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Police must learn
to police themselves
Police misconduct over the last 10 years has cost San Jose many millions of dollars in payouts, let alone legal fees, staff time and hours of administrative costs.
Officers not arresting fellow officers they know are violating civil rights are breaking the law and need to be arrested too.
Until officers, police themselves, we will keep paying off the victims of crime done by the police.
Dennis Speer
Santa Cruz
Choice between services,
good pay is a false one
Re: “Union contract will hurt ability to offer services” (Page A12, Sept. 10).
Reporting on San Jose’s historic union negotiations presents a false choice: let our workers struggle to survive in one of the most expensive cities in the country or pay our employees fairly and face cuts to the services they provide. The original budget passed in June, before union negotiations were completed, already projected a budget deficit from the proposed increases. The newly ratified contract will increase that deficit, but San Jose would require tradeoffs with either budget.
Many popular city departments and services are struggling with chronic staffing vacancies. By paying our employees fairly, we make our local government more effective and give workers a chance to live in the city they serve. The council should continue examining the budget for creative ways to eliminate waste, reduce costs and save money to close the deficit. The work is hard, but San Jose deserves a fully staffed government that respects workers’ dignity.
Giovanni Forcina
Co-President, South University Neighborhood Association
San Jose
State should lead in
cleaning up shipping
Re: “Shipping needs are at odds with California’s climate goals” (Page A13, Sept. 10).
In response to “Shipping needs are at odds with California’s climate goals,” the state of California can still be an economic powerhouse while leading to decarbonize the shipping industry. We’ve led the way for trucks, cars and locomotives; clean ships should be next.
Shipping regulations have been on the books since 2007, and since then, San Pedro ports and California have continued to gain economically. Capping emissions is the right thing to do, especially for communities that breathe in the toxic air pollution that ships and ports create. We have no time to waste. Just last week, a UN report found that the window is “rapidly closing” to reach our climate goals and avoid more record heat waves, fires, droughts and storms.
We applaud Gov. Gavin Newsom’s work to move the state to electrify everything and hope that zero-emission shipping by 2040 is next.
Teresa Bui
Sacramento
Government spending
driving student debt
Re: “Student debt crisis calls for interest-free loan solution” (Page A6, Sept. 13).
Rachel Grose suggests that the solution to the problem of student loan debt is to provide interest-free loans. What this misses is that it will make the problem of ever-increasing college costs worse, not better.
The original cause of the skyrocketing cost of college is the government backing of student loans, which opened the floodgates of money, excess money, to colleges and universities. If there’s anything a college student learns in economics class is that money-chasing “product” causes inflation. In this case, the product is college.
All of the flood of money did was allow colleges and universities to give raises to everyone and charge more tuition.
What needs to happen is the government needs to turn off the spigot of money. Reduce the supply of money and the prices will come down. Because the product will be chasing money.
Brian Blackford
Menlo Park
CSU could learn from
Purdue on tuition
The increase in college tuition over the recent decades is alarming and has led to huge student borrowing, if not taking away their college option altogether.
The rare tuition exception happened at Purdue University in 2013 when then-President Mitch Daniels froze Purdue tuition at the 2012 level. It remains at the 2012 level today as administration and operational efficiencies improved, as well as the quality of education. Purdue student borrowing today is less than the 2013 level.
Given the CSU cost challenge, I’m sure Purdue would be happy to host Chancellor Mildred Garcia in West Lafayette, Ind., and share how it was done.
Charlie Duncheon
Los Gatos
Libya flooding one more
climate change effect
Re: “More than 5,000 die during Libya flooding” (Page 1A, Sept.13).
I was horrified to read the recent headline about the unimaginable death toll in Libya due to flooding. Sadly, each day seems to be the climate catastrophe du jour, occurring everywhere around the world. Nowhere is immune. The burning of fossil fuels by “first world” countries, such as ours, has hastened the pace of global climate change, and poorer countries are paying an exorbitant price.
The article states that “climate change can combine with political conflicts and economic failure to magnify the scale of disasters.” While we personally can do little to impact the last two, we can do something about climate change. I urge you to contact your members of Congress and ask them to support strong climate legislation.
Renee Hinson
Mountain View
Source: www.mercurynews.com