New Times / Letters to the Editor
Get this straight; let's have a clean fight
Otis Page - Arroyo Grande
I apologize to Mr. Page for failing to remove words from a letter published last week that were inappropriate, and I welcome more contributions from him. — Ed Connolly, editor.
Steve T. Kobara has disparaged me in his letter (“Sex should be private,” June 26). Kobara accuses me of being “shrillest anti-gay” and names me as being a “Torturer.” I deny Kobara’s ad hominem attack. In the context of replying to Kobara, I am critical of the homosexual agenda. It is my choice and right to be critical. People should not confuse personal, anti-gay bashing with the legitimate right to criticize the homosexual agenda!
I suggest just four examples of such criticism: I believe it is wrong to allow the teaching of homosexuality in schools without a discussion of both the moral and physical consequences of that lifestyle. I believe that marriage should be only between a man and a woman. It is my belief that individual homosexuals may honestly struggle with their sexual preference, that there are many in society and in the church that stand with open arms to help them! I believe it is wrong to construe criticism of the homosexual agenda as “hate speech.” I suggest these beliefs are neither hateful nor torturous. These beliefs are not founded in “hate” but in the quest for objective truth and the right to express these beliefs.
Get upset over downer cattle
Elizabeth Gillingham - Morro Bay
It’s time we all took our heads out of the sand. As most of us have known for a long time, the meat industry does not stand up to the rigid standards it is supposed to, and there are loopholes in those standards.
The Humane Society has been documenting abuse of laws and abuse of animals for a long time, but the community, as a whole, isn’t speaking out enough to make things change. Just this month the Humane Society released another video documenting the horrific abuse of downer cattle at auction and at the processing plant.
This is the same meat that is being fed to schoolchildren in lunch programs. Processing these downer cattle is a huge health risk to our food supply, and the methods of getting these animals to slaughter are appalling. We can’t close our eyes and cover our ears because seeing and hearing about this abuse is upsetting. Get upset! Write your secretary of agriculture, your representatives, your governor.
Boycott businesses that implement these inhumane and unhealthy practices. Don’t wait until more animals are brutalized and schoolchildren end up sick from eating poor meat.
Government is no solution to health-care woes
Richard Riggins - Pismo Beach
I support Mr. Heath’s desire for a more egalitarian health-care system, but not the obsolete model he is advocating (“Support Senate Bill 840,” June 26). Single payer government health insurance is based on a top-down command-and-control system with limited consumer choices. Costs are controlled by rationing goods and services. The decisions on rationing are often based on special interests and politics, not on consumer needs. Countries that have similar systems are finding they are not particularly good at controlling costs, and they are unable to respond to the rapid changes occurring in medicine. Governments with these socialized health-care systems are gradually introducing market-based programs with more consumer and provider controls.
Market-based systems are more responsive to medicine’s rapidly changing diagnostic and therapeutic possibilities. Everyone should be required to carry health insurance, and a basic policy capping total health care expenditures without mandates should be offered. Premiums could be subsidized so as not to exceed a percentage of income. Beyond the basic policy, insurance company offerings should be unrestricted. Risk-based premiums with subsidies for involuntary risks could be available and would encourage healthy behavior.
Unwelcome learning about gay marriage
Jeremy Kincaid - Orcutt
In today’s ever-changing society, we need to have our eyes wide open to anything that might come our way. This is exactly what my family and I were doing when we had our children attending May Grisham Elementary School, located in Old Orcutt, a small town just south of Santa Maria. I attended this same school more than 20 years ago, and clearly remember kindergarten through my high school years.
Every teacher influenced me in one way or another. I trusted these teachers and believed in their belief systems after they were my teacher. Some teachers can really have a real impact on your life. Particularly my boy’s first-grade teacher. So much so that we requested him for our younger boy.
After we ended this last school season we went on vacation and, upon returning, I got the New Times magazine. It was left on the kitchen counter where my 8-year-old boy made a very interesting discovery. On the seventh page of the June 16 issue it read “They do.” One of those “I do’s” was their first-grade teacher. As my boy browsed down he had this, I’m-going-to-be-sick look on his face. My wife took the paper from him and, again, she felt sick to her stomach. Of course, I was not around at this time, but when I saw it, I said “That’s it.”
What do I mean? I will be pulling my children from the public school system due to the nature of our school systems in the present. Who knows who they will have next year. Now, I am not a bigot. I believe that if I want my children to have a strong foundation and good morals in life, this is no way of getting them. But interpreting and applying Lev.18:22 and 20:13 will give them this, another thing you will not see in public school today.
I still like this teacher and he should continue with his teaching for he is a great teacher. But when a child who loved his teacher has to come to this undesirable truth, it hurts, and who knows where this may lead them down the road. But my eyes are on them every step of the way.
