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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Address problems

Editor:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) was on a late-night talk show talking about the Democrat hope to pass universal day care/preschool for all children. I guess that most in the listening audience have, at least, a passing understanding of what the plan is about, so Sen. Warren was content to focus on the economic stimulus effect the plan would have for working parents. In that light, the plan sounds pretty good.

In watching the discussion, however, I found myself wondering about some of the possible details of the plan that, so far, I’ve never heard discussed. For example, if the government takes on responsibility for funding a major portion of pre-K education, what bureaucracy will be needed to administer the program? Will bills need to be passed mandating minimum qualifications for day care providers?

Will money be sent directly to parents, letting them use it to pay anyone they choose, from licensed facilities to family members, to watch their children? When a few children are unfortunately injured or abused, will the government accept any responsibility toward the parents? These, and other questions, need to be answered before we adopt a new, expensive but possibly worthwhile program. The problems are not unsolvable, but they do need to be addressed.

Ken Scruggs Buckeye Thanksgiving message

Editor:

Happy Thanksgiving!

We all sure have a lot to be thankful for this year, don’t we? Thank God gas is only up to $3.79 right now instead of $6. Now, we can almost afford to go on those long-planned holiday trips to visit family.

Thank God only 2 million illegals crossed the southern border since Vice President Kamala Harris became “border czar.” Otherwise, we may have had all of Central America and Haiti come in the back door along with those who made it from the Middle East.

Whew, that was a close one! I knew it! I just knew it! America’s energy independence would only last until Biden canceled it. Thank God we got to enjoy it while President Trump let us. Easy come, easy go! Who needs energy independence anyhow? So what that Biden ticked off our Canadian neighbors after they invested billions in the Keystone Pipeline and laid off 11,000 to 83,000 workers from high-paying jobs.

Thank God Walmart is always looking for greeters! Thank God that only two airlines have canceled thousands of flights when it’s close to the holidays. It could be all airlines! Must be one of those mysterious ways that God is working, huh?

Thank God that President Trump had COVID-19 vaccines mass-produced at lightning speed so that Biden could get “credit” for passing them out. What a guy!

Thank God the Biden administration made nice with the Taliban and, as a reward to the new terrorist regime that took over Afghanistan, the Biden regime gifted them for allowing almost all Americans to escape, with taxpayer-financed $85 billion in advanced military weapons that they can sell to China for profit. I’m sure this is their first Thanksgiving in Kabul where terrorists are thanking Allah as we speak. I hope they like turkey. I’m sure Gen. Milley left a few frozen birds at Bagram air base. This is what Thanksgiving is all about. Giving thanks to God for all that we have. We count our blessings and right now, I’m counting my blessings that America does not have a hammer and sickle flag flying over our capital today, because with the number of Communists we now have in the American Congress, it’s only a matter of time.

Thank God Gen. Milley hasn’t given a call to Gen. Li to warn him of a possible attack, or we’d be having Peking duck instead of turkey for Thanksgiving.

Wow, all this thanking almost made me forget that many Christmas gifts are still sitting on (last count) 160 ships anchored off the coast of California. With a severe shortage of trucks and drivers and mask mandates being enforced along with vaccine mandates, maybe the true meaning of Christmas will be witnessed this year instead of expensive toys. Now, that’s something to be thankful for.

SMITH’S OPINION — Las Vegas Sun

James Logan Buckeye

What a mess

Editor:

Try to get to Estrella Mountain Ranch during the day on Cotton Lane. What a mess! Trucks — 18 wheelers, concrete, sand, gravel, trash, construction, etc. — all on a two-lane road. Then there is the intersection of Pima Street and Cotton Lane, which is an accident waiting to happen when someone turns left onto Pima with no turn lane, stopping all traffic. I would wager if Mayor Georgia Lord or her family lived in Estrella Mountain Range, Cotton Lane would look a whole lot different than it does today.

Bert Stevenson Goodyear

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WEST VALLEY VIEW NEWS | NOVEMBER 17, 2021

Mask mandate makes Las Vegas an even bigger zoo

BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ

West Valley View Columnist

If you want to conduct an experiment in the sociology of pandemic behavior, try a quick jaunt to Las Vegas. Always a petri dish for freaks, Sin City has gotten stranger in these strange times since it continues to have a mask mandate for everyone, vaccinated or not, gathered indoors.

That’s Vegas. They’ll take your money until you’re bankrupt. They’ll bring you free booze until your liver ceases to function. You can jump in the car and drive 70 miles to a legal brothel. But if you expose a nostril, the blackjack dealer immediately summons security.

“Mask, sir! Mask!” has replaced “Come on, seven!” as the new soundtrack in every casino I wandered into last week. Given that I don’t gamble anymore, you can only imagine how much people watching I did to pass the time.

It was either that or go see Barry Manilow in residency at the Westgate. That ranks somewhere between a colonoscopy and an Arizona Coyotes game on my lousy pastime scale.

These days, there are four kinds of people when it comes to mask-wearing: “Who Me?” Guy. Everywhere in every casino, there’s signs saying you must wear a mask. Another social cue: Literally everyone else in the building is wearing a mask. Yet “Who Me?” Guy somehow fails to pick up on this. Admonished, “Who Me?” Guy stares blankly, not unlike a house pet asked to do quantum physics.

