Beam’s actual present wasteaching accountability
Re: “Family and protégés pay respects to slain coach” (Web page B1, Dec. 7).
Coach John Beam modified my life once I was a 14-year-old child on the Skyline Excessive soccer discipline. I nonetheless bear in mind getting flattened in a varsity drill and searching as much as see Beam standing over me, demanding extra as a result of he noticed extra. That was his present. He coached soccer, however he taught manhood: accountability, self-discipline, perception in your self lengthy earlier than you earned it.
Beam fought for me within the classroom, pushed me on the sector and helped me get to school when the chances weren’t in my favor. He formed generations of younger males in Oakland with the identical mixture of toughness and love.
Along with his passing, the East Bay didn’t simply lose a coach — we misplaced a mentor, a information and a real instance of what management seems to be like. His legacy lives within the hundreds he lifted alongside the best way.
One time for John Beam.
Rod CampbellOakland
Wind generators posemajor menace to uncommon birds
Re: “Bird statistics paint a skewed picture” (Web page A6, Dec. 9).
Sydney Stull defends wind generators regardless of the avian casualties. He’s right in stating that one statistic doesn’t inform the entire story, however suggests many extra birds are killed by buildings. May this should do with the truth that there are greater than 100 million buildings in the US and fewer than 100,000 wind generators?
The actual situation with wind generators will not be the variety of birds killed — it’s the kind of hen. Wind generators are likely to kill giant and uncommon species, raptors particularly. So when you care in regards to the California Golden Eagle, for instance, the wind turbine numbers rely.
Malcolm HoarFremont
Cease Krusi Park fromgoing to the canines
The unsanctioned canine park at Krusi Park in Alameda must cease. A number of occasions per week, canine homeowners collect and take their canines off-leash at Krusi Park, in direct violation of the posted ordinance requiring canines to be leashed always. Whether or not the canines are well-behaved will not be the purpose. Even probably the most well-behaved canines will be unpredictable at occasions. Otis College is adjoining to the park. College students use the park earlier than, throughout and after college. What if a toddler is frightened? Or worse?
The foundations are there for a motive. Simply since you assume you might have management over your pet doesn’t provide you with license to interrupt the principles. Respect your neighbors and your neighborhood and observe the principles. If you wish to take your canine off-leash, there are locations to try this. Krusi Park will not be that place.
Chris CarlingAlameda
‘Unitary Executive’ isfounders’ biggest concern
“Conservative” justices on the Supreme Courtroom have adopted a wholly new principle of presidential energy. They name it the “Unitary Executive,” which appears to counsel the president can do no matter he needs, every time he needs, nonetheless he needs.
Isn’t that absolutely the energy within the fingers of absolute leaders that the founders feared?
Michael SteinbergBerkeley
Progress of bureaucraciesis motive to guard them
Re: “Trump’s power to fire likely to be expanded” (Web page A1, Dec. 9).
Supreme Courtroom Justice Brett Kavanaugh mentioned that members of unbiased businesses just like the Federal Communications Fee have intensive energy over people and industries, with no accountability. True, however these businesses don’t exist to observe or implement the insurance policies of the present administration; they had been meant to be nonpartisan, nonpolitical consultants, to advise authorities and the general public of their areas of experience. Any insurance policies they develop have to be accredited by the administration earlier than they are often put in place. So why make them accountable to probably the most politicized individual in authorities: the president?
Conservative justices additionally identified that these businesses are far more highly effective than a long time in the past when the precedent was established that the president couldn’t fireplace members arbitrarily. But when the regulation protected them when the businesses had been small, how can it not shield them now? The regulation can’t apply to small businesses however to not giant ones.
Merlin DorfmanLivermore
Trump goals to beabove all legal guidelines
Reuters studies {that a} Trump administration official not too long ago revealed that the administration is threatening the Worldwide Legal Courtroom with debilitating sanctions until the ICC’s constitution (the Rome Statute) is amended to grant immunity to Donald Trump in opposition to battle crimes after he leaves workplace.
So our president will not be solely above U.S. legal guidelines and ethical norms, however he now claims a particular privilege to defy worldwide felony regulation. I suppose that is in step with Trump’s new international coverage assertion that lays declare to Latin America (along with Canada and Greenland) as our particular “sphere of influence” and implicitly cedes Ukraine to Vladimir Putin as a part of Russia’s “sphere of influence.”
In my 76 years, I by no means imagined having a president who’s hell bent on turning the U.S. right into a Darkish Age fortress of lawless thugs.
Kennedy RichardsonPiedmont
