Tucson Speaks Out: Jan. 18 letters of the day

Are all you faith-based MAGA supporters on board with GOP governors canceling food subsidies for low-income children? How about efforts to kick 20 million Americans off their affordable health care? You OK with dishonest vilification of migrant families risking life and limb to escape persecution and poverty? Don’t these clash with your Christian beliefs about feeding the hungry, healing the sick and showing compassion to those in need?

How do you reconcile New Testament teachings of tolerance, loving your neighbor and not judging with book banning, attacking LGBTQ+, distorting history and criminalizing a woman’s right to choose? Is wielding your political, albeit minority, views from a religious perspective taught in scripture?

I guess if you believe your political dear leader is God given, you can justify anything — including murdering political enemies with immunity. Please keep your thoughts and prayers private, I prefer competent, fair and secular governance.

Ralph Atchue

Oro Valley

Presidential ballots

The MAGA crowd is outraged because they think they will be disenfranchised if states boot 45 from the presidential primary ballot due to an allegedly arcane amendment to the constitution supported by unelected judges. News flash: twice in the past 25 years (2000 and 2016) a genuinely arcane component of the Constitution (the Electoral College; with SCOTUS support in 2000) gave the presidency to the loser of the popular vote. And now here we are, with lawyers for 45 (imposed by the Electoral College in 2016) arguing in Federal court with a qualified “yes” that a President can have a rival assassinated and not be prosecuted for that crime! This is insanity. Our political world has fallen so far since 2016. The former president should never again be near the White House and, if this country survives the next presidential election, we need to get rid of the Electoral College or at least amend how it functions.

Vance Holliday

Foothills

We cannot survive under Robbins

Re: the Jan 14 article “UA took risks, with weak accountability.”

VP Lisa Rulney is not the first time (even in recent history) that President Robbins has prepared a “soft-landing” for favored administrators. Months ago, after then-Provost Liesl Folks lost her position over her deathly mismanagement of events that led to Tom Meixner’s murder, she was given a similar sweetheart deal. 500K salary, fired “up” into a position with no accountability, and no service to the University mission, no teaching, and no research. Folks got 35 million budget in her new position to start a microchip manufacturing program here (to somehow compete with ASU’s program, which has 10 times the support, and a 10 year head-start). She was given the position without any open search – a condition under which anyone else, even a minimum-wage dishwasher, is held to. It’s no wonder the University of Arizona, under the leadership of President Robbins, finds itself in such a dire crisis. To the Regents, President Robbins quipped “all bleeding stops eventually,” but we cannot survive under his ungentle hands.

Keith Maggert

Midtown

Asylum policy step in right direction

Re: the Jan. 11 article “U.S. immigration system must evolve to meet reality on border, report says.”

Editor,

I loved the beginning of the article on the “New Policy Offers Hope to Migrants”. Unfortunately, you then went on to make it a Political, anti-Republican article. This new migration program is exactly how Republicans want asylum seekers to be managed when applying to come to our Country. By Federal Law, Migrants seeking asylum are supposed to apply for asylum in the first Country they enter after leaving their home Country. It is the mass illegal crossing of our Southern and Northern Borders which Republicans like me want stopped. Republicans only want the Biden Administrating to adopt rational policies like President Trump. This is a security and a financial issue for the United States that needs to be addressed immediately. This new asylum policy is a step in the right direction.

Curtis Hannay

East side

Harris vs. Trump

Much talk about Biden’s age. One major anxiety is the possibility that Kamala Harris will become President if Biden dies or becomes incapacitated. Some staffers have stated she is “unfit to be president.” Assuming this is true, here is a conundrum: Who is more unfit for the presidency—-Harris or Trump? If Harris proves unfit, she can be voted out in four years. However, judging from Trump’s statements, once in office, voting him out may not be possible—he admires Putin’s and Orban’s term extensions.

Weighing risks/benefits, even if Harris proves to be incompetent, she will not destroy our democracy by ignoring the Constitution, appointing unqualified but “loyal YES men” to her cabinet, destroying environmental regulations, leaving NATO, eliminating civil servants.... Our democracy has survived past incompetent presidents, because their goal was not to change our democracy into an autocracy. When weighing the long-term health of our democracy, there are incredibly more risks than benefits to putting Trump in the White House for a second time.

Sandra Katz, M.D., J.D.

Foothills

Don’t be fooled

Republican legislators in Arizona passed a law restricting abortions after 15 weeks even though fetal viability doesn’t occur until 24 weeks. We’re still waiting to hear from the AZ Supreme Court whether or not Arizona will enforce a 1864 near-complete ban on abortion. Both laws are unfairly restrictive, but even the 15-week ban could be whittled down every legislative session to 12 weeks, then 10, then 6, and finally down to their real goal of zero! Don’t think that can’t happen.

As a petitioner for the Abortion Access Act initiative, I know the only way to protect women’s reproductive rights is to gather enough signatures to put this issue on the 2024 ballot and vote to embed a woman’s right to manage her own health care in our State Constitution. Only then will the decisions between a woman and her medical provider regarding abortion be legal in Arizona. Politicians should have no say in the hardest decision a woman will ever make.

