The Vintage & Handmade Market
Washed away?
Ronald Harris of University Heights [“Letters,” March 31] has given us two of the most profound solutions for our big projects that anyone has given to date. I am sorry to say, though, that his brilliant and thoughtful ideas will go the way of the recent rain water.
We used to have a place where we could have put both football and baseball stadiums (we know it as the old General Dynamics site in Kearny Mesa). That site would have even been larger than the site that Kansas City currently uses to put their football/baseball statiums on. While the General Dynamics site would have had convenient access from any direction, it isn’t connected to the trolley. So, the city allowed that site to be used for other means.
As we watch the city and/or the Chargers drag their feet, waiting for public financing, neither party has considered asking Anaheim for their assistance. Since the idea is printed in a progressive publication, I’m not holding out hope that they will even consider it.
B.J. Hills,
Encanto
Know your rights
About “Talking smack” [“The Front Lines,” March 31]: Rep. Darrell Issa said: “In America you correct junk like Obamacare at [the] ballot box, not with... violence....” That statement perpetuates the fiction that we live in a direct democracy where the victims of laws can vote those laws out in elections. No, we only get to vote on representatives to do our bidding.
But even that’s an illusion because elections are popularity contests determined by the amount of media exposure candidates receive. That’s determined by the controlling owners of the media. Fifty percent of all state and federal election coffers are filled by residents of one zip code: the “golden ghetto” in New York City. The reps do the bankers’ bidding.
That leaves only violent revolution as a change agent; and that is just what our masters want: the excuse to declare martial law and intern the protesters. The U.S. Constitution, in its ingenuity, provides two intervening options to prevent martial law, and our masters would rather us be ignorant of these.
One is the last clause of the First Amendment: the right to petition for redress of grievances. Fourteen years of legal challenges by www.givemeliberty.org resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court declining to even attempt to define, for the first time, the meaning of this clause. This allows bureaucrats and legislators to ignore petitions on grounds of “no judicial precedent.” But don’t reload yet, Palin—there is another option.
No less than three times is mentioned the authority of the jury in our Constitution. The jury was regarded as the fourth branch of government, with the right and power to nullify bad laws whenever the government attempted to enforce them. In the 1880s, judges began, unlawfully, to instruct juries to not judge the law, but only the facts, as cherry-picked by the judge. Thereafter, jurors who believed that they could vote according to their conscience, in the teeth of the law, were rejected. The Fully Informed Jury Association, www.fija.org, has been teaching potential jurors how to retain this right and power, with no help from the media, of course.
I guess Issa is right after all; we are indeed backed into corners with guns (and planes).
Pat Palmer,
Normal Heights
Unhappy customer
About “Goodbye, Bassam” [“Presently Tense,” April 7]: I feel your pain. Many years ago, when Bassam was located at Fourth and Market, I would go there on occasion because I enjoyed the the international flavor it had. I would always hear many languages and accents, which at that time was not common in San Diego.
One day, I’m sitting having some coffee and doing some reading. I don’t think I was there very long, but Bassam was having some entertainment later that day and began clearing out some of the area to make room for a makeshift stage. The owner approached me and very angrily told me to move. This is without any warning and no “Please.” I thought it odd that a proprietor would be so rude to a customer who was just sitting quietly and minding his own business. Needless to say, I never went back.
Rob Cohen,
Kensington
