Dear Editor,
Donald Trump wants to celebrate the 4th of July on the steps of the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Statue.
Abraham Lincoln, an outstanding president of the United States. His greatest achievement was helping to free the slaves. A terrible, dark, and cruel, part of our past. Free men and women had been abducted from parts of Africa, and brought to the United States and sold into slavery. The additional horror, was our Civil War, killing thousands of Americans.
Donald Trump has done nothing, to make him worthy, of, even, looking up at the carved face of Abraham Lincoln. Donald Trump is responsible for the deaths of children. He is responsible for dividing families seeking a peaceful home, in the United States.
Donald Trump, who was elected, illegally, with the help of a foreign power, is the least worthy president — or, in my opinion, the least worthy human being, to stand, near a statue of Abraham Lincoln.
Appalled,
Esther Cole, Ventura
Editor:
Hundreds of former federal prosecutors are saying they believe President Trump would have been indicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe for obstruction of justice if he weren’t president.
Their statement argues the Justice Department’s policy of not indicting sitting presidents is the reason Trump avoided prosecution.
They stated “Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy against indicting a sitting President, result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice.”
Charles Baker Ventura
Ventura City Council:
The correct way to challenge the “Status Quo” is to address the inconsistency of “private sector vs. public sector” employee benefits.
Defined Benefit Plans (DBP) are practically non-existent in private industry. Businesses began eliminating them in the late 1980’s. Private sector employees are unlikely to have DBPs again. Businesses do not want the risks associated with DBPs. So Private sector employees use 401k plans to fund their own retirement.
For the most part DBPs are only found in the case of government employees. Thus, we have the very unfair situation of private sector employees having to pay taxes to support public employees. Private sector employees cannot afford to pay for a benefit that they do not have.
Elected politicians have lacked courage to terminate DBPs in the public sector. Why? Public Employee Unions have waged campaigns against politicians who have tried to remove or weaken their DBPs.
Since Councilmembers are unlikely to remove the DBP, Councilmembers might consider putting this before the people. The Citizens of Ventura would like the opportunity to vote on a full array of DBP options (including termination, funding, etc., etc.).
Kindest regards,
Charles Spraggins, M.B.A.,
Breeze:
We should praise the three members of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors for approving the Habitat and Wildlife Ordinance (4537) that will protect 163,000 acres of county rural and suburban land from reckless mismanagement and over development (VC Star, May 12, 2019).
Mining interests, developers, and ranchers want to fence off, clear, and also build on areas that are known corridors for wild animal passage between our remaining open space and riparian land that lead into the Los Padres Forest. These passages are ancient, known for ages by many species large and small. We need to carefully regulate these remaining wild zones within our urbanizing county.
The ordinance does not set permanent and fixed protections. Business and development interests (CoLab and CalCIMA) want existing policy to govern them, but that does not assure these sensitive and essential pathways will remain. The new Ordinance requires more detailed and elaborate permits in order to change them.
From mountain lions to condors to snowy plovers, from red-legged frogs to arroyo toads to dozens of plants even our semi-healthy habitats are constraining them. This can draw them closer to our shopping malls and highways and housing tracts, which should not “step out” into open space. These increase the threat to all animals needing undisturbed habitats and unblocked or narrowed paths when they are on the move. New “roads in the woods” only intensify threats to their healthy survival.
I wrote in the national magazine, American Scientist (September-October 2017, “Suburban Stalkers”) about my reservations for building big new expensive causeways over freeways. They might avoid traffic deaths of animals following their instincts but they also bring new animals from the hinterland into suburbia, give reckless people a chance to use them however prohibited– and they cost millions.
By regulating existing open space in the form of corridors, pathways and land around streams and rivers, we provide for the health of local animals at the reasonable cost of requiring development to take it easy. They would have to provide more elaborate plans and studies of their proposed impacts so we can decide how much more of the county we want to give over to our own species. Our near-insatiable grab of natural resources does need stiffer regulation—our own survival depends on it.
Robert Chianese. Ph. D.
The dream is a spontaneous happening and therefore dangerous
to a control system set-up by the non-dreamers.
~ William S. Burroughs
