Thanks to all Carefree citizens
As of July 31, 2012 I have found it necessary to resign from the Carefree Town Council. While my reasons for this action will remain private for now, they involve personal health issues, among others.
It was my distinct pleasure to have been the first ever council member elected as a write-in candidate. My heartfelt appreciation to the great citizens of Carefree who made that happen.
My goal was always to represent and fight for ALL of our citizens and ALL of our business units. I feel that over the past 13 months I have done that and I know that occasionally it made a difference.
Every day for over 15 months I have worn a button that says “I Love Carefree.” I still do, and as a private Carefree citizen, I shall continue to look for ways to add value to our town.
A special THANK YOU to the fine folks in Carefree who supported me.
Jim Van Allen
Former Carefree Councilman
Misery Index
If you're old enough to remember back to the Carter Administration you may recall when someone created the "Misery Index." It was the unemployment rate and the inflation rate added together.
I wish someone would create a new "Obama Index" adding together the unemployment rate and the disability rate. I've gone online attempting to find the historical monthly disability rate (the percentage of Americans on disability) but have been unable to find it.
I think it would be a very telling new index.
"Hope and Change"?
Obama "Hoped" America wouldn't notice he was a fraud and incompetent.
Now it's time to dump the hump and "Change" to someone with actual common sense and experience along with American ideals and values.
Tom Carbone
Phoenix
Editor note: According to “The Daily” in the article “Disability rolls swell”:
Number of Americans on assistance jumps 53 percent in a decade” by Mara Gay posted Saturday, April 21, 2012:
The number of Americans on disability has reached a record 10.8 million people, according to newly released data from the Social Security Administration.
The huge figure is up 53 percent from a decade ago, as more and more Americans have applied for government benefits during a prolonged recession.
More than 5 million Americans have applied for disability benefits since President Obama took office, although the number of Americans on disability has risen steadily for more than a decade.
Obama’s speech to America’s Olympians
If President Obama addressed America’s Olympian athletes it might sound something like this:
“I’m always struck by athletes who won gold medals who think, well, it must be because I was just so skilled. There are a lot of skilled people out there. It must be because I trained harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something – there are a whole bunch of people out there who trained hard.
“If you won a gold medal, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great coach somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create the swimming pools and public parks in which you trained. Somebody invested in the Olympic stadiums in London. If you’ve got a medal – you didn’t win that. Somebody else made that happen. It is not fair that you have so many medals. I am issuing an executive order that you must send half of your medals to me so I can redistribute them among others who have no medals.”
Jack C. McVickers
Scottsdale
Scottsdale Mayoral candidate
Scottsdale is unique in location, weather, terrain and sense of place. Only the sense of place is subject to man's influence. The sense of what we are is not something contrived in the past 20 years. It is the result of many people's recognition of and honoring this uniqueness over the past 100 years.
Visitors from all over the world have shown their love of this place by returning year after year, often moving here or acquiring winter residences. Until recently most developers realized the value of their projects was influenced by what has made Scottsdale great and that they had a responsibility to strengthen what was here when they arrived – projects like Villa Monterrey, McCormick Ranch, Gainey Ranch, Greyhawk, DC Ranch, Troon, Desert Highlands and many more.
Citizens' perceptions of Scottsdale drove infrastructure improvements such as the Indian Bend Wash, the Preserve, trails throughout the city and the creation of the world-famous horse and car shows and arts district. All of these were consistent with what Scottsdale was.
The perceptions and corresponding goals that made us great are being replaced by different perceptions and goals that do not value the sense of place that made Scottsdale unique. This is not about not changing. Scottsdale has been in a constant state of change since it was founded.
Those changes were consistent with what the town was. The changes being made now, by special-interest groups and some of our city government, are inconsistent with what we are. Until the goals which made us unique are made primary again, we will continue to slide toward Anywhere, USA.
The first requirement of getting back on track is to elect leaders who can bring us back on course, whose background, accomplishments and integrity have proven their ability to get things changed. Mayoral candidate DREW BERNHARDT is that man.
Sam J. West
Scottsdale Conservative Coalition
Wil Cardon is my choice for U.S. Senator
I believe Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl made a mistake when they bowed to the Republican establishment, and endorsed Congressman Jeff Flake for the U.S. Senate.
I know, because I used to be Jeff Flake’s boss when he worked at the Goldwater Institute.
Jeff is a good man, but as a professional politician he's been marginalized in Washington for the past 12 years. He's done little for Arizona. He has done nothing to secure our porous border, and supports a broader United States Cuban policy. He pushed for amnesty for illegal immigrants, and he tried to create a new energy tax. Ultimately, the only people Jeff helped are the Washington lobbyists funding his campaign.
