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Santa Maria Times from Santa Maria, California • 4

Publication:
Santa Maria Timesi
Location:
Santa Maria, California
Issue Date:
Page:
4
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

A4 Santa Maria times Friday, March 7, 2003 This is what I'm really fed up' about Opinion T'm writing to elaborate on my feelings of the article that appeared Thursday on the front page of the A II Santa Maria Times. 1 am Santa Maria Times Established in 1882 refuse. What about me and my neighbor's rights? Since these people have been diagnosed as mentally ill, why aren't they forced to take their medications? I administrate over a six-bed licensed Alzheimer's home here in Santa Maria. What would happen if my residents were EDITORIAL BOARD Cynthia Schur President and Publisher TOM BOLTON Executive Editor Kathleen Lund Managing Editor Ken Miller Life Times Editor fed up, Maureen Attebury Guest Commentary them more closely? Why don't they have trained, paid, 24-hour care for their residents? (It's not like they don't have the "money.) Why dont they have vans to get residents out of the neighborhood to do activities? (You should see the nice vehicles these people own.) Why have they never made themselves available to us, their neighbors, who have to deal with their residents on a 24-7 basis? Why do they allow their residents to leave their homes, beer bottle in hand, and stagger down my street? Why do they do nothing when their residents are in front of my home cursing, screaming and hitting each other? If any of you owners have the nerve to answer these questions or if any neighbors in the surrounding area would like to have these and other questions answered, we will be going before the Board of Supervisors again this Tuesday at 9 a.m. It's time that people suffering with mental illness get the proper care, attention and love that they deserve.

It's also time that homeowners have safe neighborhoods to live in. We didn't invest thousands of our hard-earned dollars to live like this. Maureen Attebury is a Santa Maria resi-' dent. left alone during the day andor night and didn't take their med mUm However, this paper didn't clearly state what I am fed up with. I'm fed up with people who live in surrounding cities, such as Guadalupe, for example, who come into my neighborhood, pay cash for $300,000 homes, and then use helpless mentally ill people and make a buck off them.

The owners of these "room-and-board" homes get anywhere from $1,000 to $1,400 per person, per month. They have up to six residents per house. That's a nice little profit. Please understand that I'm not targeting Guadalupe. It's just that I know for a fact that the owner of one house on Nova lives in Guadalupe, and she just recently bought another home on Nova only a few nouses down from her already up-and-running, room-and-board.

These owners don't provide activities for their residents to keep them busy dur- ing the day. No van to take them to the beach, park or for shopping. These mentally ill people are left to meander around the neighborhood 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. They don't "have to" take their medi-cine because it's their personal right to A Pulitzer MEDIA ications? I hate to think of the ramifications. Also, the owner of Bella Gardens and I went to all the neighbors before opening and introduced ourselves as this was the "neighborly" thing to do.

We told them that if they had any concerns to please call her or contact me. So why are these owners in hiding? They've never introduced themselves to us nor told us of their intentions. Why don't they open these room and boards in their own neighborhoods so they can monitor Citizens share blame for budget Th'rt rjrnx know that cmstind Saddam tian osier democracy. bring Mideast peace.lcmer cholesterol. i jand rawide 100 minerals and viteiniiis Sacramento Bee I you want someone to blame for California's budget crisis, you might want to start by looking in a mirror.

It may sound unkind to say so, but a big piece of the difficulty of confronting the state's budget deficit is the confused attitude of the state's citizens. Put simply, the problem is that too many Californians expect something for nothing. As the Public Policy Institute of California revealed in a survey last month, the state's residents want a lot of different and often contradictory things. For example, almost two-thirds of them told PPIC pollsters that they want more state spending on schools; only 5 percent think the schools should get less money. Slightly more than half of those polled also said that the state should spend more on health and social services; only one in eight want health cuts.

Four in five said the state should spend the same or more on higher education. So it went, down the list of state spending. In no category did a plurality of citizens support spending cuts. Yet at the same time, Californians weren't enthusiastic about raising taxes unless it's on someone else. They overwhelmingly approved higher tobacco taxes on the 17.4 percent of adults who smoke.

They supported higher income taxes on Newspaper VOICES the top 3 percent of earners in the state. But they opposed higher taxes that would hit more broadly, such as restoring the vehicle license fee or expanding the sales tax beyond goods to services. In other words, the public's attitudes just don't add up. In the abstract, a plurality of Californians (43 percent) favor a mix of tax increases and spending cuts to close the budget gap. They just don't like the particulars of most options.

Only one in eight support the only mix of tax increases and spending cuts any state leader has laid on the table the budget submitted by Gov. Gray Davis. It's no surprise to see the public's contradictions reflected at the state Capitol. The Legislature is a representative institution, after all But elected offi- cials don't deserve to be let off the hook when they claim to be only following voters' wishes. The budget crisis is an occasion where elected officials can't just follow or pander; they must lead.

The confused attitudes in the PPIC poll are a measure of their failure to do so. The governor and lawmakers haven't done enough to educate Californians about the stark choices the state faces. They aren't doing it now in any concerted way, and they didn't do it last year, when they had the public's attention during the election. Is it any wonder the public holds them in such disdain? likely to hit hospitals and homes. Instead, the Iraqis wanted to station their human shields in power plants, water treatment facilities, oil refineries and warehouses.

