By Frank Ladra
The Guardsman

Imagine your school campus has a club for avid iPhone enthusiasts. Members are true devotees to the Apple product, and they regularly have discussions about its awesomeness, often in public around campus grounds. They even set up tables where new members are invited to come and participate in sharing each others’ mutual adoration for their beloved smart phone.

Now imagine a student who has a similar devotion to the Android phone, but is curious about joining this iPhone club. Members of the iPhone club vehemently deny the student’s membership request, saying people with opposing views are not allowed.

What if I told you that the iPhone club was partially subsidized by mandatory student fees, fees that even the Android-loving student is required to pay every semester?

Almost exactly the same thing has happened at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, where the Christian Legal Society denied membership to an openly gay student, and yet still expected that same student to subsidize their club.

Anybody can see how ridiculous this is. A student shouldn’t have to pay fees that go right back to organizations that discriminate against him or her.

Thankfully, a U.S. Supreme Court decision has since denied the Christian group’s participation in the student organization program based on their unwillingness to comply with the school’s “all comers welcome” policy. The court ruled that if you want to have a club on campus that gets money from the school, you have to let anybody join.

Some opposition to the court decision has surfaced, saying that it threatens the free speech and assembly rights of students everywhere. The Christian group still has the right to assemble on campus. Nobody is stopping them. But the students still have no say in determining to whom their money goes.

Private clubs on college campuses have existed for generations. Fraternities and sororities have been discriminatory toward membership, even in matters regarding race, economic standing and sexual orientation. But we don’t generally see court cases popping up from that since unaffiliated students aren’t being asked to subsidize them.

When it all comes down to it, the Christian group still has constitutional rights to voice their beliefs. Any college freshman can see signs of free speech scattered across campuses nationwide, be it through posted leaflets, classroom debates or peaceful demonstrations.

Everyone is not going to agree with every opinion, but everyone should be allowed to attend meetings of a club they help support financially.

As a student I depend upon my freedom of speech and right to peacefully assemble.  As a journalist I rely upon my freedom of press to report the news.  As an American I respect my ability to exercise religion freely. These are our First Amendment rights, and they aren’t going anywhere.

There will always be apples and oranges, iPhones and Androids, right wing and left wing. Because of this, there will always be differences in opinion leading to discussion. Our responsibility lies in respecting each others’ given right to freedom regardless of whether or not we agree.

By Robert Romano
The Guardsman

Technology combined with the lust for war is making killing easier — virtually.

The modern military uses wireless technology to fly military attack drones known as unmanned aerial vehicles to destroy targets from a distance, sometimes from the other side of the world.

When soldiers finish their virtual destruction duties, they simply go home to their families and loved ones.

This is definitely not a happy ending. It just makes killing easier to live with.

In an August 2009 Popular Science article by Eric Hagerman, U.S. Air Force Captain Adam Brockshus said what lured him into flying UAVs, “was not the ‘magic’ of bombing targets each day from afar, but being able to tuck his kids in at night.”

The article also tells the story of a 19-year-old high school dropout recruited by the Army as a pilot instructor because of his high level of video game skills. This “antiseptic” killing insures no physical harm to the soldier. Conversely, it makes the reality of killing other human beings unreal. Drones dehumanize something that should never be dehumanized: the belief that life is important.

UAV attacks are imprecise. According to a New York Times opinion piece by David Kilcullen, a former adviser to General David Petraeus: “Errors lead to attacks that kill more civilians than terrorists – and thus drive civilians into the arms of local militants.”

Instead of the surgical removal of terrorists, UAV attacks are creating new generations of people who’s families have been killed by America.

The next generation’s hate towards America will perpetuate false patriotism by fundamentalists on both sides of the world, fueling an “endless war.”

Schools receiving funding from George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 are, upon request, required to surrender students’ records to the U.S. military. This allows them the same access to personal information that employers and colleges have. This keeps the military’s database of future recruits fully loaded.

To energize the war effort in 2002 the U.S Army released “America’s Army,” a free video game that simulates different aspects of being a soldier. According to the Army’s website, the game is meant “to provide civilians with insights on soldiering from the barracks to the battlefields.”

