Many making wrong choice
Re: the Feb. 14 letter “Value of freedom eludes leaders.”
The letter left me wondering what reality the author is living in. The American people have been given all the necessary education about the virus and vaccines. This information has been dispersed by scientists, medical experts, public-health officials and responsible government officials. Certain mandates came into play when it became obvious that many informed “proud Americans” are not choosing to do the right thing, refusing to heed science and common sense. According to the letter, if people are just given their “freedom,” they will make the correct choice, as the country did during the polio epidemic. This is a totally different time, where people actually think social media is a legitimate source of information and many have bought into the politicization of this pandemic. Right-wing politicians continue to sow doubt and distrust in science and facts surrounding COVID-19 and vaccines. Some Americans are doing the right thing, but many are not. Having no mandates, and therefore “freedom,” would not change this.
People are also reading…
Deb Klumpp
Oro Valley
Water use in Arizona
Re: the Jan. 31 article “Desalination? Toilet-to-tap? Arizona will consider all.”
Senate President Karen Fann of Prescott, said there is no need to regulate private-exempt wells because they can “only pump 35 gallons/minute” of water suggesting 35 gallons/minute is a small volume of water. However, 35 gallons/minute is equal to 50,400 gallons/day and this is a very large number considering the average use of water per person on a daily basis in Arizona is only 146 gallons/day per the state water department. The amount of water that a private-exempt well can pump on an average daily basis should be regulated so that the amount of water pumped annually is tied in some way to the needs of the average person. Clearly 35 gallons/minute over one year is not acceptable for a single family well while it could be acceptable for a community well serving many families.
Gary Kordosky
West side
No one is above the law?
In his third annual address to Congress in 1903, Theodore Roosevelt said: “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we require him to obey it. Obedience to the law is demanded as a right; not asked as a favor.”
As a lawyer, that seems to me a novel concept these days. I doubt Teddy had envisioned the kind of unending corruption that has been unearthed regarding the 45th president, and (to date) lack of accountability. I suspect he would have been appalled.
I understand that Attorney General Merrick Garland has been hamstrung by the current vitriolic political atmosphere, and that just opening an investigation into potential Trump wrongdoing would produce hordes of his loyal cult followers howling accusations of witch-hunting politics.
Like it or not, there will always be an element of politics in all three branches of government, unfortunately, even the judiciary. But it would be criminal if Teddy’s words are to ring hollow.
A. Lawrence Glynn
East side
Brink of oblivion
Sept. 1, 1939, is remembered by the world as the day Germany invaded Poland and began WWII. At the time however, some perceived it differently. Quoted the next day in the New York Times, Chancellor Adolph Hitler said Germany was only protecting its people because all other methods had failed. He went on — “Germans in Poland are persecuted with a bloody terror, and are driven from their homes. Border violations which are unbearable to a great power prove the Poles are no longer willing to respect the German frontier. This must stop and there are no other means left to me now than to meet force with force.”
That statement echoes today in Ukraine, as the aggressor blames his victim. The world holds its breath, a mushroom cloud and the specter of World War III appears before us.
Personalities and times differ, but again we must ask ourselves whether old white men have brought us to the brink of oblivion.
Harry Peck, retired trial lawyer
Tubac
GOP attacks on Ukraine response
Trump scorns Biden for doing anything above nothing to curb Putin’s evil ambitions, praising Putin like a giddy schoolgirl, while his loyal minions in Congress flail away at Biden for doing anything less than all. Republican politics in America is now cracked through and empty, absent of heart, thought and reason.
Rich Ragland
Marana
