Opinion: In Wednesday’s Letters to the editor
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Wednesday’s Letters to the editor writers like Barack Hussein Obama’s middle name and applaud this Times editorial urging him to ‘Say it loud and proud’ when he takes the oath of office. Readers also offer thoughts on holiday sobriety checkpoints, Sacramento legislators who keep their day jobs, and why chaparral deserves more respect.
Also, the Times features several letters on Los Angeles’ new light rail lines. Responding to this story about the impending opening of the Gold Line Extension into East L.A., longtime Angeleno Eiichi Kamiya (now of Rolling Hills Estates) writes that there’s nothing new under the sun:
So the light rail will go east from Little Tokyo to Indiana Street. Been there, done that.
About 60 years ago, we took the yellow P-line streetcar on that route coming home from church on Sundays.
Where the light rail will jog south on Indiana, we would change to a small, open-sided streetcar that ran from 1st Street to Whittier Boulevard. Ah, nostalgia.
Michael Mahern, of Los Angeles, has a different take on politicians’ approach to the proposed Expo Line:
Regarding the question of the proposed Expo Line endangering students at Dorsey High and the Foshay Learning Center, I am open to arguments. Apparently, Councilman Bernard C. Parks is not. Parks’ comment in The Times’ story -- ‘They’re saying we’re going to build something that kills kids. ... It’s not something in the realm of possibility’ -- is pretty mind-boggling. The Blue Line has killed 65 pedestrians since it was built in 1990, yet Parks says that anyone being killed on the Expo Line is ‘not in the realm of possibility’?
February 2008 photo of construction on the Gold Line extension by Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times.