If Kollin Kosmicki's article in the July 4 edition of the Free Lance criticizing Supervisor Jaime De La Cruz was an editorial, it should have been so labeled and located on the Opinion page. If it was an attempt to report on the item about "research regarding large project processing during the General Plan Update" on the San Benito County Board of Supervisors July 1 agenda, it failed.
There has been talk of implementing a moratorium on the construction of all large projects in San Benito County until the General Plan update is complete. That is my understanding of the rational behind the agenda item.
Had such a moratorium been implemented, the General Plan would probably be stonewalled for a very long time. It would be a de facto implementation of the most odorous part of the failed Measure G initiative of 2004.
Supervisor De La Cruz, as chairman of the board of supervisors, should be commended for placing the item on the agenda for open discussion and debate.
Marvin L. Jones, Hollister
Shine light on taxpayer abuse here
Dear Editor,
With business failures mounting, bankruptcies on the rise, people closing up and fleeing the anti-business environment of Taxaholic California, why don't you do something positive for the taxpayers suffering here? As I said to the board of supervisors, we cannot undo or overrule federal preemption and/or state preemption and unfunded mandates. But we could do something locally to show taxpayers and small business owners that we are grateful to them. After all, they are 88 percent of the employers in our county. They are the backbone of our local economy. Why does our government persecute them so much? Strangle, suffocate and crucify them?
Instead of local leaders being a blight on us, they could oppose League of California Cities and California State Association of Counties actions to deprive us of our rights in the Bill of Rights.
They could declare our county a sanctuary county free from eminent domain abuse.
They could stop the confiscatory taxes and fees that they unconstitutionally impose with their joint powers authority COG. The Right to Vote for Taxes Act, Prop. 218, amended our State Constitution to give taxpayers the right to vote for any new tax/fee, regardless of the name. COG's directors continually increase tax burdens, without giving taxpayers a right to vote on them. Worse, COG does not even have a representative for three of the county's districts. So, three districts' residents are denied equal protection and due process of law by COG's taxation without representation. Jefferson wrote that a just government derives its power from the consent of the governed. Local leaders violate that principle. Jefferson also wrote that a long train of abuses and usurpations justifies changing our government.
Local government leaders helped defeat Prop. 98; they tax us with no voting; they deny fundamental rights to a majority of the county's districts at every COG directors' meeting.
You have the last two responses from COG to my Public Records Act requests, giving us the evidence of COG's wastefulness, abuse of taxpayers, governance flaws, ignorance of transport, and arrogance akin to dictatorship.
Why don't you do something about it? Why not help us?
Why not give us some hope that one day in the future we will be able to celebrate our Independence Day again?
Joe Thompson, Tres Pinos
Urgent steps needed to advance
Dear Editor,
We need another Manhattan Project to cope with the energy crisis that threatens our economy and our living standards. To refresh your memory, the Manhattan Project was a massive federal science and engineering effort that in wartime years developed a letter form Einstein to President Roosevelt into the nuclear weapons that ended WWII.
We need to do the following without delay: Drill for oil and gas anywhere in the US, on shore or off shore, including the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, but excluding existing national parks. Develop a standard nuclear power plant design, and replace all coal and oil fired power plants with nuclear generation of electricity. Utilize our vast coal reserves to produce local fuel. Driven by wartime necessity, the Germans did this in 1944-45. Sixty plus years later, we can do at least as well. We should also extract liquid fuel from western oil shale and Canadian tar sands. Taken together, these projects require the funding and oversight, the science and engineering comparable to the Manhattan Project, and, like that project, will produce dramatic results in about four years.
We have a choice. We can develop our own natural resources, and maintain our freedom and standard of living that the world envies, or we can let foreign oil producers gouge our economy and living standards into an ever increasing downward spiral.
John C. Buchanan, Hollister
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