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Cupertino should eschew
pro-growth candidates
I am furious with The Mercury News endorsing pro-growth candidates (“Hung Wei, J.R. Fruen would help chart new course for Cupertino,” Sept. 26).
We already have a big Vallco subdivision coming to Cupertino along with the Oaks Plaza being razed for more housing, and now some would-be council members are proposing more density.
Mercury News, get out of our politics with your endorsements, and let’s stick to the slow-growth movement.
Sylvia Fortun
Cupertino
County restrictions harm
kids more than COVID-19
Thousands of elementary, middle, and high school students around the country returned to campus this week, but almost none are in Santa Clara County.
Remote school is isolating, demotivating, and psychologically draining for everyone. Why are we so complacent about it?
County Executive Jeff Smith and Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody have no clear objectives, plans to ease restrictions or checks to balance the impact of their tyranny on our economy and education. It is their policies, not COVID-19, that are destroying our needier population. They took a sledgehammer approach when a scalpel was warranted.
We should be supporting those in East San Jose and other areas with high levels of essential workers and COVID-19 instead of blood-letting the entire county. Smith and Cody have created a nightmare, and our kids are paying the price. They and the impotent board of supervisors need to resign.
Julie Colwell
Sunnyvale
Prop. 19 would mean
massive tax increase
Proposition 19 takes away important taxpayer protections that have been enshrined in our state Constitution since 1986.
Prop.19 would require property transferred within families to be reassessed to market value as of the date of transfer, resulting in huge property tax increases for long-held family homes.
The only exception is if children move into the home within a year as their principal residence.
This is a tax increase of hundreds of millions of dollars on California families that was on the ballot in 2018 as Proposition 5, but voters rejected it. Reject it again: Vote no on Proposition19. The price is too high.
Barbara Traw
Campbell
Prop. 22 would continue
worker exploitation
Your editorial Sept. 13 supporting Proposition 22 shows how far The Mercury News has fallen (“Prop. 22 will end union assaults on the gig economy,” Sept.13).
Right now 40% of full-time workers in America earn less than $40,000 a year. In 2019, 14.4% of our children lived below the poverty line, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
This proposition will only make things worse. Uber and Lyft have a simple business model: We make money by paying the drivers less. Since trying to sell wage slavery as policy is difficult, they even invented a fancy term for it — gig economy. What that means is the plutocrats and vulture capitalists want you, the taxpayers, to pay their workers’ benefits by providing them with emergency rooms to visit when they are sick or hurt; food stamps when they are hungry; and Section 8 housing when they are homeless.
Don’t fall for this attempt by the fat cats sitting in their mansions to exploit workers. Remember, profits = unpaid wages.
Stephen Mills
Hollister
Trump’s diplomatic
triumph buried. Why?
Where is the hoopla for the signing of the historic diplomatic pacts? Page A4?
Is it because it’s President Trump?
Can we please give the man top credit for something others have not been able to accomplish in years past?
Doris Livezey
San Jose