I am recommending that a memorial plaque bearing the names of San Francisco’s murdered taxi drivers be placed at the Hall of Justice on the wall across from the murdered police officers, so that cabbies get more of the respect they deserve from the police and the public.

I would also like to know how many taxi driver murders have been solved by the San Francisco Police Department and how many of the unsolved cases are still open and being investigated.

Emile Lawrence

San Francisco

This story continues below
Advertisement

Too-stylish mayors

I, for one, would like to see the Honorable Mayors Gavin Newsom and Ron Dellums stop focusing so much on how they look in their designer suits, their perfect never-out-of-place hairstyles and apparent love of hearing themselves speak in lofty tones.

Isn’t it about time that both mayors rolled up their sleeves and began governing their respective cities according to the will of the people who elected them? This would not include costly left-wing programs or excessive travel and entertainment junkets at taxpayer expense.

Larry Hurley

Daly City

$18 pasta not a bargain

Eighteen bucks for spaghetti and meatballs — spaghetti and meatballs? — might be Examiner restaurant critic Patricia Unterman’s idea of “inexpensive,” but it’s not mine (“North Beach Italian done right,” July 3). Oh, to lead the life of an upscale San Franciscan who regards $18 pasta as a bargain.

Mark Behrens

San Francisco

Stop driving hunger

In a time of increasing concern about how global warming affects rising sea levels, dangerous storms and health risks, how is it that Americans don’t seem to care that the diversion of agriculture to biofuels has caused world food prices to increase by 75 percent, according to the findings of a World Bank report in April? Let’s hope the media will wake us up to how we’re engineering our own poverty and hunger in order to keep on driving.

Robert Prentiss

San Francisco

Zoo safety is a must

Yes indeed, that Examiner July 3 letter correctly points out that a zoo does contain wild animals. But that is all the more reason to ensure the safety of anyone inside the zoo and beyond by making sure the wild animals cannot, under any circumstance, escape their enclosures.

Yes, taunting animals is wrong. But unfortunately, people have and always will ridicule anything behind bars, including wild animals. If you are going to house wild animals they must be properly enclosed, and obviously the S.F. Zoo’s Tatiana was not.

Robert Tod Messick

San Francisco

Federal dollars for religion

Barack Obama now proposes to expand taxpayer support for President Bush’s program of steering federal social-service dollars to religious groups. Obama seeks to be trusted with increased taxpayer money and to choose wisely among competing church recipients. But his own personal judgment in this area is very open to question. It was Obama himself who contributed $49,000 in 2006 and 2007 to his “former church,” the controversial Trinity United Church of Christ.

Will Obama be looking to his campaign’s “spiritual advisory committee” to help administer the program? That committee formerly included the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Father Michael Pfleger, before their bombastic and racially incendiary sermons became widely known to voters. Taxpayers should be very wary of this Obama initiative’s potential for misuse.

Jim Hartman

Berkeley

Intelligence ops needed

The recent successful rescue of Colombian hostages proves once more that the value of intelligence operations is crucial for democratic nations in fighting terrorism.

Hopefully the world will continue seeing success in such places as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where people wanted for mass murder, war crimes and crimes against humanity will be brought to justice.

Kevin Beck

Las Vegas

Obama is too indecisive

The more time that passes, the more wishy-washy Barack Obama becomes. Now he is considering changing his plan to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq in 16 months, depending on what military commanders say. Quick troop withdrawal from Iraq is one of the major reasons I would vote for Obama.

If he extends the deadline I am not so sure I will. Obama seems very indecisive and appears to have as much backbone as a chocolate éclair. These are not exactly the qualities I want in our country’s leader.

Kenneth L. Zimmerman

Huntington Beach

The Examiner gives preference to letters containing fewer than 150 words. Please include name, phone number and city of residence.

To add your voice-

By e-mail: letters@sfexaminer.com

By mail:

Editorial Page Editor

The Examiner, 450 Mission St.

San Francisco, CA 94105

By fax: (415) 359-2766