In a July 2008 article from Truthout.com, Michael B. Regan explained: “Army weapons specialists worked with developers to ensure aim, fire, sound and reload functions for all of the game’s weapons were as close to the real thing as possible.”

“America’s Army” plants the thought that killing is, in fact, a game.

The game is a free download on the Internet. It can also be picked up at recruitment centers and can be purchased for the Xbox and PSP platforms, as well as for mobile phones. The game, rated “T for Teens,” is highly accessible to everyone and is especially attractive to teens.

The military has intentionally blurred the lines by recruiting and training the soldiers of the future through fun technology like video games. This gives children the wrong impression.

War is real and in it, people lose their lives. When you kill someone in a video game, pressing reset is all it takes to undo the damage.

By Gayle Yglesias
The Guardsman

Drivers who make use of the carpool lanes on the Bay Bridge are now charged a toll fee of $2.50 and have been since the first of July.

That’s the bad news. The good news?  Well, there doesn’t seem to be much good news about this.

The carpool lane has been free for commuters since its inception. Commuters are furious because they now have to pay a fee for something that was once free.

John Goodwin, spokesperson for the Metropolitan Transportation Commission said, in the San Francisco Chronicle, that the purpose of the $2.50 toll was, “not to discourage ride-sharing, but to spread out the cost among all drivers.”

In addition to the fee hike, the only way to pass through the carpool lane and receive a discount is with a FasTrak toll tag.

Since the increase, 30 percent fewer drivers are using those carpool lanes.  Traffic data released by he MTC showed 12,000 fewer carpoolers from July 12 to July 23, compared with the same dates in 2009.

Although It seems fairly early to assume this trend will continue, the numbers don’t lie: 12,000 fewer carpoolers proves people are avoiding the new toll.

In another chronicle article, Will Kane reported that the Bay Bridge also saw approximately 6,200 fewer drivers on average pass through the toll plaza each day, compared to 2009.

In the same article, Steve Heminger, executive director of the MTC said, “I think what you are seeing here is that we are having our cake and eating it too. We’re raising revenue and seeing decreased congestion.”

The MTC is being greedy by implementing higher toll fees. Carpoolers and commuters have no voice in this matter yet they are the ones being affected by this.

On the Bay Bridge, the tolls for autos are $6 during weekday commute hours (5 – 10 a.m. and 3 – 7 p.m.) and $4 during off-peak hours. On weekends, the toll is $5. This is what the MTC calls “congestion pricing.”

Some drivers have even resorted to pulling to the side of the road with their emergency lights flashing until the off-peak toll price comes into effect –  anything to save a few bucks I suppose.

This is not the most efficient way of avoiding a more expensive toll. In fact, it’s illegal to pull over to the side of the freeway in a non-emergency situation. The MTC, along with the California Highway Patrol, needs to deal with this behavior by issuing citations before the popularity of these illegitimate rest-areas grows out of control.

“I commute from the East Bay to San Francisco almost every day with my dad,”  said a CCSF student, who requested to be kept anonymous. “It’s bad enough that the budget cuts are affecting me, but now even my commute in the carpool lane is digging into my wallet.”

Placing these tolls on drivers is unfair. Carpool lanes were supposed to be an efficient way for commuters to save time and money. Now they are a frustrating reminder of local governments’ total lack of imagination, a mental bankruptcy to match their empty pockets.

Ridership statistics of both the newly remodeled carpool lanes and public transportation, like BART, need to be monitored closely to insure the lanes’ effectiveness. If the numbers come back and show a decrease in revenue, it proves the fee should never have been applied.

The Bay Area Toll Authority is taking a gamble with this toll hike. The money they are making along with the decreased amount of commuters raises the question: Is there any profit?

Oh, and by the way, they should charge us for breathing air while they’re at it. You know, because it makes sense.  Nothing in this world is free, right?

The suburban middle-class was badly wounded when the housing bubble collapsed and now they are bleeding out. Smelling the blood in the water, the piranhas at MTC—who have already acquired a taste for human flesh—have condemned commuters to the death of a thousand cuts.

The would-be Paul Reveres galloping through lower Manhattan, bellowing “the Muslims are coming,” are playing into the hands of religious extremists by cementing the image of the United States as a nation waging war on Islam.

