Letters: Jail time deserved | Patient safety | Housing threat | Federal Reserve | Debt ceiling | Careless comments
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Holmes deserves jailfor perpetrating fraud
Re: “Why venture capitalist believes Holmes should be freed” (Page A6, March 10).
Of course Tim Draper thinks Elizabeth Holmes should be free. He didn’t have his life savings wiped out by the fraud she committed.
“Vision?” Innumerable people have vision, but they do not intentionally steal from everyone they can, already knowing that their “vision” is not remotely a reality. She went out of her way to defraud others and deserves every minute of jail time that she is so desperate to avoid.
If Draper believes she is so innocent, perhaps he will volunteer to serve her sentence.
R CoteCastro Valley
Holmes punishment justdue to patient safety
Re: “Why venture capitalist believes Holmes should be freed” (Page A6, March 10).
Tim Draper’s “reality distortion field” excuse for Elizabeth Holmes could have caused mistakes in diagnosis and possible death among patients.
I spent one-third of my working life in hospitals and private clinical laboratories. We practiced rigorous quality control procedures every time we ran a test on patient samples. We ran standard controls to make sure the result reported to the physician was accurate. We understood the ramifications of inaccurate results to our patients.
Everyone, including entrepreneurs, are responsible for the safety and efficacy of their products. If they can’t be, then they better have the staff, lawyers and investors around them that make sure this never happens again.
My objection to the premise of this commentary is about patient safety. It doesn’t even start to address the fraud perpetrated on the investors, employees and even the venture capitalists.
Craig KelsoPleasanton
Bill increases threatto historic districts
Re: “Housing still lags in spite of laws” (Page A1, March 5).
Sen. Scott Wiener’s bill SB 423, which extends the permit streamlining provisions of his 2017 legislation for housing, would continue to sabotage historic districts and public safety concerns.
His legislation allowed administrative approval of 137 condos in the center of the nationally registered historic district at the former Benicia Arsenal, overwhelming the district’s ten historic structures.
This district has preserved the headquarters of the U.S. Army’s primary supply base that helped secure California statehood and the revenue from the 1849 Gold Rush and supported the Civil War and subsequent wars. A place to educate us on the nation’s important history, the good and the bad, will be lost.
The condos will also be surrounded by heavy industry, exposing residents to a hazardous area where a port fire occurred last April.
Steven GoetzBenicia
Federal Reserve can’tcontrol global inflation
The Federal Reserve seems attached to an obsolete paradigm that U.S. policy alone (i.e. raising interest rates) can control global inflation.
In an economically interconnected and interdependent world, there is a limit to the impact of Federal Reserve actions. For example, a COVID spike and the subsequent closure of a factory in China that produces 50% of the contrast dye for MRIs resulted in a global shortage which caused an inflationary price spike.
Unless the reasons for inflation are examined and addressed the Fed is just flailing.
Barry GardinHayward
Rep. Jackson carelesswith cancer comments
Re: “In politics it’s all about nastiness, party loyalty” (Page A7, March 9).
In his op-ed, Mr. Barabak quoted Texas Rep. Ronny Jackson — “Biden is the cancer. He’s what needs to be removed, not the lesion they found.”
If Ronny Jackson has had anyone near and dear to him with cancer, he wouldn’t be so careless with his words.
Clara DiBonaHayward