Letters: Venezuela’s recent history should sound familiar to US

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Venezuela’s recent
history sounds familiar

Re: “Venezuela left to grapple with wreckage Maduro leaves behind” (Page A4, Jan. 4).

The story about Venezuela’s recent history describes how the Maduro administration arrested people in opposition parties, relied on loyalists in the Supreme Court to strip the power of the National Assembly and eroded democratic checks and balances to the extent of putting the country in a constitutional crisis.

Does this picture of paving the way to authoritarianism and dictatorship look familiar to Americans?

Florence Chan
Los Altos

Venezuela has chance
for real equality

Re: “Country’s oil supply would be seized, sold to other nations” (Page A1, Jan. 4).

Venezuela is now an opportunity for equality.

Institute an Alaska-type Permanent Fund where all of Venezuela’s oil revenue is distributed equally to every resident Venezuelan citizen and none to the government.

The government is financed by taxation.

Christian Miller
Saratoga

Congress should end
this military adventure

Re: “Trump says U.S. will ‘run’ Venezuela after swift strike” (Page A1, Jan. 4).

President Trump’s incursion in Venezuela raises myriad legal issues as well as practical questions.

The legal issues boil down to when one country may invade another, depose its leader, take its resources, maintain a military presence or “run” the country? While deposing President Maduro might be allowed based on his prosecution in U.S. courts, the remaining actions do not appear to be justified under international law.

Congress should prevent another foreign military and fiscal fiasco a la Iraq by denying funding for Trump’s adventurism. Venezuelan oil is not worth American blood.

John Fioretta
San Jose

What does a quality
education truly cost?

Re: “South Bay high schools achieve ‘perfection’” (Page A6, Jan. 2).

Congratulations to the Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District for achieving perfection when it comes to meeting the needs of its students. That is a lot of work. And money.

I would like to know how much money is spent per child, including support from the community in terms of volunteer hours and donations. How much money is needed to meet the needs of students? How much money are Los Gatos-Saratoga teachers paying for supplies? On average, how many jobs do parents in this district hold in order to provide basic needs like food and clothing for their family?

Let’s make this “perfection” score apply across the Santa Clara Valley and the state. I mean, this is for the children, so how can we as citizens of this state ensure providing perfect scores for every child? Every child deserves quality education.

Sue Kensill
San Jose

Immigrant truckers
can’t be the problem

Re: “Immigrant truck drivers in limbo after crackdown” (Page A1, Jan. 2).

The negative brought up in the article is a total of two accidents involving Sikh truck drivers. As a result of this, Marco Rubio wrote on social media Aug. 21: “The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.”

The article also quoted: “In 2023, nearly 16% of U.S. commercial truck drivers are foreign-born, according to the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration.” That means that 84% are native-born.

I think the Mercury News would do its readers a service by finding out the total number of such trucking accidents in that same period, to show that it is not “foreign drivers” who are the problem.

I’m glad you quoted this: “’This actually doesn’t have anything to do with safety,’ Deepali Gill said. ‘They’re just making lawless claims that nondomiciled CDL holders are just inherently dangerous to the public.’” Agreed.

Virginia Smedberg
Palo Alto

Big Tech leaders happy
to use kids as pawns

Re: “Shouldn’t we ban kids from social media?” (Page A9, Jan. 4).

Isn’t it ironic that Silicon Valley’s so-called leaders of industry are said to ban cellphones for their own children?

The rest of the community’s children become their pawns, testing how much advertising, such as teen makeup and other products and habits, they can foster for their self-interest and their companies’ bottom lines.

Alice Schaffer Smith
Palo Alto

Bias against renewables
promises US irrelevance

Donald Trump has demonized alternative energy sources, misrepresenting them as unreliable, costly and somehow a product of “woke culture.”

I wonder what he makes of one of his buddies and role models, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, undertaking a huge “green hydrogen“ project which employs large solar arrays and wind farms to provide the energy required to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. Saudi Arabia, a country with more oil than it knows what to do with, has the foresight to engage with the future of energy production, while we wallow in the past of fossil fuel dependence because one delusional megalomaniac has the ability to terrorize his supporters into giving him whatever he wants.

Trump’s personal failings are endless and documented endlessly at our peril. He’s bound and determined to relegate us to a future of irrelevance. We need to pay attention to the important stuff.

Eugene Ely
San José