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Public, media should
beware of testing scams
With Omicron spreading like wildfire, the demand for COVID testing is sky-high, and the conditions are ripe for scams.
There are so many pop-up testing sites, how can you tell which are legitimate? After all, it’s a great way to collect your personal information and even possibly bilk your insurance for outrageous testing costs. Worst of all is wondering if these sites really test or if they simply flip a coin to get your results.
It would be a public service if someone would blow the whistle on these sites.
Karen Sundback
Palo Alto
District overreaches
with housing plan
Re. “Better as homes or a garden?” Page A1, Jan. 1:
The voters of San Mateo County Jefferson Unified School District narrowly approved school bond Measure J (June 2018) for 80 teacher housing units to help retain teachers in-district with subsidized rent. Great idea.
Now we have come to find out the district has completed 120 units but is now trying to get approval to build an additional 1,200 market-rate units to help pay salaries “for everyone in the district.”
This is a complete bait and switch in the promotion of this bond, and, as a taxpayer, I am greatly concerned with this district’s misinformation and trust with the voters. Not only are they bullying the community members that they will bulldoze the one and only community-run garden on the development site in Daly City, but they also are misleading the community as a whole. Voters beware.
Nancy Lacsamana
Brisbane
Housing policy could
drive climate policy
California is at a pivotal moment to build climate resilience. One way this can be achieved is by modernizing local policies that create more housing. In other words, housing policy is climate policy. With every city in the Bay Area updating the state-mandated housing elements of their General Plans by 2022, the timing is perfect.
We need to build more affordable, climate-smart housing in existing communities that center people most impacted by the climate and housing crises — low-income communities and communities of color. Elected leaders, institutions, communities and ourselves each play a critical part in calling for immediate and effective action to mitigate climate change and increase community resilience. And so I call upon these various groups to use innovative tools like Greenbelt Alliance’s Resilience Playbook to guide processes like the Housing Element update to build climate resilience now.
Jessica Brennan
San Francisco
Republican Party focused
on power, not democracy
Since Hitler replaced Germany’s democracy with his fascist Third Reich in 1933, American political pundits have been proclaiming “It can’t happen here.” They were wrong. It is “happening here” — right now. A sitting president foments an insurrectionist attack on Congress by an armed mob made up of White supremacists, neo-Nazis and other thugs — and his Republican sycophants pretend that nothing happened.
Today, the Republican Party’s only agenda is telling Big Lies to their gullible followers, cheating Americans of their right to vote, and stealing elections with voter suppression and trickery. The once-proud “party of Lincoln” legislators now care only about getting donations from wealthy donors so they can keep their cushy, do-nothing jobs in Congress, staying in power — and getting rid of democracy.
Donald Trump’s first wife said Trump’s favorite bedtime reading was Hitler’s book of political speeches used to turn Germany into a Nazi authoritarian nightmare. Apparently, Trump’s studies are paying off.
Rob Charleston
San Jose
Big Lie lingers despite
needed truth-telling
Re. “Conspiracy theories paint fraudulent reality of events,” Page A5, Jan. 2:
I was relieved to read the piece on Jan. 6 conspiracies.
While there have been hundreds of articles airing the points of false narratives, this is the first in The Mercury News outlining the well-known truths. Sadly there are those among us who still believe that JFK Jr. will emerge to run with Donald Trump in 2024.
Dee Clark
San Mateo
Source: www.mercurynews.com