No more light rail

The K Street corridor will never return to its quaint and people-friendly shopping because the light-rail tracks run down the middle of the street. Long-gone businesses won't return as the area is no longer desirable because panhandlers and thugs ride the rails (hop on, hop off) making it feel unsafe and unpleasant for shoppers.

RT is planning to move a station around the corner … wonder why? How much is that going to cost taxpayers? Will moving the station have any positive effect on keeping the undesirables from the mall? Why are we taxpayers allowing this drain of our tax dollars to continue? We've seen K Street become a cesspool, yet we haven't done anything to change it. It is our city leaders and RT together who are responsible for cramming this outdated and costly rail transit down our throats. Light rail is not the answer to mass transit or public transit.

We're being led down a path of further destruction from fixed rail lines that destroy businesses and residential areas abutting them, and our taxes will continue to be needed to offset the operating cost losses.

No more light rail, period.

– Joan Toomire, Sacramento

Where is Republican prudence?

There was a time when Republicans were known for moderation and fiscal prudence. When things got tight, you cut spending and raised taxes; Ronald Reagan did it as California governor in 1967, and Pete Wilson did it in 1991.

Pete Wilson also signed the law stipulating that the car tax would return to the previous level when state revenues declined. How do the Republicans justify not increasing the car tax? Gov. Schwarzenegger has suggested raising the sales tax. How do Republicans justify a regressive tax that disproportionally punishes poor and middle-income people? Instead, we should adopt a severance tax on oil from California. We are the only one of 22 oil-producing states that does not tax this nonrenewable resource.

How do the Republicans justify taking money from light-rail transportation and using it for the general budget but refusing to raise the highway gas tax? The gas tax was last increased in 1994. California's gas tax, at 18 cents a gallon, is tied for dead last (with Alabama). This under-investment is unsafe and has led to California having the second-worst road conditions in the nation.

Pete Wilson should speak up and remind his party that they used to be known for moderation and fiscal prudence.

– Leonard Thomas, Antelope

Facts undermine Delta assertion

Much like the Bush administration used the tragedy of 911 perpetrated by al-Qaida in Afghanistan to justify the invasion of Iraq, Laura King Moon in her Forum article of Dec. 21 ("Many Delta regulations miss the mark") is using the hardships of the recession (caused by subprime lending and the housing collapse) to justify environmentally destructive water exports from the Delta.

Moon implies that this year's water export reductions to farms is increasing unemployment in Mendota (outside Fresno) and driving families to the food bank. However, a look at the data reveals a very different story.

The most recent employment report released by the state EDD shows the farm sector in Fresno County actually added 200 jobs over the past year, while nonfarm jobs in Fresno County declined by 4,000. Construction, real estate and wholesale/retail trade account for 3,600 lost jobs in the past year, directly tied to the subprime mortgage crisis and resulting recession.

Since the housing peak, about 5,000 construction jobs have been lost in Fresno County, devastating communities like Mendota. Meanwhile, farming has been the second-fastest growing sector in the county, trailing only health care.

– Jeff Michael

Director, Business Forecasting Center,

University of the Pacific, Stockton

Bush plan hurts workers

Ruben Navarrette's column of Dec. 21 ("Unions hate guest worker plan") ignores fallout from President George W. Bush's eleventh hour changes in the H2A agricultural guest worker program: Gutting labor protections and worsening already poor conditions for imported farmworkers.