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Re: “Report blasts animal shelter” (Page A1, Dec. 11).
The recent article about the San Jose animal shelter highlights what advocates have been saying for years: Shelter leadership is failing its mission.
While overcapacity is a challenge, much of it stems from mismanagement. Shelter leadership cut vital rescue partnerships, failed to establish basic procedures, created a toxic work environment that led to high staff turnover, neglected inventory management and ignored medical oversight — even as animals suffered. As a long-time volunteer, I’ve seen these failures firsthand.
Despite the dismal FY22-23 results, management doubled down on bad decisions. Whether out of hubris or incompetence, the outcome was the same — more suffering and deaths. Now, the same team is tasked with addressing 39 audit recommendations. This is unacceptable.
I am outraged by the continued suffering of innocent animals. As a taxpayer, I’m appalled by the waste of resources. San Jose’s animals deserve competent, compassionate leadership — immediately.
Lyne Lamoureux
San Jose
Re: “BART should cut routes, charge riders” (Page A6, Dec. 13).
Thomas Baker poses the rhetorical question, “Why should I pay for something I don’t use?” in the context of the BART financing debate. And that, in a nutshell, captures exactly what’s wrong with the “me century,” also known as the 21st century.
The question on everyone’s mind is what’s in it for me, not how can we work together to help each other out. To speak to Baker’s specific issue, we all benefit from less congestion on the roadways, from better air and water quality when people use mass transit instead of single rider vehicles to less stress caused by rush hour mania.
There are forces at work in a wide range of critical issues facing this country — environmental protection, health care, education, income inequality, global warming — that are driven by this narrow-minded, me-first mentality. We will all be the worse for it if we succumb to these forces.
Eugene Ely
San Jose
Re: “Trump’s Cabinet choices show #MeToo is over” (Page A7, Dec. 13).
We must remember that Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are job applicants, not defendants in a court of law. These allegations would disqualify them from getting any job at any place I ever worked. Remember when paying a maid off the books disqualified someone from a Cabinet job? When lying about drug use was used to go after Hunter Biden? Justice Kavanaugh got a lifetime appointment despite credible accusations that would’ve been inconceivable a decade ago.
I only hope a couple of GOP senators have any sense of decency and propriety and stop these insane nominations.
Ronald Cohen
Palo Alto
Fishermen use flashy lures to fool fish into thinking there is a delicious meal on offer. Instead, the fish itself becomes the delicious meal.
People who voted for Donald Trump resemble those fish; falling for the outrageous lies and half-baked promises, they will soon be gutted by cuts to the social safety net and to regulations that have ensured safe food and water and a chance to avoid heat death from accelerating climate change.
The lures worked and we are all the poorer for them.
Ed Taub
Mountain View
Everyone knows that our next president loves gold. More than his hoard of gold, he loves the golden rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”
His new best friend, Elon Musk, has more “gold” than anyone else in the universe. And while you can’t yet use it to buy elections, as a result of Citizens United you can buy election campaigns.
So, for a minuscule fraction of Musk’s wealth, the next leader of the free world can systematically replace practically any politician who shows insufficient fealty and allegiance to him with others who do.
And this could be how our democracy ends.
Barry Bronson
Saratoga
Re: “Israel is aiming to shatter Gaza” (Page A6, Dec. 13).
I found Jerry Gudeman’s letter to be misinformed and misguided.
The most egregious assertion was that the Oct. 7 attack was inevitable. That attack included the murder of children, rape of women, torture, murder of civilians, and kidnapping of children and the elderly. No state action makes these unspeakable acts tolerable.
Gudeman’s bias is clearly indicated by his characterization of the killing of the World Central Kitchen workers as “intentional.” The WCK itself acknowledged that the attack was a military error.
Richard Kroll
San Jose
