Mailbag: We must confront the twin pandemics of police violence, racism

Kurt Andras Reinhold was shot dead by Orange County sheriff’s deputies in broad daylight on Sept. 23. Clearly the coronavirus is not the only plague we are confronted with in the United States. Racism (Reinhold was a 42-year-old homeless Black man) and deadly police violence are running rampant across the nation.

What’s more, the deputies who fired the deadly shots into Reinhold’s body were supposedly homeless services officers trained to de-escalate high tension situations, yet these deputies ended up killing the jaywalking Reinhold. This hardly seems to be an act de-escalation given the circumstances.

Social workers, mental health professionals and community educators are the sorts of people that ought to be available to provide direction and services to those suffering from mental illness and/or homelessness.

Ben Miles
Huntington Beach

Election guides are a starting point

By now most Orange County voters have received their Sample Ballot and Voter Information Guide in the mail. Let me start by giving a big shout out to the County Registrar of Voters Neil Kelley. He has done an outstanding job for many years.

Before I became involved with local civic affairs some 20 years ago, I based a significant chunk of my decision-making on the candidate statements contained in the guide. Regrettably, they are not always an accurate reflection of the candidates.

For example, much of what is in the Michelle Steel statement is not borne out by the facts or her performance.

Steel does not have a track record of common sense leadership (as does her opponent, Rep. Harley Rouda), a record of supporting middle-class constituents as opposed to partisan special interests or a record on healthcare reform that protects all those served by the Affordable Care Act (which she opposes).

While her personal narrative is touching, her blind obedience to President Trump by pushing to open businesses and schools early without plans or protections flies in the face of putting people over politics.

Voters must push themselves to do more than vote their party affiliation or what partisan propaganda urges them to do. They must actually look at who best represents their interests and who can provide problem-solving leadership that is honest and fair. The guides voters received in the mail should only be a starting point to reach an informed choice.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach

Favoring one candidate over another

As a Costa Mesa voter, I think it is important to speak out when there is a questionable candidate running for City Council, and Don Harper is that candidate. Based on past participation in city commissions and committees, support for proven failed city governance practices and endorsements from the same politicians the city has been trying to recover from for the last few years, I do not recommend voting for him.

Instead, I support attorney John Stephens for District 1 who, as a Costa Mesa councilman since 2016 and unanimously appointed mayor pro tem since 2018, is a much stronger candidate on all counts.

According to City Council and commission and committee agendas and minutes, not only did Harper have inconsistent attendance, but he resigned before serving out his full term on the Parks and Recreation Commission. Also, he only attended two of 10 meetings of the Finance and Pension Advisory Committee before resigning with one year left on his two-year term.

Mayor Pro Tem Stephens on the other hand, has not missed a meeting in four years.

Based on Harper’s campaign website, he wants to run the city like a business. However, Costa Mesa is a service organization. It provides services to its residents and it is not a for-profit company. A few years ago, council members and mayors Jim Righeimer and Steve Mensinger tried running the city like a business. This approach resulted in a historic decline in our police force and public safety.

By comparison, Stephens has consistently supported the Police Department and improving public safety. He has also supported restoration of Fire Department staffing and established the hospital transport system.

It is unimaginable that Harper would claim the endorsements from some of the same unpopular past council members that caused the decline in public safety. Also, who can forget that these same endorsees attempted, not once but twice to grab power by pushing a flawed city charter onto the residents of Costa Mesa? Both attempts failed by significant margins.

Stephens opposed the flawed charters, and when the 2012 effort missed a filing date, he defended the rule of law by successfully arguing to uphold the filing deadlines during a lawsuit between the city, led at the time by Righeimer and Mensinger, and the Orange County Registrar of Voters.

On all counts I support Mayor Pro Tem John Stephens for District 1 over the wrongheaded Don Harper.

Charles Mooney
Costa Mesa

America will win this latest war

I read with interest Sandy Asper’s commentary in the Daily Pilot on Sept. 25, “Are we using kids as human guinea pigs?”

Asper references “World War II when kids were experiencing bombs nightly during the blitz.” I can attest to her comments because my twin sister and I were 6 years old in London when war broke out in 1939.

We were sent out of London to stay with strangers because of the bombing. However, the stay was short-lived because of strong family ties, so we returned to London. Our schooling was disrupted from 1940 to 1945. To make up for this loss we had to go to year-round school attendance.

Did we make up for this loss? We had no way to really measure it until 1947. My family moved to New York, and my sister and I were placed in the eighth grade at school. This lasted less than a week as both my sister and I were reassigned to the 11th grade and both graduated in 1949 and we were just 16 years old at that time.

What has this to do with Sandy Asper’s commentary? The similarity must be obvious.

We too are in a “war” at this time. The main difference is today we cannot see the enemy as we did in 1940. But the enemy is there. We cannot fight it with military equipment. We fight it with the only tools we have: the scientists, doctors and medical workers who work in this dangerous environment every day. It is their work that guides us to a safer environment.

What is our responsibility? It is at the least the following: 1) the complete safety of our children, teachers and staff; 2) listening to and heeding the advice of our only defense, the scientific community, especially as it applies to our most vulnerable, our children.

My father, Joseph, taught my sister and me to always be ready to help the children. After all, when he retired, he became the crossing guard at Mariners School for 24 years. Would we have let our children cross that very difficult crossing without Joe?

We must realize that we are in a war and there are many battles ahead before this war is won. It is not going to be easy but with the American spirit and know-how, it will be won.

Robert Carolan
Newport Beach

Rouda takes support, guidance from the left

When Rep. Harley Rouda won the CA-48 seat in 2018 from Dana Rohrabacher, I began looking into what type of representative he would be and, at first, was mollified by his claim that he would legislate as a moderate Democrat who would represent “the vast majority of voters who tend to be between the 20 yard lines.”

In following him however, I became alarmed that he would not stand by this pledge as his actions began to speak louder than his words.

Over time, I saw that he stood more and more with the radical members of the House of Representatives and, at this point, his voting record parallels Nancy Pelosi 100% of the time and the ultra-socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 92% of the time!

But lately, with many of our cities being being trammeled by wanton violence, looting and burning, my concerns about Rouda staying within the “20 yard lines” have grown into manifest fear.

It would seem that he is an out-and-out devotee of crippling law enforcement in our society.

The Indivisible Project is a tax-exempt organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., founded in 2016 by two left-wing activists with congressional experience and ties to the leftist economic policy advocacy group Prosperity Now.

It was a response to the election of President Trump and established to provide liberals a practical guide about “Resisting the Trump Agenda.” The organization supports the Green New Deal and has espoused a goal to replace all elected officials who don’t reflect their views with “diverse, progressive, local leaders.”

According to a Washington Free Beacon article from Aug. 31, Rouda is among a group of California Democrats who have accepted support from this group and was in bed with these actors during the 2018 campaign — even while he was uttering his pledge to keep it “between the 20-yard lines.”

The more I follow Rouda the more I turn from mere concern to outright fear. Any candidate who would accept donations from such organizations — bent on shredding the fabric of our society — and clearly violate his campaign pledge is an untrustworthy person and certainly has no business representing our interests in Congress.

William Phinizy
Fountain Valley

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