The result is division and fear, and there is no collective emotion more useful to the enemies of freedom than fear. There is nothing new about the presence of Muslims in New York or the united States and those trying to conjure up the illusion of a “Muslim invasion” are using fear as a weapon against freedom.

Fear of terrorism is being used to dupe the general public into abandoning the democratic values of our constitution and replacing them with a generalized Islamophobia.

While the fear of being viewed as subversive or un-American is being used to coerce American Muslims into forfeiting their constitutionally-guaranteed right to religious freedom.

The spectre of “radical Islamists” pushing for a Muslim theocracy in the United States is not the creation of those with an anti-theocracy agenda, just a different one. The most vocal opponents of the proposed Park 51 community center have no problem with the idea of theocratic government that uses religious text to create laws and restrict the freedom of non-believers and people from other faiths, so long as it’s the “right” faith doing the restricting.

“By no means are all or most Muslims fanatics of the Osama bin Laden variety,” conservative commentator Pat Buchanan writes in a recent article widely distributed online. “But many are uncompromising in their belief that, once their faith becomes the majority faith in a community or society, Muslims should write the rules and Muslims should make the law.”

But it is Buchanan who does not believe in a separation between church and state and has encouraged Christian Americans to, “capture their occupied public schools and re-establish their beliefs as the legitimate moral foundation of American society.”

His rationale? “Three-in-four Americans profess a Christian faith.”

Thanks to a largely lazy and reactionary news media, the center – basically a Muslim YMCA that would be open to all the public – has been successfully labeled “the mosque at ground zero” by those who want to use it as a social wedge.

The real tragedy, however, is not the unremarkable fact that the mainstream media once again failed to see through the sloppy, boilerplate  propaganda spoon-fed them by the Republican PR machine. What’s truly disturbing about the public response to our nation’s latest media circus is the growing knee-jerk, xenophobia it represents.

According to a CNN poll, 68 percent of U.S. citizens are opposed to the construction of Park 51. Most of them acknowledge that there is no legal basis for restricting its construction. Even the most strident critics of the proposed center admit that its construction would be perfectly legal and is protected by the constitution.

They claim that it’s “insensitive” for a community bonded by an adherence to Islam to create a space to share its culture with the larger community, because that larger community was scarred by the actions of extremists who also professed faith in Islam.

What is truly insensitive is the “Burn A Qu’Ran Day” planned by the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville Florida on the ninth anniversary of September 11. A twisted display that commemorates a tragedy, brought about by hate and religious fanaticism, with a stunning display of religious fanaticism and hate.

The message this sends to Muslims everywhere is that our country views their religion as violent and evil, or at the very least, too scary and flawed to be allowed in certain public spaces.

Incidentally, groups who burn books are rarely, if ever, big on freedom.

We’re all so absorbed in the  fighting over the difference between a mosque and a center; and the precise number of blocks between Park 51 and “Ground Zero” (an imprecise label for a space that nobody can agree on the boundaries of) that we’ve let the civil rights of American citizens become a secondary issue.

It is fundamentally wrong to deny the freedom of an unpopular group, but it is even more despicable to ask that they willingly forfeit their freedom and vilify those among them who refuse to submit to second-class citizenship. It’s outrageous to ask  American Muslims who had no involvement – directly or otherwise – with the attacks of 9-11 to live with ‘separate but equal’ status and not assert their constitutional rights for the sake of a “sensitive” majority.

In fairness, not all Conservatives or Republicans are buying into the latest political hate parade. In a statement released on his Website, Rep. Ron Paul, of Texas, decried what he called a “sideshow” motivated by “hate and demagoguery.”

“The justification to ban the mosque is no more rational than banning a soccer field in the same place because all the suicide bombers loved to play soccer,” Paul wrote.

The Guardsman is not a paper that traditionally makes endorsements of any kind, so we are not explicitly endorsing the construction of the Park 51 community center. Like most of the center’s opposition, we don’t live in Manhattan and our lives will not be affected in any way by its construction.

However, we are condemning the slippery slope of religious intolerance that is represented by the public “outrage” over a perfectly legal structure being built a few blocks away from a national tragedy that Muslims shared in the pain of.

The truth is that no matter how many names of World Trade Center employees, first responders and other Muslim Americans killed in the attacks on our country are read aloud, the religious right will not be moved. They see 9-11 as their tragedy and America as their country. For them, no distance between the center and ground zero will ever be far enough.

