A new secession candidate

Re "Perry takes heat for Fed comments" (Page A10, Aug. 17): Gov. Rick Perry's accusation that Federal Reserve policies were "treasonous" is clearly ridiculous, but I cannot understand why he is being taken seriously as a candidate at all. It was only a couple of years ago that he supported the movement to have Texas secede from the Union. Has anyone bothered to find out whether, if elected president of the United States, he plans to break up the set?

– Doug Purdy, Roseville

A new, old view on vacations

Golly gee, a president is on a 25-day vacation when the unemployment rate is over 9 percent. Why did President Barack Obama do it? Well, he didn't; it was President Ronald Reagan in August 1983.

– Frederick W. Nichols, Sacramento

UC librarians got no raises

Re "Raises in store for many UC staff, faculty members" (Capitol in brief, Aug. 18): The story implies that nonrepresented employees have not had increases in the last four years while represented employees have received increases. UC librarians are represented and have not had a salary adjustment for more than seven years. Currently our salaries lag more than 20 percent behind librarians in the CSU system.

In addition, librarians, like the rest of the UC employees, have taken on significant workload increases. In my own department in Shields Library at UC Davis we currently have two librarians, down from four in the last eight months. We are significantly understaffed and we are significantly underpaid.

Because we had the temerity to ask to bargain about our salaries, UC decided to punish librarians by withholding merit increases that have been awarded recently. These merit increases reflect the hard work that fewer and fewer librarians are taking on to support the University of California. I find President Mark Yudof's letter to be hypocritical and disingenuous.

– Axel E. Borg, West Sacramento, president, UC-AFT Local 2023

Teach all sides on plastic bags

Re "Plastic bag lobby shapes textbooks" (Page A1, Aug. 19): Hold the outrage, please. It is the job of textbook designers to present both sides of politically charged topics, including environmental issues. Plastic grocery bags are inexpensive, convenient and enormously popular. Every word proposed in their defense is true. But students may never get to read these or many other facts about environmental controversies if the environmental establishment is allowed to suppress arguments they think students should never hear.

– Paul Duer, Placerville

GOP models bad faith

Re "Bad luck? Bad faith? Obama battles with mythical monsters" (Viewpoints, Aug. 19): This column is one of the most cynical and hypocritical I have ever read. Charles Krauthammer accuses President Barack Obama of denying "legitimacy to those on the other side of" issues.

But when Obama's health care proposal was debated, it transmogrified into death squads for grandmas and the death knell of the insurance industry. When Obama rescued GM and Chrysler, he became the power-grabbing communist. When Obama wanted to eliminate tax cuts for the rich, it was part of the socialist-democratic transformational agenda.

GOP politicians have openly declared that they will oppose any of Obama's proposals. Almost all have vowed to oppose all tax increases. It is the GOP position that "obviates argument, fact logic, history." Krauthammer is a political hack and intellectual hypocrite.

The absolute refusal to compromise by the GOP is basically a tyranny of ideas, a dictatorship of political will, a suppression of all political opposition.

– Kuo Liang Yu, Carmichael

Extending life goes too far

Re "Study: Drug extends life span of obese mice" (Page A10, Aug. 19): This drug is unnecessary. Currently there is an effective treatment for obesity, cirrhosis, some cancers, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes, osteoporosis, knee and hip joint replacements, etc. What is it? Leading a healthy life.

Lifestyle health problems that require decades of "sick care" are an unfair burden on others who must pay for it. The key is a life free of self-inflicted health problems, followed by a brief period of disability, and then a quick death. We cannot support the current system of trying to cure dying through the marginal extension of the lives of the very sick. Even the best health does not exclude death.

– Marvin H. Philo, Sacramento

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