Carefree’s good neighbor policy
It was interesting to see Carefree Town Administrator Gary Neiss along with council members Melissa Price and John Crane having a working lunch in Cave Creek.
I guess with the number of restaurant closings in Carefree, one must lunch elsewhere.
Bob Coady
Carefree
Editor note: Name of restaurant withheld
Policy regarding Public Information Requests and fees
To Kandace French, Carefree Town Clerk/Treasurer
Thank you for the information. I was at the recent council meeting so I already knew a new policy would be drafted, but I am greatly surprised at the fees developed in concert with that policy. The Arizona Revised Statutes do provide a provision for municipalities to impose a reasonable fee for reproduction of public documents, although the intent may have been to cover commercial requests. In any event, the word ‘reasonable’ is an important legal concept.
Market conditions suggest that 50¢ per B&W standard page copy (8 ½ x 11 - 8 x 10 suggests a photo) is more punitive than reasonable. Even local for-profit providers charge far less per page. Black and white copies at the Carefree UPS store are 12¢ (8 ½ x 11), 15¢ (8 ½ x 14), and 17¢ (newspaper size 14 x 17). It defies imagination why Carefree has imposed such an exorbitant fee.
My monthly request for a copy of the one page State Sales Tax Report and the one page copy of Jim Keen’s Town Sales Tax Report will be replaced by a request for electronic versions; I’ll get the council packet online assuming it is complete.
Whether or not electronic copies can be requested does not diminish the seemingly punitive nature of the new charges, especially considering the prior price structure in Carefree (the first 5 pages free, all other pages 5¢ each and never a charge for council packets). I assume you reviewed the old pricing structure before developing this new one and obtained approval to proceed. Hopefully there is ample justification for such a dramatic increase, an increase in excess of 10 times the prior fee(s).
The COINS email of January 8 did note the council action but did not detail the specifics, since, presumably, the procedure and fee structure had not yet been developed. In the interest of transparency and full disclosure, the next COINS email should outline the procedure and fee structure.
Thanks again for your note.
P.S. In future correspondence, please refrain from including other residents in your communication to me. Thank you.
John Traynor
Carefree
Spouting off
Don’t buy back government buildings
When times were tough in Arizona our legislators raised some money by selling government buildings and then leasing them back. Now that the times are better many legislators would like to buy them back. I think this is a bad idea because, once they are owned by the government, it is very difficult to determine how much they are actually costing the state. If we keep them as leased properties, then the true cost is revealed in the lease payments.
Private Certification of Occupations
Most people now realize that government licensing of occupations is not usually enacted to protect the public but rather its real purpose is to protect the regulated professions from competition so they can keep their prices up. Why not test this theory by enacting a parallel system of private certification? Then the members of the public who believe government licensing protects them, could use only the government licensed vendors. But, members of the public who just want information about the vendors, could then make their own judgments about who to use.
Arizona Representative Warren Petersen has introduced just such a bill. It deserves consideration.
End Human Trafficking: Legalize Prostitution
Governor Brewer has placed this issue front and center but I wonder if her special commission has the answer? How many terrible tragedies of human trafficking will we have to witness in the news before we realize that men have been paying for sex for hundreds of years and this cannot be stopped by legislation. However, we can protect the most vulnerable victims by removing the huge monetary incentive that pimps and traffickers have to recruit the girls.
Did we learn nothing from alcohol prohibition? After several years we finally realized that people will find alcohol. All prohibition did was create criminals and terrible human tragedy. Unless we want to live in an authoritarian police state, we should decriminalize consensual activities of all types. Only then can we find the real victims, offer them treatment, and protect them.
Roy Miller
Phoenix
EV Partnership Chief describes his Eden … (Mesa Republic Community News)
Nature’s Eden is at stake
“We’ve got to have a game plan,” Roc Arnet Partnership President is noted as saying. “Another sweeping expansion is on his and the partners’ agenda.” More Sonoran Desert destruction, I presume, Mr. President? Oh! Brother here we go again! Who’s going to take care of the voiceless, CEO-less, partner-less, desert land and the native species, flora and fauna (native medical remedies), and our diminishing water table?