In their minds, the proper response to Americans exercising their civil rights is fear, but there is no room for fear in a free society. Free people have the freedom to be anything but afraid—we give up the right to be afraid when we have the audacity to call ourselves free people.

By Robert Romano
The Guardsman

Abdullah Althaman 11 and 1do 2 play together in front of the Dish Dash restaraunt during Palestiain Childrens Relief Fund dinner in Sunnyvale, Calif. on April 18, 2008 ROBERT ROMANO / THE GUARDSMAN

The United States are currently involved in two official wars: Afghanistan and Iraq – and we have helped to completely destroy these countries.

We wag a finger at the Iranian government about human rights abuses and fear it may have nuclear weapons. At the same time, we turn a blind eye to Israel — an undeclared nuclear state — as its government commits systematic genocide against the Palestinian people.

In the U.S. we have department of Homeland Security to protect us. Why can’t our administration protect the innocent victims of our collateral damage?

We should have a department of collateral damages that is funded by the government and run by civilians. Right now, these victims of our wars have to rely on independent organizations to clean up our mess.

One such organization is the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a U.S. nonprofit organization that helps victims of conflict by identifying children in medical need and arranging free care for them in countries with the necessary infrastructure.

Berkeley resident Rana Tomaira began assisting the PCRF when she traveled with her family to Jordan. After receiving an e-mail asking for help, she obtained a visa for an Iraqi boy attempting to enter the U.S through Jordan. Post-9/11 law requires two visas for such travels — one to enter Jordan through Iraq and another one to enter the United States.

Tomaira has established a system that continues to facilitate visas via email and fax, which she started with the help of the Civil Affairs Liaison Team in Jordan, a branch of the military set up as an intermediary between U.S. armed forces and civilians.

The CALT office in Jordan, however, was only opened as a public relations stunt, and it was promptly closed when the Bush administration became uninterested in the public’s opinion about the war.

The Obama administration seems to feel the same way when it comes to public opinion about conflict with Afghanistan.

Tomaira managed to rescue seven children and got them the medical attention they needed. She acted as a visa-facilitator, translator, shuttle driver and took care of the children’s basic needs.

Her family also hosted PCRF-sponsored Ahmed Ali Hani, now 16, from Sept. — Nov. 2008. He had lost his leg in a Baghdad suicide bombing that killed his father and 300 others.

When he came to the United States, Al Hani was outfitted with an prosthetic leg by Tony le France and a team of orthopedists and prosthetic specialists at Laurence Orthopedic. All costs, including the $16,000 procedure, were covered by donations.

The American government should be required  to provide medical assistance to non-combatants. A first step would be to stop using the euphemism collateral damage to lessen our degree of responsibility.

“Is it not our duty as humans to help our blood children be healthy, positive loving adults? And our duty as humans to help all children wherever they may be in the world?” said Nuha Shuman, a former PCRF host-mother. “For now, thankfully, we rely on those in the PCRF and other organizations to quietly assume the burden of the world’s wars.”

We are told that civilian death is unfortunate, but collateral damage is the price we pay for freedom. Part of paying the price is taking responsibility and helping innocent victims of war.

Besides, the word collateral damage is a euphemism that dehumanizes and makes people easier to kill.

One surefire way to protect children is not to go to war in the first place.

By Matthew Gomez
The Guardsman

If Texas rewriting history isn’t enough, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed a bill into law on Apr. 23 that essentially allows law enforcement officers to racially profile people they think might be illegal immigrants.

I’ve never had a reason to hold anything against the Southwest, but if these offenses continue,
I may just have to find a suitable bumper sticker to express my rage.

The law, Senate Bill 1070, will take effect in either August or September; which month must depend on how the Arizona heat affects Brewer’s racism. Legal immigrants would be required to carry their alien registration cards at all times, just in case they happen to be looking especially illegal one day.

At the defense of Brewer stands Joseph Arpaio, sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, who’s had a long history with the issue of immigration. Arpaio is infamous for raids — often conducted illegally — on towns where he rounds up anyone he finds suspect of being an illegal immigrant.

