1 PARTY HAS REAL ANSWERS
For those who haven’t yet cast their votes, please weigh two vastly different approaches before doing so. One approach views “crime,” “Critical Race Theory,” immigration and inflation as key to their votes. Some topics are fear-mongered boogeymen, some are cause for legitimate concern and problem solving. The other approach sees the preservation of our democratic republic, threatened by candidates Masters, Lake, Finchem, Hamadeh and Republican candidates across the nation who back the Big Lie, Trump and policies that will destroy the founding principles of our nation, as key.
Democrats aren’t perfect, no party is, but they’re working for the American people through a realistic analysis of the problems we face and corresponding legislation/actions that protect our rights and strengthen a nation emerging from the ravages of the COVID pandemic.
Crime is a natural result of any economic downturn, needing responsible solutions, not fear-mongered finger pointing. Immigration problems need comprehensive solutions, which have evaded us for decades, but can be realized though rational analysis of push/pull factors. Inflation is a worldwide problem with widespread causes, including government spending that saved our economy from crashing during the height of the pandemic and has provided numerous new opportunities for the improvement of our nation. Like inflationary periods of the past, this too will pass.
What won’t pass is the election of proponents of the Big Lie, leading to the very fabric of our nation being destroyed. Vote Hobbs, Kelly, Fontes, Mayes, Quezada, Hoffman, Kennedy, Kuby, Engel, O’Halleran, Kerby and Seaman. The far better approach.
Leon Cer, Casa Grande
WE SHOULD WELCOME IMMIGRANTS
Different, but the same. I’ve been watching the Ken Burns documentary “U.S. and the Holocaust,” and I find eerie similarities between the U.S. in the Thirties and Forties and today’s U.S.
Before and during World War II, European Jews sought refuge in the U.S. from Hitler’s persecution. Led by such figures as Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh and the Bund Group’s Fritz Kuhn, many Americans didn’t want them to come, fearing they’d take their jobs and claiming money spent to help them and Europe would be better spent here at home (America First), and stating Hitler’s actions against the Jews weren’t all that significant. In fairness many weren’t being informed by a limited media of the extent of the persecution and killing.
Today’s response to refugees fleeing autocratic regimes across the globe, fostered by the likes of Trump, Abbott, DeSantis, Ducey, QAnon, Fox and other MAGA purveyors of hate and bigotry, echoes that of the past. They’ll take our jobs, money should be spent on Americans only (America First) and regardless of condition, they’re invaders. With the access to information we have today, there’s no excuse to be ignorant of the factors pushing people out of their native countries. That knowledge is crucial.
Today’s MAGA Christian Nationalist Republicans bear a striking resemblance to the antisemitic isolationists of the past. Let’s learn from the past and turn away from them, just as Americans eventually did during WWII as they learned more and more about Nazi atrocities. Learn and vote. Turn away in November.
Leon Cer, Casa Grande
A MESSAGE TO REPUBLICANS
This letter is not written to persuade hardcore Trump supporters. Rather, it is for Republican voters with a sense of decency and a maddening outrage seeing your party hijacked by Trump extremists. The GOP no longer exists. Its demise started years ago with Newt Gingrich and his Contract ON America, Sarah Palin’s tea party and has now devolved into the misguided MAGA movement.
But don’t take my word on it; when even Mitch McConnell speaks to the shameful quality of candidates your once-proud party presents for November’s election, you know something’s terribly wrong. Look no further than our own state of Arizona to see prime examples of whom he speaks. Lake, Finchem, Masters, Hamadeh, Gosar, Biggs, Lesko, Schweikert and so many more in the state races stand out as extremist sore thumbs for your party, unworthy of holding public office. The obvious choice, though it may be difficult, is to choose nation and state over a party in fealty to Donald Trump. Take a sincere look at the Democrat Party and what it has accomplished in the face of an ongoing pandemic, worldwide inflation and supply issues, and needless obstruction. You’ll see a party that is truly working for the American people. It may not be perfect, no party is, but the contrast with the party of Trump is crystal clear. You, and independent voters, must stand alongside Democrats and vote in the true interests of our nation and state this November. Do what’s right for Arizona and America.
Leon Cer, Casa Grande
MAINSTREAM GOP IS MIA
Democrats regularly write letters to the editor of the Dispatch, and that’s OK. Those who support the current Trumpian-style platform also write regularly, and that’s OK too. I suspect that the recurring angry letters with the standard conservative message are from those who have been reciting the same ideas for many years and haven’t been inclined to freshen them up — also OK. But where are the mainstream, traditional, financially focused, old-fashioned Republicans? Are you out there?
