Your Letters for Oct. 17, 2025
California, here I come — Not
Why? How about a high-speed rail system years behind schedule and billions being tossed around, as they figure out how to complete this elephant in the room? Tossing money at this project does not seem to bother the politicians of the state.
A continuous debt seems to be the norm for this state! Is Newsom a guy you would want as your president? Under his watch, the state debt increases yearly, homes are burning to the ground, waiting for permits to build, the state's budget problems. Their problem of claiming to be a green state as the fires rage, and the current nightmare of their new rail system?
The system which is in two phases — 1). Connecting L.A. to San Fran and then 2). Sacramento to San Diego. This was reduced from 800 miles to 171 miles. $7 billion already spent just on this start of the first phase. (Merced to Bakersfield). The government stepped in and cancelled $4 billion in funds, after all, the project is now in the $13 billion range (San Fran. To L.A.). This project was to be completed in 2020! And the first ground breaking was held in 2015 in Fresno on the first 29 miles. You talk about “smoke and mirrors political moves," the about is a sample!
Deficits: $68 billion. Some reasons — drop in revenues, 2022-3 soft tax collections, weather disasters-(reserves as this happens yearly), revenue collection down — 25% in 2022-3, people who left do not pay taxes — thousands have left the state!
Why not adjust your projections if you have lost over 429,000 residents? Why? The cost of living — housing, empty office buildings, interest on loans, additional interest on housing $3500-5400, a drop in their “tech” economy, companies going public in 2022-3 — over 80% from 2021! Unemployment over 200,000, June 2022 3.8% to 4.8%, schools spending (results), gasoline prices was $6 to $7.16/gallon, natural gas deposits not used to relieve prices?
Then bam, the most current mismanagement. “The Palisades Fires, mayor Bass seemed to be in the dark over her responsibilities, the empty reservoirs’, fire hydrants that didn’t” work. The scapegoat she tried to blame: the cuts to the fire departments, overtime slashed!
The replacement of the destroyed homes/businesses, as the building permit process is so screwed up. Today (depending on which report you use) there are around 3536 applications out of 11,000 buildings destroyed to rebuild, with 1025 issued, but now after all these years they need to see if the ground they were on is now safe? All you need to build is be able to pay the doubled increase of insurance as the pay out from insurance tanked, and material cost that sadly have gone out of sight. Just pack a couple of million and they might talk to you as the cost has almost doubled.
Anybody out there want to leave Missouri and move to a sanctuary city? And schools in that state are a total joke as the test scores prove that.
Ben Pecora
St. Joseph
Church tax-exemption reform
I'd like to say at on the onset that I believe that churches, synagogues, legitimate civic/fraternal/non-profit entities which show a current, ongoing benefit to the public interest should continue to have their primary functioning "base" remain "tax-exempt." However, starting in the mid-1980s and continuing, American lawmakers have been too lax with extending such designations now known as 501(c)(3) exemptions. Again, I fully support "sanctuaries" (the actual base of worship or ceremonial meetings being tax-exempt). I'm on church membership rolls myself; but, the time has come when we, as Americans, face up to the fact that we cannot afford to extend this privilege to social halls/basketball or pickleball courts, classrooms, or even music practice-rooms in mega-churches simply by labeling everything as a "ministry."
Music/fellowship/other matters pertaining to the reverence and worship to deity can be done in the sanctuary-room proper. That should remain tax-exempt regardless of whether attendance is one person or 500 congregants. However, lavish kitchens, dining areas which only sporadically feed 30 people or more and as large as some professional cafes (yet vacant a great majority of the year) along with widespread asphalt parking-lots that are only used four days a month (if that much) are wasteful beneficiaries of pork-politics. People don't realize that taxpayers basically traded off cropland or livestock grazing-land revenues or largely unused floors and blacktop. It is time to pay the piper. God expects us to be good financial stewards. Many people shriek, but reforms-are-needed.
James A. Marples
Longview, Texas (former Kansan)
