Letters To The Editor
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Radical right, have you no shame?
Helen Lofgren (“Re-election a sorry state of affairs,” Letters, Nov. 9) calls President Clinton, “an unethical, immoral, draft dodger.” Jeremy West calls Clinton “crooked” because we’re “pretty sure” he has committed crimes (“Choice of president questioned,” Letters, Nov. 9). West wants to know, “Where is the outrage?”
Earl G. Fox ( “We’re too dependent on government,” Letters, Nov. 10) calls the President, “a proven liar, a philanderer, a proven coward and an alleged drug addict.”
Here is the outrage: The radical right has not changed its tactics since the McCarthyism of the early ‘50s. Nobody these people oppose seems to have any Constitutional right to presumption of innocence. The merest allegation is proof enough of guilt for them.
God save us from these people. Edward B. Keeley Spokane
Sort of jackals of all tirades
Maligning President Clinton and the first lady for the past four years (and intensified in the recent campaign) has been the raison d’etre of those lusting for the Clintons to be convicted for high crimes and misdemeanors. These people will be dancing in the streets if their wildest dreams come true, as the Clintons are led away in chains. Rather like jackals they will settle only for the kill and will circle relentlessly until their prey is down.
Perhaps Bill and Hillary Clinton (either or both) are guilty as alleged. But the manner in which they have been excoriated tells a lot about their accusers. Isabelle Woods Spokane
Popular vote should decide election
Low voter turnout, particularly during a presidential election race, is directly related to the essentially useless electoral college.
When the winner in a race is firmly announced at 5 p.m. PST, a time when the most people in the West are just leaving their jobs, apathy is a certainty. Local issues suffer for this reason.
The electoral college had a purpose when ours was a nation of people often separated by thousands of miles, when technology didn’t connect us all so well and when voter registration was not so regulated and controlled. I don’t feel that the electoral college has our best interests in mind. Most people in America may feel their vote doesn’t really count.
A presidential election based solely on the popular vote would go a long way toward increasing voters’ belief in the value of their own personal mark on a ballot, reducing the frustration and apathy brought on by being told that the results are already determined before you even head for the polling place. Our local issues could not help but benefit from this.
Is there not a way to effect change here? Should we be writing to Rep. George Nethercutt? Could he do anything? What is the process? Is my own apathy showing if I ask if an effort in this direction would do any good? I voted, but suffered the same disgust and feeling of futility as those who suffered from the 5 p.m. announcements. Vikki Crawford Spokane
Carry on with entitlement reforms
Congratulations, Rep. George Nethercutt.
Voters in this district and across the nation have ratified your phaseout of two 60-year old federal entitlement programs farm subsidies and welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children).
Of course, taxpayers will still provide for the truly needy. But the budget-bursting entitlement idea of everyone who applies gets money will soon be history in these two programs. Congress and the president must fix the rest of the entitlement programs, especially Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
The programs’ trustees, the head of the Social Security Administration, President Clinton’s secretaries of Health, Treasury and Labor, and two “outsiders” keep telling us they will soon go broke within a few years, with Medicare leading the way.
In little more than a generation, the giant share of the federal budget of these programs has increased dramatically so that they now consume a huge amount of federal tax dollars. The longer we wait to reform Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, the more difficult and painful it will be. Do it in 1997. Don Peters Spokane
HUNTING
Higher form of life? Yeah, right
It’s amazing to me how people can justify situations of their own creation. For example, hunting animals to save the animals from starvation - yet man kills their food. Wildlife attacking people, yet people move into the wildlife’s territory.
People create their own problems, then blame the animals. How sporting. Carola Lyons Spokane
Getting food is reason enough
In the Nov. 7, Spokesman-Review, letter writer Deborah Peterson asks: “Why do people hunt? What makes a human being want to kill an animal? It’s not self-defense. It’s not for food. Its’ not a rite of passage into adulthood, so, why? What makes a hunter enjoy killing an animal?” I can’t speak for everyone, but I can pass on what my father told me. If people didn’t hunt, the wild game would overpopulate and slowly starve to death. Hunting is much more humane.
Yes, it is for food. At least it was for my family and for many other families I knew. I’m sure it still provides food for more families than you or I will ever know.
We eat beef, pork, chicken and fish, too. People go out to fish. People go out to hunt. They have to procure fish and wild game that way. Beef, pork and chicken are raised on ranches and go to slaughterhouses - therefore, we don’t hunt for them. Mary Counts Simpson Spokane
Tolerate what you can’t understand
As a sporadic hunter and a friend of avid hunters, I’d like to explain the appeal of the sport to Deborah Peterson and other non-hunters, but I can’t.
I doubt if there are many people who are able to explain their enjoyment of any sport to people who just don’t get it. I’ve had friends try to explain the appeal of golf, football, boxing, hockey and other sports, but I just don’t understand the satisfaction they get in participating or observing these activities. However, that lack of understanding doesn’t mean I have the right to prevent other people from pursuing these pleasures.
We’re not asking non-hunters to join us or understand our enjoyment. All we ask is to be able to participate in one of the world’s oldest sports without having to constantly fight for that right. Rita Reed Rathdrum, Idaho
Picking on hunters makes no sense
Re: “Hunting just doesn’t make sense” (Letters, Nov. 7).
Last year, my husband was lucky enough to bring home a six-by-seven elk. I had the privilege of being with him. Do you know what the odds are for bringing one of these home? It’s like winning the Washington state lottery. Take a look at those odds. Sometimes, I think the odds are the same for the big bucks.
For nine years, I’ve had the privilege of hunting. You either like it or you don’t. I happen to like it and am very offended by letters like this. People like this would like to take away my hunting privilege. If the hunter doesn’t hunt, the Washington Fish and Wildlife Department will do it to control population control, diseases and so forth.
Yes, we had the elk mounted. It cost us $800. We had the meat professionally cut and wrapped at a cost of $270. We had enough venison to fill our freezer. He is beautiful, hanging on our wall. You should hear the stories of the hunt, sitting around our fireplace, sipping on hot chocolate with a freezer full of meat, looking up at him and wondering where his brother or son might be. Only a hunter could appreciate this.
To those who voted for Initiative 655, did you know that this is going to cost taxpayers an extra $1 million? Keep your “hunting doesn’t make sense” to yourselves and leave hunters alone. Sharon Gilmore Spokane
CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL
It was the haute-est of couture
This is a reply to Dorothy Carter’s letter condemning the wearing of fur coats. Carter says that “If God wanted women to wear coats, he would have grown them on their backs.”
What Carter fails to see is that God did something close to that. Genesis Chapter 3, verse 21 reads that after Adam and Eve ate the apple, “For Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them.”
As Carter will no doubt realize, Adam first made clothes from fig leaves. It was Adam’s and Carter’s God that first used animal skin as clothing. And, if the Lord God did it, it must be true. Tim Harnett, Jr. Spokane
What? No protectors for pediculosis?
All year long and forever, we have articles in the newspaper from the animal rights fanatics. How come they aren’t protesting the killing of lice here in Spokane? It seems to me this would be a worthy cause, too. George McAlpine Ephrata, Wash.