The Jan. 6 hearings have presented the old-style Republicans with a great opportunity to save the party. Few Democrats agree with Liz Cheney’s politics, but every one of us is thankful to her for standing up for democracy and trying to save our republic.
This is your opportunity to comment on the pride that you must be feeling toward her and Adam Kinzinger and the other brave witnesses that have come forward. I am confident they will be referenced as “Profiles in Courage” in the very near future for seeking the truth while knowing that their political careers were likely going to tank.
These Republicans, and many others who have been testifying in these hearings, are the saviors of your party, and you should be singing their praises every chance you get.
I look forward to reading a letter from a person who is proud of the Republican Party they joined before it was taken over by Team Crazy. You should be glad Cheney stepped up. I sure am.
Sandra Brown, Eloy
GUN REGULATIONS NEEDED
The Uvalde mass murders show, once again, the Republican Party has lost its mind. They blame everything under the sun except the proliferation of guns in our gun-crazed society. The solutions they offer, the actions they take, highlight the insanity. Ted Cruz suggests only one door in and out of any school. You might want to check with the fire marshal on that one, Ted. Gov. Abbott calls for more mental health resources, when he previously cut funding, diverting the money to the ineffective border wall. They ridiculously call for arming teachers. Why stop there? Why not arm every location where people gather? Let's fully militarize the entire nation!
Teachers can't be trusted to select books or teach history without being accused of engaging in CRT, but they can be trusted with guns? Hypocrisy. A prime example being Republican-backed Arizona HB 1412, which would certainly restrict classroom discussion about the recent murders in Buffalo. The puppet master NRA held its annual confab in Texas just three days after Uvalde, where Trump read off the names of those murdered in a false show of sympathy and then danced his way off the stage. America can’t allow this party to govern at any level. The phrase "Never forget" will be entirely appropriate to sound out in November's upcoming election. Once again, who did and did not stand up for common sense gun regulations and sincere upgrades to our mental health programs? Republicans did not and will not. Never forget!
Leon Cer, Casa Grande
THE SECOND AMENDMENT IS IRRELEVANT
Do you own a gun? If you own a handgun or a gun that shoots more than one bullet at a time, why do you have it? Do you think it is making you or your family safer? A study in the American Journal of Public Health from 2003-2006 found that “individuals in possession of a gun were 4.46 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not in possession. Among gun assaults where the victim had at least some chance to resist, this adjusted-odds ratio increased to 5.45.” The Harvard School of Public Health Injury Control Research Center conducted a 19-year study and found, “For every age group, where there are more guns, there are more accidental deaths. The mortality rate was seven times higher in the four states with the most guns compared to the four states with the fewest guns.”
The Second Amendment was written at a time when there were no local police forces, ratified in 1791, when the citizenry had made a break from foreign monarchies, and a gun required reloading after shooting once. It did not and could not have anticipated automatic weapons in the hands of the citizens. It was written during a time of scarce legal resources, vast, barely inhabited areas and the need to hunt for food (not sport) by many. It was written when, in many areas of the country, one needed a gun for daily survival. But those were not even justifications for the amendment. The actual words: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (emphasis added) Individual citizens are not a “well regulated Militia.” We have police and National Guard today.
It is unconscionable for our government to fail to act to restrict gun ownership dramatically. It is unconscionable for our country to tolerate the level of danger our citizens, including young children, are in because it is so easy to get guns and ammunition. You have to pass two tests to drive a car. You have to be trained to be a policeman or a soldier, with numerous tests applied. Knowing, as we do, that there are racist and antisemitic people out there, and angry and disturbed people out there, why do we continue to bow to the manufacturers and sellers of guns and ammo, and make it continually easier to obtain weapons that are intended to kill people?
Your guns are not doing you or anyone else any good. You have not been tested, checked and rechecked, trained and licensed. Neither has the domestic terrorist down the street. The kid posting plans on Facebook that go ignored. The white supremacist who thinks he knows best. The violent family member who is over the edge.
We owe our citizens safety and security. Instead, they get anarchy, bullets and death. The Second Amendment doesn’t mean what you think it means. Yes, we should come for your guns.
Deborah Dorman is a retired attorney and association executive and an Eloy resident. She was "Guest Columnist" on May 27, 2022.
CORRUPTION APPLIES TO TRUMP
Usually, I find Cowboy Kevin Holten’s writing too vapid to give much thought to. However, his April 12 submission, which focused on “corruption, bribery and censorship" all in the same article, did cause me to reflect. It brought up memories, as well as ties to more recent examples, of each. I thought back to the Trump administration, the most corrupt in modern history, with the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the attempt to bribe the Ukrainian government for dirt on the Bidens and the recently exposed $2 billion deal between Jared Kushner and the Saudis. Just a few examples of many.
