Letters for November 10, 2005

Junk editorial
Regarding the Nov. 3 editorial referring to the U.S. Army recruiters at Chico High gathering information on your children so they can be used as future “cannon fodder” and compares their tactics to “drug dealers and child molesters” takes your paper to yet another new low [”Military madness comes to school,"]. I have three sons, “cannon fodder,” involved with the U.S. military willing to die for your right of “free” speech that verbally degrades them at every opportunity.

It is editorials like this that waiver the real issue which was whether the information was gathered inappropriately or not. Typical of your bias that you are not so vehement about the tonnage of junk mail and Internet ads that lure you in on false pretenses to gather and even worse, go on to sell and redistribute your personal information for marketing purposes. Instead you use this legal issue as a political opportunity to slam the military. Comparing the military to “child molesters” keeps me taking your ballot endorsements to the polls to ensure I vote the opposite of anything your paper supports.

Dawn Mattox
Yankee Hill

No Rosa Parks
Wow, talk about trying to bring down our country. You people have no shame, do you? Fine, you protest the war, that’s your own prerogative, but once you start badmouthing the recruiters, I had to write a letter. First of all, I’m trying to group my angry thoughts to form a conscious opinion without coming off like a name-calling moron; I’ll leave that to your writers and their political op-eds. Second, how hard is it to say “No” to a recruiter? How hard is it for a 17-year-old to say to his/herself “You know, I don’t want to climb that rock wall"? Not hard. As a veteran, I found great disgust in this article, and can’t believe that you are actually going after our men and women in the service, while you make this Sullivan family look like Rosa Parks. Thanks for trying to pull the carpet out from under our country’s feet.

Aristeo Dueñas
U.S. Army Veteran
Chico

Big talk
I usually find your words of wisdom silly, always on the left and usually without any common sense. Indeed your paper today for example was all about voting no on everything the new governor has put before us [”Indecent propositions,” CN&R cover story, Nov. 3]. So one has to suspect that you and yours are for more tax and spend, more creeping towards a bankrupt state? A short time back our bonds were considered junk. Is that what you really are about? All you people talk so big about moral grounds and how bad this idea is yet none of you come up with anything else?

I mean gee whiz, retirement cost and benefits are cause for large companies to file for bankruptcy, schools and cities and counties are drowning in the same mess. Each year the slice of pie for medical and other benefits gets larger and larger. Schools are stopping bus service, music, even sports to make do and your apparent answer is to simply continue to spend money you don’t have and raise taxes until businesses start leaving the state in greater numbers. I have this great idea! Why not sit back and think about the way this state would look 20 years from now if nothing and I mean nothing is done to curb the current situation?

Allan Clark
Received via email

Republican’ts
I’m rejoicing at the bad news from Washington. The rise and fall of a southern politician, Mr. Bush, and his friends made my day. He has three more years to repair the damage while your paper reports the disaster of Iraq. Well, southern politicians are all alike from Huey Long to LBJ to Mr. Bush. Lyndon predicted giving the blacks their rights would turn the South Republican—so it has, so it has. All those red states are in for trouble next fall. They’ll all go bankrupt. Easy come, easy go. I’m happy Chico remains reliably Democratic.

David Lorenz
Paradise

Money over safety
How awful that the intersection of Highways 149 and 99 has claimed the life of a child when for years environmentalists and other concerned citizens have urged our government agencies to implement life-saving devices at this intersection, such as stop lights, flashing warning lights, “reduce speed” signs and lengthened turn lanes. These effective devices could have been installed long ago and at a fraction of the cost of the proposed new freeway project, which faces so many economic and environmental constraints that it’ll take years to complete. How many lives will be lost in the meantime?

So why insist on the lengthy and costly installation of a four-lane freeway with cloverleaf intersections placed in the midst of a cow pasture when cheaper, more effective life-saving devices are readily available? The answer is that a freeway is a “growth inducer” while a stoplight is not. A freeway invites development that will invade the beautiful rolling hills between Chico and Oroville, paving the landscape with more urban sprawl, the familiar strip malls with their duplicate fast food joints and big box retailers surrounded by acres of tree-less parking lots that make every town in California look exactly the same.

The proposed freeway project is not about safety; it’s about making money. If it were merely about safety, simpler measures would have been taken long ago. But as it stands now, investors and developers are encouraged by the really big money to be made when an eventual four-lane freeway links Chico to Sacramento.

Karen Laslo
Chico

Clean house
Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff was charged with obstructing an investigation into the White House cover-up of the lies that led our nation to war in Iraq

We will not be able to trust our government until every one of the White House officials who conspired to mislead the American public into war with Iraq are out of the administration. President Bush has an obligation to clean house of all the liars.

Thomas Megna
Paradise

Two ERs, please
The proposal to have Enloe Medical Center maintain two emergency rooms, with one at the Cohasset Road site, is not new. It is nothing more than we had before Enloe took over Community Hospital. This proposal is of value because it gives our community optimal ambulance access, which will save lives. Also, this proposal better conforms to typical zoning standard noise levels by moving the helicopter operation from a residential zone to a commercial zone.

Enloe’s current expansion plan shortchanges Chico’s past emergency room capabilities, let alone what future demands may be. Can you imagine an ambulance stuck in a traffic jam? Enloe’s current expansion plan ignores basic planning principles in regards to zoning, traffic impacts, noise levels and optimal ambulance access, at our peril.

Charles Withuhn
Chico