Letters for March 4, 2010

Letter of the week
Let it bleed

Re “Bottomed out” by R.V. Scheide (SN&R Race to the Bottom, February 18):

I read SN&R for two predominant reasons.

First, I am a freelance music promoter and count on the chronology of gigs. Second, I have hustled to the newsstand every week for months in anticipation of the next candid and politically informed installment of R.V. Scheide’s column.

In life, I like to be swept outside of my comfort zone; that’s good journalism, good art, in my book. Like R.V.’s noted delectable steak, many of us are bleeding a little or a lot right now. My plate “bleedeth over.”

This reluctant cannibal bids fond farewell to Race to the Bottom. I’ll be scouring the SN&R menu this week and in weeks to come for R.V.’s byline.

I like it raw, no chaser.

Paula Osborn
Davis

We’ll get what we deserve

Re “Worst. Budget. Ever.” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Frontlines, February 25):

I can’t believe I’m alone in finding 77 percent of the budget going to police and fire absolutely appalling. Safe cities aren’t the ones with prisons and fire stations on every corner. They’re the ones with good schools, parks and active citizens who demand and pay for quality government. The end of a civilization begins when prison guards, cops and firemen (who do nothing most of the time) make far more than the people who teach our children. Maybe we’re all just getting what we deserve for demanding no more taxes: a broken society.

J. Alexander
Sacramento

What if the economy never turns?

Re “Worst. Budget. Ever.” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Frontlines, February 25):

The question, more accurately, is not “What kind of city do we want to be?” It’s “What kind of city can we be?” Police, fire, parks and infrastructure are what city government does. Everything else is either funded in whole or part by the state or federal government, and if not, it’s not something a city should be doing. We likely will have to slash everything but police and fire and hope the economy turns … eventually.

Jim Reilley
Sacramento

So she wrote us instead

Re “Student unrest” by Hannah Jones (SN&R Essay, February 25):

This essay is so true. I was wait-listed and got kicked out of one of the classes that I really needed.

Blanca
Sacramento

Morro Bay man believes in global warming, tooth fairy

Re “A.B. 32 crunch time” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Feature, February 18):

I have been in business in California since 1976 and have never seen a state become so hostile to business [as] it is now. I have watched the government employee unions and the Democrats in the Legislature run this state into the ground and pile up debt as if it were no big deal. They have handed money out to people like there was no tomorrow.

Arnold is no exception. Man-made global warming is as real as the tooth fairy. And anyone who thinks that [Assembly Bill] 32 is going to be a boom for California has to be smoking something good.

I have just relocated my business (and 20 employees) out of California because I am tired of watching the Legislature (who know nothing about how money is actually made) enact lunatic policies like A.B. 32 (with our idiot governor) and guarantee that California will stay the largest welfare state in the country.

Debt is just that: debt. And I for one am not going to finance it. Arnold can’t get out of office soon enough. I just hope that California starts with voting out [U.S. Sen. Barbara] Boxer, then continues with most of the state Legislature. They all should be brought up on charges of fraud.

Scott Barnes
Morro Bay

The spaceship is already crowded

Re “A.B. 32 crunch time” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Feature, February 18):

This recent article in SN&R failed to mention the driver of climate change, which is overpopulation. The climate problem is the symptom of overpopulation, and we all know that treating the symptoms of a problem and not addressing the underlying cause is a recipe for failure. Unless civilization can come to grips with this problem, then whatever your cause, it is lost.

Half of pregnancies in the United States—and probably more than half in [other] parts of the world—are unplanned. Each new person will consume, over his or her lifetime, tons of coal and other fuels; hence the best way to conserve greenhouse gases is to reduce population growth by providing universal access to contraception, as well as education about the population problem and sexuality. It would have been more effective to do so 150 years ago, but currently there is so little information in our media about the overpopulation problem that we remain deep in a hole. Two billion more are coming onboard a spaceship that is already crowded with nearly 7 billion and warming dangerously.

