Signal chat: ‘The lies began in rapid fire’

Call me old fashioned. I remember days when government officials disagreed with criticism in a civil manner. Considered to be a respected part of the government, they acted with decorum. That behavior is now a relic of the past that will molder on the shelves of history. Faced with a serious security breach of their making, top intelligence officers acted with no decorum and a new standard of behavior was born. In the now famous Signal chat, confronted with the undeniable truth of their error, they attacked the messenger. They disputed Jeffrey Goldberg’s very credible findings, insulted, demeaned and discredited him and his magazine while taking no responsibility for their actions.

Then the lies began in rapid fire starting with the vice president’s tweet. Various members on the chat ran to Fox News to begin distortions, bile and spin. Sadly, their most egregious act is the insult to the intelligence of most Americans when, in the glaring lights of the truth, they say what was, wasn’t.

Unfortunately they are learning from an expert, Trump.

— Christine DeLapp, Aptos

SC residents shouldn’t sign housing petition

Excuse me? Trustees for the Santa Cruz County Board of Education have unanimously sponsored a measure in Santa Cruz that only property owners in the city of Santa Cruz are paying for (Letter, March 26)? Not Soquel, not Capitola, not Scotts Valley, not Live Oak, not Watsonville, just Santa Cruz.

The Santa Cruz Workforce Housing Affordability Act sounds generous for teachers but read the full language. It allows Santa Cruz to frivolously spread money around to any of the social programs they have used over the years to kick the housing can down the road. Housing is a regional problem; one city should not have to shoulder the burden alone.

Fellow Santa Cruzans, don’t sign the petition.

— Jim Bentley, Santa Cruz

Praise for Supervisor De Serpa’s pro-trail position

Many heartfelt thanks to our new Supervisor Kim De Serpa for taking a courageous pro-trail position for her constituents.

A safe, continuous, wide, multi-use trail without rail would cost far less, serve more people and be more effective in reducing car trips. Let’s rail bank and put a trail in!

— Andrea Miller, Seacliff, Aptos

Train a ‘financial black hole’; end this ‘fiasco’

The county Regional Transportation Commission just can’t get past its commitment to an electric train despite a nearly $1 billion estimate to repair or replace 28 bridges and overpasses. This does not include the actual trains, new rails, widening right of ways, parking lots at the stops or any consideration of the economic feasibility of the whole project and cost of ridership.

With BART struggling with reduced ridership and higher costs and a poorly executed high speed rail built not from both ends to the middle, but from the middle of nowhere to somewhere else why should Santa Cruz sign on to a similar financial black hole?

Time to put an end to this fiasco.

— Cliff Bixler, Bonny Doon

Homelessness just a symptom of greater issue

In his March 22 commentary, Dan Walters contends the reason the problem of homelessness has not been solved is because the problem has not been adequately defined, goals have not been identified nor have the resources, and logistics required to achieve to those unidentified goals. This, of course, is wrong primarily because homelessness is not a problem. Homelessness is but a symptom of a problem.

In 1980 there were no billionaires in the U.S. Today there are well over 1,000 with just three possessing more wealth than the bottom 47% of the population.

Automation and the outsourcing of good paying jobs to low labor foreign job markets were a great benefit to the GNP but a benefit enjoyed only by corporate executives and shareholders.

Further reductions to the already historically low tax rates for corporations and the ultra-wealthy will come at the expense of social programs intended to help the nation’s needy. It is a virtual certainty the unhoused population will grow and there is precious little any mayor or governor can do to change that.

— Michael Funari, Santa Cruz

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