The Sun
Sunnyvale's Newspaper

Letters

Next time, give an opportunity for rebuttal

In the May 13 Sun article about my election as chairman of the Libertarian Party of Santa Clara County appeared a line about unidentified "critics" saying the Libertarian policies of free-market solutions and small government with fewer laws would create "chaos." This is untrue--Libertarianism fosters peaceful dealings with others and self-responsibility as a solution to today's chaos and violence.

The cited editorial opinion with no opportunity for rebuttal was not brought up during my interview by reporter Berton. Such a defamation of our party spun into the news from an unnamed source is hard to take.

Who are those "critics"? If I'd been able to state my views in contrast to those of the "critics," maybe I could have been quoted as pointing out that individual freedom is always seen as chaotic by statists, who prefer everyone else but themselves to be in boring, predictable, lock-step lives.

But whoever wrote that line gave me no chance. That's at least unfair, and could even be considered malicious. No wonder the 100 percent liberal media are unpopular and the organizations they serve are gradually losing readership and viewership and declining economically.

Marvin B. Rudin
Sunnyvale

'Open space' limited

The Citizens Access Handbook distributed by the city of Sunnyvale holds some facts about Sunnyvale:

The city is 23.8 square miles, has a population of 125,595 and has 884 acres of open space.

With a little arithmatic, 23.8 square miles converts to 15,232 acres--meaning that Sunnyvale's 884 acres of open space equal about 5.5 percent of the city's area.

Converted to square feet, this figure shows that Sunnyvale has 36,764,640 square feet of open space. With a population of 125,595, that leaves us with about .006 or 292 square feet per person ... about the size of a small room.

This doesn't sound very open to me--and with further development allowed by the city, we may lose even that.

Think about it.

Sandra Skolnik
Sunnyvale

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This article appeared in the Sunnyvale Sun, June 3, 1998.
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