Taxes Are Bad, Damn It!
Tom Danehy wonders just who it is that the Tea Baggers want to take back our country from (Oct. 14). Well, perhaps it is from all of the liberal politicians whose cure for every ill is a tax increase. After all, the Tea in Tea Party stands for Taxed Enough Already. And just what business is it of the federal government to decide who should make what, anyway? That idea seems to be more appropriate to the old USSR than the Land of the Free.
President Obama’s desire to raise taxes on a family making $250,000 is likely to have unintended results, for that is what most people running small businesses make. Raising their taxes will mean fewer jobs, unless you honestly believe small-business owners will snatch the food from their families’ mouths.
The liberal Democrats seem to have forgotten the lesson they learned back in the ‘80s when they tried heavily taxing the sale of boats and small aircraft. This had to be repealed when it drove sales offshore and nearly destroyed the boat-building and small-aircraft industries.
Charles W. Walker
Legalize Pot, and Tax Another Vice!
I’m writing about Robert Sharpe’s thoughtful letter, “Decriminalizing Marijuana Would Lead to Many Good Things” (Mailbag, Oct. 14).
It’s high time to fully legalize pot. Only fully legal products of any kind can be regulated, taxed and controlled by any government agency. Speaking of taxing pot, it seems to me that non-marijuana users would be in favor of taxing pot. Around these parts, taxing someone else’s vice is very popular.
Kirk Muse
Card-Check Elections Would Lessen Worker Intimidation
You were right to refrain from taking a position on Proposition 113 since you did not understand all of its implications (“The 2010 Tucson Weekly Endorsements,” Oct. 7), but voters ought to reject this measure on Nov. 2.
More than 50 percent of American workers say they would like to belong to a union, but only 12.5 percent are unionized—down from 35 percent in the mid-1950s. Many of those workers were organized through the card-check system, which operated between 1935 and 1945, the heyday of labor-organizing in this country.
Proposition 113 is intended to make it impossible for people to form a union without a certification election. But certification elections often fail, because employers intimidate workers. Half of them hint that they will close if workers vote “yes.” Some 23,000 people per year are fired or disciplined for union activities.
Laura Tabili
Grijalva = Fighter for Green Jobs
Thank you, Tucson Weekly, for your continued coverage of the 2010 election. It is interesting that Ruth McClung did not want to debate Congressman Raúl Grijalva (“Why McClung Backed Out of Debate,” The Range, Oct. 15). Could it be that she has no concrete solutions to our economic crisis other than privatizing Social Security? Instead of moving ahead toward green industries, which will create more jobs and help us to compete with other nations, she is following those policies which created the situation we are facing right now.
Grijalva is advocating a new green energy policy which will bring jobs and wealth to Arizona and the nation. He has consistently voted to protect our wildlife and conserve the beautiful natural environment that all Arizonans are proud of. He is the candidate we need to represent us.
Carol Masuda
Grijalva = The Second Coming, Basically
Congressman Raúl Grijalva has tirelessly fought for all the people he represents. He has, for his entire career, put the electorate first, whether in education, conservation, social security, health-insurance coverage or green-job development. He has never pretended to be someone he’s not. A native Arizonan, he is a man who always has our best interests in mind and in his vote. He has represented Southern Arizona’s interests in the legacy of Morris “Mo” Udall and Raul Castro, consistently making me proud to tell friends in other parts of the state and the country that Grijalva represents me.
Financed by outside interests, we cannot trust Ruth McClung’s intentions. She has never represented a constituency nor demonstrated a commitment to public service. She will continue to demonstrate loyalty only to those big businesses that financed her campaign.
In response to an AzCentral.com question on congressional ethics, McClung suggests, “We don’t need bills that are thousands of pages long and are impossible to read and understand.” I prefer a representative whose reading comprehension abilities include understanding legislation.
If a bachelor’s degree in physics makes you a physicist, or a rocket scientist, as she prefers to call herself, then I guess a bachelor’s degree in physiology makes you a doctor. I don’t want her operating on me. Ruth McClung genuflects to corporate greed, denies climate change and exaggerates her very limited credentials.
I am voting for Raúl Grijalva.
Melanie Emerson
Correction
”Razing Arizona” (Oct. 21) misstated some potential cutbacks of health-insurance coverage for Arizonans below the poverty line. Unless they agree to use more general-fund dollars for the program, state lawmakers may roll back eligibility for AHCCCS coverage to 50 percent of the federal poverty line for families with children, not 33 percent, as the story stated.
