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We should agree on
common sense safety
Re: “Progressives have accountability problem” (Page A6, Sept. 8).
A letter writer had an interesting response to the East Bay Times’ op-ed on car thefts. He blames progressive thinking for the article, which points out that the rise in car thefts could be due to Kia and Hyundai vehicles’ lack of theft protection systems.
The article simply stated that the rise may be because those cars are easier to steal. Of course, stealing is wrong, and the fault of the thieves. But just as with making cars easier to steal, making guns easier to get is one cause of the increase in gun violence. Gun manufacturers shouldn’t be blamed for making guns, but they should be held responsible for lobbying to prevent practical limits to buying them.
Common sense would argue for preventing car thefts, and for preventing unstable people from owning guns. Both progressives and conservatives should be able to agree on that.
Sampson Van Zandt
Walnut Creek
Progressives seek
to limit dialogue
Recent polls suggest that, after everything, Donald Trump is running even with Joe Biden. How can this be? Most Americans agree with Democrats on most social and economic policies.
Comedian Bill Maher nailed it recently: “Part of the appeal of a Herschel Walker or a Trump or any number of egregious Republicans have backed is, the worse a candidate is, the more it says to Democrats, ‘Do you see how much we don’t like what you are selling? Identity politics and victimhood and oversensitivity and cancel culture and White self-loathing and forcing complicated ideas about race and sex on kids too young to understand them. Literally anything would be better than that.’”
Yet the pillars of the politically correct, liberal establishment, like most of academia, Hollywood, PBS/NPR and most of the press, including this newspaper, seek desperately to prevent any two-sided dialogue on race, gender and identity politics.
Steve Koppman
Oakland
Amazon should do more
to halt plastic pollution
As a student at UC Berkeley, I had become accustomed to people who worked in tech and were complacent with the ways these companies negatively impact society and the environment. On the flipside, canvassing with CALPIRG throughout the East Bay has opened my eyes to the impact of many of the issues that people in our society have turned a blind eye toward.
In 2022 California passed a law to limit the use of single-use plastics — but online retail giants like Amazon can do a lot more than the minimum required by law. Amazon produced 700 million pounds of plastic waste in 2021. Not making the products we use once last hundreds of years and switching to sustainable packaging is the obvious solution, and Amazon has already switched in several other countries.
We’re calling on Amazon to move beyond plastic waste and become a leader in sustainable packaging.
Zach Yan
Berkeley
Tuberville’s ignorance
is hurting military
As a current Army Reserve National Guard soldier and cadet in the U.S. Army, I am annoyed by Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s block of military nominations.
His block has left the Armed Forces in total disarray as many positions are vacant and awaiting Senate confirmation. This harms our readiness to combat rising threats like China and Russia.
I dislike individuals like Tuberville who have no understanding of the military and try to micromanage its every action.
Matthew Chen
Fremont
Trump should be
disqualified from office
Everyone who witnessed the horrific event on Jan. 6, 2021, can recognize an attempt to deny the peaceful transfer of government spelled out in the Constitution.
Let’s not debate whether or not what Donald Trump attempted was an insurrection — it was. What played out in the courts, the media, presidential calls to different state election officials, and social media posts were deliberate. Events leading up to Jan. 6 and after are documented in criminal indictments and sworn testimony before the Jan. 6 committee. Trump’s record as president should be enough to deny him a second term.
Trump swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Overwhelming evidence indicates otherwise, with his sole purpose to remain president regardless of the consequences. This alone should disqualify him from holding elected office, and his own party should have the courage to deny his eligibility.
James Mills
Walnut Creek
Trump’s trials should
certainly be televised
Re: “Televising Trump’s trial would be a huge mistake” (Page A7, Sep. 8)
Gobsmacked is too gentle a word to describe my reaction to columnist Stephen Carter’s summation that, “Surely news outlets don’t need video to report fairly and accurately on what happens in the courtroom.”
What planet is he living on? One need only remember the events of Jan. 6, and how that event was “fairly and accurately” reported and summarized by Fox News, to see the lunacy of his argument. The future of our country could very well be determined by these trials.
Of course they should be televised.
Carl Holguin
Benicia
Source: www.mercurynews.com