Letters To The Editor
SPOKANE MATTERS
Parent’s complaint off the point
After reading the letter from B.J. McCarver (“Non-smoking parents need help,” Nov. 7), in which she states her son had been “detained in handcuffs at the bus plaza” for providing tobacco to a minor, I find myself wondering what else her son did.
As an individual who spends a considerable amount of time at the plaza, I’ve seen a large number of incidents. The only time handcuffs are used is when the detainee is uncooperative and aggressive.
I find it ironic that this parent is more concerned with receiving a $40 dollar fine. I’d be getting in touch with the arresting officer or the bus plaza to find out what my child had done.
The suggested implementation of “stop-smoking classes in the schools” would have absolutely no effect on dropout rates. Academic subjects are considerably more important.
Taxpayers should not be responsible for teenage tobacco addicts, parents should. She may not have “taught” him to smoke, but she didn’t prevent it.
It has been a civil infraction for a minor to have tobacco since 1993. Providing tobacco to a minor is a gross misdemeanor. The schools should most definitely prohibit and take steps to prevent minors from smoking. Spokane schools have been far too lenient. In speaking to Spokane police officers Yamada and Dashiell, I’ve learned they are spearheading an effort to accomplish this.
I support officers Dashiell and Yamada 100 percent in their efforts against teen smoking. I encourage parents, teachers and concerned citizens to do the same. K.G. Johnson Spokane
City, paper, project are all wrong
Opinion editor John Webster’s editorial addressing the upcoming Spokane City budget in the Nov. 9 paper could not have been further from the truth.
Even my old Kmart calculator says I will pay another $200 per year in property taxes, as opposed to the $6. Webster claims will leave my wallet.
What’s happened to the city buying the $30 million parking garage downtown that is only worth around $6 million? I thought there was a hair-on-fire emergency, that if we don’t buy it now, Nordstrom will leave town and Oral Roberts will go to heaven. The truth is, if the emergency ordinance had passed, the citizens would not have had the right to put this financial mess on the ballot. There was so much flak and opposition to this decision that the mayor and council needed steel jockstraps and flak jackets to fend off folks.
This newspaper and city government are now in a PR mode, trying again to sell this downtown Titanic and are paying about $70 million to Coopers and Lybrand accountants who do business with the city for an independent study that assumes all the other studies were correct.
Other studies correct? No. Coopers and Lybrand independent? No. Watch out! Jonathan Swanstrom, Sr. Spokane
SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION
Changes will be made, eventually
I disagree with Opinion editor John Webster’s assertion (“Mandate sets stage for school reform,” Our View, Nov. 7) that the recent failure of initiatives 173 and 177 were stinging repudiations of the concept of choice in education.
Although these initiatives did not succeed at this time, the fact they were even on the ballot and received about one-third of the vote is a victory in itself. It demonstrates that at least one in three Washington state voters is not in favor of the current closed, socialistic education system. The percentage in favor of choice would likely have been even higher except for the scare campaign by anti-choice educators under the influence of the National Education Association.
According to Forbes magazine, the NEA collects some $750 million in annual dues from all levels of the union. A significant portion of that money is spent on partisan political activity and efforts to oppose educational reforms that range from parental choice to parents’ rights.
Choice in education in America is an idea whose time has come and it will not go away. Numerous localities across the nation have instituted charter or voucher schools, and these will increase.
Once parents and students begin to gain their freedom from the failed, oppressive and discriminatory governmental monopoly, there will continually be more who will demand this freedom.
It will not come easily or over night. But, eventually, choice and real school reform will prevail through free enterprise in education, even in Washington state. J.W. Lawson Spokane
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Having spoken, the people are ignored
My very dear friend passed away this summer in San Francisco. He had battled HIV for over 10 years, succumbing finally to liver failure caused by prescription antifungal drugs.
He never did suffer the classic wasting syndrome most AIDS victims suffer. I believe this was due mainly to his liberal use of marijuana. He had to resort to criminality to prolong his life, but he was no criminal.
Nov. 5, five days before what would have been my friend’s 42nd birthday, California voters passed an initiative giving doctors the right to prescribe marijuana. The people made it quite clear they want drug warriors out of the doctor-patient relationship.
