Mailbag: Your Chick-fil-A coverage was disingenuous

Re. “Chick-fil-A supporters crowd local store (Aug. 2):

Your article proclaiming that Chick-fil-A supporters came out “en masse” to support the company after its president said he believes in the religious definition of marriage is so disingenuous and misleading that I have to assume you did it on purpose in order to foment dissent against those who agree with his views.

Those supporters did not come out “en masse” after his statements, except in a strictly chronological sense.

That was not their impetus, as you so blatantly infer. They came out “en masse” after simple-minded and intolerant politicians from Boston, Chicago and San Francisco used their bully pulpit to threaten a legal, legitimate business that has no record of discrimination in its policies or operations.

Americans do not like bullies. Wednesday’s protesters included people who support gay marriage, but do not support short-sighted bullies carrying their flag. They understand that kind of knee-jerk support (with the emphasis on “jerk”) does not further their cause. Dismissing the 1st Amendment is certainly not in their best interest.

Randy Stratton

Costa Mesa

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Cassity on Obama

Re.: “Cassity: Sorry, but we did build that (Aug. 3):

Mr. Chuck Cassity is so wrapped up in spewing anti-Obama venom that he loses common sense. First of all, the saying he misquotes is, “Find a need and fill it,” not “Find a hole and fill it.” At the end of his diatribe he asks, who is the “somebody else” who helped him get started? That somebody else is communication, transportation, water, light, power, police and fire protection, and many other services Americans enjoy, and take for granted. That “somebody else” is the many systems regulated by cooperating city, county, state and federal government agencies.

David Barth

Corona del Mar

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Quote slicing

Cassity uses a convenient ellipsis to distort what the president said: “Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that.” When it comes to partisan politics, a little honesty goes a long way.

Lance Jencks

Costa Mesa

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Business people built it

Thank you, Mr. Cassity, for your article regarding President Obama’s comments; I had a similar reaction to those comments. Those words are insightful and indicate the president’s disdain for the small businessman and businesswoman, who, by the way, employ more than three-fourths of the population.

We get it; our president wants all of us to rely upon the government. If anyone can name a government agency (with the exception of our amazing armed forces, police and firefighters) that is not a bureaucratic, high-cost mess, name it. If anyone can name a government agency that has truly helped them get their business started, please identify. As the election gets closer, I for one, am hoping for change.

Juli Hayden

Newport Beach

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Cassity got help

I take issue with Chuck Cassity’s latest column. The business that Mr. Cassity says he and his wife built involves providing a number of services to kidney failure patients. To be brief, I will focus my comments on just the hemodialysis service.

At no time in his article did he mention the actual products that were used in the services his company provided, but I will. His company needed to buy hemodialysis units, which make use of semipermeable membranes and intravenous solutions to cleanse the blood of patients whose kidneys had failed.

Many have played a role in developing dialysis and dialysis units as a practical treatment for renal failure. For example, researchers presented the principles of solute transport across a semipermeable membrane in 1854. Since that time many more researchers and their government-funded projects resulted in the artificial kidney being developed into a clinically useful apparatus in 1943-45. This research showed that life could be prolonged in patients dying of renal failure.

After World War II ended, a few dialyzers were donated to some hospitals around the world, including Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. The blueprints for the hemodialysis machine were then given to the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, and this led to the manufacture of the next generation of dialyzer. Advancements in this technology and its use continue to this day.

The government and non-government labs and clinical research, development, clinical trials, Food and Drug Administration approvals and oversight, etc., etc. have contributed enormously to the successful use of this technology by hospitals and businesses like Mr. Cassity’s.

Charles Mooney

Costa Mesa

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Council majority is wrong

Re. “Commentary: Council is steering Costa Mesa away from ruin,” (Forum, July 29):

As a longtime Costa Mesa resident, I object to the self-serving, campaign-laden rhetoric made by appointed City Councilman Steve Mensinger in his July 29 letter. I have watched this council closely and feel the need to rebut.

Mensinger implied it is the traditional government process that has caused the financial issues of the city of Costa Mesa. He believes the council majority is justified in its attempt to remove the city of Costa Mesa from state government, and place this process, via charter, in the hands of the City Council.

In Joseph Serna’s Aug. 1 article, “Charter to go on ballot,” Mensinger states that the council majority can now dictate policy. “Dictate,” funny he should use that word. Is dictating policy what he considers “local control?”

Dictatorial decision making to ignore input from residents is not the way to steer Costa Mesa from ruin. It is the way to guarantee it.

Many of the charter cities in California are now bankrupt or are very near. This charter is not a panacea.

Terri Fuqua

Costa Mesa