Open letter to Marco Rubio
Mr. Rubio: As a Cuban American, you should be ashamed of what you and the administration are allowing to happen in Cuba. Children cannot go to school because the buses can't run. Hospitals cannot function without power and are forced to close and delay necessary surgeries. Garbage cannot be collected, causing a health and sanitation emergency. Give them the oil necessary to run their country. Go after Castro, but not the people of Cuba.
Jane Q Peterson
Oro Valley
Poisoned school transportation incentives
I live in the Catalina Foothills School District (CFSD). Because our 60-year-old neighborhood is hilly with narrow, winding roads, full-sized school buses cannot navigate it safely. Consequently, some children — including my kindergartner — must walk up to a mile over dangerous terrain just to reach the nearest bus stop.
People are also reading…
CFSD satisfies its mandate to provide busing to families living over a mile from school by placing the bus stop over a mile away from our homes. Irony, anyone? CFSD's solution is for our HOA to pay astronomical engineering costs to widen the roads, yet state law explicitly allows funding flexibility for smaller buses to address exactly these infrastructure challenges (A.R.S. § 15-922).
So why won't CFSD utilize them? Because open enrollment has poisoned the financial incentives. Rather than investing in smaller buses for local tax-paying residents, CFSD actually spends money sending large buses miles outside district boundaries to recruit open-enrollment students for extra state funding. These are bad incentives.
Samuel Rogers
Foothills
Danger ahead!
As a participant in all of the “No Kings” demonstrations, I have been feeling very positive about our chances to impede the power of our current king by electing a Democratic majority in the House in the coming midterm elections. Of course, it is really the “pro-King” Supreme Court majority that is the problem.
Fortunately, two of the conservative justices, Alito and Thomas, are approaching retirement age. Unfortunately for our representative democracy, our current king will likely convince them to retire during his term, giving him the opportunity to appoint two more justices.
If we are going to have any chance of saving our founders' vision of democratic government, we must work even harder to elect a Senate majority that can stave off this likely catastrophe! Our Senate candidates in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Texas, New Hampshire and Maine all deserve our support!
Bruce Hilpert
North side
Grand Canyon double
The article on the front page of the Sports Section about the Grand Canyon ultra marathon brought back memories.
I ran it on Nov. 7, 1982. It was a bootleg run back then; the park service looked the other way. The front of my T-shirt says ‘Double Grand Canyon’ not R3, rim to rim to rim. The distance is printed as 41.2 miles and 12,000 vertical feet. The back of the shirt lists all 49 runners. My line says: 24 11:31:33 Jeff McConnell (37, Santa Monica, California).
I remember trying to keep my focus on surviving and not the incredible beauty of this big hole in the ground. I had a hundred-dollar bill pinned to my shorts for a humiliating helicopter lift out. Near the end, I looked up at the south wall thinking, ‘Hey, there’s just a 10K to go.’
I’d love to be young again for just 11 hours and 31 minutes.
Jeffrey McConnell
West side
DJT's well-being
Is anyone else concerned with DJT's human well-being? Pictures show an unease in his core, like he is a tortured soul. Nobody should be trapped in addictive cycles of declining satisfaction. Buying, naming, building, warring more and more, but the itch will not subside! I'm putting DJT in my prayers, alongside my feral, homefree friend Joseph. Joseph mirrors that same malady. Though Joseph's excesses are less costly and hurtful to us than our president's indulgences.
Mary DeCamp
Downtown
Let's get rid of ignorance, corruption
Trump’s Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum's corruption and ignorance is appalling. Burgum recently tried to kill off wind energy off the coast in Carolina. That offshore wind lease would have created over 37,000 jobs during development and construction, provided billions in wages, and $44.9 billion in capital investment. During a House Natural Resources Committee hearing, he ignorantly argued that solar projects produce "zero electricity" after sunset, but that problem has been solved by utility-scale batteries. California’s batteries recently discharged 12,000 megawatts of power; that’s the equivalent of 12 nuclear power plants firing at once. Burgum prefers dirty-polluting energy to poison the air our children breathe. Our children deserve better.
Vote this ignorant, corrupt Trump administration and its lackeys out of government in November. Vote for Jonathan Hill and Clara Pratte for Arizona Corporation Commission in the August primary and then again in the November general election.
Mike Carran
West side
Lady Justice
My parents never brought us up with any disdain for either party. They have different views on society, and the scale shifts from time to time, depending on who is in power. Fast forward 85 years (my age). I am now engaging and showing my grandchildren disdain toward the Don and the GOP Congress. We desperately need Lady Justice's scale to tilt the other way. C'mon November!
Joe Sanchez
Marana
Reverse our decline
While Trump admired Xi, as he did for Putin and Kim, Xi warned him that the declining USA must yield Taiwan to his rising PRC to avoid the Thucydides trap. Are we declining? Consider the facts: Nixon led Carter to dump the ROC (Taiwan) to recognize the PRC, then American capital and technology rushed into the PRC under George H.W. Bush and Clinton to satisfy American consumers’ thirst for “affordable” goods. The American producers’ and consumers’ pursuit of wealth (mammon in Matt. 6:24) made Americans dependent on China, while the CCP managed the American investments and the hardworking Chinese to make the PRC the second superpower. Meanwhile, enough Americans voted for a dictator-admirer with his loyalists controlling Congress and the Supreme Court. So, our Constitution and laws are trashed, and illegal arrests, brutal wars and world economic crisis began, thus killing our aspiration for building a more livable world for all. Fellow Americans, be brave enough to vote for humane and pro-democracy candidates in November to reverse our decline!
Ke Chiang Hsieh
Midtown
You voted for this
A police state where agents shoot citizens without any accountability.
A president who sues us and settles for $1.7 billion, to be doled out to criminals who claim to be persecuted by the U.S. government. How is this possible, and what could go wrong?
Surely some of you who voted for him do not think this is OK. Please let us know which other president has bilked the U.S. for anywhere close to this amount.
Vote out the Congress members who have allowed this to occur. Vote in people who will correct the path we are on and seek repayment of the thefts we have suffered. A purge of the Supreme Court is also needed.
We have long passed the times of Reconstruction. It is time for the rebels to understand they lost the war. It is time for the Nazis to learn they lost the war. Wars have consequences. Defeating evil is never final; they lie low and return later. We are watching and ready to end the current infection.
Jeff Rayner
SaddleBrooke
Follow these steps to easily submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion to the Arizona Daily Star.
