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Brooklyn Daily
To the editor,
I fish on the Sheepshead Bay boat “Captain Midnight” all the time, and have been doing so for the past three years. I would like to come to the defense of Captain Jeff Nagler, regarding your article “Fish-cop sting in Sheepshead Bay” (online, Aug. 28).
Jeff is truly a gentleman and he always goes the extra yard for his fishermen and crew. He tries extremely hard to find where the schools of fish are on whichever days he goes out. I would like to make it very clear that Captain Jeff and his crew state the exact size limits of the various fish on all their excursions. The crew reinforces the size regulations as they help anglers remove their hooked fish.
Captain Jeff is tops in my book, and I am sure if you ask other fishermen, they will agree. Keep up the good work, Jeff.Mike Baglivo
Sheepshead Bay
Extend B82
To the editor,
The Gateway Center North Shopping Center opened recently in East New York. However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has made sure that it is virtually impossible for residents of neighborhoods, such as Coney Island, Canarsie, and Midwood, to get there safely.
They have done this by refusing to extend the B82 bus from its current terminal at Pennsylvania and Seaview avenues to the shopping center — a distance of less than five minutes. The only way residents of those neighborhoods can get there is by taking the B82 and transferring at Pennsylvania Avenue to the B83. This transfer location is in a high-crime area and makes it extremely dangerous for both customers and employees of the center.
In a place like Brooklyn, where so many people rely on public transportation, it is inexcusable for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority not to make this minor, but crucial change, to ensure the safety of its passengers.Barry Lapidus
Midwood
Scavenger crisis
To the editor,
There is an ever-growing public health issue to which the Department of Sanitation, the mayor, the governor, and the state legislature have turned blind eyes. In my Brooklyn community, and throughout the city, individuals prowling the streets in search of residents’ and the public’s discarded redeemable bottle and cans is becoming a major public health issue.
At any hour of the day, collectors can be found rummaging through garbage pails that are both on private property and placed curbside in search of redeemable material. That we have these individuals digging through dirt, grime, and unsanitary cans filled with trash is a major city public health concern.
Not only are these individuals — most of them Chinese immigrants in my particular part of Brooklyn — exposing themselves to diseases and infections, but they are potentially exposing the public to the same. Additionally, when garbage bags are ripped open, rodents and vermin are attracted to the cans, yet another major issue with the illegal collections. Rodents can be found on tree-lined, beautiful residential blocks eating out of the open trash bags ripped apart by the collectors.
Many of the collectors also ride public trains with their many bags alongside them, thus making children and those may have weak immune systems susceptible to pathogens and disease, not to mention how bad is the smell that fills a closed train car because of bags of garbage onboard. In light of bedbugs being found on N trains in the last two months, and Ebola ravaging parts of Africa, our city of 8.4 million people must take a new look at how we may pro-actively ensure that we are doing everything possible for the health of our citizens.
Putting an abrupt end to the illegal, inhumane, unsanitary collection of bottles and cans on private property and curbside is one measure that we can take right now to stop the spread of pathogens and disease in the city.Lenard Angelo San Miguel
Mapleton
School fools
To the editor,
It was bad enough that United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew used membership-dues money and Committee on Political Education money to march in an anti-police rally in August, but to deny teachers the right to sport shirts in support of our police is ridiculous.
The union had no business participating in such a march. If anything, we need the police to help us stem the daily violence and disruption that occurs in far too many schools. We cannot afford to alienate the police, as they’re here to protect us.
Mulgrew doesn’t even realize that there is no dress code for teachers in the system. Instead of fighting for lower class sizes and improved discipline, he takes on the issue of marching alongside Al Sharpton, a racial profiteer. Instead of fighting for Absent Teacher Reserve teachers, many of whom were removed to their current status because of downsizing and the fact that they couldn’t get along with their Leadership Academy principal, Mulgrew and his Unity Caucus crew take to the streets to denounce police.
Mulgrew talks about democracy. I invite anyone to pick up the local union paper. Opposing viewpoints are never printed, yet he and his cohorts win elections every three years due to a naive membership, particularly at the elementary school level.
What was Unity Caucus doing on opening day of our schools? They were probably being grateful for still another year of not teaching in a system gone completely awry. What about the parent who hit a security guard on the first day back? Why was there no comment from the union about this?
President Obama didn’t have a strategy for dealing with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, and Schools Chancellor Carmen Farina can’t implement disciplinary procedures for schools. Leaders lead by example by showing that you’re prepared to lead. Another year of chaos and all sorts of nonsense will result because the Department of Education refuses to admit that discipline in far too many schools has run amok. Don’t show us statistics to prove that children are behaving better. These statistics never show students who answer back, throw objects in the room, curse other students and teachers, cut classes, run wild in the hallways with packs of other students, and have an agenda that no one learns anything while they’re around.
