Labor advocate left out key details on Reed
“Reed’s bad policies will take San Jose years to overcome.” That’s the headline above an oped (Opinion, Nov. 30) written by Bob Brownstein, who is identified as “director of policy and research at Working Partnerships USA.” The identification should have added that Brownstein has long been the eloquent mouthpiece for the South Bay Labor Council and that the so called “Working Partnerships” is today intimately tied to the union. The oped also failed to tell us what preceded San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s so-called bad policies. Those policies have been a gutsy effort to prevent our city from sliding into a bankruptcy made almost inevitable by the ever-escalating pensions that Reed inherited from a city council dominated then by members supported by our author’s South Bay Labor Council. The author of the oped might have improved his commentary by telling the whole story.
Bob Kieve
Owner and commentator KLIV San Jose
East Side doesn’t buy BART station reality
While I appreciate BART and VTA reaching out to the East Side community, my take away was that there is no identified funding vehicle for the 28th street/Alum Rock station. While it remains “part of the plan,” only the Santa Clara and Diridon stations are included in the federal grant application.
VTA will have to rely on improved projections to Measure A and unspecified sources to make 28th Street a reality. Sorry, but the East Side doesn’t believe in the Tooth Fairy.
Jeff Markham
San Jose
Prime hospital plan makes the most sense
The Daughters of Charity Health System has been struggling financially for a long time. The most important thing right now is to see that they are given the financial care needed so they can continue to support the communities they serve. What people are forgetting is that Prime pledged to invest $150 million, protect jobs and pensions, and keep the hospitals open. That is no small commitment. SEIU wants people to believe that Prime is going to close hospitals and get rid of jobs, which is untrue. What’s their solution? They wanted DCHS leadership to go with another bidder, who was far less qualified, to pander to their own interests. That’s bad for the hospitals and bad for our communities.
David Crowley
San Jose
San Jose High has dedicated, caring staff
Scott Herhold (Page 1B, Nov. 26) writes, “to the parents of the Downtown College Prep kids, San Jose High is precisely the sort of school that they want to get away from.” I question whether they have gotten to know what sort of school San Jose High really is.
San Jose High is not my neighborhood school, but it is precisely the sort of school that I want to send my children to. Many parents get inter-district transfers so their children can also attend SJHS.
San Jose High has a dedicated and caring staff that prepares students for academic success. Students from the 2014 graduating class have gone on to attend UC Berkeley, Cornell, Barnard, Rhode Island School of Design, NYU, Duke, Cal Poly, UCLA and many other top schools.
This misconception of San Jose High only prevents other students from taking advantage of what this wonderful school has to offer.
Ruthann Eaton
San Jose High School parent San Jose
Defense attorneys have obligation, too
Reflecting on Daniel Mayfield’s column (Opinion, Dec. 2): I have been asked during every one of my 32 years of defending people accused of crime how I can possibly live with myself, especially when I know of, or the evidence strongly suggests, my client’s actual guilt. Criminal defense attorneys are not emergency room trauma surgeons. But just as it would be improper to allow those physicians the power to refuse to treat life threatening injury based on “guilt or innocence,” the same holds true for the legal profession. Where is the line drawn? Race, religion, ethnicity? That began to happen in 1933 in Nazi Germany. Look where it got us.
Albie B. Jachimowicz
Second-generation Holocaust survivor, criminal defense attorney San Jose
