Submit your letter to the editor via this form. Read more Letters to the Editor.
Oakland must focus
on homeless solutions
Bay Area leaders are deeply unserious about homelessness and find every reason to stall proposals while people languish on the streets: The site is too far from transit, the site is too near a single-family neighborhood, or the site is too near industry. We hear it all.
While city leaders and administrators debate and deflect people suffer. Oakland must focus on smaller-scale solutions like purchasing hotels or existing units in every council district concurrently with an undertaking of this size. The cost of any project that seriously addresses homelessness will be enormous, but the cost of human suffering on our streets is unacceptable and is a psychic toll on all Oaklanders, unhoused and housed alike.
I would gladly pay an annual fee that is earmarked for housing and direct rental assistance if it meant my neighbors experiencing precarity kept their housing and my unhoused neighbors got housed.
Emily Carroll
Oakland
Oakland continues
to soak property owners
I own 41 apartment units in Oakland. Five years ago my garbage cost went from $12,000 a year to $25,000 a year. Oakland got a $25 million “contract fee” at the time from Waste Management.
Last month the Oakland City Council was granted a 6.3% increase in pay, but the 6.7% increase in CPI for rent to cover my rising costs was capped at 3%.
Over and over Oakland says property owners hold the money bag and grabbing that is just fine.
David Kirk
Orinda
Data doesn’t support
return of mask mandate
Re. “Indoor mask mandate returns,” Page A1, June 3:
Alameda County Health Department ordered a COVID indoor mask requirement effective June 3.
I checked statistics to ascertain the reason for this decision. After reviewing the health department’s COVID numbers, I find their ruling to be baffling. Eighty-two percent of Alameda’s 1.6 million population are fully vaccinated. No question, citizens acted responsibly in curtailing the spread of the virus. As of June 6, there were 566 new confirmed COVID cases. Of these, 119 patients were hospitalized and 14 total were admitted to I.C.U. No COVID-related deaths since May 27 and only one on that date.
How can 119 hospitalizations from a total of 1.6 million Alameda County residents justify ordering a return to the indoor mask mandate?
Robert Vergas
Oakland
Thiessen column relies
on discredited book
Re. “Things bad under Biden? Get ready for blackouts,” Page A7, June 9:
Less discerning readers might be swayed by Marc Thiessen’s article that places blame for every bad thing that happens in the United States at Biden’s feet. But, as usual, Thiessen’s article is full of lies and distortions. Frankly, it is amazing that he claims to be a journalist. Usually, such a moniker conveys some relationship to truth.
There’s insufficient space here to detail the errors in Steven E. Koonin’s book on climate change. Every claim that Thiessen cites from Koonin’s book has been shown to be wrong. For a correct interpretation, read Scientific American’s online review of the book here.
Thiessen can’t be trusted. Sadly, many readers will be fooled. I rarely agree with conservative writers, but some at least try to address reality. The East Bay Times would do its readers a service by printing conservative writers who do research and rely on facts and science. The Times can do better than printing this unethical hack.
Jim Boots
Danville
Defense Production Act
could help Europe allies
Our European allies, especially Germans and Italians, will suffer terribly this winter without having Russian fuel to heat their homes and workplaces.
Here’s an idea put forward by Bill McKibben of 350.org. Ask President Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act to engage America’s vast manufacturing capacity to make electric heat pumps to sell to Europe.
Doing so would boost American industry, generate American jobs and reduce Russian income. Sounds like a win-win for all.
Ellen Beans
Moraga
Gun control bill
should be wide-ranging
As a deeply concerned and actively engaged constituent of California, I urge U.S. senators to do all in their power to pass wide-ranging gun control laws immediately. The continued and now daily mass shootings are a tragedy and travesty that can be addressed first and foremost by instituting these common-sense measures:
Universal background checks; extreme risk/red-flag laws; assault weapons ban as we had before; high-capacity magazines ban; ban on bump stocks and other conversion devices, and ghost guns; prohibition of gun ownership by individuals with dangerous histories; blocks on deregulating silencers.
Enough is enough. How many more children and innocent adults have to die before this country stands up to the NRA lobby? I urge senators to use their power and responsibility for ending this madness — help pass these gun control laws now.
Nicole Raeburn
Richmond
Source: www.mercurynews.com