Parker Live News from the Parker Strip since 2009.
The Quartzsite town council voted today to remove many of the powers currently held by the town mayor and give them instead to the 7-member council.
This action will be seen by many as part of an ongoing feud between the council and Mayor Ed Foster, who alleges that the council and police chief violated open meeting laws, refused his lawful access to fiscal records and wrongfully fired police officers in politically-motivated retaliation, among other things.
The purposes of the ordinance voted in today, the town said, was to ‘clean up’ the codes governing the mayor’s role, and to ensure that the mayor had no more powers than those afforded to him by state law.
Quartzsite Town Attorney Martin Brannan said he had been requested to write up the ordinance, and gave an overview of some of the changes that would take effect, which included stripping the mayor of the right to chair council meetings.
Controversy has embroiled the town’s council meetings in recent months after local newspaper publisher Jennifer ‘Jade’ Jones was arrested while speaking at the podium during a ‘Call to the Public’. The video of her arrest became a viral hit on YouTube and put Quartzsite in the spotlight for thousands of pro-liberty Americans. Mayor Foster can be heard on the recording repeatedly telling the police officers, “You are violating my rules of order.”
After today’s meeting, Mayor Foster said he would like the changes put to the voters in a referendum.
Madame Hubris grants nepotism; Madame Hubris also jerks the rug from under your feet. Beware the cross-fire!
Quartzsite politics, what a sad waste of time, money and resources. Thanks Dan Field, these are your peeps!
Carry a camera wherever you go folks. Video the corruption, the lies, the stupidity and post it on YouTube. It’s the only thing that’s working. Elections don’t work, (if they did they’d make them illegal) Recalls don’t work because the people are lazy! Caring enough to try and do something about it gets you ticketed and arrested and hauled before the courts, which are compromised.
The only option left is to fight back with a camera. If you have good video or pictures of anything, contact Jennifer Jones at The Desert Freedom Press. If she believes it’s newsworthy, she’ll print and/or post it online. Or, contact Doug Gilford at qtown.us
WAKE UP LA PAZ COUNTY! It’s time to give the politicians and the worthless bureaucrats a taste of their own medicine!!!
This isn’t just a Quartzsite thing. Things are just as bad in Parker and with the Board of Supervisors.
One thing about stupidity, unlike intelligence, it has no limits.
I agree with your above post, Roth. Here’s why:
Aside from Quartzsite, there’s more public corruption in LPC. The county assessor is ripping off taxpayers by refusing to lower assessments on recent property sales. For example, I have knowledge of a parcel that sold for $50,000, yet the owner is paying taxes as though it is worth bubble value — $300,000. IOW, the owner is paying property tax five times that which is authorized by law. These are rough numbers that I’m recalling from conversation, but my point is sound and similar examples infest the assessor’s office.
Property is worth only as much as someone is willing to pay. It’s how real-estate appraisers appraise — using recent sales to assign value, among other things, such as income stream, which is not applicable in the example I’m using. Yet the assessor’s appraisers, in my opinion, are ignoring professional standards — no doubt ordered to do so to protect county turf and revenues, never mind law or fairness for the hands public officials feed from.
The assessor should get off his backside and do the right thing. This includes cutting refund checks to those who are being cheated. Otherwise, he should assess his own property at a rate five times value (or whatever number it is).
Boy, did he show us all how efficient his office was when real-estate prices had escalated during bubble times. He was right there to increase assessments, with Eagle-Scout enthusiasm, probably even getting his backside off of his easy chair and taking to the field, himself, to help appraisers speed up the process. Now that the benefit for him is gone, he’s not just dragging his feet — he’s cheating taxpayers, in my opinion.
Taxpayers jump through so many hoops to appeal assessments, costing time, money and headaches. Maybe it’s time we have a law that makes the assessor jump through the same hoops whenever he wants to increase assessments.
Why, when it comes to government, is there always a dual standard? Public officials get their way with simple keystrokes on a keyboard, but taxpayers always have to give blood to ever prevail. There’s no sense of fairness – ever.
I’d buy more property, myself, in LPC if the assessor would just get off his carpet of corruption — or just leave office. But no way will I bend over for corruption. Lots of folks feel exactly the same as I do.
