In response to your Nov. 29 story “Newsom asks for fiscal restraint in ’08,” how is it that in spite of a $6 billion budget — a budget bigger than that of 20 states — our supervisors never seem to have enough money to fund basic city services? The reason is that they waste money on pet ideological causes that have nothing to do with core city services.

An example was the supervisors’ recent approval of a new, $100,000 position on the city payroll to facilitate aid to illegal immigrants. Why is The City spending money on people who are here illegally instead of cleaning the streets, maintaining the parks, etc.?

San Francisco voters next year have a chance to replace these far-left nut jobs with some pragmatic problem-solvers. If they don’t, then they, too, are part of the problem.

E.F. Sullivan

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San Francisco

Sources of air pollution in S.F.

I was interested to read the letter from Barbara Hale of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission setting forth the case for The City’s electric peaker plant to ensure that the old Mirant power plant is closed, in response to Joshua Arce’s proposal to leave a portion of the Mirant plant operating (letters, Nov. 29).

Since Arce and his colleagues seemed obsessed with the issue of air pollution in the southeast area of The City, they must be aware that there are greater generators of air pollution in the area. For instance, the increasingly popular Caltrain Peninsula Rail service uses large diesel engines that generate air pollution. An officially adopted plan exists to electrify the line and eliminate these diesel engines. However, it has generated little public interest or support and so has languished.

If Arce put his energy into a campaign to back Caltrain electrification on environmental justice grounds, he could make a big contribution to the Caltrain service and the Bayview community.

James W. Haas

San Francisco

Water for cotton a bad idea

Dan Walters (“Second dry winter in California underlines serious water need,” Viewpoints, Nov. 29) presents a problem but does not discuss an inconvenient truth and partial solution. If the state and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation stopped supplying subsidized water to irrigate cotton we could save a lot of water.

First, cotton should not be grown in a desert. It should be grown in the South, where it has been grown historically without irrigation.

Second, subsidizing cotton violates our international free-trade agreements. Our politicians are for “free trade” only as far as it affects others. They look the other way when it affects their campaign contributors (read: legal bribers ).

Third, stopping the growth of subsidized cotton would aid Third World nations that can grow it cheaper without our having to supply foreign aid and humanitarian relief to them. Do you think our politicians will think of this winning solution?

David R. Dawdy

San Francisco

Definition of nuclear waste

Roxanne Albertoli’s letter (letters, Nov. 27) was the first time I’ve seen “waste,” as in “nuclear waste,” challenged by quotation marks. If not waste, what then?

Plutonium relatively safe to handle? Did we not learn from our nuclear winter lesson that a few tablespoons of the stuff in the atmosphere can cause untold cancer deaths? Encasing the “waste” in glass and titanium? Well, as long as that’s easier than building a bridge.

Maybe we can encase the poison in that flat bubble-pack that our deli meat comes in — those containers seem to have a half-life of their own.

No, wait, that won’t do. In 20 years the socialists will decree that we all must become vegetarians.

Paul Burton

San Francisco

Let’s switch to clean energy

“The IAEA reported in August that there were more than 250 reported thefts or losses of nuclear material around the world in 2006, an increase of about 200 percent from 2002,” according to The Associated Press.

Is this a rational enough reason to not have more nuclear power plants? Clean alternatives exist. If we don’t make the switch, who will?

Brian Comstock

San Francisco

Gun lobby’s link to homicides

The shooting death of 24-year-old Redskins safety Sean Taylor is more evidence of the dangers we all face because of the easy availability of guns.

This tragedy is also a reminder that the gun lobby is a monstrous purveyor of death.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could legally remove every elected official who supports the National Rifle Association and their promotion of guns and death?

Michael J. Gorman

Whitestone, N.Y.