Mar 26, 2008

Letters

Plastic bags

Dear Editor: I agree with the businesses about their concern about losing money [from a possible ban on plastic bags]. Could you please print the names of the businesses opposing the ban so I can make sure not to do business with them? I think the ban actually doesn't go far enough. We should ban all free bags - put a tax on them ($1 each?) that would go into an environmental fund. It is not difficult to be thoughtful and bring bags with you to the markets - cloth ones, preferably.

Arthur Michelson,

Palo Alto



Key to prosperity

Dear Editor: Your Easter Sunday article about the prosperity of San Carlos during the last decade would make one think that this success had been the result of city planning. This planning, however, was done in Redwood City where city officials have squandered millions in tax money to build a downtown that suggests people do their shopping elsewhere.

In addition to the 12-screen movie theater we have a new 20-screen theater in the middle of town - yes, 32 screens in all. With the arrival of Netflix and Blockbuster, the theater industry has been dying at about eight percent per year. There are constant attempts to revive the old Fox Theatre even though the Circle Star died years ago from lack of interest. Redwood City has many empty stores, a huge multimillion-dollar courthouse plaza that requires constant attempts to bring people to the downtown and large fountains to make it appear that we have no water shortage.

We started shopping in San Carlos about the time that Redwood City started tearing up the streets and sidewalks and the businesses started moving out. When we returned, we found lots of parking, but it cost 75 cents per hour if you can figure out the parking meters and how to use them. My suggestion to San Carlos is that it do nothing more than make large campaign contributions to Redwood City council members to keep them in office and thus assure the continued prosperity of San Carlos.

Robert Parkhurst,

Redwood City



Strategic blunder

Dear Editor: It was a strategic blunder to have committed the United States to Iraq.

First, foreign policy requires long-term strategic planning within a set of finite limits, as opposed to knee-jerk reaction and rationalizations. To commit people to war, it must be debated thoroughly among all of our representatives. To be clear, 90 percent of the Democrats voted for this war and they too must bear responsibility.

Second, the architects of this strategy demonstrated no knowledge of Iraqi history. Thus, not knowing the Balkanized nature of Iraq, any strategy to invade absent of this analysis reduces the probability of "success" immeasurably. Prior to the war, Iraq was militarily contained and could have been used as a counterbalance to Iran's geopolitical objectives. By the same token, we are grateful to our service people for providing the necessary window of stability for the Iraqis to reconcile. However, with each passing day that reconciliation is delayed, we must conclude the Iraqis are manipulating us.

Third, our borders are entirely unsecured and our representatives have rationalized away the need for border security. Considering that fissionable material can be given to terrorists, assembled into a crude device and detonated, we are vulnerable to a devastating attack.

Our society is collapsing under the weight and folly of nation building, unfettered immigration, the disappearing middle class, an ever-increasing underclass, the loss of manufacturing jobs and engineering expertise, increasing technological espionage and lost intellectual property, and a mortgaged future for our children to bear. This generation's "best and brightest" have sold their souls for their own political gain. The end of this president's term will mark the beginning of the end of Rome as we know it.

Timothy M. Kral,

Los Altos



A friend of Hillary

Dear Editor: On the day before Sen. Barack Obama was endorsed by former [Friend of Bill] Gov. Bill Richardson (D. New Mexico), Hillary Clinton seemed to have acquired perhaps a more unwanted backer. According to the New York Post, Dennis Hof, owner of Nevada's Moonlight Bunny Ranch brothel, is quoted as saying, "Whether you like Hillary or not, this is going to change the women's movement in America."

With friends like this, who needs enemies? Irony rides again.

Mimi Kugushev,

Menlo Park



Obama's nature

Dear Editor: Barack Obama's claim to sure early knowledge of the outcome in Iraq is silly: no one ever knows in an essentially unpredictable war. What he did see and know was the evident widespread flagging of morale in post-Vietnam America (and Europe). Plus the decline of patriotism and rise of "multicultural" relativism and repudiation by the young of a grand old faith-based cultural tradition.

He shrewdly bet on defeat - wrongly, it is turning out - which advanced his striking political ambitions and fed his ingrained, however artfully concealed, and resentful anti-Americanism.

The swooners are just silly.

Robert Greer Cohn,

Menlo Park