Letters
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- Written by: Lake County News Reports
I am going to ignore the large number of non-English speakers in our schools, their inadequate funding, the bizarre districting, the outdated school buildings, yada yada yada, and blame our schools' academic failings on the lack of fish on the cafeteria menu. As everyone knows, (don't you?) fish is brain food that nurtures keen thought and quick thinking. It is the lack of fish food for lunch, breakfast and snack that is the root of our schools' academic shortcomings. It says so in the Nutritionists Bible.
It also says in there that “the Board of Education must smite those who deny the benefits of fish fillets to the students.” Accordingly, we must smack every teacher and administrator with a board until they repent of the fishless menus. Only when they see the light and serve fish fillets, fish-burgers, fish tacos, and fish-shakes will our students learn as they should.
When our educators achieve true fishiness, perfection will be achieved according the Nutritionists Bible, a large pink cloud will coalesce overhead, and we will arise to academic perfection.
Until then, heed only me. I am the Grand Panjandrum of the Piscine, and must be obeyed.
Decreed by George J. Dorner of Lucerne.
P.S. My doctor says it may take a little while for my new meds to kick in. Please bear with me until then, especially if I sound like a certain local dogmatist.
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- Written by: Becky Curry and Wanda Harris
The American people do not allow the delivery of our police and fire services – services that protect the health, welfare and safety of our citizens – to be owned and controlled by corporations, interested only in their shareholders bottom line. These institutions do not serve citizens only if they can pay individually for the privilege of being protected. Our communities share the costs of these services, for the good of all, not one by one through a profit taking middle man. Why, then, do we accept a health care system, rationed by corporations, to deliver our health care financing system?
The evidence is clear that our current, badly fragmented, private insurance based, health care finance system does not provide universal health care and produces far less than optimal health care outcomes.
The California Universal Health Care Act (SB 840 – Kuehl) will provide lifetime health care insurance for all California residents. This act will provide coverage including all care prescribed by the patient’s health care provider that meets accepted standards of care and practice and including hospital, medical, surgical, mental health; dental and vision care; prescription drugs and medical equipment, diagnostic testing, and hospice care.
Our current private insurance system provides unnecessarily high costs to consumers and providers and incorporates self contained cost spirals within the system that drive up costs at a far higher rate than overall inflation.
Sen. Keuhl’s bill will produce lower cost for consumers and employers by consolidating hundreds of insurance plans, both private and public, into one comprehensive insurance plan risk pool, thereby saving the state, patients and providers billions of dollars each year by dramatically reducing administrative costs; by eliminating stock market pressures for exceptional profit taking from the corporations who control our health care; by reducing employer costs for health care insurance and increasing their competitiveness; by reducing or eliminating inconsistencies and loopholes in legislation that allow fraud, abuse and general and specific tax breaks and regulatory relief to these corporations; by achieving economies of scale in purchasing prescription drugs, equipment devices, supplies and services and by providing a healthier workforce for employers and fewer health related lost work hours and increased productivity.
Our California legislators in Sacramento, Assemblywoman Patty Berg and state Sen. Pat Wiggins are co-authors of Sen. Kuehl’s bill.
We appreciate their leadership on this issue. We too recognize that the primary factor in our high and rising health care costs are the private health care finance insurance companies. We trust that our representatives in the state legislature will not accept any plan from the governor or other legislators that does not replace the current insurance companies with a government agency financed single payer insurance plan. This issue is critical to their Lake County constituents as well as all Californians.
Rebecca Curry of Kelseyville chairs the Lake County Democratic Club; Wanda Harris of Hidden Valley Lake chairs the Lake County Democratic Central Committee.
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- Written by: James BlueWolf
Over the last decade, I have achieved some notoriety for writing letters to the editor that could charitably be described as somewhere between preaching and diatribe. My true intent has generally been that of education however, like most opinionated adults, I have served my own ideals and agendas with little apology.
Though I probably will continue in this fashion in other articles – this time I will hold myself to questions that are of importance to Lake County residents. The questions I pose will, I hope, stimulate reasoned and comprehensive discussions of issues important to the future of our county.
What concept of growth or progress should we accept? If the traditional western model of continual population expansion, construction and development is to be accepted, how can we escape the eventual overcrowding, destruction of rural agrarianism and degradation of our natural resources that inevitably follows?
