Letters to the Editor Letters to the Editor (December 02, 2005)

Council should have opposed sex shop

Editor:

The city council decision to allow the Fascinations sex shop right next to family-oriented businesses like Baskin-Robbins is deeply disturbing. We applaud the efforts of Laura Macias to close loopholes in our outdated city ordinance regulating adult-themed stores.

It is astounding that four council members opposed her efforts. Instead, they chose to collaborate with pornographers in exploiting these loopholes to the detriment of our community. Because Matt Neely and Mike Kasperzak have positioned themselves as champions of youth, we are especially appalled at the hypocrisy of their votes. A champion of youth should support efforts (emergency or not) to protect the neighborhoods immediately surrounding a middle school, an elementary school, and a preschool. Instead, they have become the champions of pornographers desiring to enter our community.

The proposed location of this adult sex toy and pornography store is less than a quarter mile from our schools. The Second Amendment does not supersede our ability to regulate guns near campuses, and the First Amendment should not supersede our ability to protect school neighborhoods from the presence of the pornography industry.

Sexual practices behind closed doors are a private matter, but there is nothing private about a sex store fronting on El Camino Real. Pornography promotes degrading attitudes toward women, and is often associated with unsafe and even criminal behavior. We call for the halt of the Fascinations sex shop's move to Mountain View. Greg and Laura Blotter Oak Street

Google should pay far more

Editor:

I was stunned when I read that Google was offering Mountain View only $12,000 per year plus a few other onetime gifts in return for the privilege of blanketing the city with WiFi service.

Mountain View should be asking for far more than that. Google stands to gain millions of dollars in engineering, sales and marketing experience from this experiment, and Mountain View should share a significant fraction of that benefit.

I suggest that an independent third party calculate the value of the benefit to Google, subtract the value of the benefit to Mountain View, and then Mountain View should ask for half of the difference. In other words, Mountain View should share the benefits as an equal partner with Google.

What could we use this money for? Two examples come to mind. Last week's Voice reported that the city council is considering investing millions of dollars in new soccer and baseball facilities. Also, there's the controversial new child care center proposed for Rengstorff Park. Google money could help pay for some, or all, of those worthy projects and others. William R. Hitchens Sunnyview Lane

A sensible plan: Get out of Iraq

Editor:

I'll always remember Ho Chi Minh, the winning Vietnam general, saying, "We live here. We would have fought you for 300 years." The Vietnam Memorial, with its 58,000 forlorn names, is 150 yards long. If there were a memorial to the Vietnamese dead, it would be nine miles long.

We're not going to "beat" this insurgency in Iraq. There is no front line, no identifiable uniformed army to crush by might and determination. There are nine miles' worth of IED (Improvised Explosive Device) planters. Their young men suicide with cheap bomb belts. Ours with expensive Hummers and tanks. They'll fight us for 300 years.

The Murtha Option of immediately re-deploying a quick-strike force to Kuwait and otherwise taking the political fuel out of their fire seems sensible. Wendy Fleet Velarde Street

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