He even claims that in October of 2009 the Department of Homeland Security tried to limit his power. At one time he had been allowed to check the immigration status of prisoners and make field arrests concerning immigration, but the Department of Homeland Security barred him from the latter. The DHS didn’t want him enforcing federal immigration laws.

Arpaio “vowed to keep scouring Maricopa County for people whose clothing, accents and behavior betrayed them as likely illegal immigrants,” according to a 2007 New York Times editorial.

“This is not about profiling. They’re worried about the laws being enforced,” Republican Sen. Russell Pearce, who sponsored the bill, told the Associated Press.

No matter the underlying cause, deciding whether or not to question someone about their legality based on their “clothing, accents and behavior” is still profiling.

That shouldn’t faze Arpaio, though, as he already dresses his prisoners in pink underwear and houses them in tents in the middle of the desert. His blatant disrespect for human beings should be a clear sign that he doesn’t deserve to hold power; but what do I know, he has been elected sheriff four consecutive times.

Brewer, who signed the legislation Friday, “issued an executive order that requires additional training for local officers on how to implement the law without engaging in racial profiling or discrimination,” according to an April 26 article by Emanuella Grinberg of CNN.

Her idea of additional training is having her own state officials, who are under her command, “develop a training course for officers to learn what constitutes reasonable suspicion someone is in the U.S. illegally,” according to an April 25 article by Jonathan Cooper of the Associated Press.

So they’re going to school to learn how to be racist on the sly. Brilliant! It’s like culinary school but it involves profiling and is for klansmen — and it doesn’t involve cooking.

It seems the only fair way to implement this law is to conduct an illegal-alien version of the census and question everyone in the state of Arizona.

The group that’s being targeted has already been made clear; there is no way to avoid racial profiling or discrimination.

Also, it’s disturbing that these officials are doing everything in their power to expel people from land that we initially took from them.

Hopefully people rally together and stop this bill, if only for the sake of freedom and all those other ideals that don’t seem to matter anymore.

By Angela Penny
The Guardsman

In March, Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed a citywide ordinance that would make it illegal to sit or lie on San Francisco sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., with 30-day jail sentences and $500 fines for repeat offenders.

This is a ridiculous “solution” to a serious problem.

Before March, Newsom said he would not support such an ordinance because it was too divisive. He changed his mind after taking his 5-1/2 month old daughter on a Saturday morning walk down Haight Street, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“As God is my witness, there’s a guy on the sidewalk smoking crack,” Newsom told the Chronicle.

Last time I looked, smoking crack is illegal no matter where you are. So there is already a law on the books that justified having this guy arrested, it just wasn’t being enforced. Why would this new law make any difference?

The fact that someone felt it safe to smoke crack as the mayor walked down the street says a lot about this person’s mental state.

My guess is that most people hanging out on the streets don’t have $500 handy to pay a fine and that jail actually might be a welcome change for at least some of them, especially if it’s raining. Instead of sitting on the sidewalk they can sit in a room where there might be access to playing cards or a television. But chances are they won’t stay very long.

Jails are over-crowded and cost the government money. This is a serious problem since San Francisco is facing one of the largest budget deficits in history.

Haight Street merchants are very upset about the large groups of people who take up space on the crowded sidewalks and harass the passers-by, but fining and arresting these people is not the answer. When they see the police coming, they’ll just move.

How can a person with no address even be fined? It doesn’t matter if the fine is $10 or $1000, they’re still not going to pay.

These people need help and it’s frustrating because there is no easy solution. Even if our resources weren’t depleted, providing education opportunities or drug and alcohol treatment is often ineffective because of the resistance people have to changing their lifestyles.

Very quickly it becomes an “us vs. them”  situation which makes the homeless even more hostile and intensifies their feelings of entitlement. It’s wrong for Newsom to say that he’s dealing with the situation by offering this non-solution.

Obviously there is no easy way to rectify the situation or we would already have implemented a coherent national policy. But just because there is not an easy win doesn’t mean the issue should get stuck in a “pro vs. con” debate with homeless rights activists and merchants going at each other. The argument about whether or not this type of strategy is exploiting the homeless doesn’t address the need for some type of change to address the problem of homelessness.

Free trade agreement endorses ’systematic torture’

Editor:
The term “end” brings a rush of activity: finals, graduations, job and apartment searches.
How does this relate to dogs and cats half a world away?

