SMART DECISIONS
Finally, jobs in skilled trades are being recognized as vitally important to our economy ("A Different Track," 3/16/17). As university and 4-year degrees are being encouraged, we are ignoring a necessary training in auto mechanics, plumbers, electricians, etc. These workers maintain our infrastructures. Their jobs cannot be done off-shore, but right here. Parents, if you balk at your child's choice to go to community college and learn a trade, remember this. The next time you need your car repaired or your toilet fixed on a Sunday — think about the hourly service charge for labor you will be paying. Your sons/daughters will be earning a good living.
Cheryl Fleming
Liberty Lake, Wash.
UNHEALTHY FUTURE
Why do we let our legislators waste hours, days, and weeks replacing health care? Are we really going to go back to the "good old days" documented in Michael Moore's movie Sicko? Does anyone remember, or even know, that the D.C. legislators refused to fund health care for the people we refer to as "the heroes of 9/11" who risked their lives, and then lost their health due to toxic dust and fumes, working overtime to find anyone who might have still been alive in that rubble?
And what a wonderful metaphor for the stingy parsing out of basic health care that will return under "Trumpcare."
Will we let the poor die on the hospital steps or by the roadside? Watch our friends and co-workers die from lack of health care? Probably not. I like to believe that the majority of Americans are too compassionate, or at least basically decent, to let that happen. Who will absorb the cost, then? Likely the front lines of the health care system: the hospitals, doctors, nurses, etc. And true to capitalism, they will pass this cost on to their paying patients, making the cost of health care skyrocket.
We already have a system that is working and popular. Don't the legislators have anything else to do? If not, maybe we should lay them off without pay.
Katherine Shellorne
Spokane, Wash.
Readers react to news that Spokane County's roads budget has already been drained, and spring flooding is expected to cause $9 million in needed repairs:
Gary Trowbridge: Well, had they built them correctly the first time, and didn't have to spend money on all the lawsuits going on, maybe we could have avoided this. As a 40-year resident, I have never seen Spokane in a worse shape, both political and physical.
Michael Joseph Ferrell: How do you build them correctly in the first place to avoid water runoff/flooding damage? Just curious, if you could enlighten me.
George Dante Ricco: Gary Trowbridge, you are completely right. As an engineer who moved to the area for a few years, I was shocked at the horrifying conditions of roads downtown. Studying the rail maps, it's clear to me that when the rails were removed, the substratum wasn't fixed, which is why the concrete will continue to buckle. ♦