By contrast, I'm supporting Wil Cardon. Wil's had success in business in Arizona, and he knows how to create jobs. He understands how government regulations strangle business, hinders economic growth. He knows that more government is not the answer. Being a Washington outsider Wil won't be a part of the game of "politics as usual."
Jeff Flake is a friend. But Wil Cardon is my choice for U.S. Senator.
Tracy Thomas
Former Goldwater Institute Chairman
Paradise Valley
Fast & Foolish
Why is ATF Special Agent in Charge (Tampa field office) Virginia O'Brien's head not being served up on a plate; for that matter why not Eric Holders. It was his department of the U.S. government and her program that brought us the insanity of "Fast and Furious." This ill conceived plan to track gun traffic into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels brought us the death of two U.S. law enforcement officers, hundreds of Mexican citizens and a flood of lethal weapons received by smugglers, thugs and murders.
It is quite nearly inconceivable that agents of the United States government would willingly traffic in hundreds of weapons, inserting them into another sovereign nation and allow them to fall into the hands of known criminals. But this is Barrack Obama's America where any excuse to mount an effort to overturn the Second Amendment is justifiable.
Now a madman's massacre of movie-going innocents in Aurora, Colorado will again give rise to the anti-gun crowd of shrill, screeching freedom haters. Ignoring every evidence proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that a well armed society is a safer society. The renewed cries for stripping us of our rights will be joyously embraced by the President and his gun trafficking Attorney General Eric Holder. Giving lip service to public safety in advocating stricter gun control, what they truly seek is confiscation and an unarmed, controllable population.
Their monochrome mantra on gun control may backfire on them this time as the public witnesses that no inanimate object may harm without a James Holmes to assist. In the aftermath of the evil in Aurora, Columbine and Tucson weapon sales spiked as Americans armed themselves against what the police and laws cannot always prevent. All the while liberals rush boldly forward demanding that the constitution be scrapped. A move that is fast, but foolish as America is no longer listening.
Randy Edwards
Cave Creek
Don, I couldn’t agree more
I read your piece on Steve Nash leaving town and I couldn't agree more. When he and Sarver fought SB1070 a couple years ago and pushed the Los Suns uniforms on us, I quit whatever small allegiance I ever had for the Suns which was minimal at best. After Colangelo, Majerle, Tom Chambers, etc. left that was basically it for me.
Nash is another "do gooder" liberal who is basically washed up anyway and I will certainly not miss those boring APS commercials he did.
I think he is going Hollywood already. Suddenly his latest photo has the "rug" look on his head. What do you think?
Jim McAllister
Email
Economics and Commerce 101
I don’t understand how Obama and his fellow liberal Democrats can be so ignorant in the way a Capitalist America works. He and his followers believe that government institutions just suddenly start up with a newfound “pot” full of money. Then that government builds infrastructure and provides services so that the people can exist and prosper. I guess that point of view is explained by the fact that most Democrats are not business people but rather lawyers, community organizers and movie stars.
The reality is the total reverse of what they believe. Every government entity, whether it is a city, county, state or federal, begins with individual entrepreneurship; starting a business, a farm or a factory. Through hard work and employing others, these individuals produce wealth through the sale or barter of products or services, creating a profit.
At some point these individuals decide their community needs a governing body so they create a representative group via volunteers and/or an election. This group then can suggest the building of an infrastructure (a school or library), and services (a sheriff), improved roads and so on. So how is it paid for? There is no pot full of money, as Obama would suggest. Very simply the individuals in the community vote to agree to fund the above by taxing themselves on their profits (income tax) and the assets they have built (property taxes).
A government does not produce wealth. People produce wealth, which funds a system to govern. A government, which borrows until it cannot repay its debt, or taxes until it kills all incentives, will go bankrupt. America through its current leadership is on that path.
Bill Cromett
Scottsdale
Goodbye Steve McNash
I loved Don's July 18 editorial and Bil Canfield's biting cartoon. What a great idea to stratocruiser out to Canada: McCain, McKyl, McFlake, McNash, and McIllegals. Now if we could only do the same to Glenn McHamer and the Arizona McChamber of Commerce.
The cheap illegal labor PAC is flexing its muscle once again with McHamer's 2012 warning shot over the heads of Arizona Legislators in the Arizona Repugnant: "It is a complete waste of time to work on further immigration legislation on the state level."
