Don't you think it's dumb that the Arizona Strip is in Arizona?
 
Opinion
The Spectrum
 
The Arizona Strip has a serious law problem. You will never see a lawman there unless you break the speed limit. A rancher there told me that somebody stole 300 feet of well pipe from him but he couldn't find anybody to report the crime to.

Don't you think it's dumb that the Arizona Strip should even be in Arizona? The boundary between Utah and Arizona ought to be the Colorado River. The nearest county seat now is Kingman, on the other side of the Grand Canyon, a mere five or six hours drive to go to district court or get a driver's license. But if you get a ticket on the Interstate 15 strip in Arizona you can mercifully attend court in the city of - er, I forget its name - oh yeah, Mocassin, a little west of Kanab. There is a least two rooms in the trailer where court is conducted. But don't be deceived. The Strip's largest industry is conducted here.

Arizona invests nothing in the Arizona Strip and seems to care nothing about it. The Strip could have been developed by now but for Arizona's anti-growth policies. Recently, I offered to buy the Arizona Strip for $24. I thought Southern Utah developers could immediately build a subdivision with cinder block walls or a mobile home park overlooking the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

Arizona's governor rejected my offer. He worries that if a tourist could look at the Grand Canyon from Utah, then Utah might describe itself on its license plates as the "Beehive/North Rim of the Grand Canyon State with the Greatest Snow on Earth." Arizona already feels its inferiority with keen pangs because they did not get a Winter Olympics in Flagstaff. They did not even qualify as a finalist and probably never will. Arizona with its already fragile self esteem could not bear the loss of half the Grand Canyon.

So maybe here is the real solution. Strip Arizonans need to rise up, secede from Arizona and create a new country. The Western Hemisphere has not had a new country in quite a few years. The new country would be short on population for a while but its prospects for growth would improve if it had the proper non-policy on illegal immigration.

We might have a hard time attracting a president without a big president's mansion but maybe our new president could live in St. George for a couple of years until we build him an elegant double wide.

I could write the constitution if the president would like. We could have a guarantee allowing any form of marriage and no property taxes forever. Sport Utility Vehicle's and pickups would get big government subsidies in lieu of appropriations for paved roads.

Absolute freedom from all United Nations troops and mandatory gun ownership would be other prominent provisions of the Constitution.

Only land owners and developers will be allowed to vote.

There will be a term limit for our first President unless nobody else wants to run. We could have freedom of religion for all, except Muslims who could be shot on sight unless they agreed to convert to the dominant religion by Saturday - it would therefore be risky to wear any headgear that does not resemble a baseball or cowboy hat.

But we don't want to make it sound too good. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of St. George. You know - growth problems.

Bryce Dixon is a resident of St. George
 
TheSpectrum.com
Originally published March 5, 2007
 
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