Letters To The Editor

GOVERNMENT/POLITICS

Stop voting Republican

It is apparent that few people in Idaho took American History 101 while attending school. If they did take a history class, they must have slept through the semester.

People should know that the original intent of the Republican Party, when it ws formed back in the days of Lincoln, was to help big business. This party was not founded on the idea of helping the working poor.

This has not changed. The Republican Party is still doing all it can to give big business tax breaks and corporate welfare at every level. And they still have not admitted that this their real agenda.

If you are a wage earner, and you are making less than $10 an hour, you are making a serious mistake voting for the Republicans, who want nothing more than to keep you working for slave wages. If you doubt this assessment, all you have to do is look around.

You are living here is the poorest area in America. Wages are just about at the very bottom of anyplace; 350,000 people making minimum wages, working as hotel housekeepers or hamburger flippers. You cannot provide for a family making $6-8 per hour. And for you to keep voting for any Republican that is doing all he can to keep you poor is really dumb. Tom Akren Post Falls

Wide gap between report, draft

The least I would hope for would be that John Webster could make an informed decision about the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project.

There is a huge gap between the science reports done for the project and the Draft EIS. The science details degraded ecosystems brought about by overgrazing and over logging. The DEIS would continue overgrazing and logging/thinning into the last remnants of the roadless forests which are our heritage.

Webster did get one thing right. For ecology to function, forests must be allowed to rot and to catch fire sometimes. Dave L. Robinson Curlew, Wash.

House should yield to Senate

Will Congress purposely separate thousands of American families? Congress soon will decide the fate of Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Congress created Section 245(i) to streamline immigrant visa processing, relieve visa processing pressures at U.S consulates abroad and generate revenue. The Immigration and Naturalization Service says the provision will bring in an estimated $200 million in fiscal year 1997. Section 245(i) expires on Sept. 30.

In return for payment of a $1,000 penalty fee, Section 245(i) allows individuals who are already in the United States and who qualify for permanent resident status through the sponsorship of a close relative or employer to obtain such status without leaving the country. Approximately 68 percent of applicants who used this provision last year were spouses and children of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Eleven percent were professionals and skilled workers.

If Congress doesn’t renew 245, many of those eligible for permanent resident status will be forced to go abroad for processing of their immigrant visas. If they leave after Sept. 27, a harsh new immigration law will bar many from returning to the United States for three years; after April 1, the bar will be for 10 years. It’s in support of these unconscionable terms of banishment that Rep. Lamar Smith is set to kill 245(i).

The Senate has already passed an appropriations bill with a permanent extension of 245. The House passed a version of the bill that doesn’t contain such an extension.

Please contact your representative with the message that the House should yield to the Senate’s position in support of permanent extension of 245(i) in the FY98 Appropriations Bill. Ronaldo Delgado, co-chairman Advocacy Committee, Moses Lake

IN THE PAPER

Article did excellent job

My complements on the article, “No. 2 pencils worn out” in the Sept. 21 Spokesman-Review. This was an excellent job of describing the various perspectives on testing. It also demonstrates that there are some people involved in education who are trying to add some degree of sanity to the process. As one from an educational testing and measurement background, that is reassuring. Charles J. Clock Jr. Post Falls

Spokesman-Review could do more

Picture this: A large area-wide United Way campaign meets at the Convention Center and The Spokesman-Review just highlights Bill Gates.

There is so much more The Spokesman-Review could be doing to help this community come together by highlighting what is being done in the community to help the economic and quality of life of its families and residents. People need to hear these things in order to feel more a part of the community and share in it by being informed about similar community events. These events need to be highlighted before they take place to let people know they are going to happen and then afterward so that people are informed as to what took place and what was accomplished.

How many neighborhood advisory board meetings do you cover? Have you ever written about the monthly combined neighborhood steering meetings held downtown the first Friday evening of every month? How about posting in the community calendar the meeting times and places of the neighborhood steering meetings? How many people are aware of what neighborhood area they are in and what community development funds are available to those groups? Or how Vistas are able to work with those neighborhoods?

There is much The Spokesman-Review could be doing to bring this community together and help the people be a part of its development and the quality of its citizens’ lives by letting people know about these events and doing articles on them. Doug F. Danly Spokane

Shame on you, Doug Clark

In regard to Doug Clark’s Sept. 21 column on Tiffany Cook, we are all so glad Clark is the perfect parent who has never made a mistake in his parenting techniques. He always knows just the right thing to say or the right thing to do. What would we do without his pearls of wisdom regarding what Mrs. Cook should have done or said to her child?