Let’s look closer.

In another world, the South Korean government poises itself to pounce into the world economy through the proposed South Korean Free Trade Agreement which is now before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee.

At the same time, in this same world, seemingly unrelated (but similarly compelling) events progress – the goings-on in the South Korean dog- and cat-eating industry.

These markets and farms go by the unfounded belief that dog and cat meat ‘tastes better’ if there is a release of adrenaline sustained by animals who endure systematic torture over a lengthened period of time before they die or are killed.

Yearly, millions endure:
-Crushing in wire cages in extreme weather.
-Stuffing into bags, pummeled violently with a hammer.
-While still alive, their paws are cut off.
-Lying helplessly on the ground, with just stumps for legs, if the animal in sheer agony moves or tries to resist, their heads are stomped upon.
-Still alive, they’re skinned (fur) and boiled or blended (often still alive).

If SKFTA is ratified, leverage to abolish this industry disappears. Make no mistake. More U.S. jobs will disappear also.

Nancy Pelosi, District 8, San Francisco, is now unilaterally empowered to stop SKFTA.

With our 110,000 student body and rich history of activism, act now! Nancy Pelosi, hold the vote. South Korea must meet with the worldwide humane community on the issue of dogs and cats killed for food, intentionally tortured, and on our jobs!

The San Francisco college-community is a force, a beacon for all U.S. college students – a voting mass which will alter our U.S. politics. We will make a difference in the world we are embarking upon. Nancy, you are up for re-election this November. Hear us now.

Patricia Knudsen
City College student

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‘South Korea’s cities would be overrun with strays — thereby making their lives miserable’

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‘You liberals eat each other like maggots’

This letter is in response to the ridiculous editorial “Universal Health Care Abandoned.” I found your editorial to be despicable and full of nothing but ignorance.  I despise how you depict President Obama as the lone decisive factor in getting universal health care for the country. Barack Obama had to fight tooth and nail just to achieve the little change that is on the new bill. Your editorial insinuates that most of the country “feels let down” by Obama for not socializing health care. Your editorial is a subliminal jab at his “failure” on the behalf of those that “feel let down.”  The fact is that most of the citizens in this country OPPOSE Universal Health Care!! Obama is not a king! He is not an Emperor! He can’t just snap his figures and change the policies and proceedings of this country. Instead of supporting him for the little change he has brought, you liberals condemn him. My God, at least republicans stick together but you liberals eat each other like maggots and it’s no wonder why you are all known as a bunch of complainers. You folks are uneducated. Change in this country is a process not a one man decision and to say that his message of hope was just for show is a new low for the Guardian. Your newspaper has no direction. It is just a mess of uneducated, amateur, and ultra-liberal nonsense.

Jorge Lacayo

‘The naivety of the Guardian baffles me and I won’t be reading it anymore’

This letter is in response to your recent commentary on the new Osama Bin Laden Tape. I found your commentary on the subject to be nothing but a rip off of Newsweek Magazine. Why don’t you do some real independent journalism and conduct your own investigation instead of just emulating other news magazines. You speak of Bin Laden as if he were the mascot for the face of terror and that he was the only one that had a hand in the orchestration of 9-11. Any real journalist would already know that Bin laden has been in and out of CIA custody since he’s been on the top 10 FBI’s most wanted list. One example of this is the treatment he received in July 2000 at an American Hospital in Dubai.  Bin laden also couldn’t have been the only elements behind the 9-11 events. Can a guy in cave get NORAD to stand down? How did Bin Laden know of the Global Guardian and other war game exercises that were being carried out on 9-11? How did he know that Air defense in the country would be vulnerable at the time? How was he able to place nano thermite into the WTC buildings (which was found through electronic microscope analysis by physics professor Dr. Steven Jones)? How was he able to detonate the dozens of explosions in building 7 that were all heard and felt by the New Yorkers that were there on the day? The point I’m trying to make is that Bin Laden is nothing but a patsy. He’s nothing but a face for the public when in actuality there is a huge handful of  people responsible that will go forever unpunished because of idiotic editorials such as yours that keep the spot light off the unanswered questions and on the “official story.” The U.S. will NEVER catch Bin Laden. They don’t want to. His family has invested far too much in this country. You guys need to wake up and do more critical thinking. The naivety of the Guardian baffles me and I won’t be reading it anymore.

