18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY june 8-14, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com Road Rage It’s really good news that the county of Monterey has reached an agreement for Fox Creek Ranch to pay to fix the road in front of their property (“Monterey County is now letting private landowners fund road repairs near their properties,” May 25-31). This is the first step to ending the socialism of “public roads.” If you want all those potholes fixed, better pony up the funding. Maybe you can convince some Silicon Valley foundation to front you the money, if you are in the right demographic. Now we can move on to defunding the socialism of public schools, public libraries, public health, flood control, etc. Money talks! The rest of you can walk. **Sarcasm Alert** Bruce Merchant | Carmel Excellent article (“Three (private) million for three (public) miles,” posted May 27. This gifting of public money to private corporations is the curse of our times. Campgrounds (built with public money, then turned over to a mixed bag of companies to run at ridiculous fees for profit) and NASA are especially egregious examples. This all began with the New Deal, World War II and the Cold War, when corporations discovered they could control government spending to their advantage. Today, the government agencies that aren’t good profit sources—the national parks, U.S. Forest Service, et al are starved, but the swill trough of the unauditable military has so much money thrown at it that it finds it hard to spend it all. The National Park Service receives $3.8 billion a year and runs on volunteers. The black hole called the Pentagon gets $858 billion. The Beltway Bandits are now figuring out how to milk the Park Service and NASA for even more money: The reservation system for park campgrounds has been privatized as recreation.gov which is a subdivision of Booz Allen. NASA is run less as a science and exploration agency, more as a funnel to send money to the private companies like Elon Musk’s. Another concern is the in-the-wings privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. Thanks for raising this issue. Donald Scott | Carson City, Nevada Past and Present Thank you for exploring and printing Robert Louis Stevenson’s description of Monterey! (“A description of the Monterey Peninsula as it existed in 1879 reads like a long poem with prescient views about wildfires—and the author even started one himself,” June 1-7.) This was a real gift. After 20-plus years of my own here in Monterey, I know his descriptions to still ring true. May the fog never change! Gus Leonard | Monterey Fighting Hate The First Amendment trolls need to audit their writing for grammatical mistakes (“Letters,” May 25-31; “A group who claims to care about free speech harasses the Weekly,” May 18-24). Ideally, they’d put down their phones and do something productive with their lives. I’m very sorry Ms. Rubin and her colleagues are now a target of their abuse and harassment. It’s very disturbing. Val Gaino | Carmel Valley Thank you, thank you and thank you again for your incredible article about First Amendment “auditors.” Or as we know them as, frauditors. Your article was so well written and it described this breed of obnoxious, entitled people. Their purpose is to get a negative confrontation going, post it on YouTube and get paid. They are also doing nothing to protect the constitution. Au contraire. They love to enter government agencies and if an employee questions them, they shout out “deescalate!” even though they are the ones causing the problem. Francine Teel | Mercer Island, Washington Thank you for covering Anthony X and frauditors. I wish more legitimate journalists would cover these extremists, but I know most won’t cover them because of what you are having to deal with, with the call flooding, harassment, etc. I have been in the anti-frauditor community for years now. I have been doxed by three different frauditors. I entered down the rabbit hole of following and tracking frauditors three years ago while I was working on my undergrad degree in law enforcement and justice administration. I heavily focused on anti-government extremists such as Antifa, Sovereign Citizens and Frauditors. Frauditors share the same anti-government extremists views. There are many of us working hard to expose these vile people. Jacob Franklin | via email House and Home I grew up in post-World War II New York City. When my father returned from overseas to raise a family along with tens of thousands of other veterans, there was a severe housing shortage (“In desperate times, only the most desperate qualify for housing vouchers,” June 1-7). No one looked to ADUs and parking lots to provide housing, we spread out into the new suburbs. Looking around here I see hundreds of acres of open space at the old Fort Ord which would be a great place to develop new housing rather than proposing ADUs and destroying local parking lots with apartment complexes. Suburbs are a proven success for lifestyle and expansion. Vincent Tuminello | Pacific Grove Ground Cover Your latest Monterey County NOW shows a group of excited hikers gathered excitedly around woolly clover on Fort Ord National Monument (“Local Inspiration,” posted June 3). Finding this plant locally is nothing to celebrate—it is not a California native and was introduced to parts of the U.S. as a forage crop. In Australia, it is considered an invasive weed. With interest growing locally in native plants, it is important to celebrate true natives rather than interlopers. David Dickins | Monterey Trash into Art Thanks for featuring Jesse Villarruel’s artist-in-residence installation at ReGen Monterey (“Visuals,” May 25-31). His watercolors and sketches present a unique perspective on how the facility carries out its mission. This is art the public might not otherwise see. Sandra Weaver | Seaside Letters • CommentsOPINION Submit letters to the editor to letters@mcweekly.com. Please keep your letter to 150 words or less; subject to editing for space. Please include your full name, contact information and city you live in.
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