Missing Smear

As you are aware, you published an article by Don Bauder on October 30, 2008, in volume 37, number 44 of your publication, the Reader. The article was entitled “Smear Machine,” and it accused me of publishing a newsletter that “drips” with “naïveté and seething hatred.”

The article was devoid of any specific act of hating or smearing. The facts apparently don’t matter. While it is true that I have communicated to my friends and acquaintances that I believed that Mr. Aguirre’s conduct of client abandonment (which is currently under investigation by the state bar) was “seditious,” that comment, while perhaps a bit of hyperbole, is not an expression of hate. Mr. Bauder took great liberty in misinterpreting my views on a variety of subjects concerning Mr. Aguirre’s misconduct in office. Contrary to Mr. Bauder’s opinion, even the federal district court is having issues with many of Mr. Aguirre’s allegations. For example, see the following article in today’s Union-Tribune. http:// www.signonsandiego.com/ uniontrib/20081108/news_ 1m8sec.html. In addition, both U.S. District Court Judge Benitez and the California Supreme Court have also expressed serious doubts about certain allegations Mr. Bauder takes as proven.

Mr. Bauder was also informed by me that I never received MP1 benefits because I left the City in November of 1996 and that John W. Witt recused the entire office of the city attorney from advising the mayor and council or SDCERS [San Diego City Employees’ Retirement System] from this issue and retained Jones Day for that purpose. Yet he persisted in trying to put me in a false light, a tactic first developed by Mr. Aguirre when I endorsed Mayor Sanders over Donna Frye.

It appears that since moving to Colorado, Mr. Bauder has come to believe in “sentence first, verdict afterwards” instead of innocent until proven guilty.

Mr. Bauder also falsely presumed that he had all the names of the “Wolverine Network,” but he had only just over half. He has unwittingly insulted more people than he knows. The entire list includes judges, attorneys, doctors, teachers, military personnel, and members of the clergy, who all, according to Mr. Bauder, belong to the “smear machine.” Well, it looks like they reflect the views of 60 percent of the electorate, who also disagree with Mr. Aguirre’s continued abuses of power. Perhaps if Mr. Bauder wants to do an investigation on “smear machines” he ought to report on Mr. Aguirre’s treatment of Tom Story and Tracy Means.

I believe that the article was defamatory per se, but have no fear, I have no intention of suing. As the publication of the existence of the Network did nothing but enhance my reputation for truth and honesty, a lawsuit is unnecessary. If anything, the article shows that Mr. Bauder is out of town, out of the county, out of the state, and out of touch. After all, it was not I who was sanctioned by the Ethics Commission twice, reprimanded by several superior court judges and the Fourth District Court of Appeal, and severely criticized by both the district attorney and the California attorney general. In addition, the state bar’s investigation into Mr. Aguirre’s conduct is still ongoing.

Mr. Bauder’s article was nothing more than an in-kind political contribution to Mr. Aguirre’s failing political campaign. It served no purpose, as the people of this fine city easily saw through the charade and have sent Mr. Aguirre packing.

I have taken this opportunity to send copies of this email to all those who have been subject to this pernicious and nefarious attack on a group of responsible citizens.

John M. Kaheny
aka “Wolverine 6”

Don Bauder responds: The column never mentions whether or not Kaheny received MP1 benefits. The first paragraph capsulizes his dispute with Aguirre and gives both sides, Kaheny’s and Aguirre’s, but any benefits Kaheny received or did not receive are not mentioned.

The Union-Tribune article to which Mr. Kaheny refers reports on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case against five pension officials; Aguirre’s name does not appear in the story.

Two Blue Pencils

Regarding Robert Lowth’s letter to the editor (November 6) concerning Josh Board the party crasher, as poor and uninteresting a writer as Bored [sic] is, Lowth is worse. Please censor them both.

Chris Bowd
via email

No Cows In The River

Your excellent article “There Is No San Diego River” (Cover Story, October 23) stirred some old memories for me.

When I moved my family to San Diego in 1969, most of the San Diego River was a golf course, from Highway 395 to Highway 15. It flooded every once in a while, as did all of San Diego’s streams. This allowed them to cleanse themselves of natural and man-made debris.

