My Disgust

I have to let you know of my disgust with the Reader after seeing the cover story “To Live and Die in Oceanside” (February 21). I am a professional person and live in Oceanside and don’t even believe that you allow such a story on the front page of your Reader. I used to work for the San Diego County district attorney technical services division, and I saw dead gangbangers come across my desk on a daily basis, 90 percent from Southeast or the barrio. How can you slam Oceanside so freely? I don’t think you have your facts together, as our local law enforcement is on top of the gangs and violence. I’m sorry to say that the Reader has lost me as a reader.

Name Withheld

via email

Really Disgusted

I work with a group of teachers. I’m a teacher here in San Diego, in one of the high schools, and I don’t really want to name the high school, but we, as a group — there are 5 or 6 of us, and I know 10 or 15 others — we were really disgusted with the choice of picture that you have on the Reader this week (“To Live and Die in Oceanside,” Cover Story, February 21). It looks like you’re glorifying gang activity or gang membership, and it’s really appalling. I think it’s a bad message to send to San Diego and our youth, who glorify and

really look up to this stuff because a lot of them are misled, without parents and families. Whoever made that choice to put that picture of the gang member right there, with his head cut off and all the gang activity on his body, it’s really disgusting, and I think it’s low class, and I think it sends a bad message, and it’s a very bad choice. Please think about stuff that you do before you do it.

Tom Cottner

Skewed View

Regarding your cover story “To Live and Die in Oceanside” (February 21), I would like to express my disappointment. I was born and raised in San Diego and have lived in Oceanside for the last 20 years and find it a wonderful coastal community, full of terrific family-oriented, well-educated professionals in lovely, safe neighborhoods. Your article continues to perpetuate the negative reputation of the city I live in, and frankly, we don’t deserve it. The article states Oceanside has 600 gang members. This is less than 1 percent of our total population. I really do find it offensive the Reader chose to focus on the least common denominator of our city and give the impression we are a gang-ridden, unsafe community. It is the wrong impression, and it is disappointing the Reader is portraying a very old, tired, skewed view of this beautiful city.

Nikki Kuech

via email

Wrong Image

I’m sending this email about the recent cover and article in the Reader about Oceanside (“To Live and Die in Oceanside,” Cover Story, February 21). The cover of a bare-chested man with gang names associated with Oceanside is just plain offensive to us who have worked so hard at changing the image of Oceanside and have worked on wonderful new developments in this city. The image is just wrong for an up-and-coming cultural arts city with a world-class art museum, two historic theaters, a fabulous Mission San Luis Rey, pier and harbor, concerts in the park, and many other cultural events. Developers have discovered Oceanside, and new hotels, office space, restaurants, and retail are moving into the downtown area.

This type of journalism is just sensationalism to promote your paper. Oceanside is metamorphosing into a highly desirable area. We are a city comprising many neighborhoods filled with families and professionals, each with our own unique character and value that comprise the vibrant beach and cultural arts city that we are today.

The San Diego Union-Tribune and the North County Times have produced honest and positive yet balanced editorial regarding the incredible change that has taken place over many years in our city. We hope that the Reader will consider better coverage in the future.

Carolyn Mickelson

Chair

Oceanside Arts Commission

Blatant Power Grab

Don Bauder’s “City Light” (“Brash Cash,” February 21) refers to the threat of an initiative by the developers to give the mayor absolute power. Yesterday I was approached outside Ralphs and asked to sign an initiative to “audit the mayor.” It sounded good until I read it. The petition will give the mayor the power to choose the auditor who audits the mayor’s departments, which is virtually the whole city. A blatant power grab buttressed by signature solicitors who are trained to lie to the public.

Melvin Shapiro

Hillcrest

Smelly, Luddite Hippies

This is regarding today’s “City Lights” story “Strife Span” (February 21). I’ve been enjoying Rose Canyon for over ten years and used to be against the Regents bridge, but I’ve done a 180 on that.

All the squawking on this project focuses on Genesee traffic. How about how convenient it would be crossing Rose Canyon via Regents? There are shopping centers on each side. In order to go from one shopping center to the other, you need to travel via Governor Drive and Genesee and weave through some other roads instead of just zipping across. How about the environmental impact of that extra driving? How about the impact of all those cars idling on Genesee day after day?

The new bridge won’t do much environmental damage either. So a few plants and animals will bite it during construction, that’s just Darwin. Get out of the way or pave them over. The plants and animals haven’t been harmed by the existing Genesee bridge; they’re doing just fine.

I’ve had it up to here with the extra driving and moving as fast as a potted plant on Genesee. A lot of the environmentalist types fighting the bridge are outside agitators that don’t even live or drive in University City anyway. These smelly, Luddite hippies should go find another battle.

