‘Sure we stink, but at least we're expensive!’
After having silently watched the shenanigans of the CCUSD pro-override folks for some time, I am finally forced to put quill to parchment. Setting aside for the moment, and I know it's a lot to ask, the absolute futility of a protest after the vote, it is beyond idiotic to protest words written in a newspaper that you claim to have never read, as the young lady in question seems to have done.
There is a parallel to be drawn with the current state of government. Both sides of the aisle, despicable career politicians all, spend most of their time agitating us "proles" so that we fight each other, while they congregate at D.C. cocktail parties and mock us. We should be united against them, as they are wastrels one and all.
And so it goes with CCUSD. A student with critical thinking ability would first ask why their education is so poor, despite spending $9,700 per pupil. Ask why charter schools are able to garner better results with thousands less. The motto of CCUSD seems to be "Sure we stink, but at least we're expensive!"
The citizens have lost their faith in the school district for many good reasons over the last few years, so it was always going to be a tough row to hoe. Now, we are in a recession; everybody needs to tighten their belts. Perhaps that young lady's parents should have explained it to her. She should also realize CCUSD is riling up the students to divert attention from the real problem – their ineptitude. More money to them simply means additional ways to lard up the bureaucracy and administration. Almost a year ago, I wrote in this very paper, in response to a Linda Bentley article, how the district now had one administrator per 12 students. An increase of 950 percent in seven years! I received a condescending letter from some mucky-muck who offered to "explain" it to me. I declined. The problem is that I, and the rest of the electorate, understand only too well what is happening. Lard up with administration in the good times, then threaten to fire teachers (the poor children’s) in bad times, as it is the most politically incorrect thing to do.
The most disappointing aspect is this: Having used, and abused, and gamed the legally specified process for an override and lost, what do they do? Accept defeat gracefully? No! Their next step is to cajole, and use threats of boycotts in order to get their way. How they think this will persuade us to back them in the future after these temper tantrum tactics beggars belief.
They claim to educate our children, yet they are nothing but spoiled brats themselves.
Gary Kiernan | Cave Creek
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No health care reform for Congress
It is amazing so many voters do not understand what our Congress and President Obama are planning for us voters that elected them. They want to give us another massive bureaucracy to administer our health care. What most voters do not understand is that the so-called health care reform does not apply to Congress or to our President. They have their own health plan that is very lavish and although we voters cannot be part of it, we must pay for it.
During an ABC-TV special on health care, Obama was asked, “Will you and your family give up your current health care program and join the new program that the rest of us will be on?” Obama ignored the question and refused to answer it. Some Senators were asked the same question and they said, “We will think about it.” And they did. They said Congress will be 100 percent exempt.
So, the new plan is good for us voters, but not good enough for the Obama family and Congress. What fools we must be to have our elected servants have a much better plan than the voters who hired them.
Michael J. Odorizzi | Canyon Country, California
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Schwan’s naughty Christmas list
• Humiliated a town employee by firing her at a public meeting
• Actively campaigned against a direct election of the mayor by citizens
• Endorsed 4-year terms for council that were rejected by citizens
• Supported changing town code violations to criminal charges
• Voted against a longer time frame for mailing election ballots to citizens
• Condoned illegal activity of a P&Z member
• Shows contempt for citizens by continuously suppressing citizen rights
• At a council meeting, he stated citizens are there to listen and observe, not participate
• Allows staff to use selective enforcement of town codes (anyone notice the size of the Kiwanis Flea Market sign?)
• Voted in favor of up zoning to accommodate the three storied Lewis Project
• Claims to be conservative, but voted to spend $330,000 for faux gaslights, town signs and turn lanes
• Covered up possible bidding violations
• Refused to participate with Cave Creek in the joint community Treecycle Event
Ho, Ho, Ho, you’ve got to go!
Santa and all of the elves | Carefree
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I plan to continue supporting your advertisers!
