Letters to the Editor 1/7

Fix system first

San Luis Coastal Unified School District board member Mark Buchman (“Viewpoint: Kids are the target if state pulls budget trigger,” Sept. 6) did not make any public statements when the outgoing Assemblywoman Karen Bass gave her staff raises less than a year ago.

I also don’t recall Mr. Buchman, when he was chairman of the county Democratic Central Committee, standing on any street corner to protest the Democrat-controlled state government giving a 5 percent raise to a union-controlled public employee group this year. SLO City Councilman John Ashbaugh and Buchman have not protested Congresswoman Lois Capps’ lack of leadership in seeking to increase funding to special education, which would help school districts in this county.

Many school districts are providing education to students without the funding needed to give the students the best education we can provide. We have increased class sizes, cut library hours, cut busing and have not been able to give our employees the pay they deserve for many years. But we will build a high-speed rail line that will cost millions.

Gov. Brown said that he would only raise taxes with the consent of the voters. Bah, humbug. Freeze state employee pay raises, fix the broken state pension system, do this and many other cost-saving measures before you ask me to contribute one more dollar because of failed leadership at the state level.

George E. Galvan
Trustee, Atascadero Unified School District

Never condemned

I just read Terry Mohan’s sanctimonious, condescending letter of Dec. 31.

I find it intriguing that the self-selected Chosen Ones believe it is their duty to tell us Mere Mortals what God has directly told them He is doing to us: in this case, testing.

My God does not test nor keep score. He has not forgiven me for anything. He never condemned for anything in the first place.

Let us know how you do with your Finals.

Michael Miller
Grover Beach

It’s about fairness

Just a quick note for all the folks writing letters slamming the Occupy movement because Henry Ford and Steve Jobs deserved all the money they made, or because the audience at the Kennedy Center Honors were collectively worth billions of dollars but no one tried to occupy it, etc.

No one is saying the fact that rich people exist is a problem. They are saying, per www.taxkimk.com, that the fact that Kim Kardashian made $12 million in 2010 but paid only 10.3 percent in California income tax — barely more than someone making $47,000 a year — is a problem.

It’s about fairness.

The folks who are throwing around the charge of “class warfare” and saying this is about lazy bums who hate rich people are the only ones engaging in class warfare.

Linda Seeley
San Luis Obispo