A rose by any other name ...
In the past week two items in the Scottsdale Republic, one an article and one a letter, have caused me to put pen to paper. Both concern the recent ballot initiative regarding fire coverage in Cave Creek.
First, we have Mayor Francia credited with the following quote, "I think it's important to remember that the voters didn't reject fire service, they rejected the property tax." With all due respect, how on Earth can one arrive at that conclusion after such an overwhelming turnout and there only being but one question on the ballot? Clearly, the Mayor is projecting his stated wish that we pay for service with a "fee," which is somehow not a tax. A rose by any other name ...
Secondly, we have a letter from one Ted Ferris, who apparently chaired the committee in support of the ballot. His response to having gone through the legal process to let the town decide is to throw all his toys out of his crib in a classic temper tantrum. He advocates that currently responsible citizens cancel their subscriptions in order to force Cave Creek Town Council to take on the responsibility he encourages us to shirk. Classic Cloward-Piven strategy. It's called personal responsibility. Embrace it.
Quite apart from the oft-mentioned reality of the situation, which is that many have chosen to self-insure, we also have the inconvenient situation that Rural/Metro actually derives the majority of its income via the rather more mundane, but nevertheless important, business of ambulance driving. They are not going anywhere, anytime soon. Rather like Mr. Ferris' argument.
Gary Kiernan
Cave Creek
So unfair
Now that the fire tax did not get voted in, we can go back to the dark ages of fifty years ago. When I moved to Cave Creek then, the saying was that if a house or other structure caught on fire just go out and kick in all the windows and open the doors so the fire would get over with faster. It took way too long for the Phoenix fire Department to get clear out here. Also I nearly died trying to get to the hospital when I was only 30 years old. I was having my first massive asthma attack and quit breathing at Carefree. My husband kept beating me on the chest to keep me breathing while driving 90 miles an hour in open range country down Scottsdale Road. I was told all of this later after being worked on at an emergency room at Scottsdale South (or as it was called then Scottsdale Baptist Hospital).
We finally got Rural/Metro after quite a while, for which I am grateful. They were a great help when my late husband died.
At any rate, I do ramble on, but am disappointed that a few of us have to pay to keep the fire and emergency service out here for the entire community. It is so unfair.
Beverly Metcalfe Brooks
Note: It is apparent Ms. Brooks does not read Sonoran News or she would understand how and why the Rural/Metro subscription financial model has worked since 1965. And who ever said life would be fair?
John Boehner is stalling Fast and Furious contempt citation of Eric Holder
The story goes that Boehner, Congressman Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy have teamed up to delay the vote in Congress.
At a time when the Justice Department is taking Sheriff Joe to federal court for alleged misdeeds, Republicans should be standing up to the Eric Holder clone federal prosecutors.
NOT LYING DOWN.
The Justice Department is demanding a court appointed monitor for the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Joe said, “I’m not going to surrender my office to the federal government.”
If Sheriff Joe caved in, and his office is handed over to the federal “monitors,” elected sheriffs in American will be forced to bow down to federal puppeteers. Local law enforcement GONE.
Once again, we must show our solid support of Sheriff Joe.
Where are the other 14 county sheriffs in Arizona? Scared? The silence is deafening.
Where do candidates for sheriff stand? Will they all eventually back down when it comes their turn?
Sonni Hunt
Payson
Our Opinion: The fix is in – by the GOP?
Why would Arizona Senator John McCain, once again step in for President Barack Obama II during the recent Secretary of State, Ken Bennett/Obama ballot challenge?
May 19, 2012:
“The president of the United States is not going to be taken off the ballot,” McCain told Phoenix television station KPNX.
Is McCain the one responsible for the pressure on Ken Bennett to ignore everything except an email, yet to be disclosed, from Hawaii?
It is our opinion that John McCain has been a long time Barack Obama supporter. As evidenced by his most recent remarks in the press and his tricky maneuver back in April 30, 2008, when John McCain was running for President for the GOP. It was Senate Resolution 511, co-sponsored by Sen. Hilary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama.
On the surface the intent of SR-511 was to determine whether Sen. John McCain was a natural born citizen. The real agenda, in our opinion, was to make the determination that Senator Barack Obama was eligible to be President of the United States.
Refer to April 30, 2008, The Congressional Record – Senate, pages S3645 -S3646 and you will read the evidence of McCain's support for Obama.
The 2008 McCain Campaign was involved with two constitutional heavyweight lawyers. In a letter signed by Theodore B. Olson and Obama's Harvard law professor, former employer and Obama campaign supporter, Laurence Tribe, they wrote an interesting letter of support for the opinion that Sen. John McCain was a natural born Citizen under Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution.
