PUBLIC FORUM.

Boondoggle 

Re ``Mansion or cottage, $50 flat tax sought for schools'' (July 30):

Remember when we voted in the lottery to help the schools? The Assembly then shifted the money they had been spending on schools to the general fund and the schools were back to ground zero.

Now they want to tax us $50 per for the schools and they will again shift the monies they were spending on schools to the general fund. The schools will again be no better off. Of course, they are circumventing the spending controls placed on them by Proposition 13. For Pete's sake, we should not allow the Assembly to give us the shaft again using better schools as an excuse.

-- William H. Link

Northridge

The world is a stage

Re ``Did tequila make Mel a bad goy?'' (Their Opinions, Aug. 4):

Are we seeing a performance of Shakespeare's play ``The Merchant of Venice'' in all the bad press and rejection by the Jewish community of Gibson's apologies as being hypocritical or ``too little, too late''? What good did it do Shylock to demand his pound of flesh?

Remember that same thing happened when many prominent Jews attacked Mel Gibson and his old father over the making of the movie ``The Passion of the Christ.'' The Jewish opposers helped make the movie a box office giant and it made themselves look bad in the eyes of the public.

-- Ross Yerkes

Los Angeles 

They let him die

Re ``L.A. Zoo's failed fight to save chimp recalled'' (Aug. 3):

Once again the Los Angeles Zoo staff failed an animal in its care. My question is: If a human worker had stuck a hand in a bush and been bitten by a rattlesnake would the zookeepers have taken him into the lunchroom and sat him down for five hours waiting for him to fend off the venom on his own? No, they would have rushed him to the ER and given him the antidote immediately.

But why would they watch a creature in mortal danger of dying and in pain for five hours before acting? Were they trying to save money by not calling the vet and acting right away? Or are they just totally incompetent and incapable of making quick, immediate, necessary decisions? These zookeepers can weep and whine all they want. The truth of the matter is they let the animal die.

-- Millie Derose

San Fernando 

Risking civilian deaths

Re ```Seem to' facts'' (Your Opinions, Aug. 1):

Howard Barr states ``it is wrong to defend yourself when you have to shoot a terrorist holding a neighbor's child, by shooting the child to kill the terrorist.''

Such illogic, symptomatic of a hostage mentality, leads us to conclude that we must continue to let terrorists kill innocent civilians because if we stop defending ourselves the killing will cease. Ultimately, a society that is not willing to risk civilian deaths is guilty of even more deaths committed by those who celebrate a culture of death.

-- Shari Goodman

Calabasas

Words to live by

War is profane; defense is compulsory.

-- Michelle Goldwater

Woodland Hills

Over-the-hill hippies

I had the unfortunate experience of going to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young concert. After playing only a few of their hit songs they turned the stage into a soapbox for anti-war rhetoric, at one point giving a Bush-bashing speech while playing music in the background. I paid for entertainment and what I got was politics.

I'm tired of entertainers using their performances to inflict their political views on people. They are entitled to their opinions but that was the wrong place and the wrong time. I would demand that they give me a refund but I doubt if any of those over-the-hill hippies read the paper.

-- Jeff Clarke 

Simi Valley