Republicans make sure that guns are plentiful
Re: “Didn't get your mail in Oakland? Your letter carrier may have been robbed” (Page A1, April 18).
Welcome to the Wild, Wild West. Are you happy now, members of the NRA?
Our beleaguered Postal Service, already under fire from within thanks to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's attempts to sabotage mail-in voting, is now under fire from real bullets. Criminals are robbing mail trucks at gunpoint here in Alameda County, much like stagecoaches of the Old West. Dedicated employees' lives are at stake because weapons are so widely available.
What's next? Amazon, UPS and Fed Ex delivery trucks being robbed? Our society will suffer when basic home delivery is compromised. The GOP refuses to stop the gun violence epidemic in our country, but they will do anything to protect gun profiteers.
Movie gunfights at the O.K. Corral are great, but they're not OK at our schools, churches and front doors. If we want to stop gun deaths, we need to stop electing Republicans.
— Andrew Wise, Fremont
Alameda County needs DA who will enforce law
Re: “Don't let ideological attacks derail DA” (Page A6, April 20).
“Ideological” is an adjective that describes political, cultural or religious beliefs. Sandy White's suggestion in her letter to the editor that voters should ignore their beliefs when District Attorney Pamela Price downgrades felonies and demands assistant district attorneys not charge enhancements such as gang and firearm charges, is beyond understanding.
I believe most people hold beliefs that suspects should be properly charged with whatever laws they break and be properly punished as set by a judge. Real punishment is what keeps them from doing more crimes.
Alameda County deserves accountability, and Price is trying to let criminals avoid punishment. I gladly support a recall. The cost is worth it to keep us safe from these career criminals.
— Chris Wood, Pleasanton
A's, city can soften the blow of a move
Sadly, it appears that the Oakland Athletics are poised to move to Las Vegas. Whatever happens with the current ill-conceived relocation plan, the team and the city should do the following.
The team should at the very least adopt a new logo or cap insignia that reflects its current home, with possibly an acorn or oak leaf motif similar to cap designs of the historical Oakland Oaks. Like the Warriors' Oakland jersey, this would reflect at least some sensitivity to the feelings of the city's fans and should generate merchandise reflecting their hometown spirit.
The city for its part should make every reasonable effort to maintain its options for housing potential sports franchises of at least a minor league classification. From Oakland's earliest days, its sports teams have made significant contributions to civic pride and regional identity and this is a valuable tradition worth maintaining.
— Jim Schaufele, Oakland
`Reverse boycott' could keep team in Oakland
Are the A's moving to Vegas? At this point it is not a done deal.
To help keep the A's in Oakland, I urge all fans to buy a ticket on June 13 to support the reverse boycott. If we pack the stadium with fans, it will show MLB and everyone else that fans support the team despite the owner.
Buy a ticket even if you can't attend; there are cheap tickets available. MLB looks at tickets sold not the attendees.
— Jim Sartor, Bay Point
Ban wood frames to stop conflagrations
The destruction of Paradise was a once-in-a-lifetime horror show. Fingers have been pointed in several directions: Inadequate fire departments, unstoppable winds from the Feather River Canyon, too much brush and slow public reaction times. The official death toll is an undercount.
Overlooked by the Paradise City Council was the fact that most of the fuel came from the ubiquitous lumber in the houses. Flying embers made short work of the wood-framed homes. Many local builders are repeating that mistake, and believe that minor adjustments will save them.
Many residents have taken note and, justifiably, fear the next fire that comes down the canyon. Many have chosen to move to Chico.
There is a straightforward solution: Develop building codes that prohibit lumber framing in the wilderness-urban interface.
We can do this.
— Michael Roddy, Alameda
Weak legislation needs ample debate
Susan Shelley's rant against “blank” bills in the California legislature was music to my ears (“California's absurd energy policies,” April 22).
When I was executive director of StopWaste, a government agency serving over 1.6 million people in Alameda County, the 17-member elected governing board adopted a policy of nonsupport for legislation that had not gone through committee debate in both the Assembly and state Senate. Every stakeholder group, public and private, should adopt similar policies.