In that letter, signed by Olson and Tribe, they also stated on page S3646 that:
"And Senator Barack Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961 – not long after its admission to the Union on August 21, 1959. We find it inconceivable that Senator Obama would have been ineligible for the Presidency had he been born two years earlier."
This is an interesting way of saying "because Obama was born in the State of Hawaii, he is eligible for the Presidency."
It appears that the GOP's Presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, has been in Obama's back pocket since at least 2008. Once again, in 2012, the GOP's John McCain is still supporting Barack Obama.
Want to see Senator McCain's knees buckle? Ask him about his part in Senate Resolution 511 (SR-511).
Whose side is the GOP on?
Brian and Denise Reilly
Arizona citizens
Thank you “NO TAX PAC”
Thank you for saving the good citizens of Cave Creek from a monstrous plan to tax our homes and businesses with an unjustified and expensive penalty for the sole purpose of revenue generation. Special thanks go out to Vice Mayor Ernie Bunch and ex-councilman Adam Trenk for spearheading the campaign as well as all of the volunteers who contributed their time and energies to defeat this property tax proposal. We now know who the true fiscal conservatives are in this town and those who are the tax and spend members on this current council. It will be well worth remembering, come election time, which of these candidates will represent YOUR interests and not some special interest group. Job well done.
John Vannucci
Cave Creek
Sustainability is:
(a) Repeal of the second law of thermodynamics.
(b) A total scam.
(c) A way to gorge on funding.
So-called sustainability is impossible, as far as we understand the laws of physics and the universe.
Everything is consumptive.
Nothing is sustainable.
Sustainability would require perpetual motion (impossible), zero losses in a closed system (impossible), frictionlessness (impossible), zero waste products (impossible) and a willingness to accept the impossible (highly possible).
It is a la-la-land utopian dream of the you-know-whos. It's a catch phrase for conniving money from the unsuspecting. It's become a pro-forma standard in applications for government funding, university funding, legislative boondoggles, and it's a total lie.
With the possible exception of our part-time sun (always takes nights off), which won't be consumed for several billion years (so it seems to be "renewable" and is indeed a valuable asset) and wind (with huge upfront amortizable costs and waste, and perpetual maintenance just like falsely labeled "free" solar) every sustainability scheme is an affront to rationale.
Somewhere, behind the glitzy glittering gilding of glorified unsustainable dreams is an ugly underbelly of energy use, physical waste products and funding under false pretenses.
Yes, we can reduce, reuse and recycle, and sometimes that's OK as a personal choice (as opposed to freedom-squelching government-mandated requirements). But it typically comes with a reduction in the quality of life (wash your trash!), and all too often represents a net increase in resource use. Just ask yourself – why is recycled paper, from trash collection and a factory, so much more expensive than fresh paper from trees – which are a "renewable" crop?
In other news, it was revealed that although communist China, designated a "poor, developing" nation, receives special allowances for carbon-dioxide emissions, since it is a poor, developing nation, it is the world's largest polluter.
Alan Korwin
Page 9
HB 2625
Religious freedom is the issue – not reducing access to birth control! Everyone knows they can get free birth control at Planned Parenthood right now. Religious freedom is secured by the 1st Amendment stating “the government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” NOT visa versa! No government has the right to force its citizens to go against their conscience to pay for another’s morning after abortion pill. HB 2625 takes away no woman’s access to the morning after abortion pill. What it does do is to secure my right to not have to pay for another woman’s use of it! I am a woman. I am an employer. I am a woman of religious conscience and I want my right to be protected by HB 2625.
Kathie Trojanowski
Scottsdale
Government control of all things necessary for human life
Recently President Obama issued and signed Executive Order #13575 to put all of American’s rural lands under total government control.
Under this Order, a White House Rural Council of 25 unelected Cabinet Secretaries will control “food, fiber, and energy” – all of the things necessary for human life. Two groups are excluded from the Council: farmers, who are experts on farming, plus the property owners affected by the policy.
Farmers, under this order, will not be allowed to grow food without the approval of a federal bureaucrat. There will be no private property rights.
The purpose of the Rural Council is to enforce part of the UN’s Agenda 21, Sustainable Development, which has been assaulting Americans, replacing citizens with unelected bureaucrats.
Executive Order #13575 surrenders American freedom to UN globalists, from whom it originated. Although the Order is directed at rural areas, it states that the Council will also have control over urban areas.
An expert on the UN’s Agenda 21, from which this control is derived, says what this means to us is “higher energy and food prices, control of water usage, destruction of private property, control of families, a top-down managed economy over every inch of land, [over] every business activity, [over] the curriculum in every school, and [over] the information that can be conveyed [on] the public airways.” Once Executive Order #13575 gets implemented, people won’t have a say.
