Opinion: California legislators should not mistake their anti-Trump animus for good governance

To the editor: In reference to the state budget, Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) states, “It’s surprising that more folks don’t want to emulate what we’re doing.” (“Democrats see California’s new budget as an answer, and an antidote, to President Trump’s plans,” June 30)

Perhaps it is the fact that our state has the highest poverty rate in the United States when factoring in cost of living. Or perhaps it is our failing public schools, which have been performing at the bottom of states for as long as anyone can remember. Or perhaps it is the exhaustive taxation.

This is not to mention the report that appeared in the same day’s paper in which it seems that Ting’s and his colleagues’ solution to the state’s pension crisis is to ignore it. The crisis began in 1999, when citizens were mislead that “investments” would pay for a massive retroactive increase in public employee pensions; now we are to believe the state-issued figure that the current pension debt is “at least” $242 billion.

I sit in wonderment at Ting’s detachment from reality.

Chris Keane, Redwood City, Calif.

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To the editor: As a third-generation Californian and someone who has paid his fair share of taxes, I am amazed that Democrats can be proud of a budget that provides $45 million in funding for legal aid to immigrants, including those who are in the country illegally.

Even my great-grandfather, who came to Los Angeles as a 10-year-old in a covered wagon in the 1880s from Iowa (and fought bravely for this country as a Marine during the Boxer Rebellion in China), is turning over in his grave. This is not the California I grew up in either.

Some may say it is “racist” not to support the use of taxpayer dollars to help people in the state illegally; to this I say emphatically that I am not racist. I spent more than three years living abroad in Latin American countries; I speak Spanish fluently and studied Latin American history, politics and literature in college.

I believe I have an affinity for what’s at issue south of our border, and I am not unsympathetic to it — but really, legal aid for illegal immigrants? That’s just plain fiscally foolish and it truly ignores the more than 4 million people in this state who voted for President Trump.

Richard Hamilton, Oceanside

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