I would like to personally thank the Sonoran News staff for providing truthful, accurate reporting on the issues relevant to our community.
In response to the recent boycott threats against your newspaper and its advertisers, I decided to contract one of your advertisers to work on an electrical problem in my home. A wiring problem had existed in my home since I purchased it nearly two years ago. I tried to fix it and made the problem ten times worse, so I called Robert Martino Electrical to see whether he could fix what I had messed up and he came through. Not only did he fix what I messed up, but he also corrected the error causing the electrical problems in the first place, all within an hour.
Other contractors might have torn up my walls and charged me for a full day's work, but I found Mr. Martino to be honest, dependable and kind.
Any future electrical work in my home will go to him, and I recommend him highly to any of your readers looking for electrical help. Thank you for posting his Bulletin Board ad. I plan to continue supporting your advertisers!
David Doederlein | Cave Creek
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One definition of insanity
No one has ever cited an example of a government that taxed, borrowed and spent its way to prosperity. Yet President Barack Obama continues to impose discredited economic theories and practices on an accelerated and gargantuan scale hoping to change the outcomes. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
More troubling is the president’s notion that government is the only solution to every problem. After Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin announced 314 public rebuilding projects. Over two and a half years later, just six were completed. Walmart on the other hand, had 110 of 126 damaged stores up and running within ten days. In the 1980s, NYC spent $12 million dollars and could not get the Wollman Skating Rink built in six years.
Donald Trump spent $2.25 million dollars of his own money and built it in six months.
In April of this year, an access road to Hawaii’s Kauai Island State Park was damaged due to flooding. The government estimated the repair to take two years at a cost of $4 million dollars. The business owners and residents completed the repair in eight days for free.
Our engine of prosperity has always been free men creating, producing and supplying our needs in a free market economy protected by the Constitution. The government produces nothing; it only redistributes what it has taken from those who do.
Ever wonder what will happen when the engine of prosperity stops and there’s nothing left to take?
Atlas will shrug.
Ed Konecnik | Flushing, New York
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Coverage Without Borders
By Roger Mahony, The New York Times, Dec. 8, 2009
Dear Editor of the New York Times:
The Catholic bishops do not speak for the majority of Catholics. We oppose the morality and basic justice of an open border system that gives precedence to those who come here illegally for economic reasons. Our laws and simple justice give priority to the fifteen million refugees each year who wish to come here legally to flee death, mutilation and persecution in their native countries. Each job, apartment and hospital bed filled by an illegal alien should, in all justice, be filled with a refugee.
Jack C. McVickers | Scottsdale
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Obama buys himself some Republicans
I knew President Obama’s domestic policies would head us in the wrong direction, that is, toward more socialism but, like some other libertarian Republicans; I had hopes in the area of foreign policy – basically that he would reverse the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld interventionism and draw down our troops from conflicts that have no justifiable mission.
But, with President Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan I fear we will not see any improvement in foreign policy.
I am sorry to be so cynical but I believe Obama bought himself some Republicans and that he will now call on those Republicans for support on his other issues.
Roy Miller | Phoenix
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A junta of drooling anarchists at the White House
This Christmas the American people are invited to a grandiose banquet. The party is hosted by a junta of drooling anarchists at the White House. The theme of the festivities is “Our Dreams for You are Coming True.”
At the head of the table is the windbag-in-chief who has a talent to cloud people’s minds. The slogan is “Get it All While We Can” (treating the country and Constitution as if it were a Katrina-flooded Walmart with the doors smashed in).
Seated at the head table are the tax-dodging cabinet appointees, Wall Street execs, big bank or insurance Bailout Babies (awaiting more bonuses), the unions running your car companies and domestic and international greenies licking their chops.
Most of the seats around the table are filled with people who don’t pay any income tax, but rather collect “refunds” – tax credits. That is just so cool!
In the background you can hear the Dixie Chicks tune “It Can’t Get any Better than This – Ooh, ooh, ooh!”
