New rides at Disney World
Walt Disney World in Florida should open some new attractions: Transgenderland, a happy ride where they could showcase the current efforts in America to include transgender children as human beings with full rights, and FloridaHistoryLand, a scary ride where they could depict the brutal racist past of the state and their current voting restriction laws. See if the Republicans could stop that!
Michael Perdue
Vail
Award for Bowers, decline of GOP
Congratulations to Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers for winning a John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award for refusing to go along with Donald Trump’s attempts to undo the results of the 2020 presidential election. As Speaker Bowers aptly noted, though: “Honoring my oath and the people’s choices at the ballot box are not heroic acts.”
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Unfortunately, the Republican Party has devolved to the point where GOP office holders like Bowers who actually feel obliged to uphold their constitutional duties are being outnumbered by colleagues who either openly pursue authoritarian, self-serving ends or who cowardly refuse to take a stand against such anti-democratic actions.
It is a sad commentary when a GOP official of today has to be honored for doing what generations of law-abiding, conscientious office holders in the past have had no hesitation in doing when they felt the long-revered democratic ideals of this country demanded it.
John Covert
Northeast side
Sex strike wouldn’t work
Re: the May 13 letter “Sex strike.”
As for a sex strike (suggested by a couple of contributors to the Letters of the Editor section), since there will be no allowances for abortion in case of rape or incest in many states, men will have no compunction to take “No” for an answer. I think anti-abortion laws will increase the number of rapes, as the laws put all the power in the hands of men.
Patricia Dow
Midtown
Pleading with Biden over border
Under President Biden, there has been record numbers of people attempting to enter the country illegally. There has also been an increase in smuggling-related vehicle accidents resulting in injury and death. Residents in border towns are traumatized and live in fear. On almost a daily basis, human and drug smugglers carrying loads of unauthorized migrants and/or illegal drugs drive recklessly through these small towns attempting to elude law enforcement. Many result in crashes, with multiple injuries and deaths of migrants, as occurred on April 21 on I-10 near Picacho. In March, a tanker truck failed to stop at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Webb County, Texas. A lengthy chase occurred with the truck driver sideswiping law enforcement vehicles. Sixty-two smuggled unauthorized migrants were later found in the truck. Smugglers frequently crash into other vehicles, plow through ranch fencing and onto privately owned property. Terrorized border town residents have pleaded with the Biden administration to secure the border, but those pleas have landed on uncaring ears.
Mike Wayne
Midtown
Rent money breakdown
Re: the May 13 article “Where does each dollar in rent go?”
While Courtney Gilstrap Levinus’ analysis of where rent money goes is basically sound, there is a glaringly misleading item. To say that 38% of rent income goes to pay the mortgage on the property is to forget that the “mortgage” payment includes insurance (tax deductible) interest on the mortgage (tax deductible) to reduce the mortgage amount (increases the owner’s equity) and for property taxes (tax deductible.) On the property owner’s side, another overlooked item is the vacancy factor. Not all units are rented all of the time.
The remaining 9% profit is rather good even without the corrections implied above. The stock market won’t typically give you a 9% return, and 9% would be most welcome for most businesses.
James Kay
East side
Not in constitution
Justice Clarence Thomas justifies his objection to Roe v. Wade because the word “abortion” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution. This may be the only time I agree with him. But does the word “Kalashnikov” appear in the U.S. Constitution? My recall may be inaccurate, but I think not. Or does “high capacity magazine” appear? But their absence does not deter his voting to permit weapons which were obviously as un-contemplated in the late 1700s as was abortion. His duplicity is showing.
Kenneth Haber
Northwest side
Moral affront against women
Let me get this straight. A woman, at conception, becomes a mere carrier of her unborn fetus. From the embryo on, the government serves as a watchdog protecting the unborn child from being aborted. Women cannot be trusted in this matter, irrespective of the viability of the fetus, the danger to the mother, or even in the circumstances of rape or incest. Even physicians have no say.
