Mailbag: Schiff downplays illegal immigration
Rep. Adam Schiff told a government class at Crescenta Valley High School that newly elected officials might be able to save California from drowning in red ink (“Political discourse,” June 8).
Did Schiff tell his captive audience that California reportedly spends $10 billion a year on education, housing and medical care for illegal immigrants?
Did Schiff make any connection between the cost of illegal immigration and the failure of the federal government to control the border?
In a telephone town hall meeting, Schiff told me that he opposes the Arizona immigration bill, which simply reinforces federal law, and supports so-called comprehensive immigration reform, which is nothing more than amnesty on the installment plan.
And Schiff wonders why California is broke?
LES HAMMER
Pasadena
New TV view leaves public in the dark
The newly renovated City Council Chambers was a surprise to this Glendale resident, who watched the City Council meeting on television.
I’m certain it must be beautiful with the dark-paneled wood walls, and dark wood desks and guard rails on the dark patterned carpeting, but on television, the general effect suggested a film noir setting for the World War II Nuremberg trials.
The council members, and other dark-suited figures, appear to be black-robed judges. The GTV6 overhead camera is positioned so far back, the council members can’t be individually identified unless the camera zooms in on one of them, and they look oddly flat-faced against the dark wood background. A discerning echo can be heard when anybody below the dais is speaking.
All I can remember from that meeting was what those perennial oral communications speakers had to say. They are the only ones who looked normal on camera, maybe because they stood in front of natural window light.
I happened to tune in when council members were arguing about their individual participation in GTV6 productions.
Whatever the message may be, if it’s delivered from the new council chambers, that room will suffocate it for television viewers.
It’s surprising that GTV6 media people didn’t work beforehand to make the room’s design attractive for televised meeting purposes.
SUSAN N. STEPHENSON
Glendale
Schools should focus on the arts
Just a few lines relative to our present education system, which emphasizes instruction in math and science, its creators, and supporters, past and present, as well as the teaching of English grammar.
Art, music and literature — the real basis of any culture — while taught, are much less accentuated than science and math, and are generally the first courses eliminated when budget or other problems arise.
What would most of the cultures of the world, including ours, be today, if artist-painters Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet; writers and novelists William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens; composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Peter Llyich Tchaikovsky; and philosophers Socrates, Aristotle and Espinoza had spurned their particular talents and concentrated solely on the study of math and/or science?
Obviously, our cultures would undoubtedly be more highly specialized, but without the Mona Lisas, the Starry Nights, the Water Lily Ponds, the Hamlets, the Macbeths, the Don Giovannis, the Marriage of Figaros, the Moonlight Sonatas, the Nutcrackers, the Swan Lakes, the Oliver Twists, the Great Expectations, the Dreyfus’ Affairs, the Ethics, the Logic of the Casualties and the Dialectics.
While math and science are important, I personally think that this nation should begin now to stress and enforce the teaching of the arts, music and literature, on at least a par with the other courses, as well as seeking out and motivating those students who reflect talent in these studies.
RICHARD SEELEY
La Crescenta