Can we afford the housing cost increases the GMA will bring? When supply is restricted, prices always increase. It’s a basic fact of economics.

I’ve been involved with the GMA since it was first passed in this state and I believe that this piece of misguided legislation will destroy our quality of life. Jim Dashiell Spokane

Chosen few win planning game

Why do we need land use planning? It’s simple.

In a free society, the consumer rules. If the customer wants a certain type of housing or lifestyle, the producer will build to suit. Trouble is, the result might not be tidy. Someone might - God forbid - put a duplex in the wrong place! The farm where Uncle Jack communed with nature and smoked his first cigarette might be turned into homes.

This cannot be allowed. The urban planning books say so. So government types schedule meetings. Most of us don’t go to these meetings because we have to make a living, but a handful of government groupies with nothing productive to do show up for the debate.

The deliberations take years and a plan is born. Since no one, not even a government planner, can predict population growth, changes in technology or consumer taste, the plan is already obsolete.

To solve this problem, we have consultants. Consultants use their knowledge of the law and their friendship with the planners to help folks with money get around the law. Ultimately, housing costs more (creating the need for “affordable housing” programs), we travel farther to work, conflicts between farm animals and the kids in the planned urban development next door become commonplace, and we have to go to someone else’s neighborhood to eat at McDonald’s.

With full employment for the planners and consultants, they can pay off their student loans, everything is tidy and all is well. Jim Shamp Cheney

Support revitalized downtown

Having just recently spent time in downtown Seattle, I came back to Spokane to hear more wrangling about plans to preserve and enhance the Spokane downtown area.

Citizens of Spokane should realize what we will lose if we don’t move forward with the plans to expand the downtown core area.

Seattle downtown is fun, vibrant, filled with stores, restaurants and is obviously doing well economically. This is what Spokane was and can be, but only if we act now. The Crescent will never be replaced but we can make the downtown just as vibrant as in the past but updated. Let the leaders willing to take on this task do their job and we can all again be proud of downtown Spokane. Sharon M. Prendergast Spokane

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Transplant decision was sound

Although my prayers and sympathy go out to Ryan Edison and his family, I have to stand behind the decisions of CHAMPUS & QualMed in not paying for a second transplant.

As someone who chose a career in health care and as a consumer, I realize the need to manage our health care resources. QualMed’s responsible decision was made by a physician medical director and is supported by the medical community.

UCLA’s irresponsible decision to perform the second transplant was obviously made by a surgeon who not only stands to make a pretty penny off the surgery but also hopes to make a name for himself.

The next time Doug Clark wants to write a human interest story, he should do just that and not exploit someone’s tragedy as yet another vehicle for HMO bashing. Christi Clarry Spokane

Meddlers invited air bag ills

The news lately has made us all aware of the dangers of air bags to children. General Motors, among others, has been offhandedly accused of knowing these dangers for years.

What you won’t hear on network television or in this newspaper is that the accusers - consumer advocates and government regulators - have also known and understood the dangers for years.

For the air bag to be effective, the thrust of the charge must be directed at the chest area of an adult, to counteract the forward movement. This also happens to be the head height of a child.

As far back as 1984, General Motors issued warnings of the dangers involved, dangers that were ignored by these consumer advocates and government regulators. Auto manufacturers were accused of trying to delay installation of the devices.

The worst of the lot, Joan Claybrook, who used her safety advocacy to worm her way into the federal highway safety administrator position, called the reports “fragmentary and speculative.” Did the report cause safety crusaders to demand warning labels or safeguards of any kind? No, Claybrook and her arrogant, ignorant cohorts knew best.

Air bags were forced upon us by these people because we adults weren’t using our seat belts enough. If we wouldn’t kowtow to their regulations, then we would be forced into compliance with air bags. Now the evidence is pouring in that we are literally being regulated to death. Thanks, Claybrook. Michael Wiman Spokane

PRIGGEE

Priggee, you’re the greatest

You allow the vilification of staff cartoonist Milt Priggee more often than you should. I may not always agree with him, but I do recognize that he is one of, perhaps the best, political cartoonist in the newspaper industry.

How can Michael Jeffery (Letters, Dec. 15) say Priggee is unfeeling? Priggee is the one who did the cartoon of the Statue of Liberty with tears on her face when George Bush was turning back the boat people. That was but one instance.

I have purchased other papers, but find that the Good Paper is good indeed, and that Priggee is the best, whether or not I agree with him. Joyce Hoffman Spokane

Priggee made a good point

I thoroughly enjoyed staff cartoonist Milt Priggee’s Dec. 4 cartoon depicting a bill to the power companies for all the losses consumers suffered during Ice Storm ‘96. What is wrong with pointing out the costs users had to endure?

Priggee is well aware the power companies suffered greatly in the emergency but he pointed out that they weren’t alone. Its ironic that Washington Water Power is estimating power use during the crisis using higher consumption formulas. Customers will have to wait until January for a break, not that they will so easily write off the loss as the big guys.

Now, get Priggee to do a cartoon on the engineering company getting paid $100,000 to declare a 55-year-old wooden bridge unsafe - if that’s OK with his detractors. Steve R. Meyer Coeur d’Alene

PEOPLE IN SOCIETY

Critic 180 degrees off course

The Dec. 15 letter by Jini Wolski, “Homosexuals don’t belong,” was way out of line.