There is no place on Earth like the land that encases the Phoenix Metro area. Who will step from the cronyism, partisanship and say ‘can our desert sustain this battering it’s about to undergo’? The developer’s Eden is much different than Nature’s Eden (wilderness, desert).
The developers’ Eden is man-made, shopping malls, housing developments and industry. The Earth’s Eden is created by nature’s way, unhampered, unpopulated and unruffled by man. The developers’ Eden is once again as Edward Abbey noted in his book, Desert Solitaire: “There are some who frankly and boldly advocate the eradication of the last remnants of Wilderness and complete subjection of Nature to the requirements of not-man, but, industry.”
Nature’s Eden is self-sufficient and will be a psychiatric refuge for homo-sapiens to venture into to keep their sanity intact from the madness of the developers’ and expansion urban advocates’ Eden.
Abbey is also noted for saying, “So much by way of futile digression, the pattern is fixed and protest alone will not halt the iron glacier moving upon us.”
We all have family relying on the economy to produce, currency to sustain a reasonable living but, in the same breath, the population and expansion explosion in this area is depleting the desert resources until unable to sustain life here. This is not me talking but, the facts and the facts as we know hurt…consider that partnership.
“We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the Earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.” Wallace Stegner
Lyle Anderson
Apache Junction
Ice cream guy can throw whoopie pies
A former owner of an ice cream company is waging a campaign questioning the necessity of the Pentagon’s large scale weapons systems, including the F-35 fighter bomber which has been plagued with problems to be resolved.
We have a need for the development and implementation of strategic weapons systems to counter the systems of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Our large scale weapons systems have kept potential adversaries at bay since World War II, and will continue to perform this vital function. The previously mentioned countries have extensive strategic weapons systems and continue to improve them and develop new, more lethal weapons.
I agree with the ice cream guy that we have to assign resources to address the threat of terrorism. In particular, Islamic terrorism is a major threat to world peace as evidenced by the attacks in this country, Europe, Russia and the Middle East.
If the former ice cream guy can guarantee the strategic weapons systems of potential adversaries will melt away, maybe we can convert some of our military manufacturing facilities to the production of ice cream whoopie pies he can use as ammunition against our enemies.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, New Hampshire
Knife Rights' Knife Owners' Protection Act introduced in U.S. Senate!
Protects travelers from a patchwork of conflicting state knife laws.
Senators Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Mike Lee (R-UT) have introduced a complimentary Senate version of Knife Rights' Knife Owners' Protection Act, S.1955 (KOPA), This follows the introduction of Knife Rights' KOPA bill in the House last November. The Senate bill is based on the House bill as conceived and developed by Knife Rights, although it is formatted according to Senate rules. Knife Rights worked diligently with the Senate sponsors to ensure the Senate bill was fully aligned with the original House KOPA bill.
Knife Rights Chairman Doug Ritter explained, "having KOPA bills in both houses of Congress was a key Knife Rights strategy from the start, increasing the chances for legislative success. Accomplishing this without substantive differences between the two bills further enhances the likelihood that the law eventually enacted will accomplish fully our goal of protecting America's knife owners." The text of S.1955 should become available online next week.
The result of three years of effort, Knife Rights conceived, drafted and developed the Knife Owners' Protection Act as the first proactive pro-knife federal legislation introduced in the nation's history.
Ritter concluded, "This legislation will solve a real and growing problem that faces every knife owner traveling throughout America–the threat of arrest and prosecution under misguided local laws merely for possessing knives during lawful travel." KOPA will protect law-abiding knife owners traveling throughout the U.S. from a patchwork of restrictive state and local laws. As long as possession of the particular knife is legal where the journey starts and ends, and provided the knife is secured in accordance with KOPA, a knife owner would no longer be threatened with arrest simply for traveling from one place to another.
Getting these bills introduced is only the first step. We need your help to gain additional co-sponsors. If your Senator is not already a co-sponsor, PLEASE CALL OR EMAIL YOUR SENATOR TODAY and urge them to co-sponsor this commonsense legislation. You can find your Senator at http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm.
