Letters To The Editor

DOWNTOWN SPOKANE

Approve downtown revitalization

Mary Anne Brown (Letters, Oct. 27) did a wonderful job of expressing the feelings of many of us on the proposed revitalization of our downtown.

Spokane has long been the core for the social and business activities of the Inland Empire. It has been most painful to see the damage done to the center of our beautiful city. Now we have people who are willing to put their money and effort into correcting that damage. Why would anyone fight them on this?

I sincerely hope the City Council will realize how important it will be to have the Davenport Hotel, River Park Square and the new parking garages for keeping our city alive and, therefore, make the right decisions. Jean N. Repp Spokane

TAXES

State always gets its cut

Here are a few facts on one of our smellier taxes here in Washington.

Washington state is one of the few, if not the only, state that has a B&O tax assessed against gross dollars. That means that no matter if you end up with any money to keep at the end of the year, still the state will take its cut off the top. Of course the rationale is that the business person is supposed to charge that tax on their goods and services, so it shouldn’t cut into profits. Well then why is Washington 49th out of 50 states in business failures per 1,000 residents? Is it because we are just dim in the head? Considering the taxes we pay compared to the rest of America, dim we are!

We are in the top 20 percent when it comes to paying high gas taxes. And our property taxes are well above the national average.

There are a bunch more, but I gotta get back to the grindstone. Please take a minute each day to stop and smell the taxes. Charlie Schmidt Spokane

POLITICAL MATTERS

Politics: Follow the money trail

Lost in the discussion of campaign contributions, reform, PAC/soft money, foreign donations and is the simple reality that money does buy access and influence. This should be common sense.

Dennis Erickson provides an interesting case in point, one moment expressing love for Washington State University, the next moment expressing it for the Miami Hurricanes.

Let’s see, one pizza or two? Tough choice, I guess.

Phillip Morris donates $1.6 million to the Republican Party. Then, boom, the Republican Party fights the effort to limit tobacco advertising to minors. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Given these realities, the real choice boils down to which is better, the influence of Phillip Morris, the National Restaurant Association and other business interests, versus the AFL-CIO. Let’s see; the AFL/CIO gave us the 40-hour work week, health insurance and workers compensation. Phillip Morris gave us Winston Cup racing and Joe Camel.

The National Restaurant Association fought the minimum wage increase and favors so-called comp time instead of overtime. Bye-bye 40 hour work week. Work 80 hours a week in the summer and try to get time off at some other time.

Average Americans need to contemplate whose influence buys what, as they sort out this issue. While both parties are guilty, they get their money from different sources. Gregory P. Hande Spokane

Curb campaign abuses

Now that the political fecal matter is down to the wire, it’s time to consider some new rules for political candidates.

No advertising can be paid for by PACs, public or private.

All advertising must be paid for by the candidate or an appointed committee registered as the candidate’s representative.

Limit spending amount to 25 percent of the wages of the elected term. This includes all candidates in the United States.

I believe that we would find out the candidate who is the most frugal in their quest for election. This may also tell us who is the best candidate to save taxpayers the most dollars. Dick Ripley Spokane

Reform abandons poor children

I believe most of us want happy children - our own and other people’s. We want them safe and somewhere bright and clean. We want them fed. We want them to be cared for, talked to, played with and loved.

Wanting the best for children is why we should be horrified and saddened by the new welfare reform.

The old welfare guaranteed minimal financial support for those without other means, and two-thirds of the people helped were children.

Under reform, children will no longer be helped just because they have no money, food or a house, but only as long as funds exist. The law kicks children off welfare after two years, whether their parents can support them or not. The law condemns children to a life of poverty because it does not offer the children’s parents (or parent, usually their mom) a chance to train for work that can pay enough of a wage for a decent house, food and clothing.

The reform violates a basic shared value that babies, toddlers and children should be nurtured and cared for. It does not help create families that can raise happy children.

We need to work against this reform. We need a law that offers children whose families do not have opportunities and live in poverty a step toward a bright childhood and a bright future. Tracy Springberry Cheney

The system is working; keep it

Isn’t it great to live in a country where staff cartoonist Milt Priggee can express himself with freedom, this newspaper can print it without interference and anyone can publicly criticize Priggee’s work, this newspaper and candidates for public offices without fear of repression or retaliation?

