Letters: Lower tuition | Biden delivers | Congress has key | Column quality | Quality lacking | No precedent

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College experience
falls short of tuition

College tuition is far too expensive for the experience that students are receiving during pandemic times.

The “college experience” was something my parents always encouraged my sister and I to go through. I started my freshman year in pre-COVID times, and during that period I felt like I was getting the “college experience” that my parents wanted for me. There was an energy on campus, and it felt like there was always something going on. I felt like I had been introduced into a whole new world, and I really enjoyed it.

Unfortunately, when COVID hit everything was pushed online, and the experience completely changed. Classes turned into Zoom lectures, and the buzz on campus was replaced with an empty campus.

The tuition students are paying does not match the “experience” that they’re getting, and we must fight to lower the prices.

Mason Tsang
Castro Valley

Trump talked but
Biden delivers on oil

A letter writer claims (“Return to Trump policies would lower inflation,” Letters to the Editor, Page A6, March 15) that Donald Trump’s pro-oil policies would’ve kept us out of the current energy crisis if only they hadn’t been reversed.

This ignores the fact that the price of oil is set on a global market, and what happens in the United States has a limited impact. Even with world prices at stratospheric levels, U.S. frackers are holding back. Nor would the letter’s two examples make a difference. When the ANWR (Arctic refuge) leases went on sale in January 2021, no major oil companies made a bid. And the Keystone XL Pipeline would’ve added some new capacity, but much of its oil would have been from U.S. sources, not new imports. And get this: Joe Biden’s new drilling permits are outpacing Trump’s.

Trump was all about headlines and no follow-through. Biden delivers.

Greg Linden
Oakland

Congress can tank
Russia’s oil economy

The U.S. Congress should pass the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act, HR 2307, because it would ultimately end Vladimir Putin’s primary source of income and Russia’s fossil fuel-based economy.

The bill would place a gradually increasing “carbon tax” on fossil fuel at the mine, well or port of entry and then return the revenue collected to every legal adult resident and child in equal monthly payments.

The carbon tax would be added to the price of fossil fuel and that tax would be offset by the dividend payments.

The gradually increasing carbon tax and dividend payments would provide an incentive for Americans to switch to carbon-free energy and electric vehicles. Individuals who conserve and use less fossil fuel would have extra income from the carbon dividend. Spending the dividend payments would stimulate economic growth.

Lower emissions would most importantly lower global temperatures and begin to restore our delicately balanced, life-sustaining environment.

Mark Altgelt
Vallejo

Columns fall short
on facts, quality

I hope Marc A. Thiessen is paying you a lot of money for printing his op-eds, such as “President Biden’s war on fossil fuels strengthened Putin,” (Page A13, Feb. 27) which are nothing but innuendo and misinformation.

If the East Bay Times wants to present our communities with opposing viewpoints why not choose a columnist with integrity – someone who uses fact-based information and statements? Thiessen relies solely on conservative opinion, not the truth. I believe this causes you to have a quality control problem.

Janet Clark
Pleasant Hill

Ukraine letter is wrong
on NATO, equivalencies

Re. “Laying all Ukraine blame on Russia too simple,” Letters to the Editor, Page A6, March 4:

What is too simplistic to be factual is Robert Sinuhe’s understanding of current events. Russia is not “surrounded” by NATO, or any other hostile alliance.

The situations involving Syria and Iraq are both entirely different from today’s war. Any attempt to equate U.S. action then with Russia now fails miserably. The writer joins RT and other Russian apologists rationalizing the anguish caused solely by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

By printing Sinuhe’s letter, however, the paper did ensure that it would follow the instruction he provided in his first sentence. (“The problem with this paper is that it prints opinions of the uninformed.”)

R. Cote
Castro Valley

Lack of precedent
keeping justice at bay

Why is it so hard to set precedent? Because there is no precedent , it seems we are left to watch Donald Trump continue to flout the law.

We watch in horror as the delusional former president consistently spits in the eye of the Department of Justice and laughs as Attorney General Merrick Garland tinkers searching for a precedent. The same thing is in play with Trump’s congressional lackeys. One wonders how many of them could be indicted right now were it not for the dreaded precedent.

None of these characters are above the law, but because Justice has never hauled them in before it’s assumed it can’t be done. As my dear deceased mother used to say when I was faced with a difficult task, “You’ll never know if you don’t try.”

J.D. Blair
Walnut Creek