Letters: Utility benefits | Limiting democracy | Incarcerated voices | Climate change | Jobs threatened | Abortion rules
Mercury News Letters to the Editor for April 21, 2024
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Align utility benefits
with social needs
Re: “California Supreme Court to hear appeal seeking to overturn new rooftop solar rules” (April 18).
Did the Public Utilities Commission consider all of the right costs and all of the right benefits of rooftop solar?
Currently, CPUC avoided-cost rates are on expenses an energy provider would have incurred if electricity were generated or purchased from another source.
Retail rates for utility electricity are much higher. Retail rates include costs for investing and maintaining infrastructure, shareholder profits and additional fees.
When utilities count on power from rooftop solar, they avoid new infrastructure — generation and transmission. Compensation under federal regulations recognized the value of avoiding building and maintaining infrastructure — especially with incentives for green power.
Why the switch? It was argued the benefits of rooftop solar households were subsidized by lower-income households.
In gutting the calculation to bare bones, CPUC ignores the proposition as to why these rules were designed. It’s time to assign benefits fairly while paying attention to social needs.
Rita Norton
Los Gatos
Recount will limit
democracy, choice
Re: “District 16 recount doesn’t serve voters” (Page A6, April 18).
The machine recount started by Jonathan Padilla, who does not live in District 16 and cannot vote there, was clearly described in Letters to the Editor by Lucas Ramirez, who voted for Simitian.
I, too, voted for Simitian and would like to see the recount stopped, so that Simitian and and Evan Low, who came out with exactly equal numbers of votes, can see how it all shakes down in November.
From now until November is a very, very long time off, with the way Congress is functioning — if you can call it that — at this point. We Dems all deserve a chance to vote for the candidate of our choice. Please stop the recount.
Magda Grant
Palo Alto
Voices of incarcerated
belong in electorate
I want to bring attention to the inherently classist and racist law that does not allow felons serving time in jail to vote.
The prison system has long been used to enslave poor people and keep them from making a difference in the system. Many wealthy criminals can avoid imprisonment, thus keeping their voting rights. In most other countries, everyone in prison has the right to vote. It is important that we hear from all voices to represent the changes we need, including all races, classes and genders.
Sarah Furman
San Jose
Climate change driving
U.S. toward insolvency
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said something very important recently: The United States is exceeding its inflation targets heavily due to rising insurance costs, and a primary driver of rising insurance costs is the rising cost of protecting property from the increasing risks of climate change-related weather and heat.
This goes hand in hand with increased gentrification, inequality and the ongoing housing crisis. Yet the insurers continue to insure the fossil fuel industry.
Climate change is real, it’s impacting us here and now, and the impacts are only growing. To preserve our future, acting to reduce emissions now is crucial.
Mathew Clark
Campbell
AI threatens jobs
in creative fields
Many jobs in the creative field are actively at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence unless we start fighting for job security and bar the use of robots replacing human-curated jobs.
Why pay writers, artists and voice actors to do a job when ChatGPT, Dall-E and RVC can do it all for us at the click of a button? Why pay a person to do a job when a robot can do it for the cost of an electricity bill? Our capitalist society is replacing and will continue to replace all the jobs that utilize creative expression with computer-generated nonsense, and we’ll lose the humanity that goes into this work so billionaires can pay people even less than they already were being paid.
As a person in the creative field, I believe this is something that needs to be brought up and argued against. Jobs are going extinct.
Jordan Smith
San Jose
Trump is right to leave
abortion rules to states
Re: “Donald Trump gets it right on abortion” (Page A7, April 17).
“As a pro-life conservative, I get the disappointment. But Trump is right,” opined Marc Thiessen.
As a pro-choice independent, I too think that Trump got it right on abortion by “leaving it up to the states.”
Thiessen adds that Trump “is being honest with pro-life voters: Passing a 15-week federal abortion ban is not possible in Congress anytime soon.”
My question for pro-choice voters: “Do you think Biden was being honest when he promised during his State of the Union address that he would make the right to get an abortion a federal law?”
Even if the Senate were to get 60 votes to codify a position on abortion, SCOTUS could still overturn it.
Short of a constitutional amendment, abortion is a states’ rights issue, just like Trump said.
Irvin Dawid
Burlingame