The assessor’s nonsense is thwarting the revenues of free enterprise — real-estate businesses and its employees suffering the short end, as well as everyone else who would otherwise benefit from trickle-down economic activity. Not only that, proceeds form real-estate sales would certainly stimulate additional economic activity in LPC.
Maybe KLPZ will initiate a thread on this outrageous corruption. Then, maybe the supervisors will finally wake up, too, and also do the right thing and intervene. As it is now, they’re simply doing the old “look the other way” routine, in my opinion.
George Nault needs to go! Step up jackal and run against him!!!
http://youtu.be/OPR3GlpQQJA
This is got to be the dumbist town council in history of QTZ.
Grammar much getoverit?
I would say the choices they make are dumb but wouldn’t let them off on stupidity and ignorance alone. I would call it destructive, corrupt, self centered, and criminal. They believe in doing what’s right for themselves not what’s right for Quartzsite!! They need and will be voted out, they proved incompetence.
Run for office and become a public official? I’d rather submit to Chinese water torture than work for the public, the adult majority of whom have never grown up, have never done anything real, have never sacrificed, have never suffered, or have never learned (words once used to describe a presidential candidate) — all perfectly content to exist feeding at troughs kept full by a minority of producers.
Really, one has to be nuts to run for public office, which nuttiness offers explanation for the sheer incompetence that infests government at all levels today.
But if I were a public official, I very quickly would demonstrate how a little common sense goes a long way to exterminate corruption, rein in costs, and make government do as much with less — far less. Insane inflation since the 60s has been a direct consequence of subsidy — the Food Stamp program, Medicare, Medicaid, government grants and a long line of other subsidies that has destroyed our economy.
Stupidity rules as king today. For example, everyone is trying to increase access to health care by dreaming up new ways to fund health care — IOW, make it even more expensive. However, no one is bright enough to come up with ways to cut costs. Over-priced joint-replacement medical procedures, for example, cost 10 times less overseas. If Medicare would simply quit paying for domestic joint replacements, forcing patients overseas, instead, you very quickly would see an over-priced health-care system figuring out how to compete with offshore health care. As it is, over-priced health care is so bloated, it sucks up more than 20 percent of GNP — the highest in the world. And it has bankrupted us. Domestic health care isn’t even quality, going by network adverts placed by lawyers looking for victims of defective joint implants, victims of birth defects caused by mothers using Paxil during pregnancy — it goes on and on. Lawyers shaking the malpractice bushes have made network television a growth industry. Before Medicare, health care had actually been affordable.
The same common sense would work to quickly rein in costs at every level of the economy. Get rid of subsidized education, for example, and you end up with universities (again, ours is the highest cost in the world) that will be forced to compete with offshore institutions. Instead, we have ASU forcing students into a lifetime of debt, all because bloated and lazy faculty, staff and management have altars where they sacrifice the flesh of every student.
These same altars exists at every level of economy and society. Here in LPC, taxpayers are sacrificed on altars in Quartzsite, on altars in county government, and on altars in the economy. Buy a car and you submit yourself to the auto dealer’s altar, where you are nearly bleed to death to pay his inflated price. Of course, we can thank the auto-dealer lobby for outlawing, for example, Chinese and Indian imports that cost only $2000 per vehicle. Industry blames our bad economy on the Chinese because they won’t import more goods from the US. Why should the Chinese import more from us, when we refuse to import their cars? It’s all just “wants it both ways” hypocrisy that coexists right alongside stupidity.
It is in man’s nature to sacrifice his fellow man. But just as Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) said to Mr. Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) in “The African Queen” (1951): “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.”
Obviously, not many have risen above nature — especially out here in LPC.
Run anyway jackal. George Nault is a cancer on this community. He believes, no he LOVES taxes! If you or someone like you doesn’t get him out of office it’s only going to get worse, and probably much worse!!! You probably won’t even have to campaign. Just get on the ballot.
It looks as though the attempts by Town Manager Alex Taft to take over the government of Quartzsite is in vain! Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has ruled that the Secret Council Meeting of July 10, 2011 is in violation of the Arizona Open Meeting Laws and as such everything done by the Quartzsite Council, Town Manager Alex Taft, Asst-Manager Al Johnson are null and void!
