Carlsbad entrapment sting critized

I am disappointed and angry over the Carlsbad decision to entrap these men whose crime is to stand on the street and seek work "Undercover sting used to cite, deport Carlsbad day laborers," Nov. 2. Do we really think poor people are "an eyesore"? Would it be better for them to move to the more-crowded area two blocks away where the shopping centers are? Are you saying that bus stops are not a hazard, just these men who are trying to support their families?

It seems you are unable to regulate the solicitors who sit, uninvited and unwelcome, outside of Vons. Perhaps these men could set up a nice, comfortable station there!

Margaret McBride

Carlsbad

Thank a teacher

This being Retired Teachers Week (Nov. 2 through 8), let's say thank you to all the retired teachers who have given so much time, energy and creativity to teaching and inspiring their students over the years. We appreciate their dedication in the classroom, and also the hours of volunteer work that they do now in their retirement.

Likewise, thank you to teachers currently working hard to meet the No Child Left Behind mandate that 100 percent of all students have "proficient" test scores by 2014. Just remember that Albert Einstein said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."

Karen Jenkins

Fallbrook

Cutting fire and police expenses

Most agree that ensuring public safety is the prime responsibility of the Oceanside City Council. Police/fire costs consume approximately 64 percent of the city's shrinking budget. It is the council's fiduciary duty to focus on getting better value for the taxpayers' dollars.

Four North County fire departments (Encinitas, Solana Beach, Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe) recently signed an agreement to share resources, reduce costs and improve the efficiency of their departments. El Cajon, La Mesa and Lemon Grove recently agreed to move toward a common fire department. What if Oceanside, Vista and Carlsbad formed a similar common fire department -- with substantially less management overhead and with shared paramedic services?

The Oceanside FD (and PD) should contribute a fair share of 8 percent toward their own retirement, just as the Vista FD currently does. Why not have the SD County sheriffs bid on providing police coverage for Oceanside, as they now do for Vista, Encinitas and San Marcos? An Oceanside City Council goal of substantially reducing police/fire costs, while maintaining/improving safety and services, could be attainable -- with council leadership and vision!

Bruce Oja

Oceanside

Fake assistance dog use the worst

I wish to state up front that I do not hate dogs and I personally know the challenges that we disabled endure. I do dislike charlatans and can categorically state that if you go into a grocery store or restaurant with your pet and try to pass it off as an assistance dog, you are the worst kind of charlatan.

Assistance dogs are true heroes who are working all the time. They don't ride in shopping carts, dog strollers or purses; they don't growl at passers-by or snap at a child who tries to touch them, and they don't sit on people's laps, lick themselves and eat from the table in a restaurant.

Go to your local animal control office with Fido's dog's rabies certificate and fill out their application for an assistance dog tag. It doesn't cost anything. However, if you get caught lying, it can cost you a lot more.

If you fear the truth, spare us and leave your pet home. And, by the way, if people seem to resent your pet around the food they want to eat, remember, you are the rude one!

Don Peck

San Marcos

Don't stall now

We need to stop playing politics with the health reform debate and take a good look at the tremendous progress already being made in Washington, D.C. As a cancer survivor, I can tell you that the bills currently being debated by Congress represent a huge improvement over the status quo for people fighting cancer.

In their current form, the bills will: ensure that no one will be denied coverage because of pre-existing medical conditions; place an increased emphasis on prevention; guarantee access to health insurance regardless of health status; and eliminate annual and lifetime caps on benefits. These are enormous steps forward. But the only way that we can benefit from this progress is if we keep the momentum going and call on Congress to pass health care reform legislation.

Health reform is about saving lives, and it is too important to stall now. We need Congress to put aside partisan politics and act now, not later, on behalf of all their constituents who have cancer, or who could get cancer -- in other words: for all of us.

Dawn Durbin

Volunteer, American

Cancer Society

San Marcos

A revelation and a question

I've got a national revelation and a local question.

Nationally, Republican leaders are not afraid that health insurance reform will fail. They're terrified that it will succeed, and that Democrats will get credit for a program that benefits millions of Americans who are currently going bankrupt or dying with the current system. Just like the economic stimulus, count on them to scream against it until it starts working, then take credit for it.

Locally, Jerry Kern supporters like to whine about the union-backed recall effort, but never mention that the unions involved are mostly police and firefighters. My question is, where is Jerry Kern getting the money for all the big, expensive signs going up all over town?

Douglas Crews

Oceanside

Serious about nuclear bombs?

When I read Leon Smith's letter (Nov. 2) advocating the use of atomic bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan to "flatten the landscape," as he put it, I wondered at first if it was intended to be a flippant suggestion, but then I thought, what if he really means it? Certainly it may get Osama and friends, but together with thousands of noncombatants. It would probably put paid temporarily to the opium cultivation. And Iraq's oil supplies may eventually come back once all the radioactivity subsided; after all, I understand Hiroshima is now a huge thriving city.

And with the advent of nuclear warfare, Israel would not hesitate to lob a few big ones into the Arab states. We may even find out whether Iran is a member of the club, and I wonder where the Russian missiles would head for.

