Letters to the editor

Still not sold on McCain

Re “McCain comes back, swinging,” Dec. 7

John McCain opposes President Obama’s plan to set withdrawal deadlines in Afghanistan. He supported former President George W. Bush’s open-ended military engagement for the last eight years, and what has it gotten us?

It’s time to stop turning our watches back with the honorable old war horse and try something new. His way hasn’t worked.

Marc Gerber

Encino

McCain’s parting line on the Senate floor last Friday -- “It’s been fun” -- is chilling. What’s fun about the present state of our country, folks?

Where is the leadership McCain promised? Why are he and the rest of the GOP trying so hard to make sure Obama fails?

His agenda isn’t always clear, as when he mocks Obama for trimming Medicare, which McCain also proposed in his 2008 campaign.

“Cutting a very different profile” simply means he can’t seem to remember if he wants to reach across the aisle or just decry everything Obama. I was hoping for much more from the conciliatory John McCain I heard on election night.

Rob Shanahan

Venice

Extremism close to home

Re “A U.S. strain of extremism may be rising,” Dec. 7

As an American, I am proud that America continues to lead the global war on terror -- oops, I forgot that the Obama administration is no longer waging a “war on terror” but rather is conducting “overseas contingency operations.”

Now that Islamic radicals are aggressively expanding their terrorist activities within our borders, does this mean that the U.S. is now also waging “domestic contingency operations”? What a clear and inspiring call to action.

Jim Fitzgerald

La Jolla

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You say that a U.S. strain of extremism may be rising. You mean, the kind of U.S. extremism where we invade sovereign nations over trumped-up evidence, kill tens of thousands, take over governments and steal their oil, then curtail freedom of speech and the right of due process here in America?

That kind of U.S. extremism? If so, I think you’re right.

Joseph Ross

Monterey Park

Asking everyone to sacrifice

Re “Time for a war tax,” Opinion, Dec. 4

Charles A. Stevenson is absolutely right: A war tax is long overdue. The only people involved in the two wars we are currently waging are the warriors and their long-suffering families. There is no draft, rationing or any sacrifice asked of the public to support our war effort. It’s about time to involve the entire country.

If a war tax is too much for Congress to enact, maybe it’s time to reconsider our involvement in these wars.

Robert Banning

Pasadena

Money for higher education

Re “How stupid can we be?,” Opinion, Dec. 5

Thanks to Tim Rutten for pointing out that tax breaks given to the wealthiest Californians have contributed to our budget crisis. But we should not blame only the wealthy, or expect them alone to bail us out. Due to Proposition 13, our real estate taxes are lower than those in other states with excellent higher education programs.

If the enormous economic benefits it has provided California are to continue, funding higher education must receive higher priority than it does now. California home and business owners who have owned their properties for a decade or more, and even those who bought more recently, are potential sources of increased revenues.

Brian Federici

Riverside

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It’s demographics, stupid. The face of California has changed dramatically over the last 30 years. Rutten makes no mention of the huge percentage of foreign-born in Los Angeles County or statewide, nor of the educational levels of these new arrivals. Have you spent a day in a minority middle or high school recently?

The well-documented decline in California’s primary and secondary schools is more than just the result of less per pupil spending or student-teacher ratios.

The escalating cost of a higher education in California is a concern. However, money alone will not return the state to its educational glory days. To think so is really California dreaming.

Thomas Mannarino

Lake Elsinore

The writer is a retired teacher.

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Re “Wrong number on budget,” Column, Dec. 6

Cutting phone service to save money at Cal State Long Beach isn’t a big deal, though it does contribute to the increasingly Third World ambience here. The disaster is the dramatic cuts in enrollment.

CSU trains many of California’s nurses, engineers, teachers and other professionals. When we turn away students, we decrease the skilled workforce, and that becomes the problem of everyone who ever needs advanced nursing care, or a qualified accountant for their business, or any of the other services that a high school graduate can’t supply.

Scrimping on education increases the chance that the next big innovations, and the economic boost that comes with them, will happen in another state or country. Maybe a Third World ambience is what we all need to get used to in coming decades.

Nancy Hall

Long Beach

The writer is a professor of linguistics at Cal State Long Beach.

Temp nurses, big problems

Re “Temp firms a magnet for unfit nurses,” Dec. 6

Your report about the screening of temporary nurses raises legitimate concerns, but the focus was on exceptions rather than the rule. The majority of staffing firms rigorously screen nurses and only hire those with valid credentials and verifiable backgrounds.

Unfit? To the contrary, temporary nurses are highly skilled professionals who help healthcare facilities ensure the effective delivery of healthcare services.

This was confirmed in a 2007 study conducted by the University of Pennsylvania and supported by the National Institute of Nursing Research and the American Staffing Assn. The study, which was published in the Journal of Nursing Administration, found that the quality of temporary nursing staff was on par with that of permanent staff, and that temporary nurses help improve patient outcomes in hospitals with inadequate resources and staffing.

Richard Wahlquist

Alexandria, Va.

The writer is president and chief executive of the American Staffing Assn., an industry trade group.

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I experienced a kind of horrified amusement at the parallels between nursing temp firms and Catholic dioceses that have repeatedly placed priests with records of sexual abuse in parishes.

A small percentage of nurses neglect, abuse, lie, falsify records, pilfer drugs or sleep on the job. Temp agencies “put seriously ill patients in the hands of incompetent or impaired care givers . . . and shuffled errant nurses from one hospital to another even as complaints mounted.”

So this is what happens when there is a shortage of nurses and a shortage of priests. Scary.

Ronald Soderquist

Thousand Oaks

Mammogram news buried?

Re “Mammogram panel says guidelines ‘poorly worded,’ ” Dec. 3

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines on mammography have created controversy as well as anxiety for women. The Times has devoted extensive space to this issue, including a front-page story and two impassioned but anecdotal and unscientific Op-Ed articles.

Surprisingly, the most significant development since the release of the guidelines warranted only a small item on the bottom of Page A27: Task force physicians admitted that their guidelines were “poorly worded,” had confused people, and that they had not intended to say that women between 40 and 50 should not get screening mammograms.

It is unfortunate that

The Times did not place this mea culpa on the front page, because clarity is needed to understand this issue. Mammography and self-exams are imperfect but effective methods of detecting breast cancer, and should continue to be used until we have something better.

M. William Audeh, MD

Los Angeles

The writer is medical director, Wasserman Breast Cancer Risk Reduction Program, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.