Even broader relaxation of marijuana prohibition passed in Arizona. That state’s governor has vowed to veto the initiative. In California, the governor and attorney general have vowed to fight the medical marijuana issue in court.
The people have spoken with their votes and government has vowed to use the people’s tax dollars to shut them up. Special interests have driven our government out of control. Mary Toulouse Spokane
Voters reject drug war hysteria
California surprised the nation last week by approving a medical marijuana proposition.
Despite the chorus of drug war hawks, including California Attorney General Dan Lungren’s prophesies of outright anarchy, voters decided there was no sense in arresting patients who believe marijuana helps relieve their condition, or their doctors.
Between this and Californians’ rejection of a prison bond proposition, it appears our zest for incarceration may be waning.
Arizona approved an even broader drug reform initiative. Despite the huffings and puffings of Gov. Fife Symington, who threatens an unprecedented veto of a citizen initiative approved by a 30-point margin, it appears that Arizona will be “medicalizing” its drug policy. Most nonviolent drug possession convicts will be sent to drug treatment rather than prison. Money saved will be spent on youth drug education projects.
On a national level, Bob Dole discovered that drug war hoopla failed to rouse the electorate. Polls taken in the heat of Dole’s “Just don’t do it” blitz registered surprising indifference among voters.
For years, drug war support has been one of the constants in American politics. As a result, politicians raised the stakes every time they campaigned. Inevitably, they went too far, and the American people are now asking for a correction.
The next time politicians decide to dump more money into oversized prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, they will have to think twice about the reaction of their constituency. Tom Hawkins Grand Coulee
Dirty lowdown comes from low down
Just a little wake-up call to all the people expressing in low, insulting terms their outrage in the letters section over the re-election of a “crooked,” “unethical, immoral draft dodger.”
If President Clinton is as unfit as you claim he is, what does that say about how the majority of voters obviously felt about your candidate, your platform, your rigidly fundamentalist policies?
Assuming you can think logically, don’t you see that the lower you attempt to sink the president’s character, somewhere beneath there you and your ideological heroes are to be found in your self-created muck? Duh! Dan Davie Medical Lake
Nonvoters non-smart and non-effective
I was disappointed when I discovered that the election turnout was less than 50 percent. I was outraged after reading some of the reasons why in the Nov. 11 article, “Low voter turnout causes concern.”
Most of these nonvoters seem to have feelings as to how they want their government run, yet they’re too lazy to vote and make outrageous excuses. It’s that simple.
One person said he hopes he sent a strong message by not voting. Yes, he certainly did.
Another said, “This country does not offer anything to anyone who’s lower class.” Well, lets all just not vote and wait for the government to come change our diapers. If you do not vote, no politician or voter gives a damn what you care about. Why should we?
I can’t think of a better message you can send to an elected official than to vote him or her out of office. The only thing a politician pays more attention to than their respective special interest groups are the polls.
The right to vote is one of the many things our Founding Fathers fought for. How can we expect to change our government when fewer than half of Americans bother to vote on the highest office in the world?
We take pride in being Americans and being free. Perhaps next Independence Day all those who didn’t vote should read the Constitution and the Bill of Rights rather that stuff your faces, set off fireworks and wave our flag.
If this angers you nonvoters, submit a reply. You might as well exercise one of your rights. M.A. Triggs Spokane
Budget balancing is simple
Another election is over and none of the principals addressed the real issues - balancing the budget, affordable housing and medical insurance for the 60 percent of Americans who cannot get medical care. We could have a balanced budget in 60 days if politicians would do the following:
All the politicians in the House and Senate get $840,000 dollars each in an expense account. They need to cut that to $250,000 for the East Coast politicians, $350,000 for Midwest politicians, and $450,000 for West Coast politicians. Savings would be $250 million per year.
Second, we could cut $100 billion from Pentagon spending and $100 billion from all military budgets, including Star Wars. There is that much waste in the military that our military strength would not be at risk.
Third, cut General Accounting Office, Internal Revenue Service and all other federal budgets by 15 percent.
Fourth, do not give aid to anyone outside the United States unless we have a surplus in the bank.
Fifth, cut Medicaid and Medicare by billions wasted on fraudulent charges by hospitals, doctors, clinics, labs, etc.
