It’s time for healthcare for all
From the perspective of a pharmacist for over 50 years, I can’t
say that I have seen it all because I think the best is yet to
come. This is especially so if we Californians can encourage the
governor to see from our point of view. An overwhelming majority of
people favor healthcare for all, even if it means more taxes.
The reason we don’t now have healthcare for all is that last
year our governor vetoed the bill that passed both legislative
houses.
What was the big stumbling block? The HMOs and pharmaceutical
companies are fighting tooth and nail to defeat healthcare for all
Californians. Why? You see, the single payer plan cuts out the
insurance companies. The administrative overhead for insurance is
30 percent. Medicare and Social Security do the job for 1.8
percent. That means health care savings score an immediate 30
percent discount when done by the government.
The next hurdle is for the government to use its buying power to
negotiate drug prices. This would be another immediate savings.
Please don’t be fooled by drug companies needing high prices to
cover research and development. Research is accomplished in our
universities, which are already taxpayer funded. Also, drug
companies spend huge amounts on marketing and advertising, which
can be misleading and deceitful.
Like tule fog blowing in from Sacramento Valley, expect a media
blitz to obsure real benefits to the taxpaying citizenry.
Mary Zanger
Hollister
It’s time for healthcare for all
From the perspective of a pharmacist for over 50 years, I can’t say that I have seen it all because I think the best is yet to come. This is especially so if we Californians can encourage the governor to see from our point of view. An overwhelming majority of people favor healthcare for all, even if it means more taxes.
The reason we don’t now have healthcare for all is that last year our governor vetoed the bill that passed both legislative houses.
What was the big stumbling block? The HMOs and pharmaceutical companies are fighting tooth and nail to defeat healthcare for all Californians. Why? You see, the single payer plan cuts out the insurance companies. The administrative overhead for insurance is 30 percent. Medicare and Social Security do the job for 1.8 percent. That means health care savings score an immediate 30 percent discount when done by the government.
The next hurdle is for the government to use its buying power to negotiate drug prices. This would be another immediate savings. Please don’t be fooled by drug companies needing high prices to cover research and development. Research is accomplished in our universities, which are already taxpayer funded. Also, drug companies spend huge amounts on marketing and advertising, which can be misleading and deceitful.
Like tule fog blowing in from Sacramento Valley, expect a media blitz to obsure real benefits to the taxpaying citizenry.
Mary Zanger
Hollister
Taxpayer subsidized slaughter
On Tuesday the San Benito County Supervisors rammed approval of an $82,500 subsidy for county ranchers who say their land holdings are so massive they can’t possibly afford “the time or resources” to patrol their cattle herds against “predators,” meaning coyotes. The money comes out of every county taxpayer’s pocket, and will go to pay the salaries of two USDA animal trappers.
Many of these ranchers and farmers already receive up to tens of thousands in farm subsidies every year. Now they want every citizen in Hollister to pay for these trappers to kill every “nuisance” wild animal on their ranches so they don’t have to hire an extra ranch hand to shoot so-called predators on their pastures. The money will come out of the General Fund, which is fueled by the hard earned property taxes paid by all homeowners in Hollister, San Juan Bautista and unincorporated San Benito – even though 99 percent of those paying for it will most likely never use the service.
There are myriad reasons why using these trappers to kill San Benito wildlife is so wrong. But let me start with a vivid picture of what you are paying for. These trappers are from the federal “Wildlife Services,” a misnomered sub-agency to the USDA.
Private ranch trapping is a bloody business. The trappers use wire neck snare traps that indiscriminately kill many other non-targeted species, such as raccoons, rare American badgers, gray foxes, endangered San Joaquin kit foxes, and bobcats. Once the animal is ensnared, they are slowly choked to death. The more the animal tries to free itself, the tighter the wire noose squeezes its neck or abdomen. It can take ten hours or more for the animal to slowly die.
