Letters for Aug. 31, 2023
Stuckart needs to get a life
It appears that Ben Stuckart either has a need to eliminate his competition by any means possible or he is anti-Christian.
We Christians gather often in small and large groups. It is not because all our opinions are exactly the same. It is because we believe in the one true God and his son Jesus Christ our Lord. We also believe in the power of prayer.
Mayor Woodard attended the rally to pray for the victims of the recent fires that have devastated our community. It was not to take a stand for any opinions that someone else attending might have. Get a life, Ben!
Carol Wasson
Spokane
Mayor should be disqualified
Spokane Mayor Nadine Woodward has dishonored our city’s new motto, “In Spokane, We All Belong.”
In an outrageous act that disqualifies her from serving as mayor for another term, she appeared onstage Aug. 20 at a religious rally with two far-right Christian nationalist preachers on a divisive national tour.
In the worldview of Matt Shea and Sean Feucht, Washington state should be severed to create the state of Liberty, a right-wing enclave where men rule and women’s reproductive rights are ignored – a theocratic “redoubt” isolated from minorities, liberals and gays.
Shea laid his hands on Woodward and exhorted her to help him fight “Satan” – meaning those of us who don’t share his exclusionary vision of America. She embraced him as she left.
Shea, a disgraced former legislator from the Spokane Valley, is already infamous for his efforts to train boys for “biblical warfare” and his hit list of institutions he despises, including Spokane’s liberal Unitarian Universalist Church, which I attend and which champions the civil rights of gay people and all others. A Washington state legislative inquiry into Shea’s conduct condemned him for encouraging political violence; he refused to resign from the legislature but didn’t run for another term.
Spokane voters should reject Woodward in the upcoming November election for her affiliation with Shea and his allies. As our city motto says, we all belong here – conservatives, liberals, straight and gay, Black and white – and we deserve a mayor who embraces tolerance, not hatred and division.
Karen Dorn Steele
Spokane
Women against MAGA
I appreciate Jennifer Rubin’s Aug. 23 column about women leading the fight against MAGA. I moved to Spokane in 1985 for my residency training at Family Medicine Spokane. I lived and practiced there until 2011, some of the best years of my life.
While caring for patients the 1990s, I was helpless as insurance companies began to take the helm from physicians by telling us what tests we could and couldn’t order, what drugs they wouldn’t pay for, which specialists and hospitals we had to use. Now, we are simply cogs in the wheel of what the richest country on the planet calls “health care” … and I refer to as “sick care.” In the U.S., we in fact have the lowest-quality health care of all developed countries, including the highest maternal and infant mortality rates, at two to three times the cost.
The fight for democracy has at its core the fight for human rights. Ms. Rubin is correct that “women are essential to securing democracy, human rights and the rule of law for all repressed people.” How ironic that the U.S. still does not have an Equal Rights Amendment.
Health care for all is essential in addressing most of our social ills, from gun violence to addiction to PTSD to food deserts and foodborne illness to skyrocketing cancer and autoimmune disease, likely related to the toxins in our air, water, food, soil and household products (remember benzene in kids’ sunscreen?) If you don’t believe me, take it from Barbie.
Lauri M. Costello, M.D.
Las Cruces, New Mexico
Not just anyone can become president
There was a popular saying among Spokane public school children in the 1950s and ’60s: “Anyone can become president.”
That kind of sentiment is literally true in a vibrant, participatory, inclusive democracy.
But today almost no common citizen can possibly become president. The job is limited to political scoundrels who serve the interests of corporate lobbyists, the military industrial complex, political bosses and foreign autocrats, and who pledge to usurp power from the people’s congressional representatives.
Real Republicans, real Democrats, and real human beings are frozen out of the job.
Kimball Shinkoskey
Woods Cross, Utah