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Letters to the Editor
PROPERTY TAX
Editors, Daily Planet:
Food for thought: Might it not be fairer if any increase in property tax for our city’s coffers be voted on only by those owning property? Also, if a property tax increase were to occur, shouldn’t there be an automatic provision to allow those renting property to increase their rents due to higher operating costs? Just wondering.
Bruce Nalezny
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GILL TRACT SOON TO BE GONE
Editors, Daily Planet:
Last Saturday, I visited the Harvest Festival at the Gill Tract. This is UC’s agricultural experiment station, just over the border in Albany, at San Pablo and Marin.
This may be the last such festival. UC wants to shut down the Gill tract as an urban agriculture operation, and replace it with housing. Agricultural research is supposed to clear out Nov. 1. I was one of many who signed a petition to keep the research going until the bulldozers actually move in, which could be next year, or farther off, depending on bureaucracy.
We had lectures and tours of the fields. I learned that planting a “monoculture”—all the same kind of plant—makes those plants more likely to all be attacked by the same pests. Diversity is both natural and better agriculture. Much of the research was about how to mix plant types, when to plant them, and how much weeding should be done.
I saw rows of cabbage, mixed with Buckwheat and Phacelia. Such plants are chosen because their flowers attract beneficial insects (such as those which eat aphids) and because they facilitate nitrogen fixing in the soil.
The experimental rows of cabbage were in a small plot. Just beyond, taped off from the rest, was a much larger planting of corn. These plants, we were told, are transgenic experiments, funded by some big corporations.
Some of the Gill Tract research may go to the plot on the Oxford Tract. This is closer to campus, but much smaller. Other options are much farther away. The fact is that agricultural research is not a high priority at UC Berkeley. These days, housing is much more important. Unfortunately. the Gill Tract is ripe for paving over and planting cars.
UC is supposed to be a Land Grant college, dedicated to support of the California farmer. A speaker pointed out that, being publicly funded, UC should keep places like the Gill Tract, to be able to study “Urban Agriculture”—growing small crops within the city to avoid high transportation costs. This has been successful in Cuba.
In this country, the emphasis is on big-time agribusiness, selling chemical pesticides. One speaker said this gives us mass-produced unhealthy food brought to us by long-distance transportation, and the small farmers are squeezed out. Urban agriculture isn’t even considered. Big crops make the money—and sell the chemicals. Corporate research grants are nice, but they tend to “skim the cream” by concentrating on patentable techniques and products. General research such as sustainable agriculture tends to be sidelined for lack of people (funds) to work on it.
It’s really too bad that the Gill Tract, the last local outpost of urban agriculture, is to be swallowed up by apartments and rows of parked cars. The housing won’t even be affordable. If it’s like the recent new construction at University Village, graduate student families will be paying $1,400 a month.
Money talks. UC stands to make a lot of money from developing the Gill Tract. Maybe there will be a big demonstration when the bulldozers roll into the Gill Tract, something like the events at People’s Park. The park is still there and thriving; it didn’t get paved over.
Steve Geller
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THE FICTITIOUS WAR
Editors, Daily Planet:
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that over the past year our president and his staff have waged a war based upon lies and fabricated evidence? In my book this constitutes mass murder and conspiracy to commit mass murder. Seeing as how there have been more deaths in Iraq on account of the “war” than there were in the 9/11 attacks I might even go so far as to label it a crime against humanity.
Funny how I have not seen the mass of righteous indignation that one would expect from a healthy democracy when its leaders commit such high crimes. By now I would have expected an impeachment and a string of indictments, followed by an in-depth public debate about how our so-called leaders were allowed to commit such atrocities.
I’m beginning to worry about the health of our democracy.
George Palen
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KILLING LIKE GENTLEMEN
Editors, Daily Planet:
Congratulations to Kathryn Winter for lending support to the pro-Israel bomb threat-makers by favorably contrasting their ethics to those Palestinian “suicide bombers” she abhors (Letters, Daily Planet, Oct. 14-16). Perhaps she should lobby Congress for $10 billion a year in taxpayers’ money to supply Hamas with tanks, Apache helicopter gunships, F-16s and bulldozers. That way, they can stop their abhorrent practices and kill like gentlemen—as the Israelis do.
P.S.: Please withhold my name, as I’d like to avoid death threats from the supporters of “democratic” Israel.
Name withheld
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Editors, Daily Planet:
There are increasingly frequent news stories about the security of our voting machines. In November 2002, congress passed The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which allocated $3.8 billion to encourage states to buy the latest voting technologies. Some people feel that there was not sufficient thought or planning put into place to accomplish this massive change to our voting systems.
For us in Alameda County this issue centers around the Diebold touch-screen voting machines - referred to as Direct Recording Electronic machines or DRE. Many concerned computer scientists have supported the use of a voter verified paper audit trail(VVPAT) as a preventative to malicious tampering and fraud that is possible in a system that is under trade secret protection and not open to public scrutiny. Most recently, the John Hopkins report on the Diebold machine has exposed poor security techniques in its code which has caused rising concern in the voting community.
The Oakland League of Women Voters has put together an excellent panel for the Educational Forum - Touch Screen Voting Issues. The meeting will be on
Wednesday, October 29th 5:30 - 7:30
Oakland City Hall - Hearing Room 2
Speakers
Marc Carrel, Assistant Secretary of State for Policy and Planning and
Co-Chair of the State’s Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force
Elaine Ginnold - Asst. Registrar of Voters and LWVO Board member
Dr. Barbara Simons - Past President and Fellow of the Association for
Computing Machinery (ACM), and founder of ACMs US Public Policy Committee
(USACM), which she currently co-chairs
Genevieve Katz
Oakland
