Hate Crimes: Harsh Actions Needed

I must commend CV Weekly and Charly Shelton, personally, for reports of numerous shocking incidents of hateful attacks against Jewish centers in several parts of the country and elsewhere (March 2). It’s outrageous and unacceptable that a peaceful, highly educated and law-abiding community’s places of worship and culture are indiscriminately targeted by violent hate-mongers and criminals. These elements deserve no mercy. These incidents should be investigated speedily and those responsible punished appropriately.

It’s deplorable that the Jewish people have to endure continuous harassment and hate in many parts of the world. Even the United Nations has been dealing with the Jewish people and their homeland, Israel, harshly and relentlessly.

It’s a pity that America’s most reliable and the only Democratic ally in the entire Middle East was ill-treated even by the previous U.S. administration. It’s also shameful that this UN member is threatened with regular bombings, murders and other forms of terrorism by those whom the U.S. taxpayers are supporting in several ways through the State Department grants and other UN programs.

Don’t forget that Israel is also our strongest ally in the war on terror.

I hope the current U.S. Administration would restore the long-standing close ties with the Jewish state and ensure that the Jewish people and their centers in America and elsewhere do not suffer from hate crimes and attacks. As a community we all must unite and help the targeted people in facing this climate of fear, hate and attacks.

Yatindra Bhatnagar

Tujunga

Leave Medicine to the Professionals

As a registered nurse and healthcare advocate it frustrates me when our state elected officials attempt to legislate medical care. Last time I checked State Senator Portantino lacked an MD behind his name so he shouldn’t try to legislate how physicians should practice, which is precisely what his bill would do. Instead our legislature should work with the medical, pharmacy [and] nursing boards to provide them with the tools and resources so that they can ensure their members are following the appropriate standard of care.

Granted there will be some patients who will still seek out additional prescriptions for opioids by making numerous ER visits; almost every state has a system for checking if that same patient has been dispensed opioids recently and how much – in California ours is called CURES. Checking CURES is mandated, so this is one way of curbing people who are simply opioid shopping for “secondary gain.”

Geneviève M. Clavreul, RN, Ph.D.

Pasadena

Urges It’s Time to ‘Step Up’

Despite our very different beliefs Lynn McGinnis and I usually agree to disagree, but I am puzzled by his recent letter (“Washington’s Warning About Political Parties,” March 2).

Republicans with a slim Electoral College victory have put in office a “cunning, ambitious and unprincipled” man, to use our first President’s quote, and they hold a filibuster-proof majority in both chambers of the U.S. Congress. They have no need of Democrats to work with the Trump administration as it proceeds, to the extent that they are doing any governing at all, with what Republicans always try to do – further enrich the 1%, ignore or worsen the plight of the struggling working and middle classes, and drastically cut benefits for the poor. Executive orders reversing environmental protections, civil rights and other advances are also doable without help, and it seems without basic legal advice in Mr. Trump’s case.

Instead all Americans need to step up to help save our country from the harm and havoc of this intellectually unprepared, emotionally unfit and morally deficient President and his cabal of chaos. Democrats can’t do it alone.

Roberta Medford

Montrose

Local and state officials turned out in droves for a swearing-in ceremony for California State Senator Anthony Portantino, held on Feb. 26 at Glendale Community College (“Portantino Lauded At Swearing In,” March 2).

“Anthony Portantino is the best government has to offer,” said State Controller Betty Yee. “He never forgets who he represents and the voice of the community in everything he does.”

Represents who? In 2010, I confronted then-Assemblyman Portantino after a La Cañada City Council meeting and demanded to know why he voted for a bill to give subsidized tuition to illegal immigrants. He insisted that no citizen or legal resident would be displaced by the bill. Never mind that the Los Angeles Times reported that 140,000 students did not enroll in community colleges because they could not get into classes (“Just Call Them College Students in Waiting,” Oct. 4, 2010).

Now that Anthony Portantino is a state senator, let’s see who he really represents – citizens and legal residents or (to use a politically correct term) undocumented migrants.

Les Hammer

Pasadena