School board members need to be recalled

Re: "Complaint alleges 3 school board trustees held secret meeting," March 7: How did these numbskulls get elected? The union is in control!

I call on Jim Gibson to spearhead a recall and to sue Herrera, Jaka, Chunka and the Vista Teachers Association for violation of the Brown Act, collusion, conspiracy and malfeasance in office.

Secret meetings between three school board members and the union to conspire to change a decision made in public forum? Isn't that how Russia does it?

John Sable

Vista

Police union needs to rethink program

My taxes pay for the city to provide street lighting, build sidewalks for my children, and fund both fire and police protection. Public safety is the largest portion of any city's budget, and when times are good, salaries and benefits are raised to encourage the best personnel to be hired.

I understand the city's effort to cut employee benefits to help close a widening budget gap ("Compensation cut for police officers," March 19). The city wants to suspend automatic pay raises and contributions to 401(k)s for the Escondido Police Department, terms that other unions have accepted.

What I do not understand is the Escondido Police Union using such a horrible and racist flier to try to influence the City Council because they think they are too important for such cuts to their benefits. I think it is a reflection of the attitudes of the members of the police department that it is OK to scare residents to try and get their way.

Maybe the Escondido City Council should look at other options for police protection. The council should contact the San Diego County Sheriffs to see how much it would charge to replace the current police department.

I'm sure the Sheriff's deputies do not get automatic pay raises.

Jeff Griffith

Escondido

Illegal acts out of the White House closet

We now know that even while the Bushites were publicly insisting that they didn't condone torture, they were aggressively practicing it in Guantanamo and elsewhere. Is there no reckoning for that? Or for spying illegally on millions of Americans? Or for unilaterally rewriting laws through the use of obscure signing statements? Or for politicizing the powerful role of federal prosecutors? Or for abusing the state secrets privilege in order to impose executive supremacy over the courts and Congress?

If we just shove all this in some White House closet, with no public airing of what went on, then the abuses become presidential precedents, sanctioning future presidents to pull them out of the closet whenever they want.

Bush, Cheney and their apologists now assert that even if there were illegal acts, it's OK because they made America safer. Well, did they really? If there's no digging into what happened and what actual effect it had, we have no truth and no guidance for the future.

Obama's White House shouldn't be the ones to do this job. Congress should set up a no-nonsense investigative commission with full subpoena power to get down to the real truth. To know where we're going, we need to know exactly where we've been.

David Cutter

Carlsbad

Refine maps to reflect votership

I would love to see a red/blue map of the U.S.A. that gives a percentage of the total of the voters in each state that are city, county, state and federal employees, teachers and union members and elected officials.

In other words, bureaucrats and union members who are milking the rest of the taxpayers with the power granted by the politicians who are kept in power by their votes.

Lloyd Rochambeau

San Marcos

Food safety bills in Congress

Two so-called "food safety" bills that are about ready to come before the U.S. Senate (S. 425) and House of Representatives (H.R. 875) will actually criminalize organic farming and gardening, even in a home garden. Passage of these bills will take away our right to healthful foods and put organic farmers out of business.

I can imagine no more important issue.

Backed by Monsanto and other huge genetic engineering companies, these bills require even backyard gardeners to use specific pesticides â€"â€" poisonous sprays â€"â€" on plants we grow for our own families. Passage into law will mean the end of organic farming and gardening and threaten to expose all Americans, by law, to the new diseases now surfacing from the use of genetically-modified organism seeds.

Few Americans are aware that more than 100,000 farmers in India have committed suicide because of horrendous crop failures and cost increases that came with buying and planting GMO seeds instead of natural seeds.

I encourage readers to Google these two bills and read them, and to write to Congress and the president demanding that they protect the future of America's health against those who would fool us with double-speak, hiding their greed behind a false face of securing our food safety.

Carol Slater

Oceanside

A rebuttal to Kirk's column

Richard Kirk's op-ed piece, "No reason to change 'marriage,' " March 10, manages to avoid mention both of abominations and the mechanics of copulation, for which he is to be commended. However, he insists on parroting the irrelevancies about the welfare of children and polygamy.

His venture into biological argument leaves much to be desired. Recent newsworthy events tend to negate his argument that "only male-female unions produce children" as a compelling rationale for state sanction of marriage.

Changing the traditional practice (definition?) of marriage is not about "feelings of affection." It is about love and commitment, which are the ingredients that tend to make marriages stable. And it is a stable family that is best for children, no doubt far better than what exists as a result of our outrageous divorce rate.

Finally, if he is so enamored of the rights of the majority, he might better spend his time plumping for a California constitutional change that enables a legislative majority to enact a budget.

David Horwitz

Vista

Censorship at the NCT?

Through recent e-mail contact with two members of the North County Times staff, I was surprised to learn of a dubious form of censorship imposed by the North County Times.

In the Tuesday, March 17 Local section, in a story about the long-delayed cleanup by the county of the site of an alleged arson fire of a home in Mount Woodson in which the suspect owner's employee also died, there was a glaring omission ("Rubble from arson/murder suspect's home removed"). I contacted the reporter to point out no mention was made of the persistent efforts of television station KUSI's troubleshooter Michael Turko to get the reluctant county to take some action. In reply, your reporter informed me he had included the facts involving KUSI coverage, but it was removed from the story. He referred me to his editor for further questions.

I received the following reply from the editor: "We don't report goings-on of other media except those we partner with, such as KNSD 7/39. I'm glad KUSI's reporting netted some results for the neighborhood. Thanks for writing." To leave such an important part of a story out of a supposed "free press" story is indeed surprising.