I thought back to the Sixties when classics such as "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Catcher in the Rye" were banned and how today we are regressing back to those times with the same type of idiotic book bans and attacks on non-existent CRT (the latest Calvinist bogeyman) in our classrooms and libraries. The nerve of those teachers to teach students to read at literal, interpretive and applied levels, allowing them to engage in critical thought. The nerve to teach our history with a spotlight on our beauty marks as well as our warts, knowing it’s OK to feel both pride and discomfort, and ignorance isn’t bliss.
I don’t think my critical analysis is what the Cowboy was shooting for, but that’s what I was taught to do during my schooling; that’s what I came away with, and that's why I found value in his piece. Leon Cer, Casa Grande
KELLY SUPPORTS WHAT'S GOOD
I take exception to a recent Letter to the Editor from Mr. Ed Van Blaricum, stating Senator Mark Kelly is a puppet of the socialist/Democrat party. Green energy is part of an energy policy that includes oil. Why not use solar panels to produce electricity? No one is forgetting oil; it has been the life blood of this country. However, oil and other fossil fuels are huge contributors to global warming.
The writer points to the 15 months since ex-president Trump left office. Yes, fuel costs were lower. But during the Pandemic, gas consumption went way down. A number of oil companies lowered production. All of a sudden, everybody wants to drive again. The result is gas prices going up and that could be expected. Because of the Pandemic, manufacturing and industries all across the world shut down or cut back production. During the recovery demand for everything went up (automobiles, furniture, building supplies). Tremendous demand by consumers has pushed inflationary pressures creating a supply and demand problem and costs of everything going up. Much like not enough housing in this country has led to housing prices sky rocketing.
I think Mark Kelly is an individual who will run on what is good for Arizona. I do not think the U.S will continue a downward spiral if he is elected. The economy is booming - a fact. Republicans are following a playbook. Authoritarian politicians in electoral democracies typically exploit people’s fear to gain political power, and then use that power to destroy the democracy itself from within. But first they must create fear by building up a straw-man villain. Republicans today are running that strategy to try to turn the U.S., like Hungary, into a strongman oligarchy. Pick a country anywhere in the world and 100% of the time you’ll find “strongman” leaders claiming to protect the country from a minority. Republicans serve a single master: great wealth. But to get and hold power, they must have enough votes to get elected, so every election cycle they have to fan a group they can claim to be protecting “average” American’s from. Republican strategists know that a terrorized populace will quickly defer to strongman authoritarian leaders who promise to keep them safe from the evil monsters they’ve identified. And they’re doing it so they can push more tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of corporations, and addiction to fossil fuels, all without GOP voters realizing the 3-card Monty game they’re running. The writer points to a “downward spiral that will cost Americans greatly during the next three years.” I ask who is really taking this country down a downward spiral?
The former president tried to take apart NATO. I would suggest his overtures to Putin, if continued, would have left the U.S. as not being the leader of the free world. “Hang on and get ready.” As the former president said about January 6th, “it’s going to be wild.” Joel Peebles, Casa Grande
STATE'S OBLITERATION OF PUBLIC SCHOOLING IS NEARLY COMPLETE
The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
In 1901, a weather vane, a magnificent statue of 'Winged Victory,' was placed on top of our copper-domed Capitol in Phoenix. Old-timers claim she was often shot at by drunk, trigger-happy cowboys hankering to see her spin.
Today the iconic dame wears a MAGA hat, the wreath she holds aloft has been replaced by the letter 'Q' and she's spinning like a top, thanks to the drunk-on-Trump gasbags bloviating gale-force methane daily in our Legislature.
Donald Trump said he loves the uneducated, and with our Legislature he struck the mother lode, the biggest bustling corral of bovine bullies, blowhards and Bible-milking hypocrites west of reality.
Arizona turned 110 last Valentine's Day. Could that explain why our state suffers dementia when it comes to education?
For decades our public schools have been underfunded, understaffed and overwhelmed thanks to these bellowing bovids dedicated to ensuring Arizona's public schools are last in the nation in every category and that we continue to bleed quality educators like a gored stallion in a bullring.
On spending we're behind Madagascar. Madagascar has a box of chalk and a pencil sharpener.
