Letters for August 22, 2002

Enlighten ’em up

Re “Smoker’s Hell” (SN&R Editorial, August 15):

I agree with the ideas set forth in your Editorial, but I think the editor missed one very salient point of the issue. The proposal shouldn’t be promoted based on the idea that it reduces smoking. If it reduces smoking, then the state will not receive the monies it so desperately needs. The idea is merely a band-aid for what’s ailing the state. A “smoke screen,” if you will, for the fact that the people who represent us don’t want to face the issues they must face if they want to present a balanced budget.

Ah, that we could all defer major portions of our debt to some other time. Or heap the load on the backs of the redheaded stepchild in our family. But no. Out here, we need to face our budgetary issues straight-on. We don’t cling to an internal rhetoric that will prevent us from making the hard choices necessary to address the situation. We can’t cling to certain “principles” because those are probably the “principles” that put us in a bind in the first place. So, we have to make tough choices. The Legislature needs to do the same.

Enough with the band-aids and the smoke. It’s time the people in the Legislature show the people of California that they have a modicum of sense and reason.

Is that asking too much?

I know, I know, dumb question.

Kirk Rosenkranz
Sacramento

Spend wisely

Re “United Social Workers” by Carol Kearney (SN&R Guest Comment, August 15):

As someone who has worked within the broader social welfare arena at some point in my past, I have to take exception to the comment of this guest commentator that her daughter cannot make a decent living on the salary she makes as a social worker.

First, however, I will completely agree with Kearney’s statement that social workers are among the worst-treated members of our social governmental infrastructure. This is particularly true due to the fact that social workers are required to have a graduate degree merely to qualify for employment as a caseworker—an educational qualification that is these days very costly to attain. Social workers are also grievously over-worked and must cope with a wide range of depressing, discouraging and dysfunctional personalities and problems in the normal course of their work. The psychological wear-and-tear pressures that are visited upon conscientious social workers by the basic daily experiential contact they have with clients is also brutal and unrelenting. Seen within these contexts alone, social workers can never be paid enough in terms of salary or benefits to compensate them for the vitally important job they perform, unseen and unglamorised within the fetid bowels of our American social welfare system.

However, to allege that Ms. Kearney’s daughter “ … cannot make ends meet” on her salary as a social worker with a graduate degree is a grossly assumptive and illogical statement. A social worker’s salary (whether or not it is commensurate with the job’s requirements) has nothing to do with “making ends meet.” It has everything to do with the choices the daughter is making in terms of how she spends her income. People who make scandalously less money for equally difficult and demanding work are quite often able to live within their means, simply because their spending habits are suitably adjusted to the amount of income they bring home.

Chris Carey
Sacramento

Yes, there is hope for you

Re “No Parole for You” by R.V. Scheide (SN&R Cover, August 8):

Governor Gray Davis is not first with a personal agenda: self-centered, self-righteous, wanting all the power he can acquire.

We’re fortunate for the faithful among us, with a vision of fairness, some able even to forgive, allowing others to begin anew.

Fortunately we have a court system in the best form of government I’ve known.

Thank you for messages of hope for all of us in need of hope when we feel hopeless.

Wendell Anderson
Roseville

One every three hours

Re “Family Court” (SN&R Letters to the Editor, August 8):

The attitude expressed by Craig Volpe in his letter to the editor reflects an unfortunate lack of understanding about the disability of autism that apparently pervades the District Attorney’s Office as well. A person with an autistic spectrum disorder (see autism, PDD.NOS and Asperger’s), by definition could not form the intent to commit premeditated murder, because they lack the ability to comprehend the affects of their action upon other persons.

Autism is growing at an epidemic rate, with a child in California being diagnosed every three hours. The cost of intensive early behavioral intervention when the child is 2–5 years old is far less than the cost for the inadequately treated child who could require lifelong supervised residential care. Autism is everyone’s problem, as the Volp family unfortunately discovered. [Ed note: Members of the Volp/Volpe family intentionally spell their names differently.] It is in the best interest of all that the public expects their public school system and Regional Centers to support the only treatment shown to be effective—one-on-one intensive behavioral intervention. The child who is not treated with these early intensive services followed by ongoing support for the teaching of social skills can become the adolescent who requires full-time supervision in a state forensic developmental center, such as Porterville, where David is now.

In Sacramento where so many excellent resources exist and are vendored by Alta California Regional Center and some forward-thinking public school districts, there is no reason why every child with autistic spectrum disorder should ever receive less that the appropriate treatment.

The irony of David’s case is that a boy who is incapable of understanding the consequences of his actions has affected so many people and agencies.

Nancy Fellmeth
President, Families for Early Autism Treatment (F.E.A.T.)

A strip mall on the rez

Re “Native American Gothic” by Liv O’Keeffe (SN&R Cover, July 25):

I have a few points about your excellent Cache Creek article. Wintun lawyer Dickstein is also the lawyer for the Auburn Indians who expect to build their terribly located Roseville-Rocklin casino. The main reason given for the Cache Creek expansion: competition from other casinos.

Dickstein, noted for his unfounded and sometimes ridiculous statements, is playing one side against the other. It’s a classic conflict of interest.

You don’t explain the difference between the Wintun Indians and the Rumsey Band, but they appear to be the same thing. They have 22 adults and 22 children, yet tribal chair Paula Lorenzo, one of those 22 adults, grew up in Sacramento with 16 siblings. Doesn’t that mean that the Wintun Indians are mostly composed of one family, to which Cache Creek’s big profits accrue?

Ms. Lorenzo states that people with concerns about the expansion don’t send her letters. Instead they send them to government officials and the media. Obviously! Who knows her address? And why would anyone figure she would stop or limit the expansion?

Dickstein says that the tribe could not choose to be organic farmers. That’s incorrect. They have the land and they can do with it what they want.

I have a question that I have never seen addressed anywhere: How come allowing Indians to build casinos became the only way to help them attain financial wealth? People make money, often good money, from building malls, etc., so why can’t tribes use their land for non-casino profit-making, especially if untaxed by outside government?

Randy McClure
Rocklin