County should raise gas tax

My hat goes off to Ryan Johnson for treating the gas tax with the intellectual seriousness worthy of a university and advancing economic literacy in his Monday column, “”Raising gas tax no liberal war cry.””

Raising the gas tax isn’t just economically sensible – it’s fair. A gas tax is the closest thing to a user fee for driving on the road and polluting the air. Pima County voters will have the opportunity to decide whether people should pay for what they use, or whether a student cycling to the university from Sam Hughes should pay as much as a Marana resident commuting to Texas Instruments down by the airport, on May 16 by voting no or yes to Question 2, the transportation sales tax.

The Pima Association of Governments, the Board of Supervisors and the RTA, though, think it easier to implement a regressive sales tax at a special election than to ask the state legislature for permission to levy an 11-cent regional gas tax. The Pima County Libertarian Party, on whose behalf I submitted an opinion for the voter guide, has consistently said that a higher gas tax is the only fair way to pay for transportation. We urge you to vote on May 16 against the sales tax, forcing them to do what’s fair and economically sound and raise the gas tax.

Rodeo promotes cruel treatment of animals for mere entertainment

As another Tucson rodeo comes to a close, perhaps its time to reflect on exactly what it is we are celebrating – another year that animals are terrorized by electric prods and tightly pulled leather straps around their abdomens that cause them to buck in a vain attempt to relieve the pain and often result in broken or bruised ribs. And for what? Our entertainment? If dogs and cats were treated in such a manner the public would be outraged, and rightly so. Are we to believe that the suffering of these animals is inconsequential because they aren’t companion animals? It’s time to recognize the inherent cruelty the rodeo embodies and stop it altogether.

Liberalism the true ‘mental disorder’

I found Gabriel Leake and Aaron Finke’s letters pertaining to social illness quite amusing. However, both failed to hit the bull’s-eye on what liberalism really is. Michael Savage said it best: Liberalism is a mental disorder. If not all, most liberals I have met are the most delusional, illogical, unrealistic people in the world. The self-proclaimed champions of open-mindedness and

compassion are nothing more than the champions of double standards and hypocrisy. In the end, liberals are nothing more than the very same things they accuse conservatives of being day-in and day-out: racist, closed-minded, homophobic, etc. Here are some examples that further illustrate how serious of a mental disorder liberalism really is, especially from some of the professors I have had in sociology and women’s studies classes at the UA:

• Sensitivity is more important than truth, and feelings are more important than facts.

After seeing how messed up liberals are, thank goodness America is leaning more to the right.

Western governments hypocritical

There are certain countries in the world that do not value freedom of speech. In these places, a person can be thrown in jail for simply publicly speaking his mind. One might, given the recent uproar over cartoons depicting Mohammad, come to believe that I am talking about countries with Islamic governments. However, I am not (this time). I am talking about France, Austria, Switzerland and most other western European countries. There, it is against the law to deny the Holocaust. It seems that most of us are plain old hypocrites. Either you support freedom of speech in full, or you don’t support it at all. Short of directly threatening someone’s safety, a person should be able to say whatever he wants without fear of legal retribution. Upon scrutiny, though, very few cultures meet that standard. It seems rather unfair to condemn a group of people for a behavior that most of us exhibit as well.

More money won’t solve language problems

Throwing more and more money into the school system is no answer to teaching our children English. The governor thinks that if we spend more money, we will get better results. It’s the quality of our ELL programs, not quantity – or how much they cost.

We need to make sure that the money we are spending is going directly to effective programs. We need to make sure the money is going into the classroom, not to administrative costs.

Our public schools have failed generations of Arizona children who know little or no English. And where the public schools are failing, we should look to the private sector to improve and actually teach our children. The scholarship credit should be embraced by the governor to give all children an opportunity to succeed.