Now that our Nation is on track to a better tomorrow, California
should try to move on that track. All legislation, including the
budget, passes by a simple majority.
Dear Editor,
Now that our Nation is on track to a better tomorrow, California should try to move on that track. All legislation, including the budget, passes by a simple majority. Not one dime is cut from education until California public schools rank first in the nation. Investment in our children will make California golden and strengthen America.
Frank Crosby, Morgan Hill
VTA is a failed experiment
Dear Editor,
If the horse is sick, changing your jockey won’t help. If the team stinks, changing your manager won’t help. The Valley Transportation Authority’s flaw is not its appointed directors. The flaw that damns VTA and joint power authorities like it is its policy.
Resting on the foundation of quicksand socialism, rather than the bedrock of capitalism, VTA was conceived insolvent, born bankrupt and kept operating only by ever-increasingly massive taxpayer subsidies. It is a failed experiment like Amtrak and Caltrain, but our leaders don’t have the courage or wisdom to admit it.
The policy of urban mass transit as a “solution” is self-delusion by our leaders and eternal optimism by the voters. History has many examples of the failure of this socialist policy: failed and bankrupt state-owned railroads in the 1830s and 1840s; Lincoln’s reply to Gen. Granville Dodge in 1864 on private ownership of the transcontinental and land grant railroads; denationalization of our railroads only 18 months after they were nationalized during WWI.
If the socialist policy was correct, then the USSR would have won the Cold War and people would have torn down the Berlin Wall to get into East Germany. Why did the nationalized transport industries around the world get privatized in the 1990s?
With all its faults, capitalism is the only horse we ought to be backing.
Until we privatize the carriage of passenger business, our leaders have us on the same route taken by the USSR – straight to hell.
Joseph P. Thompson, Gilroy
Anti-cell phone activists at it again
Dear Editor,
It appears the anti-cell phone tower activists are busy spreading hysteria again. Ludicrous! Consider the situation. We have experienced more than 60 years of exposure to electromagnetic radiation from FM and TV stations without even a hint or suspicion of any adverse health effects and, to my knowledge, none have ever been claimed. This radiation ranges in frequency from 50 to 800 megahertz. Then about 30 years ago a new source of radio frequency radiation from cell phones was introduced in the range from 1800 to 2400 megahertz.
Suddenly, all manner of adverse health effects have been propounded. Plausible? Actually no; there is no such expectation whatsoever based on the applicable scientific understanding for electromagnetic radiation.
Back in 2003, I made a presentation to the Gilroy City Council and staff regarding the science underlying electromagnetic radiation. At the time, I characterized the health risk from cell phone towers as infinitesimal based on then current data. Nevertheless, the council authorized the staff to prepare a Cell Phone Tower Ordinance with the active involvement of the anti-cell phone tower clique.
The ordinance affords them the opportunity to intervene at anytime, even when it is only an application to continue operating an existing cell phone tower; e.g., at the Wheeler Manor Senior Health Center in Gilroy.
Well guess what? Since the ordinance was implemented the situation has radically changed. Both the cell phone and cell phone tower health risk is no longer infinitesimal; it is non-existent.
In May, 2006 the World Health Organization concluded, after 12 years spent examining all available data, that there was no credible evidence of any adverse health effects from cell phone tower radiation.
Keep in mind that WHO is a legitimate scientific organization staffed with technically competent, qualified personnel. Further, WHO, like the FDA, is charged with protecting public health. They have a positive bias for finding and exposing even the most miniscule health threat.
What should the residents and neighbors of the Wheeler Manor Senior Housing Center do? First of all they should relax.
The Consulting Engineering Firm has already determined, by actual measurements, that their exposure intensity is well below the FDA limit. The tiny exposure they are experiencing will cause them no more harm than they incurred from more than 60 years of exposure to FM and TV radiation. Second, they need to realize that they are being manipulated by a clique of sincere but profoundly misguided activists.
They would be far better served by relying on technical experts that are actually qualified by education and experience to understand the cell phone/cell phone tower technology. The Consulting Engineering Firm hired by T-Mobile comes to mind!
Mark F. Lyons, Gilroy
