Jul 17, 2008

Letters to the Editor

Daily News

Letters to the Editor: July 16 edition


New Yorker cover

Dear Editor: In the effort to turn our national anxieties into a joke, the New Yorker has gone too far. Presidential Democratic candidate Barack Obama is an amazement who has ignited this country's apathetic citizens into new energy and new hope. He is also too new and undefined to be satirized.

Satire, cynicism, irony - these are outlets that should not be applied to Obama's campaign. Too many nay-sayers believe everything negative they can get their minds around when it comes to Barack Obama and his family. The joke failed because the powers at the New Yorker didn't understand this, and maybe none of us do. That cartoon traded on our ability to laugh at ourselves, a hard thing to do when we don't understand something deep going on within this country and ourselves

Trish Hooper,

Portola Valley



Evicted tenant

Dear Editor: The Nancy Westerfield story in Tuesday's Daily News is an indication of the sad times we are in. She needs some of these high-priced lawyers to go after Dokomar Inc. to get some compensation for their being a bunch of jerks. I really can't see why anyone with half a brain that read her story would figure that she would be a bad tenant. Hopefully, someone will give her a better place to live and some compensation.

G. Cook,

East Palo Alto



Iran nukes

Dear Editor: The Associated Press report July 11 that Iran doctored photos of its July 9 missile firing confirm what I forecast in the Daily News on Feb. 11, 2006, based on my speech of May 8, 2005. Iran is running a Potemkin Village scam on the world with its nukes program, precisely as Saddam Hussein did with weapons of mass destruction in the 1990s. The same idiots in the U.S. Department of State, White House and even more gullible CIA in the 1990s (read Democrats in Congress and the entire Clinton administration) bought the scam without question or doubt, even affirming the Iraq-generated con that Saddam represented a threat and couldn't be given the benefit of the doubt as late as the U.S. land invasion in March 2003.

Iran's military is even more incompetent and overrated by the world than is its actual nukes program threat, exactly the mistake made with Saddam. The Clinton White House on Dec. 15, 1998 acknowledged our warning Saddam had scammed it into bombing Iraq on Saddam's schedule. President George W. Bush spent 2001-2003 pursuing the Saddam-crafted bombing "containment" of Saddam, but he still relies on the suckers who fed him Iraq's con.

If you do not wish to see the U.S. go to war with Iran, don't believe anything Washington says about Iran. Same for those who support such action - because the CIA and NSC have proven incapable of accepting they have been made fools of for three decades by Iran and Iraq. Is the way to end this endless incompetence the disbanding of the CIA, NSC and the State Department?

Norman P. Higby,

Menlo Park



Friends of Westwind

Dear Editor: Your article on the lawsuit brought by the stable hands at Westwind Barn, printed in the July 11 Daily News, has several errors. It leaves the impression that the stable hands brought an unjustified suit against the Friends organization with the quote of the Friends lawyer Tracy Lemmon: "And the men received four months of paid vacation each year."

Surely, this must be a misprint. Mr. Carranza was employed for 15 years and was never given four months' annual vacation. He was given two weeks annually and in 2005 was granted a third week to see his family in Mexico, in return for which he gave up a salary increase for the year. The Friends of Westwind made this "concession" - to give him an additional week because it worked out to be cheaper for them than giving him a cost-of-living increase for the year.

Although Mr. Carranza did buy a house in Fremont, he could not afford to live in it. It was an investment in the future. All the money he and his wife saved went toward paying the mortgage. One day they hoped to be able to live in a house instead of a barn - to build a better life for themselves and their children.

Another misstatement by Ms. Lemmon: "Carranza asked to live at the barn." This is not true. It was a requirement imposed by the Friends board that the stable hands had to provide 24-hour coverage of the barn - a condition also imposed by the Town of Los Altos Hills.

You can check out these facts by looking at the sworn depositions of the individuals involved. As I was one of those, I can assure you that Ms. Lemmon's comments are patently untrue.

Sadly, your article makes these hardworking individuals, Gregorio Rodriguez and Ignacio Carranza, victims once again. Readers will infer that these men were simply out to wring money out of the Town of Los Altos Hills and the Friends of Westwind. What they received in the settlement is just a modicum of justice, to which they are more than entitled.

Nancy Couperus,

Former board member,

Friends of Westwind