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Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 40

Publication:
Arizona Republici
Location:
Phoenix, Arizona
Issue Date:
Page:
40
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

is The Arizona Republic SATURDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2003 B9 OPINIONS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Views on Proposition 414 It vital to keep Make 414 tax apply statewide I agree that the Maricopa County Medical Center's Burn Center is a vital resource for Arizona residents. What I don't agree with is establishing a special taxing district with taxes only on Maricopa County property owners to fund a resource used statewide. Because the health facility is a statewide resource, any additional monies should come from the state, not from one small portion of the residents of Maricopa County. In addition, why a special taxing district? Maricopa County already has the right to collect property taxes. Something just doesn't set right with this.

Kathy Kozaklewlcz Phoenix Playing on our emotions Proposition 414 is a shameless scam to trick the overly emotional into handing over even more tax money to a wasteful government. Maricopa County muckety-mucks may be just dandy at wasting my money on illegal aliens that have bankrupted the county health system. I am not. And I will be voting down Prop. 414 on Nov.

4. David Alger Phoenix More reasons to vote no Robert Robb's Oct. 17 column, "Prop. 414 is shameless shenanigans," was right on target. Thanks for an honest approach to this very difficult subject.

It just gave me several more reasons to vote no on Prop. 414. Jim Wind Glendale burn unit open I have very personal reasons for supporting Proposition 414 on the Nov. 4 ballot. As you may know, my police cruiser was hit while I was on duty.

It burst into flames, and I was trapped inside while the car burned. Once they cut me out, I was rushed to Maricopa Medical Center's Burn Center for treatment. If the expert care and treatment that I received at Maricopa Medical Center were not available nearby, I would not be alive. While I owe my life to the Burn Center, I encourage you to vote yes on Proposition 414 for your own personal reasons. As a policeman, I know that anyone can be in an accident and anyone's home can catch fire.

If either of these horrible things were to happen to you or a loved one, you would need the Burn Center at Maricopa Medical Center. The Burn Center treats 1,600 patients per year. If it were to close, those patients would have to be flown out of state for the critical care they need. I would not have survived the trip to Dallas or San Diego for treatment. Another personal reason for you to vote yes on Prop.

414 is to maintain the quality health care that you and your amiiy currently receives. If Maricopa Medical Center closes piece by piece, other Valley hospitals will be flooded with over a half-million new patients. How will they manage these patients? Maricopa Medical Center treats 78,000 emergency-room patients a year. Other emergency rooms are already stretched to their limits, and many of us have experienced the long waits to prove it. School pressure is far too great There is far too much pressure on America's youth to perform academically.

Never before have college admissions been so competitive and never before have young Americans been so pressured to achieve. Between advanced-placement classes, standardized tests, perfecting sports skills, extra-curricular activities, college essays and everything else a given adolescent goes through, it is easy to understand why so many teens are frazzled and at times exhausted. What happened to the days when a student needed to do nothing more than come to school and get good grades? I feel the need to quote John Stossel and speak for all my fellow students when I say, "Give me a break!" Some families are planning for a child's academic future before the child is even born. At this point I ask myself, "The rewards of success may be great in the end, but what must these stressed students lose in the process?" A sense of self, healthy communication andor social skills? At what point did we choose rigid, global competitiveness over social sufficiency? Dave Binegar Paradise Valley The writer is a senior at Horizon High School. Hitler not a gun-grabber H.

Sutton is mistaken in claiming that "Hitler liked gun registration, too. It enabled him to confiscate them at will" the reality in gun laws," Letter, Wednesday). The historical facts as documented in the German legal code and published in Gun Control in Germany: 1 928-1 945 by William Pierce are otherwise. Germany's gun registration law was passed in 1928, five years before Hitler became chancellor and before the National Socialist Party had significant political power in Germany. The Nazi government in 1938 revised this law, but it was revised to be substantially less restrictive.

After 1938, permits were no longer required to purchase rifles and shotguns, and handgun licenses were extended from one to three years. The only element of this law that was more restrictive than the original 1928 version was that Jews were forbidden from being involved in the manufacture of firearms (they were NOT, however, forbidden from owning firearms). Hitler made it easier for Germans to own firearms. It was only in 1945, at the hands of the Allies, that there was mass confiscation of privately owned weapons in Germany. I agree with Sutton that gun control is a bad idea, but in this Hitler was on our side, not on the side of the gun-grabbers.

