The U.S. Treasury Department building in Washington, D.C.
Musk takeover o
f Treasury
Elon Musk and his gang of 20-year-old engineers are committing illegal and unconstitutional acts. While the media was focused on Trump’s tariffs this past weekend, they took over the Treasury Department’s computerized payment systems, suspending payments of government contracts.
Musk and his gang have not been vetted or appointed by Congress or any other official agency. They have no security clearances. They have only Trump’s blessing, yet Congress has sole authority for appropriations — not the Executive branch and certainly not a rogue group outside of the government.
Our Constitution is under attack as is our democracy. This is clearly a coup that should be setting off very loud alarm bells. The silence of media and our elected leaders is deafening.
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Henne Queisser
Green Valley
A splendid idea
A few days ago on 2/2/25, Denise Walker made an outstanding suggestion to put all the Trump haters mail in one section of the paper, like the Sunday comics, and Trump supporters can throw it in the trash immediately. A state that voted for Trump and now 99% of your Opinion section is written by idiots who hate Trump. A reasonable approach is a newspaper should be apolitical and simply report the news of the world. Instead you have the same anti-Trump editorials every day. Are you partial? Definitely, and many of the same fools write anti-Trump letters and they get published every 7-10 days. Are these paid staffers of the newspaper?
Give Trump a chance and he is doing a great job and the voters are with him.
Stuart Goldfine
Green Valley
Chaos and disinformation
In pursuit of money to pay for even more tax cuts for the super rich, Elon Musk has declared that USAID needs to die. The death of USAID would literally mean the death of untold numbers of men, women and children around the world. Just ask Doctors Without Borders.
On a daily basis Elon Musk is showing himself to be a greedy, power-hungry purveyor of chaos and disinformation, just like his sidekicks, Donald J. Trump and JD Vance. Let us never forget that JD Vance spread disinformation about Haitians eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs and said that he was not opposed to making things up if doing so advanced their agenda.
Musk, Trump and Vance would win the Nobel Prize for disinformation if they gave one.
Dave Gallagher
Foothills
Unbelievable
Ezra Klein’s February 2nd essay in the New York Times, “Don’t Believe Him,” examines the first weeks of Trump’s presidency. He refers to Steve Bannon’s term “muzzle velocity,” overloading media with daily initiatives in order to reduce opposition. Trump’s advisors know that legislative efforts for his directives might fail with only a three-seat advantage in the House and 53-47 majority in the Senate. Trump’s plan is to overwhelm Americans, hoping we’ll believe he has power he doesn’t and will never have. Please, don’t believe him.
Roger Shanley
East side
Open house
We all remember one group shouting “Close Guantanamo.” It is a security risk. A financial and economic catastrophe. Apparently not anymore. The Republicans now see it as a place for taxpayers to feed, house, clothe and care for 30,000 folks forcibly removed from the US. I guess it’s better to pay for 30,000 than it is to pay for just a few dozen.
Kenneth Haber
Northwest side
Harmful manufactured crisis
The world’s media is trumpeting its sighting of the latest shiny object dangled by President Trump, tariffs. This is instilling fear in the masses, allowing financial traders to profit from short and long positions of voluminous commodities and baffling Economists. Meanwhile, as the world watches all the fireworks and drama, the real coup is taking place at the treasury where Elon Musk the fascist-leaning billionaire and his team of raiders with questionable security clearance are accessing vital information that will benefit Musk’s business ventures. Within one day Mexico and Canada are off the hook.
It’s Showtime in America and the President is using his most powerful tool, the media, to try and show the Emperor does have clothes and power. As this manufactured crisis ends, the ship of fools sails on to the deflowering of our democracy.
David Rollins
North side
Phone your senators and Congress critter
I am independent politically, generally leaning old-fashioned, states rights Republican. Scott Bessent (our new Treasury Secretary) has granted Elon Musk’s team access to the entire federal payment system: Social Security, tax refunds, welfare payments, billings of government contractors — $6 trillion in money and basically all the personal information held by the payers (SSA, Medicare, IRS, etc). I find this outrageous. Do you want anyone who is neither elected nor approved by the Senate owning your personal data? What qualifies this guy to own your stuff: your tax filings, your medical records, your business procedures? Really.
Please use your voice, not your keyboard, to ask the people we put in office to state both publicly and on their websites their support or disapproval of this new policy. Please.
