The campaign to put a wildlife rescue center at Lake Merced is completely misguided. This is an inappropriate place for such a facility, which should not be located in the middle of a major city. I also don’t think it is an accident that some activists are trying to place a facility that they have no funding to build or maintain at this location. That is because it would displace the Pacific Rod and Gun Club, which has been at this location for 75 years and is one of the few tenants on city property that actually pays rent to The City instead of being subsidized by the city.

This club has one of the most diverse memberships of any group around and would not be able to relocate anywhere else in San Francisco. We already have other nature centers including a fabulous new facility at Crissy Field.

Keith Wilson

San Francisco

Too many supervisors

While the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is looking for ways to balance The City’s budget, I suggest they look at themselves. I’ve often wondered why a city of fewer than 1 million people needs 11 supervisors. L.A. County has more than 9 million people and they seem to get by with only five supervisors.

I realize that reducing the number of supervisors might mean that the board will no longer have time to pass important legislation, such as requiring pet “guardians” to change their dog’s non-tipping water bowl at least once a day, but given the current deficit of more than $300 million, we all have to sacrifice.

Jeanette Aden

San Francisco

Responsible journalism

Ambrose needs to go. I am wondering if any editors read his stuff before it is printed. He makes ridiculous assertions without any substantiation or facts. His latest (The Examiner, May 7) is a piece of garbage: “Nuclear plants are about as safe as energy production gets.” he says.

Great. Ambrose says it’s safe. Based on what? There are no issues with transportation of this waste, no potential for degradation of groundwater or the environment or species according to this guy. No potential of meltdown, nothing. Ambrose says it’s all good (while offering no evidence whatsoever.) Here’s an idea — build a Yucca Mountain in his backyard then.

Apparently, this guy is a nuclear scientist, transportation safety analyst, hydrologist, energy consultant, social commentator and more.

The one thing he isn’t — a responsible journalist.

One other thing, if you keep printing this lazy unsubstantiated trash, your paper becomes unwanted litter thrown on people’s doorsteps.

Brian Huvane

San Mateo

Universal health care

It seems as though Mayor Gavin Newsom is unclear on the concept of universal health care. It should mean that coverage is available universally, but San Francisco wants to make free health care available to the universe. The mayor’s own figures show the plan costing The City nearly $200 million. It sounds great to open our doors to all the sick and poor, but we are already in the hole for more than $300 million, and every fee has been raised to the hilt.

Where is the money supposed to come from? I think one of your readers had it right when they wrote that the mayor couldn’t run a lemonade stand. He would lose money on every glass, and hope to make it up in volume.

Tim Donnelly

San Francisco

Watching the watchers

Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Mayor Gavin Newsom says The City doesn’t have money to record all of the public meetings at City Hall, but does have money to buy more surveillance cameras and hire inspectors to look through our trash to see if we’re recycling correctly. It’s as if he’s saying, “We can watch your every move, but you can’t watch us.”

Bill Bowman

San Francisco

New York Times propaganda

The reputation of the formerly hallowed New York Times continues to falter. The latest debacle was triggered by a recent article by Michael Gordon in which he claimed that the Lebanese group, Hezbollah, is training Iraqi militants inside Iran. These unsubstantiated claims from “unnamed sources” were completely refuted by an Iraqi government spokesman.

John Stauber of PR Watch heaped his scorn on Gordon’s article stating that it was “reminiscent of the horrendous errors of judgment and bad journalism committed by Michael Gordon, Judith Miller and others at The New York Times who turned the paper into a conduit for phony stories that sold the war in Iraq.”

Once again the propaganda merchants have been cooking up a new stew to justify an attack on Iran to please our “special friend” in the Middle East. Former Ambassador John Bolton, a dangerous “loose cannon” favored by the Bush administration, called for strikes against Iran when he was interviewed by the most untrustworthy, unbalanced cable network, Fox News.

Jagjit Singh

Los Altos

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