Letters to the Editor 8-14-14

Relieving traffic
Editor: My husband and I live in one of the senior communities off South Fitch Mountain. Our regular route to the 101 is over the Healdsburg bridge. Since the bridge will be closed for the next 12 to 14 months, I feel there are a couple of things that can be done to help relieve the traffic for those months. We now will be going down to Healdsburg Avenue to get on the freeway. There is a big hole on the corner of East and Vine that requires the car turning right or left onto Vine to go into oncoming lane to avoid running into it. Previously there wasn’t a lot of traffic at that corner but there will be after the bridge is closed. Repairing it would aid in avoiding possible accidents at that corner.
The corner of Matheson and Healdsburg Avenue (to say the least) is congested on any given day. I suggest there be a left hand arrow in the signal that allows cars to turn towards the freeway without any pedestrian or other traffic movement.
Getting our bridge in shape is a good thing. Having a little easier access to the 101 is a good thing.
Diane Sullens
Healdsburg
In financial crisis
Editor: We are members of a local book discussion group, and our most recent was Elizabeth Warren’s “A Fighting Chance,” the story of her struggles, failures, and successes. Starting from humble beginnings in rural Oklahoma, Warren worked her way through college, then taught as a professor at Harvard Law School. In the mid-2000s the Obama Administration recruited her to organize the newly-created Consumer Financial Protection Agency of the US Treasury Department. She is currently the senior Senator from Massachusetts.
Warren’s book adds even more proof that our legal framework has been reworked relentlessly by our affluent electeds and their Wall St. patrons, who have tilted the laws to impoverish the “bottom 90 percent” and enrich the top 10 percent, in order to tilt the laws still further. The land of opportunity, the fair shake, the square deal, the chance to be affluent/creative/ productive–all this is increasingly denied to most in our nation. The system is rigged: no matter whether you’re of red, blue or purple persuasion; white, black, brown, yellow or red by genetics; male, female, or other by preference, we are slowly sinking as a people, and the predators who control the lifeboats have either been distracted  to forget us or intend to let us sink. The plutocracy is winning, as Warren Buffet says.
Many of the victims of unequal opportunities, of corporate-Wall St. dominance, and of government leaders that are their lackeys are casting around for a leader both sensitive to their situation and capable of resisting those forces and of restoring a level playing field. Elizabeth Warren is that kind of leader — untiring, brilliant, inspiring, effective, and incorruptible.
Those who would like to read an account of our (ongoing) financial crisis and of those who were responsible for it, an account that is lucid and damning, but brief and to the point, should read “A Fighting Chance.” If anyone wants to see what dogged determination and commitment to establishing accountability in the financial sector, to transparency in government, and to breaking the stranglehold of the rich and powerful on our government, can do, they should follow Elizabeth Warren’s career, past and future. We ourselves will be cheering her on.
Dave Henderson
Healdsburg