Shall unelected, unconfirmed individuals have access to private information held by the federal government? For me, this is not a matter of politics; it’s a matter of right and wrong. You want my vote? Take a stand.
Jeff Bruce
Green Valley
Yes — move the ball
In the 2025-26 Arizona will be allowed to pay $20.5 million directly to its student athletes — in addition to scholarships, NIL income, and everything else. That number becomes official April 7, 2025 if a federal judge agrees to the House vs. NCAA settlement. Experts estimate 77% of the new money will go to football players. That would be a mistake at UA. We can afford to compete for national championships in basketball. Football is out of reach. Let’s focus on winning! The athletic department never is going to make money. Accept that. Invest in the winners. Tommy Lloyd has done a phenomenal job. The team started slow. Now it’s rebounding and moving the ball. Even without Mo Krivas, the Final Four remains within reach. Give more to baseball, softball, tennis, maybe women’s basketball, too. Don’t lose too much money. But come on. Winning is where it’s at!
Walter Ramsley
East side
The demise of the United States
When Isabel Wilkerson, the author of the book Caste, entered the party before the 2016 elections and thinking of the possibility of Trump winning, she whispered to Gwen Ifill, “I think this is all about 2042 isn’t it. Ifill answered “exactly”. For those of you who don’t know what 2042 represents it is the year in which it is predicted that people of color will become the majority in this county. After watching Trump campaign on the economy and retribution, he is now concentrating on retribution and dismantling DEI and has totally forgotten about the economy. He now admits that lowering prices is almost impossible even though he berated Biden and Harris for not doing that exact thing. We are on our way to becoming Hungary or Russia and I only hope that the people that have been backing him are happy to see the demise of the United States in the name of color and religion.
Neil Norton
Oro Valley
Prop 414
Whatcha-guna-do?
Prop. 414 makes you pay!
The issue is as old and everlasting as democracy: Are you willing to pay for public services?
In this case: police, fire and affordable housing?
Yes or No?
It is not the tweaking each of us would desire in a throng of varied directions. In my case: I would prefer more for housing, more straight pay for first responders and a less regressive method to belly-up.
But 414 heads in the right direction with more protection and a lifting hand to those fallen onto our streets.
Richard Kimball
Midtown
Dem issues
Name call your way to victory! I would mention names, but DK, MZ, Morty & many more would be offended.
What did your ideas accomplish?
Incredible debt, DEI running your show. Your gender show has confused your process. And you elected a White guy from Minnesota to run your show. Oh, we are so diverse!
You are tone deaf and in the weeds. You lost because of your name calling, gender bending, & ignorance of the mainstream voter.
You lost.
People want more than you have to offer.
Wake up and listen to the janitor, secretary, garbage collector and every other person working to scrape by. You lost them. Wake up.
Richard Barnes
East side
Proposition 414
I am having difficulty supporting Proposition 414 for the Police and Fire Department. Normally I would blindly support additional funds for these two agencies, but I am confused why they need so much more funding. In the Fiscal Year 2024 budget it shows the adopted Police budget as $217.1 million, they only spent $205.1 million. The Fire budget was $140.5 million, only spent $136 million.
These agencies together did not use $16 million that was allocated to them. Usually, I’d be shocked (but pleased) to hear that a governmental agency spent less. Did the Police/Fire Department not use/need the money, or was the money transferred by the city for other purposes such as free bus fares? I know the City would say Proposition money is not the same as the General Fund money, but to me money is money regardless.
If they are not using the funds allocated, how can I consider voting yes to give them hundreds of millions more?
Gary Fennema
North side
Banning dissent
There have been several letters as of late showing dismay over anti-Trump letters from the left. It seems as though freedom of speech should only apply to those supporting the president, according to these angry letters. As someone who has studied fascism for nine years now, it should be remembered that Trump is selling a proto-fascist agenda, and with that comes a crackdown on speech that does not support the cause. In fully formed fascist nations, dissent is banned completely. This is where Trump is intending to go. His asking if we can just shoot protesters in the legs is an example of his intolerance of dissent. Since Trump is following the fascist template, he will surely try to ban written and spoken dissent. Unfortunately, his followers are so convinced by Trump’s rhetoric that they will abandon our right to dissent in this nation, forsaking the Constitution. In their self-righteousness, I’m sure they would love to ban all anti-Trump letters to the Star.
Steven Rasmussen
Foothills
