Pen-pricks
• North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un resumed his threats to annihilate America with a nuclear attack if the U.S. Navy shoots down his missiles. At home, I have a liter of Diet Coke and Mentos in my refrigerator. In other words, my nuclear weapons program is ten years ahead of North Korea’s.
• United Airlines acknowledged that a three-footlong Giant Continental Rabbit named Simon was found dead in the pet cargo hold after it landed at O’Hare Thursday after being flown from England to Chicago. It’s sad. Simon was survived by his wife and 347 children.
• The University of California at Berkeley leftists threatened to riot again when the campus conservatives demanded the right of free speech. It’s been this way for years. California college campuses are gorgeous places that are full of people just waiting to be offended by something.
Argus Hamilton is the host comedian at The Comedy Store in Hollywood and a speaker. His email address is argus@argushamilton.com.
After reading a recent article in the Yuma Sun, I am perpetually perplexed regarding the continued monetary pilfering of the state Highway User Revenue Fund. This is supposed to be tax revenue from fuel taxes and various other fees that in principle and statute are meant to be distributed to cities, counties and the state highway fund for the purpose of road construction, maintenance and repair.
Since the “Great Recession” in the last decade hundreds of millions of dollars have been “shifted” to other areas of the state budget, most notably the Arizona Department of Public Safety. I am the last one to argue that DPS should not be fully funded as it serves a vital role in keeping our state highways safe. The legislature must find a way to adequately fund DPS without depleting our highway funds.
My beef is that the legislature has become comfortable with raiding the HURF funds to equalize budgetary concerns at the expense of our state and local infrastructure. In my mind, these funds are sacrosanct in their collection and ultimate purpose for the intent to build, maintain and repair roadways among the various entities in our state that rely on this funding for their yearly projections of road projects and improvements. Without a reliable allocation of the revenue stream, local entities are subjected to fend for themselves, not only in the matter of funding, but future planning. This is contrary to the original intent of HURF and it is just plain wrong.
Anyone who drives the neighborhood streets and county roads in our community realizes that these commandeered funds are vital to the maintenance and repair of our roadways. Our local governmental entities have seen a significant reduction in state funding for a number of years and continue to stretch the “dollars” to wring the most out of their allocations from the legislature.
Our local infrastructure is vital not only to our daily commute, but the future needs and presentation to lure industry to our county to foster job creation. This is a fundamental element of a community on the move.
Guess once again we are forced to do more with less.
In the Sunday, April 23, paper, the guest column titled “Have you talked to your kids about Pot?” should read, “Kids make your parents aware of the dangers of Pot, as they have forgotten more about drugs than their parents know.”
During my time in Narcotic enforcement I had to go to schools, PTA meetings, clubs, churches, etc., and give them a talk on drugs and I found out one thing: The adult groups had no idea about what their kids were involved in when it came to drug use. Most had the idea that little Johnny and Suzy would never do such a thing! I will admit many wanted to learn but most likely business clubs just needed a speaker fill in. Mostly the attitude was “we do not have a problem with our kids!”
At schools I could sit and pick out the ones involved just by the attitude, the teacher usually would agree with me when I would point them out after the talk. The best audience by far was the lower grades in schools who wanted to know and learn the dangers with drugs, etc. I spoke with a principal that we needed to start teaching in the first grades with solid anti-drug programs, but as he said he could not sell it to the powers to be.
A good percentage of these youngsters as they advanced in school got involved with drugs of some sort due to a lot from peer pressure coming from those they were friendly with. The fact remains I do not recall any problems with young people of a certain religious group nor young people involved in FFA or clubs dealing with animals. Oh we might find some boys out behind a hay stack with a kegger but that was very seldom, but drugs no!
The remaining fact is adults today are very uninformed in many things such as anti-American groups, use of drugs by those who will be our future (our children) or any group that wants to keep God out of our lives, tearing down our country, etc. And those who want to put us under and get our young ones on drugs are so happy we are using the one deterrent that keeps them in business, SILENCE!