Jorge Lacayo

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‘Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid Are Worth Fighting For’

Corporations and their paid-for politicians have caused the worst economic crisis since the Depression of the 1930s. Not satisfied with taking away our jobs, our homes, and our savings, they are now dismantling public education.

They are also dismantling Social Security, Medicare, and Medi-Cal. As we speak, they are convening secretive, high-power Commissions to kill these programs’ legal protections for seniors, disabled people, kids, and the poor.  The fight for public education, Social Security, Medicare, and Medi-Cal is a fight for all of us: seniors, kids, poor people, people with disabilities, and younger adults.

These programs are worth fighting for, particularly for younger adults.

For 75 years, Social Security has kept tens of millions of seniors out of poverty and independent.  Would you want your parents to be dependent on you when they get old? Would you want to be dependent on your children when you get old?  Social Security is there for you even now. Payroll taxes have kept Social Security solvent for decades. Making high-earners pay would keep Social Security solvent indefinitely. We demand the government repay the Social Security Trust Fund the trillions it borrowed for wars, bank bailouts, and upper-income tax cuts.

Don’t be fooled. The same ones who say Social Security is doomed and must be cut or privatized to survive, say public schools are doomed and must be converted to  charter schools to survive!

For 35 years, Medicare and Medicaid have kept tens of millions of seniors, the poor, and people with disabilities from serious illness and premature death, but now its financing is being challenged. Meanwhile, younger adults cannot get medical care either from employers or on their own. The cure? Don’t cut Medicare. Extend Medicare to everyone, so we ALL have equal, comprehensive, affordable, and accessible care.  Don’t be fooled.  On a per-person basis, seniors’ health care costs are rising no faster than everyone else’s.  The problem is health care profits, not seniors and Medicare.

Restore funding for all students, pre-school through graduate school. Restore social service cuts.  No cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medi-Cal. Single payer health care. Restore progressive taxation on corporations and the wealthiest.  Stop spending billions on wars that
bleed our programs and kill our jobless youth.

Please call the President, Senators Feinstein and Boxer, and Rep. Pelosi to say no cuts or privatization of Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.  Their numbers are: 202-456-1414, (415) 393-0707, (415) 403-0100, and 415-556-4862.  There will be a Town Hall meeting on
protecting these benefits on Thursday, May 13, 10 AM, at the Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin St. in San Francisco.

Michael Lyon
For:
California Alliance for Retired Americans, 415-550-0828
San Francisco Gray Panthers, 415-552-8800
Senior Action Network,

By Angela Penny
The Guardsman

The ninth annual National Day to Prevent Teen Pregnancy is May 5th, so get those Hallmark cards ready.

This year Candie’s shoes produced a public service announcement with Bristol Palin hypothetically portraying what her life as a teen mom would be like if she “didn’t come from a famous family,” adding “it wouldn’t be pretty.”

Candie’s approach would have been far more effective had it not glamorized such a serious social issue.

As Palin talks, stuff disappears from the apartment set she’s standing in and her clothes change. By the end it still doesn’t look all that bad.

In jeans and without makeup, she’s standing in a freshly painted medium sized apartment with hardwood floors, a window, a comfortable couch and a lamp. Her plump toddler is standing nearby wearing only a diaper. At this point she delivers the carefully crafted catchphrase, “pause before you play.”

The slogan, which substitutes word-play for meaning, seems purposefully ambiguous. As Bristol explained on “Good Morning America”, “It could be pause and go get a condom … or it could even be pause and wait until marriage.”

Both options involve more action and time than inferred by the word “pause”. And deeming “play” as a new code word for sex seems dangerous — like using the word “candy” as a substitute for cocaine.

Most teenage mothers have a better chance of appearing on “The Maury Povich Show” than guest-starring on a prime-time TV show. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy reports that 30 percent of US girls get pregnant at least once before the age of 20.

“Pause before you play” tries to appease both religious conservatives who believe in abstinence-only and those who say prevention education is key.

Many attribute the increase in teen pregnancy to abstinence-only sexual education limitations.

In 2009 the younger Palin told CNN that telling young people to be abstinent is “not realistic at all.”