Check out the videos below and learn more!
** Phoenix Tea Party Web Site **
Thanks again to Qtown.US! KSWT News 13 Yuma report the latest news from Attorney General Horne findings that the “Emergency Meeting” of July 10th violated the “Open Meetings Law”!
KSWT News 13 video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vMMysLEHZ0
Halfmoon attacks photographer and is labeled a sick person by Chief Gilbert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=GmQBNKEF0d4
Mayor Elect Ed Foster trying to run Council Meeting & see how Chief Gilbert reacts:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPY3BIsVQq8&feature=player_embedded
Missing Secret Council Meeting July 10th (audio only not on official video):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pJLN3u2fkdU
Secret Council Meeting July 10th from QPD Badge Cam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpyXK-xNi-s&feature=player_embedded
Read more from Qtown.US
News Flash:
http://qtown.us/blog/2011/07/29/flash/
Read ’em weep Establishment Lovers. Good post Paul, many thanks! This is how you become more free. Carry a camera and report ALL abuses of power. NOBODY has power over YOU! NOBODY!!!
http://youtu.be/OPR3GlpQQJA
It looks as though the attempts by Town Manager Alex Taft to take over the government of Quartzsite is in vain! Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne has ruled that the Secret Council Meeting of July 10, 2011 is in violation of the Arizona Open Meeting Laws and as such everything done by the Quartzsite Council, Town Manager Alex Taft, Asst-Manager Al Johnson are null and void!
And just what difference did that make? They’ve just gotten worse.
MR- That’s an interesting video. The concepts resonate with me, as I’m sure they do a lot of people. But I wonder if you must join LoPorto’s movement – the ‘Wayseers’ – as he suggests, or whether the concepts can be expressed in other ways.
I dunno. I haven’t joined. I think it’s a good video and good marketing behind his idea. There’s a lot of truth spoken on the video and that’s why I like it. I’ll probably join his email list to at least see what he’s doing.
I’m expressing these ideas in Quartzsite and of course on your blog. You can quickly tell the anti-freedom and anti-liberty types when you try to explain freedom to the masses.
Wayseers is one of a host of movements that has sprung up in recent time in response to growing awareness of the crushing effect of excessive government on economy, society, family and individual. Similar awareness had taken root during the Great Depression, a time when one of the most profound thinkers of the Twentieth Century emerged on the scene. Eric Fromm’s landmark work “Escape From Freedom” first set the stage in 1941, bringing awareness to the psychological mechanism, inherent in man, responsible for the destruction of individual freedom. I still recall one chapter, which I had read while still a student, wherein Fromm used the example of a young man who had inherited a sum of money. Rather than using the money to free himself from the toil of 40 hours a week in a regular job, he purchased a gas/service station, instead. Thus, where he once had had a lot of free time with his 40-hour job, he now had no free time, whatsoever, because the gas station was a 24/7/365 endeavor. IOW, he escaped from his world of some freedom into the world of total servitude, unwittingly, of course. Fromm’s landmark work quickly became one of the most popular reads of its time, inspiring other minds, such as Ayn Rand, who gave us “Atlas Shrugged” in 1957. It can probably be argued that very few writers and artists have not been influenced by Fromm’s work.
The human behavior that compels an individual to submit to the clan is an instinct that came in handy during ancient times when the tribe meant everything, as far as survival went. However, in modern-exchange economies, which are constructs that can be likened to virtual wildernesses, no one needs to join a clan to survive. In fact, an exchange economy is the perfect environment where individuality can take root and bloom. Individuality is the most creative force on earth. It has transformed mere clan members into genius persons who have discovered new worlds, built new civilizations, and created profound inventions that have taken man to the moon and back. It also has given us music, literature, film and unimaginable cuisine. All of this couldn’t’ve occurred without an exchange economy. And it explains why native people in the Amazon, for example, are still mere native people.
The flip side of individuality is commonality, which is a prison sentence for anyone content with surrendering his freedom. As we saw with Fromm, money is freedom. When we voluntarily squander all of our money, either on material consumption or by relinquishing it to politicians, we are indeed submitting to commonality, which is a desperate attempt at compensating for personal weakness, which can never improve without individuality.
