Where’s the fiscal responsibility?
Re: the June 20 article “Bill that could slow renewable energy vetoed.”
According to weather experts, climate disasters that cost over $1 billion are a measure of climate change and its effects. Last year alone, there were 18 such events nationwide, costing more than $165B.
Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included the largest landmark climate package in history, investing $370 billion in clean energy and other climate mitigations over the next 10 years. Not a single Republican Senator or Representative voted for it.
Which is more fiscally responsible: spending $165B per year on damages or $37B per year for mitigation and prevention? Allowing climate disasters to keep worsening or taking positive action to lessen them?
Blind allegiance to big oil, coal, and gas is shortsighted, destructive, and foolish.
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With 8 in 10 US adults reporting they have personally felt the effects of extreme weather in the past five years, it’s time Arizona Republicans realize they and their families are among them. They must start doing their part to address the climate disasters headed their way.
Kay Schriner
Northwest side
Student loan forgiveness
I find it amusing that Arizona taxpayers are all up in arms about a one-time partial loan relief for college students. However, they support a gift to rich people in the way of a school voucher to send their kids to private school for 12 years. School vouchers will total more than 20,000 dollars if used from first grade to high school senior but that’s just fine. How absurd.
Jim Barnes
Southwest side
Let’s not become complacent
Re: the July 12 article “Tucson ‘extreme heat’ reaction is meh.”
Kudos to Tim Steller for another very nice local interest column.
While resiliency and adaptability of local residents to the global climate crisis are commendable, let’s not become complacent about its continuously worsening impacts on our community. We don’t want this hot summer to be remembered as the coolest summer of the rest of our lifetimes.
Although individual actions to mitigate individual contributions to the climate crisis are laudable, we need to work together on a larger scale to address this global problem. Please vote consistently, in every single election, for candidates that will work with us and for us to fight the rapidly worsening global climate crisis, not for candidates who put their own self interests first. Vet candidates carefully. Are they accepting dark money from or collaborating in other ways with the fossil fuel industry that brought us the global climate crisis? If so, vote for your interests and the interests of our community by electing their opponents.
Mark Peterson
Foothills
The labor of the ‘loud minority’
Lane Santa Cruz has suggested that those who opposed the change of annexation at 36th/La Cholla represent a “loud minority.” In 2005, 800 neighbors successfully opposed a 225-housing development here. Jose Ibarra supported constituents and called for the city to establish a fund to preserve open space — land catty corner was being preserved. In 2020, June-November, dedicated west-side neighbors collected 476 signatures from our richly diverse neighborhood. Four hundred and seventy-two people opposed the removal of annexation and dense-packed development, and 31 people wrote emails expressing opposition. These were sent to mayor and council on Nov. 20, 2020, with documents outlining opposition reasons: the Tumamoc Area Plan, traffic, environment. On Feb. 8, 2022, mayor and council (save two) voted to remove the annexation promising verbally to preserve some open space and include 14 units of affordable housing: units now gone. LSC disrespects the people who worked long hours to make sure their neighbors’ views were heard. Vote for Miguel Ortega, who respects community neighborhood activism.
Yvonne Reineke
West side
Support amendment with infrastructure
The 2nd Amendment could use some infrastructure — such as federal subsidies for the construction of new gun clubs and firing ranges across America. This would have the effect of promoting gun safety because users would have better access to proper training in the use of their weapons, and it would reduce firearm use in neighborhoods.
Other infrastructure ideas: “Thoughts and Prayers Shrines” at all mass shooting sites, 2nd Amendment inscriptions chiseled into the entrances to all public buildings, dedicated school cemetery space at all school sites, “just-in-case” memorial-wall construction for every school site.
Other 2nd Amendment-preservation ideas for legislatures: law enforcement “response-time contests” with large monetary prizes, withholding of funds to states and communities that try to regulate firearms, subsidies to communities for the training and arming of teachers and designated older students, and distribution of miniature gun lapel pins to all school children.
Gerald Farrington
SaddleBrooke
Pro-life also means valuing the mother
Since I wrote my letter in support of abortion to infant viability, I’ve received letters proclaiming me not sufficiently pro-life. First, as a doctor, for someone to insinuate, I’m not pro-life is an insult to my professional oath. Secondly, I expect anyone claiming to be pro-life to be as concerned with the life of a mother as they are with her unborn child.
Unfortunately, many recently enacted anti-abortion laws put the lives of women, mostly poor women, and often caregivers, in danger.
Anybody, Christian or otherwise, that holds the life of a pregnant mother to be less valuable than that of her unborn child is seeking power, not righteousness. The Bible has been misused many times throughout history, by Christian demagogues, to abuse women. It should not be used to oppress women in 21st-century America.
I believe politicians and preachers should stay out of our bedrooms and our exam rooms. Respect a mother’s freedom to choose what happens to her own body.
Dr. Joshua Reilly
North side
TEP foot-dragging
Re: the July 15 article “Corporate morals and regulatory negligence.”
I second Terry Finefrock’s remarks on TEP’s corporate strategy. To be doing a purposeful slow walk on a transition to commercial solar production of electricity in Arizona is beyond irresponsible and is nearly criminal, knowing what we know about mankind’s ongoing damage to our environment. The Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) is complicit in this. Given that Arizonans elect the ACC, we all bear some responsibility here. Why do we vote to give power to those who work against our own self-interests?
At least we as citizens can do our part by installing solar and other green energy infrastructure in our homes. If only TEP (and the ACC) could better incentivize area residents to install home solar electrical generation by paying customers industry-leading rates for the electricity they buy from us to augment what corporate TEP is still producing by burning fossil fuels.
Terry McDaniel
North side
EPA proposed regulations
In southeastern Arizona, we know what’s best for our communities and push back against federal overreach that harms our way of life.
That’s why I’m speaking out to oppose the Biden EPA’s latest proposal to create more regulatory red tape governing a class of fine particulates known as PM2.5. What the EPA proposes will kill jobs and hurt agriculture, manufacturing and other industries that are central to our economy in rural Arizona while doing very little to improve public health.
A recent study by the National Association of Manufacturers found the PM2.5 proposal threatens 1,300 jobs and $500 million worth of manufacturing activity in Arizona alone. As Chairwoman of the Arizona House Committee on Natural Resources, Energy & Water, I lead state policymakers in creating laws that balance environmental stewardship with quality economic growth. What the EPA proposes for PM2.5 is truly Washington overreach at its worst.
Representative Gail Griffin (R-Hereford), Chairwoman, House Committee on Natural Resources, Energy & Water
Sierra Vista
Affirmative Action
I remember when Affirmative Action first came into existence, bringing the hope of equal opportunity to all students. With its recent demise, thanks to the Supreme Court, we now see numerous articles on the topic, some positive about its demise and some negative. What’s missing, however, is any hard data regarding the results of Affirmative Action during all the decades it was in place. Did it really bring about equal opportunity? Did it measurably help minorities throughout the USA to raise their standard of living and progress in their lives? There is little point in debating opinions on the efficacy of Affirmative Action without any evidence, pro or con, that it accomplished its stated goals. Bring on the evidence first, and then let’s debate the Affirmative Action issue.
Kendra Gaines
Foothills
