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Solano County plan
would hurt future
Re: “Contentious new city plan takes shape” (Page A1, Jan. 18).
Six years after Solano County voters updated the Orderly Growth Initiative to protect agricultural lands and natural areas, developers are asking them to reverse course. Silicon Valley investors have a different vision: a massive “California Forever” development for 400,000 people.
Why would developers ask voters to change their minds? Do we no longer need natural areas to protect us from flooding? Do we now have overflowing aquifers to meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of new residents? Of course not. On the contrary: The climate emergency makes it more imperative than ever to protect what’s left of our open space and direct responsible growth to city centers.
The upcoming ballot initiative is just the investors’ bid to avoid environmental review and fast-track their false utopia. Without voter support, they’ll still build a new city, albeit incrementally. That sounds like a profit-maximizing plan, not one that cares about Solano’s future.
Frances Tinney
Oakland
Fans should support
Warriors in losses
It was very disturbing to hear Warriors fans booing their own players recently.
How quickly we forget their four championships in the last decade, one as recent as 2022. Are we so spoiled and short-sighted that we can’t hang in there for our team during the low points?
The look on Steph Curry’s face during the post-New Orleans game news conference broke my heart. As if the loss wasn’t devastating enough, imagine how demoralizing it was for our guys to hear those boos from their hometown fans?
I’ve heard it said that for the money they make, they should play better. Yes, their weaknesses are tough to take, and the losses painful. I’ve heard the opinion that fans earn the right to boo by buying a ticket.
Please remember, our players are human beings. During a slump is no time to publicly humiliate them. It’s when they most need our support.
Pat Alfieri
Danville
Trump’s ridiculous notion
of presidential power
I am writing to say that after reflecting on the assertion by Donald Trump’s attorneys that as president he had absolute immunity for any actions, I think this is a great idea and that President Biden should institute this immediately.
For fans of Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Mikato,” his minions as they set out to do his bidding should sing “I’ve Got A Little List … They Never Will Be Missed.” Biden could certainly “solve” many of the problems in this country.
Ridiculous? Of course it is. So is the idea that the president has unbridled power to do anything he wants. Our Founding Fathers required Congress declare war out of fear the president would start one on his own. The Supreme Court ruled President Nixon had to turn over the Watergate tapes despite his assertion anything he did was legal. I hope the courts will reject this argument of a desperate man.
Roger Wood
Fremont
Electoral College
tempers majority tyranny
Re: “Why do we hang on to Electoral College?” (Page A7, Dec. 26).
Calls to eliminate the Electoral College are frequently heard from progressives, including in a recent letter. This is largely because Republicans have won presidential elections in 2000 and 2016 without winning the national popular vote, due to winning far more states.
But our founders established the Electoral College in part because they didn’t trust the simple majority rule of pure democracies, since majorities sometimes inflict tyranny on minorities. And they wanted to keep the more populous states from dominating the less populous ones, which is essentially what progressives today want. (Equal state representation in the Senate also addresses this danger.) And they believed liberty was best advanced by limiting the power of the federal government and maximizing the rights of individuals and states.
Thus, the United States was to be a union of mostly independent states, not a centrally controlled nation divided into geographical provinces. The Electoral College rightly supports this.
Christopher Andrus
Dublin
The bar is low for
praising Congress
Re: “Congress acts to prevent shutdown” (Page A1, Jan. 19).
Regarding your front-page headline, it is absurd that our “esteemed” Congress has become a caricature of a deliberative body, to the point that it’s literally front-page news when it fails to harm the people of this country.
Congress members’ devotion to ritual political gamesmanship is a disservice to us all.
Sadly, we get what we deserve. These same people keep getting elected. We can’t seem to save ourselves.
Chris Brown
Oakland
Coordinated third-party
bid could bite Biden
Re: “Third-party names on big ballots may lose Biden election” (Page A6, Jan. 12).
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Los Angeles Times columnist Doyle McManus’ op-ed about third parties didn’t mention the U.S. Constitution’s 12th Amendment, which says that if no candidate receives a majority of the electoral votes for president, then the House of Representatives elects the president from the top three electoral vote-getters.
If that happens, each state gets one vote, the quorum necessary to take the vote is two-thirds (34 states), and the vote of the majority of all the states (26) “shall be necessary to a choice.”
Given the widespread, grass-roots frustration with the likelihood of another Biden-Trump matchup, it is possible that a well-organized, highly motivated, and well-financed third party could field just the “right” candidate for president, who would first deny an Electoral College majority to both the Democrats’ and Republicans’ candidates, and then persuade 26 states’ vigorously lobbied House delegations to elect them as president.
Kristian Whitten
Kensington
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