Another favored method of slaughter employed by USDA trappers is a trick called “denning.” When the trapper comes upon a female coyote’s den housing her litter of newborn pups, the trapper will toss a smoking mace canister into the hole or cave, wait for the blinded pups to come running out in agony and confusion, and that’s when the hired trappers club the pups’ skulls in with baseball bats.
Our government at work! And every Hollister citizen is paying for it.
But let’s say you could care less about this bully torture of smaller creatures. In that case, one should look at the environmental mayhem that ensues whenever humans attempt to “manage” wildlife. For the past two years, the ranchers have paid for these trapper services themselves, after the former Board of Supervisors so wisely axed the contracted subsidy in 2001. There has been a population explosion in ground squirrels since the ranchers begrudgingly started up the contract with their own money. Ground squirrels are the main staple in the coyote diet (no, it’s not cows or calves). Coyotes eat the squirrels like we eat potato chips, but since the coyotes have been annihilated, the squirrels have bred unchecked. The rodents eat precious pasture grass before the cattle can get to it, and worse, cause the cattle to go lame when the bovines stumble on their ground burrows.
What do the ranchers do? They demand another free program from the county! This time it’s the squirrel abatement poison program. They put poison everywhere in the fields. Some squirrels eat it and die. Then raptors and eagles, perhaps a condor or two, eat the dead poisoned squirrel carcasses, and they die. That’s called secondary poisoning. The ranchers’ dogs eat the dead poisoned raptors. The dogs die. That’s called tertiary poisoning.
We wonder what the third taxpayer funded program will be.
As the county ordinance stands, any property owner at any time, anywhere, has the right to shoot coyotes as the animals are considered “vermin,” much like rats. We do not agree with that assessment. Nonetheless, since the “vermin” ordinance is already in place, ranchers who insist on this program have the responsibility to steward their own land without forcing the rest of us to pay for it.
The ranchers say that 20 percent of the coyote slaughter services can eventually be paid back by the state, when they give us our county share of gas tax in a year. They say, “See, it’s free!” But the operative word here is “tax,” something all of us have already paid for. Wouldn’t that money be better spent on a youth program, or cleaning up the San Benito River, or how about getting rid of the invasive yellow starthistle in this county?
The fact is, very few cows are eaten by coyotes. If you ask one of the ranchers to give you an example of a coyote eating one of their cows, they won’t give you a straight answer because they can’t. The last time this county paid the two federal trappers to do this, we slaughtered 2,200 coyotes in San Benito in one year, surpassing every other county in the state.
In a letter to the supervisors, the county Farm Bureau recommended that the trappers even be allowed to use torturous leg-hold traps, a contraption outlawed years ago by the federal government – which speaks volumes about the Bureau’s dearth of knowledge regarding legal environmental methods.
This is welfare abuse at its finest, and we wonder where the subsidizes will end. The supervisors voted for this without consulting one wildlife biologist or botanist, let alone the county’s experts at the Nan Pipestem Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. It smells like political payback.
The supervisors were supposed to wait to approve this subsidy until budget hearings in July, but did it two weeks ahead of schedule so they wouldn’t have to hear any opposition to it. If you don’t think you should be paying for this environmental disaster in the making, I urge all over-taxed residents of San Benito to protest this travesty at the next county meeting. If you can’t be there because you have to work, I urge you to write a letter of complaint to the supervisors about this issue so that it can be placed in the public record.
Kate Woods
President, Nan Pipestem Wildlife Rehabilitation Center
San Benito County,/i>
Going the extra mile for corporate America
The Bush Corporate Legacy will be stronger than Reagan’s. Bush had a more dramatic tax cut to help corporations and he has done more to increase corporate profits. Halliburton is a good example, in 6.5 Bush years their profits have increased 368 percent, helped by no-bid Katrina contracts and no-bid Iraq contracts. Profits for 2006 were $2,348,000,000, a bright Bush beacon. Many other Republican companies have been able to feed at the no-bid contract trough with positive effects on their profit margins. A strong legacy, with 19 more months to do more for corporate America.
Frank Crosby
Morgan Hill
