Lack of justice suggests that money talks in this small town

Yes, I have a question: Do these cops think that they are above the law?

One gets paid for being a crook! Then there was the Bradshaw case, where he gets a slap on the hand.

Yes, money talks in this small town!

Tony Jacomella

Crescent City

Disheartened and ashamed by decision not to retry Bradshaw

In regards to the Bradshaw trial and the Coastal Voices piece article by District Attorney Jon Alexander (“The Bradshaw decision,” April 16), I’m disheartened and ashamed. Alexander never once showed up to the trial, yet this was the biggest case at the time of the trial. He stated that his best trial attorney tried the case, yet Katherine Micks never seemed to object to anything and fumbled over her words

Another trial would not improve her performance? Nothing would change with a new trial? That is hard to believe. If the case is so hard to prove then why was taxpayer money wasted to go to trial to begin with? In regards to memories fading due to the fact of the defense attorney's illness, was it real,? Was proof even offered or the delay objected to?

If Obama were adopted, he would never see his birth certificate

I am glad that President Obama was able to obtain a copy of his original birth certificate to prove that he was born in the United States. However, if President Obama had been born and adopted in the United States, he still would not be able to produce his original birth certificate for the public or even for his own viewing.

By law, he would only be able to produce an “amended birth certificate.”

An amended birth certificate is issued at the finalization of a person’s adoption. This “birth certificate” replaces a person's birth name with a new name and his/her natural parents’ names/information with his adoptive parents’ names/information.

Once an amended birth certificate is issued, people are kept from viewing/possessing their truthful documentation of birth. Their original birth certificate is sealed forever.

I wish President Obama had been adopted so that the country could see how discriminatory it is to seal an adopted person’s birth certificate and replace it with a falsified one.

Mara Parker

Trinidad

Better basketball program for our youth would be high school boon

I have noticed a couple of articles about AAU basketball teams in Crescent City, but don’t remember seeing any anouncement of putting the teams together.

I have lived in small towns most of my life, so I understand the “Good Ol’ Boy” system, but why would you not want to put the best players out there to represent our community?

If we had a basketball system for our youth like the one we have for football, we might start winning more championships at the high school level.

Bob Fisher

Crescent City

We need third party as Obama works under the table for GOP

There needs to be a third political party, if for no other reason than to be a chaperone, keeping an eye on the other two nit-wits, the Republican and Democratic parties.

The first thing Republicans and Democrats do when they get into office is start working on the next election four years down the road. They both work for the big corporations, not you. So why do you vote them back in? Could a third party do any worse?

People are scared of change.

Obama promised a real change. How’s that working out for you folks?

Obama is out campaigning now; he should be out in Wisconsin and Michigan helping the unions. Billy boy Clinton got the ball rolling in screwing this nation up with its poor North American Free Trade Act deal.

I think Obama is working under the table for the Republicans. They are all the same, nut-cakes.

Bob Eilert

Crescent City

Teen Clinic is right for our youth, good that it’s closer to high school

I am writing to thank the School Board for moving the Teen Clinic closer to the school where it can be better utilized and closer to the group that it serves.

I wish my son had access to such a center when he was in school in New Hampshire. My understanding is that it will provide a range of much-needed services, the same as the present clinic now does, as allowed by law — the law that the people of this state repeatedly voted for.

I believe that the young people in our schools are wiser and more worldly than previous generations. They are faced with myriad problems and situations that we never had to deal with, plus some that we did encounter. They will learn from many sources, certainly not the least of which is their parents.

I believe that they are intelligent enough to rise to the occasion and make the appropriate choices for themselves. I have faith in them and I hope that they will always know that “we”€do trust and believe in them.

Funny how that works. When you show someone that you believe they will do the “right”thing, they want to live up to that faith. The clinic needs to be close to the students to better serve their needs.

Linda Ehrisman

Gasquet

If Garcia was so disabled, he shouldn’t have been working

A Del Norte County sheriff’s deputy gets arrested on suspicion of major crimes, arrested on the job, on suspicion of stealing guns and drugs and sheriff’s uniforms, and he is given a pension.

The man is mid-30s; he is a young man. If Joe Garcia was so disabled, enough to get benefits for it, then he should not have been working at the time of his arrest. He went back to work on the streets, and he was on the job when arrested.

Why would our sheriff let Joe go back to work without a full doctor’s release? He might have to chase someone, or Tase them because of his unfit condition. Which is it? The man gets caught in his criminal behavior,  arrested on the job, gets a slap on the hand plea bargain offer that gives him  a year in county, and he gets disability too?

The problem with meth is the drug, not the Mexican people

I read in an April 1 article, “DA brings attention to county drug problem,” where District Attorney Jon Alexander speaks of Mexicans heading drug labs. Let’s not stereotype meth labs. The problem is the drug, not the Mexican people. As a former addict Alexander should know, the drug is not racist to any nationality —  Caucasians, Asians, Native American, Europeans and Mexicans.

It’s good to get educated, but to humiliate and make comments about the Mexican people only reflects how uneducated people are. You want to deal with drug problems, look in your back yard. For more than 25 years Del Norte County had a drug problem, ranging from alcoholism to heroin addicts.

So to depict the Mexican people is passing the buck, instead of stepping up to the plate. Truth is this: You can blame this nationality or that nationality, but when are you going to address the problem of the drug? If you blame others then you are not stepping up to what you know. You are a follower, not a leader.  You are letting the problem run you, instead of you dealing with the problem.

Close doors on liberalism in education or close school doors

In her April 15 letter (“Children are our future and they should be considered, respected”) Anna Porter asks if John Adams was wrong to want to educate our children with the “extras.”

At the risk of sounding pedantic I must join the conversation with the rejoinder that Mr. Adams decidedly did not express any desire to educate anybody’s kids other than the ones he was responsible for — his own. In the preceding paragraph Ms. Porter went to great lengths to show that, by quoting one of our founders, Adams, who by engaging in politics and being willing to go to war if necessary to back his political convictions made it possible for his sons to focus on basic academic subjects, thereby allowing succeeding generation(s) the luxury of an expanded and more genteel education.

He made no statement to the effect that he advocated for the government to bankroll the education of children.

President’s speech rekindles hope that he’ll hold to principles

How exciting and gratifying to listen to the president’s address to the nation and hear the message and determination which caused me to work for and feel excited over his campaign and victory!

Solving the health care tragedy which plagues our country, reversing a tax code designed for the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top two to five percent, investing in infrastructure and education rather than squandering tax dollars supporting arms merchants, ending the billions invested in infiltrating other countries for the purpose of organizing cells of the discontented for future support of their military actions, ending the propaganda machine designed to keep our citizens sure the “bad guys” are coming to get them and spending billions infringing on privacy and rights in the name of safety, putting a stop to the imprisonment and torture of imagined terrorists, conducting the business of our country in the open rather than “deal making” behind closed doors.