Unless Arizona voters want the chamber in control of votes in our state Senate, they will remove those senators who gave them that control in March 2011: Nancy Barto, Rich Crandall, Adam Driggs, John McComish, John Nelson, Michele Reagan, Steve Pierce, Steve Yarbrough.
Der Chamber has issued their orders. Now the voters must answer in the August primary.
Greg Farley
Phoenix
Greetings Don
Very good editorial! Don’t mess around, call it what it really is.
We didn’t have a lot of choice as to who to vote for. Obama was certainly a no-brainer but then all that was left was McCain. Sad!
I’m on Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s side regarding the birth certificate. Anyone who looks at what has been published after Trump put the pressure on should recognize it is a fake. Obama had three years to fabricate one. The trouble is Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become so controversial his finding will be judged as being fabricated to get back at Obama and as such discounted. A reasonable person would certainly conclude Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s findings have merit. You go Sheriff Arpaio!!
I am a believer in your newspaper and your political beliefs as you are not afraid to be honest and to the point and not try to be “politically correct.” I often forward your articles to a retired old-timer friend of mine in Florida who I know has an extensive Email list that he shares them with. We have to do all we can to make Obama a one term president before he is allowed to do any more damage. What people don’t realize is if they think he is bad now in his first term when he has been on his best behavior in order to get re-elected – should he be re-elected he will have no incentive anymore and it will be a no holds barred, in your face second term which would have a devastating effect on our country. I am going to be volunteering a lot at the county Republican headquarters and doing anything I can to get Wisconsin to be a red state. There is hope as our great Governor Scott Walker has shown.
Dave Thompson
Dodgeville, Wisconsin
Federal agencies have to go!
With all of the exposed excesses of various federal agencies like the GSA and EPA and GAO and others, it is obvious many agencies have grown out of control and are beyond fixing. These agencies duplicate, overlap and waste money and are unaccountable. No one ever loses their job for incompetence and malfeasance. There are deep-rooted people within these agencies that are lifers, with complete job security and they feel entitled. Many are political hacks who leak when it helps their cause and who cover up and stonewall FOIA requests. Obama's administration is slow-walking or stonewalling over 86,000 Freedom of Information Act requests.
Entire agencies have to be up-rooted and closed down and their power put back to the individual states to determine whether of not there is a need for the service at all. Then let states vote and pay for what they want. NO MORE FEDERAL TOP DOWN MANDATES. The U.S. Constitution does not require agencies like the EPA, FDA, Education, Justice, DOE, Fish & Wildlife, GSA, Interior, HUD, TSA, HHS, et al.
Congress kept on usurping more and more power over states to get votes and to control the people and it went too far. Now the bureaucracy must be unwound and it will take defunding entire departments in order to get rid of the cancerous nature of these rogue agencies. We cannot nip and tuck around the edges as the necessary changes will never happen and it would get mired in legal battles and wrongful termination cases, and ultimately politics and status quo. It will take a brave leadership to make the cuts, but they are necessary and vital to our survival.
Name withheld by request
Cave Creek
New Age principles, delineated by Shirley (Beaty) MacLaine
I read three MacLaine New Age books as they were published in the late 1980s. To use the term New Age today makes me wonder where it has gone. It was big in the 1980s. I suspect many readers today think of hippies and drug use when they hear New Age. That public attitude says nothing about the validity of New Age thought and principles, however. They seemed right for me then. After reading the three books again recently, the ideas still ring true. I jotted down some of the core principles as I remembered them; I may have left out some or gotten some of these wrong.
I’d feel as comfortable mentioning these ideas in the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Phoenix as a lowly priest in the Vatican might argue them in front of the pope. Shortly after joining the congregation, I used the term New Age in an informal conversation over coffee after a worship service. A founder of the congregation, now deceased, said to me and to others at the table, “The New Age is a crock of merde.” (She used the English, not the French.) So much for the alleged openness to ideas of UU members.
1. There is no one God. Each human carries his or her own God within.
2. Each of us decides when and how we die.
3. Each of us has lived many (hundreds or thousands) of previous lives.
4. Each of us chooses a next life and our parents.
5. Our only limitations are what we think they are: Negative outlooks lead to negative results in life.
6. Each of us creates his own reality all the time, usually unaware of the process.
7. There are no accidents, no seeming coincidences.
8. Extraterrestrials have been helping Earthlings for most of history. Notice historical blooms of technology and living standards across history. (Machu Picchu, movable type, Renaissance Italy, for examples.)
So the New Age is now the Old Age, largely forgotten on a shelf somewhere, waiting for someone to pull out a book, read it, and comment, “Now that’s a new idea. I wonder if there’s anything to it? What else did she write?”
Jack Grenard
Carefree
