Tucson Speaks Out: December 21

How not to be depressed in Nov. 2026

The November 2026 elections will be some of the most significant in our country's history. The balance in the House and Senate could change, and many of us are hoping it will. Hope and dreams do not make for good election outcomes. Starting now does. Do your part to achieve these goals by:

— Registering to vote and then vote in the fall.

— Encouraging family and friends to register to vote and asking them if they actually did vote

— Becoming informed via credible news sources about the candidates and the issues

— Donating time and money to local candidates and to candidates in other parts of the country

— Donating to organizations that support free and fair elections

— Writing an LTE or Op-Ed to your local newspaper or newsletter

— Attending events where candidates are speaking.

— Contacting elected officials with your concerns, and contacting them again

— Peacefully demonstrating for your causes and issues

We can do this!

Fran McNeely

Northeast side

Medical guinea pigs

The WISeR pilot program will use A.I. and introduce preauthorization into traditional Medicare in Arizona and five other states. If this were a study by a medical school professor (I was one), it would require approval of the Human Use Committee and Informed Consent from each participant. To do otherwise would be a breach of medical ethics. No one will be presented with such a consent form. No one conducting this study knows how it will impact the health or pocketbooks of those affected. It is experimental. Government turning a blind eye to ethics in the name of weeding out fraud and abuse. Noble or ignoble? A.I. will second-guess your doctor's judgment. He/she didn’t consent either. It reminds me of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in which black patients were not informed they were being used for government research. I would not consent if asked.

Robert Rietschel

Green Valley

Appeasement

People who are not familiar with European history may not recognize the name of Neville Chamberlain. He was the British Prime Minister who, in 1938, signed the Munich Agreement, which gave Hitler a region of Czechoslovakia with the promise that Hitler would not invade any more countries. Hitler ignored the agreement and invaded them anyway. This is the classic example of why appeasement does not work. It appears that history may be repeating itself. Our leaders want to give Putin a piece of Ukraine with the agreement that Russia would never attack Ukraine again. Based on Russia’s past history, it can be counted on to not keep to the agreement. If that happens, we can nominate our leaders not for the Nobel Peace Prize but for the “Neville Chamberlain Appeasement Medal.”

William Brandt

Oro Valley

Whose oil?

The pathetic wretch, Trump, said of Venezuela, “They took our oil and we are going to get it back.”

I do not own any oil in South America, do you? Even if you own or owned stock in an oil company in Venezuela, the nationalization of that company occurred decades ago. The loss was written off soon after.

Now the orange clown is killing accused drug runners in an attempt to incite Maduro into a military escalation. Maduro, being smarter than Trump, is standing silent as Trump slaughters people who have not had a moment in a court of law, diminishing his stature even more. He is also killing the tiny amount of international goodwill the US has left.

Is this what you voted him in to do? Start a war over oil assets that will never pay a penny to any of us? Who will profit?

Jeff Rayner

SaddleBrooke

Name recognition

Now that our leader has arranged to change the name of the Center for Arts to include the name "Trump", I suggest that he continue by signing another executive order to change the name of the "Stickney Water Reclamation Plant" (near Chicago) to the "Trump Stickney Water Reclamation Plant" so that he can have his name on the largest sewage treatment plant in the world as well.

Alan Roehl

Green Valley

Big Brother?

Just saw that Trump added his name — before John Kennedy's — on the JFK Center for Performing Arts. He is also putting his face on the National Parks pass and plans on issuing a $1 coin with, of course, his face all over it.

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Be careful, Big Brother is watching.

Norma Guest

East side

No time for 'negotiation'

The last couple of weeks, the Arizona Daily Star's Sports section has had on its last page the Lakes and Rivers Report as part of the weather graphic. This info is very illuminating.

As of the Friday, Dec. 19 Star edition, the water level elevation of Lake Powell was 3,541.66 feet. The capacity was at 26.05%. The report "Lake Powell Water Levels-Historical and Current" shows the level for power generation is at 3,490 feet, or only 51 more feet of water loss.

The water level was about 3,660 feet only 14 years ago, or a loss of 119 feet since 2011.

For the same December date above, the water level of Lake Mead is 1,061.14 feet, and the capacity is 29.68%. At 1,035 feet, or only 26 more feet of loss, 12 turbines won't work. At 950 feet, the other five turbines won't work.

Lake Mead's water level was at about 1,135 feet in 2011, or 74 feet higher than now.

Did the CAP only delay an inevitable economic crash?

Matt Somers

Midtown

Humanity in the ICE age

A mother and son of my acquaintance in a city far from here are standing up for their immigrant coworkers whose children attend schools where recent ICE raids have plucked kids from classrooms and snatched parents who’ve come to pick them up. These frightened coworkers are keeping the kids home from school and forgoing Christmas and grocery shopping for fear of capture, detention and deportation. So the mother and son are taking coworkers’ shopping lists and picking up/delivering the goods they need. This — not flag-waving, political hoo-hah, indignant tweets or even writing letters to the editor, for that matter — is what it really means to be an American.

Darrell Durham

Northwest side

The end

Last night, I visited an elderly friend in an assisted living facility for their Christmas party. It was a very nice physical facility with spacious rooms that were obviously high-end. When I walked in, the smell of feces was overpowering. The food served was recently frozen and overall awful. Conversation among the patients was nonexistent. My dear friend wanted desperately to die, but her body will not let her. The facilities desperately need her to live so that they can make money. I find myself indignant that younger healthy people make rules about how we must spend our last days when they cannot possibly understand the gradual, inevitable decline in ability that all seniors have. Not allowing responsible individuals to decide when their own life should end is cruel punishment. Once in these “rest homes,” you are trapped just as surely as any prisoner in jail.

Russell Bonn

SaddleBrooke

Close the door

Close the door, we don’t want anyone to move to Tucson drinking our water, using our electricity, driving on our roads, eating at our favorite restaurants and breathing our air.

This is the mentality of a group of Tucsonans that don’t embrace change or economic progress. Put 10 people in a room with $10 each and pass to the person on the right a dollar. Keep doing this over and over, and you will find that each time a dollar goes around, it is worth less each time it passes.

Service-oriented economies behave like this. No new money is introduced to the table. Expenditures on haircuts, nails, toes, etc., dilute the value of the money on the table.

Manufacturing, mining, research by the university, and tourism bring in new money, money that wasn’t here before.

Businesses operate with labor, material, profit and overhead. Overhead pays for the cost to do business, profit is what grows the money pool to play the game at the table.

Ed LeGendre

East side

Prop 201

The following information is provided to enlighten those who are calling for red light cameras.

Prop 201, which passed by a two-thirds majority in 2015, did more than ban red light cameras. The proposition changed Tucson Code such that the only citations that are valid and enforceable are those delivered in person, at the time of the violation, by the officer witnessing the violation. The city is prohibited from using any traffic control technology that does not provide an eyewitness who can testify to the violation in court.

Since the camera suppliers are more concerned with making money than safety, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find a supplier who will place cameras in Tucson when citations are not valid and, therefore, cannot generate revenue.

Paul Peterson

Northeast side