Dissing Information

Ward 3 Councilwoman Kathleen Dunbar's admission of "misinformation" (Mailbag, February 7) arrives as a preface to some serious "dis-information" about the upcoming vote May 21 on the city's transportation plan. According to Dunbar, the plan is a "necessary first step" toward building "a better Tucson for the future including light rail and expanded mass transit."

Ms. Dunbar, exactly how much of the expected revenue is dedicated to light rail? Answer: none. The plan allocates a mere 18 percent of the half-cent sales tax increase to fund public transit: approximately enough to continue with the anemic level of bus service we currently enjoy.

To be sure, the planned funding for maintenance of existing roads (not the absurdly expensive and ultimately ineffective continuous-flow intersections) is warranted and necessary. But the lion's share of the expected revenue is targeted toward construction of new roads, and that is foolish beyond belief.

This "Citizens' Transportation Plan" is a hoax and a sham, inspired by a complete inability of the "planners" to think outside the box, and an unwillingness to understand that any transportation system that relies this heavily on the personal automobile is not a "system" at all.

--Ron Richards

Be Rude to Cellphonies

Even if Tom Danehy was a drunken, tobacco-smoking, Nazi child-molester, I'd still have to support him in is outright opposition to cellphones (Danehy, February 7). Naturally, we all know that they are not going to go away anytime soon; however only a fool would deny that the use of cellphones is truly a social disease.

Besides causing driving problems, cellphones provide inconvenience for those of us who are forced to deal with those using them. "Did he say that to me, or the person on the phone?" is an all-too-common situation. Cellphones would not be a problem if they were used only selectively, but most folks will continue to use them rudely at the expense of the rest of us.

The solution is to be rude back to them whenever the situation warrants it. That might not help the conversation-in-a-car situation, but some may eventually figure out when to use a cellphone and when not to after continual rude treatment returned.

--Steve Vetter

Here's Proof We have Readers

I've noticed that the Tucson Weekly and The Skinny like to bash the daily papers for numerous problems, one of them being grammatical errors.

Not that the daily papers are worthy of defense, but it's funny that while such bashing occurs, the Tucson Weekly consistently has grammatical errors and typos. I wonder if the authors of these venomous articles even read the paper for which they write.

For example, for weeks many of the film capsule reviews have contained question marks instead of apostrophes. Some of these were fixed; however, in the February 7 Shipping News article the apostrophes run rampant.

Further, the ads on pages 3 and 18 of the winter dining guide were so distorted that it'd be outrageous for those companies to have paid for them. Perhaps the new editor of the Tucson Weekly will invest in proofreading as well as our community.

--Travis Klein

Fleecing America, Olympic Style

It's highly unlikely that you'll see a Nightly News with Tom Brokaw segment on the Fleecing of America relating to un-reimbursed tax subsidies at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics. After all, NBC is the principal network for broadcasting the events.

But recent government figures (as reported on the network news shows) state a conservative amount of $300 million in tax subsidies just for providing security for the Olympics. In addition, many federal, state, county and city agencies are providing un-reimbursed support for the events. And it's most likely that no one is collecting all of the costs from all of the agencies involved. This kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy is because we really don't want Joe Bag of Donuts to find out what's really going on with his hard-earned tax money.

Perhaps the congressional committees spending so much time investigating the Enron debacle should divert some of their resources to investigate the amount of your tax dollars at all levels being used to make the international and U.S. Olympic Committees wealthier.

Let them make a profit the old fashioned way--raise the ticket prices and have the costs of government-provided security, etc., reimbursed to the general treasury of federal and local governments.

You may want to consider boycotting the Olympics, and ask your representatives to pass laws that limit the amount of subsidies for future events. Write, e-mail, or call your elected representatives to express your outrage over this situation.

--Tom Sander