Tucson Speaks Out: May 15

Generosity for some

The open-arms generosity of the U.S. is on display. We accepted 59 immigrants from South Africa. Isn’t that Musk’s homeland? But the generosity stops at the 8.6 million Americans who will lose health insurance under the tax proposal now before the House. Or the 42 million Americans who will have food assistance (SNAP-food stamps) reduced or eliminated. Or the tens of thousands of Central Americans waiting at a border crossing. But none in those groups are from South Africa, and none contributed $250 million.

Kenneth Haber

Northwest side

The Trojan airplane

Beware of Qataris bearing gifts! Especially gifts on which they are doing the electronics/security.

Trump says he’d be stupid to pass up a “free” airplane. I guess if the only thing he cares about is money and his insatiable ego, and if security is of no importance, maybe passing it up would be stupid. But if he made a stupid decision about this airplane, it would have lots of company.

Jim Rapp

Southeast side

New parking policy misses the mark

I love downtown Tucson and support its restaurants, shops, and entertainment. I’m concerned about the City’s decision to extend metered parking to 8 a.m.–7 p.m., Monday through Saturday, starting June 2.

I’m an engaged resident, yet I — and many others—had no idea public hearings were held last fall. Without a print daily paper, we rely on word of mouth and niche newsletters. City Council notices often fail to reach residents.

Broken meters pushed me to try the Park Tucson app, which I find clunky, unreliable with Wi-Fi, and has a 30-cent surcharge. I got two tickets before calling for a tutorial.

This isn’t just about fees. Charging for parking until 7 p.m. and on Saturdays creates a financial and psychological barrier to enjoying our downtown.

There are better options: Perhaps 8 to 5 weekdays, 10 to 5 Saturdays. Let’s reconsider this policy and get more input from residents.

Kali Van Campen

Midtown

Informed neighbors

My sincerest thanks to the thoughtful and informed letter writers to the Arizona Daily Star.

Some of you are so spot on that I wish I knew you personally. I find comfort in your critical thinking skills, which are obvious through your grasp of the Constitution and words reflecting compassion and empathy for all humankind.

While we face many challenges as a nation and a state, to align yourself with the most heinous president of all time will not find the long-term solutions needed for our survival. Diversity is what has made us great. Not whiteness.

Monica Joyce-Walker

East side

Billionaires are doing just fine, thanks

When I think of how I want my tax dollars to be spent, helping Americans improve their lives is top of the list. Republicans apparently have different priorities. US House Republicans revealed their new budget, and it proposes, among other things, $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid (which helps the low-income and working poor) in order to give billionaires a tax break.

Nearly half of all births are covered by Medicaid. A third of all American children have health care through Medicaid. More than half of all nursing home residents are covered by Medicaid.

This bill, if passed, will mean more deaths to some of our most vulnerable citizens. Are you OK with that, Republicans? I’m not. In case you missed the salient point in my letter, billionaires do not need tax cuts because — wait for it — they are already billionaires.

Karen Micallef

Oro Valley

Rio Nuevo: Provide affordable housing

The Rio Nuevo board of directors needs redemption.

It can earn some by expanding its strategy beyond the redundancy of more bars and restaurants downtown to include helping alleviate the city’s housing crisis. It should subsidize affordable housing developments; the beneficiaries will be people with low to moderate incomes.

Such a shift can fulfill Mellow Dawn Lund’s May 11 op-ed admonition to Rio Nuevo to “recognize that revitalization means supporting people as much as projects.”

Wealthy developers of luxury apartments charging rents of up to $4,000 a month can find financing without taxpayer subsidies. What about affordable housing? A $4,000 rent is 54% higher than what the U.S. Census Bureau says is Tucson’s average individual income.

Rio Nuevo has helped finance housing projects, but few with rents affordable to the average-income person. If it has Tucsonans’ best interests at heart, Rio Nuevo should take on one of our biggest issues — affordable housing.

Shraddha Hilda Oropeza

West side

I miss box scores

I am probably in a very small minority, but I really miss the baseball box scores that have been removed from the Star’s sports section.

