Opinion: Do better than Wal-Mart, Relative caregivers underpaid

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2008/feb/18/no-headline---ob7wclet18-fc/

Do better than Wal-Mart

Re: Leo Bowman's Feb. 6 letter, "Shoppers want Wal-Mart":

Some of the comments I read in this letter astound me.

"The majority" of Venturans like traffic? Then I am definitely in the minority. We already have traffic in Ventura, so why not add more? I can't imagine anything more absurd. Why prevent an avalanche? Let's just keep adding snow.

With two Targets here already and a Wal-Mart 10 minutes away, why do we need a Wal-Mart in Ventura? If "the majority" of people enjoy driving and traffic so much, then they can go to Oxnard.

As a mother of two and a resident of this city for more than 20 years, I would like to see positive, thoughtful growth and development in Ventura. Yes, Wal-Mart would bring tax dollars to Ventura — so would any new large retail establishment — but at what cost? How about increased crime at Wal-Marts? Wal-Mart uses the local Police Department as its own private security force — your tax dollars at work. Or, how about Wal-Mart driving out more small businesses by bringing in poverty-level wages and its myth of low prices?

Why are there no "Stop Target" or "Stop Ralphs" campaigns? Maybe all the lawsuits Wal-Mart is involved in yearly give you a clue as to why Wal-Mart is "special." Wal-Mart makes its own rules. It won't allow its 1.4 million employees to form a union and earn decent wages and benefits, unlike our grocery stores. When one of Wal-Mart's stores unionized, it simply shut it down. Maybe it's "special" because it has so many products made overseas under disgraceful working conditions and with no apparent quality or safety controls.

Surely, our beautiful city can do better than Wal-Mart.

— Jennifer Stehle, Ventura

Relative caregivers underpaid

Re: your Feb. 8 article, "More than 50 people charged in child care scam":

I see in The Star that "hundreds of millions, if not billions" of dollars that were for welfare recipients have been stolen. These funds were to pay for child care while the recipients in the welfare-to-work program sought work.

I understand Child Development Resources is involved in the disbursement of these funds, which are for the children in its system, including children who may be living with foster parents. When those funds are used up, there is no other source of funding. The CDR has a daunting task, which apparently is never-ending, and I would not trade places with anyone who works there.

Having said that, I will offer them a bit of a lifeline: Find a way to increase the meager funding relatives receive for taking in the children who would otherwise go into foster care. More relatives might come forward to care for those kids if they received the same monies as foster parents, and I'd bet if funding was increased above what strangers get for raising those kids, the relatives would really step up to the plate.

It is a statement of perverseness against the powers that be when relatives are penalized for rescuing kids from the system, as if their sacrifice somehow ascends above and beyond the normal needs and requirements of raising children — as if a loaf of bread somehow costs us less than it does that stranger and many times many strangers.

One truth can't be denied: Relative caregivers are not in it for the money, but it would help us help our charges if we got an equal cut of the pie.

— La Donna Martinez, Ventura

(The writer is a caregiver for a relative. — Editor)