Friday, January 20, 2012

Editorial: Anti-piracy bills

The unnamed editor gets it right, more or less, but about two weeks late. When we're talking about public policy in the making, you have to inform people while it's still possible for them to have a say in it. Reactive editorializing is useless here.

Wiederaenders: A little harmless brown-nosing

In his weekly "whatever" column, Courier editor Tim Wiederaenders can't help but leak some foamy effusion over getting a personal audience with our LD1 legislators, with an extra lick or two at the boots of Speaker Tobin for his "heck of a memory and ... his eye on the ball." The commenters are doing a good job identifying the sort of ball Mr Tobin has been eyeing, and all I need add is a Congressional desk in Washington.

Lest we forget
   While I understand the optics of getting us out from under the awful deal our Legislature (including the three Tim is praising here) made to pawn our state buildings -- and not incidentally eliminate it as an election issue -- I agree that we could be spending the money on higher priorities right now. (Thanks to the impressive negotiating powers of the Leg, the buyback will cost exactly the same at any point in the coming nine years or so.)
   But where Tim writes, "Said another way, instead of burning the mortgage on three state buildings this year, it would be better to, oh, provide healthcare for however many thousands of people through AHCCCS," I'm confident that he's going a lot further than Mr Tobin ever will. Andy's spending priority will be on more tax breaks for business, leaving health care for the working poor somewhere around dead last.