A diehard Cubs fan, I started reading box scores in the Chicago Tribune as a sixth-grader in 1943. It was mandatory for me to check out the exploits of Cubs’ stars like Phil Cavarretta (1945 NL MVP) and Hank Sauer (also NL MVP, 1954), as well as players on other teams such as Richie Ashburn (Phillies’ Rookie of the Year, 1950), and the great Jackie Robinson, whose career in the NL began in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Then there were some players we intensely disliked for their brilliant play against our Cubs. Stan Musial and Enos Slaughter of the hated St. Louis Cardinals were secretly admired. I had to read their stats every morning, hoping they’d had bad games.

Now that pleasure is denied me. Does anyone else miss the box scores?

Jerry Helm

Northwest side

Eugenics

Trump said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” reintroducing the beliefs of eugenics to America. The practice of eugenics during World War II eliminated millions of Jews and other “defectives.” Trump’s deportations and denying birthright citizenship to wrong-colored babies is the beginning of his Holocaust. VP Vance and Christian Nationalists want to assure more white babies are born by following Nazis’ practices of eliminating birth control and abortion, and funding pregnancies for desirable white breeders.

Do they know eugenics triggers genocide, feticide, ethnic cleansing, infanticide and forced sterilization?

If they want to practice eugenics by ridding our country of undesirable people, they should start with murderers, rapists and January 6th insurrectionists. They know foreign prisons to send them to. Evil, heartless geniuses like Musk and his progeny should be deported immediately. Narcissists, pathological liars, sociopaths, psychopaths and megalomaniacs certainly have to go. And we will want them to kick out money-grubbing oligarchs and power mongers. This should help to make American democracy great again.

Dee Maitland

Marana

Thanks

As appears to be typical, Mr. McConnell’s views frequently lack perspective and nuance, possibly related to a serious Trump-worshipping mindset. Nuclear, solar and/or wind generations of power all have pros and cons to them. “Economic hardship,” in the short term anyway, often accompanies major change — change which may ultimately be required to save the planet. (Does Jeffrey have similar concerns about “economic hardship” when it relates to ill-conceived Trump tariffs?) As to speculating on Iran’s “annihilation” plans for the U.S. or Israel, realistically I think we need to be far more concerned with the “annihilation” of the Constitution and the rule of law by the current grifting, gangster president, who is far more focused on personal gain, cruelty, revenge and retribution than on meaningful stewardship of the country. But, yes, Jeffrey, I do thank you for reminding us of this.

Hope Gastelum

East side

Make billionaires richer again

All Hail our great leader, President Trump, the Master of the Art of the Deal. He has saved us from the threat of 145% tariffs on all goods from China. We can say Merry Christmas again. We can be thankful that our dolls will only cost 30% more. And stuff from all other countries will only cost 10% more (for now). This is so much better than the woke 2.5% inflation under Biden.

And the best part? The higher taxes we peons pay at the cash register with the new tariffs will pay for the massive tax cuts for the richest Americans. We should all be thankful for the privilege of making America’s billionaires richer again.

Bruce Hilpert

North side

Tucson Water proposed rate increase

Our lot size is close to an acre, about three times the lot size of an average Tucson house. The water required for irrigation is much more than Tier One charges. The City proposed increase is 70% to us. We have water tanks totaling 1,300 gallons that reclaim water from the roof.

Our water bills for January, February and March averaged $3.90 vs the $2.31 base rate per ccf for Tucson Water. This is 68% more than the base rate. The reality is that it takes more water to irrigate larger lots. 70% of our water used is irrigation, with some of the water returned to the water table and some returned through the sewer. The suggested price escalation is very aggressive with higher volume usage, making the price charged unreasonable. We have no representation with Tucson Water or the City Council while they spend hundreds of thousands on consultants and lawyers to justify increasing our rates.

Dave and Ann Locey

Foothills

Trump vs. Gallego

Trump’s first State of the Union address outlined his ‘comprehensive and bipartisan’ Four Pillars for Immigration Reform:

1. Path to citizenship for DREAMers

2. Border security

3. An end to the diversity visa lottery

4. Restrictions on family-based Immigration

Fast forward seven years, and Trump has secured the southern border in less than 100 days with no legislation required while our newly minted Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego, who is running for president just unveiled a five-pillar plan to secure that same border and fuel economic prosperity:

1. Maintain order at the border and keep communities safe

2. Reform the asylum system to end abuse

3. Expand legal pathways to fuel economic prosperity

4. Bring people out of the shadows

5. Address root causes of migration

It must be better because it has an extra pillar, but you decide. I’m good with Trump’s four.

