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Spendthrift A’s
won’t move to Vegas
The A’s will never move to Las Vegas.
In professional baseball, an existing baseball market can be taken over by another “higher level” franchise. But with the marketplace being taken over, both the local team owner and the league must be compensated.
To date, MLB said it would waive the relocation fee to the league if the A’s were to move to Vegas. But what about the team owner’s compensation? The current Vegas team owner built a new stadium for $150 million that opened in 2019. The team has a 20-year, $80 million sponsorship deal. The ballpark is part of a master-planned community. And the team is owned by the Howard Hughes Corp. Yes, that Howard Hughes.
So what do you think the odds are that the thrifty A’s are going to buy their way through all that? I say none. Long story short, Oakland or bust!
Rene Boisvert
Oakland
Doonesbury hits mark
with comic on guns
Replying Bob Cummings’ Letter to the Editor (“Doonesbury crosses line liberals ignore,” Page A6, July 13), actually, I do read Mallard Filmore regularly, perhaps because I retain some junior high school sense of humor where kicking someone in the groin is funny. The Mallard waits until the last panel to do it.
I also read Doonesbury, because I have grown up and appreciate sophisticated humor that goes around multiple corners to be understood. Unlike Cummings, I believe that most thinking Americans, even those who have most severely been affected by the daily assault-rifle massacres, will welcome that someone has most forcefully pointed out the hypocrisy of an 18-year-old kid not being able to buy a beer, but having a full legal right to buy a military weapon, the only purpose of which is to kill people, and using it to blow away a classroom of second graders or, as the cartoon implies, a bartender who dares follow the law.
William Gilbert
Lafayette
State must go further
to dismantle Prop. 8
With the horrifyingly regressive rulings from the Supreme Court, it seems increasingly possible that with the looming threat of a repeal of Obergefell v. Hodges, SCOTUS could also overrule the federal Hollingsworth v. Perry ruling, which could re-enable California’s Proposition 8 (2008) in full force, banning same-sex marriage in California and causing California not to recognize existing marriages.
This would be a disaster for many LGBTQ+ Californians, and so it is essential that Gov. Gavin Newsom, Assemblyman Bill Quirk and Sen. Bob Wieckowski support a proposition to remove the text added by Proposition 8 from the California state constitution. We should support both a repeal of California’s Proposition 8 and a proposition to add the explicit equal right to marriage to California’s state constitution for the 2022 November ballot.
Stephen Jacob
Fremont
New drilling leases
won’t lower gas prices
Re. “Biden administration signals support for oil drilling project,” Page A5, July 10:
When I last went to the gas station, it was a dollar more than the national average of $4.84 a gallon. But new oil and gas leases won’t reduce the high prices we’re experiencing. It would be years before new sites produce any oil or gas; meanwhile, Yosemite is burning and heat waves are unrelenting. How do we balance our need for affordable energy with concern about the climate crisis?
President Biden and Congress should pass a price on carbon dioxide emissions, the greatest contributor to climate change. If the fee were charged at oil/gas drilling sites and rose year over year, energy companies could still drill but would be increasingly incentivized to switch to cleaner energy sources. The fees collected could be returned to the public as a monthly payment, cushioning the pain of high energy costs for Americans.
That’s a compromise I could live with.
Sandra Liu
Berkeley
Let’s drill our way
to green energy
The oil industry’s mastery of drilling techniques needs to go further if we want unlimited clean energy.
Today geothermal power plants, about as “green” as electricity gets, must be situated at just the right site to tap into that geothermal mass. If we could economically bore deep into the Earth’s crust – about 12 miles deep – we could tap into that geothermal mass almost anywhere on land, but conventional drilling methods only take us so far.
One company, Quaise Energy, is using “millimeter waves” to drill deeper than conventional boring techniques allow, and the “waves” also vitrify, or glass line, the borehole. Imagine converting coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants to geothermal with the simple addition of a well. Geothermal power plants could be built almost anywhere. Add some water, make some steam, and go to town.
Let’s hope the research proves good very soon.
Larry Davick
Fremont
Setting the record straight
A letter to the editor appearing in Thursday’s opinion pages misstated the percentage of voters that participated in the June primary election. The most recent report from the California Secretary of State shows that 33% of voters turned out for the election.
Source: www.mercurynews.com