The Dodgers’ ownership woes; Max Boot on the war in Afghanistan; Gregory Rodriguez on a divided America

Broken dreams

Re “Denial of TV deal further chokes Dodgers’ cash flow,” June 21

The ongoing soap opera with Frank and Jamie McCourt is an embarrassment to Los Angeles. A once-proud ballclub is being torn asunder by this roadside show. Don’t the McCourts have the decency to relinquish control of this team and place it in the hands of someone who has the best interests of the Dodgers at heart?

People don’t want to attend ballgames with this farce going on. You used to feel like part of the Dodger family when the O’Malleys were owners. Going to the ballgame meant seeing first-class baseball.

If these shenanigans continue, “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” will play to a ballpark devoid of loyal fans who long for the experience of taking their sons and daughters out for a family night, as their parents did before them. With the McCourts in control, that wholesome experience is gone.

Barry Wasserman

Huntington Beach

Afghanistan in the balance

Re “Ripple effects,” Opinion, June 22

What kind of people find enemies everywhere? Who would find today’s generation of Israelis to be victims? How could any balanced personality believe that the governments of Nicaragua, Afghanistan or Iraq could be threats to the United States such that their subversion and overthrow could be justified?

America, the superpower, has shown only how thin and fragile its sense of self is when it speaks of its attack on and occupation of Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, as courageous. Elective wars can never be justified, and certainly the wholesale slaughter of our opponents cannot prove America right.

Remove our troops and the effects will take care of themselves.

Geoffrey N. Lachner

Laguna Niguel

Max Boot’s dire warning about pulling troops too fast and too soon from Afghanistan has eerie similarities to the domino theory that dictated policy decisions during the Vietnam War.

Though Boot is worried about political legacies and intervening in a civil war, he makes no mention of the loss of life sustained, both militarily and “collaterally.” And that cold-blooded indifference to the dead and wounded has historically been a staple of conservative geopolitics.

Marc Rogers

Sherman Oaks

America the divided

Re “Why social media isn’t,” Opinion, June 20

Gregory Rodriguez hits the nail on the head but doesn’t go far enough. The “nichification” of politics and resultant gridlock prompt larger questions.

Are we obligated to each other? If we are, who pays for it? This gets to the heart of the current divide. America was once defined by its support of the common interest and was willing to pay for it. We didn’t think of it as anything but an investment in each other.

The right has stampeded the public into thinking that taxes and all investment in our infrastructure, healthcare and education are somehow destructive. From their perspective, they’re correct. Taxes destroy the free ride that corporations and the wealthy have had for the last 30 years on the backs of the rest of us.

David Ellis

Sherman Oaks

Rodriguez states that “breaking bread isn’t a panacea for the country’s growing social divisions, particularly those created by inequality.” I’m not sure that dialogue is a panacea. However, I believe, as suggested by retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, that “if we can do that on broader scale, I think we’ll come out all right.”

I would argue that dialogue — characterized by listening carefully to others’ points of view and communicating that we value them, whether or not we totally agree with them — is a significant way to get beyond the barriers that separate people on issues of human differences that result in continuing inequities in our society.

Karl Strandberg

Long Beach

E.T. might not be all that friendly

Re “Disconnected,” Opinion, June 18

Regarding the “hibernation” of SETI, it would be wise to be reticent regarding contact with extraterrestrial intelligent life if we find it.

If intelligent aliens evolved in an Earth-like Darwinian fashion, they are likely suspicious, self-centered and violent. Even if peaceful, an alien civilization — after observing the behavior of Earth’s powers-that-be — might think it a good idea to destroy us if they can before we destroy them.

Jeffrey B. Schneider

Glendale

If Douglas Adams, author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” were penning this plot, Earth would immediately be invaded and enslaved by an aggressive extraterrestrial species whose only warning would be on frequencies no longer monitored by the SETI array.

Dave Massey

La Mesa

Crowded cages

Re “Promoting rehabilitation,” Editorial, June 20

If society no longer believes that criminals can be rehabilitated, we should stop calling our prisons “correctional” institutions. Call them what they are: cages. Overcrowded cages at that.

Something has gone wrong in America, which currently has the largest inmate population on the planet, both in raw number (more than 2 million) and on a per capita basis. A string of stories has described prisoners — some on death row and others incarcerated for decades — who were released based on DNA and other exculpatory evidence.

I anxiously await the publication of the forthcoming book, “The Collapse of American Criminal Justice,” by the late Harvard legal scholar William Stuntz. And I pray for this nation.

Richard Dickinson

Glendale

Food safety

Re “Will irradiation be back on the table?,” June 19

Irradiation is not the solution to food safety issues. Building enough facilities to irradiate all of our food would be physically impractical, not to mention expensive. Further, the long-term health consequences of irradiating a large percentage of our food are unknown.

The article references a study concluding that irradiated foods are safe. In fact, byproducts found in irradiated foods have been linked to genetic damage in human cells

and serious health problems in lab animals.

Additionally, irradiation doesn’t help us pinpoint the origin of a food-borne illness. Larger volumes and longer global supply chains make tracing the source difficult.

A real solution would be based on adequate funding of our food safety bodies, more vigilant monitoring of imports and a much better understanding of the risks posed by intensive food production and processing methods.

Wenonah Hauter

Washington

The writer is executive director of Food & Water Watch.

Money talk

Re “Where money is no object,” Column One, June 18

While he is far from being a millionaire, my youngest son and many of his close friends espouse the same beliefs regarding wealth and the use of money as those of the young entrepreneurs detailed in this article.

Among all these young people, there is a stated disdain for much of the offerings of what has been called the American dream. While far from being monkish about it, they are fashioning simpler, deeper lives, which gives me great pleasure and further instills hope for the future of our planet.

Carleton Cronin

West Hollywood