There were a few businesses along Highway 8, but those were in danger at flood times. Even the dairy farmers had enough sense to not build anything in a streambed! How the City and County of San Diego could approve the construction of huge shopping centers and living areas along those streams is beyond me. But money talks, and bureaucrats hear it.

Sadly, the San Diego River is only one of many fatalities among our streams and steep canyons. I live on what was once the San Luis Rey River. When I bought this property in 1974, the river ran most of the time, clear and clean.

In the 1980s, many deep wells and water-diversion projects began removing the water faster than it accumulated. Now the San Luis Rey is a streak of sand and rock extending from the ocean to Lake Henshaw. Four-wheelers race on it!

Pala’s casino was built where a magnificent oak grove once stood, in the floodplain. Other atrocities exist or are being considered from the ocean to Henshaw. That’s enough memories for me!

Name Withheld
Pala

Worthless Paper

Don Bauder (“Bailsman,” “City Lights,” October 16) gives charity to the current financial mess. The gigantic bailouts will saturate the world with Federal Reserve scrip (debt note) dollars in the forthcoming paperstorm. German prime minister Merkel said after the current financial debacle (manipulated collapse), a new global financial system will emerge, meaning the current crisis is under central bank control.

Did you notice the Bank of England’s private U.S. Federal Reserve subsidiary, Delaware incorporated, producer of our near-worthless unbacked paper dollars, was “not” nationalized with the other troubled banks?

The purpose of the central banks is to transfer wealth such as real property, factories, and other assets to the Fed’s owners with worthless and unlimited and unbacked (gold, silver) paper. It establishes public policy from The Communist Manifesto — here, the “abolition of private property.” It has no reserves except the paper it prints at will with zeros added on and transferred to its computer coffers.

The Congress should abolish the Fed’s charter, resume its constitutional duty, and direct the proper limited amount of nondebt currency, gold and silver backed, to control any overexpansion, providing the stability it once knew.

The present unbacked currency proliferation accounts for our international meddling, wars, and homegrown unconstitutional bureaucracy expansion.

Smart investors saw the dollar’s demise and invested heavily in gold and silver, creating shortages beginning last March for the first time.

Thomas Jefferson said, “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

The central bankers supported the environmental and more recent eminent domain concepts to bring about the same result.

Ray Bently
Escondido

Sunshine and Mediocrity

Ho hum. I had hoped for some rational constructive criticism to my previous letter, my mild criticism of this city (Letters, October 2). However, three responses were angry, irrational, condescending, sarcastic, and full of personal invective. The one letter in my defense was from a lady who had lived in the Bay Area, naturally. The scale of discourse there tends towards the rational and the intelligence level much higher. I thank this lady for her insight and gentility. As for the recent letter from Mr. P.B., you need to know that sarcasm is the last refuge of the witless. I also do not understand why you think I want to move to L.A. I was thinking more of a great city 500 miles or so north, the real “finest city.”

The three nasty letters typify for me the provincialism of this place. Are you gentlemen incapable of rebutting my view of San Diego in a logical, constructive fashion instead of merely tearing it down with personal invective? How boring! I was hoping to get a good conversation going, maybe to learn something from a positive dialogue. Instead I get the tired old “love it or leave it” tirade, trite and facile.

I’m from San Diego, but I was fortunate to have had the opportunity to live in other places. However, I remember when this was a small, pleasant town. Then it became a large, unpleasant town without bothering to become a city. That is all I am saying. Can you refute this without resorting to personal invective?

Your letters have further convinced me that we all live in an intellectual wasteland. Significantly, the most intelligent letter came from an ex–San Franciscan. She won’t be staying here long. This lady realizes that sunshine and mediocrity are not enough to make a great city. You will too, one of these days.

Rico Gardiner
Mission Hills

Clip Ollie

Most weeks I go though the Reader. I find some good articles and some not so good, okay. I’ve been reading the “Remote Control King” thinking it was humor. In several months now it has not raised as much as a smile. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just a filler. Clip art would be cheaper and more entertaining.

Dean Rither
via email