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Diverstiy alone is
no panacea for state
“Recruiting a Legislature that looks like California (finally)” (Page A6, Dec. 16) promotes the profoundly un-American scam that Californians must place gender, national origin, race and sexual orientation ahead of competence, leadership, imagination and integrity in choosing public officials.
It’s this kind of thinking — electing leaders by genetics and gender — that keeps many Americans from shifting from the toxic Trumpian Republican party to a Democratic one enmeshed in poisonous identity politics.
That Black people are “over-represented” (admittedly, a ridiculous concept) in state leadership compared with their 6% of California’s population, and 42% of the Legislature are already women, isn’t enough for op-ed author Delano, who uses the grossly misleading, all-encompassing concept “people of color” — anyone whose ancestry isn’t 100% White Caucasian European — to define acceptable legislative candidates if already bearing the dual stigmas of heterosexual male.
If “diversity” answered our problems, this state would be in seventh heaven.
Steve Koppman
Oakland
COVID rules enforced
unevenly, unfairly
Stories on the same page on Dec. 2 reported that Calvary Chapel in San Jose was not fined for violating a Santa Clara County prohibition of indoor services during the pandemic (“Church won’t have to pay county COVID fines,” Page B8) and that a Napa doctor was sentenced to three years in prison for providing fake COVID-19 vaccination cards (“Naturopathic doctor gets nearly 3 years in prison“).
Rules about indoor services and false vaccination cards are meant to protect public health. Yet one was enforced and one wasn’t.
Karen Lee Cohen
Walnut Creek
COVID disaster architects
returned to power
Many East Bay Times readers have commented on the terrible effects on kids, particularly in lower-income neighborhoods, caused by those who insisted that public schools must be closed during 2020 and 2021.
The COVID-related impacts have been nationwide, but most dramatically in states with lengthy school shutdowns. President Biden’s Education Secretary Miguel Cardona called these academic setbacks “heartbreaking,” but stopped short of noting exactly who caused them, although that is quite clear.
Now we learn that two out of three California students did not meet state math standards this year, reflecting sizable drops in performance compared to the year before the pandemic. The California results are even worse for Black students (84% not meeting state standards) and Latino students (79%).
The election results were both amazing and sad, as many of the same politicians who promoted school lockdowns were reelected. One wonders what voters were thinking.
Mike Heller
Walnut Creek
Biden laptop story
is no ‘nothingburger’
Reader Rob Vorkapich presumes the Hunter Biden laptop story is a “nothingburger” because “if there were anything to report, surely it would have come out by now.” A key part of the story, though, is its suppression, including its blocking on Twitter, possibly with government collusion, to keep it from becoming an “October surprise.”
The provenance of the laptop is not “murky.” Hunter Biden took it into a repair shop, then abandoned it, making it property of the shop. An independent forensic analysis found no evidence that the user data, turned over to the FBI under subpoena, had not been modified, fabricated or tampered with.
The “scandalous contents,” Hunter Biden profiting from work as a board member with a Ukrainian firm accused of bribery, and with a Chinese businessman now accused of fraud, have indeed been reported.
Beth Elliott
Oakland
Farewell to Pitts
and his column
I am sorry to see that Leonard Pitts is retiring from his column.
I will miss his excellent and poignant writing, his clear-headedness, his humor and more. I look forward to reading his book.
Best wishes to him.
Naomi Karlin
Walnut Creek
Yes, we should, but
don’t, learn from history
Regarding “History teaches one can’t appease dictators” (PageA16, Dec. 4), try telling that to the White House. We won’t support protests in Iran lest we risk pursuit of that ludicrous Iran nuclear pact.
We could supply old fighter jets to Ukraine that we have in such abundance we use them for target practice. Those planes could easily destroy the slow Iranian drones Putin is using to destroy Ukraine’s energy grid. But that might irk Putin.
We won’t support Chinese protests or mount our own protest of their fentanyl exports. Corporate interests and possibly family interests are at stake.
To appease climate change idealogues we bump fists with Saudi Arabia and lift sanctions on Venezuela, all to get their dirty oil. We could supply the world with the cleanest oil and gas available until such time as technology makes it possible to discontinue fossil fuels.
Learn from history indeed.
Eugene Paschal
Danville
Source: www.mercurynews.com