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Free home sales
from capital gains tax
In a recent article, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump is exploring removing capital gains taxes on home sales to spur the housing market.
This would be a great benefit to homeowners, particularly in the Bay Area, where home prices have appreciated. The supply of available homes would increase for those seeking to purchase because long-time homeowners would no longer have to fear confiscatory taxes on their gains if they sold.
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Eliminate capital gains taxes so everyone can benefit.
Thomas Baker
San Jose
Column creates an
Olympic loser for L.A.
Re: “Los Angeles should halt plans to host 2028 Olympic games” (Page A6, July 25).
Joe Mathews’ suggestion that Los Angeles refuse to host the 2028 Olympic Games unless Donald Trump accedes to certain demands is a bridge too far.
Mathews does make a respectful case why L.A. should not have made the bid to host the Olympics in the first place, but that is not the situation L.A. is now in. Trump would never accede to the demands that Mathews lists, so L.A. would be forced to either back down from its threat to withdraw from hosting the Olympics or actually withdraw. Either way, L.A. (and California) would lose and Trump would win.
I share Mathews’ negative feelings about Trump and his policies, but we must pick and choose our battles with Trump wisely, and the 2028 Olympic Games are not the right battle.
David Muhlitner
San Jose
ICE cartoon only serves
to inflame public debate
With respect to the editorial page cartoon published on July 23 (Page A6), I must object to the characterization of ICE agents as akin to criminals. While ICE officials across the country are routinely demonized by politicians and media personalities, they have faced an 830% increase in assaults through the first 6.5 months of this year compared to the same period in 2024.
Political cartoonists have every right to air their grievances toward elected officials and criticize our nation’s immigration policy. However, they would do well to consider that ICE agents are apolitical actors duty-bound to follow lawful orders and enforce federal immigration law, as distasteful as their tactics may seem to some commentators. The vilification of these federal law enforcement officials — many of whom are our friends, family and neighbors simply seeking to earn an honest living — will serve to inflame our political discourse at the most inopportune time.
Mark Habelt
Burlingame
Stop appeasing Trump
and resist instead
The tragedy of the 1938 Munich Agreement was not just that appeasing a rabid dictator failed to sate his appetite for further conquest and domination.
Instead, it is what it might have averted. The German general staff distrusted Hitler’s aggressive plans and had decided that if he invaded Czechoslovakia, they would instigate a coup and unseat him.
British Prime Minister Chamberlain gave Hitler the free gift of the Sudetenland and eventually all of Czechoslovakia without the Germans having to fire a shot.
This convinced the generals that Hitler was correct to challenge the West, and they gave up on their coup plans.
Today we have an authoritarian of our own. All those who try to appease him by “bending the knee” are instead emboldening him to proceed with his overthrow of our established democracy. Instead, we must all resist or else lose our rights for a very long time.
Ed Taub
Mountain View
Trump pronouncements
an exercise in projection
In what must be the most preposterous example of projection, Donald Trump has called Joe Biden “a mentally incompetent FOOL, and our WORST EVER President, who came close to destroying our Country” and called him “grossly incompetent.”
So if Biden is mentally incompetent and evil, what do we call someone who separated children from their families, starved entire populations by defunding USAID, halted decades-long cancer and other life-saving medical research, and is a convicted felon? And that’s just for starters.
Irv Brenner
Palo Alto
Faith demands we
call for Gaza ceasefire
Multifaith Voices for Peace & Justice’s Steering Committee joins religious and humanitarian communities around the world in condemning:
• The Israeli army’s relentless killing of Palestinians, many of them children, many at aid centers seeking food.
• The Israeli government’s blockade of secure and safe humanitarian aid distribution into Gaza, essentially using starvation as a weapon of war.
• Deadly settler violence occurring in the West Bank.
• Our government’s support of the unremitting bloodshed putting at risk true security for all people of the region.
We call for an end to all violence, unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, and a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians recognizing every person’s worth, dignity and human rights.
All of our faith traditions teach us that every human life is sacred. It is our religious and moral obligation to speak out against these atrocities and protect innocent people, whoever and wherever they are.
Rabbi Amy Eilberg and the Rev. Diana Gibson
Multifaith Voices for Peace & Justice Steering Committee
Menlo Park