Letters for Oct. 4, 2024
Keep the Evergreen State green
Last month, California passed legislation banning all plastic bags at grocery and retail checkouts. Washington state should be next in line.
Plastic waste makes up 80% of all ocean pollution. Floating plastic waste is devastatingly harmful to our marine wildlife, who mistakenly eat it or get entangled as it floats through their underwater homes. Never degrading and full of harmful chemicals, plastic pollution is even harming our Southern Resident orcas, whose digestive tracts are full of microplastics.
To cut down on plastic pollution, Washington state stopped allowing single-use plastic bags in grocery and retail stores in 2021. The catch? You can still get plastic bags in these places, but they’re marketed as “reusable” and cost you a few extra pennies. Despite being made of thick plastic, most people still treat these bags as single use, so our plastic bag ban hasn’t reduced as much pollution as intended.
The Washington state Legislature needs to update our bag ban to eliminate these thicker plastic bags. We need a better bag ban. If the Golden State can do it, the Evergreen State can, too.
Mia Altieri
Seattle
Julia Parker for Senate
The Idaho Republican Party is hardly familiar to me these days. So far right it’s nearly unrecognizable, thanks to individuals in the extremist ranks. Many recent Idaho legislative actions under the guise of “freedom” are having the opposite effect of placing restrictions on individual rights as well as curtailing local government functions.
Julia Parker is committed to fighting for women’s reproductive rights. Idaho is losing top-notch medical practitioners and finding it hard to recruit new medical providers, thanks to strict abortion bans enacted by extremists in the Idaho GOP. Parker’s opponent, Sen. Dan Foreman, wants to end ALL abortions in Idaho, with no exceptions for rape and incest. Extremists also want to ban various contraception methods. In vitro fertilization, especially vital for couples struggling with infertility issues, could also be on the chopping block. How is it that a small number of mostly male lawmakers continue to enact rules and laws adversely affecting women’s health care? Shouldn’t health care decisions be strictly between women and their physicians?
Idaho’s Senate (and House) needs to moderate … a lot. Parker wants to help make this happen and will stay focused on important issues, avoiding political tit for tat and promoting civility. She has broad experience working with people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs, from her work as director of nursing at a local care facility to serving as current member of the Moscow City Council.
Please join me in supporting Julia Parker for Senate from District 6.
Dan Pierce
Moscow, Idaho
Vote Van Winkle for superior court judge
Harold Clarke says to vote for Tim Fennessy because Andrew Van Winkle’s ideas for modernizing Spokane’s superior court are too expensive and impractical. Clarke misses the points of valid criticisms.
Every superior court in the counties surrounding Spokane allows parties to e-mail documents to the judge. Spokane is the outlier, having just adopted a local rule requiring documents to be physically printed and delivered to the judge. Allowing parties to use email is budget neutral. Government and business have been using email for decades. Why won’t our judges?
For unrepresented parties delivering documents in family law cases, every trip to the courthouse is burdensome. It’s another trip to Office Depot to print documents. It’s more money in the parking meter and another missed shift at work, often unpaid. We need judges who will listen to their customers in the community – not to the lawyers who practice in front of them.
Each of the undersigned has had a case before Spokane County Superior Court in recent years. We can attest from our personal experience that small changes, like allowing people to email documents to the judges, can have an outsized impact on making the court less burdensome and easier to navigate.
If Clarke’s letter is any indication of Fennessy’s attitude, the community would be better off with Fennessy joining Clarke in retirement. Vote for someone who cares about people who have to go to court without representation. Vote Van Winkle for superior court judge.
Eric Coltrain, Kyle Spencer, Cindi Valenti and Cody Lytle
Spokane