Then it clicks: Me. Face. Mask. “Who Me?” Guy digs deep into a pocket and, lo and behold, produces a crumpled mask, which he dons. Life as we know it resumes — until he splits a pair of tens and his fellow blackjack players maul him to death.

OK, I made that up. But it would be a helluva spectacle. “The Kvetcher.” Visiting from Boca, Mrs. Horowitz is as happy to wear a mask as she is to explain her compromised immune system. She has “the asthma” and rheumatoid arthritis, plus “my nephew, the doctor, doesn’t like how my blood sugar looks.”

The mask is no fun — “it itches my face like you wouldn’t believe” — but it’s necessary, because “we do this trip three times a year, and that I could not miss.” But: “Oh, this inflation. I remember when a shrimp cocktail was 99 cents and those shrimp were as big as your fist.”

Now? “Meh! And they water down the cocktail sauce.” “The Outlaw Josie Whines.” Mask, schmask. They don’t wear masks back home. Masks are for wussies. The outlaw has done his research, too, and he knows “this whole COVID thing is BS!” He’ll wear a mask if they make him do it, but not until he lets everyone within 30 feet know it’s under protest.

Masks are “because Biden, because Fauci, because the drug companies, because the liberals, because our Founding Fathers, because Let’s Go Brandon, because freedom…”

Because go lick a doorknob, genius.

Opposed on the political spectrum — yet equally annoying — is “The Virtuous One.” She hails from LA. Three things in life she will not do without: A Louis Vuitton bag large enough to conceal a body. Her Gucci mask. And her Resting Pelosi Face — the one that proclaims she is silently judging exactly how superior she is to you.

“The Virtuous One” wears her mask everywhere: In the casino, outside in the valet line, in her Prius driving alone, in the shower, and tonight…

In the front row at Barry Manilow.

Certain things in life I will never understand, including why people pay to listen to Manilow sing “Mandy,” the rules to pai gow poker, and why a thin strip of cloth can make grown adults behave like children.

David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com

BY J.D. HAYWORTH

West Valley View Columnist

You might regard this column as a bedtime story, just devoid of “Once Upon a Time.”

This concerns the way we keep time.

The two words “fall back” were music to the ears of residents in 48 of our 50 states early on Nov. 7. When clocks struck 2 a.m. in time zones across the USA, they were moved back an hour, to 1 a.m. Consider it restoring the hour of sleep that was taken last March, when the return of daylight saving time prompted “spring forward.”

Of course, those of us in Arizona didn’t lose any sleep over this. That’s because the Grand Canyon State — like Hawaii — stays on standard time year-round. To out-of-state family, friends and business associates, “Arizona time” is usually explained in this fashion: “When you’re on daylight saving time we’re on ‘LA time.’ When you’re on standard time, we’re on ‘Denver Time.’ The only exception comes on the Navajo Nation, in the northeast region of the state; it goes to DST, too!”

What prompted Arizona to remain on standard time? It’s tempting to tell a tale described as a combination of political intrigue and special interests. Actually, it’s a bit less sensational than that.

When the 1966 Uniform Time Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson, it ended the random way in which the states had been observing DST. The act stipulated that states must change to DST on a specified date or remain on standard time throughout the year.

Arizona in 1966 differed greatly from today. With a less-populated state in the mid-’60s, there was more farming and ranching. With limited technology, there was less entertainment. Accordingly, two of the most powerful lobbies were the Arizona Cotton Growers and the Association of Drive-In Theatre Operators.

Simply stated, those agrarian and entertainment interests realized that starting movies around 9 p.m. in the summer months would impair farmhands’ ability to show up for work early in the morning.

That argument prevailed in the state Legislature, and Arizona remained on standard time.

Arizona’s Barry Goldwater may have challenged LBJ for the presidency in 1964, but the 1966 law which gave states the power to opt out of DST if they so desired proved — well, “timely.”

The act was vindicated in another fashion by the Commonwealth of Virginia, according to the late Rep. Herb Bateman. In the mid-1990s, Bateman welcomed his GOP colleagues to Virginia’s First District for a Republican retreat. Herb proudly called his district “America’s First District,” because it included Jamestown, site of the first permanent English settlement.

Prior to serving in the U.S. House, Bateman spent a dozen years in the Virginia state Senate. Recalling lessons he learned in Richmond, he emphasized that arriving at a political decision, even if controversial, was infinitely preferable to dithering and delay.

What galvanized his outlook was the reticence of Virginia legislators to deal with a dilemma that dogged the Commonwealth before Bateman ever ran for public office — deciding whether his home state would opt for DST. Not wishing to anger constituents, the House of Delegates and the state Senate left the DST decision to Virginia’s 95 counties. As a result, some counties adopted DST, others stayed on standard time, and a handful “compromised” by moving their clocks ahead by a half-hour!

The Uniform Time Act of 1966 ensured that Virginia would have to decide, and the Old Dominion legislators finally did so, determining that the Commonwealth would find common ground through DST, putting an end to the “counterfeit compromise” of letting the counties decide.

Today, 19 states have decided that they want a permanent time change, passing resolutions to provide for yearround DST. Arizona and Virginia are not among them. Could it be that we fear Bob Dylan’s old refrain?

“The times… they are a-changin’.”

J.D. Hayworth represented Arizona in the U.S. House from 1995-2007. He authored and sponsored the Enforcement First Act, legislation that would have mandated enforcement of Federal Immigration Law in the 109th Congress.