‘Sicko’ Made Reader Feel ‘Anti-American Government’
Editor,
My husband and I watched “Sicko” yesterday. And it frankly made me anti-American government. It’s sad and frustrating. We are said to be a “free” people, yet the government has us pinned against the wall and has rendered us helpless. It makes me sick. In the 60s, people got out and protested about the troubles of our nation. Yet, I can’t see many doing that now. We are so involved with our “lifestyles” that we don’t go out and yell about what is going wrong with America. This is what the government wants for us. They want us distracted with material things, with trying to strive for a lifestyle that is more than what we need, and in the meantime, the rich are getting richer, the middle class are complacent, and the poor resort to deviant behavior to live.
I belong to Kaiser, and when I asked to be put on the newest drugs to treat my diabetes, my doctor tells me that its unavailable at Kaiser, then gives me this quizzical look and states: “Why would you want to take the inhaler instead of the shots?” Between Tommy’s employer and my employer, we are putting well over $1,000 a month into our health care, only to run into medical professionals who already have on their agenda not to allow us the full medical help that we need. I’m dropping Kaiser in the Fall. However, the PPOs are probably not any better.
Paula Bower, Hollister
Wilderness Program Concerns are Based on Emotion
Editor,
The kit fox concerns of Mrs. James Appenzeller and others are not based on fact, but emotion.
First, the endangered kit fox areas of San Benito County are well defined on maps by Fish and Game. The Wildlife Service person will have those maps and refuse to enter those areas. It would cost him his job.
Second, with the San Joaquin Valley Endangered Species Recovery Planning Program people have been monitoring the kit fox area of our ranch since 1995. In 1995, they cage-trapped five kit foxes, collared (florescent), blood sampled for diseases, DNA and placed a tracking chip under the skin. Two years later when they removed the collars, one kit fox was missing. It was assumed by the biologist the coyote had killed it. In a second monitoring site, in Kings County, they found a tracking chip in the stool of the coyote.
The biologist recently placed motion cameras throughout the kit fox area in an effort to get a current count.
Besides the endangered kit fox, we have the endangered kangaroo rat and snub nose lizard. Their decline is attributed to the overpopulation of the coyote. Any reduction in the coyote population would help these endangered species.
Charles F. McCullough, Paicines
