This week's feedback

The ironic left

About your story reporting the details of Doug Manchester’s divorce [“The Front Lines,” Aug. 12]: I think the link between gay/traditional marriage and divorce is weak and the details of a private citizen’s divorce as fodder for an article, appalling.

Real examples of irony:

Leftists squealed like pigs over the Patriot Act invading the privacy of ordinary citizens. Yet leftists revel in the personal lives of people like Doug Manchester and Joe “the plummer.” No information either illegally or unethically gained or distributed is beyond the pale. Leftists are pigs in slop rolling around in it. That’s ironic.

The CityBeat Gestapo will punish anyone who dares not to support gay marriage, except if their name is Obama. People with that name get a free pass and their feet licked. Ironic.

A president makes health care “insurance” reform his big cause, yet he does not involve himself in the details of it. He speaks in generalities and can’t sell it because he doesn’t know it. A man who promises the stars and the moon doesn’t get involved in the substance of it—turns out his only skill is making promises he has no idea how to deliver. That’s ironic!

Obama lectures us about expensive conditions that are preventable, driving up costs, yet on he smokes. Ironic.

Decker must go

It is time to fire Ed Decker.

His conclusion, “... fuck the children!” in his Aug. 5 “Sordid Tales” column is unacceptable language in any decent publication. Your own reputation as a journalist is tarnished every day you keep this “columnist” on your staff.
I take no position on the Children’s Pool issue; I only write to complain of Mr. Decker, a poor representative of your publication.

Bring on the Consti-Con

Unlike Valerie Sanfilippo [“Letters,” Aug. 12], I was actually at the Aug. 1 meeting in Mission Valley on which you editorialized in your Aug. 5 issue, and, not surprisingly, I had a more positive impression of it than she did.

California’s state government is totally dysfunctional, and the only people that pleases are the anti-government Republican crazies Sanfilippo dislikes. As long as the Republican Party retains more than one-third of the members in each house of the California Legislature, and as long as their legislative caucuses are run by anti-tax zealots who not only accept but actively desire the destruction of the social safety net, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.
The voters of California have repeatedly rejected single-issue initiatives designed to fix many of the biggest problems with California’s governance: the two-thirds budget vote requirement, the way Proposition 13 has hamstrung the state’s ability to raise revenue and made local governments permanent mendicants of the state and the draconian term limits that force legislators out of office just when they’ve begun to learn their jobs.

The call for a constitutional convention is based on the idea that the voters might be persuaded to support these changes if they’re presented as a package and offered as an overall solution to the state’s ongoing fiscal crisis. The causes that make Sanfilippo a Democrat will be helped—not hurt—by a constitutional convention that produces a reasonable package of reforms.

Sanfilippo is also wrong in saying that those calling for a constitutional convention want to keep the two-thirds vote requirement for the budget. Indeed, one of Richard Rider’s principal discontents about the meeting was that there were no speakers on the panel that supported the two-thirds rule. Also, I don’t know where Sanfilippo got the idea that unions represent 53 percent of U.S. workers. The actual figure is 12 percent, and in the private sector, it’s less than 8 percent.

CityBeat’s bias

As I understand it, from reading the U-T, Elizabeth Manchester filed for divorce, not Doug Manchester, as stated in your article [“The Front Lines,” Aug. 12].

Your political slant (tying it to the boycott) amounts to nothing more than irresponsible reporting. So much for the unbaised press.

Editor’s note: Our story actually never stated which party “filed” for divorce. We reported that Doug Manchester “pushed” for a speedy divorce after the couple split up.