Tucson Speaks Out: Jan. 11 letters of the day

Trump’s Project 2025 is a horror show straight out of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Republicans voting for Trump in 2024 are voting to end our democracy and rule under the law replacing it with Nazi authoritarianism. Consider the following fascist unconstitutional items:

1. Trump will order the military to round up millions of undocumented immigrants or others putting them in prison camps.

2. Trump will order the military to suppress all peaceful demonstrations critical of him.

3. Trump will use the Justice Department for retribution against his long list of enemies throwing them in jail.

4. Trump will replace experienced educated federal civil servants with inept partisan loyalist cronies.

5. Trump will suppress newspapers and network news agencies that broadcast critical news stories of him.

6. Trump will encourage armed right wing extremist militia groups to use violence against his enemies.

Project 2025 is a long thorough plan for authoritarian Nazi rule. Republicans want a right wing white Christian nationalist regime with their “Orange Jesus” as Fuhrer of the United States.

Kyle Stoutenburg

Sierra Vista

Border crisis

Just when you think the situation at our border could not get worse, the Biden administration comes up with more policy “fixes”. Record numbers of migrants are entering illegally and parking themselves on our side of the border to wait or to be taken into custody for processing. To speed up processing, the Feds abandoned checkpoints which often intercept human traffickers and drug smugglers. Next, they punish U.S. citizens by closing the Lukeville entry so that folks traveling to or from Rocky Point have to travel extra hours through parts of Sonora that the U.S. has warned against traveling through. Businesses in the Lukeville area are hurt, and slum like conditions being created by the migrants is having an environmental impact. Suggestions: Reopen the Lukeville crossing for the safety of U.S. citizen travelers. Discourage the mass migration by sending the message that those migrants entering illegally will just have to wait. Give all those currently waiting hundreds of 30-gallon trash bags and demand that they clean up their mess.

Matthew Scully

Sahuarita

A good guy with a gun

On Dec. 6, three students were shot and killed on the UNLV campus. Near the end of October an individual was charged with the federal crime of threatening to commit a mass shooting at the University of Arizona. His weapon of choice? The criminal complaint says it all, “When asked how he was planning on committing this mass shooting, the individual told police, ‘With an AR-15.’” Then he stated, “it’s Arizona you can just buy one.” His plan: to wait until just before the event and purchase the assault weapon so his mother would not discover it. I want you all to understand the rationality of this irrationality! It is comparable to the thought: “A good guy with a gun.” I have no doubt the intended perpetrator felt justified in what he was going to do, in essence he saw himself as, “A good guy with a gun.” I want you all to understand that these killers feel justified, yesterday at UNLV and tomorrow somewhere else, unless we do something.

Richard Harper

Northeast side

Trump paved the way for our problems

Day 1 he snubbed our allies; his first foreign visit being Saudi Arabia – the ultimate-totalitarian regime no one talks about.

Canceled Paris Climate Agreement — China is now No. 1 in solar / wind leaving us with dilapidated refineries and a potential 2026 EU carbon border tax on US exports.

Canceled Iran Nuclear Treaty removing any credible communication with that regime, giving them, as we’ve seen, a free hand.

Started trade war with China, enacting inflationary tariffs on imported goods.

Fearing lower stock prices, he bullied the Fed against increasing interest rates in times of pre-COVID economic prosperity. The result — higher incremental rate hikes, inflation and 20+% labor shortage.

His tax cuts increased the deficit, snowballing at current interest rates.

His vendetta hurt ACA funding and stopped Obama’s program to produce 54.5 mpg cars in 2025.

Stacked the Supreme Court with judges willing to let a minority control the rights of the majority.

No action to curb monopolies on our uber-expensive food, TV/internet, and phone.

Sue Applegate

SaddleBrooke

My Fellow Travelers

To my fellow travelers through life, who periodically write letters to the editor:

Happy Birthdays.

Another Year Older!

Another Year Wiser?

One Can Hope!?

Merry Ho! Ho! Ho!

Happy Rinse and Repeat!