Lee W. Miller
Stockton

Coal burner selectively cuts, pastes and fabricates to prove global warming a hoax

Re “A.B. 32 crunch time” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R Feature, February 18):

Cosmo Garvin missed the message on A.B. 32. Global warming is an issue of the past. A lot has happened the past four months.

In November, the British climate center (sic) was caught fudging temperature records to prove carbon-dioxide theory, then refused to release the raw data so citizens could see how they did it. The unit head resigned. The United Nations was caught in a lie when it predicted that Himalayan glaciers would all melt by 2035. The government of India retorted that there was “enough ice to last 1,000 years,” then set up its own institute to come up with more realistic figures.

Then the Copenhagen conference ended when China and India refused to agree to deep cuts in power production. [President] Barack Obama and 25 congressmen and senators rushed back from the conference 36 hours early because a major snowstorm was predicted to hit Washington, D.C., and shut down the airport. They got back in time, but without an agreement on global warming. Then they sat out the storm, happy at home in their warm domiciles heated by West Virginia coal.

When Obama said in his State of the Union, “We all recognize that climate change is a real problem,” those assembled (including the press corps) burst out in laughter. That was, as they say, “a signal.”

Three states have now sued to prevent the [Environmental Protection Agency] from enforcing rules against fossil-fuel use, asserting that CO2 is not a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The agency has quietly shelved its plan. Poll numbers for [global warming] are down and going lower. Only in California or Florida, where it never gets cold, is the issue still viable.

Steve Tabor
Oakland

The darkest Race to the Bottom letter ever

Re “Bottomed out” by R.V. Scheide (SN&R Race to the Bottom, February 18):

In his opening, R.V. Scheide states, “It suddenly occurred to me that beef and human flesh have a lot of similarities.”

More than you would like to think. People don’t eat [human] flesh, yet slaughtered animals are eaten. What’s the difference? Isn’t a butchered chicken, cow, lamb, pig dead meat and flesh? On a deeper level of understanding, isn’t eating meat, decomposing flesh, harmful? Isn’t meat a decomposing corpse?

When does decomposition begin? At the moment of cessation of the functions of life, the body loses its protective radiation and decomposition sets in. Eating meat—beef flesh—is eating dead and decomposing cellular matter, whereas eating raw, fresh wholesome fruits and vegetables is eating live foods. There is a choice.

Ron Lowe
Nevada City

Vegan won’tbe on menu

Re “Bottomed out” by R.V. Scheide (SN&R Race to the Bottom, February 18):

Please kindly remove my name from the invite list to the R.V. Scheide retirement barbecue. Thank you.

Mark Evans
Davis

No, tattoo you!

Re “Rethink the ink” by Rachel Leibrock (SN&R Popsmart, February 11):

I really enjoyed reading this article. As a 19-year-old English major at American River College and a heavy tattoo bearer, I think you stated what a lot of us have been thinking, maybe even myself a bit.

As far as the notion of the overwhelming frozen yogurt and Uggs, my girlfriend is infatuated with both, and me saying “They drive me insane” would be an understatement.

And I can’t stand the Kings dancers when I finally get lower-level seats. I finally get to see my favorite team (they were playing the Celtics) and I get these half-naked “dancers” stalking the aisle ways getting stopped by men in their 20s smelling of Bud Light and Curve cologne.

Devin Reed
Sacramento

Jobs,not weed killer

Re “Nasty problems” by Jeff vonKaenel (SN&R Greenlight, February 4):

After reading the first paragraph, of the many responses to this information, the most suitable reply is, “Are you freaking serious? Really?”

Considering the economical situation, spending a half a million dollars to combat weeds in agriculture could be better spent by hiring a labor force to do it the old-fashioned way: Pluck the weeds out by hand.

Then human beings could have an income to be able to pay rent and utilities, instead of being homeless. Talk about a mismanagement of funding: $13.6 million being spent on an anti-weed campaign? Hire a labor force and stimulate the economy, so people like me don’t end up homeless!

Kathryn Haseltine-McConkey
North Highlands