The SF PATRIOT ActSan Francisco doesn't come close to Washington, DC, or Chicago in gun deaths precisely because we don't have a counterproductive, reactionary, and overly expensive gun ban in place, as those other cities do [Proposition H, "Endorsements," 10/12/05]. It's as if you've been listening to arguments from 20 years ago and stopped your ears to the progressive reasons to be against the ban: There are also serious police state concerns with such legislation, threats to the Fourth Amendment, as well as the Second Amendment, and the beefing up of law enforcement and surveillance. Hell, we might as well call Prop. H the SF PATRIOT Act. Colin Hussey Prop. 77 is democraticYour rejection of Proposition 77 as "undemocratic" is shamefully dishonest. Gerrymandering, the art of drawing contorted and gnarled voting districts, virtually guarantees incumbents electoral victory – despite incompetence or worse. Gerrymandering is the reason that only about 7 percent of seats in the US Congress have a remote chance of changing hands and becoming Democratic in 2006, even if the majority of Americans across the country demand change and vote to prove it. Similarly, only about 8 percent of seats are competitive in California. Prop. 77 will ensure that your vote and mine can actually make a difference. Your scare-mongering that an independent panel of judges might result in a red California is simply false. Just to get district drawing out of the hands of the partisan politicians who have a direct conflict of interest between their job security and the principles of democracy will result in fairer districts, even if partisan judges are appointed. Nicholas Kallen Why we need firehousesWe need firehouses in San Francisco simply because of: (1) wood-frame houses, (2) houses adjoining each other on both sides, (3) said houses on narrow streets [Opinion, 10/5/05]. Gordon D. Robertson UCSF monkeys just get byGiven that the violations at the University of California at San Francisco were very serious and reflect a chronic disregard for the Animal Welfare Act, I was dismayed that UCSF's rebuttal ["UCSF Loves Animals," Letters, 10/12/05] essentially amounted to copyediting. A university official claimed some details needed to be corrected – for example, a certain monkey cage was, in fact, the minimum legal size and allowed "normal postural adjustment." In light of the laundry list of violations and penalties levied against UCSF, this assertion is almost laughable. I don't want to mince words. A monkey can indeed make more postural adjustments in a cage than he or she can when bolted into a restraining chair, but the minimum cage size allowed by law is hardly a luxury suite. Research done at Harvard Medical School and the University of Washington indicates that roughly 90 percent of monkeys in laboratories show some form of abnormal or stereotypical behavior even though confined in legal cages. Tragically, 15 percent or more actually injure themselves – biting their own bodies or banging their heads against the cage wall. I doubt many readers would be surprised to learn that risk factors for these psychological conditions include the amount of time that a monkey is housed alone and the frequency and intensity of experimental procedures. Regulations for animal care and housing provide minimum standards. In practice, those standards are often treated like ideal performance targets. Should we pat ourselves on the back for doing the minimum? No. It is irresponsible to approach any aspect of animal care and housing with a just-enough-to-get-by mind-set. Dr. Debra Durham, Prop. 75 and social justiceProposition 75 isn't just an assault on California's teachers, nurses, and firefighters and their families. It's also a profoundly immoral stealth attack on minimum wages for the lowest-paid workers, workplace-safety enforcement, health care for the poor, affordable housing – all the social justice goals Californians hold dear. Any union member today can order their union not to spend their dues on political campaigns. But the people who provide the big corporations' funds, the shareholders and customers, have no such control over how the corporate executives spend their money. Organized labor always has much less money to contribute to candidates and initiative campaigns than corporations do. In 2004, business interests contributed two and a half times as much as unions. Prop. 75 would make this imbalance much worse. It unfairly singles out public employee unions for restrictions while imposing no restrictions at all on the big corporations – which are spending millions of dollars to try to pass it. Rick Schlosser, |
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