Posted on Tue, Jan. 09, 2007
Public unions have control of lawmakers

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger calls for a commission to study health care and public employee pensions.

Call me a pessimist and a cynic. As long as public employees unions continue their stranglehold on the state, no commission will achieve anything. We had a chance in November 2005 to break that hold. We blew it.

These unions own most of our legislators so there won't be any corrective action, no matter what the commission recommends. Commissions are powerless, just another committee, and committees rarely achieve anything noteworthy.

Arnold should have come back with another proposition this year to limit these unions use of members' money. The unions exhausted their treasuries in defeating the 2005 proposition and would not be able to mount a blitz to defeat it. Instead he rolled over and aligned himself with the likes of Don Perata, D-Oakland, and Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles. Hopes for change in the state political environment when Arnold was elected were dashed over the last year by his actions taken to just get re-elected.

Arnold is better than Angelides, but barely. We have a Democrat-controlled legislature and a liberal governor. We can only look forward to more control of our individual rights and more strides toward the socialist state of California.

Ken Hambrick

Walnut Creek

Threat to workers

The first order of business for American workers who don't want to end up shoulder-to-shoulder with immigrant and Third World labor is to put a stop to the North American Union (NAU). It threatens to destroy America's middle class.

The NAU is a plan currently being devised in Washington which will merge Canada, the United States and Mexico into a single economy. It is the basis for treaties being developed without the consent of Congress or the people but favored by the administration, most Democratic and many Republican legislators.

Winners: international corporations (cheap labor) and socialists (pro-immigrant votes).

Losers: American labor, small business, middle class, our Constitution and eventually everybody. (Imagine a Europeanized America, the European Union or the Third World resisting major tyrannies).

The NAU means open borders, swamped services and social security, declining wages, lost jobs, drugs and gangs -- all the corruption our ancestors fled, following us here.

Inform yourself. Use Google to search NAU, totalization, NAFTA Highway, etc. Ask your representatives why. Be prepared for evasion. Make a decision before it's made for you.

Bob Leach

Walnut Creek

Wrong, wrong, wrong

If we just look at recent history, say the last six years, it should give us all the information we need to determine whether or not the Bush administration can be trusted to make the next right decision about anything. Let's see;

1. Appoint Alberto Gonzales: Wrong

2. Appoint John Bolton: Wrong

3. Invade Iraq: Wrong

4. Weapons of mass destruction: Wrong

5. Warrantless wiretapping: Wrong

6. Torture prisoners: Wrong

7. Keep Rumsfeld for six years: Wrong

8. Iraq mission accomplished: Wrong

9. Sack Kyoto treaty: Wrong

10. Sack Geneva Conventions: Wrong

11. Delete habeus corpus: Wrong

12. Largest deficit in history: Wrong

13. Cut veterans benefits: Wrong

14. Weapons in space: Wrong

15. Build new nuclear arsenal: Wrong

So if you get the basic idea here, I wonder if we should surge more troops into Iraq? Do the math folks. This list could be 10 times this long. What is it going to take for us to wake up? Bring the troops home now! Or how about you going to relieve them for a while.

Doug Rotermund

Walnut Creek

Paper ballot

I join the call for a paper ballot for every vote cast in America. It is time for Congress to finally pass an election reform bill in which the American people can have confidence.

Any such legislation must require a paper ballot, not a "paper trail" nor a "paper record" for every vote cast. I fully support the open letter from leading election integrity organizations. Please make this a top priority in the upcoming legislative session.

Warren Sanford

Pleasant Hill

Blatant fouls

Thomas Sowell's Dec. 29 column (Productivity key to wealth) conveniently omits an important element: Value can be fairly ascertained only in an arm's length transaction.

Since Derek Jeter did not appoint George Steinbrenner and is not his personal friend, chances are Jeter's pay reflects his value.

The same cannot be said for multinational corporate CEOs, who appoint cronies to the board that sets their salaries.

Their bloated paychecks represent kleptocracy and insider dealing, not actual value. It is time for our elected representatives (the referees in the game of capitalism) to wake up and blow the whistle on these blatant fouls.

Paul Schindler

Orinda

Unchecked evil grows

Dennis O'Brien made some astute points in his letter of Dec. 24. I would like to crystallize the key point.

The lesson we should have learned from last century's wars is that evil unchecked grows. We have two options: Confront it early at the cost of several thousands of brave lives, or confront it later at the cost of millions of lives.

President Bush, hoping the unity of 9/11 would enable the former choice, erred. He has been proven a fool for trusting the American public to be unified for the national good.

In contrast, Osama bin Laden, depending on our division, was proven right in his assessment.

If we do not unify to do the right thing and stop the evil now, we shall indeed merit and reap what we shall sow: Many millions will die, even if we stop the evil.

David R. Spharler

Pittsburg

http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/cct ... 416765.htm