LETTERS to the EDITOR 09.28.17

Wither on the Vine

It’s all going to pot (“Local nurseries shutter as an industry faces new threats,” Sept. 28-Oct. 4). Jody Hutchinson | via Facebook

Yards are smaller, water is expensive, plants themselves are expensive, and people don’t want to spend the time it takes. Glenn Woodson | via Facebook

More people are renting than owning their homes; that’s less incentive to spend money on your home in general. David Goldman | via Facebook

I’m not defending video games, but it’s kind of crazy to come to that conclusion of that being the cause of nurseries closing. How about no one wants to use water to keep plants alive? Especially now that it’s tripled in price. Jane Flury | Monterey

Not So Sweet

Please be advised that Nestlé has no regard for anyone’s health or diet choices, only for keeping shareholder profits up (“Swiss super-giant Nestlé buys family-run Sweet Earth of Moss Landing,” Sept. 14-20). For decades they falsely promoted their baby formula all over the world as preferable to breastfeeding. It’s typical corporate propaganda against which many people, the La Leche League for instance, have tried hard to combat.

This is the American way of business: A small local company grows and grows until it’s pounced on by some multinational conglomerate squeezing out the care and personality, sending the profits offshore. Soon it will be all one corporation, maybe Amazon? Peter Watson-Graff | Monterey

Full Contact

When I lived in Carmel, the cops would not believe me that I was standing in my driveway. Had to get a copy of my lease agreement for them to believe me (“Appellate judges slam the county for a botched investigation,” Sept. 21-27). Diego Quevedo | via Facebook

Because it isn’t like police cars are equipped with computers, where an officer might be able to look up information on who lives at a certain address… Apparently we can’t ask a person to stand in their yard while we verify their identity. Better to tackle and cuff an innocent man, press charges against him and ruin his career in the process.

I hope the [county] has to pay out the nose for this nonsense. Joseph W. Borawski | via Facebook

Piping Up

This is capitalism at its finest (“A small condominium community in Monterey is gobsmacked by their new water bills,” Sept. 14-20). Public ownership can fix this mess by charging equitable rates across the board for commercial and residential use. John Norman | via Facebook

That is horrible. Sounds like everyone who lives there should start a petition and get this resolved. This is ridiculous. Sara Lauderdale | via Facebook

Ahhh, the beauty of privatized public utilities. That’s what you get for not voting for Measure O. Miguel Banda | via Facebook

All Work, No Play

Who does your movie reviews? Most of the adult film reviews are fine, but who ever does the family films should have children or grandchildren. The reviews done on the live-action Beauty and the Beast ($400 million-plus) and Leap! just don’t take into account what the children get out of the movies. I’ve taken my granddaughter (4 years old) twice to see Leap! and both times, her and several other little girls left the theater dancing in the lobby.

Family films can just be fun and don’t follow logic. Just like the children they entertain, let them play. Frank Soria | Salinas

Weather Patterns

Terry Tempest Williams, writer in residence at Harvard Divinity School said: “For so many years, talking about the weather was talking about nothing. Now it really is our survival.”

No one can say that hurricanes Harvey, Irma or Maria were directly caused by climate change. But we can say that devastating storms are far more probable in a warmer, carbon-polluted, atmosphere and ocean. We can observe that “1,000-year” weather events are now occurring much more frequently than every 1,000 years.

It is time to pull out all the stops to reduce carbon emissions, including placing a price on carbon. We are seeing encouraging steps, such as the bipartisan Climate Solutions caucus in the House of Representatives. Our elected representatives need to hear that small steps in the right direction are not enough. We need bold action now. Jennifer Smith | Marina

Oh, Sheets

We are indisputably a nation in crisis. And while the good and decent citizens of Carmel stress out over beach fires or utility pole locations, and our wonderful neighbors in Pacific Grove are unfortunately knicker-twisted on the issue of short-term rentals, a far Greater Menace threatens The Republic.

I refer, of course, to the scandalous Great Toilet Paper Swindle.

To maximize profits, the TP manufacturers have universally conspired to shrink the product while keeping prices “the same”: Rolls are narrower; cardboard tubes are larger; number of sheets per roll are fewer; sheets are smaller. (In case you were wondering, the average American uses 46 sheets of toilet paper a day, according to Kimberly-Clark.)

But these are not ordinary times, and average Americans have been supplanted by an exponential growth in the number of assholes in our country.

Something must be done! But with the perpetual stalemates in Washington, the Congress, already full of it, seems content to wash its hands of the (t)issue. Eric Tyle | Monterey