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| September 21, 2016
Viewpoint
our opinion
ThE mineR
l e t t e r s p o l i c y We welcome letters to the editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Letters should be typed and submitted to The Miner office no later than 5 p.m. Friday for publication the following Wednesday. No letter will be published unless it is signed by at least one individual, even if the letter represents the view of a group. The letter must include a telephone number and address for authentication. The Miner reserves the right to edit letters. Political letters will not be published the last issue before an election. Letters will be printed as space allows.
Thanks to volunteer firefighters, we still have ambulance service
O
ur fire districts in Pend Oreille County are going above and beyond the call of duty, literally saving lives, even before any mechanism for reimbursement is in
place. Newport Ambulance, a once for-profit company in Newport that moved to Oldtown due to foreclosure, is mired in problems from a lawsuit filed by the state of Idaho to tax liens filed by the IRS. Owner Steve Groom announced Sept. 1 that Newport Ambulance is “taking a break” from transporting patients, which would have put local residents needing emergency medical care in quite a pickle if it not for our fire districts. When Groom made grumblings this summer that he may not be able to afford to keep his doors open, the Pend Oreille EMS and Trauma Council put together a contingency plan to cover ambulance services. Lucky for all of us, the fire districts in Pend Oreille County stepped up to the plate. As it stands now, there are no systems in place for these fire districts to charge for their services, and most of them are comprised of volunteers with a handful of paid staff. They are hoping that patients will donate to the fire districts or voluntarily pay for the service. Newport councilman Mark Zorica said at Monday night’s council meeting that a fire district ambulance responded to an emergency on his street in southern Newport. They arrived on scene within seven minutes. That’s a pretty great response time. Two districts – Nos. 2 and 4 – will be asking voters in November to approve levy funding to cover ambulance transport services. Voters should approve these levies, and we need to thank our firefighters. Living in a rural area definitely has benefits and deficits. But surprisingly, volunteer emergency services are a benefit, rather than a burden. -MCN
Town of a Thousand Barks Okay, Newport, so we’ve been seeing each other for almost a whole year now and things have been great. We got together when there were a lot of extenuating circumstances going on in my life, but that is really neither here nor there, since exploring you and your extended family of communities in the Pend Oreille Valley kept me busy and gave me a sense of direction. But we need to talk. I know those are the four words no one wants to hear in a relationship, because it usually means that said praise is about to be followed S o ph i E ’ s with potentially harsh truths. But C H OI C E the relief from the thorn comes from the plucking of it from one’s Sophia thumb, or some quasi-Shakespearaldous ean axiom like that. You’re pet friendly, which I love! You obviously have a penchant for our four-legged friends and it shows. People walk their dogs up and down your streets, canines bobbing pertly on their leashes ahead of their owners as they take in “The Land Beyond the Yard.” There’s a yellow lab a few houses down from me that perches on the stone walkway leading up to his human’s house and makes what I can only describe as chortling noises in the back of his throat when you pet him, and it drops my defenses like a sack of sand every time. However (yeah, here it is), apparently the dogs in this town take their role as guard to the furthermost extreme. If the dogs in our fair town could talk, it would be a barrage of “HEY! YOU! YEAH, YOU! HEYHEYHEYHEYHEYHEYHEY…” and so on and so forth. I get it, dogs bark. It’s what they do. But maybe, just maybe, as a pet owner, you could go check on your dog, make sure that they aren’t indeed keeping a cadre of axe murderers treed in the back yard, and then reassure them or bring them into the house so the rest of us don’t have to hear a continuous loop of their custodial observations (“CAT! DEAR GOD, A CAT JUST WALKED PAST THE FENCE! HEY YOU, CAT!”). A few minutes of such alert systems is okay, but when it’s 10:30 at night or 6 a.m. on Sunday morning, it tends to wear a little thin. Remember, I only bring it up because I care. And because I appreciate a good night’s sleep.
w e b c o mm e n t s We welcome comment on select stories on our web site. You may comment anonymously. We will review comments before posting and we reserve the right to omit or edit comments. If you want to comment only to our writers and editors, let us know that you do not want your comment published.
