Tucson Sammy

Yours Truly attended a special Town Hall Meeting on the “Methamphetamine Epidemic” at the Salpointe High School auditorium. It was quite the show, and included a panel of “police, medical experts, and neighbors” who had ideas on how to stop the “meth epidemic”.

It had the disturbing quality of the first Junior High (that would be “Middle School” for those of you under forty) anti-drug assembly I attended in ninth grade. No laptops and Power Points then; just two narcs with crew cuts in sport jackets and ties telling us how marijuana would kill us. It was all very exiting for a young boy. I went up to the front after the show where the narcs were doing an informal Q and A. I heard one of the narcs say, “I watched a boy beat his head against the radiator – just like this one – to stop the pain”, as he pointed to a cast iron radiant heating unit on the floor next to the wall – they were ubiquitous in those days. The only thing I didn’t understand was why anyone would ever touch a drug!

Of course, within a few years I had friends who -gasp!- smoked marijuana! The odd thing was that not only were they not banging their heads against radiators, but they were doing well in school and had lofty ambitions (eventually they would become lawyers, publishers, research scientists, and economists). Naturally, I wanted to be part of the crowd, so I smoked marijuana too – and I didn’t bang my head either.

Back at the town hall meeting, it was nearing the end of the Power Point presentation and we were treated to pictures of dental nightmares that apparently resulted from years of meth use – it dries your mouth. I glanced around the auditorium. The largest demographic was blue-haired retired women, many of whom were slowly shaking their heads side to side, undoubtedly thinking, “I don’t understand why anyone would ever touch meth!”

I remember a time, many years ago, when I … had a friend who used methamphetamine occasionally. He told me that it did in fact make you feel like Superman. In this the “mental health experts” concur. What the “mental health experts” did not know was that you could avoid tweaking by drinking alcohol to mitigate the effect of the meth. Anyway, my friend used to drink with some grad students who worked in labs and manufactured meth for their own use – and that of my friend. Upon graduation, they went their separate ways. They typically entered careers in their chosen fields, married, and lived happily ever after – no reports of any head banging.

Now, I’m certainly not suggesting that drug abuse is all fine and dandy. What I am suggesting is that narrow, hysterical presentations tend to result in more distrust than healthy living. My friend dabbled in meth use off and on for a period of less than a year. He told me that if he had it to do all over again, he never would have taken the stuff; of course, he also said that he never would have taken up drinking either.

On the lighter side, it was delightful to see the local pols out on the town. Vice Mayor Dunbar and her staff at the Ward III office hosted the event. I believe the entire staff was there. The Katie and Alex Show (of the Uhlich and Trasoff campaigns respectively) was there. Karin (yes, she spells it “Karin”) Uhlich herself was there with a pocket full of bumper stickers. Even Vernon Walker took time from working the Himmel Park Library to stop by. He still does not have a web site. These will be fun elections!

A one billion (that’s one thousand millions) dollar budget has been approved by the Council for the City of Tucson. Boy Howdy, that’s a bunch of money! The Federal budge ammount has always been incomprehensible, and now, so is our city’s.

The good news is that there are no huge increases, or new spending - only nominal increases in police and fire. Wait, can this be true? I thought this was a Blue County? What happened to subsidising the breakdown of the family, supporting illegal immigration, and “public art”. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen any good “public art” since the sewer statue at Glenn and Mountain came down.

Anyway, I like the “back to basics” approach to dispensing tax money. The Council is developing some libertarian tendencies; well, four out of seven are. Jose Ibarra and Steve Leal followed their usual socialist tendencies and voted “No” without comment - though in the past they have complained about insufficient funds for recreation services and other stuff that belongs in the private sector. Joining the in the “No” vote was Shirley Scott, who kept her committment to vote against anything with a garbage fee (someone ought to tell her that she’ll never get anywhere in politics if she’s preoccupied with committments). Wildcard Carol West joined Kathleen Dunbar, Fred Ronstadt, and Uncle Bob Walkup in voting “Yes”.

I’m not quite sure what to make of this. Have the Republicans gained new respect for the taxpayer? Have they, unlike their national level counterparts, the confidence to do the right thing? Will we see smaller municipal budgets with concommitant tax reductions in the future? Well, perhaps not, but if you like this direction, remember their vote when you vote in November. That vote will determine the fate of Dunbar, Ronstadt, and Leal - all of whom are up for re-election.

Note: this is a rewrite of an ealier posting which contained factual errors - thanks for your patience.

O.K., Let’s walk through this. As long as I can remember, it has been illegal to go into a bar with a gun in Arizona. There are, of course, exceptions: 1, law enforcement officers; 2, Owners of the establishment; 3, employees of the establishment with owner permission. The argument is that people go to bars to become intoxicated, intoxicated people go on murderous rampages; therefore, only unarmed people can enter bars so that when they become murderous they can’t do as much damage. The lie to this argument is inherent in the exceptions. Are armed and drunken police officers really so much safer than armed and drunken civilians?

Even if you answered “Yes!”, consider the another lie to the argument: when they say “bars”, they really mean any establishment that serves open adult beverages. Think about that. How many restaurants that you patronize sell beer, how many don’t?

Imagine going to a pizza joint for a dinner out with your spouse, and before you open the door to the establishment you notice a neon Budweiser sign in the window. Dang! You walk back to your car and think about where you’re going to put it…under the seat? No, you know at least two people who have had their pistols stolen that way. Hmmmm… glove box? Yea right! So you stash it in the vehicle, look around to see if anyone was watching, and go back to the restaurant to enjoy your “Meat Lover’s” and RC Cola, which you would have enjoyed were you not wondering if you were going to join the list of those who hang their heads and say something like, “Yea, I used to have this really nice .357 that my dad gave me when I graduated. It was his father’s. No, it was stolen out of my car in a parking lot.”

Someone finally noticed that the vast majority of people affected by the law were not going out to get intoxicated at all; in fact, many were not even having a beer with dinner. So, to make the law more reasonable, Senate Bill 1363 was written to allow armed people to go out to dinner if they did not drink. A common sense, no-brainer, right? Not quite.

The usual suspects (Leftist politicians, Leftist newspaper writers, police unions, etc.) came out in force against what they called the “Guns in Bars” bill. The usual moronic arguments were made: 1, Just because the person isn’t drinking doesn’t mean he won’t turn into a crazed killer if he’s in the proximity of alcohol with his gun; 2, You can’t expect some schlub to have the Jedi-like power over weapons that policemen have; 3, Criminals get into fights in bar parking lots, so, obviously, the guy going to the pizza parlor with his wife will too.

So Governor Janet Napolitano (you may remember Janet Napolitano as one of the Clinton administration lawyers who participated in the “high-tech lynching” of Clarence Thomas) vetoed SB1363.

How does it feel to know that the Governor of the State of Arizona sees you as a murderer waiting to happen?