James Abels

Midtown

Dictator-in-waiting

Donald Trump has told us that if re-elected he plans to destroy our cherished democracy. He stated in a recent Fox News interview that he plans to be a dictator on Day One, which makes sense in light of The Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank. This Project plans to staff a future Trump Administration with thousands of pre-vetted appointees tasked with dismantling the administrative state from Day One. So I take Trump at his word that he’ll be a dictator on Day One. We just remembered the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor that brought this country into World War II. How disrespectful to World War II veterans that we find ourselves fighting authoritarianism in this country today. We have work to do to save our democracy. It’s all hands on deck. We need to re-elect President Joe Biden. He has the wisdom, competence, and experience to save and strengthen our democracy.

Cindy Bordelon,

retired lawyer

Downtown

Starbucks not needed downtown

It seems the end goal for Rio Nuevo and DTP is to get national chains downtown, which works if you want to turn Congress Street into a replica of Tempe’s Mill Avenue. Mill Ave. is chain after chain after chain, which pretty much defines Phoenix. I’d like to think Tucson was better than that. Most of Fourth Avenue and the majority of Main Gate Square have local businesses. While I agree you can’t have a successful downtown that is just built on restaurants and bars, I don’t see how Starbucks changes that equation.

I was happy when the plan to have Starbucks in the Wig-o-Rama location fell through. Having a Starbucks in an iconic building like the Chicago Store is a travesty. I’m hoping that everyone that drinks coffee downtown is willing to go to Ikes, Exo, Caffe Luce, Cartel, Five to Oh, Hee Mee, Eleven Cafe or Dandelion Cafe and just leave that other coffee shop in the dust.

Karen Greene

Downtown

What part of failure don’t Americans understand

Joe Biden says Israel has the right to defend itself. But Israel did not defend itself despite billions of dollars from the American taxpayers. They had a 40-page detailed description of the attack planned on the 32-mile-long border between Israel and Gaza. The country of Israel is smaller than Pima County. It is only 47 miles from Tel Aviv to the Gaza border. It took the Israeli army eight to more than 20 hours to reach the places attacked. Hostages were not taken until three hours into the attack. Apparently the Israelis neither feel any concern nor accept any responsibility for this impossible-to-believe incompetence.

Because of this failure of competence I have two rational suggestions. First, no more money should be given to the Israelis for their defense. Secondly, no taxpayer dollars should be spent on “peace processes” which have resulted in not one minute of peace in 75 years.

Susie Morris

Midtown

The cheapening of genocide

Palestine authority President Mahmoud Abbas declares that Gaza is worse than genocide, worse than Nakba. This is a further example of the cheapening of the language — everything bad becomes a genocide? genocide means the intended elimination of an entire people or race. The Turks against the Armenians in 1915, the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews in which European Jewish life was annihilated, United States policy against Native Americans over centuries — these are genocides. The terrible things that happen in war are not genocides. No Israeli or American is asking for the elimination of all the Arabs in the world. What is at issue is how to eliminate a violent fundamentalist terror organization that is armed and funded by Iran.

Harvey Wolfe

Foothills

Arizona college tuition

When I went to the U of A, tuition for Arizona residents was free, zero, nada. Not so today! Dimwit politicians perpetuate dimwittedness in our state by limiting educational funding. The U of A admits 5,000 new Arizona resident freshmen each year, ASU 7,000, NAU 3,000. Annual tuition is $14,000 at UA and over $11,000 at ASU and NAU, exclusive of books and other fees. Assuming 15,000 new Arizona resident students annually (UA, ASU, NAU) and an average tuition of $12,000 per student per year, let’s set a tuition limit of $4,000. The remaining tuition cost overage would be $8,000 per year per student for four years or $480 million. Assuming 1.5 million Arizona taxpayers, the annual cost would be $320. As a taxpayer, I would pay that amount annually to make annual tuition $4,000 to assure a highly educated population in Arizona’s future. If our dimwit politicians and Arizona Board of Regents won’t step in, we the people should.

Dennis Winsten

Northeast side