Letters for May 24, 2012

Getting the help needed

Re “Special Report: How Butte County is doing ‘whatever it takes’ to help the destitute” (Cover story, May 17):

First of all, if Butte county officials are doing “whatever it takes” to help the homeless and mentally ill, there would be representatives down on the streets to help the extreme mentally ill get SSI or into special-needs living facilities. The extreme mentally handicapped don’t even know they are eligible for disability income, and some might be getting SSI and not even know it.

Butte County Behavioral Health has told me personally that their budget has been cut back severely. It is extremely hard for a single person without a child to get welfare for extended durations, if they can get it at all.

I see the homeless in Oroville daily, panhandling, drunk, loud, unclean and on drugs. I have seen the police arrest these people for disorderly conduct, public drunkenness and panhandling, and in a day or so they seem to be right back at the same location, boisterous, rude and drunk. The police do not sort the severely disabled out and help them find assistance.

It is pathetically sad.

There are many programs that have been proven to work and help many rehabilitate themselves. The trick is getting the severely handicapped to them.

Michael Thice
Oroville

The recession took my home, my savings and my retirement and created serious debt. It drove me to planning my death. Living at the Torres Shelter gave me hope. The wonderful staff never stopped inspiring me.

I asked for help and it was given. I discovered I had a mental illness. I got the right combo [of medications] after six months. Two years later I live in a Section 8 apartment. I have been given the opportunity for education and am doing very well with it. I will be back in the “real world” very soon and am eager to get there.

Butte Behavioral and the Department of Rehabilitation will help you if you’re willing to help yourself. I don’t know how to thank so many counselors, doctors and the staff.

My question to those of us who are down on our luck, have mental illness and addiction problems, is: Do you want to be healed? All the help is there, just walk through the door.

J. Fred Hocking
Chico

How the city works

Re “Schindelbeck misleads” (Letters, by Karen Laslo, May 17):

I don’t know Karen Laslo, but for some reason she saw fit to cast aspersions at me while overlooking the real issue: the lack of leadership in the City Council.

The reality is that City Manager [Dave] Burkland directed Fire Chief [Jim] Beery to cut $95,000, even though the Fire Department is under the budget set for them. Due to safety, minimum staffing requires each fire station to have at least three firefighters working at all times.

Since public safety has already been cut so deep, Burkland knew that Chief Beery had one option when faced with another cut: close a station.

Let me educate Ms. Laslo on how city management works: The city manager works for the City Council; the City Council works for the people of Chico. The buck stops with the City Council.

Now Station 5 is closed. Thousands of homes are at risk, including my own, due to increased response times. The citizens of Chico have spoken loud and clear that they want their tax dollars to fund public safety first.

The ball is now in Mayor Ann Schwab’s hands, because only the City Council can make the supplemental appropriations needed to re-open Station 5. The citizens of Chico are speaking loud and clear about this. The question is this: Is Ann Schwab listening to them?

Toby Schindelbeck
Chico

Editor’s note: Mr. Schindelbeck is a candidate for the Chico City Council.

What does Wally say?

Re “Web of deceit” (Newslines, by Tom Gascoyne, May 17):

Dear congressman Herger:

I have always had respect for the integrity you have shown through your long tenure. As you are well aware, the candidate you have endorsed and given quite a chunk of money to has set up a fraudulent website that slanders his opponent, [Sam] Aanestad. The evidence was obtained by subpoena from the web host that [Doug] LaMalfa’s chief of staff, Mark Spannagel, authorized and paid for this site.

Wally, you have always been a man of integrity, yet you have been strangely silent on this issue. Will you condemn this action? The world wants to know.

Jim Ledgerwood
Chico

Two kinds of ‘reality’

Re “Reality” (From the Edge, by Anthony Peyton Porter, May 17):

I’ve been a big fan of Anthony Peyton Porter since I first began reading his columns on your back page. He’s a terrific writer—funny, fearlessly honest, thoughtful and quirky. I can only imagine the ordeal he’s living through as his wife struggles with the horrors of brain cancer.

And I can readily understand why he has no energies or spirit left for politics, or why he might, in despair, arrive at the conclusion that Romney and Obama are just stories we’re told while “reality” is what he’s facing on a day-to day-basis. My heart goes out to him, and to Janice.