Although Clark may never have had a passionate bone in his body, or the urge to move mountains for his child, I’m sure Cook’s actions were hardly motivated by self-centeredness, but rather overzealous efforts to protect her child and make Tiffany happy. Shame on you, Clark, for being so pompous in pointing out the obvious. Leave it to The Spokesman-Review to hash and rehash someone’s embarrassments. I shouldn’t be surprised; it’s what your tabloid paper does best.

Take heart, Mrs. Cook, not all of us are as perfect as Doug Clark. The rest of us make mistakes, apologize, forgive ourselves and go on - without having it thrown back in our faces again and again. Tamy K. Akins Spokane

Paper needs some language lessons

“Speaking aboard a ship in a Black Sea port, his tone was anxious” - this is the lead of an Associated Press article? (“Theology, science join hands” Sept. 21).

My husband and I hardly flinch anymore at the use of the contraction “it’s” for the possessive pronoun, a usage particularly rampant in your weekend entertainment listings. We even try to overlook the use of incomplete sentences, which have wormed their way into your community news and feature articles, where they are presumably tolerated in the name of folksiness or casual journalism. (It is still difficult for us, however, to countenance sentence fragments in front-page articles, where they wiggle around, struggling in vain to grow a new tail.)

And now you bring us, courtesy of the AP wire, this puzzling lead sentence.

Time was, journalism students were encouraged to read the newspaper daily in order to be exposed to correct language usage. If these are the standards the newspaper upholds, doesn’t that leave students, like the subject of this lead, rather at sea? Jennifer R. Jackson Spokane

‘LIVING WAGE’

What does future hold for wages?

“Activists push ‘living wage’ of $8.25 an hour” brings many questions. What will the “living wage” be in the future? When one thing increases, so does everything else.

The first thing will be the cost of your employer’s commodity. We hear the business world is making so much profit they can afford this extra expense. This is not reality. Supermarkets make 1-3 percent. Look at the bankruptcies of small businesses. The successful companies are the ones that support us all and pay the bulk of taxes.

The National Recovery Act, passed in 1933, established the first law saying the minimum wage would be $13 per week. I was working at the Packard Garage then. I received that amount, but the mechanics were paid only if there were cars to be worked on. Also, there were no extras such as overtime, food stamps, free lunches. I supported myself making $13 per week - surely poverty level, but I didn’t know it. I even had my hair done weekly for 75 cents. As late as 1950, minimum wage was still 35 cents per hour.

Things are better now. Most of the things we consider necessary weren’t even thought of in the 1930s. It frightens me to think what the dollar will be worth in 15 or 20 years. Our current law saying even my Social Security will be raised annually indicates there is no ceiling.

I am glad to be as old as I am. I don’t want to see where we are going. Opal M. Martin Spokane

Reasonable wage is what’s needed

In the Sept. 19 article about pushing for a living wage, Professor Rodney Fort suggested we improve our skills to improve our income level. That sounds good, and I have been trying to do just that.

But after paying an exorbitant rent for a house the landlord refuses to maintain (knowing we can’t afford to move), trying to maintain the only car we can afford and having two children in high school, I have had to postpone returning to take one evening college class because I don’t have the $420 required (and that is at a college even less costly than Fort’s WSU).

What we need is the employer paying a reasonable wage. When a big East Coast insurance company was coming to Spokane they promised wages that were well above Spokane’s average, which would force businesses to increase wages to keep the valued employees. When the insurance company got here and saw how they could make a bigger profit by paying Spokane wages and still have no trouble getting good workers, that’s what they did.

Now another “big” company has announced plans to come to Spokane and pay higher wages. Let’s see if they really do, or if they, too, succumb to the greed level of most of the others. Mark W. Harry Mead

Lving wage plan has a few holes

Re: “Activists push living wage” (Sept. 19), there are some serious flaws in Heidi Burbidge’s plan.

First, who pays? I don’t believe Burbidge has ever taken economics 101. If you inflate the minimum wage, everybody’s wages will have to go up to catch up with where they were before the increase. Thus, in a few years you will end up at a worse point than you started.

Second, most businesses that couldn’t afford the increase would be forced to move out of Spokane - or worse for Spokane, they would move to Idaho. Businesses competing on the world market may be forced to move their business out of our country altogether.