Misty Atkins

Oro Valley

To the tune of Beverly Hillbillies

Come listen to a story about a man named Jedd

Poor head coach, barely kept his family fed

Then one day while he’s at our school

Up from the ground comes a bubbling pool

Money that is, purple gold, pure greed

Well the next thing ya know ol’ Jedd’s a millionaire

Kin folks said “Jedd, move away from there”

UDub is the place ya oughta be

So he loaded up the truck and became a Husky

Fleas that is, Dawg drools, recruiting stars

Frank P. Morello

Foothills

Overhaul asylum law

Re: the Jan. 7 article “To Congress, President Biden: Help prevent a humanitarian crisis.”

Adelita Grijalva and Regina Romero co-authored a local opinion. They stated that soon federal funds to shelter and support “legal asylum seekers” will run out, leaving local governments to foot the costs. It went onto say that since September 2023, 130,000 “legally processed asylum seekers” have been released into Tucson, Pima, Cochise and Santa Cruz counties. That is an astounding number. Grijalva and Romero repeatedly cited “legal asylum seekers” and used the benign term “border crossers” to refer to those illegally entering the country. Typical of liberals. Neither Grijalva or Romero questioned the validity of all these hundreds of thousands asylum claims. Surely as intelligent government officials, they know many are fraudulent, used as a ploy to enter the country and be released with a Notice to Appear set years into the future. Coming really for economic reasons. Neither asked Congress or President Biden to overhaul asylum law. Neither blamed Biden for causing this humanitarian disaster.

Martin Wagman

Green Valley

Voting and preserving our republic

Americans labor under the misconception that this is a democracy. Benjamin Franklin said our founding fathers had formed, “A republic. If you can keep it.” A republic is where elected representatives are governed by law, and represent and are answerable to the people who elect them. The continuing viability of the republic is what is at stake this November.

Many people would prefer the luxury of a authoritarian as President without fully understanding that would mean the end of this country. Half of Americans have had their rights to make medical decisions for themselves taken away. Their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons would quickly lose the last semblance of their ability to control their own lives and property were the republic replaced by a dictatorship—even for just one day.

People have been voting against their own self-interests for years. At least they had the chance to vote. That right will be gone if we vote for candidates who do not want to preserve our fragile republic.

Jennifer Dubay

Southeast side

Lack of police protection

I am writing as a concerned resident and small business owner in the 85705 area to bring to your attention the pressing issue of increasing crime, drugs and theft that is adversely affecting our community. The recent surge in criminal activities has left both businesses and residences in our area feeling vulnerable and unsafe.

One of the primary concerns we face is the noticeable lack of law enforcement presence and police protection in our neighborhood. Moreover, we have seen a disturbing rise in homelessness in the area, which is likely exacerbated by the lack of enforcement and support for local businesses.

Melissa McGary

Northwest side

Football leadership

Cannot believe U of A hired a guy who was judged under-qualified during the last search and passed on a defensive coordinator who proved excellent over the last three years.

This is a terrible move that consigns football to mediocrity at best for the coming three years.

Management rule No. 1: Hire proven excellence.

Carl Hammerdorfer

Downtown

Protect dialysis patients

Those with a sudden and serious illness that requires immediate medical attention are called “crash” patients. My husband Raymond was a crash patient when he was diagnosed with End Stage Renal Disease, or kidney failure. Luckily, Raymond had private insurance, so he didn’t have to worry much about the cost of his life-saving dialysis treatments when he started.

Eventually, dialysis patients transition to Medicare as their primary coverage within 30 months after beginning treatment. Yet now, a Supreme Court ruling from last year leaves room for private insurers to weaken dialysis coverage in that initial 30-month period. This could push dialysis patients onto Medicare too quickly and add the stress of changing insurance plans to an already stressful time in their lives.

Congressman Ruben Gallego must fight to pass the Restore Protections for Dialysis Patients Act, which would secure full private dialysis coverage in the first 30 months of treatment. Congressman Gallego, please put yourself in patients’ shoes.

Analyn Scott

Southwest side

Taking back woke

Consider turning off fear-inducing, divisive propaganda, and turn toward yourself and others with honesty, truth, goodness, and compassion. We are all part of the same tribe- the human race. Work toward understanding and peace. “Woke” is not just a catch phrase of the GOP, it is a natural and healthy state of living and Democracy.

Lorraine Crawford

Northeast side

Sharing the road

Re: the Jan. 14 letter “Safety of bicycle riders.”

In his letter to the editor the writer asked bicycle riders to not ride side by side in one lane, ending with “cars can’t ride double in single lanes, nor should you.”

It’s important to differentiate between ones personal feelings and the actual laws of our state. If the letter writer is a bicycle rider as he claims, then he should know that Arizona state law specifically allows two riders abreast, ‘but single file when safe to do so’.

It’s possible that the riders he mentioned have identified a stretch of road where they have felt in danger from passing. In this situation the law permits them to ride two abreast, taking the full lane for their own safety. Everyone’s safety on the road is important and it’s not going to be the end of your world if you are delayed by a few minutes by having to ride briefly behind a bicycle rider.

This is the true meaning of sharing the road.

Garrett Rhodes

West side