Letters: Homeless sweep | Others’ money | UC fixes | Letter misleads | Climate change aid
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for April 6, 2023
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San Jose should rethink
sweeping homeless
On Thursday the city of San Jose will be sweeping the unhoused folks living in RVs at Columbus Park, getting ready to build a dog park. If their RVs don’t run, the city will crush them leaving folks with no home and with nothing. Is this inhumane? I think so.
There aren’t any RV-safe parking sites. The city needs to rethink this and find a solution.
Gail Anne Osmer
San Jose
Spend your own money
before spending others’
Regarding M.R.and Sujatha Pamidi’s letter(“Reparations owed by slaveholders’ descendants,” Page A6, April 4) about slaveholders’ descendants paying reparations, it is always good to hear how eager some folks are to spend other peoples’ money.
No, I am not the descendant of a slaveholder, so I suppose that would exempt me from payment; however, I fail to see how demanding money from innocent people for the sins of their relatives, long dead, is the American way. Those who are so eager to throw money at the problem are more than welcome to empty their own bank accounts and seek out a slave descendant to enrich.
Five million dollars? Absolutely. If you have it, give it away. That includes Gov. Gavin Newsom, too. I welcome generosity from those so willing to give our tax dollars away, but eagerly donate your own money first, and set an example.
Jay Morrett
San Jose
UC must fix more
than transfer process
Re: “UC has a plan to make it easier for community college students to transfer” (Page A1, April 1).
Affordable higher education in California shouldn’t be exclusive. But the complexities of the transfer process to UCs leave out under-resourced students. Instead of renewing transfer pathways, California should look at the big picture, which also solves student housing shortages. California can learn from Penn State’s 2+2 Plan. “Penn State students can start a degree program at any one of 20 undergraduate campus locations across Pennsylvania.”
How about making financial support to low-income California students very simple? Look what Stanford does. “Undergraduate families with annual incomes below $75,000 will not be expected to pay tuition, room or board at Stanford.” UCs are ranked as the top universities, attracting many out-of-state undergraduate students. Many of them are from affluent families. How about matching the out-of-state tuition to rival Ivy League schools?
Instead of trying to fix one area, think outside the box. Allocate the resources more equally, then the system will move forward.
Cindy Tieu
San Jose
Letter’s focus on
income tax misleads
Fascinating letter from John Fulgado (“Rein in state’s high income tax rates,” Page A6, April 4) made all the more remarkable by the fact that only last week, a published analysis showed that California is not even in the top 20% percent of states with high tax “burdens.”
Strangely, Fulgado chooses to focus on “income tax rates” rather than “overall tax burden,” i.e. the proportion of their total income that Californians actually pay in all state taxes — income, property and sales taxes.
His argument against high rates of income tax is that they contribute to a lack of investment, and therefore to high unemployment. There is no evidence that California’s unemployment rate is significantly higher than the national average. One report shows California ranking 43rd, among the 50 states, in unemployment.
It could be that Fulgado has an undeclared political axe to grind.
Howard Thomas
Los Gatos
Congress must do better
on climate change aid
Re: “Climate change is a crisis of morality” (Page A6, March 30).
In his letter responding to the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Doug Peterson points out: “The world’s poorest nations produce a small fraction of mankind’s excessive greenhouse gases, but they are suffering the greatest amount of harm from the resulting climate atrocity.”
International climate finance is a way for us to do what is morally right and strategically astute. The Biden administration has asked Congress for approximately $5 billion in financing to help climate-impacted developing countries strengthen their resilience to climate impacts and expand their use of renewable energy.
Funding greater use of renewable energy will reduce future greenhouse emissions that fuel climate disasters worldwide. Such funding will also boost U.S. green-energy companies’ sales.
Biden’s previous request for $5 billion in such funding was reduced to $1 billion. Let’s encourage Congress to do better this time.
William Kirkpatrick
San Jose