yo u r o p i n i o n Disappointed no 9/11 remembrance photo To the editor, With no local events scheduled to remember the tragedy of Sept. 11, 2001, I was disappointed that The Miner chose to decline an invitation to take a picture of the 4 foot by 8 foot tribute prepared by the Coldwell Banker Real Estate office that hung on their front window for over a week. The board displayed dozens of pictures from that day that changed the hearts of America forever and it was a good time for us to stop, look, and remember. Because on that day we all said, “We will never forget.” -Lorraine Kirkpatrick Newport
Presidential power limited To the editor, No president can control the
return of manufacturing jobs or make a company return plants to the USA. The lost jobs are never returning unless American workers are willing to work for the same low wages and benefits as Chinese workers. No corporate board is going to build new manufacturing plants in America while closing plants in China and other Asian countries solely on the basis of who is the president. There is no basis for Donald Trump or any candidate to make that promise. The office of president comes with extreme restrictions on what can be ordered without approval of the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. The president needs funds appropriated by the congress and faces years of court challenges to cause any proposals to become reality. There will be no wall built on the border or mass deportation of undocumented people living in the USA. Military spending will not
increase nor will any other federal program. The gridlock in the congress cannot be broken by any president’s will. The first day in office for the new president elected in November will have speeches from the opposing congressional leaders promising to limit the president to a single term and pledging zero cooperation for the president’s proposals. The best we can hope for is more of the same political and economic status quo. The president has no power to change the tax code. All the president can do is sign or veto bills that originate in the congress. Then there are the court challenges that will be made by any losing side. The promise of change by any of the four candidates for president has nearly a zero chance of occurring. I am still waiting for Obama to come and take my guns. -Pete Scobby Newport
Human decency moves civilization forward By James A. Haught
Remember a semi-comic Cold War movie, “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming”? A deadly Soviet Union nuclear submarine, capable of killing millions of Americans, suffered engine trouble and was forced to surface Haught in a little New England fishing village. After some awkward dealings, villagers with shotguns and rifles went to the waterfront. Soviet sailors lined the deck with machine guns. Weapons aimed, they faced each other in a tense standoff. If anyone pulled a trigger, a double massacre would occur. Suddenly, a little boy, watching the drama from a church belfry, fell and was caught tangled in a rope, suspended high above the ground, screeching. Abruptly, both Russians and Americans put down their guns and rushed to rescue the child. Sailors formed a human pyramid and untangled him. Then both Russians and Americans joined in a hugging,
back-slapping celebration. Village girls kissed Russian sailors. U.S. warplanes arrived to destroy the stranded sub, but villagers shielded it with their fishing boats and escorted it safely back to sea. The movie had a deep meaning: Human decency – the urge to save a child – is stronger than political conflicts and military hostilities. A similar message occurred on Christmas Eve, 1914, when British and German soldiers paused their hideous trench warfare on the Western Front for a spontaneous truce. They sang carols to each other, shouted holiday greetings, then got out of their bunkers to meet in No Man’s Land, where they traded small gifts and cordialities. Afterward, commanders had difficulty forcing the men to resume shooting each other. Actually, human decency is the lifeblood of civilization. Abraham Lincoln poetically called it “the better angels of our nature.” The desire to help each other – or at least not kill each other – keeps humanity surviving and thriving. Philosophers call it humanism, a craving to reduce slaughter and
make life better for everyone. It’s the driving force of social advancement. Every government program that reduces poverty, improves health, prevents violence, upgrades nutrition, guarantees human rights, betters education, secures housing, assures equality, cures disease, enforces fairness, etc., is a step in the process. And decency slowly is winning. Several scholars have written books outlining progress that has elevated personal living conditions. For example, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker asserts that rampant killing was 1,000 times worse in medieval times than today. In his classic 2011 book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,” he notes that international warfare has virtually vanished in the 21st century -- and that murder, rape, genocide, torture, wife-beating, lynching, gay-bashing, dueling, racial attacks, and even cruelty to animals are vastly less than in the past. “The decline of violence may be See Haught, 5A
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Visit The Miner Online to answer our readers’ poll question through Monday afternoon. Find it on the right-hand side of the page at www.PendOreilleRiverValley.com. The results will be printed next week on this page. You need not be a subscriber to participate. If you have any ideas for future readers’ poll questions, submit them at minernews@povn.com.
Does Clinton’s health factor into your decision to vote for her? I need more information before I decide. She and Donald Trump need to produce their medical records for public examination.
12%
With the release of the feature film “Snowden,” a biopic by Oliver Stone, whistleblower Edward Snowden is back on people’s minds. Snowden released thousands of files of classified material to news organizations, which wrote their own stories revealing the classified material and a secret NSA program to gather all email and phone info in the U.S.
Yes.
65%
Is Snowden a traitor for revealing the classified information? No, he’s a national hero who risked his life to reveal unlawful behavior by the government. Yes, clearly he’s a traitor by definition and should be prosecuted.
24%
No.
Total Votes: 34