LETTERS TO THE EDITOR, 5-10-2012

Illegal CVS tactics
Editor: Your April 26 article concerning the hefty fine paid by CVS for mishandling medical waste (“CVS settlement in statewide civil enforcement case”) exposes an arrogant corporate culture that considers paying fines for laws broken simply a cost of doing business.
When the controversy over proposed development in Sebastopol heated up, I researched CVS Pharmacy and after reading hundreds of pages of court documents and articles, decided to no longer shop there. CVS is merciless in its quest to buy out or drive out other pharmacies everywhere, especially independents. A lawsuit by pharmacists in Texas uncovered sophisticated CVS computer programming for harvesting private patient data, which is sold to pharmaceutical companies and used to undermine other pharmacies. I was a victim of this scheme last year when I phoned pharmacies looking for a prescribed cream. Of the ones I called, CVS alone requested my diagnosis and doctor’s name as a requirement before saying if they carried the medication. That violated my medical privacy and was illegal.
CVS Caremark has paid hundreds of millions in fines resulting from class action lawsuits and investigations by 24 state attorneys general for consumer fraud, deceptive business practices, double billing, and illegally dumping confidential patient records. In January the FTC settled some of these charges for $5 million. Former CVS executives were charged with bribery, conspiracy, and fraud for paying a Rhode Island state senator to act as company “consultant.” The senator pled guilty to mail fraud.
In 2010 CVS paid $75 million, the largest penalty ever paid under the Controlled Substances Act, for illegally selling pseudoephedrine, used to make methamphetamine. Prosecutors said the sales “fueled a rise in methamphetamine production in California.”
Regardless of what happens with downtown Sebastopol, I cannot in good conscience shop at CVS.
Eric Snyder
Sebastopol


Supports library upgrade
Editor: Regarding the front page article in the issue of May 3 titled “Library Project Moving Along,” I was glad to read the comments of library users who were so supportive of the efforts made by the Library staff to provide the service of getting books to patrons. As a volunteer at the library and member of the Advisory Board, I had hoped that the patrons, being Sebastopoleans, would pitch in and use what we felt was an austerity solution with good spirits. And it is turning out well.
Rhea Voge
Sebastopol


No on AB 2398
Editor: AB 2398, legislation proposed by Assemblyman Jared Huffman, includes abolishment of existing Regional Water Board authority to oversee the discharge of irrigated tertiary wastewater. This legislation will remove existing water quality protections at a time when river recreational use is high, flows are low, and contaminants are not easily assimilated into the streamflow.
Contaminants will not only come from wastewater itself, but also from endocrine disrupting pesticide, herbicide, and nutrient runoff. Discharge of up to 50,000 gallons will be allowed before filing any necessary reports. Monitoring for estrogenic chemicals would not be required in irrigation wastewater even where human contact may occur.
On May 2, 2012, Nicholas Kristof wrote in his New York Times column entitled “How Chemicals Affect Us,” about a “… landmark 78-page analysis … published in Endocrine Reviews…. The article was written by a 12-member panel that spent three years reviewing the evidence.”
These chemicals are implicated in problems with obesity, diabetes, heart disease, birth defects, cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and many other serious illnesses. Furthermore, the many and varied impacts on aquatic and wildlife include sexual anomalies in fish and frogs. This legislation would take away authority of the Regional Board to oversee these impacts.
Our group, the Russian River Watershed Protection Committee, presented this report to Assemblyman Huffman’s committee, but it was not accepted into the record.
While we do not oppose all wastewater irrigation reuse, Russian River Watershed Protection Committee is protesting this legislation. You can find sample letters and more information on our website at www.rrwpc.org.
Brenda Adelman
Guerneville


Not pedestrian friendly
Editor: CVS/Chase and their insistence for drive-up bank and drive-through pharmacy has been a disaster from the get-go.
The whole concept of building two car-centric businesses at the hub of our downtown encourages car traffic. How is that pedestrian friendly? How does having that monolithic stretch of wall and glass on that important corner reflect on Sebastopol’s values?
The traffic study, inadequate as it is, predicts 2000 more car trips per day. We already have backed up traffic up Bodega Avenue and Highway 12, and on Petaluma Avenue and Highway 116. How can it be anything but worse if this plan is approved? How do idling cars in gridlock patterns affect our greenhouse gas emissions goal?
The traffic area studied as ordered by the Planning Director went only as far as High Street on the west, Morris Street on the east. Do cars disappear when they leave that hub? Why such a narrow study area? Drivers will be frustrated at the gridlock at the junction and will undoubtedly go through our neighborhoods rather than deal with that congestion at the hub. Or ignore our downtown altogether.
No matter how this project is configured, it is the wrong project for the location. Let CVS and Chase stay up at Gravenstein North with their ample parking. We already have two pharmacies and three banks downtown.
Consider instead a project there of stores and offices on the two street frontages, with affordable rentals as a second story. Don’t give up on our small town, on our general plan that calls for pedestrian friendly streets. Don’t sign away our values and our way of life. The changes offered by the developer are not enough. Those businesses simply do not belong there. They would create a traffic nightmare; an intolerable, unsafe, ugly area of our town that could be beautiful, inviting and provide some badly needed affordable housing and extend our now walkable downtown to provide an economic boon to the town, not to CVS shareholders.
Helen Shane
Sebastopol


Twisted degree
Editor: Suppose a mugger stole your watch, your wallet and your car, stranding you in the middle of nowhere and then pulled a few bills out of your wallet to help you pay the bus fare. You might be grateful for his generous gift, but I doubt if many of us would call him a philanthropist (literally, “lover of mankind”), the term used to describe Sandy Weil.
Weil and his Wall Street colleagues used their substantial wealth and political influence to change the rules of the game to allow them to reap unprecedented profits at the expense of America’s working people, our infrastructure and our educational system.
I’m not surprised that SSU President Armiñana would be grateful that Sandy Weil’s gift has allowed him to complete his legacy project of the Green Music Center. However, I am more than a little offended that the institution that awarded me a Master’s degree after two years of hard work would demean the value of that degree by awarding Sandy Weil an “honorary” doctoral degree.
I am also appalled that as a society we have sunk so low as to revere those who directly profited from the looting of our economy — resulting in the gutting of our educational institutions and saddling a generation of college graduates with crippling debt — and then thank them for the pittance they deign to bestow on us.
Maybe it’s time to accept the “new normal” and join Dickens’ “Oliver Twist” in humbly petitioning our new robber barons, “Please, sir, may I have some more?”
Larry Robinson
Sebastopol