At birth, the state loses interest in the protection racket. The welfare of the child is shifted to the mother.
The Supreme Court, twisting the notion that a woman can make decisions about her own body, brings us back to the unsafe time when a man can hide in the shadows, while the female he impregnated undergoes an illegal abortion and takes her chances. Clearly, this is another example of the moral affront against women. It smacks of spite, masking as nobility.
Ron Lancaster
North side
Water a priority
Every day there are more headlines about our impending water crisis. What has my Republican state Sen. Vince Leach done? Nothing! He adopted the three monkey posture — see, hear and speak no evil.
Ignoring our water problems, Leach and his Republicans cohorts used the legislative session to pass laws that suppress voting, restrict a woman’s control of her own body and deny parents the right to choose certain medical treatments for children.
Meanwhile, Lakes Mead and Powell plummet to record-low levels. How about doing something to reduce blatant water waste? During a visit to our capital, I was appalled to see commercial developments irrigating useless lawn berms. Why didn’t our legislature use the session to pass a law similar to Nevada’s “non-functional turf” bill?
Arizona’s one-vote Republican majority effectively blocked environmental legislation. Time for a change! In November we need to vote out extremist Republicans and vote in moderate Democrats like retired pastor Mike Nickerson.
Thea Chalow
Oro Valley
Show empathy and respond
I have watched the horror of the murderous attacks on Ukraine, leaving me saddened, outraged and feeling helpless. The bombed-out schools and hospitals, the obliteration of Mariupol, women and children huddled for two months in the bowels of a steel plant. The tearful goodbyes at train stations. The funerals, the mass graveyards. The heart-rending interviews with Ukrainians who have lost their homes or buried loved ones.
I suggest that to even begin to understand what this war has wrought on Ukrainians and to empathize with them you do the following: Close your eyes and picture the above scenario in your part of Tucson, in your immediate life. It’s your house, your neighbors, your grandchildren, your school, your hospital. Bodies on your street. Your son, in a trench somewhere, who you may never see again.
Similar misery is occurring in places like Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Ethiopia. We owe it to all these people to empathize with their plight and respond as best we can.
Peter Bourque
Midtown
GOP and border fear
It is really sad to hear about outgoing Gov. Doug Ducey’s attempts to copycat Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s border stunts: by creating a “border police” force. And the Republican candidates for governors show footage to scare voters of “masses crossing the border” and drugs flooding our schools; “I will finish the Wall”... etc. These are federal areas of responsibility. But they are out to scare voters, not educate them.
I would hope that Ducey and GOP wannabes 1) waive the gas tax to help people out; 2) have concrete plans or ideas about future water needs for state; and 3) education for our children: their future and the state.
No, the GOP wants to make it harder for people to vote; ID for elderly reservation folks or poor folks who have never driven, etc. GOP’s priority is to scare people and redraw electoral district maps to protect dangerous incumbents, a truly sad state of affairs. Unfortunately, it is a national policy of the GOP: the party of fear.
Margarita Bernal
West side
Separation of church and state
It is disturbing that the separation of church and state is being jeopardized by the Catholic and Evangelical coalition operating in the right wing of the Republican Party. It wants to impose their religious beliefs and values on the rest of us through political policy or law.
That happening will weaken democracy. With religious doctrines come restrictions. The Supreme Court justices who are Catholic should excuse themselves from acting on Roe v. Wade. It is a conflict of interest because strict anti-abortion is in the DNA of the Catholic religion. That would leave Ketanji Brown Jackson, Neil Gorsuch, and Elena Kagan, which might be too small a number to act at all. The Supreme Court is stacked and political. Our founding fathers did not intend that as a check on the balance of power.
We need to move to the middle as a government by voting for moderates of whichever party. We need people in office who care about nurturing American government, not abusing it.
Rozanne Plotnik
Green Valley
