Letters: Stadium threat | Punishing the poor | Stand together | Drop the politics | Unsupported claims | Rants unchanged

East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for Jan. 25, 2022

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PG&E making strides
to keep state safe

Your January 15 editorial calling for a state takeover of PG&E begins with this challenge: “Raise your hand if you believe PG&E will meet the safety standards established as part of the deal for the utility company’s emergence from bankruptcy.”

My hand is up — along with my 40,000 PG&E coworkers and contract partners who are dedicated to ending catastrophic wildfires.

This is a new PG&E, with new leadership and a new way of doing business. We are taking bold actions to reduce risk across every part of our system, every day.

Those efforts are working. While there’s more to do, I am confident the changes we’ve made during my first year as CEO are making California safer.

Here’s my challenge: I invite your editorial board to visit our wildfire command center for a firsthand look at everything we’re doing to meet our safety commitments — then share that with your readers.

Patti Poppe
CEO, PG&E Corporation

 

Ending child tax credit
punishing poor families

Why is it that conservatives seem to be more concerned about rich people in the United States being allowed to hoard money than they are about poor families trying to feed their children?

Allowing the expanded child tax credit to die is just wrong in the richest country on earth. If you want to expand the economy, allowing poor families to spend money on food, clothing and extras for their children puts money into local economies and helps everybody. Rich people storing money in tax-exempt havens and overpriced stocks does not move economies.

I believe we should use our wealth to help poor families feed, clothe and educate their children. That is how you make a great and prosperous country.

Bill Nicholson
Martinez

All faiths must stand
against anti-Semitism

The Interfaith Council of Contra Costa is saddened by the rising climate of anti-Jewish animus both domestically and around the world. The recent attack on a synagogue in Texas (“All hostages out and safe at Texas synagogue, governor says,” Jan. 15) is the most recent manifestation of this troubling trend, which we have also observed locally.

No one should be afraid of entering their own community of faith. The Interfaith Council decries another armed struggle inside a house of faith. We stand again in solidarity with our Jewish brothers and sisters and condemn in the strongest terms threats and acts of violence directed toward the Jewish community domestically and abroad.

We recognize that anti-Semitism is the base theology for White nationalism and Christian nationalism. We each need to speak up for better mental health care, crisis services and more engagement with those at risk of ideological violence. It’s our job as people of faith.

Rev. Will McGarvey
Executive director of the Interfaith Council of Contra Costa County
Pleasant Hill

Facts don’t bear out
voter restriction claims

In his editorial entitled “In a season of no hope, you can’t help but grow weary” (Page A7, Jan. 20), Leonard Pitts wrote that he has grown weary of the right making laws that make voting more difficult for people of color. He’s weary. Period. He felt no need to provide specific examples.

A few specifics: The right-leaning state of Georgia provides more days of early voting and offers more mail ballots to its voters than the left-leaning states of New York and Delaware. (Providing more days of early voting, and more mail ballots makes it less difficult for people of color to vote.)

Daniel Mauthe
Livermore

Column’s rants are only
things that don’t change

There is a new drinking game where a reader takes a shot every time Victor Davis Hanson uses the word “woke.” It is sure to leave the sturdiest of constitutions with a buzz.

His recent column (“Biden is leading U.S. toward a complete systems collapse,” Page A7, Jan. 21) blames the woke for attacking hallowed U.S. institutions such as the filibuster and 50-state union, venerable solely due to their longevity. One wonders if earlier incarnations of Hanson bemoaned the loss of male-only voting, slavery, the decline of the horse-and-buggy and the addition of Vermont as the 14th state.

Surely there are conservative writers who are capable of acknowledging progress, as opposed to Hanson’s clear belief that the reign of Augustus was the peak of civilization.

Lou Ascatigno
Concord