Tucson Speaks Out: May 19 letters of the day

It is difficult to have patience with people who complain about the erosion of their personal freedoms when governments are finally taking action to stop the destruction of our planet’s habitability. Allowing the fossil fuels-powered Industrial Revolution to kick into high gear with coal, oil and gas generation of electricity and gas-powered transportation was a huge mistake. It violates the physical laws that govern our world. Even readers who, like Donald Trump, believe global warming is a Chinese hoax, don’t protest the laws of gravity by jumping off cliffs.

Burning releases carbon that had been safely sequestered beneath the earth’s surface for hundreds of millions of years. That carbon stays in the atmosphere for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, preventing increasing amounts of the sun’s energy from being reflected back into space.

The fastest possible transition to renewable energy sources will allow us to preserve the benefits of the Industrial Revolution without killing our planet.

Steven Lesh

East side

Arizona is the worst

Re: the May 2 article “AZ ranks 49th for access to adult mental health care.”

This is one of two articles in the May 2 paper that noted Arizona currently ranks 49th in K-12 funding for public schools and 49th for access to adult mental health care. It’s depressing how often we hear this.

In 2023, Arizona was ranked 46th in healthcare for women due to the low percentage of women with healthcare providers and a 22% increase in women’s mortality and 48th in health care for children due to the high percentage of uninsured children and the low percentage in early childhood education.

In 2020, Arizona was rated the worst state to live in with an F in quality of life, health, and inclusion, noting a lack of health resources with a mere $79 per person spent on public health, among the lowest in the nation. We were ranked the fourth-most dangerous state for pedestrians and second in road rage killings and injuries.

Want a better state with the health care and public schools we desperately need? Voting for Democrats will deliver them.

Jacolyn Marshall

Oro Valley

Was it better four years ago?

Re: the May 5 letter “Hate Trump club.”

The writer paints a rosy picture of how things were under the ex-pres.

At the end of his letter, the writer asks voters to remember to ask, “is our country better off now than it was four years ago?”

Does he have a short memory, or is he ignoring facts on purpose?

Four years ago, our country was under the siege of COVID-19, hospitals were overflowing, and like many others, I had to confine myself to my bedroom to keep from spreading the disease.

And in April of 2020 the unemployment rate was 14.7%.

And we had a president who suggested that it might be helpful to drink bleach. He didn’t volunteer to be first though did he?

NO! I do not belong to the hate Trump Club!

I belong to the Love a Good Leader Club.

David Hatch

Southeast side

Where is the world’s humanity?

Every pro-Palestinian protester, and those who support them, should have to watch Sheryl Sandberg’s documentary “Screams Before Silence,” which testifies to the brutal sexual violence committed by Hamas on Oct. 7. Interviews of multiple eyewitnesses, released hostages, first responders, medical and forensic experts and survivors, all bear witness to the women and girls who were raped, mutilated and murdered. This happened to people on the land of a sovereign nation, in people’s private homes and at a music festival for no other reason except that the state of Israel exists. Where is the world’s humanity for Israel?

Maureen Salz

Oro Valley

Arizona can’t afford to lose more doctors

Arizona has long experienced a doctor shortage. According to the Arizona Public Health Association, Arizona currently has a shortage of 560 primary care physicians alone, with an estimated shortage of 1941 doctors by 2030.

Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the country yet ranks 42nd nationally in the number of physicians.

A recent NPR report stated that medical school students considering residency are avoiding Arizona because of the abortion ban. They want comprehensive training and worry that “state fights over abortion access have created uncertainty for pregnant patients and their doctors. That uncertainty has also bled into the world of medical education.”

Physician residents tend to settle within 100 miles from their residency. If they don’t train in Arizona, it’s highly unlikely that they will practice here.

Let’s keep our graduating medical students and residents. This November, vote to enshrine abortion access and reproductive rights into the Arizona constitution.

By protecting women’s health care, you will be protecting your own.

Carla Andrews Ohara

Northwest side

Not voting is not an option

Re: the May 10 article “In defense of not voting.”

I was aghast to read George Will’s column. Many of us voters do wish we would have a different choice come this November. But we’re stuck with Biden and Trump. It’s a given that the MAGA world will turn out for Trump. Non-MAGA Republicans, under the misguided assumption that a Trump victory will further Republican principles, will vote Trump. And some number of Independents will do the same. That leaves Democrats, Democrat-leaning Independents, Independents who fear the Trump agenda and Republicans who see a Trump defeat as the only way to wrest control of their party from this wannabe dictator. This group must vote. Withholding your vote for Biden as a protest simply increases the chance that Trump will squeak by the Electoral College. If you think your one vote won’t matter, I offer you the 2020 election results in Arizona and Georgia.

John Crittenden

Oro Valley

Imagine ...

What could Arizona’s public schools do with an additional $1 billion a year?

Consider: the current school voucher system costs Arizona taxpayers over $800 million; the Tuition Support Organization tax credits cost an additional $200-plus million a year. Private and parochial schools, the beneficiaries of these tax dollars, do not have to administer state mandated tests nor report test results, do not have to publish budgets or financial reports and their administrative salaries are a mystery.

No one knows what we are getting for our tax dollars. But imagine what public schools could do with it. Perhaps get out of the bottom five states in teacher salaries and per-student expenditures? Repair failing facilities? Improve students’ health and safety?

Elections are coming up. Is it time to end decades-long efforts to eviscerate public in favor of private and parochial education?