Who is pushing their views onto whom? It is we, in heterosexual society, who are telling them that our preferences, simply because of our sexual orientation, are right and theirs are wrong. So aren’t we forcing the homosexual persons to think that their views are wrong?

Furthermore, homosexual and bisexual people do not wish to have marriage rights solely to be considered a “minority” and to “reap all the benefits.” Homosexual people want to marry for the same reasons most heterosexual people do: they love each other and want to share life together.

Lastly, why shouldn’t we have to be “subjected to their sexual aberrations”? Flip on the television. They have to be subjected to watching ours every day.

Wise up, Wolski. One of the major reasons that America has gone downhill so much is because of closed-minded people like yourself. Maggie L. Anderson Spokane

Some lecture some experts

At this time of the year, when we’re supposed to be celebrating Christ’s birth (if you’re a Christian), why must people like Jini Wolski write such hurtful, mean-spirited letters (“Homosexuals don’t belong,” Dec. 15) concerning homosexuals and their relationships, i.e. marital status?

Why don’t homophobic-heterosexual people concentrate on what the Bible says about divorce? The Bible is much more specific about the sin of divorce, and divorce is much more of a serious problem to today’s society than gay marriages ever could be.

So if certain bigoted segments of society would like the gays to “go back into the closet, lock the door and throw away the key,” I say, forget about homosexual marriages and keep your own houses in order - without so many divorces and dysfunctional single-parent families mucking up an already overburdened society. Dennis L. Adams Spokane

High-tone camouflage transparent

I was surprised by associate editor Frank Bartel’s column of Dec. 15, in which he reports that Americans are fleeing the United States for other places, such as Costa Rica, primarily because of social deterioration and moral laxity in the United States.

I haven’t been to Costa Rica, but I’ve been to other places in Central America and met Americans living there. They were there, they told me, primarily because they could live at a higher standard of living there than they could in the United States.

Because their incomes were from invested retirement dollars and Social Security, their money went further. They were able to live on a hill or on the beach, in a foreign compound, in a house that would cost $1 million in the United States. In addition, they could employ a handful of servants from the local population to make life easier.

I think that it is one thing for people to choose the life of a rich foreigner in a poor country, but it is something else entirely to insist that they have made this choice because of the social deterioration and moral laxity of the folks back home. If their consideration is social deterioration in the United States, perhaps they would be interested in Switzerland or one of the Scandinavian countries.

But, of course, in those countries most Americans would be part of the struggling middle class. Richard Cripe Kellogg, Idaho

Success bears seed of disaster

I have been reading Frank Bartel’s column the last couple of weeks, in which he has been talking about retiring in Costa Rica. People have very short memories. Doesn’t anyone remember when Spokane was discovered?

Look at it now. No one in their right mind would move there. I live in Moses Lake, where we are in the process of being discovered. Yes, Costa Rica would be a nice place for about two weeks. Then, new immigrants would get politically involved and the rest would be history. I wonder if the natives of Costa Rica know their standard of living and quality of life are headed for the Dumpster?

You can run, Bartel, but you can’t hide. Bob Cleis Moses Lake

Rabbi is in good company

The Christian community owes a debt of gratitude to Rabbi Jacob Izakson for his support of the Texaco boycott. Izakson takes his stand in a long line of Hebrew prophets, which certainly includes Jesus. That line of prophetic voices uniformly confronts the wealthy, who in the prophet Amos’ words, tread on the necks of the poor.

In this cynical age, it is encouraging to hear a religious leader challenge the callousness of those who trivialize the continuing racism of our society. Rev. Robert M. Stevenson Spokane

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Rebuff Big Timber’s hired hand

Anyone who follows public lands issues has known for some time that Sen. Larry Craig has a plan for our public lands.

The senator from Boise (Cascade) is one of the largest recipients of timber industry PAC money, and is a walking poster child for why we badly need real campaign finance reform if we ever hope to ever again have a semblance of democracy, rather than the corporate-controlled plutocracy we now have.

Craig learned well from his predecessor, James McClure, who represented the timber industry in the Senate for 18 years. McClure’s legacy is the flooding we went through last year and will be paying for for a long time.

Craig claims to be a fiscal conservative, but his attempt to pay back the timber industry will cost us all in ways we cannot afford and can never repay.

The big lie regarding “forest health” will continue to be told. The health problem is real, and overcut watersheds, from years of unsustainable harvest rates on steep slopes at elevations where they are mining trees, is the real health problem. It ought to stop.

Craig would shut citizens out of the process and gut our environmental legislation, which benefits future generations. His hand has been in the cookie jar far too long. The lid should be slammed on his fingers. Gregory Jett Spokane

Inept government trampling freedoms

The U.S. government can make you use an air bag, but not to worry because only a small percentage of people are killed by them.

The government can make you wear a helmet, even though you can’t hear and the excessive heat takes its toll on your nerves. It can make you use a seat belt. This should be optional, except for children.

Where does democracy end and dictatorship begin? The margin is getting smaller and smaller. We should have the right to die with dignity as we choose. Our being is the only thing we really own in this world, and we should have control of our own soul.

The government lets big interests use pesticides to pollute the air we breathe and the water we drink. It lets rapists, child abusers and killers out to maim, abuse and kill again.

Inane judges and money-hungry attorneys make a mockery of the laws they are suppose to uphold. Where has common sense gone? The government has seemingly unlimited powers, but evidently has no power when it comes to correcting the wrongs in our society. Concerned? I am. Lillian Fleming Spokane