Student debt cancellation
Re: the March 2 article “College borrowers see disconnect.”
University of Georgia student Niara Thompson was quoted in an AP piece in the Daily Star about students wanting college debt relief. Thompson stated, “It felt like people who could never understand why we want something like this.”
I’d like to explain why millions are opposed. Fifty years ago, I was fortunate that my parents could afford to pay my college tuition. My son went into the trades and is a successful plumbing contractor. I paid my daughter’s tuition for five years before she dropped out and joined the workforce. My granddaughter and her husband both graduated from ASU with student debt. He became a police officer, and she is an RN. Upon graduation, they both moved home with their parents to more quickly reduce their student debt until they married. I respect their decision and don’t feel they, or I, am responsible for my tax dollars benefiting those with their decision to go into debt.
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Dan Watson
Oracle
No accountability
Per the new “educational freedom” law in Arizona that allows all 1.1 million students in Arizona access to ESAs formerly open only to special needs students and a small subset of tribal, military, and rural students, I propose this to parents compelled to leave the public school system for whatever reason:
a) Homeschool your child/children
b) Enroll your child/children in a private or parochial school at your own expense
Yes, it is your choice. But not on Arizona’s dime.
The uproar over curriculum in Arizona boils down to parental control vs. a broad public school curriculum that encourages free, unbiased critical thinking. Now, non-public schools that receive ESAs will have no transparency or oversight. This translates to Arizona citizens funding private/religious schools with taxpayer money with nothing in return. What about much-needed teacher raises and improvements to Arizona’s national educational ranking instead of siphoning off public funds?
The irony can be cut with a knife.
Ashley Sweeney, M.Ed Curriculum and Instruction
Oro Valley
Water and dust
For two decades, I thought I should write about the city dropping the regular street cleaning on my street. We “feeder streets” were dropped en masse for “lack of funds.” So, the particulates in the air, especially our neighborhood’s air, rise 178%. Yesterday I got the letter: I am one of the reprobates using 250% more water than other normal 2.5-person households. Well. My acre in midtown, with our 2.5 businesses, seeds and plants, produces seeds of 300 local native species, and seedlings and bigger plants, after 42 years now at about — well, about a trillion propagules for southern Arizona. Yes, we are sinners; we use almost as much as someone with a swimming pool! We did ask to get the business rate, which would have saved a lot off our regular $300-$700 water bills. The city guys only drove up out front and said no. Instead of jacking up our water rates, how about giving us free lunch instead?
Gary Maskarinec
Midtown
EVs and equity
Re: the Feb. 3 article “Falling EV prices only help the wealthy.”
As an advocate of the Citizen Climate Lobby’s revenue-neutral, market-based carbon fee/dividend proposal to address global warming, I have reservations about the Inflation Reduction Act.
However, Ashley Nunes’s critique of the IRA’s EV tax credit as iniquitous is misleading.
First, the EV tax credit is a minuscule part of the IRA. Second, a growing number of reasonably priced EVs are eligible for the tax credit, e.g., the Chevrolet Bolt. Third and most importantly, there is a practically non-existent used EV market, the primary source of vehicles for those with modest incomes.
To bolster this market, it is necessary to first sell new EVs. This will benefit people with limited incomes.
Admittedly, this is reminiscent of thoroughly discredited trickle-down economics. But given nearly uniform Republican opposition to addressing climate change and economic inequity, this is perhaps the best Congress can presently do.
Doug Pickrell
Midtown
Right-wing grievances
Re: the March 4 article “Blame liberal policies, not talk radio.”
I read Bob Lee’s assessment of the problems of our world: liberals! This fellow claims to have invented right-wing talk radio in Tucson. He deifies such far-right characters as Rush Limbaugh and Rupert Murdoch (Fox News), and, as is typical of his ilk, blames all of our problems on “liberals,” who I guess include anyone not fitting in with his lopsided view of the world, or at least Tucson. According to him, “liberals” are in favor of “defunding the police, freeing criminals, supporting illegal immigration, and ‘enabling’ lawlessness.” I know of no progressives who support such straw men as these: the typical fodder of far-right grievance ranting. But people like to listen to these folks in the right-wing echo chamber of fabrications, exaggerations, and outright lies and lunacy.
Still, I’m glad the Star chose to publish his screed so that reasonable people can see the bankrupt claims from the right.
Jeffrey St. Clair
North side
No role models in Davos
These are not the people that merit my respect or admiration. These and other bureaucrats and elites that seem to be pulling the strings of control in our country and the globe are not those who we have elected.
Why is it that we would give up our sovereignty to the likes of WHO, are they chosen by us?
These are not any of those we’ve elected to carry out the will of our people.
The FBI, NSA, CIA and many other bureaucrats!
Did we elect them to spy on us and use the data that they collect to destroy our constitutional rights and freedoms?
Did we elect them and give them these extra-constitutional powers?
I think not, and yet they are in charge.
This forebodes a much different life for our children.
Sad!
Rich Barnes
East side
Advice too late for Murdaugh
To paraphrase an old adage: it is best to remain silent and be thought to be a lying, stealing, pill-popping, narcissistic, double-relation murderer than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.
Rick Cohn
West side
Water solutions
Recent proposals from Star readers for constructing a desalination plant on the California coast, in return for the California “share” of Colorado River water, have posed an attractive alternative to the preposterous notion of supporting the building of a plant in Mexico with a pipeline up to Phoenix.
However, I now read that environmentalists in Huntington Beach have successfully opposed such a plant there. Why? “Concentrated brine from the plant would have created a marine dead zone, and emissions from the energy-intensive desalination process would ... exacerbate the climate crisis” with its greenhouse gases (report in Sierra Magazine, Fall 2022). Why has former Gov. Ducey’s Arizona Water Infrastructure Finance Authority, which voted to spend $5.5 M of our taxpayer dollars on exploring such a project, not told us about the effect of concentrated brine on the delicate ecosystem of the Gulf of California?
Suzanne Ferguson
Southeast side
Planting trees and mistletoe
Re: the Feb. 9 letter “A million trees?.”
As an ecologist in Tucson for 53 years, I comment on this letter about the City of Tucson’s plan to plant a million trees. Shady, tree-lined streets are an Eastern U.S. vision inappropriate for desert areas dependent on dwindling Colorado River water. One reason given to plant trees is that shade slows down global warming. In the Sonoran Desert, most shade is from shrubs, not trees. I need to point out that mistletoes do not kill trees. The desert mistletoe (Phoradendron californicum) is a hemiparasite that only draws a bit of water and no nutrients from the tree and produces its own energy. Trees die from other causes, such as lack of water, Texas root rot, and windfall. Mistletoes have provided food and nest sites for Phainopeplas and many other birds in the velvet mesquites in my yard for over 35 years without harm.
Tom Van Devender
North side
East Palestine, Ohio
When Donald Trump went to East Palestine, Ohio, he forgot the paper towels.
Larry Gray
SaddleBrooke