To their horror, one groups of shields found themselves being assigned to an army base on the southern approaches to Baghdad, a base the shields easily envisioned being obliterated on the opening night of the war. The peace activists' plan to be human shields was based on a naive and flawed premise that their presence would dissuade the United States and its allies from depriving Saddam Hussein of his weapons of mass destruction by force. The use of human shields is forbidden under longstanding international laws of war. If the shields were to stay and die in a futile defense of a legitimate military target, American war planners and pilots would be saddened, but the Iraqi officers and officials who deployed the shields would be facing an international war crimes tribunal. Trudeau Letters of dailv pensive escapades known to mankind.

In my opinion, many of the experiments were a waste of time and money which could have been accomplished in a more safe manner without going around and around in circles in an experimental rocket Why anyone would want to go to the moon or Mars is beyond my stretch of imagination. A trip to one of our local deserts would do just as well. In the few seconds before the seven died, their last thoughts may have been, "Boy, did I goof." LeoGarske Santa Maria EDITORIAL POLICY The Santa Maria Times encourages readers to express their opinions. Letters should be no longer than 250 words and must include the author's full name, address and daytime phone number. They may be edited for length, clarity and of-fensi veness, and we reserve the right to run longer letters on a case-by-case basis.

Thank you letters will be accepted without a list of individual contributors. E-mal letters to smtletterspulitzer.net to 806-928657 Mat Id P.O. Box 400, Santa Maria. CA 93456OO400 Human shields' enthusiasm wanes Willingness to adopt not the issue Joan Leon asked the question in Sunday's Times (Feb. 9), "How many of we who are so adamantly against abortion would be willing to adopt one of those children, sight unseen?" Ms.

Leon, we have done so and our son is one of our joys and delights. Yes, Td do it again But that is not the issue here. I've also done some counseling of young girls and more often than not, if someone suggests giving a child up for adoption, they reply that they never could do that' They'd rather kill their child than to put him or her up for adoption. But that is not the issue either. Is education the key? It may be, but not in the manner that you believe it is.

The issue boils down to the value that is placed on each person, not whether or not he or she will have an "acceptable" quality of life. There is a creator and people (including babies, bom and unborn), are created in His image. That is what gives value to these little one's lives. Educating young mothers on the latest and greatest ways to kill their infants only devalues both the life of the child and the mother's view of the life of her child. The long-range outcome is that each of those mothers and fathers come to view all people's lives as expendable, even yours and mine.

Is that the education you want for your children? Of course there are problems to be encountered raising adopted children. There are problems to be encountered raising biological children. And I cannot give an acceptable answer to the question of why God allows some children to suffer abuse and torment But one's inability to answer all the questions does not negate the issue We (all of us) are created in God's image and as such, we should work to preserve all human life, not seek to destroy it Barbara Biggs Santa Maria There's plenty of French to boycott Why would I not visit the Statute of Liberty, that's so un-American? That is, unless you are participating in boycotting all French products. Thaf right, my fellow citizens. Lady Liberty is French! And so are french fries, let's rename them freedom fries.

And french toast, let's rename that freedom toast And French's mustard, let's rename that Freedom mustard. Once we have changed these Mallard Fillmore French items, we can move on to the other nasty French stuff like Cognac, which becomes Freedom Brandy, and Champaign, which becomes Sparkling Wine (oh, we already did that one). Also, Creole food becomes Freedom food, and New Orleans becomes New Freedom. After we have swiped the word "French" out of the American language, we should stop using French products like the printed language for blind people, Braille. Sorry blind people, Braille is French.

We will not use all those other insignificant French inventions like parachutes, lead-acid batteries, canned food, margarine, Diesel engines, Etch-A-Sketch boards, neon lamps, surgical in- struments, turbine engine airplanes and let's not forget bikinis and pencils. That will show those wimpy French! Ortando Dozler Santa Maria Shuttle deaths an expensive waste Hopefully the seven lives lost in the last shuttle tragedy will be the last This effort to advance the accumulation of knowledge is one of the most senseless and ex Bruce Tinsley Scripps Howard News Service The drawback of a career as a human shield is, of course, that one day you might actually be called on to be one. This realization has caused the peace activists who flocked to Iraq to deter a U.S.-led attack by serving as human shields to rethink that proposition. And now, after entering the country to much favorable publicity about their idealism, they are scurrying back out as war seems imminent. Of the 50 anti-war protesters from Britain who arrived in a convoy of double-decker buses, only two were left at the start of this week.

It seems the Iraqis and the peace activists had differing ideas about the role of human shields. The visitors saw themselves as protecting schools, hospitals and residential areas. But the Iraqis noted that in the event of war the schools would be closed and that the Americans, with their precision-guided munitions, weren't Doonesbury Garry Give Take HAKD1CSeY.SK. 7Hg 0IUJOH. AM Nhsanems poerr trrHKJ9St.

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Pages Available:
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Years Available:
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