The quality of a teen mom’s experience does not depend on the fame of her family. It depends on whether her parents are willing to assume responsibility for helping to raise the child; it depends on whether she has a place to live and the quality of her education.

Upper middle-class teen moms have a hard time — they miss prom, don’t get to go away to college and find it more difficult to develop a romantic relationship — but many have it far harder.

There currently is an epidemic of teen pregnancy among former foster youth. Almost half of women under age 19 who spent time in foster care have at least one child, according to a Time magazine article published last July.

“Having a child is a way to create a family that they don’t have, or to fill an emotional void,” University of Chicago researcher Amy Dworsky said in the article.

Most teenage girls assume that they’ll have a baby, marry the father and live happily ever after. Only after the child’s birth do they realize how idealized the fairy-tale perception they had envisioned was.

When you’re 16 years old, forever is a foreign concept.

Babies aren’t toys or puppies; they’re people. And it’s really not fair for a baby to be born to people that can’t take care of them by themselves. That feeling of undying love and an unbreakable bond with another is universally tempting, but part of growing up is learning how to establish a relationship with oneself. It’s not fair to have a baby for your own emotional neediness.

Those who are born into less than ideal emotionally supportive situations need to break that chain by becoming fully independent and learning to love themselves. A baby isn’t the answer.

By Liska Koenig
The Guardsman

The San Francisco Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum has been open to the public since 1940. Known for its collection of about 100,000 plants, among them more than 300 of which are extinct or endangered in the wild, its special exhibits and individual theme gardens, it remains one of the city’s few free attractions.

Unlike Powell and Market Streets or Fisherman’s Wharf, the garden is not overrun by seedy con-artists or celebrity impersonators, riddled with drug addicts or teeming with mediocre street musicians trying to earn a quick buck.

This world famous garden is much more than a bunch of pretty plants. The arboretum serves as a resource for locals and tourists alike.

Spread out over 55 acres, the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society offers educational walks, teacher workshops, and special events for school children and the general public. More than 23 carefully planted gardens like the Redwood Grove, the Garden of Fragrance and the Japanese Moon-Viewing Garden awaken the interest of even the most casual visitor.

However, anyone who can’t prove residency within city limits might soon have to fork over up to $7 to enter this sanctuary. This is to help curb what could be a record budget deficit for San Francisco — up to $750 million for the 2011-12 fiscal year.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and his posse are channeling the spirits of greedy robber barons and cooking up new schemes to fill the disastrous hole in the city’s budget.

In a communal effort to shoulder the burden, all city departments are expected to contribute. Unfortunately, nature lovers are getting the short end of the stick.

City officials argue these measures are required to keep the area up to par. The annual budget for the garden is $3.2 million, with $1.4 million coming from the city and $1.8 million from the nonprofit Botanical Garden Society. City officials have even threatened to diminish the number of gardeners, according to the San Francisco Botanical Garden Society website.

Brilliant idea — maintaining a landscape as extensive as this is labor and cost extensive — cutting down staff will eventually lead to the deterioration of plants. Charging people hard cash to visit a once-great, but now mediocre garden is a surefire way to turn the this local gem into just another San Francisco tourist trap.

Alternatively, volunteers could be recruited to help with the daily challenge of maintaining such an extensive collection of plants. This would keep the cost down and possibly eliminate the need to restrict free access to those who can’t afford to pay a fee.

Parks should be free for anybody to enjoy, including tourists or anybody who can’t prove residency in areas with the “right” ZIP code. It is wrong to scare people away from one of the few remaining free city attractions by forcing them to pay a fee. The Japanese Tea Garden and the Conservatory of Flowers already charge admission and it certainly won’t be beneficial to include the arboretum in this line up.

Tourists and visitors provide a major source of income to the city. In 2009 San Francisco had about 4.9 million visitors, who spent more than $7.8 billion of their hard earned dollars here. Hotel taxes alone collected $146.8 million dollars, according to statistics by the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau.

It’s time to wake up and smell the coffee — the tourism industry is one of the city’s life-lines. How does it make sense to piss off the people who bring money to the city by inventing exclusive fees to see local attractions?

For more information or to sign a petition to keep the Arboretum free for everybody go to http://www.sfbotanicalgarden.org.