Court blocks cellphone radiation warnings
To the editor:
So, it’s an affront to the Bill of Rights for San Francisco to require cellphone dealers to inform purchasers that the World Health Organization has classified cellphone radiation as potentially cancer-causing? (Friday editorial, “Compelled speech”). Yet the government requires warning labels on cigarettes?
The big difference here isn’t based on factual data or proven scientific fact. The big difference here is that a majority use cellphones and a minority smoke cigarettes.
You resist nanny-state, government-ordered speech when it suits your individual beliefs, but you abhor it when it goes against your individual preferences. Talk about hypocrisy.
MICHAEL R. STILLEY
MESQUITE
Baby-sitting rates
To the editor:
I agree with Cindy Johnivan (Sept. 10 letter) that teachers should only get paid for the time they are with the kids and not get any planning-time pay or in-service pay.
Of course, this situation would not constitute anything resembling education, but would definitely constitute glorified baby-sitting.
After all, I’m sure that she wouldn’t do any planning, meeting, evaluating or any other duties for her job if she wasn’t getting paid for it, so neither should the teachers. I mean, fair is fair. Who works without getting paid?
So this leaves, what did she say, 4.17 hours of baby-sitting? As a teacher, I think I could cut the school district a little slack and charge a pretty low rate of say, $5 per hour per student. Classes are running at roughly 40 kids per class this year. That’s 40 kids times $5, which is $200 per hour times 4.17 hours. To my reckoning, that’s $834 per day.
With 180 days in the school year – oh, sorry, 176 days according to Ms. Johnivan – that’s $146,784 per year! Yahoo! That’s way more than twice what I make now. You know, I think they could increase the class size. More money for me.
The best thing about it is no evaluating the students, no planning lessons, no data collection, no talk of merit pay, no spending our own money on our students, no accountability, no pressure, no countless unpaid extra hours at home or at school working on papers, preparing, calling parents.
It’s a dream come true. I think this woman should be the superintendent of schools!
Of course, some of us with master’s degrees would lose out because we’d all be paid at a flat rate, but I could live with that. That Ms. Johnivan is a genius. Really, she should run for office.
MAGGIE MOOHA
NORTH LAS VEGAS
What about Harding?
To the editor:
In reference to Thomas F. Jefferson’s Sept. 12 letter (“Silent Cal”), the fact is that Woodrow Wilson was president from 1913 to 1921. Calvin Coolidge was president from August 1923 (after the death of Warren G. Harding) to March 1929, only seven months before the stock market crash which marked the beginning of the Great Depression.
While I’m not writing to argue economic policy, nearly all experts in that field blame the crash and the ensuing depression on easy credit that allowed people to buy stocks with little or no money down. Lack of regulation and oversight by the federal government was the culprit.
That sounds exactly like the housing bubble that caused our current problem.
STEVE OSBORNE
BOULDER CITY