What are the qualities of Lake County we cherish the most? What makes Lake County special besides the personalities and energy of its citizens? If we value the open space, the trees, birds and animals that share it with us and give it character, how can we protect their future?
If it is the quality of our water; the lake, creeks, springs and wells that sustain us, what can be done to absolutely insure their quality and abundance?
If it is the soil that holds the seed of our sustenance should modern systems fail, what can be done to insure that enough remains open and available to agriculture to provide food or fuels for our future survival?
If it is the quality of the air, purest in the state, how can we demand that every aspect of our development and lifestyle preserve that purity?
Should we decide that the preservation of the previously described natural resources be a priority of commitment, these questions set the boundaries of other questions.
As a small rural community, can we reasonably expect the same levels of service and maintenance that larger cities provide or will we instead embrace and be proud of our rural nature, understanding the economic limits to public services that our priorities will sustain?
Do we continue to widen our streets and highways for the inevitable obsession of additional automobiles or do we make commitments to a myriad of forms of public transportation for our workforce, as well as senior and disabled citizens?
Can we keep our communities from spreading uncontrollably until, in some far future, they grow together to create one continual town that encircles the lake? What can be done to grow them internally so that each is its own self-contained community that holds all the necessary elements for its citizens so they are not required to drive elsewhere for necessities?
If we commit to controlling our growth and development, how can the businesses that depend on that growth continue and prosper, or must the concept of mushrooming profits that define “progress” be redefined to allow only the best and most respected to survive? What type of new business growth could contribute to a “green” and “organic” and more “self-sufficient” Lake County?
How can we begin to treat the epidemic of drug and alcohol abuse sickness that affects so many of our citizens? Could a commitment to the arts, music, entertainment, family agriculture and education contribute to gatherings and community spirit events to promote that healing?
How will we encourage growth in businesses or technologies that provide a living wage and how can we restrain the price of land and homes so that our own children can afford them, rather than seeing them purchased by higher income urban refugees looking for investment properties?
These are just some of the questions we need to discuss. What are your opinions?
James BlueWolf lives in Lakeport.
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- Details
- Written by: Lake County News Reports
Did you see Al Gore’s frightening new eco-film, “An Inconvenient Truth”? He said he “invented” the Internet, not long ago. Now, he’s passionately ringing a global-warming alarm bell. Greenhouse gases are increasing, he warns. Polar caps are melting. Rising oceans will flood coastal cities. Millions will suffer and die. The film is so popular among liberal Democrats Gore is thinking about running for president, again. Many Democrats will vote for him because neither he nor they recognize real dangers to the planet.
Gore is not wrong to want to be a watchman for the world and see danger ahead. He looks, however, in all the wrong places. The globe is spinning towards disaster and the sky really is falling in but not because of global warming. The real danger to nations and planets is, and always has been, human character that turns sour. One witty comic said not long ago, “We have seen the enemy and he is us.“ Most people laughed. A few sighed and cried. Those who lamented know human charity and kindness are melting away like snow on the sunny side of a mountain. Hearts are hardening like brass and turning cold like ice. Faith in the world is waning like the moon in its fourth quarter. More and more, world leaders are behaving like beasts in the jungle. They hope to kill before they’re killed. Gore would do better if he aimed his distress signals at mushrooming moral blindness.
People with eyes to see hope Gore will make a film about the real dangers to planet earth. Unfortunately, he walks in darkness. It was Gore who personally led the assault on family values when he was vice president and later a candidate for president. He permitted an out-of-the-closet lesbian to give a keynote speech at his Democratic convention. Militant homosexual activists played a big role in trying to get him elected. He recruited “save the abortion clinic feminists” to help him campaign. The destruction of the family is a real threat to the planet but Gore doesn't get it. Children who don’t have mothers and fathers are a worldwide catastrophe.
Readers remember it was Vice President Gore who supported President Clinton when he introduced the world to oral sex and semen-stained dresses. Adultery is a worldwide plague but Gore kept his mouth shut when Clinton had affair on top of affair.
Secular history has proved many times over good character builds strong nations. Gibbons’ “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” shows how moral decay brings them down. Biblical history tells the same story with a divine variation. Genesis reports a violent world brought to a watery grave by an angry Spirit who looked for justice and found none. Revelation reveals another corrupt world will be destroyed by the same August Spirit in an unquenchable fire. This is the global warming that should alarm Gore and his aficionados.
Darrell Watkins lives in Kelseyville.
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