I'd like to address the under-30 folks who resent having to buy insurance under the Affordable Care Act. They reason they think it is unfair is because they are young, healthy and unlikely to get sick.
Insurance works by spreading the risk over a population to keep down the costs for everyone. It's like this: Although I've never been in a serious accident, I'm required to have car insurance. Similarly, my 118-year-old wooden house has never caught fire, but we had to have fire insurance in order to get a bank loan.
And to those who think that they are being unfairly taxed by having to pay a penalty for not having insurance, I have this to say: I don't have children, yet I pay property taxes, a portion of which funds the schools. I do this willingly because an educated public is essential for society. The same is true for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act - affordable health care benefits us all.
With all due respect, Rep. Nancy Pelosi has it dead wrong on the best use for the mid-Crissy-Field site in the Presidio ("Pelosi endorses 'star attraction' at site," Dec. 20.
The Bay Area has never been a place primarily distinguished for the elevation of presumptuous and self-aggrandizing star attractions. Just the opposite. It's the place where the underpaint on a new bridge at the Golden Gate inadvertently created one of the most beloved destinations in the world, where a solitary John Muir following his heart and instincts into the wilderness sparked the environmental movement, where six poets in a marginal nightclub catalyzed the Beat Movement, and where two guys named Dave and Bill tinkering in a garage launched Silicon Valley.
Serendipity, freedom, passion, openness. Not one man's closed-in monument to himself. George Lucas might be an extraordinary filmmaker and merchandiser, but he is a quite ordinary collector with his own foibles and preferences. To allocate the heart of the most spectacular urban park in the nation to Lucas' private and grandiose whims, rather than to the Golden Gate Conservancy's democratic, vibrant and open town square, would be a short-sighted and obsequious attraction to a star rather than a star attraction - a mistake likely to reverberate sadly for generations.
I was shocked and appalled when I heard about the New Year's Day firebombing of the Chinese Consulate on Laguna Street ("S.F. Chinese Consulate hit by arsonists - no one hurt," Jan 3).
One-fourth of the city's citizens hail from China, and they must feel considerable anger about having their chief representative office get trashed like this. According to the story, the Police Department and FBI are taking this event very seriously and are making a maximum effort to bring the perpetrators to justice, as they should. This criminal act is an unfortunate blot on San Francisco's history of multiculturalism and its reputation for openness and inclusion, and needs to be firmly repudiated.
Are contracts meaningless to The Chronicle's editors ("The big pension battle ahead," Editorial, Dec. 31)? Are contracts meaningful to city administrators, like San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed, only as long as they are convenient?
I always believed that contracts were good-faith negotiations between parties that resulted in mutual understanding after, sometimes painful, compromises; neither side gets all it wants nor gives up all it needs.
Reed's potential ballot initiative would invalidate the negotiation process and impose one side's (his) solution. If he is successful, why would employee groups ever trust employers during bargaining if the follow-up strategy is to nullify objectionable portions. If Reed does not like provisions of San Jose's employee/employer contracts, he should try to make changes in the same way those provisions were decided - at the negotiating table.
The Chronicle's support to test Reed's idea to upend labor contracts is disappointing, as this is a thinly veiled partisan, antiworker effort. More disturbing is your approval of another attack on the already beleaguered middle-class.
Should this initiative reach the ballot, additional ones to limit the salary, perks and pensions of city administrators (and even newspaper editors) might follow.
In "Sunny Tahoe raises chilling drought fears" (Jan. 3), the 10-year-old who got the last word certainly had it right: Tahoe is "more fun with snow."
But the way this winter's tepid snowfall hurts Tahoe's fun factor isn't what worries me about this story. It appears that serious impacts of global warming have arrived at our doorstep, and unnaturally low snowpack isn't just bad news for skiers and snowboarders like myself: It could mean serious trouble for our crops and our drinking water.
California is a state that knows the cost of a drought. Just this year we watched the Yosemite Rim Fire decimate some of our state's most iconic landscapes. What will 2014 have in store for a drought-ridden California if we let global warming run unabated? Tackling a problem like this will take serious changes to the way we use oil and energy in this state and in this country.
For the future of ski season, the future of our farms and the health of our environment, our decision-makers must make tackling global warming their 2014 New Year's resolution.