Viewpoint: Hold government accountable

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• Some think fairness is just so unfair

  Some think fairness is just so unfair

  Bob Cuddy

  In hindsight, maybe I was a bit rough on the guy. After all, he was just trying to make a few bucks. He’d probably lost his job and was doing what he had to do to put food on the table.

  But he annoyed me when he stuck a petition under my nose in front of the County Courthouse and asked me to sign so that “the people” could vote on redistricting.

• Some think fairness is just so unfair

  Some think fairness is just so unfair

  In hindsight, maybe I was a bit rough on the guy. After all, he was just trying to make a few bucks. He’d probably lost his job and was doing what he had to do to put food on the table.

  But he annoyed me when he stuck a petition under my nose in front of the County Courthouse and asked me to sign so that “the people” could vote on redistricting.

  That simple plea no doubt netted more than a few scrawls, at $2 a pop. Who doesn’t want the people to decide things?

• Letters to the Editor 2/3

  Letters to the Editor 2/3

  How to ‘delight’

  PG&E’s new CEO wants to “delight me.” Hah! The Viewpoint on Jan. 29 voicing concerns over PG&E’s safety seminars should make everyone in the disaster zone leery of anything that comes out of their spokespersons’ mouths.

  “The earthquake modeling software cannot link faults,” they say. Seriously? How can PG&E, with any degree of honesty and integrity, come out and say the plant was built to withstand any significant event the surrounding faults can produce, when software models only one single fault at a time? What would delight me is for PG&E to withdraw license extension requests and shut down the plant.

• Dan Walters: Legislative mischief on 'trailer bills' becomes easier

  Dan Walters: Legislative mischief on 'trailer bills' becomes easier

  Two years ago, when unions and Democratic politicians sponsored a ballot measure to reduce the required legislative vote on the state budget from two-thirds to a simple majority, this column and others raised the possibility of ancillary mischief.

• Letters to the Editor 12/18

  Letters to the Editor 12/18

  Climate change’s costs

  As the article “The Deadly Dozen” (Dec. 7) about extreme weather phenomena made clear, there are high costs associated with climate change. Even after eliminating tornado damage as not associated, the climate change price-tag from 2011 is at least $27 billion compared to $9 billion in 2008. If the U.S. and other major carbon emitters continue to stall on actions to drastically reduce emissions, the costs can only rise. Who will pay for such damages? FEMA when the government is broke? Private insurance companies who will impose limits on coverage as these disasters become more frequent? Individuals whose homes are destroyed and farmers whose crop yields are wiped out by droughts and floods? None of the above.

  There will be more suffering, economic and otherwise, because there are no binding treaties holding the largest emitters responsible for reductions. Our government didn’t sign the Kyoto treaty, and this month’s Durban conference did not yield a binding treaty. Several years