May 2 town council meeting
Linda is basically correct when she described a brief incident during the council meeting on May 2.Council voted unanimously to table the second general agenda item to approve a resolution authorizing the mayor to approve a development agreement between the town and North Mountain Reserve Homeowners Association, inciting unrest in the audience by members of the community and causing Maricopa County Sheriff’s Captain Kip Rustenburg to intervene.
The reason the NMRHOA members were angry was because they had sat through a long and at times pedantic Open Space Financing scenario.
The courteous thing to do would have been to advise people at the beginning of the council meeting that Agenda item 2 would not be discussed. They would have been disappointed, but would not have been justifiably upset with nothing in the way of an explanation after sitting around for an hour. Inciting unrest is a bit of hyperbole by Linda.
When did courtesy and politeness to residents become a non-issue for the mayor and council?
It was certainly disappointing to see such a dismissive view of citizens concerns. But, it was not a surprise to anyone.
CW Jensen
Council Candidate
Good news for Carefree residents
Mayor Les Peterson has announced he is a candidate for re-election in the upcoming MAYOR election. He was appointed to the Mayor position upon the sudden medical departure of David Schwan last year. He has done an outstanding job of listening to and caring for the residents of our town. Two of the council members (Glenn Miller and Melissa Price) fought Peterson from taking the title and authority. They even caused the town to spend thousands of dollars for outside council to mediate the issue...and said “they would refuse to work with Les Peterson.”
Thankfully Peterson prevailed, as he should have.
The Mayor has a strong marketing background and a 20 year residency in Carefree. He served on the Planning an Zoning Board prior to being elected to the council and was appointed to be the Vice Mayor. He has spent the past two months holding small residents meetings with his Vice Mayor, John Crane. These have been no agenda..’.just tell it like it is’ one on one meetings. And recently I have heard from many attendees it was well received and appreciated.
The Town will face many small and large issues in the next two years. The recently approved town budget actually calls for less income from local sales tax, even though we have spent many thousands of dollars to attract new businesses and customers. I have great confidence Mayor Peterson will handle these with great care and wisdom.
Don’t even think about voting for any other person for our town’s CEO/Mayor. Be certain to vote for Les Peterson when your ballot arrives in the next few months.
Jim Van Allen
Carefree Citizen
Unacceptable!
Don, you were prophetic in your Op Ed piece on the deterioration of our American culture. While the ink was still drying on your column protesters (nay, rioters & anarchists) flying Mexican flags fouled the streets in California. And now Seattle where foul-mouthed Hispanic kids throw the "F" bomb with raised middle fingers to Trump supporters. Where were these kids' parents, better still who were they. No manners and no class in a rotting society.
Our U.S. Constitution defends the right to peaceful assembly and political descent, even encourages it. But that is not what is happening in this election cycle. There are forces afoot that seek not to guide or shape voter opinion, but quash it, hoping to drive a final nail into the coffin of American culture and the franchise of free elections.
Is the suggestion of the rule of law so unacceptable to these people they must disrupt the process to the point of violence? What is unacceptable is the anti-Trump crowds' aberrant and uncivilized behavior.
Randy Edwards
Cave Creek
Slim dollars and opportunities ahead for lazy Americans
Higher wages for all people is a worthy cause to achieve. The states that want to raise the minimum wage should do so. Keep it on the state level. Washington State, Texas and Kentucky are three different states with entirely different economies. While one state may offer a minimum of $15 another state may find it tough to go beyond $10.
Sadly too many people have jobs that aren’t worthy of a higher minimum wage. Receiving wages means rendering work or service for the wage. I’m all for paying high wages to good workers who do a good job.
I get tired of going to restaurants where the service is lousy and the attitudes of the workers are just as bad. On top of this they have the audacity to expect a 20 percent tip. I usually break down and give a generous tip anyway because I typically feel sorry for people. Recently a waitress was so rude, so slow, so unresponsive, while carrying a drink around the whole time and sipping out of a straw, that I only left a $2 tip. The waitress was a total slob. This was supposed to be a slightly upscale restaurant but we were surely dismayed. I bet this same waitress wants $15 an hour. The next day I sat in a hole in the wall barbecue joint were the food was A+ and the waitress was kind, responsive and very attentive to taking care of us. I left a 30 percent tip because I was so appreciative of her efforts.
A popular coffee chain promises higher wages and even some medical insurance to employees. The price of the coffee and specialty drinks should certainly cover the higher wages. On too many occasions the service and the attitudes of the workers are a turn off.
In our little town there is a Mexican restaurant that has grown dramatically over the years.
