Another letter to the editor:

In your article http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/mar/20/bn20water12926/?zIndex=70189 about the mayor announcing his plans for water budgeting, he is missing an important component, the number of members of a household. The water budget is based on water usage in fiscal years 2005-07. Using this is fine as long as other variables remain the same, namely the number of people in a household. Our son was born in May 2007 and since then our water usage has increased to wash his clothes, his cloth diapers and him. While we are doing everything we can to conserve by replacing our backyard with artificial grass and removing our front lawn to replace it with drought tolerant landscaping, not everyone can afford to do that. For families that added a child or even started caring for someone else at home in the last 2 years, this water budgeting needs another variable and that is the number of people residing at a residence. Maybe the mayor and city council will consider this before voting on the plan.

It probably won’t get published because I recently had a letter published, but we’ll see. I’m going to send this to the mayor as well.

Following up on my previous post about the local city council election, I’ve decided to post copies of ads I received from both candidates (these ads are only the ones I received today; I receive ads a few times a week from both candidates).

From April Boling, the extremely negative campaigner:

From Marti Emerald, my candidate of choice:

Please, oh please, don’t elect April Boling; we need cooperation in government and all she seems to want to do is put down her opponent. To me, this seems like someone that has no good qualities to be in government, so she slams her opponent.

Any quote can be taken out of context and misconstrued. Let’s not stop there; the photo of Marti Emerald has been flipped horizontally; the original is the other way. And while I’m on a roll, that picture comes from a site that is copywritten which may make using it a copyright violation.

(The images above are posted with the understanding that I can use them under the Fair Use Doctrine of US copyright law. If asked by the copyright holder, I will remove the images.)

I know I’ve written about this before, but I finally decided to write a letter to the editor about it.

The race for City Council District 7 is heating up with both sides sending numerous printed ads to us, but each side has a different tactic. April Boling has decided that negative campaigning is the only way to win the race; instead of focusing on what she can do for San Diego and our council district, she has chosen to show what Marti Emerald hasn’t done. Of course, it hasn’t been Marti’s job to change city council, but April feels it is necessary to blame the city’s problems on her.

While I’m disappointed that the Union Tribune has decided to endorse a candidate that has nothing positive to say nor has any real solutions for San Diego, I’m not surprised. I hope that voters in council district 7 don’t simply take the Union Tribune’s word on who should represent this district and can see that we need a city council member that is an outsider and can bring much needed change to our city.

Will they publish it? Probably not.

Yesterday I received a campaign flyer from Duncan D. Hunter for Congress and started looking at it, not to think that I’d vote for him, but to see why on this earth anyone would elect him. Our local newspaper had an article about our congressional district and how Hunter had a good chance of winning it. What makes him qualified for this position? His father is the current representative for our district and he served in the Marines (he is still in the reserves). Did I list anything else? Nope.

In the campaign flyer, he opposed the bailout on Wall Street. While I’m not a huge fan of it, economists understand that something must be done in order to keep the economy from going into more of a recession (without credit, people can’t buy houses, cars, and businesses can’t expand). He, of course, didn’t offer any other suggestion (at least in the flyer) for how to improve the economy (other than to keep military bases open in San Diego).

I don’t see the other candidates for this race being any better than him, but he has no credentials to become a U.S. Representative. He surely isn’t going to represent my interests if he gets elected.

With the recent events about the economy and how John McCain hurried back to Washington to help out in the deal, I started think about politicians doing the job they were elected to do. The presidential candidates and vice-presidential candidates are campaigning when they are supposed to be in Washington doing their jobs. We, the taxpayers, are paying for their new “job search” and paying them for not doing their current job. McCain and Obama should have resigned their positions in order to campaign for president as they are both doing a disservice to their states. Campaigning appears to be a full time job; how can the presidential candidates listen to the discussions in senate and participate if they aren’t there? Yes, McCain and Obama came back to throw in their two cents on the bailout, but where have they been for all the other discussions? I can watch the discussions on C-SPAN, but does that mean I’m participating? No.

Speaking of politicians doing their jobs, if you look at the official house calendar, congressmen (and congresswomen) only work 9 months out of the year. I suspect they are supposed to be talking to their constituents the rest of the time, but does that really happen? Why do we pay these people so much to do so little? Oh, it’s because they make the laws.