Kevin Walsh Phoenix 'Do Not Call' is working Here it is, nearing the end of October, and our household has received only three telemarketing calls this month. How nice it is now, when the phone rings, I answer, and it is a friend, it is my daughter, it is my golfing buddy. I do believe that the federal Do Not Call Registry is working. To help it become effective, have a piece of paper and a pencil near your phone. If you get a telemarketing call, be polite, but get as much information as you can from the caller.

Like the name of the company, phone number, location, name of person making the call. Record that, along with the date and time of day. Then report it to the Federal Communications Commission. Enforcement is the key to keeping this program working. William "Bill" Capron Mesa Airline profit a group effort As an employee of America West Airlines, I would like to respond to Alex Thurber's letter to the editor saved airlines, Thursday).

Mr. Thurber's statement that the "big shots" are taking credit for the last two quarters' profits is not correct. I know that all employees for the airline have had an active hand in the ongoing turnaround and all should receive credit. His statement that America West received "handouts" from the federal government is subjective, at best. America West obtained loan guarantees; no new money was given to the company.

These guarantees were underwritten by stock warrants valued at $3. With the stock currently hovering around $13, the U.S. taxpayer could profit nearly $200 million. Hopefully this will ease Mr. Thuber's angst that Southwest Airlines is paying taxes and AWA purportedly is not.

I understand that there are still many issues that need to be addressed. However, I am one to believe we are going in the right direction. Yves Hoebeke Phoenix Training teachers to teach Regarding Peter Gill's letter questioning teacher-certification standards standards skewed," Wednesday): I'm in a K-8 teacher-certification program. I am thrilled with the training I'm receiving and my decision to switch careers. What many other people fail to realize is that effective teachers know far more than just their subject matter.

I recently passed the Arizona Educator Proficiency Assessments (thank you, thank you), and only half of the eight hours' worth of tests focused on subject matter. The other half tested my knowledge on how to teach. All the experiences from my classroom internships lead me to believe this is a just proportion. Mr. Gill, your former student should now focus her efforts not on higher levels of math, but on pedagogy.

Her future students will be better served by her ability to run a well-managed classroom than her knowledge of trigonometry. Now I'd like to say a few words to this soon-to-be teacher: "Good luck. This state needs people like you inspiring new generations with your love of math." David Franks Scottsdale Does anybody really know what time it is? With the end of the daylight-saving time on Sunday, I get to play one of my favorite games: "What time is it really in Arizona?" Even the Time and Frequency Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the actual government organization that provides official time to the United States (official slogan: "We're in the has trouble with Arizona's time. Its Cesium Fountain Atomic Clock may provide "an uncertainty of less than 2 10-15" (1 second in 20 million years)," but the Time and Frequency Web site lists only one official time for Arizona. Hawaii and Indiana are the only other states that do not follow daylight-saving time.

I can understand Hawaii (island time is a hazy concept at best) and even Indiana, (it may no longer be the "Crossroads of Ameri More than 2,400 patients a year are treated in Arizona's second-busiest trauma center at Maricopa Medical Center, and this hospital cares for more than 50 percent of Maricopa Jason Schechterle County's most seriously ill infants. It is unrealistic to assume that other hospitals will be able to handle these patients. They will be overwhelmed and our care will suffer. Yet another way that Maricopa Medical Center ensures quality health care for all of us is its doctors' training program. More than 200 doctors from all over the country are currently training at Maricopa Medical Center.

It is the largest training facility for doctors in Maricopa County. And more than 50 percent of the doctors who train there, stay here to practice. We already have a doctor shortage in Arizona. Local communities and hospitals throughout the Valley will suffer from greater doctor shortages if Maricopa Medical Center closes. Proposition 414 is cheap personal health care insurance.

It will cost only $21.84 extra per year for an average homeowner in Maricopa County to ensure that the funds are available to keep Maricopa Medical Center open to serve all of us. This is a very small price for such an important resource. Please join me, the Arizona Nurses' Association, the Professional Firefighters of Arizona, the American Cancer Society and many others in voting yes on Proposition 414. Jason Schechterle Phoenix ca" but at least it straddles two time zones). But I don't understand why Arizona should be so fickle as to have two separate time zones.

