LETTERS

Basically excellent
Just sending a response letter in regard to the article “Back to Basic” [“City Eat,” Jan. 31]. I am six months new to the area and like to try different places to dine. The article on Basic was accurate in terms of menu and atmosphere. The salad was “a must” to try and I am glad we did. The pizza toppings were a little sparing, but the flavor was great.

The one thing I would like to add is that the restrooms and eating area were very clean! I always enjoy visiting a dining facility that has clean restrooms.

I don't like crowds so I had no problem that there were few people there. However, the advertisement on the outside was sparing, and we almost missed the location (we thought it was closed when we drove upon it). I will definitely return to this restaurant in the future. Thank you for your review.

Barbara A. Rinehart,
Chula Vista

Control your emotions
I read your article “Pandora's baby” with puzzlement [“Backwards & in High Heels,” Jan. 24]. Couples make selection of their babies' traits all the time, and that is even more dramatically so if they adopt. Most folks I know who have adopted go to Russia or China or Africa or their local source to get what they want and thus discriminate on race, origin and genetic load.

How many folks adopt a troubled child or from a crack-addicted mother? Very, very few. Statistics say that the chances of adoption sharply drop with the child's age; is that age discrimination? You bet. To be even more general, most adults make a choice of genes, economics and race when they pick a mate to marry and thus “discriminate” what kind of baby they want. Have you heard of folks liking them “tall and blond” or “smart and professional” or “with a job” or “dark and Latin”? What do you think that means?

In short, the interest of your piece notwithstanding, it would be nice if you had made it a bit more balanced and realistic instead of an emotional piece.

J.A. Boedo,
Pacific Beach

What Bush is up to
Re: Tony Phillips' column, “Semantic rabbit holes” [“Because I Said So,” Jan. 31]. I agree with your point of view on political semantics. The Bush administration's rhetorical spin is essentially fear-based, so what better catch phrase to trigger our deep-seated childish fears than the word “monsters.” However, the words “extremists” and “radical fundamentalists” now incite much more fear in our post-9/11 world. It is scary and even more telling how fast and aggressively this rhetoric was put into motion after that fateful day.

I disagree with your phrase “sending more kids overseas to kill and die for god-knows-what.” I don't think it takes a god to figure out what is really happening. It is much too simple to say that it is for oil. It is nothing short of economic and strategic hegemony. The phrase “god knows what” implies confusion or a helter-skelter policy, but you can be sure the Bush administration has its eyes focused on the goal of global capitalism under the auspice of the United States government and its parent transnational corporations.

If any of your readers are advocates for U.S.-dominated world economics (God forbid), then they should be ashamed of the Bush administration. This regime has attempted to force the issue with military action and has undone 40 years of sneaky, conniving, bullying, back-door-dealing economic “diplomacy” such as NAFTA. Now all the objectives are blatantly obvious to the rest of the world, and we have only our brute-force card to play.

Wes Elliott,
Ocean Beach

Big ideas
Philip Boncer's letter in the Feb. 7 issue makes some outstanding points, but he really doesn't go nearly far enough. Rather than simply doing away with the minimum wage, we should be looking at alternate labor models that will help eliminate inflation altogether.

Perhaps if we had a system whereby we could simply pay some sort of middle man (who could gather the labor together for us; it's not for us to know or care how) a “handling” fee. We could then simply use that labor in exchange only for basic housing and food. Boy, would that ever hold down costs! Talk about fighting inflation!

As for taxes, a much better proposal would be to eliminate them altogether. If it weren't for phony liberal pussies constantly picking my pocket, perhaps I could afford things like a massive security force to protect my family and to protect my labor force from nosy do-gooders. Roads?! I'll build my own, and none of you better even think about using them, unless you want to answer to my private security force!

Markel Tumlin,
Normal Heights

Nip it in the bud
Edwin Decker's article “Grounded” [“Sordid Tales,” Feb. 7] closely reflected my sentiments about out-of-control children: It all goes back to the parents.

Sometimes it seems as if parenting is becoming a lost art. While I have little tolerance for permissive, overindulging parents, I am equally annoyed by overindulgence by those in authority. A case in point: About 10 to 15 years ago, there was a problem with skateboarders and cyclists performing stunts on public property and damaging railings, walls, sidewalk edges, stairs, etc. I recall some of the local politicians and community leaders saying things along the lines of, “We need to build them some skate parks.”

The first thought that came to my mind was, What a load of crap. Nothing was said about discipline, respect for property that isn't yours, limits, etc.

