Baseball and Arizona’s All-Star game; Greece and its lessons for us; cuts to programs for the needy

A swing and a miss

Re “Step up to the plate,” Editorial, May 15

The Times’ editorial asking Major League Baseball to move the 2011 All-Star game from Phoenix has some interesting analogies but forgets some important facts.

The game of baseball has rules that must be followed or the entire game descends into chaos. There are umpires to enforce those rules, and not agreeing with the rules will get you removed from the game. Illegal immigrants want to play the game with their own rules and are now angry at the umpire because the rules are being enforced.

The United States allows more people into our game than any other country in the world. Those who break the rules are not allowed on the field. Arizona is a state that is stepping up to the plate.

Gil Roscoe

Valley Village

Your call for baseball to move the All-Star Game from Phoenix to protest the new Arizona law is ridiculous. Your comment that this “new law seems almost certain to lead to racial profiling against Latinos” is filled with left-wing emotion. Which crystal ball are you using to predict racial profiling with such certainty?

You also mention that many Americans are appalled by this law. How convenient that your editorial leaves out that most Americans are in favor of this law.

Unlike baseball, where you play the game before you know the final score, this law is not even in effect as of this date and you are already predicting the results. Must be magic!

Peter Foley

Palm Desert

“Three strikes” does indeed describe our limited tolerance for failure — and Arizona has reached that limit.

Arizona is not the villain; our federal government is. Washington has been acting on issues it has no business controlling (banking, insurance and so on) and not acting when it is authorized to do so by protecting Arizona’s borders and its citizens.

If baseball mirrors and propels American’s evolution, it will continue to do so by keeping the All-Star game in Phoenix because the majority of Americans (baseball’s fans, after all) approve of what Arizona is doing. Do the fans count?

Linda Dean

Santa Ana

You have the “power of the pen,” so why waste it by focusing on baseball with barely a mention of the federal government abdicating its responsibility to close our borders?

The problem isn’t baseball; it is Washington and generally liberals (I’m one too) who, for the sake of votes, are unwilling to “step up to the plate.”

What would you suggest Arizona do to resolve its problem — act like the other 49 states and do nothing?

Marvin L. Sobel

Encino

Today, Greece; tomorrow, us?

Re “Greece’s troubling gift,” Editorial, May 14

The Times asks the following question: “Can democracies respond to financial problems before they become crises?”

This is the wrong question. Rather than responding to financial problems after they become crises — ones that the politicians themselves have created — government should avoid the financial problems in the first place.

The question The Times should be asking is whether Democrats can resist creating the financial problems in the first place.

The editorial makes clear that whether it’s Greece, the U.S. or California (or Los Angeles, for that matter), it’s the excessive spending on social welfare and public service jobs by socialists in Europe and their equivalent progressive liberal-Democrat brethren in the U.S. that has put all three in financial straits today.

Yeah, raising taxes astronomically could get us out. But make no mistake, it is the profligate spending that put us in this predicament in the first place.

Jim Bagge

Yorba Linda

Perhaps Californians should follow the European Union’s lead and use the leverage of too much leverage to restore democracy and functionality to our state.

We just need to wait for the almost inevitable bailout by the feds and then require as a condition of the bailout that gerrymandering be eliminated in our state. We should instead use a simple computer program that would redraw the district lines after each census based on a formula ensuring the shortest possible lines to create the most nearly equal population divisions.

Unlike in Greece, the only riots that would follow that draconian precondition would take place in the hallowed halls of Sacramento’s Capitol.

George Hammond

Orinda, Calif.

California’s cash crunch

Re “Governor’s budget deals blow to poor,” May 15

A First World state balances its budget by increasing revenue through highly progressive taxation (yes, “taxing the rich”).

Doing this results in a state like 1960s California, home to a vibrant middle class, an excellent education system and a first-rate infrastructure.

A Third World state balances the budget by cutting spending on social services. Doing this results in a state like Mexico: grinding poverty surrounding tiny pockets of wealth, and a decaying infrastructure.

Apparently, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is trying to solve the problem of illegal immigration by turning California into a Third World state, just like the one from whence the illegal immigrants came.

Seems a bit like burning the house down to save it from the wildfire.

Richard S. Marken

Los Angeles

Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled Legislature are unable to deal with California’s budget problems simply because it’s not in their agenda-driven political DNA to do so. But what else is new?

As long as the state is held hostage by extreme environmental regulations, implementing the economy-busting AB 32 emission control law and increasing taxes on oil companies instead of gaining revenue from increased on and offshore drilling, the people of California will lose.

Tap-dancing around the inevitable by failing to make necessary cuts, stop spending and lowering taxes — while yielding to the education establishment, dumping costs on counties and cities and continuing to pay for illegal immigration — will certainly accelerate California’s decline.

Daniel B. Jeffs

Apple Valley, Calif.

Re “Healthcare programs may end,” May 13

Schwarzenegger is out of line when he complains that judges are “crazy” to cry foul on healthcare cuts for the elderly and disabled. States cannot ignore the law when they find it inconvenient.

Medi-Cal is a partnership with joint responsibilities. The feds pay more than half of Medi-Cal’s budget. In return for these billions, California agreed to follow federal standards of fairness. Unfortunately, California signed off on a budget last year that ignored this agreement and targeted services for the elderly and the disabled.

The judges who ruled that the cuts were illegal followed well-established law — nothing “crazy” about that. If anything’s “crazy,” it’s cutting off programs that bring in matching federal dollars to the state.

Even when we’re all hurting, let’s not take it out on the most vulnerable among us.

Paul Nathanson

Washington

The writer is executive director of the National Senior Citizens Law Center.

Less is more

Re “A better America at 40% off,” Opinion, May 12

Loved your film reviews, Joe Queenan, and while we are looking for $6 movies and budget MRIs, we can all, consciously, consider not just overpriced but oversized.

Do we really need 60-inch televisions or monstrous SUVs? Most of us, it appears, should consider a bowl of good soup instead of the whole can. Too many of us are king-sized because of our attitudes about not just food but stuff way too big for need but purchased on appetite. When you add up all the money you save, less just means more.

Kind of like a Kevin Costner movie.

Tom Sloss

Fountain Valley