Third, at best the only good that comes from inflating the minimum wage is that more people are in higher tax brackets, thus the government will have more money for welfare for those who couldn’t get jobs because of companies moving away, and others cutting back because expenses exceed income.

Fourth, and most important, employees and employers take their value to the marketplace. That’s what they’re paid for, their value to the marketplace. When we increase our value, we get paid for that increased value. Any artificial change in that value is destructive to the economy.

It would be a good idea for Burbidge and a few of her friends to start a business and provide a thousand or so jobs that pay at least $8.25 per hour. She will be providing good-paying jobs from a sound business, not some artificial increase that will subsequently destroy jobs and our economy. Dan E. Meckel Veradale

Livable wage a realistic wage

The livable wage campaign is not to set an “ideal” minimum wage. It’s a realistic wage, if anything. Realistic because $8.25 is how much it would take for a single-income couple with two children to just make it above the poverty line. It is a wage at which an employee can make a decent livelihood in Spokane. If this is idealistic, I don’t know why anyone should go to work.

You go to work so you can live. If a worker in Spokane can barely make a living, than something is wrong. And supposedly we are in the midst of a good economy. If 14 percent of the families in Spokane are living in poverty now, then maybe we should rethink the idea of a “good economy” - or else take back some of the wealth the workers of this community created by a livable wage ordinance. Ross A. Tippit, volunteer petition member livable wage campaign,Spokane

HEALTH ISSUES

Diet drug should not be allowed

It’s infuriating to see fen-phen was even allowed on the market without proven testing showing it was supposed to be safe. It appears humans have become the guinea pig of this supposedly safe weight loss experiment.

I know for a fact that fen-phen was over-prescribed and over-utilized. I know people who were on it for a year, for fear of regaining the weight they had lost. The patients/ people I know could call in to their doctor and get the prescription without getting examined for any side effects, or even have their blood pressure taken. This is not close monitoring, and it shows negligence on the doctors’ part.

Let’s face it. Drug companies and doctors prescribing fen-phen were out to make a quick buck. I hope enough lawsuits will come from this to put the drug company out of business.

There is no quick way to lose weight. Stick to the basics - eat smart and exercise. Dr. Gina Yaritz Deer Park

Mentally ill deserve fair treatment

I agree with many of the points made in the recent editorial about the mentally ill in the workplace. Attempting to use the Americans With Disabilities Act as a springboard with which to jump aboard the affirmativeaction bandwagon, the mental health establishment is making a colossal blunder.

Using the rhetoric of identity politics will only have a chilling effect on potential employers of the mentally ill, who will refuse to hire the mentally ill in the first place due to the understandable fear that people with a mental illness are dismissal-proof. Instead of arguing for preferential treatment for the mentally ill based on their fundamental differences, the mental health establishment should be lobbying for fair and equitable treatment of the mentally ill based on the latter groups’ fundamental similarities to people without a mental illness. Trying to sound like another disadvantaged minority group only hinders the mentally ill in this challenge.

I would also like to point out that schizophrenia does have a biological origin. The best evidence for this is that schizophrenics such as myself, much like diabetics, can lead reasonably normal, productive lives with the proper medication. I have never asked for nor received any accommodations in the workplace nor have I given any accommodations to any of my 30 or so mentally ill students. This undercuts the theory that the mentally disabled are disadvantaged, so you won’t hear things like that from the mental health establishment. David Rottmayer Spokane

STA

Bus riding may come to an end

I have been an employee of Sacred Heart Medical Center for five years and a very loyal bus rider for the past three years. My employer encourages - even with a $5 discount on buses passes - their employees to find alternatives to private, one-passenger vehicles.

Recently my husband and I moved to a smaller home. I now have at least a 15-minute walk to the closest bus stop, instead of a 3-minute walk from my old address.

I value the transit system and my opportunity to take part in keeping our environment cleaner for all of us. I know no matter how foul the weather, the bus will be there, even at 5:40 a.m.

The proposed changes would not allow me to ride the bus. The closest proposed route to my address will not go close to Sacred Heart. In contrast, the route that does have a stop at Sacred Heart has its closest bus stop for me of another eight blocks from my current stop. Try a 30-minute walk, one-way, before 6 a.m. in the dark most of the year, every day. This is more convenient?

I would hope STA would take a very careful look at how their riders use the current system. I do not wish to stop riding, but I will have no choice if the changes are put into action. Margaret F. Wild Spokane