Letters: Why is Castle still headed in wrong direction 23 years later?

Renters better than vacancies at Castle

In 1995, the U.S. Air Force left behind 1,707 empty dormitory beds that could have become apartments, university or senior housing. But our county supervisors and Mark Hendrickson wanted commercial use – a manufacturing hub or a 300-acre auto test facility – instead of residential. So they have wasted 23 years on impossible dreams while rejecting common-sense renters and real estate buyers.

These folks want us to believe the dormitories are loaded with asbestos. The largest dorm complex was completed on June 4, 1990, at a cost of $8.56 million. The Air Force quit putting asbestos in buildings in the mid 1970s and implemented a long-range asbestos eradication program in 1980. The largest dorm complex was named the Summit and approximately one third of it is leased to Sierra Aviation Academy. The Supply Squadron Dormitories are near the South entrance and would make a beautiful motel or hotel.

Castle was a valuable asset in 1995. Now Hendrickson wants to demolish 55 more buildings so his department will not be bothered with small, nickel-and-dime buyers and renters.

Sun-Star, media can quit crying

The Sun-Star’s animus toward Donald Trump is no surprise. The effort to embrace victimhood by participating in the “Day of Rage” hatched by the Boston Globe was a coordinated effort of more than 300 newspapers to stand up to Trump’s assault on journalism and to counter the president’s ongoing assertion that fake news is an “enemy of the people.”

By doing so the Sun-Star – with its obsession with “Russian collusion” – participated in massive collusion to assert its own legitimacy. If there was a measure for hypocrisy, it would be off the charts. When the Obama administration’s DOJ, without notice, sized cell and home phone records of more than 100 Associated Press reporters, AP CEO and former CEO of McClatchy Gary Pruitt wrote to then-Attorney General Eric Holder: “There can be no possible justification for such an overboard collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters.” Regardless of the administration in power, the press will always cry they are under assault when “free speech” was designed by the Constitution to work both ways.