Progressive Rail began providing freight service to Watsonville on the Santa Cruz branch line on Aug. 16. The staff of the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission recommends spending $635 million on passenger, tourist and freight service through 2035. (Contributed)
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Santa Cruz voters
have spoken: Keep rail
There’s a very small special interest group working hard to prevent rail service in Santa Cruz County.
They are motivated to write frequent letters and opinions to news and social media despite an overwhelming rejection of Measure D last year. Santa Cruz voters turned down their plan to remove the rail tracks by 73%.
Why are they continuing to push this short-sighted agenda so hard when a clear majority of Santa Cruz residents said build the trail and keep the rail? The continuing letters and posts advocating track removal and trail-only are from a small group trying to obscure the fact that most of us want both a safe wide trail and great passenger rail service.
Russell Weisz
Santa Cruz
Tech doesn’t always
make things easy
Re: “Finding a rental in the Bay Area no mean feat” (Page A6, July 26).
I truly relate to Sue Kensill’s frustration in trying to help a retired relative find housing.
Modern technology leaves no room for exceptions. Using the internet for retired people is so difficult because often the forms we have to fill out do not give us exceptional options. So often I spend hours trying to complete what should be a simple task. There is no way for an ordinary mortal to deal with artificial intelligence.
At the age of 93, I worry about facing my next life decision. I truly relate to her frustration in trying to help a retired relative.
Richard Hewetson
Mountain View
Ballot for every issue
would be unworkable
Re: “In California, Dems are anti-democratic” (Page A8, July 27).
Apparently, Jay Morrett does not understand how representative government works. He complains in his letter that voters in California did not expressly vote on a number of policies and laws enacted by the Legislature.
Of course we did not. We elect representatives whose job it is to study issues deeply and make informed decisions. Then we either re-elect them or not based on the positions they took. Eliminating the Legislature and putting every item on a statewide referendum would be a disaster. Already the ballot measures demonstrate that sloganeering and false propaganda are used to sway uninformed voters.
The legislative process exists to preserve our democracy and it does.
Dan Pitt
Palo Alto
Moderates must take
back the country
Those who believe that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are the best candidates for president of the United States are putting party before country and politics before the people. This is one of the people who has had enough.
Time to go back to moderate America that protects the marginalized, the underrepresented and the weak automatically, because it’s the American way — the right way. No more screaming liberals or right-wing extremists.
After 50 years of voting, I’m still waiting for a president with military, business, foreign affairs and education, as well as political experience. The problem is that ideal candidate, no matter what their gender, sexual orientation or nationality, is probably too smart to run. And now we’re stuck with Biden and Trump, again.
Time to take back America from those who put themselves first, their party second and the people, as well as America, dead last.
James Stoch
Carnelian Bay
Reparations are
a national issue
Re: “Reparations are proposed for Black Californians. What about Indigenous people?” (July 14).
While California prides itself on being a beacon of light for our nation, the case for reparations should rest with our federal government.
Our great nation has previously paid reparations to many people including Native Americans, Japanese internment survivors and (German) Holocaust survivors, plus their descendants.
Shortly after President Lincoln’s assassination, President Andrew Jackson repealed Field Order No. 15. Otherwise referred to as “forty acres and a mule,” Field Order No. 15 called for the federal distribution of hundreds of thousands of acres of former Confederate land issued in 40-acre tracts to newly freed people along coastal South Carolina and Georgia.
The list of injustices against African Americans, such as Jim Crow, poll taxes, literary tests and other grandfather clauses, is long. America must make amends, not just California.
Akeem Mostamandy
San Jose
Republicans feed
Americans’ fears
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” The coiners of that phrase never imagined a world where the opposite would be true.
Today the Republican Party would have you afraid of everything from woke warriors to women with the temerity to make decisions about their lives for themselves to people who pray to non-Christian gods and to impoverished asylum seekers wanting better lives for themselves. They will burn or ban books, gut school curricula, disenfranchise voters and attempt to institute a state religion so that no one will have to confront the scary prospect of engaging with the world of ideas.
Meanwhile, they’re not afraid to encourage white nationalists and fascists engaging in violence or threats of violence as means to their ends. All is fair in hate and war? No. Not at all, but one party is certainly playing that game.
Eugene Ely
San Jose