Fresno Bee readers on the ‘Care and Conflict’ project and Community Medical Centers
Hospital project reveals profit motive
Great, important, enraging article Sunday about Community Regional Medical Center and the corporate con job that fleeced Valley residents to engorge profits in and beyond Clovis. Those of us who are old enough remember the onetime Fresno County General Hospital at Cedar and Kings Canyon.
The county hospital took care of our area’s most medically and financially needy patients. The Fresno County Board of Supervisors closed the county hospital, assuring us all that patients would receive equal or better care in what was then called Fresno Community Hospital, which was renamed CRMC. Now that promise, too, will be broken as the CRMC is bled of its staffing and medical resources. The place to receive that top-level medical care will be Clovis (where I received excellent, absolutely essential cardiac care and underwent surgery).
It’s all about profit for developers and others. I won’t name names. They’re in your great Sunday article.
Jim Steinberg, Fresno
CMC conflicts ‘smell to high heaven’
The very informative story in Sunday’s edition regarding the Community Hospital System’s use of funds for the Clovis Community Hospital’s vast campus expansion rocked my sensibilities. The reporting by Ms. Amaro is incredible. Her findings of the behavior/partnership between board chair Assemi and his partner, Ms. Dunn, smell to high heaven. Surely there must be an oversight entity that can take this well-done investigation to the next level and put in place some changes that will assure the Fresno site the funds for retrofitting or replacement of buildings required by the state. Since the board is responsible for diverting the funds, perhaps they as a group and/or individually could be compelled to refund to the Fresno site the diverted funds.
I am not even commenting on the conflict of interests that appear with the Assemi-Dunn partnership in the medical college built near the Clovis campus. The board should require the resignation of chair Assemi and discontinute the welcome of Ms. Dunn at the board meetings.
I congratulate your editor Mr. Kieta for shepherding Ms. Amaro through the lengthy investigative process which was necessary to produce this revealing and important story.
Wilda J. Frasher, Fresno
Judge wrong in Porterville fire case
Hugo Loza is clearly a biased judge. This stops justice from being done. The abject failure of this judge to uphold the law or common sense marks him as an elected official who needs to be recalled from the position he has disgraced.
This judge is a shining example of how broken our state has become and he needs to removed.
Bill Badertscher, Fresno
Controlled burns so simple
In 1968, Fred Biswell, a fire research scientist, approached the Forest Service and pointed out that it takes about 25 years to accumulate enough forest fuels naturally to cause a conflagration fire.
The Smokey Bear policy began in 1941. In other words, when Biswell approached the Forest Service there had been one”fire regeneration cycle” (my term) and the Forest Service rejected the advice. Biswell then went to the Park Service, who asked for a demonstration, which Biswell did; since then, the Park Service has been performing fuels reduction annually. Each fall when you drive through Yosemite you can see signs saying, “Do not report smoke, controlled burn.” The Giant Sequoias of Yosemite have been saved due to this policy.
Because of the Forest Service attitude, we have had fires like the Creek ... and the rest of the forest is a tinderbox ready to burn because three fire regeneration cycles have accumulated. When a fire does occur, the forest supervisors say it is a natural phenomenon and “the manual says.”
But it would be so simple to do as the Indians used to do, as did the sheepmen and cattlemen who learned form them. Such a simple thing to do.
Robert W. Evans, Coarsegold
State must take over PG&E
PG&E should be a public, nonprofit company. We can reduce costs, use more wind and solar and prevent wildfire fraud and profiteering by a state takeover of the power companies. The future of power is not large, centralized power stations and companies, but batteries and local production.
Ironic as it may seem, that future lies in a government take over of PG&E, which only stands in the way of the future.
Tony Radford, Fresno
