Jul 18, 2008

Letters to the Editor

Daily News

Palo Alto City Council

Dear Editor: In today's (July 16) strip, Catbert advises Dilbert that he can't put him on the management fast track until he confirms that his moral compass is broken. In today's Daily News, our Palo Alto City Council checks in with acceptance of a pie-in-the-sky fiber network proposal, and in another newspaper Council Member Yoriko Kishimoto questions how the city is going to find the $5.2 million per year to pay interest only on the certificate of participation notes it intends to issue to fund a new police station.

Even if there was money to pay for them, certificate of participation notes amount to nothing more than using another name for bonded indebtedness in hopes of evading a vote.

The fiber network proposal is too good to be true. This alone should suffice. Legal challenges will be made. Even the council admits that. Full indemnity or total legal protection, as it expects to happen, is impossible. Intervention of four parties: The City, Packet Front, 180 Connect, and Axia Net Media, three of whom invest nothing, is a recipe for chaos. Yet our council is so anxious to be at the head of the pack that it is willing to go for this proposal hook, line, and sinker at the same time it sinks its existing profitable fiber network.

If you still think of this council as capable, consider how well it did last year with the redesign of our Web site. Is anyone out there willing to help me rein these rascals in?

Michael Goldeen,

Palo Alto



Mideast crisis

Dear Editor: Jewish people are defending Israel, saying how good Israel is to the Palestinians. When Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia Poland, I was there. No matter how nice Hitler would have tried to treat us, we wanted him out of our country. We organized men - French, Polish, Ukranians, Czechs, Belgians and others.
We fought Hitler every way we could, just like the Palestinians are doing today. England and the United States loved us, calling us Partisans; Hitler called us terrorists.

Just because the United States, England and the United Nations took Arab land and created the state of Israel, this does not make it right. Pamela Kiball is talking about 5,000 years ago when there was a Jewish king. Perhaps Pamela should go back to Adam and Eve times. We are talking about today, our fathers and grandfathers' times. They cultivated this land, it is rightfully ours, no one has the right to take it away from us.
Shortly after Sept. 1I, I saw on 60 Minutes that Arabs are saying loud and clear that any country supporting Israel they will attack. The World Trade Center was destroyed because we support Israel. Israel persuaded Bush to attack Iraq because Iraq was the biggest threat to Israel. Now Israel wants Bush to attack Iran because Iran is a big threat to Israel. There will be no peace in the Middle East until Israel will cease to exist - that's what Iran wants. Jaghit Singh and Tejinder Uberoi are telling the truth. Any honest Jewish person would agree.

Bacil Mackiw,

Palo Alto


Phil Gramm

Dear Editor: Sen. Phil Gramm, top adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, said last week there are no economic problems, that everything is just dandy and that we are a nation of whiners.

With all of the foreclosures, the billions spent in Iraq, high (and rising) food and gas prices, banks tanking and the stock market falling, this is a classic statement of denial and lack of concern for the American people.

I was a child when the Great Depression hit. President Herbert Hoover said there should be no concern, as "prosperity" was just around the corner. My parents were Republicans so, of course, I believed him. However, when I visited my young friends in the neighborhood, they were sitting around in their coats and blankets; there was no heat in the house and it was 20 degrees below zero in Minnesota. Their fathers had all lost their jobs quite precipitously. There was little food to eat.

The local churches went from house to house to collect any kind of food and coal to keep people from starving and freezing.

It was difficult for my child mind to reconcile the reality I saw with President Hoover's blithe pronouncements. Things just continued to get worse until Franklin Roosevelt was elected, faced reality and instituted a series of projects to put people back to work on the infrastructure and many other beneficial projects.

Marie Antionette before the French Revolution said, as the people gathered before her palace begging for bread, "Let them eat cake." We all know what happened to her when she uncaringly denied the obvious reality of the time.

Jeannette Andrews,

Palo Alto