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Letters
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- Written by: Dwain Goforth
Instead, Anderson comes out with a poorly written letter that shows his bias against the sheriff. The letter also shows Anderson's lack of education and ability to keep his eye on the ball.
Anderson states that, “I never have, and will not make personal attacks on the sheriff.” And then he proceeds to accuse the sheriff of slander!
I believe Anderson is wasting taxpayers' time and money instead of doing his job. Public faith in his office and the job he is doing is sinking rapidly.
And what have we gotten so far? To fill the void, a small group of uneducated anonymous troll monkeys are jumping up and down and screeching in the Lake County News forums.
What are Internet trolls? According to Tom Postmes, a professor of social and organizational psychology at the universities of Exeter and Groningen, Netherlands, and the author of “Individuality and the Group,” who has been researching the problem for 20 years: “... Trolls aspire to violence, to the level of trouble they can cause in an environment. They want it to kick off. They want to promote antipathetic emotions of disgust and outrage, which morbidly gives them a sense of pleasure.”
The public is getting tired of people making Lake County look bad in their attempt to smear the sheriff. Trust and faith in justice are going down the tubes, and the trolls are cheerleading all the way to the gutter.
When they run out of nasty things to say about the sheriff, they turn their hatred toward anyone speaking out for fairness and justice.
I'd say these trolls have no sense of shame, but in reality they do, because they are afraid to say their antisocial sick opinions and make their false allegations in public.
One would think that even if half their allegations were true, their threatened recall would already be on the ballot, and they would stand up straight like men instead of cowering like rabid rats in the shadows waiting for the biased district attorney to throw them a little moldy cheese.
I'm sure Anderson will do everything in his power to make the sheriff look bad in his reports. Unfortunately, it is a “lose lose” situation brought on by himself.
Unless he outright indicts the sheriff for lawbreaking, there will be more backlash against the district attorney than against the sheriff, for wasting so much time and money, and diminishing the integrity of his office.
And once again our county will look bad in the eyes of Californians throughout the state.
Dwain Goforth lives in Kelseyville, Calif.
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- Written by: Maurice Taylor
No matter how pretty the pictures in the “Official Lake County Visitor Guide,” produced by the Lake County Chamber of Commerce, and with virtues described as warm sunny days with the beauty of the lake’s ancient treasures, it’s still a bit difficult to overcome the experience of tourists who want their money back from smelling and seeing Clear Lake’s renowned ancient treasure, the famous algae scum.
And let’s not leave out the disgust of residents, particularly the rim landers, who may pack up for the duration of the smell, leaving the rest to enjoy the lack of enjoyable swimming, fishing and boating as the special effects of this ancient scummy treasure, year after year.
While Carolyn Ruttan, invasive species program coordinator for the Lake County Water Resources Department, has publicly stated she receives “10 calls a day” concerning the noxious algae from outraged citizens, the calls have been ringing off the hook for at least 40 years, made to a county government that seems incapable of acting responsibility regarding the problem.
At times, through the years, algae scums have covered the lake by tens of acres one meter thick, so thick that small boats could not navigate through.
Again, how many smelly years does it take to have a responsible government that can act effectively upon this problem?
The waste of our money in the feeble attempt to use an air boat to break up algae scum does not, has not and cannot do the job. It only makes the lake more turbid, releasing even more toxic material into the water.
While obviously the problem requires a much more comprehensive approach, the costly air boat solution represents the kind failed government mentality that continues.
One solution would be to establish a seasonal task force that suction-skims the algae from the lake’s contaminated surface around relevant tourist areas, removing it from the lake.
But should a Clear Lake citizenry continue to accept a quality of government that manages to ignore such known, long-standing economic and material damage?
While the Lake County Chamber of Commerce extols the beauty of Clear Lake, its government, in a paradoxical and perverse denial of the algae (cyanobacteria) problem, maintains an ineffective and antiquated water management; a condition that has and is costing millions of lost revenue per year.
This cost in damage to Lake County by government denial is far in excess of the cost of remedial action that could simply remove the surface algae out of the lake on a seasonal basis (but which of course is not meant to be a the long-term solution).
Maurice Taylor lives in Clearlake, Calif.
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- Written by: Howard Glasser
As you may or may not know, the World Health Organization, after consideration of the large body of scientific evidence that now exists on Smart Meters, determined that wireless devices like Smart Meters pose a health hazard and risk of cancer, categorizing the radiation from such wireless devices as a Class 2B carcinogen. Some nuclear experts have said the radiation from Smart Meters is equivalent to 100 times the exposure of that emitted from a cell phone.
We should be grateful to the Lake County Board of Supervisors and to Lake County Counsel Anita Grant for maintaining a vigil on this matter and keeping public health and our county’s economy in the forefront of their decisions when weighing in on how to defend against PG&E’s position that if we want to opt out, we’ll have to pay for it and we give up our right to retain our perfectly fine working analog meters.
Thousands of reports have poured in statewide from people and their doctors after the installation of Smart Meters that are now linked to such deadly disorders as brain tumors, tinnitus, acoustic neuromas, childhood leukemia, neurodegenerative diseases, DNA damage and cognitive impairment. Smart Meter radiation also has been blamed for slowing motor skills, reducing learning ability, heating body tissue, lowering the immune system and damaging the blood-brain barrier that prevents toxins from entering the brain.
For PG&E, Smart Meters represent a gold mine in new fees and creative ways to charge for your current energy consumption in what they call time-of use-rates. Eventually, they’d like everyone connected to a grid that they could monitor and control from a central source which means that in our future, our appliances would be under the central control of the utility company. For understandable reasons, a lot of people take issue with this.
Then there’s the issue of vulnerability to hacking. This type of wireless system is susceptible to the most vicious of hacking crimes with the most devastating of consequences. A single hacker could bring down a large region of the country and that’s a terrorist nightmare waiting to happen.
And what of the millions of bits of personal data collected and stored on servers that could not possibly be secure enough to protect our rights to privacy? It’s not that we have something to hide or that we are guilty of anything. It’s the principle of a utility company owning this information and to whom it could become available and for what purpose.
This whole Smart Meter movement was thrust upon an unsuspecting citizenry and sold as something green and environmentally conscious while claims that it will ensure a cleaner environment cannot be substantiated. What we can be sure of is that a private power company will make a fortune and that many will be made sick and that we will once again fall prey to the greedy machinations of a corporation run amuck.
We have a chance now to stand up for Lake County and support our supervisors as well as the mayors of the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport that passed ordinances banning Smart Meter installations here though PG&E and the CPUC chose to ignore these bans and continued to install despite public rejection. More than 10 counties and 34 cities throughout California have demanded a halt to smart meter installations and more are considering taking action.
In a decision reached May 17 by the state of Maine’s Public Utilities Commission, Maine’s PUC upheld citizen’s rights to retain their existing analog meters and for a nominal charge. We in California have not been given that option because the decision making process has been corrupted by industry insiders who run the CPUC and write blank checks to companies like PG&E. That’s an outrage.
Be sure you’re at the Lake County Board of Supervisors meeting Sept. 13. Even if you’ve never gone to a public hearing before or spoken out in public, now’s the time to do it. The world’s what we make it. Take the leap. Your voice matters!
Howard Glasser lives in Kelseyville, Calif.
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- Written by: Bill and Carol Kenner