Letters
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- Written by: Phil Murphy
If you were Jewish, you could have gone to one of the city’s 13 synagogues to celebrate Chanukah with the thousands of Jewish residents of the city.
Jews and Christians worship openly in Iran, and the growing Iranian Jewish population even has a representative in the Iranian parliament.
There were no Christmas celebrations in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, because it is a serious criminal offense to practice any religion besides Islam in Saudi Arabia and simply having a Christmas tree will land you in prison.
Saudi Arabia is a kingdom so there are no elections for their leader, and the news media is heavily controlled and censored, so if anyone protested these basic civil rights being violated you would probably never hear about it.
Strangely enough, Saudi Arabia is our ally and Iran is our advisory, even though our values are in most cases much closer to those held by Iranians than the Saudis.
In Yemen, we are told there is a proxy war between Iran and the Saudis, but the supposedly Iran-backed side has no air force, no navy and no Iranian troops helping them.
The Saudis have a naval blockade of the country, complete control of the airspace, and Saudi troops and tanks roam the Yemen countryside. Whatever support Iran is giving the rebels in Yemen must be very limited, though based on western news reports you would think they had bombers, warships and tanks like the Saudis are using.
Our relationship with the Saudis has always been hard to explain, because even though both Al Qaeda and ISIS were created, armed and funded by the Saudis, somehow Iran has been deemed the world’s biggest exporter of terrorism by our state department. It is even stranger when you consider that American and Iranian troops are both in Syria fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, our common enemies.
One can only imagine what the response would have been if the Iranians had lured one of their journalists to their embassy and dismembered him, at the least there would be sanctions and perhaps even a military attack, but for some reason the outrage against the Saudis never approached that level.
We do, however, complain that Iran is not a genuine democracy, which is even stranger when we routinely elect presidents who lose the popular vote and are instead installed by the electoral college.
It is also ironic that in 1953 America overthrew the democratically elected leader of Iran and installed a brutal dictator in his place, and the irony is heightened by our complaints that the Arab world has so few democracies. It is also ironic that we claim to believe in democracy but have so often worked to subvert it and replace it with dictatorships, like was done in Egypt.
American foreign policy in the Middle East has been a consistent failure but for some reason we are unable to learn from our mistakes or change course as the recent reaction to the plan to leave Syria has shown, even the idea of leaving Afghanistan after 17 years of fruitless combat still raises howls of protest from “experts” and pundits-not to mention politicians.
We can either continue to accept failure or we can choose friends based on something besides “they give us a good deal on oil,” because with friends like the Saudis who needs enemies?
Phil Murphy lives in Lakeport, Calif.
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- Written by: Ed Calkins
He got a gift coming into office of $16 billion in excess (more tax revenue than expected). The budget indicates he can spend this on almost anything he wants. His bean counters project the excess will grow to $21 billion in 2019 thanks to our improved economy.
The same state has the highest fuel tax in the country (including diesel tax used in trucks to deliver our food and everything else) and last year it was significantly increased, along with increasing the highest DMV vehicle fees in the country.
During the recent election there was an opportunity to repeal these latest increases, California spent tens of millions on TV time so our last governor (aka Moonbeam) could explain over and over and over that if you did not vote these taxes back in, the state could not fix the potholes and make the roads safe. We sheep responded and saved the tax, who wants unsafe roads?
The increase adds another $52 billion in fuel taxes and vehicle fees over the next 10 years allowing California to initially spend $6 billion on roads annually (or on whatever they can tie to improving transportation for us, aka bullet train). Such road repairs have been in the budget all along. And the surplus could have fixed the roads.
Our overtaxed young families are unable to afford housing in areas with lots of jobs, and unable to afford fuel to commute between affordable housing and available jobs. Our state expects this excessive taxation to force them to buy electric cars which most young families do not want and such vehicles do not meet their needs or their limited budgets.
This letter is already too long to explain how else your taxation funds California’s noble goals of changing the planet’s climate.
My confusion (and conclusion): We have surpluses that exceed the entire budget of some states that fix their potholes, yet we overtax our young families and drive them out of the state to fix our potholes. Why? Please explain.
Ed Calkins lives in Kelseyville, Calif.
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