Sixth, do not allow use of Supplemental Security Income funds to balance the budget and repay within a year all money owed to SSI.
Finally, do not allow any pork barrel legislation on any bill that comes before Congress.
If these suggestions were accomplished, we would have a savings of over $400 billion and a balanced budget. David Mallery Post Falls
Media types, leave Dole alone
Some years ago, I saw an interview with your editorial cartoonist. There was a picture of him slouching in his chair in front of his drawing board, giving us the sanctimonious sneer of the terminally confused.
It was pointed out in this piece that his mission in life was something on the order of getting people to think. Having been raised in Montana, we had a proper response to that kind of statement, one that involved the end product of the digestive process of the male bovine.
After the 1994 elections, staff cartoonist Milt Priggee indulged in a three-month tantrum predicting the end of the world as we know it, since the “Contract with America” would most assuredly result in the demise of this great nation. Little did he know at that point that his hero, the incumbent president, would adopt two-thirds of that document in his conversion to Republicanism.
Since the incumbent has spent nearly full time (in the past two years) fabricating bald-faced lies about the Republicans, he had little time to tinker with the economy. History has plainly shown that the less tinkering Washington does, the better off we all are.
As his idol is back in the White House to complete what history must assuredly chronicle as the one of the darkest periods in our presidential history, why don’t Priggee and the equally fatuous Molly Ivins leave Bob Dole alone and proceed to further asininities? W.M. Russell Spokane
OTHER TOPICS
Could someone make a grain of sense?
An article titled “Feeding the World” by Charles J. Hanley of the Associated Press (Nov. 10), reported that the world’s population has risen 10 percent over the past six years, while global grain harvests have increased only 2 percent over this same period.
A July ‘96 story in Newsweek magazine, “The Next Food Crisis?” reports that “between 1961 and 1994, the population of the developing countries roughly doubled, while grain production nearly tripled. As a result, grain output per person rose a third.”
Who are we to believe? Dave Beine Spokane
Endorsements just S-R ego trip
When a newspaper editor and his heavy hitters devote a full page in the paper to rationalizing a specific policy (political endorsements), you can bet that last turkey drumstick they’re skating on thin ice.
What a remarkable attempt to sway public opinion about a practice that attempts to sway public opinion. It never ends.
Only a group of journalists full of self-importance could believe that a 30-minute interview (at least, I’m sure some were 31 or 32 minutes) would provide an in-depth analysis of each candidate’s life, accomplishments and failings, and their potential for success in office. That a run in a lady’s nylon indicates that she doesn’t pay attention to details or that a dream is a “tool’ in choosing who to vote for. Now, can I see a raised hand out there from everyone who believes the Spokesman-Review pays attention to details?
Endorsing political candidates used to be taboo in most U.S. newspapers. It was considered unethical, the exercise of undue influence and subjective. Many newspapers are returning to that simple, moral logic, but not the one you’re reading. The egos are too big. The arrogance is too strong.
It’s time editor Chris Peck got a clue. This paper is responsible for more damage to this great city than it could ever imagine. Climb down off your pedestal and take off the blinders. If you and your writers would talk less and listen more, you might enjoy some local respect without having to blow your own horn on any other day. David Bray Spokane
California rids itself of bad law
California passed Proposition 209 on Election Day, making it the first state to address the inequities of our quota-based hiring system. The new law simply states that race, ethnicity or gender will not be a factor in government hiring.
Simple, huh? No hidden agenda, no tricks in the wording of the law. In fact, it uses the wording of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, one of Martin Luther King’s shining accomplishments.
The losers called this proposition the “anti-affirmative action law.” They were forced to lie about what the proposal would do because no logical person would vote against such a fair law.
Who would do such a thing? It was the usual liberal suspects - the American Civil Liberties Union, the lawyer associations, National Organization for Women, gay and lesbian organizations, even the dishonest National Education Association. Their pathetic arguments said that white males would unfairly succeed because of this restating of the original civil rights law.
What they overlook is that in college admissions, at least, statistics say Asians will benefit most simply because they score highest on entrance exams. The way the law has been used in the past is to discriminate against one particular minority - Asians. Who, according to the statistics, has benefited most? The largest majority - white women. Michael Wiman Spokane