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Trump adminstration
needs lesson in integrity
Flag Day and the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army are moments when we can be proud, as well as humbled, to live in the United States. This country offers us magnificent ideals to live up to, yet has a past that teaches hard lessons about doing what is right by all people who live in this great nation.
The Trump administration needs to look in the history books to review those lessons and learn about decency, honesty, goodwill, accountability and most of all, integrity. Having integrity is what makes America great, and being honest and decent to our neighbors makes America great. Military parades don’t make America great. Masked men kidnapping parents away from children doesn’t make America great. Tackling and handcuffing a U.S. senator doesn’t make America great.
Where does this insanity end? It ends when we the people speak up and demand better from our elected officials.
Heidi Morrison
Pleasanton
Bill doesn’t include
added fire safety
SB 79 passed in the California Senate and is in the Assembly. It requires ministerial approval of high-rise, high-density residential development within one-half mile of transit stops such as BART. It falsely states that it exempts sites located in fire hazard severity zones.
SB 79 would add section 65912.159(a)(3), requiring that a project “comply with … the prohibition against a site that is within a very high fire hazard severity zone, pursuant to subparagraph (D) of paragraph (6) of subdivision (a) of Section 65913.4.” There is no such prohibition, because the last sentence of subparagraph (D) states, “This subparagraph does not apply … to sites that have adopted fire hazard mitigation measures pursuant to existing building standards or state fire mitigation measures applicable to the development.”
“Fire mitigation measures” are required in all new construction in fire hazard severity zones under Chapter 7A of the Building Code. Oppose SB 79.
Nick Waranoff
Orinda
Trump’s flouting of law
damages U.S. values
America’s strict laws and enforcement penalties prohibited bribery. No more.
After decimating the FBI’s anti-bribery office, Donald Trump institutionalized bribery. He takes bribes openly: million-dollar tickets to fundraising dinners, memberships to his private clubs, selling cryptocurrency, a $400 million airplane “gift,” and $2 billion invested in his crypto-bank, World Liberty Financial. The wealthy buy government favor, receiving tariff exemptions, financial law deregulation, pardons for felony convictions, and sweetheart government contracts in return.
House Speaker Mike Johnson denied that these actions are bribery, saying, “Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open.” Boldfaced flaunting does not minimize bribery. It corrupts our political and moral values, leading to a dysfunctional government.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont
Senate must restore
clean energy tax credit
Re: “Padilla taken down, out of news briefing” (Page A1, June 13).
While the nation’s attention is rightly focusing on the militarism of the Trump administration, while we watch video of our U.S. senator being ejected from a DHS press conference, then pushed to the ground and handcuffed, we can forget that a spending bill is working its way through the Senate.
The so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill,” as passed by the House, stops the clean energy tax credits that were part of the Inflation Reduction Act. Now this bill is working its way through the Senate, and we have an opportunity to get those clean energy tax credits added back. Every state in the union has benefited from the clean energy tax credits, so it is something that should be able to get bipartisan support.
Contact your senators today and ask them to advocate with colleagues across the aisle to restore clean energy tax credits.
Jeffrey Spencer
Fremont
Gabbard’s nuclear war
warning is well-founded
Re: “Nuclear war’s too serious for Gabbard video” (Page A7, June 13).
Marc Champion’s insulting put-down of Tulsi Gabbard’s video disregards the warnings of many experts.
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The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and scientists who had developed the atomic bomb. Their purpose was to warn the public of the dangers of nuclear war. They created the symbol of the Doomsday Clock that they reset every January to show how close to nuclear oblivion we had come. This last January, they reset the clock the closest to midnight since 1945, the highest danger we have ever faced. Gabbard’s concern is well-founded. Pray Donald Trump takes her more seriously than Champion.
With all-out war breaking out in the Middle East and the peace negotiations to end the Ukraine war collapsing in the wake of attacks on Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers, we are even closer to nuclear war now than last January. We must step back from the brink.
Michael Dunlap
Oakland
