Letters: Good example | State credibility | Perpetuating Big Lie | Childish rants | Trump set stage | Court politics | Party rancor
East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for Jan. 30, 2022
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Oakland should follow
San Jose on gun control
The news I spotted on the front page Jan. 27, “San Jose OKs gun control mandate,” gave me immense pleasure to read all the way to the end.
Congratulations to the mayor and City Council for passing this new ordinance after nearly two years of hiccups from both sides.
If San Jose can do this for families who lost their loved ones then other cities could follow to help prevent mass shootings by firearms in their communities.
Allow me to shift gears and speak directly to the popular mayor of Oakland: It is the right time for you and the Oakland City Council to follow in the footsteps of San Jose leadership.
At this juncture, the city of Oakland can’t afford more body bags. Enough is enough.
Zafar Yousufzai
Fremont
State needs street cred
for health care support
We can all agree to support Assemblyman Ash Kalra’s single-payer health system once California establishes some street cred.
For example, implementing high-speed rail as originally touted to taxpayers (Sacramento to San Diego at sustained speeds of 200 mph) and within the latest approved budget; and ensuring that all Californians, particularly all its elected officials, shall be subjected to the same health plan they try to inflict on ordinary citizens.
Larry Yelowitz
Sunnyvale
Media is keeping
the big lie alive
From Day One of President Biden’s administration onward, the news media have filled us with speculation about who’s going to run in 2024. Why aren’t the media focused on what this duly-elected administration is doing, instead of immediately looking to the next election, as if it were nothing more than a popularity contest?
Obviously, the extreme right-wing media wants to promote Donald Trump’s lie that he didn’t lose the 2020 election. But while normal news media encase it in disclaiming words like “untrue assertion,” they continue to repeat that lie.
Our trusted news sources are keeping Trump’s agenda alive in the minds of its audience, becoming the unwitting tool of Trumpist propaganda. We don’t need to speculate about who’ll run in 2024 until 2023, but we do need to know what the administration we elected in 2020 is trying to do now, and who is obstructing its agenda.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont
Take columns’ childish
rants for what they are
I have read many letters from East Bay Times readers lamenting the contrarian opinion pieces offered by Victor Davis Hanson or Marc Thiessen.
Long ago, I found solace in reminding myself that they are simply following the narcissist credo so popularized by their false idol. Specifically, these cultists rely on projection, the act of accusing others of what they are doing or planning to do. Denial is paramount in this process, as it allows them to escape responsibility for anything unpleasant or negative. Misdirection and blame-shifting have become the M.O. of the neo-GOP.
I have discovered that if I keep their defense mechanisms in mind when listening to tirades or reading articles written by alt-right delusionists, I can smile and dismiss their actions for the child-like behaviors they are.
Jon James
Pleasanton
Trump capitulation set
up Putin aggression
While Marc A. Thiessen’s columns are so regularly misguided they are unworthy of comment, his accusation that President Biden can’t stand up to Russian President Putin (“President Biden showing he can’t stand up to Putin,” Page A7, Jan. 27) is so laughable it must be refuted.
Nothing more needs to be said other than Thiessen is an acolyte for Donald Trump who was, and is, a sycophant to Vladimir Putin. If Trump had stood up to Putin, and not savaged the government of Ukraine, we would not be in the mess we are in now. If Trump had not undermined our relationships with Germany and NATO, the current crisis would not be so dire.
Jim Hopkins
Oakland
Court retirement timing
sure looks political
Re. “Justice Breyer to retire from Supreme Court,” Page A1, Jan. 27:
It is reported that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer “bristled” at the accusation that judges act politically. And Chief Justice John Roberts has said in the past, “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
One wonder why then do liberal judges retire during Democratic presidencies and conservative judges during Republican presidencies. It isn’t politics … wink, wink.
Kathryn Tomaino
Los Altos
Scourge of party
rancor ID’d long ago
Leonard Pitts Jr. tries to make a very old problem sound new in his op-ed “No surprise: GOP has zero interest in bipartisanship.” (Page A13, Jan. 23).
In his farewell address, President Washington wrote that the spirit of a political party “serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riots and insurrection.”
He went on the write that political parties “are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very agencies which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
Sounds like a well-known, 223-year-old problem to me.
Robert Varesio
Sunnyvale