By Pat Orr
The renaming of Columbus Day in some cities and jurisdictions as “Indigenous People’s Day” is, as they say in San Francisco, bovine feces.
I thought only Stalin was allowed to rewrite history to his liking and at that he had to kill off most of the poor folks who knew the truth to make his version stick.
Columbus Day has always been kind of a benign holiday celebrating a man who didn’t know where he was going, didn’t know where he was once he got there and had no idea where he had been when he left. For some reason, the Italian people have embraced him as a hero and are generally at the root of most Columbus Day celebrations.
Given enough Chianti, even a guy who got lost can seem like a world class explorer to many. To blame poor Chris for the eventual demise of the native population in the Americas is like saying the first person that grew sugar cane caused world-wide diabetes.
We need to put a stop to political correctness before it totally destroys what history we have left. I am bracing in November for what we used to refer to as Veterans Day. I believe the new plan is to refer to it as “Remembering those killed by conquering Americans Day.”
You get a two-fer
You may have seen a few signs around town that say “Gregg for School Board.” Funny, but I see the same signs in Hesperia.
The answer? We have three Greggs running in four races in two cities.
One Gregg is already on the Hesperia Unified School District board but is running for Hesperia City Council. His father is on the Hesperia Recreation and Park District board but is running for re-election to that and also for the Hesperia Unified School District board. The third Gregg is running for the Apple Valley Unified School District board but appears to be sharing campaign signs with one of the other Greggs running for the Hesperia school board.
Got all that? Me neither. Needless to say, we are overrun by Greggs right now and one of them is bound to get elected to something somewhere.
We need accurate water info
As you can tell from past comments I am not ready to jump all over the “let’s buy Ranchos Water” band wagon because I have been down that road with the Blue Ribbon Water Committee. It seems to me we can agree on two things: first, we need water to grow and sustain this town; second, the cost of water is high.
What I don’t think has been done adequately is for some entity to actually do a real dollar-for-dollar comparison between Apple Valley, Hesperia and Victorville water rates including all the fees assessments and add-ons in every city.
Both Ranchos and the town are becoming more adversarial every day so neither of these entities are impartial enough to do a real rate comparison simple enough and complete enough for we dumb citizens to understand. Perhaps this would be a good joint educational project to be undertaken by the chambers of commerce in each city, then write a combined report. Any new business is going to want to see this data anyway, so why not put it in the hands of organizations that can actually use the data and may be a little more impartial?
I’d like to see “real” comparison numbers before we make a decision for a change.
Pat Orr is a local business owner, community volunteer and political junkie.