Well, I'm sure some of you think that's the amount the State of Arizona should get for naming rights -- nothing, nada, zilch. But given that we're running a ga-billion dollar deficit, you'd think the tightwads at the legislature who are cutting funds for organ transplants, Medicaid, public education, and just about every other state service would hold out for a few bucks to allow a corporation to buy the Arizona brand.
But they didn't, as Howard Fischer noted tonight after the Senate vote 18-12 to name the Colt revolver the state's official weapon:
Cost to name the Cardinals stadium after the University of Phoenix? $154.5 million over 20 years.
Cost to Bank One -- now Chase -- for its name on the baseball stadium? $2.2 million a year until 2028.
And the cost to the Colt Manufacturing Co. to get the Arizona Senate to name one of its products the official state weapon? Priceless.
Well, actually zero.
That's right, just like we have an official tree, bird, and all kinds of other authorized stuff, Arizona will soon have an official weapon. The difference, as Republican Senator Adam Driggs of Phoenix said in opposing the bill, is that our other official mascots are all generic -- a Palo Verde for the tree, a Cactus Wren for the bird. It's not a bird manufactured by Dow Chemical.
But that's exactly what Colt Manufacturing got here -- state naming rights for absolutely nothing. "This is an advertisement for Colt," Driggs said. Shit, corporations pay big bucks to plaster their name around the Grand Canyon, but we'll give away the entire friggin' state for nothing.
What's next? An official state automobile? An official state chainsaw? The author of the bill, Colt lobbyist Todd Rathner, said that the Colt was "historically important to the founding of the state." Well, cars and chainsaws have affected the development of the state every bit as much as this one firearm.
Democratic Senator Krysten Sinema, who in exasperation called the bill "ridiculous" on Feb. 22 when the Appropriations Committee considered it, Tweeted from the hearing today after the bill passed:
Well our problems are solved - the AZ Senate just named the Colt 45 as the state gun. thesepeoplearecompletelyoutoftouch
If Sinema were not a State Senator, she might have Tweeted, "What the fuck are these dog-whistlin', knuckle-draggin', dickwads thinking?!" As the state digs itself deeper and deeper into an economic and educational abyss, these wackjobs are voting on a new "Don't Tread on Me" license plate sponsored by the Tea Party, and taking time to debate and then provide free advertising for a weapons manufacturer.
And don't even get me going on the "historically important" significance of the Colt. Yeah, talk to Arizona's original citizens about the Colt. I'm sure Native people are just dancing in the streets now that the state has named the firearm that was used against them "official." Maybe next the legislature can name an official disease.
And get this: Rathner even mentioned the Colt's role in providing "security" during the 1917 Bisbee mining labor war. Are you shitting me? He really went there?! We know that here as the "Bisbee Deportation." Look it up, it's a huge chapter in Arizona's labor history. Here's just a taste -- the first sentence from Wiki:
The Bisbee Deportation was the illegal deportation of about 1,300 striking mine workers, their supporters, and innocent citizen bystanders by 2,000 vigilantes on July 12, 1917.
Governor Scott Walker would probably love to have the latitude that Phelps Dodge had back then. When President Wilson refused to send in troops to force the peaceful Wobblies back into the mines, the giant mining company hired thugs (with Colts) to round up striking workers in the middle of the night, tear them away from their families, throw them on railroad cars, and ship them to the middle of New Mexico. With a threat not to return -- because the thugs had Colts if they did.
Yeah, let's celebrate that. For $0.