California's energy policies are not absurd. Climate change is devastating and must be fought with strong actions. But only weak legislation needs to evade public debate.
— Gary Wolff, Castro Valley
If you believe in accountability, if you believe in personal responsibility, if you believe that misdeeds merit punishment and those who knowingly lie should pay for their dishonor and deceit, then Monday was a good day.
Tucker Carlson — the racebaiting, immigrant-hating, election-denying, Putin-promoting, two-faced ringmaster of rightwing sophistry — was unceremoniously dumped by his corporate sponsor, Fox News.
Let the joyous news be spread! If you believe his ouster will commence a new day of sunshine and companionship across the land, healing our divisions and making red and blue Americans join hands as one, you are probably as gullible as the viewers who swallowed the diet of fallacy and claptrap routinely fed them by Carlson and other disingenuous Fox hosts.
It's not going to happen. His removal from a slot in television's prime time eliminates a major source of air pollution. But it doesn't change the mentality, a corporate drive for profit at any cost, or cease the kind of purposeful mendacity that turned Carlson into one of Fox's biggest celebrities and a kingmaker in today's benighted Republican Party.
Lest it be forgotten, Carlson replaced Bill O'Reilly, another top-rated star, who trafficked in distortion and misdirection, when O'Reilly grew entangled in one of the network's serial sexual-harassment scandals.
Unless Fox throws out its business model and overlord Rupert Murdoch registers as a Democrat, Carlson will doubtless be replaced by a host equally willing to serve up the same noxious brew of incitement, spin and made-up stuff to an audience that craves it.
On the propaganda network where never is heard a discouraging word.
One of the most startling revelations to come out of the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox, which resulted last week in a nearly $800 million payout, was how many of the network's on-air personalities — Carlson included — knew the allegations of a stolen election were false. They persisted in promoting the lie because they believed it was what their audience wanted to hear, truth and journalistic ethics be damned.
“The insight one can gather from the Dominion disclosures is that Fox News has focused on satisfying existing needs and playing to the desires of a base, niche audience and has done so successfully,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a University of Pennsylvania professor and one of the country's leading scholars on politics and the news media.
“And when threatened” with losing viewers, she noted, the network and its hosts deliberately misled them “to protect its interest in controlling that space.”
Amply demonstrating Fox News' corporate credo of market share uber alles.
Carlson's defenestration happened to coincide with Don Lemon's firing from CNN and because what-about-ism is today's reflexive fallback, let's briefly consider Lemon's dismissal.
He made a stupid, sexist remark about Nikki Haley, the 51-year-old former South Carolina governor seeking the GOP presidential nomination, being past her prime. It also didn't help that Lemon failed to catch on as co-host of “CNN This Morning.”
But nothing Lemon said compares with the long, reprehensible list of vicious and hateful statements Carlson spewed. Those include attacks on immigrants — who, he suggested, make America poorer and dirtier — antisemitic and white supremacist tropes and a suggestion, mid-pandemic, that viewers call police or Child Protective Services if they saw a child playing outside and wearing a mask.
There might have been a smirk and own-the-libs wink when Carlson made such egregiously over-the-top remarks. But there was nothing the least funny about how some in his audience responded.
In one extreme case, the “great replacement” theory Carlson promoted was cited by a gunman who killed 10 people and wounded three others in May 2022 at a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo.
Reams of academic studies have also documented the deleterious “Fox News effect” on viewers — who showed higher levels of being misinformed or believing proven falsehoods — as well as pushing congressional lawmakers to more far-right, uncompromising positions.
It is too much to blame a single individual, as despicable as Carlson may be, for leading a whole country into a slough of anger, backbiting, recrimination and mistrust.
But there is something particularly revolting about a person who was not only willing and eager to contribute to that poisoned atmosphere but did so knowing he was promoting a dangerous and explosive pack of lies.
In private, Carlson called allegations about Dominion stealing the election from President Trump “shockingly reckless” and “absurd.” On air, he spoon-fed them, straight-faced, to his credulous audience.
Carlson's humiliating dismissal won't cure all that ails this country. But it's satisfying nonetheless.