June 28, 2024
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for May 24, 2024

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Country lost a good
man in McCloskey

I wanted to share some thoughts about Pete McCloskey, who passed away on May 8. I joined his staff in 1968 as his legislative assistant when he was first elected to Congress.

I often sat in on meetings in our Washington office that Pete would have with constituents who disagreed with his opposition to the Vietnam War. Pete would listen respectfully and then reaffirm his opposition to the war. If his constituents continued to disagree, Pete would suggest that maybe they should vote against him in the next election. He said that if he lost, he would return to the San Francisco Peninsula and practice law. And he assured them that he was very much OK with that. Getting reelected was never a reason for any of Pete’s opinions. Nevertheless, he was elected to eight terms in Congress.

The country has lost a really good man.

Richard Whitmore
Palo Alto

Media continues
to boost Trump

Re: “Trial in Manhattan probably helps Trump” (Page A7, May 21).

Why does the media keep on pumping up the Donald Trump myth that he’s invincible? Given all the important issues arising from his hush money trial, the Mercury News chooses how it is helping the one who is a threat to our national security.

Is the Mercury News a defender of democracy or not? Does a skywriter need to emblazon the words, “Democracy Dies With Trump” to see the handwriting?

Will it take jackboots clicking in your hallway to realize that he means what he says he’ll do once in office? This is a big-time mobster gunning for the White House. Inform your readers better.

Allen Price
Montara

We must be ready
to defend democracy

The Woylie is a diminutive Australian marsupial. It was headed for extinction, so conservationists scooped up a host of Woylies and put them in enclosures to help them survive.

The good news is the Woylies are thriving in their enclosures. The bad news is they no longer fear their predators, so releasing them into the wild will lead to massive loss of life among the released Woylies.

We in America have become like the captive Woylies.

There are dark predators aiming to destroy our democracy. We have been living in a nation that has (until now) mostly respected the compromises that allow democracy to thrive. The Republicans are now licking their lips and looking at the destruction of our hard-earned democracy. We must regain our “spidey sense” and do what is necessary to defeat the predators who are stalking our freedoms and our right to choose our own destiny. Vote blue.

Ed Taub
Mountain View

Media is failing to note
Biden’s successes

The media is doing a terrible job of informing the public.

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With multiple outlets spending Biden’s entire term proclaiming a recession is imminent, there is no recession. A Harris poll indicates that 58% of Americans wrongly believe the United States is in recession and 49% believe the stock market is down and unemployment is at an all-time high, none of which are true.

The truth is most macroeconomic indicators put our current economy in a sweet spot of sustainable growth and high employment, and the United States consistently outperforms other economies in the post-COVID recovery. If inflation has been higher than the long-term average of 3.1% for a few years, it hasn’t been substantially higher, and people feeling the squeeze personally can mostly be explained by corporate price gouging and historically high inequality which Democrats work to mitigate, and Republicans work to make worse.

Mathew Clark
Campbell

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