I want to share some of the things that annoy me in the hope there are others who feel the same way. If so, commentary via a letter to the editor for the next issue would be a good idea; so here goes:
Is it necessary to refer to a country by its religion? The media appears to keep stoking the hot coals lest we forget who we should hate, despise, or want to kill. So the Fourth Estate decides to instigate and enforce feelings through references to ‘The Islamic State of Iran,’ ‘The Communist Country of China,’ and ‘The Jewish State of Israel.’ How would we like a reference to ‘The Catholic City of X in the U.S.’ or ‘America the Mixed Christian Nation’?
Over to another pet-peeve: ‘Our’ local people are always Congressman so and so, as well as Representative so and so. I would like to know how innocent it is to mostly mention ‘Mr.’ Obama instead of President Obama?
And last but not least for the “R-party of NO” holding up any progress in this country; this includes no unemployment extension, hardly any business loans for entrepreneurs. Keeping people struggling to make sure that “Mr.” Obama gets blamed for a cruel and lousy economy in the Fall election.
To quote from the New York Times: “Republican senators had made it clear that they would use confirmation hearings to distort Dr. Donald Berwick’s record and rehash their arguments against the recently enacted Healthcare reforms, mostly to score political points for the November elections”. (Dr. Berwick is a recess appointee to oversee Medicare and Medicaid and is an expert on reducing health care costs. Incidentally, that particular post has not seen a permanent administrator since 2006.)
To conclude my litany for today: as Americans, we are known for many things, actually some really good things, except we can not pride ourselves on being regarded by the world around us as being “naïve and being of extremely short memory.” Can some of us still remember that we had eight (8) years of purposeful break down of the economic fabric precipitating our present woes?
Not to sound too bitter about all of this, may I ask, “whatever happened to our social conscience?”
Alternatively sadly and angrily submitted by:
Elly Orrin
Fresno
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Is your question (July’s question of the month – Is the City of Fresno doing enough to end homelessness?) a serious one or a naive one. Which city is doing enough for anyone who is homeless? I haven’t seen any.
In San Francisco, in Los Angeles, in the big cities, especially, there are hundreds if not thousands of people living under bridges, on the sidewalks. It is a disgrace. Fresno is not different. The same goes for all the cities in the Valley: Visalia, Porterville, etc. etc.
The city needs to have a program to help all these people with adequate housing. I certainly have ideas about how to solve the problem. But who is going to ask me? The so-called “leaders” have no idea how to solve any problem.
Alfonso C. Hernandez
Three Rivers
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I have a question. Your paper is called “Community Alliance,” but does it represent or help my community? We, the women here at VSPW are continuously verbally, emotionally, and/or physically abused here. I have a substantial amount of “granted” and “partially granted” 602’s, but this only causes the officers conduct to get worse. Who’s our voice out there? Do you have the courage to print these kinds of stories, our stories? I hope so.
Ayanna Green
V.S.P.W. – Chowchilla
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In these times of budget cuts and school closures and city and state layoffs, the name of the game is called furloughs. Where I am, at the California training facility at Soledad the administration has gone a step further and added a new twist to the laziness and mismanagement of the department of corrections.
Now they have gone to a new system to “save money.” They have what is called “rolling blackouts” which means that every other day they put the yard on lockdown status and feed all meals in cells, and have no recreational yard. The reason they say that they have these blackouts is to save money by having less staff working that day. This is a total sham and a farce. On the days that they have the blackouts they actually have more staff working because they have to cell feed and escort inmates everywhere.
They said that the furloughs were supposed to cut back on hours which would save money. This too is a total sham and is a blatant conspiracy to make the public think that they are doing the right thing and saving the state money. Quite the opposite. The real problem is that they have way too many administrators doing nothing but soaking up the money. CDC over employs the administrators and promotes overtime for the common officers.
For every furlough day, the officers take they get 2 days worth of overtime. For what? They do nothing. It’s like a frat house on the yard with these cops. They do nothing but play slap ass with each other and stand around talking about how they are going to spend all of the overtime they make. It’s crazy. Just tonight on the way back from our dinner there was an officer greeting us inside the housing unit door thanking us for all the overtime. No kidding.
Paul Graham
Soledad, Ca
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The announcement by Schwarzenegger, Steinberg, et.al. suggesting that the bond be delayed until 2012 amounts to an admission that the passage of the bond bill by the Legislature last November was an effort to hoodwink the public in order to benefit their corporate agribiz buddies. All the conditions that they just cited to now delay were in existence last November. They simply got caught and are now afraid of a bad defeat this coming November.
If they hope to put the same pork-laden $11.14 billion bond on the 2012 ballot they are just doubling up on their arrogance and disregard for the real interests of the public. What should happen is a full repeal of the current bond proposal and a careful rebirth of its only two elements worth considering —- some money to fix the Delta and some money for some real meaningful water recycling. The total for those two elements in the current proposal is $3.25 billion. A new bond proposal should not exceed that.
Jerry Cadagan
Sonora, CA
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A speaker at our church last week was telling us about the meaning of the two names. SIMON means gravel or pebble in the Aramaic Language, and PETER we know means boulder or large rock. When Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, he was known as the Rock. I thought of Jesse Morrow Mountain. I and many more of us would like to have Jesse Morrow Mountain remain the large boulder that it is, and not gravel or pebbles.
One knows what blasting will create in our air, many small particulates and dust that cannot be filtered out by our nose or our lungs, but go straight into the bloodstream which causes heart problems, asthma, and other health problems. Then when the mountain is blasted the debris must be crushed, causing more particulates and dust. That’s not all, There is noise in all this! Perhaps day and night, which means lots of lighting on that mountain.
Then we have Trucks going and coming with double trailers and mostly diesel operated [up to 900 trips per day]. That’s more particulates, noise and wear and tear on our roads and bridges. I haven’t even mentioned the water usage yet that will be used to try to stop all the dust and small particulates. When holes are drilled 40 to 50 feet in the rock for blasting, no amount of water can stop the stuff flying in the air.
Let’s keep Wa-hal-lish [Choinumni name for Jesse Morrow Mountain] a large boulder PETER, not gravel SIMON.
To your Health,
Georgia Linscheid
Reedley, Ca