I would like to think that worldwide conflagration is not on the agenda; it would be like another 9/11, but carrying global warming to the ultimate. By the way, I am one of the immigrants Mr. Smith referred to, but still with memories of being continually bombed, day and night, regular bombs, V-1s and V-2s, in our 1939-45 war which, incidentally, was an "official war," not a knee-jerk reaction based on ill-founded intelligence.

Rob Sulsh

Oceanside

Don't compromise quality health care

My husband and I both strongly feel that the majority of citizens support a public option and health care reform. We cannot afford to "compromise away" the effectiveness of reform in order to appease lobbyists for big insurance corporations and pharmaceutical corporations. Fox News and a few "talking heads" are distorting the facts and catering to those who would manipulate with fear and deceit.

We trust that President Obama and our Congressional representatives will honor the public trust and vote on a bill that encourages a strong nonprofit option, such as through Medicare, that will provide a real choice and real competition for the private sector, allowing more affordable prices for everyone.

Marketing and manipulation should not be the driving factor in costs, and we should allow Medicare to offer lower drug prices by allowing purchases from other countries, such as Canada.

Lynn Braun-Marr

Encinitas

Is election just a stepping stone?

Why do voters elect people to office? Millions of dollars are spent on campaigns, only to be wasted and ignored before their term in office is completed. Could it be getting elected is only a stepping stone to bigger and better things?

The people listed did just that: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Garamendi, Joe Biden, Kathleen Sebelius, Janet Napolitano and Richard Nixon.

Roy Matthies

Encinitas

New Deal ended the Great Depression

The dusty skull of Joseph Goebbels must be plastered with a huge grin. Various conservative blowhards, many of them alleged journalists, continue repeating the old lie that the New Deal failed to end the Great Depression and that WWII provided economic recovery. Overrated political pundits may traffic in falsehoods, but numbers do not.

The fact is that major economic indicators -- including employment numbers -- improved significantly nearly every year under the New Deal. The degree to which employment lagged behind other indicators was, if anything, the result of Roosevelt's backing away from some New Deal reforms during the early 1930s. When FDR pressed on with a more vigorous economic program, employment numbers began to rise again.

Furthermore, WWII provides poor refuge for decadent economic conservatives. I am indebted to columnist Don Williams of the Knoxville Voice for pointing out that economically, World War II was the biggest public works project in U.S. history -- a project buttressed by unabashed protectionism. Even from this angle, the interplay of World War II and the American economy was a far cry from the unrestricted dismantling of our industrial infrastructure advocated by Rush Limbaugh, Cokie Roberts, Fareed Zakaria, Sarah Palin and other modern "free-traders."

Jeff Brownlee

Vista

Socialism debate continues to rage on

It has become most humorous to see the words "socialism" and "Marxism" bandied about in the letters. Everyone against universal health care uses these words without much thought.

Here are examples of socialism, and none of these are included in our Constitution: public education, fire departments, paramedics, water supplies, Social Security, roads, highways and freeways, government-sponsored vaccines for viruses, the FDA, the FTC, police, prisons, food stamps -- the list is endless. It would take up far more than my 200-word limit to list them all.

The only thing our Constitution is to provide is safety from outside intruders (which we don't do) and freedom within our boundaries (which we don't do). Everyone out there who is against universal health care, I want you to write a letter to the North County Times explaining which of the above-mentioned you are willing to forgo.

Joseph Kraatz

Oceanside

Private versus public

Ross Douglas (Letters, Nov. 4) misstates the causes of our financial and economic collapse. The problem was not that there was too much regulation of financial markets, but that regulations and oversight were relaxed.

In railing against government, Douglas joins those who see the political and economic divide through a dichotomous prism of black or white, ignoring the true spectrum of colors in the middle. It is a perspective that lives only at the extremes of either Ayn Rand's rugged individualism or Karl Marx's collectivist, communal socialism. Neither extreme has ever led to prolonged, broad-based prosperity. Humans are not solely individualistic or social creatures. We are both. We cherish our privacy, but also cooperate in social communities.

The middle ground that has always generated long-term prosperity is the balance between those extremes. We need to respect and protect the privacy of our personal lives and private choices. We also need public institutions for mutual protection and for our shared environment and infrastructure.

And when those institutions are implemented through representative democracy -- the will of the people, within Constitutional safeguards -- we keep in check the "control-happy politicians" whom Grant Kuhns (Letters, Nov. 4) fears.

Douglas Dunn

Escondido

The great health care fracas

We Americans have been involved recently in an old battle over whether or not this nation should provide a form of European-style, government-funded medical services.

The battle between the Democrats, Republicans and other groups has intensified to the boiling point in 2009. There are two very basic, but not obvious, problems inherent in deciding this knotty question. First problem: The politicians who vote whether to adopt the program, how to pay for it, and what to include, are not subject to its provisions. Politicians have another, better system.

Second problem: Those citizens who will be subjected to those provisions do not have a vote on those provisions. A suggested answer is to force all federal politicians to be included in the government health care provisions. No exceptions. If that were done, any resulting government health care system would, at least, be a good one.

Thomas Rees

Carlsbad