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Voter IDs would secure
elections from doubters
So what’s really wrong with requesting voter identification. One wonders if people know most all European countries require voter IDs.
The more secure voting is the more confidence people will have in it.
And please do not say it’s too hard to get an ID card as most 18-year-olds and older hold licenses in their state of residence. Everyone keeps pointing to Europe as a model for social programs. So emulate them for voter ID also.
Let’s not let Donald Trump or others have the ability to even question the integrity of the vote.
Steve Benkly
Clayton
Biden spending bill
will punish economy
Economist Paul Krugman suggests that more government entitlement spending will pay for itself (“Biden’s Build Back Better will create a better future,” Page A7, Dec. 15). He fails to note that trillions more in spending would add to inflation that’s already gone up 9.6% for wholesale prices in the past year and reduced people’s real incomes. The real cost of the bill is closer to $5 trillion when gimmicks such as saying new entitlement programs would expire in a year are removed. When was the last time an entitlement program was canceled?
Our government already spends 51% of its budget on welfare and health. If we want to add entitlement programs we should pay for them by reducing other wasteful government spending. One wonders when Americans will learn that what the government giveth it taketh away with inflation.
Ed Kahl
Woodside
Column avoids hard
truths about the right
Re. “Why is left now worried about end of democracy?” Page A7, Dec. 17:
Why Victor Davis Hanson is allowed to spew his MAGA lies across your pages is inexplicable. There is no organized left in the United States, the Democrats are no longer a labor party.
His tropes about immigration, a nonissue as virtually all immigrants give more to the economy than take from it, ignore the collapse of the middle class and the for-profit health care system, functions of absolutely irresponsible and cool, complete corporate control of the American economy. What is it these people are afraid of? They would rather destroy the entire country than share the bounties of the world’s richest nation with all of its citizens.
He completely avoids the very real attempt by Trump and his followers to utterly subvert the electoral process, ludicrously asserting that the centrist Biden administration is establishing a dictatorship, rather than simply governing.
Matt Piucci
Oakland
Open mind for opposing
views, not columns’ lies
I had begun to wonder if my left-leaning views were making me overly prejudiced against columnists Victor Davis Hanson and Marc Thiessen, but I see several others share my opinion.
I gave up trying to read Thiessen’s inaccurate and inflammatory drivel a while ago, and I don’t think Hanson could write at all if he couldn’t use the term “woke.” I picture him as Gollum, sitting in his cave making up stories and croaking “Woke. Woke.”
I do want to read information and opinions that don’t necessarily jibe with what I already know. That’s what it means to be liberal – open-minded. But there’s no room in my mind for manufactured hate and opinionated lies that only serve to spread anger and ignorance. If you insist on printing these columnists, please put them under “Letters to the Editor.” Most of your readers who write are more accurate, informed and erudite.
Sydney Stull
Clayton
Global distribution
of vaccines critical
It should not be a surprise that omicron has come to us from South Africa. The only defense humanity has is to vaccinate as many, as quickly as we can. Both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have been with us for a year, yet they have not made their way to the Third World in the numbers necessary to slow the evolution of the virus.
This is where the private sector profit model fails humanity. The drug companies are due a profit based upon their research, but not an unlimited one. The government should contract for research, share that tech with the world and order mass production to be given away ASAP. Expensive as that may be, it’s much less costly than shutdowns, or even what is now spent on weapons or war.
Russ Button
Alameda
Source: www.mercurynews.com