They are almost always full. The food is great. The service is friendly and very responsive. The waiters look at the customers, listen to them and work to fulfill their requests. The entire staff is made up of immigrants from Mexico. Occasionally we go to another little joint for breakfast. The staff is a mix of Hispanics and Asians. The food is great, the service, friendliness and responsiveness of the servers is always impressive. I don’t mind leaving a tip and they deserve whatever they make.
Millions of Americans work hard and produce every day. America is what we are today because of men and women who give a hundred percent at their jobs every day. These good Americans earn their pay and often are worthy of even more.
America has changed and we are changing more. If you are lazy with a chip on your shoulder and sour faced disposition you are going to have a tough time in this country. There are people who are willing to work hard and will appreciate every penny they make. When they are running our nation they will not care about the disgruntled, lazy people who do not want to work hard.
Glenn Mollette, Author
Visit Amazon.com
According to PVT South
It's getting to the point where you cannot insult anyone without hurting their feelings. OK, Sen. Lindsey Graham and Bill Kristol, you self righteous morons, are you setting your selves up to be the third party answer to Trump? Sitting out this election ranks right up there with the French letting the German Army march into Paris. (It did seem like a good idea at the time)
Hillary is loving all the hoopla and chaos but in the end it won't help. (The Queen is still going down) When Slick Willy was President, Hillary was burned in effigy in Kentucky. (How about that, I guess the press forgot) Don't forget Bernie and the FBI, is that a great soap opera or what? Now the Koch brothers, the heroes of capitalism, hated by the Democrats, may support the Pepsi Sisters because of Trump. (Makes you wonder if God is a Democrat)
Senator McCain is getting some grief at home because he supports Trump. A question for McCain and Trump: Do We The People really need an expensive wall if the United States created a sound National ID system for every American?
PVT South is nothing more than a barking dog, sounding the alarm about other hostile nations similar to what Col. Billy Mitchell did in the 20’s about Japan. Col. Mitchell was chastised severely for his efforts and America paid dearly.
Now our Amateur In Chief is going to Hiroshima. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the last chapter of a sad book written by the Japanese. The first chapter was December 7 1941, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Have a nice day and keep your powder dry.
PVT South
Email
Rollins “tremendous”
Donald Trump wants to make America great again – and if we want him to succeed, we must help him win a decisive victory of historic proportions over that "liberal" Hillary Clinton.
I'm urgently asking for your support of Great America PAC's fight to elect Donald Trump the 45th President of the United States.
In 1984, I had the honor of managing President Ronald Reagan's historic re-election campaign, which reaffirmed the American peoples' strong support for a conservative reformer who came from the people – not the political elites – with one of the greatest political victories in American history.
In winning 49 of 50 states in a 525-electoral vote landslide, President Reagan utterly defeated leftist Democrats and continued his historic reversal of the economic, cultural, and military decline of the Carter years.
Now, after almost 8 years of even worse decline under the deceptive, divisive, and disastrous rule of radical "Community Organizer-in-Chief" Barack Obama, America needs a strong, independent, courageous, conservative leader more than ever – and that leader is Donald J. Trump!
Donald Trump has now earned more Republican primary votes than any GOP candidate in history – even more than Ronald Reagan!
And now, like we did with Reagan in '84, we are going to hand a crushing defeat to liberal Hillary Clinton in the general election!
Donald Trump is a hugely successful businessman, but even he doesn't have the resources to face the multi-billion dollar Clinton Democrat political machine – especially in the modern campaign era.
There is so much that only outside groups like Great America PAC can – and MUST – do to help Donald Trump win.
As the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, and dozens of others have made clear – your Great America PAC is the official PAC supporting the election of Donald Trump – and the only one actually delivering, with more than $1 million in television ads and united more than a million new supporters for his campaign!
But now that he is the presumptive nominee and faces the liberal Clinton juggernaut, we must ramp up our efforts even more.
And everything we do to help Mr. Trump depends on the generosity of Americans just like you who want to Make America Great Again!
Sincerely,
Ed Rollins
National Co-Chair, Great America PAC
P.S. Just like Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump is the right man at the right time to shake the corrupt Washington establishment to its core and reverse the catastrophic decline of the Obama-Clinton Democrats – please help us deliver an even greater electoral triumph in 2016.
Freedom Schools: What’s up with that $5 Million earmark?
