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Poultry, meat recall
a testament to waste
Re: “Poultry, meat are subjected to recall” (Page A2, Oct. 11).
I wonder how many animals led a tortured life and then were needlessly killed to total 10 million pounds of meat? How much land was wasted growing their millions of pounds of feed? How much water and fuel was wasted, and air and water pollution created — needlessly?
A slap on the wrist for BrucePac does not serve justice for the four-month “lapse” that allowed such waste and disregard for public health and safety. Perhaps the only saving grace is that the announcement to the public was so delayed that many of those animals were actually eaten before consumers knew there was a problem and there were no reports of illness.
Elizabeth Fisher
Pleasant Hill
Newsom’s calls for
unity are conditional
Re: “Newsom prepares for Trump skirmishes” (Page A1, Nov. 8).
It’s good to see that Gov. Gavin Newsom is all in on uniting our country.
It only took him a day to announce he was planning to “resist” the upcoming Trump administration.
During the infamous COVID lockdowns, the Newsom team kept admonishing us that “we’re all in this together,” but apparently not this time.
Mike Heller
Walnut Creek
Harris lost because she
ran on empty words
Kamala Harris deserved to lose because she did nothing to excite tens of millions of people hungering for real change. Donald Trump, however, did not deserve to win. Only in a morally bankrupt, corrupt, vicious world could a constantly lying, narcissistic, authoritarian, convicted felon deserve to win. Perhaps such is our world.
It is demoralizing how cowardly and arrogant the Democratic Party is. To offer people nothing but (deserved) criticism of the other candidate, and then expect their votes, is dumb. Had Harris strongly supported taxing the rich, cutting the military budget, cutting arms to Israel, Medicare-for-All, she would have won decisively. Instead, she spent a billion dollars running a smiley-face, empty phrases, say-nothing-meaningful campaign, and emphatically lost.
The Democratic Party should be put out of its misery. Instead, in an imitation-is-the-sincerest-form-of-flattery mode, it most likely will jerk further right and hasten the country’s downward spiral.
Keith Nakatani
Oakland
Leave grief behind
and resist Trump
Re: “Trump’s second term could realign US diplomacy toward authoritarian leaders” (Nov. 7).
It is hard to believe that half of our country voted for an authoritarian, misogynistic, racist, sickeningly incompetent and morally corrupt person because they think the price of food might go down.
This is not only about Donald Trump or what his hateful and vicious rhetoric has unleashed. It’s about our country: a belief that a woman should not be president; it’s about fear-mongering race-based hatred, and deeply rooted dehumanization of immigrants.
This vote is a backlash against being a multicultural society, against women having control over their bodies, against LGBTQ rights, against the regulations that are in place to combat global warming and so much more.
Although we are fearful and filled with grief, despair is a privilege we can’t afford for too long. We need to resist deportations and more to come that will attempt to erode our fragile experiment in democracy.
Micky Duxbury
Berkeley
American is facing
a dreadful future
Here is how I see post-election America.
We have a president-elect who regards himself above everything else. He does not appreciate democracy and openly idolizes despots.
He appears consumed with retribution and has already signaled his intent to use the Justice Department as a weapon.
He’ll have a majority in both houses of Congress, filled with sycophants and others afraid to disagree with him. He’ll enjoy immunity from prosecution that no president ever had or needed, which seems like it was tailor-made for him.
We already have a Supreme Court that doesn’t seem to care about the appearance of graft and malfeasance.
Legitimate news is widely regarded as fake, and dubious news is regarded as real. The same is true of science. Truth itself seems to have lost its usefulness.
I have a feeling of dread about America’s future that I have never felt before. I hope I’m wrong.
Jim Peterson
Walnut Creek
Will media narrative
change to Dems’ doom?
For years media-anointed experts, academics and editorial writers have been writing that if Republicans continued to embrace Donald Trump it would destroy the Republican Party and reduce it to permanent minority status.
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Now, in 2024, there are more registered Republicans than registered Democrats, Donald Trump is president-elect again, Republicans will control the Senate, and will probably control the House. There are also six conservative Supreme Court justices. So I have to wonder what else these experts have been wrong about.
If these experts want to regain a shred of credibility, they will start writing articles about how, if the Democrats continue to embrace left-wing progressive policies it will destroy the Democratic Party and reduce it to permanent minority status. But I doubt they will.
Bill McGregor
Berkeley