Choose wisely.

Todd Ackerman

Foothills

Quit whining

Trump complains that his hush money trial is interfering with his ability to campaign. If true, Trump has no one but himself to blame.

He repeatedly tried to delay the trial, including an attempt to move it to federal court without a basis, two attempts to remove the judge and a dozen other attempts to delay.

This is in keeping with his overall strategy to delay all of the pending cases until after the election. Had he truly wanted the American people to learn how not guilty he is of all of this before we vote, he could have already resolved most of the cases.

Instead, it’s been delay after delay. Sort of odd for such an innocent and unfairly accused defendant.

Larry Fleischman

North side

U of A Faculty Senate Chair and antisemitism

Pennsylvania President Magill and Harvard President Gay both lost their jobs because they did not explicitly say that calling for the genocide of Jews would necessarily violate their code of conduct on bullying or harassment. University of Arizona Faculty Senate Chair, Professor Leila Hudson at first refused to issue a statement condemning antisemitism. Then, surprisingly she issued a document on May 10, in part, “I reject antisemitism personally as a grieving Palestinian American.” Her statement is qualified by her status and diminishes the credibility of her letter. She writes, “Let there be no doubt that antisemitism — like all forms of bigotry, racism, supremacism, intimidation, harassment, and violence — has no place on our campus or in our culture.” Professor Hudson never points out code of conduct violations from the protesters that are antisemitic. Instead, she points to the “chilling of legitimate speech and the “disproportionate Police and institutional violence against protesters,” to excuse abusive language by the protesters. That is not legitimate speech and reveals her implicit bias. She should resign.

Richard Harper

Northeast side

I’m just wondering

What’s special about campus Israel/Palestine protests requiring daily headlines since April 18? Columbia protest fostered 100 arrests. With 36,000 students: 0.277%. Why protests now, end of semesters? Why not months ago?

Don’t get me wrong! The humanitarian crisis in Gaza is horrific, a place that experienced over 60% food insecurity prior to Hamas attacking. U.S. arms have been involved in response. But why not outrage when the U.S. did not support Ukraine’s many requests for arms against Russian invasion, which has killed 20,000 civilians, 444,000 soldiers? Why no screaming at Congress to help them? If Russia wins, it’s certain not to stop there. What happens next?

Where was outrage over Syria and 677,000 deaths? Or Yemen’s 377,000 deaths? What and who woke students up?

I respect protests. I participated in the largest war protest in history: Iraq. And massive climate change and women’s rights protests. But press like this? What’s the intent? Just wondering.

Nancy Jacques

Northeast side

Your money or your democracy

I see many letters supporting a change in the presidency. Most focus on transient annoyances like oil and food prices and inflation, in general. So, those writers so concerned with their pennies are, apparently, willing to transform our almost 250 years old democracy to an autocracy overseen by an impeached and indicted individual. There are things much more important than money; freedom, for example.

Dennis Winsten

Northeast side

What if?

Israel withdrew all military and civilians from Gaza in 2005. Hamas was voted into power by the Palestinian people in 2006.

What if:

Hamas had spent their time, money and efforts to develop a vibrant economy to benefit the people instead of building their military forces, conducting raids, and firing missiles indiscriminately into Israel over the years since then?

Hamas had not invaded Israel on Oct. 7 supported by a barrage of 3,000 rockets, slaughtering civilians and raping and mutilating women, killing 1,139 civilians and taking 250 men, women, and children hostages?

Gaza civilians had vacated areas of Gaza as directed by the Israeli IDF before the IDF began military operations?

Hamas had not used hospitals and the tunnels below as military command and control centers?

Egypt had accepted and welcomed Palestinian civilians in coordination with Hamas to provide safe havens for civilians?

The basic tenets of each faith, basic respect and common sense had prevailed?

How many civilian deaths would have been avoided?

Cal Rooker

Southeast side

Uncertainty

Like you, I have no idea what health issues I might face between now and next February. Whatever happens, should they prove serious, even life-threatening, I am secure in the knowledge that skilled doctors will be there for me.

That is not the case for anyone between the ages 12 and 50 who finds herself pregnant, with or without her consent, with or without healthcare, with or without financial means.

Unlike me, our doctors will not be there for her throughout her nine months of uncertainty, unless her death is imminent and even then her doctor must contemplate how close to dying must she be before he’s protected. As a result, maternal death rates are 62% higher in states with abortion bans.

The CDC reports 80% of pregnancy-related deaths in the US are preventable given the right care at the right time. It is shameful that is not the case in Arizona.

One thing is certain. Your vote can change that.

Jacolyn Marshall

Oro Valley

Presidential election

It is a done deal. Only one of Trump’s criminal trials will be completed before the 2024 presidential election. The SCOTUS has stalled the DC election interference with its stalled ruling of the boundaries of Presidential immunity. Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, has stalled an obvious case of Trump willfully taking top secret documents and then obstructing the effort by the government to retrieve them. These efforts by the by the above are actually the work of a “deep state” in our judges and courts to protect to protect a Presidential candidate who orchestrated an insurrection on Jan. 6th, 2021. The people’s institutions of the judiciary have failed its citizens! It is up to us; the will of the people to rid ourselves of a narcissistic megalomaniac threat to our democracy Donald J. Trump (defeated Presidential candidate in 2020).

Frank E. Montez,

Veteran 32-year ARNG

East side