On Loughner and Jacobs

Stop the hate

Regarding your Jan. 12 editorial, “Loughner’s lessons”: What I think is that a time like this a nation should be united. We shouldn’t be slamming and accusing people within minutes of a tragedy with not a shred of evidence indicating they are responsible.

You can be a Democrat or a Republican—I don’t care. Opposing opinions are one thing. Ruthless accusations are driving this nation into the ground. What about the heart attack that Cheney had and Democratic politicians saying, Maybe he’ll die—we can only hope.

What has happened to us that we would rather accuse the opposing party than finding out the truth. This is not what our nation is about. I remember my parents as Democrats debating and talking politics—not accusing and making horrible statements about Republicans.

Let’s wait until we have the truth. Stop the hatred—stop promoting it as a right. We need to unite as a country—there are too many nations that hate and oppose us. We will never be able to withstand this if we continue hatred because we have opposing political views.

You could help—but you choose to validate accusations that are unfounded. You could help make this a better country, even in a little way—but you choose to validate the hate accusations.

I am no longer a reader of CityBeat.

Janell Jackson, Tierrasanta

Editor’s note: We’re not entirely sure what Ms. Jackson thinks our editorial was saying, but we did not intend to validate any accusations. We simply stated that we understood why some were focused on Sarah Palin as soon as the news of the Tuscon shooting broke, but we followed that by saying a different picture soon emerged.

All hail Irwin Jacobs!

Irwin Jacobs’ scheme would obviously desecrate the Cabrillo Bridge and the entrance to Balboa Park [“Spin Cycle,” Jan. 12]. Jacobs does not want to hear the word “desecrate”; he seems to have grown used to his money com manding feudal deference. This is the problem with philanthropy: It allows the rich to exercise outsized influence on public affairs.

If the American rich paid the taxes that a more social democratic system would require, public institutions wouldn’t be underfunded, we wouldn’t need this kind of “philanthropy” and we wouldn’t have to deal with rich people’s ridiculous egos. For that matter, there might be decent public transport so that we wouldn’t be thinking of paving over parks and canyons with bypasses and parking lots.

Charles Thorpe, Carmel Valley

Under the bridge

I have a possible compromise regarding the plan to remove vehicle traffic from the Balboa Park Central Plaza, if the topography works [“Spin Cycle,” Jan. 12]. Rather than removing any part of the wall and sidewalk on the east end of the Cabrillo Bridge, what if the existing vehicle roadbed (but not the sidewalk) sloped downward and made its turn to the right under the bridge’s wall and sidewalk. Not only would it preserve the existing bridge structure, but pedestrians could continue to enter the park using that sidewalk, not interrupted by traffic, as the Jacobs proposal would require.

David Cohen, Hillcrest

Correction

In his “Front Lines” story last week, “Don’t fear the Reepers,” Dave Maass incorrectly reported the ages of two Tea Party bloggers. B-Daddy is 52, not 57. Jenny Erikson is 28, not 34. We’re very sorry for the mistakes.

This issue of CityBeat is dedicated to Athene cunicularia, XinJeisan, MelanieN and SDResident, four editors battling Carl DeMaio to keep his Wikipedia page neutral and sourced.