The only difference between Wayseers and Tea Partiers, for example, lies with its constituency. While the Tea Party appeals to traditional conservatives, the Wayseers appeal to liberals who are fed up with the same things that conservatives are fed up with — politicians, liberal and conservative alike, who’ve swamped our economy and destroyed job opportunity. But no liberal is going to join the Tea Party. That would besmirch reputations with implication of association with the likes of Sarah Palin or, god forbid, the Christian Right’s Governor Perry. However, by joining the Wayseers, liberals can save face by using re-branded agenda that is virtually identical to conservative ideology and purpose — extermination of greed and corruption in the political process.
Everything that is wrong today has basis with man’s weakness for joining the clan. As Fromm’s predecessor, Friedrich Nietzsche, said: “When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.” (I’m pretty sure Nietzsche meant that each gets the mind of the clan as a whole.)
Nietzsche pretty much sums it all up right there.
Jackal- Great summation. But don’t you think the differences between these latter-day revolutionary movements are more than superficial?
I would imagine the Wayseers would be more likely than Teapartiers to think of the arts as highly important, or to use psychotropics, or to protest war, or to be internationalists, or to enjoy eastern philosophies (for examples).
I think an essay comparing the similarities and differences of Wayseers and Teapartiers would be a great read.
A favorite Nietzsche quote
“But the state lies in all the tongues of good and evil; and whatever it talks about, it lies – and whatever it has, it has stolen. Everything about it is false; it bites with stolen teeth, and it snarls. Even its very entrails are false.” – Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (thanks to Robert Katz)
Wright, I don’t think there is much difference, agenda-wise, between Wayseers and Tea Partiers (everyone is just out to survive in a trashed economy), however, I would absolutely agree that the differences between the liberal and conservative personality remains vast. Just as Russia had thrown in with Allies against Nazi Germany, it quickly reverted to its former self the minute it perceived its survival was no longer in the balance against Hitler. Likewise, movements like Wayseers and Tea Parties will quit tolerating each other just as soon as it’s perceived the economy has been restored to full health.
I have an article on my hard drive that lends further insight into Tea Parties. I’ll dig it up and post a link.
Roth, apropos Nietzsche quote describing today’s public officials. BTW, Nietzsche was a champion of individuality.
Actually, the article I mentioned does not contrast these Tea Party groups as I had thought (my apologies).
I would agree Wayseers are more abstract in personal pursuits and substance-chasing than conservatives at large. However, I don’t know if the same can be assumed for Tea Partiers. A New York Times poll, which by reputation oversamples liberals, found that Tea Partiers are far wealthier and better educated than average voters. Too, one in five Americans supports Tea Parties, and 5% are black and 11% Hispanic. Then there are also those individuals (the individualists) who will not openly subscribe to any group, much less say out loud that they align with Tea Party ideology, and their pursuits span the interests of those all the way from the extreme left to right.
It would be interesting to see a similar poll on Wayseers. I’d guess, for one, they’re much younger than Tea Partiers. Two, their ranks are far less than the 20% for Tea Parties.
FWIW, the tea parties were started by the Ron Paulites in 2007. (I was a tea partier WAAAY before it became fashionable) Then it got co-opted by the neocon wing of the republicrat/demopublican party. However, a large part of the tea party movement is still hard core CON stitutionalists.
These illegal wars have to end. The welfare state has to end. The war on drugs and poverty is an abject failure. NO NAFTA. NO INCOME TAX. Freedom of choice in ALL areas of your life. And we need to have an honest money system again in this country if we are ever going to be free!!!
This is what the original tea party was all about.
Now if someone hears governor Perry say one or two words about the Federal Reserve, they think he’s some kind of a kick ass rebel, when his entire career has been about the expansion of government.
People largely believe what they are told to believe on TEEVEE and most talk radio. The real truth is out here on the internet.
Thanks John for allowing us the use of your venue to (mostly) freely express ourselves!
Here’s a speech by a great American at the Virginia Tea Party Patriots Convention
http://youtu.be/BmQy-QLL5eA