Jun 4, 2008

Letters

High-speed rail

Dear Editor: I was excited to read Tom Elias' column, Monday about high-speed rail in California. He makes it sound as though these rail corridors are nearly a sure thing and that the last detail is how they will be financed. I sincerely hope that high-speed rail is finally on track here. It is certainly overdue.

Financing, however, is a big obstacle. It will be very difficult to pay for the investment from revenue without a significant change in California's attitude toward rail transportation. In the other areas that Elias cites, Europe and Japan, the high-speed rail routes are just the tip of the rail transit pyramid. For every TGV or Shinkansen, there is a whole network of regular-speed trains that everybody uses on a common, everyday basis. In Japan, the JR network was developed as a national imperative before being substantially privatized and producing what is now several layers of high-speed Shinkansen.

We should make it a state priority to build a passenger rail infrastructure. We need a master plan and a commitment to its success to provide an overall transit capability for the whole state - Redding, Chico and even Eureka, not just Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco and Sacramento. If we provide the rail network as a practical alternative to automobiles and airplanes, revenue-financed high-speed rail is a strong possibility and could be a practical alternative, not just a toy for the few.

It is an embarrassment that California, with a comparable size to Japan and similarly constrained corridors, has almost no rail capability while Japan has a thriving, technologically advancing rail system that provides the population with safe, speedy, comfortable and convenient transportation.

Let's seize the moment, and build a high-speed rail system as the logical consequence to an overall transit infrastructure.

Bill Rosenberg,

Palo Alto



School rankings

Dear Editor: To extend Patrick Mattimore's basketball analogy (guest opinion, Sunday), wouldn't Newsweek's high school ranking system not be based on the number of shot attempts, but instead by the price of admission into the game? Because it certainly is not free. Without taking into account the affluence that allows these schools that perennially place atop these lists to offer AP courses and lure top-level talent to teach them, these rankings boil down to little more than "America's Richest Schools." A normalized measure would be much more informative and constructive. By dividing each school's raw score by the median household income of its city or town, we would calculate a true measure of each school's performance. Which schools are doing the most with what they have? That should be the benchmark of a good school.

A product of the Palo Alto Unified School District myself, I can say that this "better than" culture of rankings is toxic and serves no worthwhile purpose. Rather than spending our time griping our entitled way up a few rungs of this meaningless (and obviously slanted) ladder, our time would be better spent in search of opportunities to help the less fortunate school districts in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Or at the very least, let us not lose sight of the fact that our children are blessed with extraordinary opportunities in Palo Alto Unified, no matter where we rank.

Ben Goltz,

Palo Alto



Gray Davis and the recall

Dear Editor: I read with interest Tom Elias' musings [Friday] over whether our state would be better off having not recalled Gray Davis. Personally, I'm ambivalent. We'd be $20 billion overspent regardless of who was governor. What I do find amusing is Elias' prior insistence that he played a central role in the recall of Davis, stating "the Davis recall, for instance, began with one of my columns. Documented." This reader would like a clarification on whether Elias is either insane or a compulsively dishonest partisan of a magnitude unseen in this reader's lifetime.

Joe Kozocas,

Fremont



Presidential campaign

Dear Editor: I am a 16-year-old sophomore at Gunn High School. I was born in Brazil and moved to the United States in 1998. I am looking forward to voting in my first election in two years. When my mother was my age in Brazil. there was a dictatorship and people did not have the privilege of voting for their leaders. It disappoints me that the Democratic Party candidates are more concerned with attacking each other than discussing the important topics. I feel that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton seem to only be talking about each other's negatives instead of talking about the issues. It also seems to me they are only interested in becoming their party's candidate rather than helping our country. What kind of impression are they presenting to us young Americans and to all the people abroad who are following this election?

Julia Schubert,

Gunn High School



Mideast conflict

Dear Editor: If only Israel and the Palestinian majorities could both control their extremists as Gilwee Walker suggests [Letters, May 5]. Israel does control hers. The Palestinians can't control theirs.

Many people fail to understand the difference between a "free" society and what former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky calls a "fear" society. Israel and America are free societies. All points of view are hotly debated in our press and media. We can publicly disagree with elected leaders. None of us are afraid we'll be hauled off to jail or worse for speaking our minds in the Daily News or the Jerusalem Post. If you were living in the Arab world and sent letters to newspapers in Gaza or any Arab cities calling for reining in Islamic extremists or (God forbid) recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, your life and likely that of your family would soon be threatened. You are equating the ability of a society that is free and fighting annihilation threats from its neighbors to a society that is oppressed by its own leadership.

It's true the Palestinians held elections. But without freedom of speech and a free press it doesn't do them much good. The people under the duly elected Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaderships have no alternative but to abide by the concept of blaming Israel for all that ails them.

Sheree Roth,

Palo Alto



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Dear Editor: All Americans should take issue with Michael Barton's distorted perspective on Hamas (Letters, June 3). It is more appropriate for us to compare Israel in 1948 to America in 1776.

Does Barton think that our founders are like Hamas?

Hamas is an organization that thrives on a culture of hatred. The Haganah, Irgun and Stern Gang were fighting the injustice of not allowing Jews to settle in Palestine. Their fight was for Jewish refugees trying to escape persecution and death in Europe. Like our Founding Fathers, these Jewish groups were fighting for freedom and opposing tyranny.

Hamas teaches their children to hate Jews and to kill as many men, women and children as possible. The founders of Israel fought soldiers when it came to the British and terrorists when it came to the Arabs, like those that slit the throats of Jewish children in Hebron.

Furthermore, Barton's inflammatory distortions and propaganda actually impede making progress in obtaining peace in the Middle East.

Howard Roth,

South San Francisco