You first on privatizing sex talk
Joe Stayton - Los Osos
I almost hate to break it to Steve Kobara in this manner, (“Sex should be private,” June 26), but blunt revelations of heterosexuality are so pervasive they almost go unnoticed. Underwear ads. Beer commercials. Public displays of affection. Bridal magazines.
So, I’ll put it to him this way—we’ll stop when he does. We’ll stop when he can’t feel comfortable holding his wife’s or girlfriend’s hand in public, either. We’ll stop when heterosexuals are thought of as child molesters out to “convert” their children, too. We’ll stop when frank talk about homosexual subject matter, more often than not, earns a film an ‘R’ rating.
I doubt the gay community would need a celebration of who we are if the heterosexual community didn’t advertise their orientation. So, how about it?
And for the record, if a bunch of homosexuals standing around, drinking beer, and watching Wanda Sykes is a grave affront to his “down-home country values,” he should know that he could have inherited a townhouse on Folsom street. SLO Pride is practically funereal in comparison.
Beach carelessness burns boy
Marilyn Pieters - Atascadero
One week after what should have been an enjoyable day at the beach, my 5-year-old grandson remains hospitalized in a Bay Area burn unit. He was transported to Valley Medical Center in San Jose, by ambulance from the Arroyo Grande emergency room after receiving severe burns to his feet at Pismo Beach. Hot embers left by a beach fire were camouflaged by sand. The physical, emotional, and financial toll this is taking on my daughter’s family was entirely preventable.
I hope this serves as a reminder that beach or camp fires need to be fully extinguished with water, not just sand or dirt. Also, since the city of Pismo Beach does not have an ordinance that prohibits fires on the beach, I hope they will post signs for the sake of public awareness. Additionally, ordinances without enforcement are simply meaningless.
Carter: Appraisal too low for Chinatown land
Andrew Carter, City Councilman - San Luis Obispo
I received an e-mail today from a local broker who strongly believes the $8.8 million market rate appraisal for the Chinatown property is too low. This broker told me he “knew” the Copelands had spent at least $12 million accumulating the Blackstone, Sauer, Muzio, and Bello property. I asked him how he knew this. He said check the assessed values at the County Assessor’s Office. I did that.
The current assessed value for those properties is $12,716,880. Add the small building on Palm, which the Copelands also own, and you get an assessed value of $13,523,397 for their Chinatown property. That property equals 37 percent of the entire Chinatown project. The city parking lots and Public Works building equal 63 percent. Using a straight-line projection, this would make the city’s property worth $23 million. Even discounting that value by 60 percent, to account for the smaller frontage on Monterey, would make the city’s property worth $13.8 million. It seems to me that the market rate appraisal is too low.
Given this new information, I would ask the council majority to once again consider whether $3.7 million is fair value for our property. Sixty-three percent of the property is ours, yet we’re prepared to sell it for not even 30 percent of what the Copelands have already paid for the rest? Does that make sense?
Incidentally, I am very disappointed that I am discovering this information now when the information is a matter of public record. I question why this information was not part of the market rate appraisal prepared by our consultant, C.B. Richard Ellis.
Get real! Humans can't change the climate
Norman Mehl - Santa Maria
The planet Earth is a very dynamic place for the tiny human life that inhabits five percent of its surface. The climate is constantly changing, even though from the Homo sapiens’ points of view, who live 90 years out of the billion years of the planet’s life, it seems to be fairly stable.
Somehow a small but influential part of our population thinks that we are capable of changing the climate of this planet because we generate carbon dioxide and other pollutants. Compared to animals and volcanoes, we are insignificant. Nearly all carbon dioxide is absorbed by plant life and the great oceans.
Scientists, who are not funded by environmentalists, believe that we are in the final states of the last ice age, and some feel we are on the edge of a new ice age. Whatever, we are not going to stop it. We just went through one of the coldest winters we have had in a long time. (I noticed there was none of the earth-warming nonsense during that winter.)
As far as college studies are concerned, the New Times would run out of paper printing all the predictions and advice we get from these perennial students, who take a little bit of information and use their limited experience to extrapolate it into advice that is totally dismissed by the next study.
Like most politicians, President Bush will go along with pressure from those he feels he must appease. Example: The 25,000 polar bears on the endangered list. He ignored the environmentalists for most of his term. The real threat to the U.S. is the environmentalist. They have kept us dependent on foreign oil, costing us billions of dollars a week. That not only devalues the dollar, but will eventually lead to bankruptcy. I am not against reducing pollution and moving away from gas-driven vehicles. However, it is a long-term effort.