May I suggest the North County Times review your curious media/partners policy.

John Anderson

San Marcos

Bilbray, Issa against homeowners

Junious Montgomery (Letter, March 19) has left his Hillary-world to attack two female "Peggy" writers to this page. If Montgomery had a clue, he would focus on real problems.

According to the North County Times, local mortgage defaults hit a new record in February ("Foreclosure crisis spreads to higher-end neighborhoods," March 13). Since January 2007, almost 10,000 North County homes have been foreclosed upon. Don't expect any help from local Republicans, but the U.S. House recently passed the "Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009" to prevent mortgage foreclosures and enhance mortgage credit availability. It was without the help of Limbaugh Republican Reps. Brian Bilbray and Darrell Issa, who voted "no" on the measure.

They helped to create the economic mess by spending like drunken sailors â€"â€" they were for earmarks, before they were against them. Now they are doing nothing to help local homeowners â€"â€" now that's a sad commentary!

Robert Tormey

Escondido

Geneva violations, anyone?

Surprise, surprise. A United Nations human rights investigator, a Jewish man, has reported at least three violations of international law by Israel in their latest murderous phase of their final solution to the Palestine problem.

This does not include the use of white phosphorus bombs. Using these weapons allows the victims to feel themselves burn to death rather than killing them before burning.

It does include the "crime against peace" violation, a principle from the Nuremberg trials. You remember those trials, don't you? They were conducted to prosecute and punish monsters from WWII.

It seems the phrase used after these trials, "never again," does not include the Palestinians. How much more of this genocide must we bear to watch before the civilized world steps in and ends it the same way we ended the genocide of WWII?

Phil Acosta

Vista

American imperialism and blowback

We hear a lot about how America and its people face mortal threats around the world, from communists to terrorists. They hate our freedoms, or our way of life, and are often made to seem crazy. When Iranians seized American hostages in 1979 and al Qaeda attacked the U.S. in 2001, Americans couldn't understand why a peace- and democracy-loving country like America could be hated. Government, business and the media reinforced the sense that we were innocent victims. Is it true?

America has more than 700 military bases in around 120 countries and spends more on weapons than the rest of the world combined. We maintain a "nuclear umbrella" as a deterrent. The CIA and Pentagon have overthrown democratically elected governments around the planet, and invaded at the behest of U.S. corporations. We use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to exploit other countries economically.

Occasionally we suffer "blowback" from our foreign policy. We overthrew the elected government of Iran in 1953, then propped up the brutal Shah for 26 years. We built al-Qaida by trying to bleed the USSR in Afghanistan. While we may be in denial, our victims hold us accountable.

Paul Cavanaugh

Ramona

Public comment was one-sided

Last week, I attended a community meeting where Caltrans offered information regarding freeway widening, freeway noise and the Highway 56 connectors. Hardly anyone under 65 attended, and there was uniform opposition to any building activity. NIMBYs one and all. The Caltrans guys listened, answered foolish questions and moved on.

Totally absent was the age 21 to 65 group, who use the freeways to get back and forth to work and hustle their kids around. Sitting in freeway traffic is not their favorite thing. This is the group that makes the San Diego County economy hum, pays most of the taxes and works in the stores serving the residents.

Particular venom is hurled at the trucks using the freeways. One has to wonder how food gets to the grocery store, pajamas to Wal-Mart and prescription drugs to the pharmacy.

In an effort to equalize the debate on what should be built, how and when, a community organization, Build or Else, has been formed. While BOE certainly agrees there needs to be community comment and reasonableness applied to transportation building projects, this one-sided public comment needs to be confronted.

Pat Stewart

executive director

Build or Else

Del Mar

Employees affected most contribute more

I read in the paper that some judge has decided that the state can cut pay and furlough certain employees, including those working in the Board of Equalization ("Judge: Pay cuts OK for Calif. workers," March 13).

I wonder if anyone in Sacramento realizes that the Board of Equalization employees audit and collect sales taxes owed but not paid by business. Do they know that each auditor enriches the state's funds by more than they earn each year? I don't recall if the Franchise Tax Board is also included, but I would assume they are. That board audits submitted income tax forms but I don't know if they bring in more than they cost. They probably do.

If anyone in either department is furloughed, it should be some of the upper echelon people with jobs that could be combined because of duplicated work in each of the departments, not the auditors.

Also, the legislators should not be paid in any way when they are in Sacramento trying to pass a budget bill after the deadline to have one has passed. If the rank and file have to give up a day's pay, those who caused the problem should be making sacrifices also.

Shirly Fletcher

Carlsbad

Writer must have a different Constitution

In reply to Mr. Howard Killion (Letters, March 20): He needs a course in the Constitution and history. The Republican Party was hijacked by the radical Christians during the initial campaigning for President Reagan. They had decided it was time to foist their archaic belief system on our entire society. It only got worse as time went on. Witness the last eight years under a president who never had an intellectual thought, but was sure the Bible was scientific fact!

Mr. Killion cannot call himself a conservative while, through the use of laws, signing statements and judicial appointments, he forces me to accept his beliefs. I don't believe that the following are contained in our Constitution: "conserve the traditional American standards for marriage and the sanctity of the unborn," likewise, "traditional recognition of the Judeo-Christian heritage as the historical foundation of American public life." He must possess a different Constitution.

When our original founders escaped England, it was to throw off the tyranny of the Church of England (Christian) and its control of the government. They did not come here to set up another theocracy. That is the type of system used in most Middle Eastern countries.

Joseph Kraatz

Oceanside