We should be very careful not to vote for someone who would try to limit these hard-earned freedoms. Ray Holcomb Spokane

ANIMALS

Fur coats come at a horrible price

Thanks to Carola Lyons (Oct. 24). She is right. Maybe if people who wear furs knew the horror these precious animals (i.e. minks, sable, leopard, baby seals, red fox, chinchilla) live before their slaughter, in filthy cages, exposed to weather, freezing or roasting, they would not pamper themselves with the animal skins.

I have seen on film how minks are mistreated - using an electric prod, snapping their necks and throwing them in a container, one on top of the other, some still very much alive, ready for skinning.

Still want a fur coat? There is faux fur. You can’t tell the fake from the real. I suppose that wealth and vanity must be served, but the fur looks better on its original owner. Mary Cosentini Spokane

IN THE PAPER

Degerstrom’s company sensitive

Recently The Spokesman-Review has printed tabloid-style details and accusations arising out of a suit against Neal Degerstrom and his company. Since you apparently have little concern over what affect your stories exposing personal matters and unproved allegations may have on a person’s or company’s reputation, we and 13 other local Degerstrom employees would like to present our side of the story.

Several of Degerstrom’s employees (or their family members) through the years have suffered from serious (nonwork-related) illnesses and accidents such as cancer and severe multiple bone breaks. The company has stood solidly behind the employees and their families, not reducing pay in spite of extended medical time off, and providing practical help.

Neal Degerstrom goes out of his way to provide employment for workers through the winter when heavy construction work normally comes to a halt. During the summer, he spends many of his Saturdays running a wood splitter, making firewood from trees on his own property, which he paid to have cut and bucked, to provide firewood for any of his employees who want or need it.

Does this sound like the “insensitive” company spoken of by lawyer Greg Staeheli as heralded on the front page of the Oct. 8 Region section? Your paper portrayed a person and a company which do not exist. You have done us, our employer and our community a disservice. It seems that the jury had a better grasp of the truth. Richard A. Stager and Nels N. Cox Spokane

Bats don’t deserve bad press

Staff cartoonist Milt Priggee has stepped over the line this time. He should stick to lampooning politicians who do such a fine job lampooning themselves that his job is simple. When he begins to attack the poor and much maligned bat, well, he has just plainly gone too far.

In his Oct. 31 cartoon he uses the symbol of bat wings attached to the Democratic donkey and Republican elephant to illustrate how they are evil (in denying campaign finance reform).

Some facts Priggee should consider next time he sets out malign the bat (courtesy of Bat Conservation International):

A single little brown bat can catch up to 600 mosquitoes in one hour.

A colony of 150 big brown bats can protect a farmer from up to 18 million or more rootworms each summer.

Tequila is produced from the agave plant whose seed production drops to 1/3000th of normal without bat pollination.

An anticoagulant from vampire bat saliva may soon be used to treat human heart patients.

More than 50 percent of American bat species are in severe decline or already listed as endangered species.

Loss of bats increased the demand for chemical pesticides, can jeopardize whole ecosystems of other plant and animal species and can harm human economies.

So, Mr. Priggee, please do us a favor and stick to the politicians and others of note. They deserve to be on the receiving end of your pen. Leave the bat alone, it already has enough bad press. Marc D. Brown Mullan, Idaho

Clark may have made it worse

Columnist Doug Clark’s continuing expose on Carolyn Lair (Oct. 24) strikes an entertaining tone but may fall short of Clark’s own standards for truth telling.

The Arts Commission that Clark lampoons so freely is, as a body, responsible neither for Lair’s hiring nor for her firing.

Clark ridicules the Arts Commission because he takes it to be blindly committed to Lair. He doesn’t seem to have noticed that another segment of the Spokane community is enraged by the presumed failure of the Arts Commission to support Lair. I think the truth lies somewhere in between.

The Arts Commission is constituted of volunteer, civic-minded folks who were eager to help Lair bring new vitality to the arts in Spokane but who likely cannot condone the resume falsifications by which she sought an unfair advantage over the dozens of other candidates for the position.

The real target of Clark’s latest column is, however, not Lair but the Arts Commission itself. Clark shouldn’t ridicule the commission for defending Lair until he determines what the members are really saying and doing. It is no small matter, if he’s wrong in his gross assumptions. The damage and the injustice Clark stands to do to the credibility of the commission should compel him to be more scrupulous.

