Gisler bridge study would waste money...

Gisler bridge study would waste money

I am in total agreement with the Daily Pilot’s editorial position

expressed on Sunday (Editorial, “Costa Mesa needs to fight study of

bridge at Gisler”).

How many more times must taxpayers dole out money to an endless

stream of consultants to study this issue before a stake is finally

driven through the heart of the Gisler Avenue bridge?

For crying out loud, the [Santa Ana River Crossing] study is not

yet complete, and the disingenuous members of Fountain Valley’s City

Council try to slip another one under the door. Their request for

$500,000 in grant funding at this point looks particularly wasteful

in light of the dire financial condition of the state this year.

I can only assume that Fountain Valley’s leaders cynically believe

that if enough studies are done, they’ll someday get the answers they

want to hear. Sadly, this show of bad faith from Fountain Valley

toward its neighbors just reinforces my long-standing belief that

some local politicians will keep resurfacing a pet issue over and

over again until the opposition is worn-down or is looking the other

way.

Yes, I do have an ax to grind when it comes to the Gisler bridge.

I live on Gisler, and would be impacted by the noise, the fumes and

possible loss of part of my property to a wider Gisler if the bridge

were built. Not to mention the fact that I’d need a traffic cop to

help me get out of my driveway.

It doesn’t take a half-million-dollar study to understand that

this quiet residential neighborhood would be destroyed if the Gisler

bridge were ever built. I’m just a private citizen, and not well

enough connected to catch wind of dirty deals going down.

Thanks to the Daily Pilot for bringing this latest maneuver by

Fountain Valley to the attention of people like myself. I, for one,

will keep fighting the bridge until it is removed from the county’s

master plan for good.

JON ROWE

Costa Mesa

Union obviously not that powerful

In her letter to the editor (Mailbag, “Blame for poor school

system lies with union,” Sunday), Betty Brown gives the teachers’

union credit for a lot more power than they deserve.

As a teacher in the district for 35 years, I can assure her that

we are among the feeblest of organizations. If we really had that

much power, we would not be teaching in dilapidated classrooms

crowded with 38 to 40 kids, and we might be getting paid enough to

actually afford a house in this district.

I wonder if Brown has ever been in one of the current classrooms

she describes. I have, and I can assure her that kids are more

motivated and better behaved today than they were 35 years ago. As to

the “dumbing down” of education, my experience is quite the contrary.

When I started at Newport Harbor High School, we offered one

Advanced Placement class. AP classes are college-level classes that

offer college credit if the student passes an extremely difficult

national test at the end of the year. In 1972, probably 50 students

took an AP test at Newport Harbor. Even though the population of the

school is less than it was in 1972, we now offer 13 AP classes in a

variety of subjects. Last year, more than 500 AP tests were given to

Newport students, and the vast majority passed.

We have doubled the number of science labs and have added a

half-dozen fully equipped computer labs. I teach AP European history,

and I think my students who are heading off to Harvard, Stanford,

Dartmouth, Berkeley, etc., would smile at Brown’s comment about the

teaching of history.

I doubt that she had a history class as difficult as mine. If she

had, she would know the following facts: In the 15th through the 18th

centuries, the Catholic Inquisition imprisoned, tortured and

executed, usually by burning at the stake, thousands of people, Jews,

Protestants and nonbelievers, for their religious belief.

In the 16th century, Martin Luther and John Calvin and their

followers challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, but when

they gained political control of a region, they encouraged similar

atrocities against those who did not accept their views. They were

particularly harsh toward humanists who dared to suggest that perhaps

God wasn’t as wrathful as they were depicting him. Calvin personally

ordered the burning of Michael Servetus, a humanist.

In the French religious wars of the 16th century, Catholic

soldiers would sometimes tie young Protestant girls around a keg of

gunpowder and ignite it.

In the 16th century, German Protestants killed as many as 100,000

people, mostly women, because they were suspected of witchcraft,

often also burning the young daughters of the condemned women.

In the 16th century, Dutch Protestants and Spanish Catholics

fought a savage war in which prisoners on either side were given a

choice of converting or death, a death preceded by hideous tortures.

In one incident, a Dutch physician extracted the heart of a Spanish

prisoner and nailed it to a ship in the harbor. Protestant townsmen

were invited to take bites from it, which they did with great relish.

In the 17th century, European Protestants and Catholics fought a

30-year-long war that left millions dead and hundreds of towns

totally depopulated.

Atrocities and wars for religious reasons continued for centuries

in Europe, all done with the full cooperation of whatever brand of

Christianity had become the official state religion. English

Anglicans killed Irish Catholics, Italian Catholics killed Italian

Protestants, English Puritans killed English Anglicans, and of

course, everyone killed Jews.

Finally, in the 18th century in France, some courageous men,

mostly non-Christian theists like Voltaire, Diderot, and D’Alembert,

began speaking out against these senseless horrors perpetrated by the

various state-religions.

In 1776, a group of educated colonists in America, men like Thomas

Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison -- who had read Voltaire and

who knew well the savage history of their European ancestors --

decided to start a country with some different ideas. In spite of

their personal religious beliefs, these men agreed on one thing.

There would never be a state religion in America.

In the 1990s, a Newport-Mesa school board member suggested that we

have a state-sponsored prayer, that we hang in every classroom a

state-sponsored religious document, that we change our science

classes to match her particular religious beliefs. Dedicated

teachers, both liberal and conservative, shuddered in horror.

As true Americans with as much right to their opinion as anyone

else, and as educated people who know what can happen when the

government sponsors a particular religious view, the teachers rather

timidly suggested that voters might consider their options carefully,

that maybe this board member had some rather scary ideas.

Apparently, the voters agreed. I like to think it was common sense

that prevailed, not a fictitiously powerful union.

JOE ROBINSON

Newport Beach