We get an editorial every Pearl Harbor Day, but Iraq Invasion Day is here again with no mention of it in the Courier. Maybe the editor would jump on it if we celebrated it with green beer. Or would red be more appropriate?
Update, Sunday: An anonymous commenter asks how many other papers covered this story. Consider this list to start.
I'm so surprised: the unnamed Courier editor is blaming Rep Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, for sometimes voting like a Democrat.
I must have missed the many editorials wherein the editor excoriated her predecessor, Rick Renzi, for voting too often like a Republican, as well for not voting at all after the indictments started coming in. Maybe the editor was out sick that decade.
See, here's how it works. Since the editor voted against her for Congress but she still won, in order for her to properly represent The People (= The Editor), she has to vote as the editor would. Doing otherwise obviously makes her a puppet of the evil California liberals who want to put the editor in chains, take all his guns away and give them to North Korea.
Never mind that Ms Kirkpatrick is among the small group of congressional freshmen demonstrating the most independence from the party line. If she votes against the editor, she's been bitten by Nancy Pelosi and become one of her army of liberal zombies.
I'm sure it's also very confusing to the editor that the Representative has failed to demonstrate her zombieness on issues the editor holds dear, like guns, congressional pay and deficit spending. Those initiatives couldn't possibly be anything other than a "smokescreen of conservative credibility." I tell you, nothing gets past this guy.
Seriously, editor, why can't you just write that you don't agree with Ms Kirkpatrick's vote on health care, using research to back up your argument on the issue rather than personal attack and innuendo?
Do you even care what's in the bill? Wouldn't it make more sense to help inform your readers on its merits and demerits? Or are you really only concerned about whether your team is winning?
No sensible person will argue against transparency in government. More information is generally a good thing, and in principle requiring government authorities to publish their budgets and spending details is the responsible thing to do. But a couple of things bother me about today's screed from the Goldwater Institute.
First, it's from the Goldwater Institute, the primary purpose of which is to help wrest government functions out of the hands of the people and into the loving care of corporations. The Courier is all too often a shill for this group, printing its press releases and pseudo-news uncritically and often unattributed to cover the source. GI is a highly skilled propaganda organ, famous for framing issues to look reasonable in support of its radical agenda.
Which brings me to the second problem. We all want transparency (except, apparently, when Republicans are in charge, since GI never demanded anything of the sort during the Bush regime), but consider the next step: you've got the data, so what do you do with it?
It's entirely reasonable to infer that reams of searchable data on government expenditures can help agencies identify redundancies and possible savings. That's all good. I would hope that we were hiring managers whose primary responsibility is to do exactly that, and if they're not I have to wonder what our state thinks a manager is supposed to be doing. But there's a lot to do, and more eyes on the problem can help. 
What I don't want to see is a horde of angry, self-righteous right-wingers, whipped up by television fearmongers, peppering our government managers with ignorant, politically motivated demands and judgments.
All the data in the world is useless unless you know how to interpret it and understand its basis in context. How many of Goldwater's public-spirited citizens will sit down and do the research to understand what's behind a given expenditure before passing judgment on whether they like it?
I have a feeling GI hopes to employ the old government-as-sausage-making saw to its advantage in tearing down government, betting that showing people more details of government while keeping them ignorant of the whole picture and hammering on the government-is-bad button will fuel the torches-and-pitchforks mobs that help keep people divided and corporations running the show.
Yeah, sure, celebrate St Pat, a religious zealot who helped subjugate the last free Celts for the Roman Catholic Empire.
It's so easy to forget the history when there's green beer around, innit?
The editorial follows up on Friday's story by Paula about a dust devil in Congress between the school district and four people who've demanded to see lots of documents and speak at board meetings, two of whom are mother and daughter.
Clearly there are two sides to this story. What concerns me about the news story and the editorial is that they seem to be based entirely on a press release from the Goldwater Institute, which is not only an extreme partisan organization, but is legally representing the people who've been bugging the district.
I'm not saying it's impossible for GI to be giving out the straight dope, but since there are no other news sources (including the Republic, which parrots the same release), we can't know any more about it than what GI wants us to know.
