Letters To The Editor

Sat., May 4, 1996

SPOKANE MATTERS

Stepping down was for the best

Each year 12 princesses are chosen from area high schools to represent the Spokane Lilac Festival as goodwill ambassadors and role models for Spokane young people.

As parents of past Lilac royalty and as former directors, we experienced the effects of Lilac’s careful nurturing and generosity to our daughter and her court. Four years later she continues to feel honored and appreciates the benefits from having been a part of the Lilac Festival.

The Spokane Lilac Festival Association is a dynamic, generous group of individuals who expend thousands of volunteer hours and exhaustive effort to present a week of related activities and an outstanding torchlight parade to the community.

Former Ferris Lilac Princess Sharma Shields is to be commended for recognizing the need to step forward and accept the consequences of her actions. All of us have made mistakes and it takes great courage to admit to them.

We also understand the Spokane Lilac Festival Association’s plight for compassion and fairness, and we understand MADD’s position on this issue. No matter the outcome of this messy mistake, not everyone will agree or be satisfied. However, we all know that drunk driving kills innocent people and there are no margins for error.

We congratulate the New Spokane Lilac Festival princess for Ferris, Jayron Ganji. To the 1996 Lilac Queen and her court, we say we’re proud of you all. Enjoy the days ahead. You will be treated royally. Mel and Bonnie Algar Liberty Lake

Verbal apology won’t do for DUI

In response to Kate Kershner’s April 26 letter on the subject of Sharma Shields, too many of your age mates seem to think that an “I’m sorry” erases the damage. Lilac officials, thank you for doing the right thing.

As a teacher whose school promotes the DARE program, I think your first acceptance of Miss Shields “apology” erased years of work on the bad consequences of the choice to drink and drive. I was furious.

After Sharma apologized and took “responsibility” for her mistake, Kershner implies that the media should have backed off. No way! Sharma shouldn’t get away with a flimsy apology based on a rose-colored explanation of the facts.

Can any drunk driver who has killed or maimed someone just say to the victim’s family, ‘I’m sorry; I’m very responsible”? It doesn’t change a thing.

If you are a public figure, you must epitomize the action expected by our laws. And the consequences of your choices must stand as a public display to all.

Thank you for doing the right thing. Mary McClure Spokane

Good to see rules mean something

I would like to commend the Lilac Festival Association for their recent decision to revoke the crown for the lilac princess who has been in question. They had standards set and finally backed up their own rules. Fern Farrell Spokane

GRASS FIELD BURNING

Decision flawed at its core

My recent visit to the state Department of Ecology to review information DOE’s recent emergency rule against grass field burning is based on proved enlightening.

DOE did not base its decision on science because there are no epidemiological studies linking the effects of grass field smoke to health problems. Instead, the decision was based on a petition from local doctors and anecdotal references.

You can argue all you want about grass burning affecting public health, but the issue is far more complex than just air quality. DOE must ultimately address the consequences of trading wide open grass fields functioning as beneficial wildlife habitat, a soil conserving tool and protection of water quality in exchange for urban sprawl, more automobiles and more wood stoves.

I have noticed several bird species, including the longbilled curlew, feeding on bugs and worms in my bluegrass fields, but not in annual cropping fields and not in Spokane suburbs. Kentucky bluegrass is the premier cropping alternative for Eastern Washington, considering all interconnected environmental benefits.

DOE must follow the letter and intent of the state Environmental Policy Act (SEPA). It requires in-depth, objective, scientific analysis of all matters relating to grass growing, including natural background levels of smoke in the environment.

There currently are no reasonable, practical alternatives to open field burning. Bluegrass evolved over millennia, surviving a natural environment of fire. Viable alternatives may take just as long to develop. Chris Lyle Washington Association of Wheat Growers, Ritzville

Ending field burning no cure-all

I’m 15, and in the Ecology Youth Corps (EYC) at the Department of Ecology. At one of our meetings we had a guest speaker from Yakima on grass burning and how they wanted it stopped.

If that were to happen, about 200 farmers would be out of work. Putting all those farmers out of work doesn’t seem logical to me.

One day my dad and I were taking paper to be recycled. On our way there, a semi-truck pulled out in front of us and was burning so much oil and fuel that we couldn’t even see the road.

Ecologists present themselves as fair people, but if they want to put all those farmers out of work without enforcing laws about truck emissions, then they need to weigh their fairness.

Personally, I don’t think grass burning affects our health as much as the pollution that cars and trucks put out. Trucks run 12 months out of the year and grass burning happens only once a year.

All of these ecologists are against pollution, right? Do they walk or ride their bikes to work or do they drive? Do they have solar energy or do they have stoves? To be perfect and to keep our world beautiful we would have to live in a bubble, eat organic foods, wear clothes made out of recycled plastic bottles and walk or ride our bikes everywhere.

