|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Do right by the community
After reading about the El Camino Healthcare District’s plans to purchase five medical clinics in the region (“Hospital board votes to buy five South Bay clinics,” Feb. 22), I find it odd that the board won’t agree to carry over the current employees. As a health care worker, I know how important it is to have employees who are familiar and trusted by the patients. Without that bond, patient care suffers.
There’s no reason for the health care district to abandon those workers who have been dedicated to their patients for so many years. I’m a taxpayer in the district and I want the board to do right by the community: Retain the employees and continue providing excellent patient care. Anything less than that will only create problems for everyone.
Jesus Cortes
Escuela Avenue
Hospital clinics purchase
As a taxpayer supported group, the El Camino Healthcare District should care about something more than the bottom line. Mountain View residents finance the district’s operations, yet the board is acting like it owes nothing to the community as part of buying these clinics.
I expect the El Camino Healthcare District to operate in the public’s interest, and that means providing accessible, affordable and quality health care. So far, the board refuses to keep the current clinic employees. This sends a conflicting message to me.
I am one of those affected workers. My clinic is being purchased by the health care district. With no plan to retain workers like me and fellow coworkers, we have great uncertainty and unease.
Our patients already trust us. They deserve excellent continued care provided by experienced workers who deserve to retain their positions. The community will benefit from this. And now the board needs to honor its obligations to the community.
Irene Reiko Yoshida
Ada Avenue
Green New Deal
Recently a number of young future leaders met with Senator Dianne Feinstein to urge her to support Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey’s joint resolution for a Green New Deal.
Feinstein attempted a head fake, advocating a watered-down bill that would fall far short of what is needed to avoid what scientists overwhelmingly agree is a looming planetary catastrophe.
Given the senator’s long-standing allegiance to her corporate donor base, I was not at all surprised by her statements. But this exchange did make me realize that the Green New Deal vote is a key marker that will reveal which Democrats are ready to take the bold action required to ensure our planet’s survival, and which Democrats need to be shown the door.
We just need to look around to see things quickly falling apart. Our fellow citizens in poor and disenfranchised communities like Flint, Michigan, have long been suffering from fouled water and air. But even those fortunate to live in affluence in the Bay Area won’t be shielded from rolling global disaster. We have seen this just last winter, when smoke from the Camp Fire clouded our skies and choked us.
Scientists estimate that 150 to 200 plant, insect, bird and mammal species become extinct every 24 hours. This is nearly 1,000 times the “natural” or “background” rate. For these reasons we need to put a stop to regime change wars and maintenance of military empire. We need to start supporting legislation like the Green New Deal so that we can ensure our continued existence as a species, as well as deliver economic justice for our fellow citizens who have been getting the shaft for far too long.
Chris Bedford
Hamilton Avenue
“Green New Deal” (March 3) included a number of important reasons we need a Green New Deal. Here are a few more. Without massive greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2030 we will risk “catastrophic” global warming which will cause “global economic collapse” followed by “societal collapse” (National Academy of Sciences, IPCC),
The good news is that the Green New Deal can achieve net-zero emissions by that 2030 deadline. It will also create 15 million good-paying, local, permanent (40-year) jobs (Stanford University’s solutionsproject.org).
The GND can even reverse global warming by using best farming and grazing practices to enrich our soil and turn it into a massive carbon sink. This will be a game changer. We won’t be stuck for millennia with the extreme storms, wildfires, floods droughts, etc., that we’re beginning to experience. Climate disasters just from 2016-18 have cost US taxpayers over $450 billion (NOAA).
Unchecked global warming will costs hundreds of trillions. Just a half-degree rise in global temperatures ill cost $54 trillion (National Academy of Sciences). We can’t afford not to have the Green New Deal.
Once again, those who want to commit economic suicide and drag the rest of us with you in the name of “saving the planet” are at it again.
I have had it with repeated fear-mongering of the left regarding the climate. As I was growing up, it was global cooling and the new ice age being brought on by human activity. Then, thirty years later, it was global warming and we were all going down in a ball of flame. Now, they have decided to just call it “climate change” so their bases are covered whatever direction the thermometer goes that year. The sacrifice of truth for power is all too obvious.
The facts as reported by NPR is that if the US went with this GND (if it were even remotely possible to do, which it is not), the very best that could be done for the global temperature by 2100 would be a temperature decline of 0.2 degree. The cost? Millions of jobs and millions of lives in the process.
Global poverty has been in a decline for decades because of development of jobs directly related to increased energy access. How many people are you willing to kill or impoverish for that 0.2 degree?
As for the GND, what complete and utter hogwash (which I am sure would be banned because it emits too much methane). It’s not about the planet. It’s about all the other garbage attached to that ludicrous proposal.
And one other small detail. The US is not the country causing the most global pollution. That honor is held by China and, before long, I project that India will pass the US to capture second place. Those countries have upwards of a billion inhabitants each, all hoping to become conspicuous consumers. If you think either of those places is going to commit economic suicide, you are seriously misguided. They will continue the use of what fuel sources will ensure the advancement of their economy. Until they are convinced to curb THEIR consumption, the GND is worth less than the paper it’s printed on.