There's an important clue in Paula's story: The GI lawyer says, "If the lawsuit goes forward and the district gets an injunction, it could completely negate the public records law, negate the First Amendment right to free speech and eliminate public participation for fear of being sued." This is legal poppycock -- the injunction would be sharply limited, against specific people in response to specific behavior. By framing it this way, GI is setting up the idea that there can be no limits to citizen demands on government entities, including harassment. GI's kill-government history shows that it loves to see bureaucratic wheels grinding to a halt (outside the military and police apparatus, of course).
It could also be that the district board is being run by a few hotheads who can't stand people calling them to account. A lot of details in the story don't add up. But without a clear account from the other side, we're left to guess.
Given that the unnamed Courier editor saw fit to run with Goldwater and no new information, I'd probably bet that the story is largely BS and the school board has a reasonable complaint. Watch for a followup story on how the judge rules.
From all reports I've heard, Eileen Klein is a smart cookie, one who is probably completely aware that her show for the cattlemen was all smoke and mirrors.
In mirror mode, she evoked St. Reagan to justify her boss' support for the sales tax hike, and blamed Gov Napolitano for allowing "the government to grow as large as possible," as Heidi describes it. Perhaps Ms Klein forgot that both houses of the Legislature were controlled by Republicans for both Janet's terms and most of living memory, and the Governor does not allocate the state budget. That's the Legislature's responsibility.
In smoke mode, Ms Klein talks about how California's finances were a "house of cards, a Ponzi scheme" necessitating new taxes, setting that in direct parallel to Arizona today, but we hear no mention of how the structural weaknesses in Arizona's financial policy that led us to this pass can or should change to be more dependable and stable.
Let's not forget that the Gov has declared for reelection, so this was an early campaign speech to an influential chunk of her base. Ms Brewer may be telling the truth, but clearly she has no ideas for correcting the problem. In other words, if Jan gets everything she wants, it could all come down exactly the same way in another five years.
Shorter Klein: We got it really wrong in the past, so we should keep doing that.
We need a much more serious approach than picking the pockets of poor folk to patch a system that has proved catastrophically deficient. Sensible structural change means moving away from sales taxes as the primary revenue source, away from construction as the primary industry, and toward real property taxes, as we have a more settled population and more established businesses in one of the most attractive environments for living and working in the western hemisphere. We have to move forcefully toward renewable energy and sustainable industry, and away from dependence on retailing and extractive industry. We have to spread the tax base to raise revenues and improve fairness. That's the sort of ideas I'll be looking for from this year's crop of candidates.
Today the unnamed Courier makes the case that elections don't matter and the City should just do what the editor wants.
We know, of course, that the editor vehemently opposed the open-space allocation of sales-tax funds in the 2000 initiative. He and most of the representatives on city councils since have complained continuously about that vote and worked diligently to subvert it.
Somehow it's impossible for these people to understand that in voting to allocate money to buy open space, the voters of Prescott defined purchased open space as a need. So for Council or the editor to turn around and say it isn't is just beating a still-opinionated but entirely dead horse.
People don't vote to tax themselves thinking it might be nice if we could have this. They decide that the thing is necessary to their community at cost to themselves personally. That's fairly persuasive, if you ask me. I'm not saying that voters can't or don't make mistakes in the process, but that's our system, like it or lump it.
The editor can argue all day that we should overturn that initiative and spend the money on streets. He can't argue that such spending is objectively unnecessary -- the voters said otherwise, explicitly, and it'll take another vote to change that -- and he can't argue for just using the money to repair streets instead -- that's not legal or ethical. Given that revenues from that sales tax have far exceeded projections at the time and actual open-space purchasing is far behind intended schedule, he can't say with any authority that open-space purchases have impeded the intent of the initiative in terms of street repair. If the editor believes we need more money for streets, he is arguing in favor of higher taxes to pay for them. He should be advocating a new initiative for additional sales tax to cover better projections of how much money will be needed, and specifically overturning the open-space allocation.
Somehow I don't expect we'll see him doing that. It's so much easier to call for ignoring the will of the people. Things were so much simpler when we had kings, huh?
