Your letters: west county

Baseball needed a cop

Re: Tim Gallagher's Feb. 10 commentary, &quot;Congress needs to butt out of baseball&quot;:

Gallagher is dead wrong when he thinks that steroids, which are controlled drugs by federal law and California law, can be traded like candy. A physician must diagnose a legitimate medical condition in a patient to prescribe a controlled drug. This was not the case with baseball, as a clubhouse attendant was the drug supplier, along with the personal trainer. A legal drug was being used in an illegal way.

Congress stepped in because the baseball owners, the baseball commissioner and the players union knew about or should have known about the widespread use of steroids in the clubhouse. The owners were happy with the increase in attendance after the players strike because the home run was what the fans wanted to see. The owners get new ballparks, the players get huge salaries, the commissioner keeps his head in the sand. Rep. Henry Waxman gets involved whenever he gets publicity. The real victims are the young athletes who think they need to get an edge with steroids because someone else might be using. This is why the government needs to be involved.

&#8212; Jeffrey Aronson, Camarillo

Steroids not issue for Congress

Re: congressional hearings on sports teams' practices:

What are we paying our elected officials for? Why are they concerned about Roger Clemens taking steroids or his wife taking human growth hormone for a photo shoot? Why is Sen. Arlen Specter worried about the New England Patriots' taping practices or pregame workouts? Is this what we are paying Congress and other elected officials for? Are these things top priority for our country?

Last time I looked, we have problems with other illegal drugs, such as meth and crack. What about terrorism? What about homeless people? What about our declining economy? What about a 14-year-old shooting another 15-year-old student? You would think these things are a little more important than Barry Bonds using steroids to hit more home runs. Doesn't Congress have more important issues?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think having young people getting killed in Iraq for no reason is way more important than performance-enhancing drugs.

&#8212; Dennis Porto, Oxnard

Do better than Wal-Mart

Re: Leo Bowman's Feb. 6 letter, &quot;Shoppers want Wal-Mart&quot;:

Some of the comments I read in this letter astound me.

&quot;The majority&quot; of Venturans like traffic? Then I am definitely in the minority. We already have traffic in Ventura, so why not add more? I can't imagine anything more absurd. Why prevent an avalanche? Let's just keep adding snow.

With two Targets here already and a Wal-Mart 10 minutes away, why do we need a Wal-Mart in Ventura? If &quot;the majority&quot; of people enjoy driving and traffic so much, then they can go to Oxnard.

As a mother of two and a resident of this city for more than 20 years, I would like to see positive, thoughtful growth and development in Ventura. Yes, Wal-Mart would bring tax dollars to Ventura &#8212; so would any new large retail establishment &#8212; but at what cost? How about increased crime at Wal-Marts? Wal-Mart uses the local Police Department as its own private security force &#8212; your tax dollars at work. Or, how about Wal-Mart driving out more small businesses by bringing in poverty-level wages and its myth of low prices?

Why are there no &quot;Stop Target&quot; or &quot;Stop Ralphs&quot; campaigns? Maybe all the lawsuits Wal-Mart is involved in yearly give you a clue as to why Wal-Mart is &quot;special.&quot; Wal-Mart makes its own rules. It won't allow its 1.4 million employees to form a union and earn decent wages and benefits, unlike our grocery stores. When one of Wal-Mart's stores unionized, it simply shut it down. Maybe it's &quot;special&quot; because it has so many products made overseas under disgraceful working conditions and with no apparent quality or safety controls.

Surely, our beautiful city can do better than Wal-Mart.

&#8212; Jennifer Stehle, Ventura

Relative caregivers underpaid

Re: your Feb. 8 article, &quot;More than 50 people charged in child care scam&quot;:

I see in The Star that &quot;hundreds of millions, if not billions&quot; of dollars that were for welfare recipients have been stolen. These funds were to pay for child care while the recipients in the welfare-to-work program sought work.

I understand Child Development Resources is involved in the disbursement of these funds, which are for the children in its system, including children who may be living with foster parents. When those funds are used up, there is no other source of funding. The CDR has a daunting task, which apparently is never-ending, and I would not trade places with anyone who works there.

Having said that, I will offer them a bit of a lifeline: Find a way to increase the meager funding relatives receive for taking in the children who would otherwise go into foster care. More relatives might come forward to care for those kids if they received the same monies as foster parents, and I'd bet if funding was increased above what strangers get for raising those kids, the relatives would really step up to the plate.

It is a statement of perverseness against the powers that be when relatives are penalized for rescuing kids from the system, as if their sacrifice somehow ascends above and beyond the normal needs and requirements of raising children &#8212; as if a loaf of bread somehow costs us less than it does that stranger and many times many strangers.

One truth can't be denied: Relative caregivers are not in it for the money, but it would help us help our charges if we got an equal cut of the pie.

&#8212; La Donna Martinez, Ventura

(The writer is a caregiver for a relative. &#8212; Editor)

NASA could help schools

What would you do if you had an extra $4.5 billion to spend? Would you buy luxuries, put it into savings or invest in your child's education? I think that with $4.5 billion, we can help schools so that they wouldn't have to cut the budget and we can improve our society.

The state of California is proposing to cut $4.4 billion out of the educational budget for 2008-09 school years. Many local schools have already delayed buying up-to-date textbooks. They have also put off repairing and replacing outdated facilities. Will layoffs be the next step for the educational community?

NASA seems to have $4.5 billion extra to spend on a telescope &#8212; one that can see to the beginning of time, or so it says. NASA's James Webb space telescope has four main science themes: the end of the dark ages: first light and reionization; the assembly of galaxies; the birth of stars and protoplanetary systems; and planetary systems and the origins of life. It plans to send this $4.5 billion telescope 900,000 miles into space to discover these things.

Why spend billions of dollars on this space telescope that can uncover important information or be all for nothing? I think that this money would have better purpose helping our educational system.

&#8212; Joseph D. Hooton, Ventura

(The writer is a California Virtual Academies eighth-grader. &#8212; Editor)