San Diego Unseen: An Urban Portrait
Not what pot law sought
Regarding your April 6 “Spin Cycle” column, “Can the city do that?”: Most of San Diego citizens recognize that the argument that we need 180 pot shops so that patients can have their medicine is a load of crap. We did not vote for this. We voted for a closed-circuit relationship between a patient and a caregiver as described in the law:
A primary caregiver is a person who is designated by a qualified patient and “has consistently assumed responsibility for the housing, health, or safety” of the patient. (11362.5(e).) California courts have emphasized the consistency element of the patient-caregiver relationship. Although a “primary caregiver who consistently grows and supplies… medicinal marijuana for a section 11362.5 patient is serving a health need of the patient,” someone who merely maintains a source of marijuana does not automatically become the party “who has consistently assumed responsibility for the housing, health, or safety” of that purchaser.
We all know what a caregiver relationship looks like, and it is not a pot shop in a strip mall. A true caregiver can come to the patient and give care (or in this case marijuana) and not open a store and advertise in at least five San Diego magazines with glossy, sexually laden ads.
Pot shops are their own worst enemy, and they need to self regulate themselves because now the city is forced to do it for them. We all know why the respect within the industry isn’t great enough to clean it up—the money is just too lucrative.
Scott English, Ocean Beach
Making everyone poor
About your April 6 editorial, “You’re the employer”: When he introduced his pensionelimination plan for city workers, Mayor Jerry Sanders said, “Public employees should not have any better retirement benefits than the people they serve.” Really?
Using that logic, public employees should not make higher pay than the people they serve. We would all be at minimum wage with no money saved for the future.
Should a firefighter or accountant make the same pay as a new worker at McDonald’s? Should education and experience make no difference? Of course not. That is not the American system.
When our economy was weakest during the Great Depression in the 1930s, we found a way to lift everybody up by introducing public pensions and Social Security. Meanwhile, unions in the private sector secured private pensions.
Since 1980, the number of people covered by private pensions has declined, taxes for the rich have been reduced and now public unions are under attack. As a result, the gap between rich and poor has grown and will continue to grow. Our economy is weak because the robust purchasing power of the middle class has eroded. There are not enough rich people spending money to keep the fire of the economy going. Money is not changing hands.
If Mayor Sanders “solves” the problem of “lack of resources” by making everybody equally poor, there will be almost nobody left to buy anything. Our economy is doomed under Mayor Sanders’ way of thinking.
What is the solution? Pensions for everybody. Every private and public employee would set aside 6 percent of income for retirement, and the employer would match it.
A pension would belong to the employee and would not be controlled by the employer. Actuaries would design the plan so that the benefits would not be more than the plan could afford. In addition to giving the employee a future, there would be more money to invest in the economy now.
So, let’s stop trying to make everybody poor and look to a bright future for all working Americans.
J. Patrick Foley III, La Jolla
Wake up and wage war
I read your April 13 article “True tax tales” by David Cay Johnston with great interest. Those of us who aren’t in the top 1 percent of income earners need to realize that this battle is us against the millionaires and billionaires. It is class warfare, and as Warren Buffet stated, his class is winning.
We the people need to stop voting against our own financial best interests. The Republicans have been very effective at using wedge issues (god, guns and gays) to get the hand puppets of the wealthy elected again and again. We need to wake up and start thinking about our future as a country.
Steve Haslet, North Park
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