Regulating taxi medallions

If dead and infirm taxi drivers continue to “operate” vehicles and medallion owners can sublease, don’t we need to overhaul the archaic Proposition K, established in 1978 (“Commission’s ex-chief blasted,” July 12)?

San Francisco should have city auctions for new and reclaimed cabs and thereafter permit the legal transfer of existing medallions at market rates. In the former instance, The City could keep all the funds and in the latter The City could charge a transfer fee.

It would be the gift that keeps on giving for San Francisco. These revenues might even help offset some of the deficit that surely will be generated by the ill-conceived health insurance concept being proposed by the Board of Supervisors and the mayor.

Brian Browne

The City

Taxes on business

While the Examiner takes its predictable pro-business stance in its editorial on the gross-receipts business tax proposal, the failure to acknowledge the macro issue here is shameful (“Business tax’s demise fixes nothing,” July 13).

It seems that corporate welfare is OK, but social welfare is bad. It’s all right for big corporations to receive all kinds of handouts — tax breaks, “incentives,” loopholes, subsidies and rights enshrined into law that provide a corporation the same liberties as an individual, even though they are much more powerful.

But when we talk about asking them to give back and support the person who has no health insurance, we hear the same default arguments: “Business will be driven out of The City,” “It hurts the small business,” “It is a burden,” etc.

Quite simply, this is a values issue. This society needs a shift in thinking that puts people before profits.

William Buehlman

The City

City Hall economics

The triumvirate of Gavin Newsom, Tom Ammiano and Aaron Peskin have spoken. San Francisco business is required to pay for providing health insurance for residents currently without such coverage.

One wonders what these bureaucrats, sequestered in the marble halls of City Hall, are thinking. Perhaps they should establish a lemonade stand in Civic Center and

“investigate” the fundamental economics of operating a business and see for themselves how many glasses of City Hall lemonade they can sell when applying the myriad multipliers, fees, taxes, surcharges and miscellaneous add-ons.

My hunch is that not only would it take 10 years to complete the required permitting and vetting process to establish the enterprise, but the ultimate cost of the lemonade would make even Halliburton cringe.

Matt Mitguard

San Francisco

Educating the electorate

Current law requires voter guides be mailed 21 days before elections.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd’s proposed ordinance to add merely 8 days to current requirements is both shortsighted and insufficient (“Supervisor wants guides mailed 29 days before election,” July 11).

Linda Tulett, deputy director of the Elections Department, asserts guides for the June 6 election “all arrived on time.” But two weeks before the election, her department asserted the last guides would be mailed on Saturday, May 27.

I received mine on Tuesday, May 30, just seven days before Election Day. The delay appeared deliberately designed to keep voters from reading 28 guide arguments in favor of the Laguna Honda initiative, so desperate were Elsbernd and the Mayor to ensure that Proposition D failed.

Elsbernd should amend his proposal, requiring that guides be mailed 14 days before absentee ballots are mailed, so voters can read and think before casting absentee votes.

Patrick Monette-Shaw

The City

Defending soccer

Regarding John W. Lillpop’s anti-soccer letter in Wednesday’s edition: Maybe the question should be how can nearly one-sixth of the world’s population be enthralled by a sport that maybe 5 percent of the Earth’s population ignores.

Mr. Lillpop, do you only consider the United States part of the civilized world? After all, South American and African countries are just as fanatic about soccer in general and the World Cup specifically as are their European counterparts.

Only we remain out of the loop. So who is civilized?

Channing Wayne

The City

Redwood City development

Glad to see efforts to bring housing to the Redwood City waterfront are still alive (“Plans unveiled for 800 units on waterfront,” July 12).

I hope the new design keeps the original proposal’s pioneering features, including a tunnel to mass transit, a shuttle service and other innovations that fight traffic

congestion.

James O. Clifford Sr.

Redwood City

Troops in Iraq

We are turning fresh-faced, formerly innocent all-American servicepeople into monsters.

They have no moral compass while they kill rape, maim and torture the Iraqi people, whom they see as the "other."

Denise D’Anne

The City