Tucson Speaks Out: September 29

Arizona’s homeowners insurance premiums have soared 71% in the past five years due to the high costs of wildfires, floods and severe storms. Between 2020-24, Arizona experienced nine extreme weather events with losses exceeding $1 billion. However, every dollar invested in disaster prevention could save six dollars in future property losses.

But that’s not all. Since Trump’s drastic EPA and FEMA cuts, climate disasters have become more widespread and destructive, causing more damage, injuries, illnesses and deaths, along with food and water shortages and species extinctions. Extreme heat waves are now the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the U.S.

Save money and save lives by electing climate advocates who will invest in disaster prevention:

• Arizona Corporation Commission candidates Clara Pratte and Jonathan Hill will harness Arizona’s clean energy sources and lower energy costs.

• LD 17 House candidates Kevin Volk and Holly Lyon will protect our water resources.

• Attorney General Kris Mayes will continue to sue for climate justice.

Jackie Marshall

Oro Valley

Having trouble finding a doctor? Blame MAGA

Having trouble finding a doctor? Blame MAGA.

I ran into a friend today and asked how her daughter, a Tucson pediatrician, was doing. Her answer: her daughter moved to Canada months ago. Two of her physician colleagues moved with her. I did research and found the real number may be close to a thousand in the U.S. last year. Canadian healthcare is managed at the province or territory level, and there is not a national “total” readily available.

I know personally and through “the grapevine” of friends that finding a new physician here in Tucson, in almost any field, is a long-term, difficult undertaking. Many physicians are not taking on new patients, some have retired at a young age, and some have moved. But to Canada?

Reasons given lead back to the Trump administration’s assault on medicine and science. The CDC is no longer trustworthy. Blame MAGA. Vote Democratic.

Mel Strijdonk

Northwest side

Early voting and your ID options

I’m sharing our experience and alerting people to a new option offered in Pima County. During the primary election, I mailed my ballot, while my husband took his to a voting center. He was offered the option of just dropping it into the box or showing his driver’s license to the poll worker, verifying his signature right then and saving them a time-consuming step later on. He did so, the worker marked his unopened ballot envelope, and it went into the box. Both our ballots counted just fine, and election officials said later that they were thrilled with how smoothly on-site signature verification went and how much it sped up the counting.

I’m fine with presenting an ID when I vote, and encourage everyone to do this if you can. Arizona elections are safe and secure, but we voters can do our part to make them even more safe and secure. Democracy benefits everyone.

Gail Gibbs

Oro Valley

A suggestion

The polls suggest that Democrats will take control of the House at the mid-term elections. Assuming that happens, I suggest that the first line of business be a law to make the sale of pardons illegal. The Constitution grants the exclusive right to pardon to the executive with no real guardrails. The framers wrongly assumed that the executive would be an honorable person. I would legislate that any compensation, gift, or donation for receipt of a pardon results in the pardon being revoked, and the person receiving the gift to pardon would remit double the amount of the remuneration to the U.S. Treasury. The lawyers in Congress could do the specific wording so that gifts to election funds, or libraries, or affiliated charities or offspring would be included in the prohibition. I would also include the restriction that self-pardons are banned. That would be a good start to restoring credibility to government.

Ronald Nowicki

Green Valley

I want America's honor back

The WH resident walked President Xi through the gallery of self-indulgent, disgusting and sickening portraits of former presidents that the WH resident created. What a shame that the current resident has no sense of values, no sense of honor, no sense of decorum, no credibility among decent human beings and no intellectual conscience. Vote his equally un-American cronies out in November. Time to bring back the United States as a world leader instead of an entity for ridicule and disgust.

Cynthia Schiesel

East side

DHS Detention

$1.2B for housing in Arizona! Where can first-time home buyers sign up?

How many will be incarcerated in the new Arizona $1.2B DHS detention warehouse, and how many human beings are and will be held in the $7.3B program passed by Representative Juan Ciscomante and the Republicans?

How many tax-paying workers have been and will be rounded up, destroying their families? What is the annual cost to maintain this inhumane program? What is the plan?

Why is this our best use of our resources and of those human beings held captive?

How long will we ignore what is happening to the "other?"

How many homes could be built in Arizona with $1.2B?

Melvin Cohen

Midtown

Ciscomani stages smear campaign

As a 100% Trumper, our CD6 congressman’s record on the economy, health, ICE, the environment, borderland desecration, and the war in Iran is indefensible. He is adept at deflecting issues. So how does he win? With his many “JUAN Ciscomani” billboards, and the recent posting of signs that smear his opponent as a tax cheat, proponent of “Guys in Girls’ Sports,” etc.

JoAnna Mendoza should take the gloves off. Start with the incumbent’s status as a citizen. As The Star has reported, Ciscomani’s campaign has declined to explain the circumstances of how his father secured a religious worker visa to move his family from Sonora in 1993.

If Ciscomani were a Democrat, you can bet that a cloud of suspicion and the whiff of denaturalization would be in the air. Technically, misrepresentation or concealment of a material fact pertains to the citizenship process itself, but no matter. Remember that Trump got his start as a birther. Yes, Juan, let’s “show your papers.”

Robert Laux-Bachand

Green Valley

Voter registration

An election bill called the Save Act is currently being considered in Congress. It would require those registering to vote to do so in person using either their passport or birth certificate to confirm their U. S. citizenship. This will affect many women who took their spouses' names when they married.

A married acquaintance of mine received a letter in the mail addressed to her former name listed on her birth certificate. I urged her to call her county recorder, which she did. She was told that the letter came from "a third party" and that her current voter registration was valid.

It appears that this missive was sent to try to confuse my friend so she wouldn't vote on November 3. I urge other women who may have received this letter to contact their county recorders immediately. Everyone who is duly registered must vote.

Carol W. West

East side

Steller Unmasks Ciscomani

In his column in Sunday’s paper, Tim Steller exposes the real Congressman Juan Ciscomani. On meaningless issues, he can sound bipartisan and reasonable. At times he even puts out statements that are sensible, like defending Medicaid. However, when it comes to doing the thing that matters most, ie his vote, he comes up short again and again. He has had two terms in Congress to prove himself. He has failed to do so. It is time for a change.

Elias Toubassi

East side