After all, Alaska has two zones; China, which covers much more territory than Arizona, has just one. Or perhaps, since daylight-saving time became a federal law a mere 37 years ago, Arizonans remain convinced that it's some sort of fad, like pet rocks, or since it was 1966, bell-bottom pants for men. Yet I can understand not wanting to succumb to state peer pressure. So what if every other state follows daylight-saving time? If they jumped into the Grand Canyon, would Arizona have to follow? I think not. And I understand some of the opposition to daylight-saving time.

Springing forward is a bit like suffering do, it would be people from Guatemala, Brazil, Honduras, Colombia, etc. I doubt there would be Americans lining up to pick vegetables under the Yuma sun for a low wage. We should think about that the next time we blame another country for our problems. Simon Albar Phoenix 'Forked tongue' speaks again The colloquialism "White man speak with forked tongue" has always been apropos to our border policies with Mexico. The American government is sending one message, American industry is sending a second, and the American people are sending a third.

Racism underscores all three. America has always had an official system to exploit labor of disadvantaged people, even our own. In pre-co-lonial days there were indentured servants from Ireland. The South had their slaves from Africa. The Northeast industries imported Eastern Europeans by the boatloads.

The Western mines and railroads ex- mm Views on immigrants and border policy VIEWS from jet lag without leaving your house. Falling back is no fun, either. We own too many clocks in unlikely devices such as ovens, thermostats and stereos. The Navajo Nation, which observes daylight-saving time, won't gain an hour. Instead, residents will spend most of that time changing all their clocks, especially if they try calibrating their digital clocks.

My kitchen, for example, is comprised of three time zones: the coffee maker, the microwave and the oven. Meanwhile, technology may be getting "smarter" but that doesn't always solve the problem. My new VCR automatically adjusts for daylight-saving time. Soon it will start flashing "11:00 p.m." Norman Birnbach Marblehead, MA The writer is a Boston-based freelance writer and humorist. ploited Chinese workers.

For the last half-century, the corporate farmers and meatpackers have had the benefit of cheap Mexican migrant labor. The immigration policies of the United States do little but disgrace the little heritage we Americans possess. The economic disparity between Mexico and America is exacerbated by our own policies, and serves only the interest of large employers and xenophobic Americans. The idea of reform through better administration, fairer laws and stricter enforcement is also absurd, and Americans in leadership positions in this country know it. The answer is simply to open the Mexican border and let whatever migrations may happen, happen.

It may turn out different from the predictions of the xenophobes, and could even raise the standard of living on both sides of the border. It seems the only fair thing to do. American history with Mexico is filled with disgrace, especially over the last fifty years. Isn't it about time we start atoning for those sins? Emll Lester Phoenix Criminals died in that desert It was 205 criminals entering this country illegally, not 205 migrants or undocumented aliens who died this year in the desert. Many speeders and reckless drivers have died on our streets this year.

A very harsh penalty for both, but they alone put themselves at risk. I feel sorry for them, but I refuse to feel guilty. A great thing about our country is the ability to change our laws when necessary, so law-breaking should not be excused, condoned or rewarded. This country was, and is, being made greater by immigrants legal immigrants, not criminals who think they don't have to obey our laws. Lewis Jarre tt Mesa OTHER WMOLD Aph Real scandal goes unnoticed The Republic has filled its editorial pages of late with articles exposing the hypocrisy of our immigration laws.

While I generally support this view, one could argue that the paper has gone too far. However, the ignorant letters I see in response are especially appalling, full of myths and nonsense. If a worker who is here illegally and can't speak English threatens your job, you need job training. If 100,000 aliens were immediately removed from Arizona, our economy would fall into a tailspin. These illegals not only earn money, but spend it as well.

To replace their positions with American citizens, assuming you could find any workers, would mean drawing from the ranks of the "unemployable." There is no such thing as a work visa for a Mexican. It is not possible for one to legally come here only for work. Family members living here can apply for them, but it is a lengthy, costly and uncertain process. The real scandal is the HI visa program, which allows tens of thousands of skilled foreigners to work here in the United States, displacing Americans from high-salary positions. Wayne Grallan Phoenix Our problem and our fault I can't believe all these letters I have read lately about how it's Mexico's fault that immigration has gotten out of hand.

The folks who share this view are shutting their eyes to the reality: Jt is our problem and our fault! If Mexico's economy suddenly became perfect and there was no more need for Mexicans to seek jobs outside their country, we would still have the same situation. The only difference would be that instead of Mexicans coming to the U.S. to take the low-paying jobs that no one here will ii a DUDES LOST HIS EDGE, I WAN..

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