Readers
Jon/John-come-latelies
missed their chance
The aging vaudeville act Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee – i.e., Jon Kyl and John McCain – boast lots of gall. Boohoo, they see tragedy in Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package.
Where were their flapping gums when Reagan and the two Bushes racked up $11 trillion of debt? The Republicans’ phony wars and endless tax breaks for the rich have cost this country plenty.
Unless Jon-John have any ideas about getting back taxpayers’ squandered money from the likes of Cheney’s Halliburton, then I suggest they shuddup.
By the way, if McCain is really interested in limiting government, he ought to start with Rosemary in his own office. She belligerently answers any question with, “I don’t know.” Fire her, Mr. Man of Action.
Alan Neff
Don’t fill Arizonans up with little bits of pork
The March 4 guest opinion by Raúl Grijalva and Walter Sainsbury (“Clean energy can power Az, U.S.”) is the same sell we get when the government tries to convince us they know what they’re doing.
They blame the American people but say government money will be used to help start programs by putting people to work to correct these problems.
Winterizing homes, public transit and other small projects are just a drop in the bucket to the real approach needed.
The numbers cited seem astronomical, but compared with what coal or gas-fired plants, chemical manufacturers or any large polluter emit daily, they are minute.
It’s easy to say, “cut dependency on foreign oil,” (advocate) “homegrown clean electricity” and “create millions of jobs” – especially when neither the president nor Congress have a plan other than to throw lots of money at the problem.
The small amount of money to be used isn’t the answer, and you and I know it. It has not worked in other states, and it will not work in Arizona.
How can they say it’s going to create all these jobs? Have there been any wind towers, electric plants or clean energy built under their watch?
The plan for clean, green and alternate energy is a great idea and can be accomplished – but not this way.
We first need a plan – and private investors, willing to take the risks, knowing federal and state laws and red tape delays but with the ability to overcome all obstacles, without government inference.
That’s how clean energy will come to Arizona and the United States.
You can do more for Arizonans by not trying to sell your earmarks of little pork projects.
Grijalva should leave the real important work to the experts, and play “follow the leader” as he has in the past.
James Knorr
Survive tightrope walk by landing on Net
I am concerned more for my own news reading than the profits of Gannett or Lee or whoever invested in a newspaper as a profit venture.
Some of the newspaper owners’ attitudes in the past made me change from the Star to the Citizen. They did what seems to be a right of the newspaper, advised the reader how to vote, but then did not publish my rebuttal. Your closure leaves me now in a quandary.
I am going to suggest an escape from your financial woes and an available alternative: Go Internet only.
Most of you have the ability and the means of doing it; most, including the Citizen, are doing it quite flawlessly.
I have a paid subscription to a technical magazine that went that way, without my opinion of course.
You have an asset, which is a group of extraordinary reporters with good knowledge of local issues, that may be lost to the locals, and that is unfortunate. Advertising in the Internet is easy and cheap, and the media are free.
You surely have considered this, and I encourage you. An article in the March 2 issue of Time deals with this and refers to The New York Times’ acceptable revenue.
I have used the media to help transmit a message about some local environmental issues, by publishing some Web sites. They are bare and unprofessional, since profit is not my motive. They are azlands.us and azwater.us.
Hector Conde
Opinion-aided Citizen going with a whimper
It’s clear the Citizen has had little control over its fate. With the market for afternoon newspapers all but extinct and advertising revenues falling off a cliff, the Citizen is largely a victim of economic circumstances and changing times.
But the Citizen has not helped itself, either.
Even as the Citizen watched its circulation stagger toward the vanishing point, the paper lurched leftward, abandoning huge numbers of potential readers who are either conservative or middle of the road. Thus it shot itself in the foot.
By planting editorials thinly disguised as columns on the front page, the Citizen breached the time-honored and vitally important wall between news and opinion. The front page is for news; the editorial page is for editorials.
When key front-page real estate is devoted to such writing, it compromises a newspaper’s claim to neutral reporting and erodes readers’ trust. It matters not one iota whether such pieces are conservative or liberal. It’s just bad journalism.
I’ll miss the Citizen despite its faults. It’s sad when a newspaper dies, and I wish only the best for its employees – Anne Denogean and Billie Stanton included.
Ron Solomon
Letters to the Editor