Racist cartoon
Re: the Nov. 28 cartoon by Tom Stiglich
The Star should be ashamed of publishing a disgusting, racist cartoon by Tom Stiglich depicting a Black man in a hoodie stuffing a ballot box. This cartoon promotes the Big Lie claiming fraud in the 2020 election and blames Black people.
This Stiglich cartoon is similar to one he published in The Missourian two years ago depicting a Black man in a hoodie stealing a woman’s purse telling her not to bother calling 911 because Black people defunded the police. The outcry from that racist cartoon prompted an apology from the newspaper’s owners and the resignation of the owners and publisher.
Two years earlier, Stiglich published another racist cartoon in The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, New York depicting a man with MS-13 gang tattoos crossing the border holding a baby and a handgun, expressing support for the abhorrent, xenophobic policy separating migrant children from their parents.
Stiglich is infamous for his racist cartoons. The Star should never publish his work.
Cheree Meeks, NAACP President and Amelia Craig Cramer, Vice President NAACP
Downtown
Shohei Ohtani agreed on Saturday to a record $700 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Gun crimes
Re: the Dec. 10 letter “The blast effect of the AR-15.”
Contrary to how the letter writer describes the AR-15 as capable of “blowing the body apart,” the AR-15 is no more powerful than the other 44 million AR-15 type rifles in use in the U.S. today. The rifle is favored due to its ease of use, accuracy, reliability, ruggedness and versatility as opposed to other rifles, and is in fact much less powerful than some other rifles such as the .30-06 Springfield and .300 Win. Mag. AR-15s are widely used for action sports, target shooting, hunting, and legal defense inside the home.
Furthermore, 78% of mass shootings between 1982 and 2023 involved handguns, not rifles.
Why don’t such letter writers discuss the much more serious problem of the thousands of Black on Black gun homicides each year rather than harping on the relatively few AR-15 mass shootings each year? I wonder.
David Pearse
Foothills
Beware Ciscomani’s support of extremists
Re: the Dec. 10 letter “Congressman Ciscomani just gets it.”
The writer ignored Ciscomani’s consistent backing of Republican extremists. Egregious examples were his votes for election deniers Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson to be speaker of the House. Jordan and Johnson support would-be dictator Donald Trump.
Ciscomani’s votes for them is more important than what the writer called “core issues” of border security, crime and the economy. With extremists in charge, the only core issue will be can democracy survive.
By the way, as a Mexican-born naturalized citizen, I oppose the immigration stance of Ciscomani, a fellow Mexican-born naturalized citizen.
We don’t need further border militarization, as he wants. Rather, we need policy reflecting the U.S. role in Latin American economic, political and environmental destabilization that is forcing people northward, and we need more immigrants, not fewer.
We won’t get that from Ciscomani or other extremists.
Shraddha Hilda Oropeza
West side
Never a day without Trump in our ears or eyes
An observation. Reading letters to the editor, writers are often unaware that the Daily Star publishes letters from both parties. Repetitive complaints about the Star being a “tool of the extreme right” are just, well, plain stupid.
Both parties have intelligent writers, I assume. Those who choose not to or cannot read letters opposing their viewpoints, are missing the point in saying (I moderately paraphrase), “I never see any letters with my point of view.”
Their point of view is too often cited and prevaricated upon — in the Star, on TV and radio and by the self-assumed leader of that cult, through constant fabricated comments.
If you do not see your candidate’s obvious deceptions, you’re not looking. Fox News exposes his distortions and hoaxes. We often find an article-a-page about him saying the same thing again, just in case he didn’t hear, understand or forgot himself the first time.
If the Star doesn’t print letters supporting him, how did yours get published?
Sheldon Metz
Northeast side
AR stands for Assault Rifle
As a writer who loves semantics, I have found the debate about whether the acronym “AR” means “assault rifle” to be both hilarious and tragic. Apparently some gun lovers think that any gun control advocate who thinks that an AR-15 is an “assault rifle” shouldn’t be believed about anything.
At least one major arms manufacturer disagrees with them and advertises that “AR” stands for “Assault Rifle.” That would be the Belgian assault rifle, the FN SCAR. (Great name for a deadly weapon,) “FN” is the name of the company, Fabrique Nationale. “S” means Special Operations Forces. “C” means Combat. “A” for Assault, and “R” for Rifle. FN SCAR, also known as the FNH SCAR after the company included their full name.
It comes in a semi-auto version for sale to the public and an automatic version for the military. Next time someone tells you that “AR” can’t mean “assault rifle,” tell them to learn more about guns.
John Vornholt
Northeast side
Gas price decline
With gas prices continuing their ongoing decline, is it time to discard the convenient conspiracy that big oil companies drive-up prices at every opportunity? These greedy capitalists are surely missing a golden opportunity with a major drawn-out Middle East crisis on top of the holiday season.
Douglas Koppinger
East side
Thanksgiving dinner at Williams Clement Center
A big THANK YOU to the staff of William Clements Senior Center at 8155 E. Poinciana Drive in East Tucson. Staff members served about 50 senior citizens a wonderful turkey dinner with all the trimmings — including pumpkin pie with whipped cream! What a treat for us seniors who have cooked and served countless family Thanksgiving celebrations to be able to enjoy an affordable meal with our fellow senior center members.
Judy Jessing
Southeast side
UA financial crisis audit
I was chief financial officer of Lenox Hill Hospital, a New York City teaching hospital, and of Grady Memorial Hospital, a one-thousand-bed Atlanta public hospital and the principal teaching hospital for the Emory University School of Medicine. If I had been responsible for the sort of “… money ‘mismanagement” resulting in the kind of “… financial ‘crisis’ including a $240 million miscalculation in UA’s projected cash reserves” reported recently in the Star, there’s no doubt that I’d have been fired for incompetence.
The Star reported the UA Faculty Senate recognized that state auditors and UA internal auditors may have failed to uncover internal control problems and top management blunders which may have resulted in the UA-wide financial crisis. The Arizona Board of Regents should have arranged for an outside audit immediately upon learning the confessed failures of the UA CFO and CEO — which probably should have resulted in their firing due to their gross negligence.
Mort Ganeles
Foothills
Ashamed, and angry, over U.S. veto of U.N. cease-fire resolution
The recent U.S. veto of a United Nations resolution calling for a humanitarian cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas conflict subverts the will of other nations on the U.N. Security Council.
Great Britain had the dignity to abstain. If the U.S. can reverse its position or introduce a balanced resolution, it should do so.
Israel has every right to exist peacefully and to defend itself within its own boundaries. It does not have the right to inflict suffering on peaceful families in neighboring regions, already crowded by illegal Israeli settlements.
Israel’s invasion and bombing of neighbors in response to Hamas’ brutal terrorism on Israeli soil perpetuates aggression and will increase support for Hamas. If my home had been bombed, livelihood destroyed, and relatives killed, how would I respond?
To criticize Israeli aggression and the U.S. veto in the U.N. does not make anyone anti semitic or anti-American. That’s the old “ad hominum” evasion. Can’t attack the logic? Attack the speaker.
Ila Abernathy
Midtown
UA President Robbins
Curious, why hasn’t this guy been fired?
Tim Baker
Oracle
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Ohtani and the math
Shohei Ohtani just signed a $700 million dollar 10 year contract with the Dodgers. Let’s do the math. That means he gets $70 million per baseball season. If he plays 140 games of a possible 162 games, he will be paid $500,000 per game. If the game lasts 2.5 hours he will be paid $200,000 per hour. If I was the parent of young children, they wouldn’t get anything for Christmas except Baseball equipment! I’m just saying.
Richard Bechtold
West side
