Letters: Utility tax | Mitigation leader | Recovering from Trump | Colleges are thieves | Judgment a travesty | Tactics aren’t fatal

East Bay Times Letters to the Editor for April 14, 2024

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Pressure Legislature
to remedy utility tax

Re: “State’s utility charge saga began with misuse of budget process” (Page A6, April 4).

As Dan Walters points out, in 2022, a budget trailer bill (AB 205) with little oversight passed and uncapped a monthly fixed “Utility Tax” that residential power customers will be charged by investor-owned utilities (IOUs), giving the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) a blank check on the final decision.

The CPUC, doing their usual bidding for the IOUs (including PG&E), just proposed a monthly utility tax of $24 per customer, more than double the national average. This includes people who live in apartments, condos and small homes. Remember, an uncapped tax could rise to $80 per month tomorrow.

California’s legislators created this problem, and only they can fix it. Call or write today asking them to vote for AB 1999, which caps the tax at just $10 per month.

Steve Christianson
Newark

State leads the way in
mitigating tech’s impact

Re: “Technology in general is bad for workers” (Page A8, April 4).

Kristian Whitten‘s letter brings out an important point but makes an error. Technology does not require job losses. Yes, the Bay Bridge toll-takers are not coming back to the bridge. However, they are also not losing their jobs. As reported by KQED, “A (Caltrans) spokesperson there says the 250 employees who had been working at Bay Area bridges have not been laid off. Instead, the agency is working with them and their union to find them other jobs within the agency.”

So if you take Ms. Whitten’s advice to write about the impacts of technology on jobs, be certain to include how our state is leading the way in eliminating adverse job impacts and that businesses should do the same.

Michael Brent
Lafayette

Republican Party may
not recover from Trump

Re: “MAGA supporters have forgotten GOP principles” (Page A6, April 3).

I agree completely with Jack Kline. Donald Trump’s ideals are not those of what used to be the Republican Party. He has usurped the title and made it his own. He even managed to get his daughter-in-law to control it.

The Republican Party may never be the same.

Jim Cauble
Hayward

Biden is villain, but
colleges are real thieves

Re: “Biden revives student-loan pledge” (Page A1, April 9).

If Joe Biden cancels student debt, will he issue refunds to all those who did without, who deferred home purchases, who deferred marriage to pay off debt?

Biden is a villain, but the biggest villains are the colleges that charge ridiculous tuition.

Bob Ricioli
Danville

Travesty is in judgment
against Trump

Re: “Trump bond deal is a travesty of justice” (Page A6, April 10).

Karen Lee Cohen is right — the Trump bond deal truly is a travesty of justice, but not for the reason she puts forth.

The real travesty of justice was the judgment itself. Even a beginner real estate lender would never make a multimillion-dollar real estate loan without satisfying him/herself that the collateral was adequate, and would certainly include a professional appraisal. Those lenders are professionals and do it for a living. They knew what they were doing, knew the risk they were taking (every loan has risk), and satisfied themselves that the risk-reward tradeoff was sufficient.

The outcome shows that they were right. They earned the interest that they deemed adequate for the risk taken — the typical outcome for most real estate loans.

John Griggs
Danville

‘Free Palestine’ tactics
haven’t killed anyone

Re: “The appalling tactics of the ‘Free Palestine’ movement” (Page A7, April 9).

It behooves us always to consider proportionality.

Bret Stephens finds the worst things he can that some pro-Palestine demonstrators have said, which he then labels the “heart” of the “pro-Hamas movement.”

This includes heckling of and shouting at Zionist speakers, kids saying, “Jews are stupid,” “traitors” and “spies for Israel,” and “resistance is justified” after 57 years of occupation of the West Bank, deprivation of all rights, arrest without charge, home destruction without process, and a 17-year blockade of Gaza, both acts of war we would support resistance to anywhere else.

Was anyone killed by these actions? Were a thousand children’s limbs blown off? Hundreds of thousands starved?

The same can’t be said for that state that doesn’t merit the name Israel, that trades on the history of the Jewish people but won’t honor its values or commandments.

Steve Koppman
Oakland