Start disciplining pupils by reviving the 600-schools policy and allow administrators to use corporal punishment where necessary. Then and only then will we see an improvement in academics, and begin evaluating teachers, professionally and adequately.Ed Greenspan
Sheepshead Bay
ISIS ‘dogs’
To the editor,
I was once friendly with a group of Muslims. They kept speaking Pushtu, and I felt left out, so I very wrongly called one of them a dog. He picked me up and was about to throw me over a terrace until another person stopped him, explaining that I did not realize the severity of that word.
Those low lives at the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are definitely dogs and worse. Our president should have them killed! Me? I’d put ’em in cages and let the natural elements get to them.Name withheld upon request
Eco-Bam
To the editor,
I am pleased that the Obama administration is leading the effort to conserve the greater sage-grouse, one of the most iconic and imperiled bird species of the American West. However, according to a scorecard released by conservation groups, the administration’s plan for grouse in Wyoming does not comply with the best available science or with standards necessary to protect grouse populations.
I feel strongly that the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Agriculture need to follow the measures called for by agency scientists to conserve the species. These include recommendations to limit future oil and gas drilling and mining, better grazing practices, and the creation of protected areas.
Conserving the greater sage-grouse will require protecting large areas of habitat. Most priority sage-grouse habitat is already heavily degraded and grouse are only persisting in large, relatively undisturbed blocks of habitat. Protecting the remaining large expanses of important sage-grouse habitat will also help stem the decline of many species of wildlife and preserve the wide-open spaces of the American west for future generations of Americans.George Zoulis
Dyker Heights
Bam’s shams
To the editor,
One would think President Obama would spend more time at work, with all the current crises, including the spike in illegal border crossing, veterans not being treated, illegal Internal Revenue Service investigations, Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, civil wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Ukraine, along with the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, but he reminds me of the famous Mad Magazine character, Alfred E. Newman, who famously said, “What, me worry?” with a big smile on his face.
Did you miss President Obama’s most recent fundraising stops in Westchester County? One — at $32,400 per person — was at the home of Camilo Patrigani, the chief executive of Greenwood Energy, a subsidiary of Libra. This was hosted by George Logothetis, a shipping heir and chairman of the Libra group, along with his wife, Nitzia Logothetis, founder of Selenti, a nonprofit company which promotes mental health for woman. The second — at $15,000 and more per couple — was at the estate of Robert and Carol Wolf. This was hosted by Robert Wolf, former chairman of U.B.S. Americas along with his wife, Carol Wolf, who manages special projects for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
How ironic that Obama visited at a time when 6.6 percent of New Yorkers are out of work (with another 7 percent given up looking resulting in a real unemployment rate of 13.6 percent). Is this the “change we can believe in” he promised on the campaign trail?
Obama continues to enjoy building his frequent flyer mileage with his dozens of political campaign fundraising events. Each trip on Air Force One costs taxpayers a fortune for logistics and Secret Service protection. We are stuck with the tab for police and traffic support. No previous President has spent so much time away from Washington to participate in a record number of fundraising events than Obama.
“Do as I say, not as I do” applies to him and Congressional Democrats. Bash the wealthy with one hand, but get the big bucks with the other hand. Those in attendance included the usual one-percent crowd, along with Wall Street, lobbyists, trial lawyers, real estate developers, Hollywood celebrities, special interest groups, millionaires and the pay-for-play crowd. At those prices, the 99 percent working- or middle-class people were hard to come by, except in the kitchen or serving. What is that tired old refrain about the Democratic Party being the friend of the working and middle class, while those nasty greedy old Republicans are the wealthy big-buck fat cats? Seems like Obama prefers hanging out with the one percent.
Larry Penner
Great Neck, N.Y.
Food for thought
To the editor,
The debate on genetically modified organisms is much too kind to the industry. More than 26 nations ban genetically modified organisms, including Italy, Russia, China, India, France, and Germany.
Supporters argue that if we don’t want to take a chance on eating engineered food, we can always eat the organic kind. Really? What right does the genetically modified industry have to put this garbage into our food supply? At the very least, we have the right to know which foods are genetically modified.
Millions of dollars are spent to fool people into believing that if genetically modified foods were labeled that prices would go up. Experts have warned about lots of other problems with these types of foods being in our food supply, including pest-resistance on crops. Let’s not forget the Indian farmers who committed suicide because their genetically modified seeds failed to produce crops — note only farmers who used these type of seeds had problems.
The facts are in, and consumers need to demand genetically modified foods are labeled as such.David Raisman
Bay Ridge