Feinstein’s facade

RE: “Speed Limit“

04/28/00

Your article on the anti-meth bill was on target but erred in describing Sen. Dianne Feinstein as a “liberal.” To the contrary, Sen. Feinstein routinely lines up with the most reactionary Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee in support of draconian and repressive anti-drug and anti-civil-liberties measures.

She is the co-sponsor of Sen. Spencer Abraham’s cocaine sentencing bill, which would remedy the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine by RAISING the penalties for powder; she supported Sen. Phil Gramm’s amendment to deny welfare benefits to folks convicted of misdemeanor drug offenses like marijuana; she sought to strengthen, rather than curb, the government’s civil forfeiture powers; she opposed California’s medical marijuana initiative, Prop. 215; and she has supported legislation to censor the Internet, to outlaw computer encryption programs that don’t have a “backdoor” for FBI spying, to require national identity cards, etc.

Dale Gieringer
Coordinator, Drug Policy Forum of California

RE: “Earth Day is Evil?“

04/28/00

Microsoft has done nothing wrong except foolishly believing that they did not have to bribe the politicians with protection money because they were going about the honest business of creating wealth and making life better for millions of people around the world. The leaders in the high-tech industry who have supported the anti-trust action will live to regret it, because they will be targeted sooner or later if the government wins, therefore establishing precedent for persecution of success in the new economy.

Joe Armstrong

RE: “Speed Limit“

04/28/00

I think the legislators are trying to do something good in their own minds. Censoring the Internet is not the way to do it though. They aren’t tuned into the “digital revolution.”

Looking up a site for a cookbook is the same as asking your junkie friend to tell you how to make meth. Censoring the Internet would have to mean censoring what my junkie friend would say to me. That’s not right. If you don’t censor his free speech too, that’s discrimination. You can’t do just one or the other.

Orko

RE: “Speed Limit“

04/28/00

Your country’s drug laws are the sick, perverted creation of a new breed of fascist that thrives in the Land of the Free. I’m sure you guys are well aware of PBS’s Frontline exposé on the toll the Reagan-era drug laws have taken on some pretty nice people, but don’t forget to remind your readers constantly. This crap has to be stopped.

Thanks for always being there,

Karl

RE: “Militant Marketing March“

04/27/00

Capitalism is like a cancer that seeps its way into every nook and cranny that becomes socially acceptable. People say it’s unavoidable, and that we can’t say no to the money and awareness it brings with it. Bullshit! Queers have come this far without the “help” of corporate sponsors, and we can continue that way. Any social activism that is sponsored in any way by corporations puts limitations on its audience and therefore goes against everything that I’ve been fighting for.

We don’t need corporate backing to have loud voices! If we truly want to elicit some change, then capitalism is going to have to be abolished, and the day that the Pepsi symbol appears on my pink triangle is going to be a very sad day indeed.

Jamie Milroy

RE: “Earth Day is Evil?“

04/27/00

You might have some valid points about the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism, but the anti-trust suit against Microsoft is a bad example to pick. You are standing on shaky ground. Anyone with half a brain and a little knowledge of the computer industry realizes that Microsoft could be toppled overnight by a better technology created, literally, in someone’s garage. This is the inherent beauty in the IT industry — the fact that anyone with a better idea has the potential to replace any technology that is currently perceived as “entrenched.” This is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, which is what it would seem the current Justice Department is going after with a vengeance.

Keith Bielaczyc
Chesterfield, MI

RE: “Militant Marketing March“

04/26/00

It is about time that corporate America realized the gay community is worth marketing to. Everyone has an agenda; even the queers who choose not to participate are trying to make a statement. The Millenium March on Washington is a great opportunity to meet other gays and lesbians from around the country and offers opportunities for networking and building friendships.

Stephanie Shumsky

RE: “Militant Marketing March“

04/26/00

This article, and ones like it everywhere in the non-mainstream press and on the Web, make clear what all G/L/B/Ts should begin to read and understand: An arrogant “upper crust” have put superficial assimilation ahead of the achievement of real civil equality. The sell-out has to stop. Thanks.

Wm. A. Beetstra

RE: “Earth Day is Evil?“

04/26/00

Your April 24 diatribe against the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism has to be a new low in journalism.

Many decades ago, the Left was an intellectual power. Even though their ideas were utterly wrong, they were stated with moral conviction and reasoned persuasion. The only evidence of these virtues in your diatribe, “Earth Day is Evil?” were the statements made by Robert Tracinski of the Center, an organization I proudly support both financially and intellectually.

As a long-time Objectivist, I am compelled to clarify some things in your article. First, your equation of Ms. Rand and her philosophy with Reaganism is an outright falsehood. Objectivists are neither conservative nor liberal in politics. We are radicals for capitalism. More precisely, we advocate the total separation of state power and economics. Obviously, this has nothing in common with the Reagan administration, no matter how many of his adherents paid lip service to Ms. Rand. Mr. Greenspan, once associated with Objectivism, has now strayed so far from its tenets one has to wonder if he even remembers what he wrote at the time.

Your writer’s automatic hatred of all things corporate shone all too brightly. It looks like, in viewing the worldwide failure of socialism, hatred is all those who abandon reason have left.

Blair Schofield

RE: “Makah whaling poll correction“

04/25/00

The gray whale was removed from the endangered species act when the population reached (or exceeded) pre-endangered levels. The current food supply for the pods in the Northeast Pacific region are insufficient for current populations resulting in the death of 155 whales in the past couple of years. Most recently one washed up on Sen. Jack Metcalfe’s property.

Your statement that their removal was a result of “lobbying” efforts by the Makah Nation is at best misleading, and at worst a flagrant effort to cast aspersions upon the integrity of a nation whose culture is and has been intimately connected with the gray whale for generations.

The Makah’s whaling arrangement is the result of a share of an already existing quota for subsistence whaling for aboriginal groups worldwide. Their inclusion in fact reduces the number globally which may be taken as subsistence hunting by all groups. Moreover, this arrangement forbids the commercial sale of any of the whale meat.

I am extremely disappointed in the caliber of reporting by the MoJo Wire as regards this poll.

Ishgooda
Managing Editor
Native News Online
Wayne, Michigan

RE: “Earth Day is Evil?“

04/25/00

“Earth Day is Evil?” glazed over some of the important issues raised by The Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism. Instead of rebutting any of the director’s valid claims in opposition to Earth Day and anti-trust actions, you resorted to MoJo’s standby quasi-argument: political lynching. Some passages didn’t make argumentative or grammatical sense. For example:

“If they are for a new technology, let them go out and invent it,” Tracinski said. “But they say, get rid of the old technology first and maybe somewhere in the future we will have some new technology.”

Not really, Bob. The new technology is here and being actively blocked by the old technology industries. Don’t you read the papers?

What does the “not really” refer to? If it refers to his proposition that Greens want to get rid of old technology first, you negate the “not really” in the next sentence, by effectively restating what he just said in more euphemistic terms. As for the “Don’t you read the papers?” bit — I don’t see a lot in the papers about Greens actively pushing new technology as much as they propose stiff regulatory measures against existing technologies. To the contrary, the (currently) cost-prohibitive technologies Greens do support are readily available — people (besides Ed Begley Jr.) just aren’t buying. You guys could have done better with some of Tracinski’s outlandish claims than this frivolous ad hominem hen-pecking.

Eric Drouillard