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Preventing crime
without more police
I totally agree with Michael Moore’s letter to the editor regarding adding more police officers to try to prevent the smash and grab robberies that have occurred on Walnut Creek (“Adding officers won’t stop group robberies,” Page A6, Dec. 8).
Limiting access to stores is a beginning. What is needed is more surveillance of social websites where the planning begins, stiffer fines and jail time for the perpetrators, and more fines and jail time for the fences where the merchandise is sold.
There have to be consequences for these crimes or they will continue.
Ann Oliver
Walnut Creek
Loss of Roe would
return secrecy, danger
I appreciate David Brook’s opinion regarding abortion (“Abortion: Voice of the ambivalent majority,” Page A17, Dec. 5). However, being 80 and importantly a woman, I have had experience on both sides of Roe.
Prior laws victimized women through threats, secrecy and shame. We could sneak out of the United States or chance a back-alley abortion. Poor women had fewer options. Foreign abortions were expensive. Secrecy was an absolute if you didn’t want to be charged with murder and put anyone who helped you at risk. Even going through with the birth put a woman and then a baby at risk. Any choice, if not kept secret, was shameful and could cost you a career.
After Roe, women had rights to their bodies that had been taken by old, ignorant, White men. Women were no longer victims of their own legal system. If Roe fails, women will again become victims. Those who have achieved legal recognition will be challenged to retreat into secrecy.
Nancy Thornton
Concord
Columnist’s cause seems
to be to divide nation
I realize that, in fairness, a newspaper should publish both sides of a story and opinion, but Marc Thiessen is not the answer.
Most of his opinions are so far off the mark that they become satire. His encouragement of the “Let’s Go Brandon” chant as a valid replacement of a profane insult of President Biden as “perfectly harmless and humorous” (“Three cheers for ‘Let’s Go Brandon,’” Page A19, Nov. 28) simply foments Donald Trump’s base and continues to keep the divide in America as wide as possible. When the left was saying “Trump is not my president” four years ago, the right was telling everyone to get over it. Now the right doesn’t accept the loss of last November and is keeping the lie alive. This is dangerous for all Americans.
I hope the editorial board will realize that Theissen is not the “opposite” opinion but is keeping the divide wide open. Please find a different — and valid — opinion writer.
Stacie Thomas
Fremont
Vital to keep memory
of Pearl Harbor alive
Re: “Vivid memories of a dark day in history,” Page A1, Dec. 7:
Thank you for sharing Warren Upton’s harrowing account of the attack on Pearl Harbor 80 years ago.
As we hit this important milestone, the memory — and awareness — of that brazen attack on America has continued to fade. And as a 15-year-old boy, I know that firsthand.
But by keeping stories of Pearl Harbor alive, we can prevent their loss to history, and instead impart them to my generation and the next. This article represented one great step in that direction.
Shun Graves
Berkeley
Conservatives trade
only in opposition
Conservatives oppose President Biden’s social safety net and climate bill. Of course they do.
Conservatives opposed: The American Revolution, public and compulsory education, abolishing slavery, voting rights for the poor, Blacks, Native Americans and women, equal rights for racial minorities and gay people, anti-trust laws, child labor laws, the 40-hour workweek, the eight-hour workday, labor rights, worker safety laws, national parks, the Endangered Species Act, environmental protection laws, welfare laws, workers compensation, Social Security, Medicare, the Affordable Care Act, unemployment insurance, ending Prohibition, the Interstate Highway System, desegregation, inter-racial and same-sex marriage, banking and speculation regulations, and emergency loans to U.S. automakers during the 2008 Recession.
All these measures took effect. President Biden’s will eventually as well.
Thomas Sponsler
Moraga
Without solution, column
only adds to the problem
Regarding “The woke got what they wanted — so now what?” (Page A7, Dec. 10), Victor Davis Hansen evidently believes that any American who recognizes and seeks solutions to the problems this country faces is “woke” and thus un-American.
His solution to these problems is to either build more prisons, give more money to the rich, pretend the problem doesn’t exist, or, in typical conservative fashion, do nothing.
As Ronald Reagan said in 1988, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Mr. Hansen is evidently part of the problem.
Robert Magginetti
Hayward
Joy rides to space
belie trouble on Earth
I read the article about several rich and famous people taking a space joy ride for a few minutes above our atmosphere (“Astronaut’s daughter, Strahan set for Blue Origin adventure,” Page A2, Dec. 11). I also saw a program about how really smart engineers and scientists are working on a humongous, new telescope to observe if there are other habitable planets in space.
Both efforts made me mad then sad that we are spending billions of dollars and a lot of brainpower to see the Earth from afar or find a new habitable planet. Why? Because we are destroying our planet day by day and using money for thrill rides in space and to look for another planet we can ruin.
There is plenty to fix here on Earth and plenty of problems for brilliant people to solve. We’ve got our priorities messed up.
Suzanne Barba
Oakland
Source: www.mercurynews.com