Latest news with #LaurieRoberts
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Actually, Sen. Gallego, the solution for transgender women in sports is simple
Laurie Roberts wrote a piece about U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego's evolving stance on transgender athletes that I found a bit confounding. Maybe that's because Gallego's position on the issue is muddled to the point of being almost incoherent. Gallego seemed to support the exclusion of trans girls and women from sports, suggesting they could find other activities. But then he also suggested we could leave it to local institutions to decide who participates. Huh? The senator went on to say that trans people should be welcomed into our community, just not apparently the sports community. It's never good when a politician takes a stand, and yet can't comprehend it. I will grant you that the issue is a complex one, but the solutions also seem rather simple given the relatively low number of transgender athletes we are talking about. The NCAA and each state's athletic governing body should make decisions about participation. Kids in grade school, in my opinion, should be able to participate freely. This idea of a level playing field is a joke. Inequities in sports are common. Does the high school girl who is 6'2' have an advantage in volleyball or basketball? What about Brittney Griner? A blanket policy on this issue is unfair. Dan Peel, Scottsdale Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego gave her State of the City address and covered a lot of successes and challenges for our growing city: transportation, water, public safety, housing and economic development. I think she and the City Council are making good progress on many issues, and are thoughtfully anticipating future developments within the constraints of money and public opinion. You can't have everything, and definitely can't subsidize everything. Columnist Phil Boas makes his case for the coming wonders of data centers and artificial intelligence. ('Arizona leaders disagree on data centers. Are they worth the trouble?' May 29.) He may be right, but that doesn't mean the Phoenix taxpayer should give giant tax breaks to this multitrillion-dollar industry of the future that, despite its potential benefits, is unlikely to produce many local jobs or revenue. She is rightfully more focused on tangible, affordable benefits for Phoenicians, rather than picking winners in the economy. She wants to help them get around town more easily, enjoy a reliable supply of water, endure the brutal summer sun and secure many high-paying jobs in the biotech and microchip sectors. Our mayor has also warned us that squandering up to $1 billion to placate the billionaire owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks to upgrade Chase Field and undefined surrounding property is not the best use of our tax receipts. Just ask the City of Glendale. It's reassuring to have a mayor and City Council with good judgment and good results. They've performed no miracles and have work left to do, but they're moving in the right direction. Good luck to the data center folks. I hope the Trump administration's expulsion of foreign students, especially graduate students, doesn't put too much of a crimp in successfully competing with China. Andrew March, Phoenix The Phil Boas column linking tragedies related to the Middle East to liberal teaching in American universities seems one sided ('Two young people are murdered in D.C. We must now ask hard questions of universities,' May 27). To blame an extremist's heart-rending murder of two young people to American universities and how they teach about the Middle East seems tenuous at best. It ignores the horrors of deliberate starvation and the use of sophisticated modern weaponry against the defenseless civilian populations in Gaza. Justification for Israel to destroy Hamas is framed as a fight against antisemitism. More letters: Don't complain about egg prices. It's not Hickman's fault But this is about Israel's long-term plan to establish power over the territory. No effort is made to look at the history or motives of the right-wing Likud party, which uses the cloak of antisemitism to cover its cruelty toward Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and to continue their land grab. Likud never had any intention of allowing a two-state solution, which might have provided a framework for peace if guaranteed by third parties. Rabin's assassination says it all. Hamas' actions are as indefensible as are Israel's. The bloodshed will only continue until there is justice and security for both peoples. Alan Austin, Phoenix Out-of-control deficit spending has become a big topic in today's news. The answer seems apparent to me. Raise taxes on the super rich. Then get serious about scrutinizing all the waste in the U.S. Department of Defense. That seems like a logical start. Unfortunately, the GOP has never considered this. Instead, the Republicans' latest idea is to take away health care for millions of people. Fred Batko, Phoenix Columnist Bill Goodykoontz says the book 'Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again' by CNN's Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios, is required reading for the left. He adds, 'in retrospect it's easy to say journalism failed,' then asks, 'Where was all this reporting when it really mattered?' Let me answer. The 'journalism' could have been found if people chose to tune in to Fox, Newsmax or talk radio. They early on were showing the videos and airing the sound bytes, making a case for Biden's condition, just as they made cases for all the issues that the left wanted to ignore and to ridicule us for bringing up. Charles Lopresto, Phoenix What's on your mind? Send us a letter to the editor online or via email at opinions@ This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Sen. Gallego's stance on transgender athletes makes no sense | Letters
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Don't blame late early ballots for Arizona's slow election results
Laurie Roberts recently wrote a column, 'Sorry, Democrats. There's no plot to suppress Arizona voters now,' in which she makes the case that a new bill to shorten the early voting period won't suppress voters but will make sure 'we don't grow old waiting to find out who won the freaking election.' As someone who has both won and lost elections, I can relate to the frustration of waiting to get accurate results. I can also relate to worries about growing old. That said, I don't think the solution to this problem is to make it harder for older people to vote, which is what would happen if the Legislature won't allow people to turn in a ballot on Election Day. Because most early ballot voters are older, this new restriction would force those who turned in ballots on Election Day to stand in line to vote, making it more difficult. The legislators pushing Senate Bill 1011 complain that it took too long to count the votes. These are the same folks who gave Arizona our longest ballot in decades — two separate pages — by referring so many proposed laws to the ballot in 2024. With 3.4 million of us voting, county governments had to count up to 6.8 million ballot pages, instead of half as many. So, the Legislature made the vote-count slower and now blames the public for how long it took! Some trick. Let's try to remember that elected politicians work for the people, not the other way around. Still, the problem remains: how can we get accurate election results more quickly? More than 3.4 million Arizonans voted in our 2024 election. Yet it's estimated that fewer than 10% of those folks handed in their ballots on Election Day. So, the obvious question to ask is, were the remaining 90% of results reported on election night? No. People handing in their early ballot on Election Day is not the real cause of our inability to count all the votes within a day or two. The actual cause for county governments taking more than a week to accurately count the ballots is that they don't have the staff or the equipment to quickly verify and count the glut of early ballots that come in in the last few days before the deadline. SB 1011 will not solve that problem. It will remove one proven method of voting: allowing voters to turn in an early ballot on Election Day. If we ban a voting practice used by hundreds of thousands of people, the result will be hundreds of thousands more people waiting in line, or not voting at all. Opinion: Early voting is key to a quick, orderly election More people in line could just make the problem worse. In November, Navajo Americans encountered real obstacles to voting in person. Specifically, voters in Apache County waited outdoors in long lines in cold temperatures due to the county having broken machines, lacking pens and other problems. The Navajo Nation attorney general has publicly said that 'Apache County disenfranchised Navajos voters in the 2024 general election.' We need to balance a few key priorities: Giving every voter a simple and convenient way to vote. Getting an accurate count of how the people voted. Getting votes counted quickly. Arizona does reasonably well on the first two priorities, though there is a lot of room for improvement. Getting votes counted more quickly will take more money to hire more workers and deploy more machines to verify voters and signatures on Election Day. There are other ideas worth consideration: Expand early voting during the full weekend and Monday before Election Day. Then-Sen. Ken Bennett introduced a bill (SB 1467) to do this in 2023 but never received a hearing. Allow ballots to be returned to central processing throughout Election Day and allocate the necessary resources to verify and tabulate them in real time on Election Day. Limit the number of legislative referrals on the ballot. I would like faster election results, so let's get that job done. But not by restricting options for voters. Jonathan Nez is former president of the Navajo Nation. Reach him at jonmnez2@ or on X, formerly Twitter, @FormerPrezNez. This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Arizona should not cut off early voting to speed results | Opinion
