Letters for February 19, 2004

Don’t give us your tired and poor

Re “Exporting indigence” by Jill Duman (SN&R News, February 12):

Kudos to Tim Brown of Loaves & Fishes for finally speaking the truth about homeless-dumping into Sacramento County.

Homeless-dumping has been happening for years, and thanks for much of it goes to agencies like the Salvation Army and Volunteers of America. That’s why they haven’t noticed it.

Back even further than the county’s Ten Acre Social Service Complex Committee that a neighbor of mine served on, [providers for the homeless] objected to recordkeeping that showed how many homeless they served repeatedly and how effective or ineffective their services were to end their homeless clients’ revolving door.

Their “give me your tired, your poor” attitude sends a loud call far and wide that Sacramento welcomes all homeless!

Remember, providers for the homeless don’t get more donations by telling their donors that they’re doing a lousy job of serving fewer people.

Hans Huber
Sacramento

Abortion is unhealthy for everyone

Re “Inside the abortion clinic” by Chrisanne Beckner (SN&R Cover, January 29):

I would like to comment on how you paint the Partial Birth Abortion Ban, as it relates to abortion providers, as “just another skirmish in an ongoing war with politicians and activists who oppose abortion rights.” Quite frankly, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban is the only way to save babies from having to be brutally murdered. You may not see it that way, but maybe you should witness one, see it happen. An unborn baby doesn’t have a pulse for the pure fun of it. It is a living being that deserves to live.

I am one of the people out there who are against the second- and third-trimester abortions. I believe that if your child has a disability, then that is life, and it is sad. Maybe I am being too crass, but that is the way it is. My cousin just gave birth to a Down-syndrome baby. She knew long beforehand that her baby would have Down and also have a heart defect that 40 percent of Down-syndrome babies have. If I were in my cousin’s shoes, I would do the same thing, not because of my abortion beliefs but because I am not going to put my selfish emotions in front of my child’s life. The baby is doing fine and has a great attention span—a very smart, healthy girl.

Something that abortion clinics don’t share is the findings from a nice little study on abortion linked to breast cancer. Did you know that having abortions, especially repeated abortions, will increase your chances of breast cancer greatly? Seventy percent of women who get abortions later developed lumps in their breast. Why?

When a woman is having a healthy, natural pregnancy, her breasts swell from the hormones changing in her body; her breasts are getting ready to feed a baby. When you suddenly terminate that pregnancy, the hormones are left there with no place to go. The hormones stay and, more often than not, become carcinogenic. The body doesn’t know that an abortion is going to happen.

Why does this not happen to women who have miscarriages? Because the body terminates the pregnancy on its own for its own reasons. Your body prepares itself for the miscarriage. It sends out hormones to instruct the body of the event that will happen.

You should check that study out. If abortion clinics care so much about the patient, why do they not share that piece of information with them? But then, how do you ask someone if they want to greatly increase their chances of breast cancer? Maybe they can just sugarcoat the question, like the way they are able to ask someone, “Are you sure you want to kill your baby?”

Josefine Hensley
Sacramento

Bush steals an election; good for him!

Re “Cartoon” by Kloss (SN&R Opinion, January 29):

Your cartoonist includes “The stealing of the election” as one of the bags of loot behind President Bush.

In these days of homeland security, high-tech cameras and nonstop whistle blowers, I am amazed that somebody who the media calls stupid can steal an election. Not just any election, but the presidential election of the United States of America. Just the fact that he stole something so valuable and rare from 335 million people is truly amazing. That alone makes him deserving to be president! Could you or I have pulled it off without anyone being able to prove it? I know I would have stolen it if I were smart enough; I am sure that you would have, too.

But alas, I will be forced to continue to do what I do. And you folks will still do what you do: provide my cat with high-grade material for his kitty box.

Mitch Taylor
Antelope

An attitude of entitlement

Re “Can’t get past the shopping carts” (SN&R Letters, January 22):

As a 30-year resident of Midtown, I, too, have to weigh in that the homeless are out of control and that it is time something was done. The city and county spend over $20 million a year to “solve” the problem, and all it does is get worse.

Thirty years ago, there were homeless, but they were not a problem. Sure, they scared suburbanites, but residents didn’t feel the need to look over their shoulders. If you said no to panhandlers, that was it; they moved on. Then the programs started in 1983.

Now you say no or ask them to move on, and the result is a threatening tirade about your parentage and their rights. Sometimes the threats are even physical. A young couple I know were both beaten on the American River Parkway when they tried to pass through a homeless group blocking the right of way.

Why the change? The only difference is their exposure to all the service providers who indoctrinate them about everything that is owed to them. That translates to this modern attitude of entitlement.

As with Clinton’s welfare reform, we need a new philosophy about helping homeless, and that is a uniform program approach that they themselves are responsible for their plight, rather than somebody who won’t give them a quarter.

Ken Lauszus
Sacramento

Reading between the lines on Iraq

Re “Between Iraq and a hard place” by Andrew Scutro (SN&R Cover, January 15):

Whatever the naive hopes of the soldiers, however many $100 bills they hand out, the true face of the occupation is captured in the photo of Maj. Woody Nunis, his face rigid with rage at the little Iraqi boy who dared give him the finger in the schoolyard, Nunis’ own index finger in the command position of the arrogant conqueror giving orders to the defeated.

These guys’ outbursts of furious brutish anger are natural (though totally counterproductive); they are in way over their heads. They think they’re bringing democracy, but Iraqis know the United States has no intentions of letting a democratic Iraq reject U.S. corporations’ plans for Iraq’s future. So, these poor young soldiers are taking deadly shots, dying, losing limbs and eyes, so that executives of Halliburton, Bechtel and WorldCom, safe in Manhattan and Palm Beach mansions, can rake in obscene profits privatizing the Iraqi economy and controlling Iraqi oil.

Reading between the lines of Scutro’s article, it seems clear that things can only get worse. That’s why I’m voting for Dennis Kucinich. He would end the insane killing and immoral war profiteering by bringing U.S. soldiers home immediately and turning policing and rebuilding Iraq over to a true international body. The war was illegal and immoral; this occupation is the war continued. It must end.

Jeanie Keltner
Sacramento

Pravda wouldn’t print this letter

Re “Don’t ask, don’t tell” by Cosmo Garvin (SN&R News, January 15):

I find it amusing and ironic that SN&R is so upset over allegedly being “shut out” by the sheriff’s public-information department. Is SN&R going to report the facts in a fair and unbiased manner, with no slant or agenda?

There is as much chance of SN&R being fair, reputable and unbiased in its editorials and articles concerning police departments, Republicans, business and the environment as there was a chance of the former Soviet state newspaper, Pravda, being fair and unbiased toward anything American.

Vasily Staverosky
Sacramento

Corrections

Re “President Lu?” (SN&R News, February 5):

The story misidentified the Public Law Center, which is part of the Nevada Superior Court, as the only self-help legal center in the United States. The article should have said it’s the only such center to be housed in a law library. Eligible low-income Nevada County residents also can access free civil-law services and advice through Legal Services of Northern California in Grass Valley.

Re “A civil action” (SN&R News, February 12):

A legislative bill that would close the former School of the Americas—House Resolution 1810—was misnamed. In fact, that bill has been reintroduced as House Resolution 1258.