Why are the so-called “Freedom Schools” at the University of Arizona (Center for the Philosophy Freedom-CPF) and Arizona State University (Center for Political Thought and Leadership-CPTL; Center for the Study of Economic Liberty-CSEL) getting a $5 million earmark in the Arizona State budget? Most folks involved in promoting liberty know government money means government control. Nearly all organizations that promote free markets are proud of the fact they neither ask for nor accept any government funding. (I admit that, since all three of these “centers” are located at public universities, they will naturally enjoy some indirect government benefits but I would expect that all three of them should derive their primary funding from non-government sources.)
So, what is happening? It seems that one of the centers, the CPTL at ASU, has decided to solicit government money and was successful in gaining an appropriation that creates a new “school” at ASU called the “School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership.” The two centers at ASU would presumably be subsumed within the new school. (Notice how the names of the centers were combined to create the new name.) In academic parlance a “school” is one step above a “center” and is more “officially” associated with the university. One direct benefit of this more official designation is the ability to offer degree programs.
However, I and many of the true believers in liberty are more concerned about promoting the proper philosophy than the ability to grant degrees. This is because of the very extreme leftist bent of faculty and staff on almost all academic institutions in the United States, including the public universities in Arizona, even though a substantial majority of Arizona citizens identify themselves as conservative. There is a desperate need for conservative and libertarian views on our campuses.
But, if these centers are taken over by government funding (remember that “he who pays the piper calls the tune”) then their benefit will be lost. We can see this happening in the name selected for the new school: It will be the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership. The CPTL has always been more conservative than libertarian, as are the principals involved on their board. The other center, the CSEL, is more “pure,” that is, more libertarian or more free market. The key word in their name is “liberty” and that exemplifies their bias. This commitment to liberty is even more desperately needed at public universities than more traditional “conservatism” but the word “liberty” was dropped from the name of the new school.
It should be reinserted to emphasize that the new school will truly emphasize the free market viewpoints that are so lacking at ASU.
We fought this same battle several years ago when I was working in fund raising at ASU and I am personally aware of how difficult it is to get that free market emphasis, even in the business college, a place where one would expect to find free market views. In fact, there are very few true believers in free markets among the staff or faculty at the WP Carey School of Business.
CSEL was on the right track. The person selected to be the executive director, Scott Beaulier, could not have been a better choice. However, Scott’s talents have been recognized by others and he is leaving to be the dean of a business college. The founding director of CSEL, ASU Professor Bill Boyes, has been the primary spokesman for Austrian economics and free markets at ASU for many years but Bill is now a retired professor and I am concerned that he cannot carry the baton alone.
With the formation of CPTL and CSEL Arizona has a wonderful opportunity to advance free market views that are sorely needed at ASU. We should not let this opportunity slip through the crack by letting the nose of government under the tent and dropping the stated emphasis on liberty.
Roy Miller
Phoenix
Stop civil asset forfeiture
Recently it was reported that a Christian band, orphanage, and church had $53,000 taken from them by the Oklahoma state government. The government did it by using an unconstitutional program known as civil asset forfeiture. This is where the government can take your property without even charging you with a crime. Civil asset forfeiture is unconstitutional, it violates your property rights, and it has to end.
As long as this unconstitutional scheme is allowed to exist, everyone’s property is at risk of being taken by the government. Just think, if a church’s property was taken by the government, how safe is your property?
Stand up for your property rights!
Tell Congress to stand up for your property rights by signing a petition today. Visit http://fwact.org/id6pI0G.
For Freedom,
Adam Brandon
FreedomWorks
I don’t know’s on third
Philip Rucker and Robert Costa of the Washington Post report that Mitt Romney and other establishment Republicans are attempting to put together an “independent” Republican presidential campaign versus GOP nominee-apparent Donald Trump.
If the goal is partisan Republican victory this November, two Republican candidates on the same ballots means a Democratic win. So let’s assume that winning the election is not what this move is about.
If the goal is preserving the Republican Party’s “soul” -- its core ideology -- we’re also looking at a very bad idea here. Why? The Republican Party HAS no core ideology. These days it’s just an ad hoc coalition of interest groups and identity politics blocs like the Democratic Party. The GOP leadership’s problem with Trump is that he’s displacing them in their role as Pied Pipers.
The real purpose of an “independent Republican” campaign against Trump is to give anti-Trump members of the Republican coalition another Republican to vote for so that those voters don’t abandon the GOP for good.
After decades of Republican failure to deliver on the things Republicans supposedly stand for, they’d rather put up with four years of Hillary Clinton than face the music they themselves made.
The Republican establishment created Donald Trump. A fake third party campaign won’t save the GOP.
Thomas L. Knapp
William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism
