LETTERS

Keep flying

My first response to this article (“Trouble above,” Dec. 17) was thank heavens the “Hueys” are no longer flying. That machine could be heard thundering up and down the Arroyo — dum, dum, dum — from miles away.

Longtime residents of the Northwest remember not always having a police presence, the 1970s and ’80s in particular, and the area was known as the ghetto. Even police were hesitant to head north.

The helicopter program began about the time Mr Gostelow was born, unaware of why this valuable service was initiated — heavy-duty drugs and killings the major reason.

Capt. Mulhall, the pilots and staff who take great risk in flying over Pasadena are to be commended.

This resident witnessed two shootings and one killing on our street in this early period and the cry from here is KEEP ’EM FLYING!

Regarding noise, Mr. Gostelow and his group could be useful in eliminating the horrible-sounding ice cream trucks and noisy gas-fueled leaf blowers.

~JAMES BEHM, PASADENA

Yes, President Obama absolutely deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Specifically, for silently standing around for months with his finger in his orifice as his secretary of state’s friends actively supported the military coup in Honduras.

That said, considering his military efforts in Iraq, Colombia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, we are still able to say with assurance that the president is definitely more deserving of a peace prize than his fellow awardee, war criminal Henry Kissinger. At least so far.

~BILL HUNNELL, SIERRA MADRE

It’s all the rage these days to sell public assets to pay off government debt. We mustn’t default, after all. We just hate to see our national parks, public roads, energy grids, water, hospitals and schools being sold to robber barons. Do we have anything to sell that the majority of Americans wouldn’t mind parting with?

What about all that Pentagon real estate owned by US taxpayers? More than 1,000 military bases worldwide. That real estate must be worth a fortune. Given the worldwide inflation of real estate values, created by the central banks, it must be worth trillions. We could close our worldwide military bases and sell that real estate to the locals, who would probably jump at the chance to get rid of a foreign occupying army. We could ask the buyers to pay for the land with worthless Federal Reserve notes. That would solve their problem of how to get rid of their worthless US dollars and simultaneously give Americans a sufficient amount of worthless dollars to pay back the Federal Reserve for the national debt they created with worthless Federal Reserve notes. Without those military bases we couldn’t have wars and we should be able to drastically reduce the Pentagon budget, saving even more money and lives!

Just think of it … close to $1 trillion every year being sucked up by the Pentagon would be liberated for health care, education, infrastructure and a peacetime economy. We could even get rid of the Pentagon altogether. After all, we lived quite comfortably without it for 170 years.

While we’re at it, we could sell off those secret CIA torture prisons; close all those military labs that make chemical and biological weapons and the pharmaceutical labs that create deadly vaccines. This would free up enough cash to save our hospitals, schools and national parks — with money left over to clean up all the depleted uranium sites contaminating 39 of our states.

We could get rid of the domestic surveillance apparatus and stop outsourcing intelligence gathering to private “security” firms, cancel the contracts with mercenaries and assassins, stop funding military recruiters in our schools and stop paying for coups in countries where people would rather elect their own leaders. That would save a fortune. Selling off the whole covert operations apparatus would have the double advantage of fetching a good price and freeing other people to live their lives in peace.

If we wanted to permanently flourish, we could get rid of the Federal Reserve and restore the function of money creation to the public — constitutional money backed by the full faith and credit of US citizens. A new monetary system owned and controlled by the public would ensure that credit is always available to cities and states, schools, hospitals, small businesses and homeowners. We wouldn’t have to sell off the public assets we value because we wouldn’t have any government debt. Problem solved.

The public has plenty of toxic assets to sell. Wall Street hasn’t cornered that market. I wonder why Obama hasn’t thought of this himself. Perhaps the $900,000 in “campaign contributions” from Goldman Sachs is clouding his vision, or perhaps the advice he gets from the privately owned Federal Reserve is self-serving. Perhaps the corporate CEOs that rake in billions from public despair have his ear, or perhaps the beneficiaries of Pentagon wars have convinced him that killing people in Afghanistan and Iraq will bring greater returns than selling off the toxic assets Americans really don’t want.

Paying off the national debt is a no-brainer when you have a conscience.

~NIKKI ALEXANDER, VENTURA

Re: “Altadena’s rules of order,” Dec. 17

[Herbert] Simmons does not understand that the Altadena Town Council is not a governing or legislative body, but merely an advisory body to the county Board of Supervisors, so he needs to brush up on his knowledge of government. Simmons acts like he is on trial. Yet, in a way he is because the ATC has blown this issue way out of proportion and created unnecessary controversy by holding closed meetings about ethics investigations into Simmons’ conduct. The actions of the ATC have raised Simmons’ importance to a ridiculous level. If the members of the ATC were not so wrapped up in their own egos and desire for power where there is none, they would ignored Simmons and instead demanded that the PUSD school board look into PUSD administration for allowing Simmons, who is not employed by the PUSD, to randomly set up a school award program in our public schools. But, oh, I forgot, this is the same ATC and PUSD that brokered the deal to allow the private Altadena country club exclusive access to the public tennis courts at Eliot. Oops!

~Posted by BlahBlahBlah