Letters to the Editor 7/10

Neglecting future

Why is it that whenever a government agency wants to reduce costs it seems always to start with cuts that impact the future — our children — the most? Healthy Kids, First 5, schools, mental health and other programs will be drastically reduced. Prisons and prison personnel can always be financed and prisoners have access to more health care than homeless and senior persons.

By neglecting our children, our state legislators ensure that there will always be money to expand or build new prisons and assured employment for prison guards, who need only a high school diploma to be eligible for training, the same as a fast food server!

Dawn E. Williams

San Luis Obispo

A living wage

Were we to follow just one course that Republican President Teddy Roosevelt recommended, we would never have to worry about the economy, nor falling behind in education and health care. That course was to pay every worker a “living wage” which he defined as enough money to:

1. Put a roof over his family — not a mansion, just a simple home.

2. Feed his family.

No fancy restaurants.

Just plain good food.

3. Send his children to college, if they were qualified.

4. Provide for necessary health care.

5. Have enough left over to save for retirement.

It’s a simple formula that puts most of the money in the hands of the consumer. Instead, the Republicans, starting with Reagan’s attack on the middle class, have put 95 percent of the nation’s wealth into the hands of just 5 percent of the people.

Greed has a side effect: Shortsightedness.

Norm Jackson

Atascadero

Defense of Bt corn

Jesse Arnold’s comments about Bt corn (June 7) left out some facts and were somewhat misleading. Mr. Arnold was correct in saying that; “genetically-engineered Bt corn is engineered with a bacterial toxin built into it to kill ear worms.”

What is left out is that Bacillus thuringiensis or Bt, is a naturally occurring bacterium, common in soils throughout the world and used as a registered organic pesticide. This pesticide is a gut toxin to worms, but is a protein to humans.

This may come as a surprise to many of you, but organic farmers do in fact use pesticides and Bt has to be sprayed every five to seven days in order to have a fairly viable organic corn crop. There is actually less Bt in genetically modified corn than in organic corn that has been treated with the same Bt. As a farmer, I can tell you that there are more than three growers in our county growing Bt corn.

Yes, like not choosing to eat what Monsanto wants to feed us, we can choose the same by not eating what McDonald’s wants to feed us. It’s a choice, but I would much rather get the protein and better value eating the Bt corn than a half-eaten ear of corn.

Vince Ferrante

Pismo Beach

Death and fees

Death and taxes used to be the only things that couldn’t be avoided. Now, death and fees can’t be avoided. Sewer fees, water fees, trash fees, license fees, etc. Aren’t these really taxes, masked as “fees”?

People know when they are being taxed, so call it a tax. “Fees” are a cowardly way to raise government revenue. Politicians will say, “We didn’t raise your taxes.” But what good does that do when increases to unavoidable fees and licenses more than make up for any purported tax savings?

Mitch Rust

Arroyo Grande

Power grab

Reading Bob Markel’s exhortation to Get Involved (Letters, June 11), I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Mr. Markel’s unabashed admiration for our leader ignores the inconvenient truth that we can’t tax ourselves into prosperity, except on the backs of our children. “Millions of regular Americans like me” know better, especially “people right here in California” experiencing the fallout from the budget debacle in our own state.

The Obama budget may look like a “bold plan to rebuild our economy and put our country back on the right track” to Mr. Markel. It looks to me like a bald power grab to begin recasting the United States into the mold of the socialist nations of Europe.

One thing we learn from history is that too many don’t learn from history. Learn more about the seldom-told history of the American left in the New York Times bestseller, “Liberal Fascism,” by Jonah Goldberg.

David Young

San Luis Obispo

Non sequitur

John Van de Kamp argues (“Abolishing the death penalty is sensible,” June 15) that the death penalty should be abolished because of the high cost of implementing it. “The system simply isn’t working,” he says. “No one is being executed.”

But his conclusion does not follow from his premises, which cite only the lengthy legal obstructions to carrying out executions and the high costs that those delays impose on taxpayers.

That is true, but it doesn’t show that there is anything wrong with the death penalty, only that there is something wrong with a legal system that benefits no one except lawyers and, perhaps, the depraved, vicious convicted murderers on death row, by pointless, prolonged appeals processes. If we need to revise something it isn’t the death penalty statute, it’s the legal system.

In the absence of a death penalty, convicts sentenced to life without parole have no incentive not to kill, rape and torture if they get the chance. That’s a plus for the death penalty, I think.

A.C.W. Bethel

Arroyo Grande

Other guy’s money

We should be grateful to Congresswoman Lois Capps for her efforts to bring so much federal money to California and her district as she wrote in her article “Funds to Reinvest in the public” published in The Tribune on June 7.

After all, that is how government works. Get as much of the other guy’s money as you can. It is a sad commentary when a state as rich as California must rely on less wealthy but more frugal states for financial support. How much better it would be if California could control its spending and live within its means. Bringing home the bacon locally just looks like pork to everyone else.

Richard Riggins

Pismo Beach

More common sense

It no wonder that Terry Sweetland (Letters, June 17) doesn’t want us to become like Europe.

After all, in the current economic climate Sweetland can afford five weeks in Spain and mull over a Danish tourist’s comment that “Obama was going to remake America into a European-style country.”

Who won’t be upset at the prospect of universal health care and housing safety nets for fellow countrymen who are not fortunate enough to be as successful and travel as widely as Sweetland?

Sweetland seems very deficient when it comes to the current state of our nation. One can almost assume he has only FOX, RNC/GOP and Limbaugh teleprompters telling him what to think.

In a nation (and world) that plainly has been dangerously destabilized by the past administration, I would hope for the sake of our democracy and our collective future that the Sweetlands of our country would start showing more common sense.

It time to lift the country, not drag it down!

Bradley Zane

Cambria

All-American Obama

Terry Sweetland (Letters, June 17) shared that during a recent visit to Spain, he encountered a Dane who voiced her opinion that President Obama “was going to remake America into a European style country.”

Mr. Sweetland concurred and stated that President Obama “seems very deficient” in remedial American history regarding our national origins and political influence on Europe. This alleged educational shortfall was ascribed to Obama’s youthful attendance at a Muslim school in Indonesia.

Sweetland did not mention the reasons for believing Obama is purposely steering us into a European makeover; however, if governing more in accordance with the laws of the land, improving health care and education, insisting on greater corporate accountability and making our tax structure more equitable are indicative of a European drift, I’ll go along.

For the sake of clarification, President Obama attended a regular public school (then a Catholic school) in Indonesia, not a Muslim school. In addition, his education in constitutional law and public presentations (at the D-Day cemetery in Normandy, for example) provide apt testimony that President Obama is well-grounded in history and that his preferred national style is all-American.

William Preston

San Luis Obispo