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Supply and demand
doesn’t work in Bay Area
Re: “High housing costs making California more undesirable, RAND economist says” (Sept. 27).
The Rand expert, Jason Ward, is wrong. The supply and demand model doesn’t work for Bay Area housing. The supply is high-rise, market-rate housing; the demand is housing for working people with low incomes. Property owners would rather have vacant apartments taking a tax loss than lower the rent.
Increased market-rate supply has not and will not lower rents. They will never be “affordable” to those camping in the street. Affordable in the Bay Area is for people making $100,000 a year, based on a county’s median household income.
Margot Smith
Berkeley
In conflict, both sides
started as children
I have so much compassion for both the Israelis and Palestinians, the hostages and all of the children who are victims in the Middle East. I even have compassion for the members of Hamas, even though I want them to be held accountable, because they, too, came into the world as adorable babies who wanted to love and be loved and be happy and were taught to hate the Jewish people and kill the Israelis. They were programmed to be cruel terrorists.
May all of our minds and hearts be filled with love, kindness, compassion and respect for each other and ourselves. May there be peace in the world.
Joan Redding
Pleasant Hill
UN must act to secure
peace in the Mideast
The latest bloodshed and carnage of Palestinians and Israelis has represented a significant challenge to the United Nations Security Council, which has not been able to find a just and last peaceful settlement to the conflict.
Therefore, the council must meet and adopt a final peace plan, which includes the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian Territories occupied in 1967, the establishment of a Palestinian state in the Palestinian Territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and a commitment by the Security Council to protect the peace and security of all states and peoples of the Middle East including Israel and the Palestinian state, which must conclude peace treaties confirming the renunciation of use of force and violence and entering into normal peaceful relations including diplomatic relations.
Amer Araim
Walnut Creek
Trump support is
terribly upside-down
George Floyd was killed because he was accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill. There was no chance to get proof that it was counterfeit or that he knew it was.
Donald Trump has been indicted on 91 felony counts — some of the crimes serious enough to jeopardize the democracy we cherish. Yet he is seen by millions as a worthy candidate for president of the United States. Something is terribly upside-down.
Karen Lee Cohen
Walnut Creek
Powell sentence shows
two justice systems
Re: “Attorney pleads guilty, agrees to cooperate” (Page A4, Oct. 20).
I find the sentencing of one of Donald Trump’s former lawyers quite interesting.
After initially being charged with racketeering and six other counts as part of a wide-ranging scheme to keep Trump in power after he lost the 2020 election, Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to six misdemeanors accusing her of conspiring to intentionally interfere with the performance of election duties. Her punishment: six years of probation, a $6,000 fine and she’ll have to write an apology letter to Georgia and its residents.
I recall the case of a black woman in Houston who voted in the 2020 election unaware that she was not eligible to vote and was convicted of election fraud. Her original punishment: five years in prison.
The Republicans have managed to get one thing right — there are two standards of justice in this country.
Mark Gabin
Concord
Federal solution needed
to curb e-cigarettes
Re: “Communities struggle with disposing disposable e-cigarettes” (Oct. 19).
It’s bad enough that tobacco companies deliberately target and profit off of teenagers, but even worse is that they’ve created an environmental and financial sinkhole down the line. Even until their dying breath, the incinerated vapes are releasing pollutants and toxins that are sure to have long-term consequences on the surrounding community.
The resources, as in our tax dollars, that schools and cities are spending on collecting and transporting vapes should be used on much-needed programs and social services instead. The FDA and federal policymakers need to crack down on imports of the varieties of vapes that, according to the Associated Press, are making their way into the United States.
Jessica Kim
San Francisco
Source: www.mercurynews.com