Jeffrey McConnell

West side

Realistic solutions to drug prices

I know that there is a lot on the plate of Congressman Juan Ciscomani as he works with his party on this reconciliation process. But he needs to keep his constituents in mind when it comes to some of these policies being tossed around during these negotiations. One such policy that he should strongly oppose is the Most Favored Nation policy in drug pricing. By only paying the lowest price for drugs that other countries pay, it would inadvertently reduce patient access to essential medications. In countries with stringent price controls, some cutting-edge drugs simply aren’t available due to a lack of profitability. Replicating this system through MFN could result in similar restrictions here, leaving patients without critical medications. There are many ways to attack the high cost of drugs, such as pharmacy benefit manager reform or increasing the availability of generic medications. Relying on other countries’ pricing schemes is not one of them.

Linda Wieczornzki

Midtown

Divine intervention

I’ve read where Pope Leo is an avid Chicago White Sox fan. It’s true the Sox need all the help they can get, but I believe there’s another team that needs the Pope to change allegiances. I’m writing about my beloved Pittsburgh Pirates. What other team lost its starting second baseman to a fractured ankle while running out a home run? What other team had a fan fall 21 feet over a wall onto the field? As an added incentive, if the Pope is willing to root for the Pirates, I will personally fly to Rome and gift him with my cherished Roberto Clemente T-shirt. I eagerly await his response.

Charles Schultz

Northeast side

Tumbling down Trump’s road

We are entitled to an equitable future for ourselves, our children, our grandchildren and future generations. Can we leave future generations a better world? How can this be since on Trump’s road to recovery, we encounter a collapsing democracy, and we are thrown a shredded Constitution? On Trump’s road, there is a “taking away” philosophy. Taking away from Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, FEMA, the Department of Education, the Congressional Library, freedom of speech, habeas corpus, etc. Is this what Making America Great Again means? I think not. Congress, wake up from your hibernation before midterm elections.

Toni Kane

Oro Valley

Nothing

The billionaires have decided that the people with nothing have too much.

Terry Louck

East side

No coal for AI

A recent article tried to make a case for coal-fired power plants to power AI, perhaps to stay ahead of China. I asked ChatGPT about this idea; here’s what it said: “Reactivating coal fired power plants for AI is like burning down the library to power the internet. Relying on coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, is climate negligence. Coal is responsible for about twice as much CO₂ per unit of energy as natural gas and produces toxic air pollutants, mercury, and particulates. We need smarter planning, massive investment in clean power, and regulation that doesn’t treat tech growth as exempt from environmental responsibility. If we’re building AI to optimize human progress, doing so by sacrificing climate stability is a moral contradiction. AI could help manage energy systems, optimize grids, and accelerate clean energy — but not if it’s fueling the very crisis it’s supposed to mitigate.”

Dwight Swisher

Hereford

South African refugees

So, Trump is offering to bring White South Africans over here as refugees without going through what everybody who isn’t white goes through.

Are they criminals? Will they bring mass amount of drugs over? Are they all a bunch of criminals as Trump say about the refugees at our southern border?

Can they rebuild roofs, build houses, do landscaping, lay block, trim bushes or trees? Will they be willing to do anything required of them for decent pay? Or will they stand on our street corners and beg for money like so many, if not all of our so-called homeless do?

Jose Salgado

Northeast side

Data centers

Initially, a facility would be protested by saying “not in my back yard”. Now “data centers” are joining communities; not only huge and noisy but consume electricity and other resources at a prodigious rate and increase the pollution due to their need for power and cooling. While they provide enormous power to A.I. and telecommunications, they serve the few rather than the many. To appease this appetite for electricity, solar power and small nuclear reactors may provide the power needed. Solar power has advanced from the initial panels created; as for nuclear reactors, the U. S. Navy has mastered the use of small, safe reactors engineered for use on ships and submarines with trained nuclear technicians. The first reactor powered the USS Nautilus to the North Pole and back without refueling; today’s reactors are better and more efficient — so if data centers are now a fact of life, perhaps one stigma can be removed by utilizing the reactor(s) found in submarines and solar power panels.

Richard Rebl

East side