Where personal motives are at issue, many wonder whether Ralph Busch and Clark couldn’t have handled the issue of the Lair resume in a way that satisfied their personal interests less and served the Spokane community better. Wayne B. Kraft Spokane

MEDIA

Media critic got it wrong

In response to Jackie Randall’s letter of Oct. 25 (“Review, at least, came through), I would like to defend the news media.

Randall’s accusations about the lack of news coverage at Albi Stadium were false. I watched KREM 2 newscaster Adam Zeren live at Albi Stadium twice during the newscast. He interviewed a director who discussed the judging of the bands and also invited everyone to come join the event. He even had the bands playing in the background during his broadcast.

Being new to Spokane, I am impressed with KREM 2 for its community involvement. Tom Sherry visits schools with his dog, Doppler. Deborah Feldman, Scott Charleston and many more were involved in Family-a-Fair. KREM 2 is not all about sports and violence. Kimberly Woodring Spokane

OTHER TOPICS

Development driving away wildlife

We have been fortunate, until now, to have a large field behind our house where grass and woods gave wonderful cover for families of Chinese pheasants and quail. No longer. The area has been bulldozed, graded and made level for the apartment buildings that will soon be built there.

We used to see the pheasants each evening through our dining room window as they wandered into the small vacant lot next to us, but no more. They enjoyed scratching and finding seeds in our back yard, too. We would count them - the proud cock, the mamas and the little ones. Now once in a while we see one or two.

I grieve for them, and wonder if they have found another habitat.

We see this happening all over our area, the few empty fields being filled in a frenzy of development. And our few remaining orchards are being demolished to make more housing. Will we not be happy until all is asphalt? Is there really such a need? I read not long ago in this newspaper that there are already more apartments than tenants.

Am I anti-progress? When it means that our smallest, most vulnerable little creatures are being destroyed by it, you bet I am. Marjorie Young Spokane

Don’t forget the ‘Coats for Kids’

Fall is here and I notice the “coats for kids” sign is prominent in the windows of many cleaning establishments in the city. It reminds me of my dear friend and neighbor, Catherine Gelhausen, who instigated this program many years ago.

“Katey” was a kind and thoughtful person with an affinity for young people. She spent many hours every year sorting and preparing warm garments for those in need, especially the children.

Now is the time to give her the credit and publicity for this wonderful gesture, even though she has been dead for several years. So, do your part and don’t forget Katey’s kids. The cleaners exhibiting the sign “coats for kids” will clean them free of charge, transporting them to the nearest neighborhood center for distribution to those in need.

The weather is getting colder, so clean out those closets and don’t forget Katey’s kids. Marcella M. Thibault Spokane

Good reasons for stigma some bear

Connye M. Draper is astonished by the Spokesman’s lack of knowledge and/or sensitivity concerning mental illness. She implies that with knowledge comes sensitivity.

That is untrue, as is the notion that you’re ignorant simply because you disagree with an activists’s beliefs.

Draper states that stigmas are the cause of job loss due to mental illness. I beg to differ. Stigmas are the result of mental illness, not the cause. A stigma only exists because there is a certain amount of truth to it. Just because it might hurt the person caught within it, doesn’t mean it’s an absolute falsehood. Those with such polarized views on life are willing to omit certain truths for the sake of sensitivity.

The fact is, if one of your co-workers is mentally ill, the chances of that person creating adverse working conditions, including safety concerns, is greater than many employers care to deal with. Unfortunately for many people, this is a capitalistic, free enterprise economy, where oftentimes it means that helping other people through your business means making less money. We all know money rules the world.

Lastly, she says to educate the Spokesman staff. I think she misstated herself. If being educated means agreeing with Draper and her opinion, it is not education but indoctrination. Mike B. Harmon Spokane

Consider what’s really grim

Mitch Finley’s “Grim Catholic” joke (Oct. 25) might have had some surface plausibility back when the world without God could still pretend to be a happy place. Apparently, Finley hasn’t been watching television or reading the newspapers for the last few decades.

If he really enjoys smirking at grimness, I suggest he take a look at some MTV videos, daytime soap operas or late-night talk shows. Then he may discern that flaunting Christ’s commands is a heck of a lot grimmer than struggling to abide by them. Chip Piper Sagle, Idaho