Letter: A farce of an arguement

The commentary by Heather West in your Nov. 19 edition (“Sheriff should rethink priorities”) would have been hilarious if it hadn’t been such a pathetic exercise in liberal “logic.”
First, her criticism of the sheriff’s department for enforcement of existing law as “unwarranted police behavior” is nonsensical. Police officers neither enact laws nor sit in judgment of offenders. We have the legislature and the judicial system for that. What would really be “unwarranted police behavior” is the employment of her concept of selective law enforcement.
Next, Ms. West suggests that imbibing booze from a paper cup in a public park is akin to having a cocktail in a licensed watering hole. Hum … Thunderbird in a biodegradable Solo cup vs. a Blue Sea martini in chilled stemware — yeah, that really makes sense! It is, I suppose, a step up from brown paper bags — which she would probably reject as environmentally unacceptable.
Then, somehow she makes a connection between this libational liberation and rent control tied to current home prices as a solution to homelessness. Hello? Did she ever hear of things like mortgages, taxes, maintenance and other costs that don’t necessarily drop with the decline in property value? I guess the landlord should simply absorb these costs for the benefit of those whose behavioral choices do not include gainful employment.
One must wonder if Ms. West also favors keeping the cost of liquor and paper cups “commensurate with the decline in the selling price of homes.” I think a better approach would be to link the cost of these requisite components of her “outdoor cocktail” inversely with home prices. That way, the homeless would be incentivized to spend less on alcohol and more on housing. How’s that for a novel idea? Imagine spending your welfare check on a place to live that’s not inside a bottle (or a paper cup). It could even be a solution to jail overcrowding.
In the end, however, the only thing more farcical than Ms. West’s commentary is the Press-Banner’s decision to print it.
Gene Scothorn, Scotts Valley