Before attacking those evil farmers, maybe we should look in our own back yards. Angelique Utley Mead

GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS

Better a boycott than tax rollback

This is my response to the Speaker of the House’s statement about the 4-cent gas tax:

That hardly raises the gasoline price to 37 cents over a three-week period. Does he think the people are stupid?

There’s no shortage of gasoline, as they are raising the speed limits, so what is the excuse of the gasoline companies?

I urge everyone to boycott the service stations and not drive any more than necessary. Stay home on your vacations until they lower these prices. Lois Stone Newport, Wash.

Remember, presidents pick judges

Opinion Editor John Webster’s editorials about the judicial system, “Court’s role is not to play God” (April 9) and “Voters must rise above politics” (April 18) were very interesting.

Voters need to know more about local judges up for election. What are their backgrounds? Do they favor criminals’ rights or victims’ rights? We hope the Washington State Supreme Court Commission study will help voters become better informed. Judicial reform is especially needed at the federal level. Here we see socalled constitutional rights being created by judicial decree, rather than through the specific procedures our founding fathers devised for amending and adding to the Constitution.

The founders balanced rights with morals, virtue and responsibility. Clearly, they never envisioned such “rights” as aborting unborn babies. Nor would they condone a newly discovered right to die or right to be killed by a physician, as recently proclaimed by 9th Circuit Court judges in San Francisco. Those judges completely refuted the will of Washington state voters.

When federal judges act as unelected autocrats, making decrees on moral issues that affect all of our lives, the public has a vital interest in examining the background and ideology of the person who chooses and appoints them to office: the president.

As voters, we must give careful, conscientious thought to choosing our next president. We need one who respects and is dedicated to preserving the moral values upon which our country was founded. David and Ann Petty Spokane

Tobacco industry has friend in Dole

Nineteen-ninety-six may be the year of the tobacco election, according to a leading national magazine.

After a century of misinformation, America’s most lethal industry is finally attracting public attention. It’s been verified that tobacco kills 420,000 Americans each year. This coupled with 1.3 million stopping smoking each year has them seeking new markets. Their targets: preteens and foreign markets.

Fact: 70 percent of all smokers are hooked by the time they are 18.

Tobacco (a large PAC) is strong-arming GOP governors and legislators to override anti-smoking legislation, tobacco excise taxes and industry lawsuits.

Sen. Bob Dole, the main GOP leader, helped give the tobacco industry over $250 million in tax breaks. He and Sen. Jesse Helms have expanded foreign tobacco markets, especially in Asia and Korea, by pressuring the governments to allow previously banned, seductive tobacco advertising.

Dole personally lobbied Korea’s ambassador to allow such advertisements. Then he killed a bill that would have imposed a tariff on Korean textiles. He has promised to fire Commissioner David Kessler of the Food and Drug Administration for his actions against smoking.

In 1985 Dole and Helms craftily changed a bill raising excise taxes on tobacco - into a tobacco subsidy. He said if tobacco could be linked to oral cancer he would personally reconsider those excise taxes. But when the surgeon general did that, the senator from Kansas didn’t reconsider. Andy Kelly Spokane

Liberals exploit groups

In response to Michael Wiman’s April 27 letter about Molly Ivins and affirmative action.

Ivins is a typical liberal and she knows what she wants to accomplish. As a fish needs water, a liberal needs a “victimized” group of people. Why? So that he/she can “help” them by spearheading their “fight.” The fight has to be against someone, and that group is always labeled “the privileged.”

By spearheading somebody’s fight you acquire a position of power, which in modern American society means votes. To create an impression that fight is necessary you have to picture the world in black and white, and because reality is never that simple you have to twist the truth.

Ivins does that excessively in her column. Just analyze some of her statements. “Many experts,” she writes “will tell you that standard tests are culturally biased.”

I’m a mathematician by education and somehow fail to comprehend how that can be in a math test. But if tests are “biased against minorities,” how come Asian students excel at them? Aren’t they also minorities?

She uses the contradiction: rich white/poor black as if all white kids who go to college are rich and all black kids are poor. This is not the case at all.

She asks theatrically why race should not be a factor in college admission. As Wiman excellently answered, because a smart kid of any race doesn’t need it.

Consider Ivins a humorist. That will turn reading her columns into a lot of fun. Peter C. Dolina Veradale

Don’t unvervalue need for character

Current polls show that unless things change before November, the electorate intends to give President Clinton four more years. It’s puzzling that the same polls show most Americans are not foolish enough to trust President Clinton.

One can only conclude that people are still convinced by the most egregious argument ever used in American politics, the theme of the 1992 election that character should not be an issue.

Character should be the issue. To quote perhaps the greatest student and practitioner of beneficent government this country has ever produced, Thomas Jefferson, “The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.” Jonathan H. Lundquist Spokane