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Letters: BART extension | State business | Gun control

Mercury News Letters to the Editor for Nov. 5, 2023

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Funding prolongs
BART extension debacle

Re: “Extension gets $375M in funds” (Page B1, Oct. 27).

The city of San Jose and the Mayor are determined to build an extension from the BART station in Berryessa to Diridon Station and Santa Clara.

This project is a waste of money and time. It will disrupt San Jose businesses and will probably cost more than the anticipated increase in funding required.

What will it do? It won’t go to the airport. Instead, the city is planning on autonomous vehicles transporting people from Diridon to the Airport.

Why not have a bus bridge from Diridon to Berryessa with a stop at the airport and the other proposed stops along the way?

The city has failed to inform us as to what benefits will be gained by the extension except in vague terms. It will be good for workers and put people to work, but labor shortages abound.

Kathleen Cannuli
San Jose

Globetrotting Newsom
should focus on state

Re: “Gov. Newsom plays hardball in China, collides with student during schoolyard basketball game” (Oct. 31).

Gov. Newsom launched his outrageous hubris show by playing his “fiddle” for the Chinese and Israelis as PG&E burns our state a second time with rates twice the American average.

Now is the time for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to review Newson’s CPUC, starting with a list of PG&E’s campaign donations, then making PG&E accountable to the citizens of California instead of to its shareholders on the New York Stock Exchange.

Come home governor and fix your state’s insurance fiasco in which your commissioner drives out established insurance companies claiming they overcharge. Then, your state overcharges its citizens with the California FAIR plan, which is riddled with problems.

Stop trying to make yourself famous and try serving the citizens of California as you solemnly swore in your oath of office.

Curtis Panasuk
San Jose

Cities, states can lead
way on gun control

Re: “Why the latest gun restrictions in California won’t make state safer” (Page A6, Oct. 27).

The op-ed by Connor Vasile makes a faulty giant leap forward on recent Second Amendment rulings. He joins the gun rights chorus whose favorite song is, “It’s a Gun, Gun World.” It is not. The rulings on Heller and Bruen did not assert that any gun was protected. Even Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in Heller that the government has a right to prohibit guns deemed too dangerous for public ownership. California and San Jose are two bright lights in this dark inferno of Second Amendment distortion.

We are now living in that “Valley of Death” where guns designed for maximum combat death can be purchased by anyone with a lethal grudge.

The Heller decision ignored decades of precedent and led us into this hell hole of gun rights. But it will not last if states and cities use insurance and taxation laws to limit the weaponry of war in public spaces.

Allen Price
Montara