The government control of farmers and farming may destroy agriculture. One wonders if that’s its ultimate goal.
You may be wondering why you haven’t heard about the UN’s Agenda 21 that Executive Order #13575 implements. One reason is that the complicit mainstream media are working to prevent Americans from knowing what’s happening as our country is being undermined.
A second reason is that President Obama did not present the Agenda 21 policy to Congress for debate and vote, but instead bypassed Congress and tried to sneak it into law quietly by Executive Order.
Contact your congressman in the House of Representatives and demand that this government tyranny be stopped immediately.
Stay alert for other attacks on The Constitution and our freedoms.
Arden Druce
Camp Verde
Your chance to influence Federal Legislation
It’s election year and the perfect time to talk to candidates about critical rural issues. An elected official is most likely to make a commitment to you when seeking your vote. So seize the opportunity. Commitments are harder to get after the election.
There are a few simple steps you can take. None requires detailed policy knowledge or expertise.
First, tell them who you are – a voter in their district and current or potential constituent. That gives you credibility. If you are an elected official, farmer, community developer, community volunteer or small business person – tell them that too.
Ask for a commitment. If you want Congress to cap payments to mega farms and invest in rural development, conservation and beginning farmer programs, first tell them what you want. But don’t stop there. Ask them, “Will you promise to support funding for rural development?” or whatever else you request.
Finally, establish a personal relationship and follow-up. Stay after the formal meeting to shake the candidate’s hand, thank him/her for coming and provide your business card or your name and address scribbled on a scrap of paper. Ask who on their staff you should contact when the issue comes up in the future. When it does, get back to that person and, if you got a commitment, tell them.
You can make a difference. It takes a little effort, but you can do it. Campaign season is the best time to extract a commitment from an elected official to support good legislation.
Chuck Hassebrook
Center for Rural Affairs?
English, please!
I wish politicians, political mavens and talk-show hosts would stop referring to "liberty and freedom," as these are synonyms. So says the Department of Redundancies Department.
J-P. A. Maldonado
Phoenix
Enjoying life
The old, barely original, slogan, “Stop worrying and enjoy life,” seems to be the favorite message for our government. It could be translated into “Relax! Don’t you worry about the crisis, keep on spending, while I watch out for everything.” This is said rather than meant, for after looking at the growing unemployment statistics, relaxing is but a remote dream. In spite of everything, the unions’ choir also keeps repeating that there is nothing wrong, meaning “stop worrying and enjoy unemployment – if it ends you will get compensation.” Therefore, stay happy, even if jobs come to an end.
On the other hand, following this unique minister, enjoying life refers to the mere use of sex, far from the original gaudium (joy), which has a deeper content, and which is defined by the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy as “a sense of satisfaction at owning, remembering, or hoping for, desirable goods or things.”
Of course, it depends on which desirable goods or things you hope for. If one follows the line of the messages proclaimed today – hedonistic and pleasing the senses – those goods involve sheer material immediacy. Only the self and today matter; anything else does not concern me. To take a rather real situation: if what one hopes for is an outdoor booze session, with enough libation and amid an atmosphere of permissive buddying, and then whatever may come up – this does not seem to be called enjoying life, but rather a different thing, which might not be remembered later due to the hangover. But, just in case, there is the morning-after pill. But then, of course, breaking parental authority and guidance, this way of life, eroticized by an education tinged with ideology, throws joy into a pit called abortion. Here we have a government pervading people’s conscience, setting itself up as a guide and teacher for our teenagers.
In those mouths, the enjoy-life motto adds sarcasm when it refers to an unborn human being, since its chances to live on depend on the lottery of the parents who have begotten it, and on the harassment around women in favor of abortion, instead of offering help to the future mother all the way through delivery and for some time thereafter.
The first step involved manipulating language through plays on words to describe each stage of a human being, even though a human being is one and the same from conception till natural death, whenever it may occur. Once words have been manipulated, cutting a life short has become an insignificant gesture, which remains in people’s unconscious as something just as ordinary as taking a bus. The joy of life, for everyone, is living it with coherence, and facing the future.
Agustín Pérez
Independent Forum of Opinion
Birds of a feather
Now the Obama campaign is hitting Romney with Trump’s “birther” claims! This is great! If Obama's people can go after Romney's association with Trump over the "Birther" issue can the Republicans bring up all the bombers, communists, socialists and American hating black racists Obama has been associated with in the past? Is this a birds of a feather test? If so, Romney will win hands down!
Joseph DuPont
Towanda, Pennsylvania