You, the ordinary people who work hard, pay taxes and save for retirement (pardon a little joke) – sorry there is no room for you at the table. However, you are represented. The dirty secret that all the others enjoy telling us is that “YOU are the main dish – the roasted turkey on the silver platter from which the looters plan to carve. All that will be left is a pile of your bones, picked clean by the drones.
Is our ride a hearse or an ambulance?
Only you will decide.
John P. Brebner | Carefree
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Democrats can and should prevail
In a rare fit of bipartisanship for the benefit of these United States of America, I recommend that all Democrat voters contact their senators and reps, demanding that they pass President Obama's sweeping healthcare reformation. Since they have a majority in both houses, victory is certain.
Shortly thereafter, the Dems will be recalled and their new programs dismantled.
Republicans will prevail for a few years, until they again become closet Democrats. In short order, frustrated Republican voters will again detect and reject the same false facade of phony principles.
It gets monotonous.
Joseph Pasulka | Southport, North Carolina
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The extremely conflicted Mike Ryan of the Arizona Republic
As informed citizens of this community, we have the expectation that our local newspaper hold themselves to the same standards they are demanding of others. As the Scottsdale Republic asks the Scottsdale Chamber to clean up their act; I offer an invitation for them to do the same and erase the inference of hypocrisy they are immersed in.
How bold of the Arizona Republic to ask for full disclosure from the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce as to who contributed and where the dollars came from to finance the public information piece regarding Scottsdale’s economic vitality. In actuality, they need look no further than within their own offices for the answers to their curious questions. There, conspicuously present they will find none other than the extremely conflicted Mike Ryan, vice president of the Arizona Republic's "Community Newspapers" division and general manager of The Scottsdale Republic and former member of the Scottsdale Chamber of Commerce’s Executive Committee. Mr. Ryan was obviously an Executive Committee member when the decision was made to launch the infamous campaign. Simple logic: Mr. Ryan knows all.
Regardless of whether or not the Scottsdale Chamber is guilty of a hair-splitting infraction in Arizona campaign law, somewhere in the shadows between the Scottsdale Republic and the Chamber is a former double agent, who up until his self-serving resignation from the Chamber’s Executive Committee, has always been a powerful force in manipulating and persuading all aspects of Scottsdale politics.
Mr. Ryan had no qualms about yielding the full force of the Scottsdale Republic to drive political ideology. Mr. Ryan has carefully managed the extraordinary position of working both sides of the street up until now. Perhaps when he resigned from the Chamber he should have considered resigning from the Arizona Republic as well.
Mr. Ryan must now carefully balance the tightrope of pressuring the Chamber (who he has already betrayed) to disclose on their own, while not offending his former fellow Executive Board members, advertisers and keep his job all at the same time. Unfortunately for Mr. Ryan, there are no more shadows to hide in. I offer him the best of luck with this challenging undertaking!
Bill Crawford | Scottsdale
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Letter to the United States Senate regarding government controlled healthcare
Fortunately, this nation is a republic, governed by our Constitution. How could any ethical, patriotic senator have the audacity to vote for a socialized healthcare program under the guise of "compassion" when senators are obligated to uphold the Constitution? Senators know or should know that under the Constitution their powers are limited and they have no authority to pass this bill.
Why would anyone in their right mind want government to control their healthcare? Most people know that socialized medicine has never promoted good healthcare in any nation. Why have the members of Congress excluded themselves and their families from this healthcare bill?
The majority of the people of this nation are satisfied with their healthcare. We do not want this bill passed with a few amendments, we do not want government to control healthcare – period.
It is impossible to believe Congress would create such a massive, costly overhaul of our healthcare system without alternative motives.
It is obvious that any form of socialism will give government more control over the lifestyle and income of the people of this nation. I ask you again, how could a senator with any amount of patriotism, respect, ethics or concern for the well-being of our republic or the people of this nation vote for such a costly, destructive and undeniably unconstitutional program?
Nancy Porche | Scottsdale
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