But the “reality” of difference between Obama and Romney remains “real.” The ordeal Anthony and Janice are experiencing would be far worse if the Romney forces had their way, if they could cut Medicare, if they could engineer a hundred laws and policies that exacerbate all the “reality” that inevitably comes to us in this vale of tears.

When George W. Bush was elected, I tried to convince myself that there weren’t fundamental differences between the power brokers, anyway. “How bad could it be?” I asked myself. As a nation, we found out.

Love you, Anthony, and love your writing. But there are differences between Romney and Obama that matter, that are real, that won’t go away. And I know you as a man who has spent much of his life in service to principles, and those principles still matter, even on the days when we’re dealing with far more immediate and personal struggles.

Jaime O’Neill
Magalia

Prohibition has failed

Re “Measure A’s a downer” (Editorial, May 17):

If marijuana were fully legal there would be no backyard residential growers cashing in on inflated medical-marijuana prices. Legitimate farmers would produce it by the ton at a fraction of the current cost. There is a reason you don’t see Mexican drug cartels sneaking into national forests to cultivate tomatoes and cucumbers. They cannot compete with a legal market.

Marijuana prohibition has failed miserably as a deterrent. The United States has higher rates of marijuana use than the Netherlands, where marijuana is legally available to adults. The only clear winners in the war on marijuana are drug cartels and shameless tough-on-drugs politicians who’ve built careers confusing the drug war’s collateral damage with a relatively harmless plant.

Robert Sharpe, MPA
Common Sense for Drug Policy

Those noisy machines

Re “Pipe down, folks” (Editorial, May 10):

I’m glad that Chico’s noise policies are being reviewed. College students were mentioned in the editorial, but they aren’t the issue for me. Machines are.

I have no hope that the use of chainsaws and power mowers will be limited, but what about leaf blowers and the Silver Dollar Speedway races? Does anyone else in town run for cover when these noisemakers (and dust raisers) from hell are active?

Janice Lee Porter
Chico

Money and politics

Lobbyists are not elected, but they currently write more bills than our representatives. Of course they require a sponsor from the state Assembly or Senate to propose their bill, and here’s where it gets bad: Sponsored bills typically come with large campaign contributions, and this looks a whole lot like a bribe. Sixty percent of the bills passed in the 2007-08 session were sponsored.

The Democrats backed more sponsored bills than Republicans, but Republicans backed more private special-interest bills. Fact: Large campaign warchests are necessary to get re-elected, and this causes legislators to aggressively solicit campaign contributions, even while crafting legislation.

Fact: On average 94 percent of the candidates who outspend their opponents will win the election. Fact: When it comes to raising money incumbents have a 5-to-1 advantage over their opponents.

For years both major parties have sued to death every attempt at campaign finance reform, despite overwhelming voter support for reform. No wonder our state is so screwed up!

Jack Lee
Chico

More than OK

Speaking of music in schools, it is time to applaud the Chico State’s College of Humanities and Fine Arts’ Theater Program for its recent outstanding performances of Oklahoma!

This musical was staged during the same period that the school announced the termination of another program, one that trained future high-school music teachers. The college’s reasons for the end of that program seem valid. I hope we can look forward to many more years of spring musicals.

Ronald Angle
Chico

Craigslisting Facebook

Re “An alternative to Facebook?” (Guest comment, by Tom Blodget, May 17):

My canned-and-ready response was that the loss of privacy is the price you pay for Facebook (which is why my participation is restrained). But you are right. Craigslist took a multi-billion-dollar a year business that supported most newspapers in the United States and essentially removed the money from it, in the process becoming successful on the spare change left behind. Someone could do the same thing to FB. Or someone could do to FB what FB did to MySpace—create a cooler place.

Jonathan Simonoff
San Francisco

Correction

Due to an error in our source material for the Earthwatch item “More electric-car plug-ins” (May 17), we stated that NRG Energy, Inc. was installing recharging stations in California as part of a settlement agreement resulting from the company’s “alleged market manipulation and overcharging more than a decade ago.” The allegations were against the now-defunct company Dynegy, which NRG subsequently purchased, thereby assuming its liabilities.