Saturday, June 18, 2011

Tucson City News Let us eat Cake!







This Jeff Rogers who is chair of the Pima County Democrats is waging a campaign against the voters of this city. If he manages to disenfranchise all of the Republican voters, he may view that as a victory but it actually shows why lawyers should not be running this country. I always did think that the rules for getting signatures are too fluid. How about a standing number of 200? If 200 people want this person to be in the primary, then so be it. Cancel clean elections and let the primary sort it out. In the mean time, the Democrats seek to prevent legitimate candidates from even being on the ballot. The letter of the law but not the intent of the law.

The intent of the law was never to prevent all candidates but the Democrat candidate from being on the ballot. The intent of the law was to have an orderly election process that prevented unworthy candidates from running for office by requiring citizen signatures of support for the candidate. How about a little reform that would lower and standardize the number of signatures and let everybody pay for their own campaign? If Rothschild is the only candidate of the two major parties on the ballot, I will not vote for those tactics.

Democrat chair Jeff Rogers can be lumped with Clarence Dupnik in his rabid response to the January shootings, blaming his old political foes for that horrible tragedy. Too bad such shortsighted and narrow men remain in power among the Democrats. I sense a possibility of compromise and progress if these roadblocks to creativity are removed.

These Democrat politicians and Mayor Walkup have used and abused the city of Tucson, leaving the taxpayers with a heavy debt of more than $1,200,000,000,000 that these people expended. $1.2 billion in debt with more planned so they can spend and spend. Since Jeff Rogers is suspected to have threatened the Democrat city council members with dire noncooperation from the party if they don't follow his line, I can't help but wonder when his name was on the ballot. It is obvious that he likes shutting out a chosen candidate from the meetings simply because the Democrats have a majority. Our voters are being disenfranchised by the city council who refuses to hear anything from the voters who elected our guy.

I openly call this kind of political manipulation corruption. We don't need any little Kings in this town. Let us eat cake, will he?

I can't help but hope the current investigations bring some corruption to justice. The heat of the summer might bring out the tarantulas. Just shine a light down their holes.

In other news, the RTA is borrowing and must pay back about $150,000,000 plus about $50,000,000 in interest. I don't believe that $50,000,000 in interest was a professed ballot item even though projects that cost far less were on the list. Why has the right of voters to OK borrowing been destroyed? Mr. Hayes is playing fast and loose with tax money in an effort to meet some imaginary deadline, instead of using the ready cash to pay for projects. Mr. Hayes is in such a hurry to start projects, he is wasting fifty million dollars on interest. That's $50,000,000 less to spend on local hiring. I'm tired of these wasteful officials who are not even an elected having the power to indebt the taxpayers. So what will Mr. Hayes cut from the RTA budget when he has to pay back the money with interest? Valencia Road work? It's near the bottom of the list.

Maybe Mr. Hayes can hire more of his inlaws, like he did for the 'Value Engineering' reports for the Grant Road and Houghton Road RTA projects. I asked for these reports in a public information request that was finally answered after repeated e mails. I was told that the reports would not be available until July. That was a month away but Mr. Hayes had assured everyone that money was saved by hiring his inlaws for $89,000 without a bid. Maybe the next time Mr. Hayes has a no bid project, he should hire local. I can hardly wait to see these reports!

Support Republican candidates for Mayor and City Council plus Joe Flores in Ward 1 if you can vote in the Democrat primary. Jeff Rogers has blackballed Joe Flores even in the primary among the Democrats. I guess Joe is a little too independent for the likes of Rogers.

Vote Shaun McClusky, Jennifer Rawson, and Tyler Vogt! Clean up the corruption in city government!



Dorothy Prater Niemi

June 2011