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Re: “Policy could be costly to the state” (Page A1, Nov. 30).
The CalMatters article pointing out how devastating mass deportations would be to our economy is valuable to a point. Most tragic would be the human toll with Donald Trump’s plan for deportations modeled after President Eisenhower’s 1953-54 program “Operation Wetback,” named with an ethnic slur and that Trump praises.
I am old enough to remember it. People died. Human rights were violated. Hispanics were rounded up in raids, put on buses and in trucks, hauled deep into Mexico without due process and dumped. An unknown number of Hispanic U.S. citizens were swept up in the raids and deported. News headlines and stories daily humiliated the victims.
As a 10-year-old boy then, I’ve never forgotten this disgrace. The prospect of repeating it 70 years later is horrifying.
Tom Debley
Walnut Creek
Re: “DOGE cost-cutting billionaires are dangerously out of touch” (Page A12, Dec. 1).
Having just read LZ Granderson’s article critiquing the new DOGE cost-cutting program, I have two points to make.
First, we don’t know what they are planning to do yet, but Granderson is already making the assumption that they don’t understand the issues of lower-income and poor people. If they begin with Citizens Against Government Waste proposals (long a source of egregious waste in the federal government), they will have plenty to focus on that is not impactful.
Second, he suggests that even as Donald Trump and company enjoy McDonald’s food, Granderson says, “for a lot of poor people, it’s what they can afford.” I maintain that healthy grocery food is a much better deal for health and your wallet. McDonald’s is a treat.
Denise Kalm
Walnut Creek
Re: “Democrats are the new threat to democracy” (Page A6, Nov. 26).
The writer of this letter apparently believes that the plans of Democratic state governors to oppose the policies of Donald Trump in his second term constitute a threat to democracy.
Need I point out that the United States is a federal republic with a Constitution that gives limited powers to the central government and reserves the remaining powers to the states? If there is a threat to democracy here, perhaps it is in the intention to pre-empt the states exercising their constitutional powers.
Or do “States’ Rights” only apply when a Democrat is president?
Merlin Dorfman
Livermore
