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Pay community college
tuition with salary cuts
I have an easy solution to the perceived problem of the “high cost” of community college (“New bill could lead to free tuition at community colleges,” Page B1, Feb. 25): cut $100,000 from just 10 highly overpaid faculty and administration at Dave Cortese’s West Valley-Mission Community College District.
1. Chancellor Brad Davis’ $467,492
2. Jerome Borges’ $358, 715
3-8. Art and architecture instructors’ $1.5 million (Keep the “Repair Cafe.”)
9. Jen Ho in Sociology (who makes more than the district’s chief of police), $260, 214
and last but not least
10. Heidi McFarland’s $171, 972.
That starts to add up. If my math is correct, the $1 million saved would more than cover a year’s tuition for every West Valley College student. Speaking of salaries, take a look at Transparent California.
See you at the next Trustee meeting.
Jerry Sheahan
San Jose
Carbon capture isn’t
enough in climate fight
Re. “Pipeline debate at heart of state carbon capture plans,” Page A1, Feb. 26:
Unfortunately the article only covers carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), fails to mention the imperative to remove legacy carbon dioxide (CDR), and uses the terms “capture” and “remove” almost interchangeably.
CCS typically refers to capturing CO2 that’s in the smokestack of a power plant. While this reduces emissions of CO2, it does not remove other toxins, and many worry it might give the industry an excuse to keep polluting.
CDR refers to anthropogenic activities that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and durably store it in geological, terrestrial or ocean reservoirs, or in products.
Polling shows that roughly 70% of Americans favor the United States taking steps to become carbon neutral by 2050. CO2 emissions cannot get to zero by then. “Hard to abate” sectors include agriculture and aviation. Thus, we need “negative emissions.”
The good news is that California is already gearing up for CDR, not just CCS.
Karl Danz
Los Altos
US should follow
California’s lead
The Feb. 26 article on the pipeline debate (“Pipeline debate at heart of state carbon capture plans,” Page A1, Feb. 26) is both encouraging and alarming.
California’s “ambitious roadmap” to sequester carbon underground needs to be one of many such projects. Despite all legal and financial obstacles, we need to support more of this kind of global thinking to reverse, not manage, climate change before its consequences become intolerable.
As one of the main contributors to human-caused carbon in the environment, the United States (and not just California) has a moral obligation to lead the world in removing carbon from the atmosphere as soon as possible. Slowing emissions or targeting plans for 2045 is too little, too late. If we don’t collectively solve this problem, the crazy weather, rising seas and melting glaciers we experience today will look like small problems compared to the famine and extinction we will soon face.
Get on board Florida, Texas and Louisiana, or we’ll all sink together.
Joe Brock
Palo Alto
US must control
runaway borrowing
Page 108 of the 2022 IRS Form 1040 Instructions shows a pie chart of where the U.S. Government gets the money to pay its bills. If you haven’t seen it, it’s an eye-opener.
Forty-one percent of the federal government’s income for 2021 was borrowed.
For both liberals and conservatives, this should be alarming. Either we cut spending drastically or raise taxes significantly. We all need to contact our elected representatives and let them know what choices we would like to make to get this problem under control.
It’s immoral to continue borrowing at this pace to saddle future generations with our debts.
David Matuszak
Gilroy
Dubious data clouds
gun control debate
Amy Swearer pulls out the usual cherry-picked data, and the traditional Chicago fallacy, to repeat the “gun control doesn’t work” lie (“Gun control laws aren’t the cure for what ails us,” Page A7, Feb. 21). By focusing only on mass shootings (conveniently redefined to produce a more
congenial dataset), she triumphantly claims that California leads the nation in mass shootings. If you want to increase your freedom to get shot, move to Mississippi where the firearms mortality rate is 28.6 per 100,000 compared to 8.5 in California which is seventh from the bottom of the table.
The best city to get shot in would be Jackson, Miss., where homicides per capita are 97.6. Chicago, which is next door to the gun shows of Indiana, ranks 26th at 25.
Gun control works. No amount of mental or statistical gymnastics from right-wing “think tanks” can challenge that reality.
Eamonn Gormley
San Jose
Source: www.mercurynews.com