Tucson Speaks Out: April 16 letters of the day

City Council did the right thing

In an emotionally packed city council, our council members chose to unify our community, instead of ripping it apart. No one wins in the matter of the Israel/Gaza conflict, the healing has to come from within with hate and vitriol from one side, I hope they find peace. Quoting Golda: “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.” I pray this time will come soon.

Andrew Kunsberg

East side

Outrage great! Action needed!

The responses of outrage to the recent Arizona Supreme Court upholding an 1864 Abortion law are welcome. We need more than outrage. We need action! The immediate threat (in approximately 50 days) is that even though our State Attorney General has promised not to prosecute under this heinous law, many providers will be concerned and may stop providing. The Arizona Legislature is majority Republican. They have so far refused to allow discussion of repealing the 1864 law. Rather than engage with the Democrats they closed their session. They seem to have short memories. In 2022 Republicans wrote and passed a 15-week bill. Arizona has been operating under this bill for two years. The Arizona Supreme Court stated that only the legislature can correct the problem of the two competing laws.

Action is needed — call and email your state House and Senate members and ask them to repeal the draconian 1884 law. www.azleg.gov/ findmylegislator/

Mary Keerins

Foothills

Mayor Romero, fix the roads!

Short and succinct. Mayor Romero, “Fix the roads!” This is your main job. You got a massive pay raise recently. Show your appreciation. Avoiding potholes on Irvington between Kolb and Houghton is impossible. Do we still have a road maintenance department? Fix the roads!

Galen Paton

East side

Tucson Community School’s 75th year

Congratulations to Tucson Community School (TCS) for 75 years of early childhood education, which it celebrated on April 13, 2024. In 1949, parents started a school for young children using indoor and outdoor classrooms with planned activities that encouraged exploration and learning. Parents and faculty worked together to provide for the needs of each child using an accredited curriculum. Thousands of children and parents have had the opportunity to participate in this school. As a past parent, teacher, director and trustee of this remarkable school, I am thankful that I enrolled my 3-year-old son at TCS in 1980. I attribute much of his subsequent successes in life to this early childhood learning experience. TCS should be congratulated on its 75 years of service and contributions to young children and their families of our community.

Barbara Earnest, M. Ed

Foothills

Another silly conspiracy theory

Re: the Feb. 29 letter “Different viewpoints.”

Oh dear! The letter writer sees a conspiracy where “liberal writers” coordinate their efforts and are on the Star’s payroll. Perhaps a spectral liberal bogeyman hiding under her bed revealed the plot. Writers have plenty of motivation to criticize the falsehoods of the “other side” and Donald Trump without compensation or coordination, as Trump attacks the rule of law.

Writers also need not be liberal to be critical. Former congressional representative Liz Cheney, my very conservative hero, said on NBC’s Today show in early December 2023: “A vote for Donald Trump may mean the last election that you ever get to vote in. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote against the Constitution.”

Trump and MAGA are playing for keeps with their Project 2025 and bloodbath threats. We will not be silenced in our defense of human decency and democracy, even if the scofflaw fraudster slithers back into power.

Ronald Pelech

Midtown

Powers for diversity on City Council

Late April, Tucson Mayor and Council will appoint our new Ward 6 representative. The Mayor’s procedures, approved last month, have no provision for public input. An oversight? or an indicator that the appointment was already decided? Regardless, let’s make our choices heard.

Will Mayor/Council’s appointment ensure no more of those pesky 6-1 votes that we in Ward 6 came to expect? I appreciated having a council member who asked tough questions after doing his in-depth homework. I believe diversity of thought should be welcomed at study sessions, not eliminated.

The applicant I find most likely to continue that Ward 6 tradition is Pamela Powers. As a former Democrat state legislator, she know political issues, how to vote “No” and how to communicate with her constituents.

The Ward 6 appointee will serve 18 months — too long for a rubber stamp; too short for a newcomer to learn; just right for an experienced, long-term Ward 6 resident to contribute to City problem-solving. My choice — Pamela Powers.

Ruth Beeker

Midtown

Lake promotes desalinization plant

Kari Lake is at it again. Wanting to be senator, she supports building desalinization plants in Mexico and California. She is just plain wrong about these plants. She tries to compare Israel and its desalination efforts with Arizona.

First, Israelis pay twice much for desalinated water as we pay for our water. No household or farmer would be willing to pay such an exorbitant fee (nothing more than a tax).

Second, Israel is a small country next to Arizona. Israel ships its desalinated water 10-20 miles. The desalinization plant proposed for Puerto Penasco would ship water 200 miles to Phoenix.

Third, any effort to build and ship water from a plant in Mexico would require a treaty, unlikely. California has turned down building a new desalinization plant for itself because of environmental problems. It certainly would not agree to build one for Arizonans.

Do not believe Lake’s latest con.

Howard Strause

Foothills

SAVE Plan loan forgiveness

Those complaining about our government’s SAVE Plan loan forgiveness reminds me of Matthew 20:1-16, The Laborers in the Vineyard. When those hired first complain that they worked longer and harder but earned no more money than those who worked less, the owner replied, “Friend, I am doing you no wrong.” Those of us who paid our student loans worked hard and long and met our agreements need not be envious nor dissatisfied with others good fortunes. Friend, I am doing you no wrong.

