Don’t just complain — do your part for S.F.
I’ve read several of Carl Nolte’s columns about reasons to be proud of San Francisco (Native Son, June 2 and June 9). Nolte has a way of finding wonderful things to discover about this city.
I have lived in San Francisco for many years. I still have a fondness for San Francisco but can see that it has changed. I hear residents complaining all the time about how dirty San Francisco is, but all they do is complain.
Stop complaining and do something about it.
Clean up just around your own home, apartment/condo building, office building, retail and restaurant — it would make a big difference. I’m not talking about the poop and needles found everywhere (call 311 or use app SF311 for these problems), but picking up discarded bottles, cans, paper cups, newspapers and other paper blowing around, flattened boxes strewn around. It would help make San Francisco a cleaner city.
Susan Belmont, San Francisco
I’m not fooled
The president’s tariff/no tariff episode with Mexico last week was typical Trump: create a phony problem, deliver a phony solution, declare a phony victory. Unfortunately, 40% of America will believe it. Gary Cavalli, Danville
Taxpayer choice
A retort to the writer of “Hyde amendment” (Letters, June 10) who objected to taxpayer funding of abortion:
I don’t like my tax money to go to unnecessary military conflicts in other countries. I don’t like my tax money to go to billionaires that don’t need it. I don’t like my tax money to go to abstinenceonly sex education. I don’t like my tax money to go to religious organizations. I don’t like my tax money going for corporate welfare.
So your argument about the Hyde amendment rings rather hollow. We pay, through our taxes, for many things that we find abhorrent. Abortion is the only subject for which Congress has created a loophole. Does that sound logical to you? If you think there is no emotion surrounding this policy, I guess you have never seen protesters at abortion facilities, screaming vitriol through a bullhorn at patients trying simply to have a safe and legal medical procedure.
Vinny Vance, South San Francisco
Names with meaning
To the Oakland City Council and San Francisco Board of Supervisors:
Please keep the names of your transit stations the place name — Fruitvale Station and Chinatown Station. These are commonly known and help family, friends and visitors know where they are and where they are going. Rooms inside endowed schools or other institutions may have such individual or family names. Please don’t do that to our bus, BART and train stations.
Aileen Frankel, Oakland
Rest of the story
What happens to the students whose parents manage to get them into major universities by cheating? The students are ill-equipped to compete. Do they flunk out in their first year? Just wondering. Julie Wyatt, Daly City
Do-nothing Senate
With regard to “Do-nothing Party” (Letters, June 10), one should point out to the writer that Republicans controlled the House and Senate for the first two years of the Trump presidency and they still control the Senate, where Majority Leader Mitch McConnell won’t submit legislation passed by the Democraticcontrolled House for a vote.
What have they done? A tax cut for the wealthy, no plan for health care to replace the Affordable Care Act, packing the federal judiciary with questionably qualified candidates, blocking sensible gun regulation, and enabling an incompetent and corrupt administration by failure to fulfill their constitutional oversight responsibilities.
They have been the pathetic do-nothing party. Richard Brown, Walnut Creek
Drivers shortchanged
As a proud union member, I’m upset after reading “Ride-hail hours, flexibility drive workers to stay” (Page 1, June 10). Many of the gig workers for Uber and Lyft might like having flexible hours, but they surely don’t like insufficient hourly wages or a lack of benefits like health insurance. Drivers who have to pay for gas and vehicle maintenance out of their own wages and who have no way to effectively complain about working conditions are more like gig serfs than gig workers. What if they are injured on the job and are faced with catastrophic medical expenses?
Our state should recognize their plight, designate them as employees, and allow them to form unions to secure better wages, worker protections and benefits. Gloria Curazon, Daly City
Race isn’t over
Phil Matier’s gratuitous assertion in his June 9 column that London Breed is a shoo-in for mayor this November ignores the actual platform of Ellen Lee Zhou. This tenacious opponent says quite a few good things. I say: game on!
Thomas Busse, San Francisco
Look deeper for waste
I note your unusual June 6 editorial reference to the cost of Juvenile Hall as “a waste of taxpayer money.” I understand the concern with taxpayer money represents consistency with your campaign to close Juvenile Hall and wish you were concerned on many other matters, including a record $12.5 billion annual budget proposal emanating from supposed guardians of taxpayer money in local government. Maybe closure of Juvenile Hall and the resultant savings will be precedential.
Quentin Kopp, San Francisco