Slow down for whales

In Friday’s paper we learn about the $68 billion state budget surplus. We also learn about closing the English-as-a-second-language program at City College of San Francisco because of financial problems and learned Tuesday about putting up our homeless in dilapidated, roach-infested hotels to keep them off the streets.

Meanwhile, I can hear the striking teachers down the street hollering about Oakland Unified closing schools because they have no money to keep them open.

Also Friday, we are informed that our doughty state Legislature wants to get rid of the surplus by fixing these things? No. They want to use it to pander to our assumed greed by giving each of us $200 to spend on beer, gas for our SUVs or as we otherwise see fit, so we will continue to love and admire them and, above all, re-elect them, so they can continue their quest for power and riches.

What leadership! What a system! Makes one wonder if Vladimir Putin is right about the efficacy of democratic government.

Sophomore Rhiannon Cogley rallies in front of Oakland Technical High School during Friday’s protest of budget cuts and school closures in the city.

of our sordid history of slavery has the same ignoble motivations as Holocaust denial.

As Harvard law and history Professor Tomiko Brown-Nagin said recently, “We cannot dismantle what we do not understand, and we cannot understand the contemporary injustice we face unless we reckon honestly with our history.”

Regarding “Ships asked to reduce speeds to protect endangered whales” (Bay Area & Business, April 28): The

only blue whale I’ve ever seen was a dead one. The young whale had washed up on a Bay Area beach after being hit and killed by a ship.

But this poor whale was only a small part of a very sad story. Ship strikes are now a primary cause of death for endangered blue whales, humpback whales and fin whales off California, according to the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito.

That’s why it’s incredibly disappointing that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps pushing voluntary measures that just ask — rather than require — ships to slow down.

Don Feria / Special to The Chronicle