John (Jay) Van Echo

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West side

We still have choice

I’m a retired attorney and close observer of Arizona’s abortion laws saga. The recent Arizona Supreme Court’s convoluted decision stripping women of their reproductive rights was legally wrong. These judges — including Kathryn H. King and Clint Bolick, who are on the ballot this fall — had a straightforward case of statutory construction. Had they done their duty, i.e, applied time-honored, sensible rules governing conflicting laws and avoiding constitutional conundrums, they would have harmonized the 2022 and 1864 laws while showing preference to preserving the more recent, specific 15-week abortion ban.

That’s what a normal court would have done. They didn’t. Instead, ignoring legally required off ramps and hiding behind contorted legal reasoning, these judges simply CHOSE to remove our reproductive rights. Was it incompetence, extreme partisanship, both?

What to do? The answer is as straightforward as the legal problem they fumbled: this fall vote to remove justices Kathryn King and Clint Bolick; vote Democrat, the pro-choice party; and vote for the Abortion Access Act.

Mary Theisen

Foothills

Kindness in Tucson

It was the day of the eclipse and I was running around trying to find glasses and everyone was out … but Walgreens suggested trying the library. I knocked on the window and a volunteer said I would have to wait an hour and I was late already! He held his hand up and said “wait a minute”. He went and got the glasses and opened the locked door. That is kindness and that is Tucson!

Jackie Gerard

Foothills

Giving credit where it is due

I want to thank a couple of brave and competent politicians. Thank you Gov. Hobbs for protecting us from these hillbilly state legislators. If not for her our school classrooms would each have an armed guard and the kids would spend half their day watching Fox News and Prager U. propaganda.

Thanks to Mayor Romero for fixing our streets! She impressed me by being the only politician I have ever seen that admitted a mistake and then fixed it as she did regarding saving Barnum Hill. Her campaign to plant a million trees is great idea our grandkids will thank us for. I planted a tree she gave me (now named Regina) and it is thriving. She told me she loves her job and it shows.

Robert McNeil

Midtown

Wrong definition of genocide

Re: the April 14 letter “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”

I’d like to know what facts the letter writer is basing her claim that Israel “was founded on the mass displacement of the indigenous people of that land…” As a Jewish person and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I can speak to the facts of my family’s history. My great-uncle Mordecai Pakier, after escaping from the ghetto in Baranovich, Poland, then fighting in the Partisans, immigrated to Israel in 1946, with the help of my grandpa, Israel Pakier, who helped open the Jewish Office of Refugees in Berlin. Uncle Mordecai first lived at Kibbutz Eilon, established in 1938, ten years before Israel’s independence.

That is a brief glimpse into my family’s story, however, Jewish people have populated the land of Israel for over 4,000 years. I take issue with the letter writer’s definition of genocide. I encourage the letter writer to look at her grandparents’ experience during the Holocaust, as a more accurate description of genocide.

Lori Riegel, PhD

Northwest side

Get our finances in order

Re: the April 13 article “Why are our national finances so weak?”

Columnist Megan Mcardle has written an outstanding piece on a critical issue threatening to blow up America. All those who profess patriotism and care about our children’s’ future should read it!

Mcardle shines light on an issue we seldom think about or discuss, Our federal government is pursuing an unsustainable financial path of year after year spending more money than it takes in, leaving us with about $34 Trillion in debt we must pay back but with no realistic strategy to do so.

What is so alarming is that our national leaders do not mention the problem anymore. Trump pushes tax cuts and Biden pushes new spending, neither of which we can afford while we owe so much money.

Economists warn our debt will cost more and more in interest payments, taking that money from important services (defense?). Wake up and demand we get our financial house in order.

Jim Greene

Northwest side

Engel will move us forward

Re: the April 14 article “Schweikert’s budget proposal support could spell disaster for Arizona.”

I applaud Dr. Goodrick’s opinion piece about the Republican (aka MAGA) 2025 Budget proposal. It demonstrates yet again that the only people Trump and the MAGA Republicans, including our own Juan Ciscomani, are interested in serving are the very rich and those who support their very conservative views on women’s and LGBTQ+’s rights to control their own bodies. In addition, they clearly do not believe that healthcare should be a universal right, available to all irrespective of their ability to pay. We are, I believe, the ONLY so-called 1st World country that does NOT provide some form of universal healthcare. MAGA Republicans are taking us backwards, not forwards, and Juan Ciscomani is right there with them. We need a representative who will take us forward, support the entire constituency, including all beliefs and genders, and ensure all of CD-06 retain their rights to live healthy lives. Kirsten Engel will do that.

Nancy Atherton

Foothills

Hudbay Mining is outrageous

For a foreign country to come in and destroy the beauty of the mountains sacred to Native Americans (here long before white men) in order to sell copper to a foreign country that then manufactures products to sell back to the USA at high cost is outrageous!

There will be a permanent dust haze enveloping Green Valley, probably needing to change its name to Brown Valley.

All of the technological jargon does not disguise the destruction involved. There are copper deposits elsewhere in Arizona to fulfill our needs.

Diane Stephenson

Foothills