Home | Opinion
Valley Times letters to the editor
Letters from our readers
May 11, 2008
A recent writer took issue with an editorial cartoon that took issue with former President Jimmy Carter's talks with Hamas. The writer went on to say that "enlightened" people know to talk to your enemies. Apparently the writer is confusing "enlightened" with an inability to grasp when 'talks' will have nothing but the opposite result of achieving peace.
In the writer's view, Neville Chamberlain must have been truly enlightened for bringing "peace in our time."
Except that peace turned out to be World War II. France had the ability and opportunity to stop Adolph Hitler in his tracks but chose "enlightenment" instead.
It took an attack on Pearl Harbor to get the United States to stop drinking the enlightenment Kool-Aid. What good is enlightenment when the result is an attack on your country?
True wisdom is the ability to recognize when the "enemy" is a partner in peace or an obstruction to peace. Wisdom is recognizing when peace is actually a possibility from talks and when talks are just a ruse by the "enemy" to reach the ultimate goals of destruction and domination.
Until the "enemy" chooses mutual peace, any talks are at best futile and at worst counterproductive. Hasn't humanity suffered enough from enlightenment at all costs?
Enlightened solutions are always preferred but sometimes the grim reality and the enemy's refusal to conform to enlightenment dictates the situation. Wisdom is knowing the difference and acting accordingly.
Robert Miller
Livermore
Money is earned
Much has been said about Exxon earning $40 billion. What is less widely discussed is the taxes Exxon pays. Last year, Exxon had $140 billion of pre-taxable income and paid more than $100 billion in taxes, 70 percent of what it earned. Most of that was excise taxes which non-oil companies do not pay. Exxon pays nearly $275 million of taxes every day.
In contrast, last year General Electric made $26 billion and paid $4 billion in taxes. AT&T made $18 billion and paid $6 billion in taxes.
Google made $5.7 billion and paid $1.5 billion in taxes.
Exxon paid more taxes in one week than Google paid in an entire year.
Some politicians have been proposing "windfall profit taxes" specifically targeted at Exxon and a handful of other U.S. oil companies. They stoke public anger toward high gasoline prices in order to build momentum to pass additional taxes that ironically will increase the cost of energy.
Exxon deserves the money it earns. It uses technology to find oil in extreme environments that otherwise would never be brought to market, thus increasing oil supplies and lowering prices. We all benefit from the oil it provides.
Sean Chiniquy
Danville
Elect Piepho
In 2007, I e-mailed county Supervisor Mary Nejedly Piepho's office with a question I had about a specific Contra Costa County benefit I saw in a Times news article.
Although she had no idea who I was, Piepho sent a personal reply right away, with a copy of instructions to the county offices to respond to my question. She then personally followed up until she was confident my question had been addressed.
There is no way I would vote for anyone to replace this involved, ethical, and responsive supervisor.
Guy Houston was right to encourage Piepho to become our supervisor.
He is wrong now to try to take her job.
Bob Olson
San Ramon
How would he know?
President Bush and his Republican rubber-stamp Congress free-traded, deregulated and tax cut the American economy to smithereens for six years.
Recently he blamed the Democrats for not cleaning up and re-diapering his mess in the 14 months since they won the House and Senate. "I have asked Congress to do its part (he said in his Rose Garden remarks) by sending me sensible and effective bills I could sign."
How would our dear president know a "sensible" bill from one that was "Looney Tunes"? Remember, this is the guy who inherited a federal budget on track to eliminate the national debt by 2010 and turned it into its current $9 trillion (and growing) deficit. Have you heard him say anything "sensible" about the fiscally pernicious effects of a chronic $700 billion-plus annual trade deficit? Has he come up with one "sensible" idea for restoring America's industrial might? Was it "sensible" to believe that after 1,400 years of enmity, Shias and Sunnis would stop feuding and live together in Jeffersonian democratic harmony?
Napoleon said, "Never interfere when your enemy is making mistakes."
Terrorists aren't attacking America because they can't. They're not attacking America because Bush and his merry men are doing their dirty work for them.
Howard T. Goodman
Danville
Caged hens' misery
In your recent farm animals' article, I was saddened to see one absurdity ("It's not clear whether letting hens stretch their wings would actually improve the birds' lives") and many lies attributed to egg farmer Arnold Riebli.
Your story was about the proposed ballot initiative, which would lessen the intense, lifelong suffering of veal calves, battery-caged hens, and sows.
What was UC Davis professor Joy Mench smoking that caused her to state battery cages keep hens healthier? Hens in intense confinement can't cannibalize one another because their beaks are cut with a hot iron when they're just born!
The feces Riebli said hens don't stand on falls from above and through to the floor many levels below, where those hens who fall into it die. It falls through because the floors are wire. The wire floor is angled so eggs forced from their poor bodies roll into a trough. Also, the hens' feet become crippled over time or attached to that wire.
Intense confinement of sentient beings, such as these, has been likened to an eternal Treblinka. It's a national shame and debases those working among the horrors of these conditions.
This is bad reporting. Get facts at www.upc-online.org.
Cynthia Burke
Richmond
Cutting commentary
The commentary by Roger Moore, "No Intelligence allowed in 'Expelled'" was appalling. The creationist bashing, cutting attitude of the author toward those who question Darwinism, is exactly the same kind of discrimination this documentary sheds light on. Ben Stein rests his case!
I had a career as a scientist and am currently a science educator. I am experiencing discrimination such as this movie presents and know a number of Ph.D. scientists who are as well.
None of us needed a documentary to sucker us into thinking there is academic prejudice. Furthermore, I occasionally enter debates.
I always know I am winning the debate when the opponent begins harshly attacking my character simply because there is nothing left to argue. Moore and others who are criticizing Stein are doing the same.
Stein is accused of using "disgruntled, under-credentialed academics dismissed from lesser colleges" as examples of those being discriminated against.
That is purely nothing more than the opinion of the commentator, no doubt due to his prejudice which speaks loud and clear in his writing.
The continued rhetoric of Stein-bashing could have been replaced with credible examples or evidence of how Stein might have been dishonest. Yet, none is given.
Sarah Walsh
Concord
Copyright 2008
Powered By Zebra Mobile