Letters: Recall support | Solar disincentivized | Remake filibuster | Transformational policy | Seeds of recall | Speaking to ‘unwoke’
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Recall support grows
as state deteriorates
The front-page article “Poll: Push to recall Newsom growing” (July 24) is not surprising.
Seemingly, California’s uber liberals, who dominate the Bay Area, are starting to see the rampant crime, out-of-control illegal immigration, worsening homelessness, defund-the-police movements, sanctuary city policies, senseless health restrictions and loss of enforcement of the rule of law are impacting their lifestyle and safety. One can only ignore, pretend and look the other way for so long. Eventually, people react to the bad policies of a state’s government that continue to be poorly managed.
It looks to me, the common sense perspective of candidate Larry Elder would be refreshing, and a giant step forward for all people of California.
Chris Kniel
Orinda
PG&E’s money grab
disincentivizes solar
Like Martin Wilmington of Hayward (“New solar rules will make rates more fair,” Page A6, July 23), many readers don’t understand residential solar power or PG&E’s money grab from clean energy producers.
Nobody gave us free solar panels. Our family spent $14,000 on rooftop solar including hookups. We generate all our own electricity at zero carbon emissions. PG&E bills us monthly hookup, infrastructure and solar producer fees, buys the surplus at wholesale and resells our electricity at retail rates to its customers — including us when we are underproducing. After fees and markups, we save a few hundred bucks per year to help pay off our investment, decades down the road.
Maybe the consumers who generate no electricity, but use our solar panels plus PG&E’s dirty sources, should send our family a check to pay for use of our rooftop generator — plus a nice carbon-offset fee. Solar power isn’t pushing up rates — PG&E’s fires are.
Incentivize solar, don’t penalize it.
Chris Conrad
El Sobrante
Change filibuster
to protect civil rights
Neither the GOP nor the filibuster can be allowed to stand in the way of the For The People Act or the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. President Obama called the filibuster a relic of “Jim Crow” because it has been used to block civil rights bills, including 200 anti-lynching bills.
Senators Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema must be persuaded to reform or revoke the filibuster so these crucial bills can pass. Moreover, if these bills do not pass, important issues including civil rights, health care, racial justice and climate change will also fall by the wayside.
It is the duty and obligation of our senators to keep fighting until these bills are passed. Our voting rights and our democracy are at stake.
I am doing all I can as an American and as an activist to fight for our democracy and I expect my senators to do the same.
Evanne Jordan
Concord
Child Tax Credit will
transform families
On July 15th, nearly all working families in our district and across our nation automatically received monthly Child Tax Credit Payments of up to $300 per child. This was made possible by the American Rescue Plan, which I voted to pass earlier this year.
This is a transformational moment. Hardworking families across our district will on average receive a tax cut of $2,700 that can be used for items such as groceries, rent payments, childcare needs and educational costs. This historic tax break will cut child poverty in half and lift 8,900 children in our district out of poverty. If people are having trouble accessing this tax credit, please contact my office for assistance.
Rep. Mike Thompson
St. Helena
Hanson’s half-truths
play to the unwoke
Victor Davis Hanson lays out a sweeping and highly biased list of half-truths and skewed generalities on the last 50 years of U.S. politics in the article “What happened to party of Truman and Kennedy?” (Page A7, July 23).
He uses the phrase “a woke Neo-Maoist movement” to let the reader know that he will be comparing the Democratic platform to Mao’s ideology. Anyone with the slightest grasp of current and past events should be offended at such an absurd comparison to a despot who was responsible for the greatest famine in world history. This is a sophomoric attempt at fooling those who are easily fooled — the Trump base comes to mind.
Connecting “woke” to Mao is a sadly warped perspective. The opposite of “woke” is asleep. When you sleep your eyes are closed, closed to history and current realities. Hanson’s story of those evil Democrats is a disease perpetrated by the non-woke, i.e., those with eyes and minds closed.
Scott Duncan
Santa Clara
Lack of common sense
isn’t Facebook’s fault
On July 22, the East Bay Times printed an editorial entitled, “Facebook deserves its public scolding from the president” (Page A6). No, it does not.
The editorial states that Facebook should be accountable for “its ongoing failure to remove misinformation and disinformation from its platform.” Facebook gets criticized if it flags or otherwise “polices” speech, and it is also blamed if it doesn’t. Critics blame Facebook for Russian attempts to influence the 2016 election by spreading misinformation on Facebook. Maybe the problem isn’t so much the Russians as it is Americans making voting decisions based on Facebook posts. Similarly, nobody should be relying on Facebook for scientific information about vaccines (or anything else).
Facebook is not responsible for a lack of education, common sense or critical thinking. There are reports estimating 50% of Americans get their news from Facebook. That is appalling. And that is not Mark Zuckerberg’s fault.
Paul Schmidt
Los Gatos