Letters for December 29, 2016

Open the books

Re “Railroaded” by Scott Thomas Anderson (SN&R News, December 22):

I don’t think [Darrell] Steinberg cares more about the homeless now than he did when we both served on the Sacramento Army Depot Re-use Commission and he made zero effort to support the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 pursuant to the Base Closure Community Redevelopment and Homeless Assistance Act of 1994, which was supposed to put homeless assistance at the top of the list. Instead, I observed Steinberg, then a councilman, focusing on economic development for profit. More recently, we observed him carry special legislation so that K.J.’s downtown arena could get more public funding even after Sacramento voters had made it clear that was not what they wanted. If developers claim they can’t afford to build housing that the working class can afford to buy as well as rent, then they should have to open their books and prove it.

Muriel Strand

Elk Grove

A political slap

Re “The Grinch who stole 2016” by Scott Thomas Anderson, Karlos Rene Ayala, Janelle Bitker, Blake Gillespie, Raheem F. Hosseini, Rachel Leibrock, Nick Miller and Anthony Siino (SN&R Feature Story, December 22):

Raheem F. Hosseini is trying to explain to SN&R readers how half of American voters were akin to insidious aliens for having voted for Donald Trump. The point he makes is that 29 out of 50 states just got it flat wrong, and America as we knew it over the past eight years should have been obviously extended for another four years, by having elected Obama in drag, i.e. Hilary Clinton.

The point he obviously misses, or is in denial about, is that America needed to change from an establishment government back to one for the people—all people, not just for the people who already like the way this country is. This presidential election result was a slap in the face to all the people who were in love with the politically correct status quo.

Roy Edwards

Rocklin

Camera truth

Re “Red light, greenbacks” by John Flynn (SN&R News, December 15):

One of the advantages to cameras is that they don’t discriminate by income or color, which officers are prone to do. Yes, it is probably true that drivers going straight through a red signal cause more serious crashes, but right-turning vehicles cause crashes, and equally as important, they intimidate pedestrians. If a driver can’t stop by the stop line, then they can’t stop for a pedestrian, and they are creating a real danger. If there were a way of doing automated enforcement on failure to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk, that would be good, but since there isn’t, and there is almost no enforcement of this law anyway, then red-light violations are a good stand-in.

Dan Allison

Sacramento