You’re gonna want to read this. It’s short and sweet.
Tucson, Arizona has a population of 580,000 and is one of the poorest cities in the U.S. 6th poorest. It is Arizona’s liberal bastion with a 3-1 majority Democrat-Republican voter registration (there are no Republicans on the Tucson City Council) and the county seat of Pima County, which is also dominated by liberal Democrats on the Board of Supervisors. The city and county, not surprisingly, are sinking into an economic abyss. The tanked housing market and associated Midwestern retiree migration to southern Arizona is still in bad shape. There’s no more Monopoly money for “nice to have projects.” Hasn’t been for years. That’s the background.
On Tuesday, the people of Pima County voted on 7 bond issues totaling $820 million dollars. Buried in the 7 bond proposals were 99 (!!) projects, of which the vast majority were useless Christmas tree ornaments. Not needs of the community at large, but “nice to have” stuff favoring liberal activist groups.
All of them failed by large margins, including a $200 million bond to fix the roads, which are some of the worst in the nation. Right behind the road bond was $192 million for parks and recreation, which the liberals touted as a vital function of the local government. Pima County already has the highest bond debt in Arizona, and these bond proposals would have more than doubled it. Evidently, TPTB didn’t think there were enough voters with basic math skills to sink the bonds. They were wrong.
Hope this helped to brighten your day.
“Supporters of the bond said it was the only way the county will get the funding needed to achieve it’s goals of staying economically competitive…”
By going further into debt? How do these idiots get into office?
Give Arizona and California back to the Mexicans. Problem solved.
How do roads in arizona go bad? Are they bad by michigan standards?
@Iconoclast421
Gosh, it would be hard to match the standards of Michigan. I grew up near Toledo and but most of my family lives in Michigan and I had to drive around quite a bit to go visit family. The roads in Michigan present a danger to anyone that drives on them. You can easily render your car into pieces if you are not careful on a Michigan road.
I’ve driven around Tuscon recently and the worst of their roads is still like driving on glass compared to Michigan.
SSS: you once mentioned that you were posted to El Salvador. If I may ask, when?
On topic, you’re right: your post brightened my day.
Even a blind hog finds an acorn once in a while!
How do the roads in Tuscon go bad?
Golfers. Its true. At 6am its a herd of cars headed to the golfcourse like a herd of Bison stumbling toward a cliff.
1) Bad roads = patches, cracks and small potholes
2) Bad roads by Michigan standards = craters of the moon
To the above comments about Michigan roads: Hey, my wife and I took a 2,300 mile trip through the upper Midwest this past September, which included the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan and down the west coast of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The roads were generally fine. Are you folks talking about Michigan’s urban areas, which we avoided like the plague?
@ Kill Bill: thanks for my smile of the day re golfers creating the bad roads in Tucson.
@ Montefrio: my tour in El Salvador as a member of the U.S. Military Group was a year, January 1982 – January 1983. It was the most exhilarating and stressful year of my life because 3 days after I arrived, the FMLN guerillas snuck onto Ilopango Air Base and blew up 60% of the operational aircraft in the Salvadoran Air Force. As the senior U.S. Air Force advisor in the country, things got very busy, very fast, but we managed to put Humpty Dumpty back together again in less than 6 months. Shortly after my arrival, I also got a personal, written assassination threat (“You will never leave El Salvador alive.”) from the FMLN laying in the driveway of the house I was renting in San Salvador. Assholes.
I have a special place in my heart for Salvadorans. They are some of the friendliest and hardest working people I have ever met. I am saddened to read about the criminal violence which has been sweeping through the country for many years now. The people don’t deserve that.
More glimmers of hope: basic message is, “no one trusts government to help them any more.”
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/1105/America-s-red-state-crisis
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2015/1106/For-black-Millennials-a-determined-hope-tempered-by-frustration
SSS: thanks for your reply. You left just before a good friend arrived (’84) to take up the thankless task of COS there, a task that resulted in many problems for him, happily eventually resolved. Sadly, his problems arose less because of the evil FMLN folks and more because of a Marine Corps colonel with a brief he should never have had: I’m sure you know to whom I refer. What a God-awful mess all that was! My pal was as loyal and patriotically dedicated an FSO as you would ever want to meet and a strict adherent to the charter of his agency, but he was raked over the coals all the same and resigned on principle, correctly so imho. I’ve never been in El S, but from what friends told me, your assessment of the folks is spot on. Top-down “management” in large measure created the conditions into which the country later fell. In-country field folks, as in many other places, were made to conform with the “assessments” of “DC” policy-makers who didn’t know their rectums from field-dug latrines and thanks to them US host-country activity went to shit. You guys did the best that you could do. but the political officers impeded y’all from doing what you could have done. I’ve been looking for a long time to vent some of this frustration and I thank you for giving me the chance to do so even if it’s just between us. No surprise we ended up here, eh?
Back on topic, spent a couple of years in Bisbee (mid-90s) and went to Tucson with some regularity: it wasn’t so bad, wasn’t so great then, can only imagine what it’s become. Good on the folks for defeating the dumb damned bond issues!
May all Liberal Democrat controlled areas = Third World Shitholes in the future
These people are like a cancer that destroy once healthy communities. My wish is that these assholes are not allowed to flee but to live out the rest of their miserable lives in what they have created.
hmm What about the CAFR ? comprehensive anual financial report?
They Tax , Tax ,Tax , but the CAFR says they already have , have , have .
I’m just a fucking psyhco cook lol what do I know lol
As a trucker, Tucson was just a day’s end stop for me, but I liked it. The highway wasn’t too bad, but it’s been years since I was there.
” How do these idiots get into office?”
Did you miss the words “liberal Democrats” in the article?
SSS says: Shortly after my arrival, I also got a personal, written assassination threat (“You will never leave El Salvador alive.”)
The sexy mulatta says her brother was a mechanic in the employ of the Salvy Army, he too got death threats that were all too real. Bodies lying in the streets were a common sight.
She said another common sight was that of kids lining the sidewalks, they were new orphans waiting to be informally adopted by any family that would take them in.
The war left a scar on the mind of the young now grown up, violence does not scare them. Many deportees are gangbangers, veterans of the war between LA Mexican gangs and Salvy gangs. The Mara Salvatrucha had to be even more violent to survive. The Mareros then established their own society within the Salvy towns. Honduras also suffered the invasion of gangbangers, they tried the ‘mano dura’ approach of the Salvadoran government but Hondos don’t like the violent approach.