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Better way to limit
S.J. water use
Thank you for your article on San Jose’s new water usage limits (“San Jose Water adopts drought restrictions,” Page A1, Nov. 19). For San Jose to take the lead in this makes me proud to live here.
That said, I wish they’d establish maximum usage amounts instead of percentage reduction targets. The latter allows profligate users to continue doing so, just at slightly lower levels. This hurts all of us. It’s time for excessive users to wake up and smell their dead lawns.
Craig Dunkerley
San Jose
‘Neighborhood voices’
catalyst to housing crisis
Dev Davis’ rant against SB 9 (“SB 9 takes away California’s neighborhood voices,” Page A8, Nov. 12) is loaded with factual errors and political cliches chosen for emotional impact.
“Sacramento politicians know better than you do.” We, the people, chose those politicians to govern all of us. “Developers” just want to profit. Developers build our housing; if they don’t make a profit, they go out of business. “Everyone agrees we need more housing,” but “everyone” agrees we should build it somewhere else. “New projects … will stress storm water, power lines, schools.” Really? Denser housing does not increase storm water; power lines are upgraded by utilities as needed; schools face declining enrollment and many are closing as a result. “Greenhouse gases could increase from more driving.” No, “more driving” happens when people commute from Tracy or Morgan Hill or Vacaville because they can’t afford a place closer to work.
“Neighborhood voices” have created California’s housing crisis. Letting these voices prevail will perpetuate it.
Mark Lawrence
Palo Alto
Inflation analysis
slanted, misleading
Re. “Bay Area inflation jumps by highest rate in years,” Nov. 10:
The quoted analyst promotes a slanted argument, attributing the pandemic stimulus and future government spending (the infrastructure bill) to current inflation while prognosticating higher future inflation, which non-partisan economists contradict, as supply chains recover from Trump’s catastrophic pandemic disaster and as Biden’s team takes effective action.
Trump’s utter failure to contain the pandemic made it worse and caused the economic disruption we see.
When day traders pontificate that the pandemic stimulus “overstimulated the economy,” they ignore people desperate for relief as the economy tanked. Biden helped average people survive, and rightly so.
The misleading arguments disregard previous Trump tax cuts, overwhelmingly benefiting the rich, and hugely driving up the deficit and overstimulating the economy far more.
Economic evidence shows Biden is blameless for inflation, which came from an economy driven haywire under Trump, as our worst pandemic raged under his malpractice.
Evidence indicates the infrastructure bill will greatly rejuvenate the economy.
Carl Tuttle
Mountain View
Moderate voices will
improve our discourse
Thank you Mercury News for the recent, and noticeable, shift toward more moderate and respectful voices in your Opinion section.
In particular, selecting David Brooks for publication on two recent Sundays is a most welcome change. Brooks’ constructive criticism of the Democrats, as well as his observation that imagination helps us “experience other viewpoints” (“Importance of imagination cannot be underestimated,” Page A19, Nov. 14), is helpful and desperately needed advice for improving the politics and public discourse in this country.
Please keep it up.
Michael Rovero
San Jose
Apply budget surplus
to state child care crisis
As the state of California has a budget surplus, families in California are struggling to find child care.
Last year 8,500 child care sites closed in California. Centers that stayed open reduced capacity. Now it’s very difficult to get space in a center. If you’re lucky enough to get a spot, you better have backup care because any sniffle and kids are sent home.
Women are more likely to be the low-earners and thus stay home as caregivers — even when they are skilled, compounding the pay gap.
We need to increase the number of daycares: streamline the permitting process, have a liaison for applicants, offer grants and interest-free loans, and remove fees for licensing to clear obstacles.
The surplus can be spent on schools. Tell Newsom to dedicate money to early childhood education programs.
Tracy Campbell
Santa Cruz
Stop portraying GOP
as a normal party
I am distraught by media reports that treat the Republican Party as if it were a normal political party.
The GOP is a toxic, anti-democracy, nihilistic, corrupt, authoritarian party that promotes violence. No more proof is needed than the fact that the GOP is the first American political party to attempt a coup d’état to overturn a presidential election they lost. This alone should cause the GOP to be treated as illegitimate.
I can’t fathom the thought of the incalculable damage the GOP will cause if it takes control of the House or Senate. By maintaining the fiction that the GOP is a regular political party, the news media are helping to realize that nightmare scenario.
The media can help save our country by telling the unvarnished truth about the Republican Party.
Jose Martinez
Sunnyvale
Source: www.mercurynews.com