Pen-pricks
• USA Today reported that Americans spent $234 billion last year on alcoholic beverages. Booze gets the party going. Last night Vladimir Putin and the King of Saudi Arabia walked inside a bar and ordered a hit of Scotch, and ten minutes later Sean Connery was dead.
• Sen. Elizabeth Warren became a punch line when her DNA test came back 1/1024th Indian blood. And that wasn’t even North American Native Indian blood. My DNA came back English, Coors, coca, cannabis, Care Unit Cedars-Sinai, Betty Ford, followed by 32 years of Diet Cokes.
• President Trump vowed to cut off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua if they don’t turn back a caravan of refugees at El Salvador’s border wall before they get to the Mexico border wall en route to the U.S. border wall. Their national sport was once baseball. Now it’s the steeplechase.
• The Weather Channel forecast a cold autumn for the Middle West after a freak early snowstorm dumped snow down to Kansas. Another wave followed. A cold front swept into North Dakota on Canada’s Legalization Day on Wednesday, dumping six feet of contact high on everybody.
Argus Hamilton is the host comedian at The Comedy Store in Hollywood and a speaker. His email address is argus@argushamilton.com.
Proposition 411 was front page news in the Yuma Sun Oct. 14 edition, a seminal issue for anyone that travels the city streets of Yuma. Funding for said infrastructure is clearly up for debate, and more importantly on the ballot Nov. 6.
One only needs to drive our local streets to realize the disrepair that exists. The State Legislature, for decades, has raided the state Highway User Revenue Fund to balance the general fund at budget time and left local entities to fend for themselves. Funding may or may not be fully restored. The responsibility lies squarely on the City.
Several prominent local citizens in the Sunday article expressed legitimate concerns regarding infrastructure funding. Perhaps this issue needed to be addressed years ago. No argument there. Perhaps the funding is there and priorities are not. That may be a stretch.
We currently have a crisis in funding for our police and fire departments. The attrition rate of employees leaving for better pay in other venues is abysmal. We need to look at the City budget from a macro sense. Economics 101.
Nov. 6, please consider making an investment in our City and our future. We need certainty in funding. We need a vision for repair. More importantly, there is a plan.
Vote Yes on 411.
As a physician, I find it offensive when people use medical “props” to try and sell things of no medical benefit. The people scheming to get rich by deceiving the Arizona voters into mandating Arizona convert clean natural gas and nuclear plants into unreliable windmill and solar power sources, recently sent me a propaganda piece insinuating that Prop 127 would lead to “less asthma and better health.” We do not have a problem with the electricity generation currently being used. It would be a major health problem in Arizona if this Prop 127 passes, and electricity production is impaired. The “health” of Arizonans will definitely suffer if air conditioners are not powered, if hospitals need to use their generators to back up unreliable windmills, and people on home breathing equipment fear the next rolling blackout. The wind does not always blow, and the sun does not shine at night. Don’t be fooled, unreliable electricity from wind and solar is the real threat to your
We live in one of the sunniest places in the world, so why does Arizona only get 6 percent of its power from solar energy? Solar and wind are clean, renewable and free for the taking. All we have to do is tool up for it. The problem is that it is more profitable for APS to continue using the dirty, polluting sources of the past. It is well known that the burning of fossil fuels emits CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere contributing to climate change and other health problems. Nuclear power plants have the special problem of disposal of spent fuel rods which will remain radioactive and dangerous for millennia.
It is clear to me that Prop 127 needs to be passed and enforced to get the power generation industry on track in Arizona. There is a role for government to play here. The power producers will not take the right course of action on their own when profits are threatened. Do you think the auto industry would have started building fuel-efficient, nonpolluting and safe cars had they not been forced to? I don’t.
Additionally, the Prop 127 “escape clause” signed into law by the Governor was a very underhanded act of pandering to corporate interests. It basically makes the Proposition unenforceable if passed.
Nov. 6 is fast approaching, voters. It is time to change the color of Arizona politics and think of the future rather than continue to live in the past.