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Shoreline project good
for coast, environment
Re. “Living shoreline project launches at Santa Cruz County beach,” Feb. 22:
I loved this article about constructing a living shoreline in Santa Cruz.
I grew up in the Bay Area and often visited Santa Cruz County beaches with my family. It’s important to preserve such an established shoreline that we as a community have transformed for our use while also promoting, protecting and restoring the environment. Seawalls and jetties may be great temporary solutions, but a living shoreline is clearly better suited given the unfortunate circumstances of ocean level rise due to climate change.
Living shorelines fortify the shoreline, better protect the beach from erosion, promote wildlife rehabilitation, and better protect the beach and mainland from harsh weather events. The added benefits of doing so will surely preserve the shoreline for years to come.
Evan Brown
Austin, Texas
For safety’s sake, get
tougher on criminals
Dan Walters is correct in his op-ed of April 7 (“Sacramento shooting spotlights failure of state’s gun restrictions,” Page A6). The only thing that will prevent the tragedy of the shootings in Sacramento is keeping convicted felons in jail.
The politicians who fall all over themselves advocating for more Second Amendment restrictions are only working to get re-elected. If they were more attentive to the facts these tragic events could be stopped.
Thomas Baker
San Jose
Boycott countries that
won’t condemn Putin
Vladimir Putin draws support from China and India whose leaders blatantly standby and refuse to call out Putin’s egregious war crimes. In the United States we have the economic power to effect a change. Simply quit buying anything made partially or wholly in those two countries (or any others that refuse to condemn Putin).
After a few container ships or airplanes turn around and take their blood-tinged cargoes back home, the attitudes of the leaders of those countries will change fast. You don’t need that iPhone or flat-screen TV right now. Just defer it for six months. Save the lives of civilians in Ukraine. Help sustain democracy in a country where individual citizens are taking up arms to fight for their beliefs. We can make a difference even when our politicians are too timid to act.
Stanley Gage
Portola Valley
Fox host, Putin share
unsavory qualities
Tucker Carlson and Vladimir Putin are two peas in a pod.
Both are most watched in their countries. Both rely on disinformation, propaganda and big lies. Both promote conspiracy theories. Both are out to destroy their perceived enemies. Both care more for power than for citizens. Both must control their followers.
Russian people can say little about control. Americans can say a lot through our wallets. Boycott Fox News. Boycott their sponsors. Restore honest journalism.
The Big Lie resulted in an insurrection. Continuous big lies are eventually believed and will end democracy as we know it
Patricia Andrews
San Jose
World must tighten
sanctions on Russia
Bucha reveals horrendous war crimes by Russia. The stick and carrot approach to sanctions is not effective. The time has come to unleash all possible sanctions on Russia instead of threatening to do more.
The West is running scared of triggering a nuclear war with Russia. But what happens if Russia threatens nuclear retaliation if NATO does not remove all sanctions? This could happen at any moment Putin chooses.
What will it take to make Russia pay for human and property destruction? What if “page two” is for Russia to test an invasion of a NATO country next? The only way for this war to stop is to hold Putin’s feet to the fire. That takes everything we can throw at him immediately and stand strong when he threatens to use his nuclear arsenal. That’s going to happen sooner or later.
Al Miller
San Jose
Right cries ‘woke’ so
they can dodge facts
I’m not sure what the latest political buzzword “woke” means, but I do know that the right uses the term frequently when they have been caught doing or saying something racist. For example,
when a Fox News contributor was disciplined for making a racist comment about VP Harris’s outfit, she sidestepped taking responsibility by saying she’s just another victim of “woke culture.” Invoking the “woke” is meant to show faux outrage while avoiding the facts. Daily you hear the right bellowing “You’re so woke” and then angrily stalking away.
But if the Right detests the “woke,” reason would dictate that they must therefore be “unwoke.” It’s sort of the anti-Rip Van Winkle. Rip slept for decades and arise to a new vibrant age of progress and diversity. The “unwoke” right would prefer to do the opposite, sleep decades to awaken to a time simpler and whiter, say the 1950s.
Bob Parker
San Jose
Source: www.mercurynews.com