Mailbag: Watch out for the street sweeper change

Having lived as a renter in Corona del Mar for six years, I have been accustomed to waiting for the Tuesday, Wednesday street sweeper to pass by and then move my car to the opposite side of Fourth Avenue.

This is what happened on Wednesday, June 29.

I, in fact, waved to the sweeper driver. I came out an hour later to find a ticket on my car for the heinous crime of hindering the sweeper’s duties. The tracks and the water from the sweeper were beneath my car.

Remember that I, and many others, have followed this pattern for five years at the least, without ever getting a ticket. Several other vehicles followed suit and were ticketed in the same manner.

I tried to find whoever wrote the ticket to ask why. No luck.

Needless to say, parking in CdM is challenging, at best. The concept of ticketing vehicles after the sweeper has gone by means that we can no longer take advantage of the remaining two hours of vacant parking spaces until after 12:30. I went to the Police Department and inquired as to the reasonableness of such behavior.

“Well, it is the law” is what I got. I understand the letter of the law, but what about the spirit of the law?

I went to City Hall. No one would even discuss the matter. They gave me a form to fill out.

I have gotten no response.

I think it is important to warn the citizens of Newport Beach that if this is a new policy, be prepared to pay fines of $52 and vent your resulting anger. My heart goes out to those folks on Balboa Island.

Richard Rice

Corona del Mar

A liberal view on ‘exceptionalism’

Regarding Chriss Street’s rambling, disjointed, revisionist propaganda piece that the Daily Pilot chose to showcase, I am in total agreement that “American Exceptionalism” will prevail (Community Commentary, July 4).

It will prevail, in spite of the 30-year onslaught against the middle class by charlatans who use the flag and the Bible as props, while plundering our treasury, wantonly shedding the blood of our youth, polluting our air and water, and exporting jobs overseas.

It will prevail, in spite of a Supreme Court bought and paid for by corporations, foreign and domestic. Totalitarian rule, whether from the left or the right, cannot, and will not, last forever.

Did our teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crash the stock market, wipe out half of our 401(k)s, take trillions in taxpayer-funded bailouts, spill oil in the Gulf of Mexico, give themselves billions in bonuses and pay no taxes?

They did, if you get your news exclusively from the Republican propaganda machine known as Fox News. They did, if you were to listen to the elected council members of Costa Mesa and Newport Beach. They did, if you are following the shenanigans in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Florida and on the Supreme Court.

American Exceptionalism is under attack by 2% of Americans who will not be satisfied until everyone else is forced to live on subsistence wages with no benefits. The fight has just started to restore the American Dream and American Exceptionalism will prevail.

Two percent of Americans, however rich and however powerful, will not forever subjugate the other 98%.

Jamshed Dastur

Balboa Island