So, five-plus years down the line, there was an epidemic of car crashes caused by young drivers racing on streets and freeways. It dawned on me that it was the same li'l bastards that were the undisciplined cyclists and skateboarders of yesteryear but were now old enough to drive. The problem could have been nipped in the bud before it manifested into more dangerous behavior.

Dan Jacobs,
Mira Mesa

Aguirre responds
Let me get this straight: Participate as one of the ringleaders in creating San Diego's financial crisis and then thump your chest and take credit for helping clean up the mess. Yes, that would be City Council President Scott Peters in his letter to CityBeat [Feb. 7], in which he states that CityBeat “readers deserve the facts.”

Peters writes: “Although we might wish we would have started earlier, this City Council has made tremendous progress in solving the city's financial problems. In 2004, we ended the annual practice begun in the 1990s of underfunding the pension system.”

Wait a minute, Scott! Wasn't it you, along with Mayor Murphy and a City Council majority in 2002 that approved labor agreements increasing employee pension benefits in exchange for decreasing contributions to the pension fund? Today's current $1.5 billion shortfall in the city's retirement system is attributed to that vote. I guess you just forgot.

Peters continues: “In 2005, we established a two-year wage freeze, which cut the pension deficit by $150 million, and we secured a $17 million annual revenue stream dedicated to pension funding through give-backs from city employees. This allowed the city to inject more than $100 million into the pension system last year.... As part of that agreement with employees, we also eliminated costly benefit programs authorized under previous councils.”

C'mon, Scott, you can do better than that. Your efforts represent a drop in the bucket. Meanwhile, the mega pension deficit continues to grow at 8 percent compounded annually. Maybe the City Council should just admit that the 1996 and 2002 agreements that increased employee benefits in exchange for contribution relief were part of a scheme by City Hall insiders to rig the pension system and move hundreds of millions of dollars of pension liabilities to future taxpayers. How about just rescinding the earlier council actions?

Oh, and the costly employee benefit programs authorized by previous city councils that you eliminated? Did you happen to mention that it applies only to new employees hired after June 30, 2005? Hmmm, I was wondering about that one. So, does it mean that you and certain of your City Council colleagues get to retain the costly benefit programs for your own pensions?

Wow, Peters' next quote, well, it hurts just a little bit: “Unlike incessant press conferences, bankruptcy threats and frivolous lawsuits, these actions by the City Council brought real progress. Recently, the retirement system announced that its funding level is at almost 80 percent, up from the low 60s in recent times.”

OK, I guess I have had a few press conferences-but they have been for the purpose of informing the public about the fiscal shenanigans that have gone on for the last decade at City Hall. While not an option preferred by me, the possibility of bankruptcy can't be ignored. That is because there is no way to pay the pension tab. Including retiree healthcare, which lacks an established trust fund, the bill would total $12,000 for every single family household in the city of San Diego.

Filing frivolous lawsuits? They aren't frivolous. Somebody had to do something. In his ruling against the lawsuit we brought challenging the runaway pension benefits, Superior Court Judge Barton said of the City Attorney's Office: “Despite the creative use of these [legal] principles and the excellent presentation of the case at trial by the city, previous inconsistent positions taken by the city before the filing of the cross-complaint raise significant obstacles to the city's current effort to undo the remaining pension benefits.”

The previous inconsistent positions taken by the city that Judge Barton alluded to occurred in 2000 and 2002, before I became the city attorney. These mistakes involved the same cast of characters that created the labor agreements that have taken our city to the brink of financial ruin.

Hey, that was a nice statistic you cited about the funding level of the retirement system being up to almost 80 percent. Do you suppose it involved any accounting wizardry-like being able to make a one-time credit of total investment earnings for the year to the system? Doesn't this deviate from the standard practice of spreading out earnings over a number of years to lessen the impact of short-term abnormal gains or losses?

I guess you could say I agree with Council President Scott Peters: CityBeat readers do deserve the facts.

Michael Aguirre,
San Diego City Attorney

Ed for prez
Open letter to the citizenry:

I hereby nominate Edwin Decker for president based on his brilliant anti-brat, anti-Frankenkid policy [“Sordid Tales,” Feb. 7].

It's about time! Gen-Xers (the first generation of overly loved, indulged toddlers) display a profound excess of self-esteem, many assuming they should be respected, rich and famous even though they've done nothing to deserve it. My own offspring is one of them.

Karyl Miller,
Pacific Beach