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Article perpetuates myth
that rich are overtaxed
Re: “Yes, wealthy are taxed enough” (Page A9, March 24).
How many times are we going to be fed the lie that high-income earners pay more than their fair share of taxes? E.J. Antoni writes an entire column based on exactly what he complains about: “cherry-picked data.”
“14.9% of all federal tax receipts [come] from just 8.9% of family incomes,” says he, and uses those figures to claim that high earners are paying too much. E.J., the number of families that comprise the percentage of receipts doesn’t matter one whit. It’s what they earn that matters, and that determines what they pay. Yet you use those two figures to make your spurious claim and further expand your error.
Before you write again, you need to complete a statistics course, which will teach you: a) how to properly use figures, and b) high earners are not paying exorbitantly. Unfortunately, it cannot alter the political impetus behind your intentionally improper conclusions.
R Cote
Castro Valley
Defense of Trump
misconstrues facts
Re: “The fraud behind accusing Donald Trump of fraud” (Page A6, March 28).
Thank you for publishing Jay Ambrose’s disinformation piece that criticized Democrats and defended Donald Trump.
Ambrose claimed that the conviction of misleading lenders by filing fraudulent documents is a legal “trick” rather than the serious crime it is that harms the entire financial system. He called the use of a jury-replacing judge “weird” and “prejudiced” despite the fact that Trump’s lawyers requested a judge instead of a jury.
Ambrose diminishes the upcoming Stormy Daniels trial by ignoring it is about campaign honesty, not about porn star behavior.
Ambrose ignores the full Mueller report that confirmed Trump’s collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice, instead relying on William Barr’s whitewashed summary to discredit the charges.
Ambrose mischaracterizes the 14th Amendment with the word “evicted” rather than “convicted of insurrection.”
Publication of this disinformation helps readers understand why presumably reasonable people would support a lying grifter for president. They are being conned.
Bruce Joffe
Piedmont
Don’t vote for leaders
pushing Gaza starvation
Re: “Congress seeks to bar funding for U.N. agency” (Page A3, March 21).
The article describes how an emergency funding bill to avert a government shutdown includes a one-year extension of the Biden administration’s ban on funding UNRWA, the U.N. agency that is the primary distributor of aid to the people of Gaza.
Despite inadequate token face-saving measures such as airdrops, Israeli measures to deliberately restrict aid to a trickle are causing widespread starvation, especially in northern Gaza where the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child warns that one out of three children suffer from acute malnutrition. Twenty-seven children have already been reported to have died of starvation, the true total being almost certainly much higher. The most vulnerable and the first to succumb are newborns and children under 2 years old.
To include this gratuitous ban in the emergency funding bill is cruel and shameful. People of conscience must withhold their vote from those responsible for starving children.
Michael Dunlap
Oakland
With no Biden case,
GOP spins wheels
Meet “the gang that couldn’t investigate straight.”
The “star witness” in the House impeachment of President Biden, FBI informant Alex Smirnov, was recently indicted by David Weiss, a Republican U.S. Attorney appointed by Donald Trump, and charged with lying to the FBI about President Biden. The allegation that Joe Biden extorted $5 million, for influence peddling, from the Ukrainian firm Burisma has now been completely debunked.
Since there is now zero evidence of any Biden corruption, House Republicans have resorted to attacking the FBI as being corrupt in covering up the so-called “Biden crimes.” The FBI director, Chris Wray, is a lifelong Republican, and there has never in the FBI’s long history been a Democratic director.
Since House Republicans don’t have a clue how to govern, they have to try to impeach the president to help Trump win the election and pacify their rabid MAGA supporters.
Arthur Straus
Walnut Creek
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