Letters to the Editor

No Military Exercises

On April 16, the California Coastal Commission received notice that the United States Marine Corps would be holding exercises. “Military pre-deployment training that is beach landings by military landing craft on Belmont Shores [sic] Beach.” The first of these exercises may begin on May 22.

Long Beach Area Peace Network is an organization dedicated to peace and social justice. We oppose the use of the beach at Belmont Shore by the Marines as a training area.

The US military has been used to wage endless wars that have resulted in death and destruction in many countries in addition to harming our men and women in uniform. Because of post-traumatic stress disorder and physical injuries as well as what is known as moral injury, over 10% of the unhoused people in this country are veterans.

With respect to our Armed Forces being trained and deployed to protect our nation and to keep the peace globally, we would like to point out the following:

After almost 20 years of war in Afghanistan, United States military has at best fought to a stalemate and at worse lost another war.

The Iraq War that had nothing to do with 9/11 caused about a million deaths, destroyed the infrastructure of Iraq, and has destabilized the country.

In 2011, the US military along with NATO overthrew by force the government of Libya. Today this country is a failed state divided in two by warring factions.

The US military supported the Saudi Arabian invasion of Yemen. This is causing the largest humanitarian crisis in the 21st century. Again, in this war there is no end in sight.

In addition, the US military stages drone strikes all over Africa, targeting groups and people the US government thinks are a threat.

The military budget is a great drain on our society at $714 billion. Instead of landing exercises on Belmont Shore the military should be used for humanitarian purposes for example, helping to vaccinate people of the world against COVID-19.

Marshall Blesofsky

Automotive Future

I read the Beachcomber editor column on every edition.   Last week [5/7/21 Beachcombing] ]much was said about the advent of the life-changing electric cars.  

One question:  Who is going to pay for the replacement of the electric grid?   The cost of rebuilding the electric grid to support an all electric fleet of cars and trucks will be easily many times greater than the cost of the pie-in-the-sky Biden infrastructure programs.  Let me throw a figure  of about 40 trillion dollars.

In the meantime I choose to live in a town requiring a minimum of auto travel and I drive an old beater car that uses little gas and is easy to maintain. And by the way,  most of my essential services are within about a ten minute walk.

I’m betting that decades will pass before you see a majority of autos and trucks propelled by electric motors.  A more likely scenario would be if cities re-organized themselves in a way that didn’t require a huge consumption of energy, much of it wasted in lengthy commutes and junkets to retail malls.

Thomas Beeler, Anacortes, WA

Too Bad

It would be great if Newsom had to pay out the monies he’s trying to buy votes with on the recall from the monies he got from public unions, big tech and regular donors instead of from the taxes he’s getting from the Democrat bailout of Dem states and our supposed state surplus.

Vance Frederick