Pat Wilson

via email

Extremely Upset

I recently read a letter (February 14) by someone who asked why “Roommate from Hell” articles no longer appear in your publication and why “Dumped” is there instead. The response was that “Roommate from Hell” articles are published as they become available. Well, let me say I sent in my “Roommate from Hell” article for publication in November and have not received a response, yes or no either way. I am extremely upset by this, and this is my fourth or so email complaining about the lack of professional conduct of the Reader. My article was as good as any other (I would be willing to resubmit it); however, if it was offensive in any way, I would have at least expected an answer. I emailed it to the correct address, which by the way is no longer in the Reader, but rather a new address for “Dumped” has taken its place. It is concerning to me that such a thing has taken place, and I have not forgotten about it.

Name Withheld

by Request

Legally Stripped

Re “Very Heartening” (Letters, February 14), whose revelations bring to mind this excerpt from our Declaration of Independence: “He [King George] has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation.” I am reminded of the arguments proffered by the advocates for “redemption” strategies, wherein “John-Q: of the clan Citizen” is legally stripped of his/her sovereign status by unwittingly volunteering to be a commercial entity named John Q. Citizen, which is legally subservient to his “upline”: any government agency, inc.; town, inc.; city, inc.; county, inc.; state, inc.; U.S., inc. It’s no wonder that Congress has defined the Citizen as the “enemy” of the U.S., Inc.

So this is how these seemingly unconstitutional “laws” (Patriot Act, etc.) get properly blessed by the courts. The Constitution is not operable; we all operate in commerce! It all makes sense if you refer to the Uniform Commercial Code rather than the Constitution to determine what’s fair.

For example: the U.S. Marine Corps, Inc., is contracted as a mercenary enforcer for U.S., Inc., which is contracted by the Federal Reserve Bank, Inc., to secure its shareholders’ oil assets in Iraq, composed of oil companies, inc.

This is not new. The Empire of “The City,” by E.C. Knuth, 1945, researched obscure research papers that collectively proved that the British government, from 1815 to 1945, acted as a mercenary force for “the Crown.” This is not the royal family but a banking cartel, led by the Bank of England (privately and closely held, of course) all of whom lived in and operated from an independently governed ghetto of London called “The City.”

The book’s point is, Britain instigated dozens of wars, including WWI and WWII, from which the citizenry gained nothing except a declining standard of living and lost sons in every generation. The nation owned none of the colonies, which encompassed five-eighths of the globe by 1945. Parliament had no jurisdiction over the “British Empire,” only over domestic affairs. This national self-sacrificing behavior made no sense for the citizenry.

The mercenary mantle was passed to the U.S., Inc., and we are reenacting history until we end up poor and broken like most of the inhabitants of Britain. Our “national interests” around the world are really certain private interests whom we ignorantly work (and die) for. Our own bankster masters live in the “Golden Ghetto” in New York City, whose zip code is the source of half of all political campaign funds for all state and federal offices. No wonder Bill Clinton, when asked what he’d learned upon becoming president, replied: I learned that someone else makes all the decisions.

Lastly, the writer’s advocacy for a gold-based dollar is misplaced. The U.S. government owns no appreciable amount of gold. Look for the book On the Horns of the Beast, by Bill Still (author of the video documentary The Money Masters). In both articles, he chronicles the long history of banking and power politics. He ends the book with a convincing argument against gold as collateral for money; not the least is that whoever owns the gold owns the money and the nation that uses it.

Pat Palmer

Talmadge

Obnoxious Population

Don Bauder’s excellent February 14 article, “Dust Bowl Coming?” (“City Lights”), quotes solid authorities and conditions regarding Southern California’s drought. No politician or conservation measures will alter its severity, as outlined in Max Evans’s November 15, 2007 letter, “God-Haters Miss the Point,” whereby the problem is not climatic or geophysical but rather spiritual, for God owns and controls the weather (Psalms 147).

Early America honored God’s precepts for living and governing and found itself blessed beyond imagination over any combination of backsliding and pagan nations, precepts today mostly ignored and paralleled with an increasingly obnoxious population and declining standard of living resulting from a new idol worship of things created, and not the Creator, including environmental material objects and vain, arrogant celebrities.

Biblically, and ultimately, legalized sacrifice of the young (abortion) and legalized perverse sex, unless reversed, will bring military defeat and the remaining population spewed (driven) out of their land (ref. Lev. Ch. 18, 20, 26; Deut. 18 and 28).

Mr. Evans mentioned a simultaneous severe drought and destruction of a latter-day “daughter of Babylon” (Jer. 50:38). Likely the U.S. for transgressions, currently manifesting erratic and vicious weather and economic dislocation.

Our industrial base has left, agriculture faces heavy foreign competition and endless new and foreign pathogens, potential depression and possible dollar collapse, all representing loss of blessings and new curses due to our unbiblical lifestyle.

To reverse the above for prosperity and good rains, the U.S. must repent (II Chron. ch. 7:14) and ask God for forgiveness through His son Jesus Christ and for eternal life. Sam Adams said, “You will be ruled by God or by tyrants.” The current one has a good start on us.

Ken Howard

Escondido