Or, you can use the Open Congress website: http://www.opencongress.org/bill/hr3478-113.
Here's a model email that you can use. We strongly suggest you keep it simple and to the point:
I support S.1955, the Knife Owners' Protection Act. I urge you to become a co-sponsor of this commonsense legislation that will protect my rights and the rights of all knife owners to travel throughout the U.S. without fear of prosecution under the myriad of state and local knife laws.
Knife Rights continues to lead the way with aggressive proactive legislative action to defend and protect knife owners' rights. KOPA is just another example of our groundbreaking efforts to create a Sharper Future for all Americans.
A FAQ on KOPA with additional details and background can be found at: http://bit.ly/1arZIa0
Doug Ritter
Chairman / Executive Director
Knife Rights, Inc.
Knife Rights Foundation, Inc.
www.KnifeRights.org
Dear Patriot
I’m tired of hearing about how members of the Tea Party movement should just “fall in line” and blindly support every “Republican” candidate for public office.
I’m tired of the ridiculous claims coming from the so-called professional political consultants that Tea Party candidates can’t win and have cost the GOP control over the Senate.
Here are the facts.
First, the Tea Party movement wasn’t created by millions and millions of ordinary Americans in order to help the Republican Party. It was formed at the grassroots by taxpayers who were fed up with the failures of politicians in BOTH political parties. We took matters into our own hands to fight against big government because no one else would! Our loyalty is to the Constitution and future generations of Americans, not sleazy party bosses in Washington.
Second, Tea Party candidates have been very successful, while “sure thing” establishment candidates have proved to be losers. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and many members of the House have helped resuscitate the Republican Party. Meanwhile, in 2012 alone, “moderate” GOP senate candidates in New Mexico, Montana, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Dakota and Virginia all lost.
Those incompetent pro-big government candidates cost the Republicans control over the Senate. Not people like you and me!
That’s why I believe it is so important for our movement to support candidates who will do the right thing and help save America rather than simply give up and take whatever the Republican Party gives us.
The stakes are too high and the track record of the Republican Party establishment is so bad that we simply can’t fold our Gadsden flags and fall in line behind incompetents like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell.
Every American deserves a choice. Every taxpayer deserves to be able to evaluate and fire or rehire their elected officials.
No politician automatically deserves a free pass in an election. Yet that is exactly what the Republican establishment wants.
They want us to give Republicans who support higher taxes and more spending a free pass.
They want our votes. They want us to put our lives on hold and volunteer for their candidates simply because they have an “R” behind their names!
We tried that strategy in the past. It failed. The last time the Republicans were in control of everything, they spent like drunken sailors and blew up our free market system with bailouts.
Never again.
The Tea Party movement was never intended to simply serve as an echo for GOP party bosses.
We are fighting to save the country and if that means that some “Republican” candidates who don’t share our commitment to cutting government and promoting liberty have to be defeated in primaries, so be it.
Competition is good. It’s the American way. And supporting more competition in politics is exactly why we created the Tea Party Patriots Citizen Fund PAC.
Please help us do just that in 2014. Make the most generous contribution you can today.
Sincerely,
Jenny Beth Martin
Tea Party Founder and National Coordinator
When will Hillary Clinton comment about the treatment of women in Islam?
I just heard Hillary Clinton talk about "the clock turning back for women." Why? Because some don't want to pay about 10 dollars a month for other people’s birth control pills and some religious organizations don't want to sanction having viable babies ripped apart in a late term abortion procedure!
Will Hillary have the courage to talk about how radical Muslims treat their women both abroad and here in the good old USA? No that is turning back the clock. I think not! If Hillary had any self respect she would have talked about how Obama cheated her out of the Democratic presidential nomination by saying that she was for mandatory health insurance and he (Obama) wasn't! But then again I have yet heard anyone in the media or even Republicans state this fact. The biggest question is why?
Sincerely,
Joseph DuPont
Towanda, Pennsylvania
Editor note: Various writers have questioned the lie about mandatory health insurance with respect to clenching the Democratic nomination.
