Greetings from the Great State of Baja Arizona
Welcome to another edition of the BAK Open Thread. Click through for news, views and items of interest from Tucson and Greater Baja. If you live in Arizona we invite you to check in and tell us what’s going on in your part of the state.
This week’s tune …
Road Trip!
Yesterday we drove over to Benson for Benson Butterfield Overland Stage Days. As you may
know, I’m all about the Meet-Ups and it was a pleasure to finally meet Dave in AZ in person after so many years of online interaction here at DKos, most notably our Election Results Liveblogs. Dave’s main issue in Cochise County is protecting water resources and that is a very good issue indeed. We also got chance to meet one of the candidates for State Rep. in LD 14 and I would surely vote straight ticket if I lived in that district. On the way to Benson we got a chance to see the idle locomotives parked along I-10. The siding they’re on is south of the freeway and the line of locomotives starts at the Cienega Creek bridge and goes on for miles, all the way past the Marsh Station exit. These engines are idle because shipping is down and shipping is down because consumer spending is down. Don’t let ‘em tell you there was a recovery because, for 99% of us, the economy still hasn’t recovered.
Power from the Past
Hard to believe, I know, but the Cochise County Democrats’ tent was not the most interesting thing we saw at Butterfield Stage Days. I was fascinated by the display put on by a group called Power From The Past, in particular their antique stationary engines. They had some restored hit-and-miss engines on display. These things were used to power various kinds of pumps and tools. They have these massive flywheels that do the work with their angular momentum and the engine only fires when it needs to in order to keep the flywheels spinning. A mechanical governor tells the engine when the wheels are slowing down and, “pop” the thing fires its single cylinder. Here’s a little vid:
Speaking of power, you know that big solar plant outside of Gila Bend ? It has an emissions problem.
Ironically, the "clean-energy" plant is worse than a natural-gas plant for certain emissions, Maricopa County officials said.
In other news …
The Star is out with their endorsements. They’re endorsing John McCain for Senate. I don’t know if it’s because he's calling for escalation of the Syrian regime-change war or because he's withdrawing his support for Donald Trump. They’re also endorsing O’Halleran in CD-1 and McSally in CD-2. So far, the Star has not endorsed either candidate for president. Up in Phoenix, the Republic endorsed Hillary which upset some subscribers. Governor Ducey has decided that the Dept. of Revenue no longer needs to audit corporate taxes and Pima County is considering tax "incentives" for Monsanto. The City of Tucson says both Trump and Sanders owe money for police protection at their rallies at the TCC back in March. They want $81K from the Trump campaign and $44K from Bernie. Open enrollment at “The Marketplace” begins soon, most Arizonans will have only one option. The Arizona Democratic Party endorses Prop. 205.
OK …
That’s all I got for this week. I’ll have the big debate on in the background but I’ll be here off and on all evening. Don’t be shy about checking in and be sure to take advantage of the tip and rec buttons.