To add to our pride, Arizona's schools are shy about 2,000 educators who worked here briefly, learned their lesson and skedaddled as fast as they could to greener pastures named 'Anyplace but this Godforsaken Wasteland' leaving our schools struggling to wrangle new teachers, or should we say suckers, willing to be a political piñata every budget cycle. And to take a vow of poverty. And to be yoked like beasts of burden by their culture-warcrazed overseers with mind-boggling regulations and endless runs at muzzling speech in their classrooms. And now the herd famed for daily dropping their odoriferous bills onto the floor of our statehouse has some bad news and some good news for y'all. The bad: As of Friday they were itching to cut the $1.2 billion dollars owed public ed with every single R in the House voting to slash public ed's lifeline. It's a cliffhanger in the Senate. That'd mean more layoffs, more programs butchered, more school closings and celebratory hootenannies at state Republican Party Headquarters. They stripped the meat off public education's bones years ago. Now they want to suck out the marrow. The good news? What do our schools desperately need? Guns. In our classrooms. Guns. Their solution to all our problems. If their brains were bullets they'd be firing blanks. When Arizona became a state, our founders decided little old Tucson would get the state university. In return, Phoenix, home to the Legislature, would get the state asylum, thus giving our capital two wholly indistinguishable institutions. Today the State Hospital's gone, but our statehouse continues to serve as our premier asylum for lunatics, kooks and cultists. Behold. Rep. Steve 'Trump for King' Kaiser wants educators to stop teaching subjects that cause our poor sensitive Caucasian kiddies to feel bad. Such snowflakey victims of facts deserve special protection from reality. Instead, teach our pale-faced punkins revisionist history so they don't feel blue about historic racism. Teach lies. We'll call them white lies. Sen. Nancy 'No one but Trump-o' Barto, inspired by the old East German Stasi, vants all teachers to post everything zat zey are teaching on zeir websites so zey can make sure no one is teaching 'critical race theory'. Make White America Feel Great Again. Or else. Sen. Michelle Ugenti-Rita, a Sarah Palin poodle from Snottsdale, wants a magic wand granting all school board meeting protesters immunity from arrest. It's just harmless legitimate political discourse. (Darn those freedom-hating fascists who want us to wear masks!) She's also calling for our nonpartisan school board races to become partisan. This is so the the good people of the Legitimate Political Discourse Party will know which candidates belong to the sinister Godless-America-Hating-Socialistical- Party. Their agenda is clear. Keep expanding vouchers. They love robbing public education to fund white flight to unregulated and unaccountable private and elite schools. Keep pushing guns in our schools. And be damned sure there's a portrait of President Donald Trump and a 'Don't Tread On Me' flag in every classroom for the coroners to salute when they 're called to the next 'frontier justice' schoolhouse crime scene. Keep serving the rich donors who keep their feedbags full of campaign cash by hammering Arizona's Supreme Court to kill Prop. 208, the desperate initiative passed by Arizona's disgusted voters calling on that party's wealthy enablers to pay their fair share to fund our schools as if we were living in a 21st century civilization. Keep at it and take a bow, Arizona lawmakers. Your decadeslong crusade to dismantle and decimate public education has been a crushing success. David Fitzsimmons: tooner@tucson.com DAVID FITZSIMMONS Arizona Daily Star
ELECTION BILLS ARE WRONG
Through several articles, the Feb. 3 Dispatch did an excellent job of exposing the insanity coursing through the Arizona Retrumplican Party. There were the usual suspects: Fann, Borelli, Rogers and Townsend with their voter suppression bills, featuring poor loser audits and examinations, piled on top of 70 other election-related bills. Thankfully Speaker Bowers shut down a measure to, among other voting restrictions, allow the legislature to override election results. That brought a rebuke from sponsor Rep. Fillmore, “he does things like he’s a God.” As opposed to overriding election results? “We need to bring back 1958-style voting.” Including a poll tax and literacy tests? That would go right along with the rest of this lunacy. There’s Rep. Griffin, wanting to require “technical expertise” from anyone to be elected to the Arizona Corporate Commission. “Suggested” by utilities that often disagree with the commission? Correspondingly then, shouldn’t legislators be required to have expertise in all areas they address? It’s another ridiculous power grab by the “limited government” party. Now there’s a new member of the team, Rep. Martinez, an acolyte of Paul Gosar. She’s all in on required voter ID, yet makes no mention of how to help people who have difficulty obtaining one. She explains that minority voters do have ID, “because when the police come to talk with them, they are asked to produce ID.” Stereotype much? Meanwhile the lone article on Democrats/President Biden was on his new Cancer Moonshot program. The need to vote “D” in November is apparent.
Leon Cer, Casa Grande
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