Letters: BART should clean house, not hike sales tax

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BART should clean house, not hike taxes

Re: “Rail future on shaky ground” (Page A1, Feb. 23).

This is a high crime that BART is threatening the Bay Area with shutting down 10 to 15 stations if the 1-cent sales tax in San Francisco and the 0.5-cent sales tax in other Bay Area counties are not approved by voters.

BART first needs to clean its own house, where a janitor makes $200,000 with overtime. This is insane.

Let us start by firing one BART director for every station closed.

BART and PG&E are two public services that need to be seized and run honestly.

Virendra JainConcord

GOP, Dems give voters no good choices

Donald Trump’s belligerent and catastrophic stranglehold on the country is weakening, just like he is. Even Republicans know it, so now they openly defy him. Losing Congress in the midterms to the treacherous Democrats will make him a lame duck loser.

Trump’s poll numbers are the worst ever. He’s toast. He knows it, so is likely to become desperate, like bombing Iran with no clue of what’s next.

People are rightfully upset and cranky, yet Trump keeps lying and bullying because that’s all he knows

Still, he has tens of millions of supporters, mainly White, male Christians.

The Democratic Party is also largely to blame for Trump’s support. Since Bill Clinton, they have sold out the working class to favor the greedy rich.

The people are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Keith NakataniOakland

ICE story only fans flames of public fear

Re: “Officials say ICE not seen at stadium” (Page B1, Feb. 10).

The headline on this article is idiotic. It’s akin to saying that it wasn’t snowing in Melbourne yesterday.

There was no reason for ICE to be at the Super Bowl, so they weren’t. It was just another effort by the left-leaning media to gin up hostility toward the Trump administration, one of the few remaining things they are good at. As for other law enforcement agencies, it made sense for them to be there, since the Super Bowl is one of the most high-profile terrorist targets in our country.

All the stories prior to Super Bowl LX about an anticipated ICE presence were attempts to keep the public in fear. It’s no wonder the media has so little credibility.

Bill McGregorBerkeley

Administration’s lies obscure Pretti slaying

Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, and the Trump administration’s gotta push outrageous and slanderous lies.

Despite video footage to the contrary, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem continues to insist that Alex Pretti was “brandishing” his handgun. (Who you gonna believe, Noem or your own eyes?) “An individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.” (I never knew that mind-reading was a prerequisite for the job.) As for a handgun? No self-respecting domestic terrorist would attend a protest with anything less than an assault weapon at the very least (see Kyle Rittenhouse, August 2020). Not to be outdone, Vice President JD Vance and Stephen Miller now call Alex Pretti an “assassin.“

Finally, two ICE agents pumping ten bullets into a defenseless man on the ground, surrounded by several ICE agents, is an execution.

Mark GabinConcord