The language of the 2000 initiative left sensible room for Council to to operate in terms of specific allocations of funds at a given time. The voters trusted Council to follow the clear intent of the initiative rather than bind the City to hard schedules. Council has instead taken advantage of that trust and sensibility to resist the initiative. This short-term political opportunism risks long-term loss of options if the voters decide they can't trust Council. I'd urge sitting Councilors and staff to be very careful about treading on that flag.
The unnamed Courier editor takes the opportunity afforded by the antics of Councilmen Hanna and Blair to polish his rightist immigration credentials, managing in a couple of hundred words both to characterize removing the Spanish banner as "an extreme reaction" and to urge readers to elect more extreme reactionaries.
Along the way he betrays his lingual chauvinism (or is it racism?), calling it "an unfortunate fact of life that many legal American citizens still speak primarily Spanish in their daily lives," as if speaking Spanish is some sort of developmental handicap.
But he really kicks it into gear when he demonstrates that he really doesn't get the issue at all: "we at the Courier don't like an expression that encourages illegal residents to participate in the census," as if it's an illegal act, or participation in the census confers some sort of legal privilege.
Editor, we, all of us, including you, really do want illegals to participate. If they do, we have a clearer idea of how to apportion public spending (like roads and infrastructure, say) for the actual number of people in our community, as well as ensure that we get enough votes in Congress to account for that real number. More illegals on the census is an advantage to our communities, and does not change their status or public benefits one bit.
But I gather that's really hard to see through race-tinted aviator sunglasses.
My good friend George Seaman posits that the expansion of corporate freedoms awarded recently by the Supreme Court is a danger that we should be able to see equally from across the political spectrum. He's right, we should. So why don't we?
I have to wonder whether a lot of people who identify with the right are enthralled by corporations in much the same way a battered wife continues to defend her abuser. They've deluded themselves that the abusers really love them, despite what all their friends tell them, and if they can just be loyal enough and do the right things, the abuse will magically stop.
You can't penetrate this sort of self-delusion by stating the obvious. George's argument is cogent and clear to those of us who already understand, but our problem is that a whole lot of us don't or won't buy it.
George sensibly asserts, "Most of us don't have to think very hard to find evidence of this kind of collusion in today's 'unfree' markets," but fails to provide any examples to back that statement and help lead unconvinced voters to water. "Presidents from Jefferson to Obama, and many in between, have warned of the dire consequences of elevating corporations to an equal footing with the people," true enough, but the people we need to persuade do not understand what those consequences are.
We have to more clearly articulate the very real danger inherent in giving corporate interests unfettered license to use their financial and propaganda resources to influence elections and public policy. Many, perhaps most, voters already think that corporate influence is so deep that this ruling won't matter. The predictable difference might be expressed as a little water in your basement once in a while against a flood taking the house away. But this is not an easy sell against decades of daily corporate propaganda. We must be persuasive, persistent, factual and elementary if we're to have any hope for change.
I got a chuckle in the comments from one that characterizes ol'-hippie George as a rightwinger trying to pass as a libertarian. It's funny, but also illustrative of how people can read all sorts of things in that not only aren't there, but are completely opposite of reality.
The unnamed Courier editor notices that the Chino Valley school override failed, infers that voters simply can't afford the additional tax, and expands that into a victory lap for the idea that any new taxes are bad.
We've certainly been hearing an awful lot of noise lately from people who think they are Taxed Enough Already, and they have a point. But what they and the editor fail to notice is that there's an important group of citizens who draw benefits from our society out of all proportion to their numbers and who are certainly not taxed enough: the rich.
These well-heeled folks have the resources to deflect the media away from themselves and frame the tax debate entirely on their own terms. But informed voters know that during the Bush years the tax burden rose on the middle class to the benefit of the top 20% of earners.
The editor is surely not in the lofty brackets that would have to give up a couple of toys to restore even the gross tax inequities that Reagan brought down on us. But he's clearly bought into the idea that the rich have no responsibility to give back, even where it means less education for our kids.
Today's letter from Steve Chontos is probably directed at Councilman Steve Blair and his daily for-profit AM show, but it's an issue for me too, since I've been producing a weekly public-radio show with LD1 Rep Lucy Mason for over seven years.
Until last year the FCC allowed elected officials to maintain regular broadcast appearances even during elections if the content did not involve direct electioneering. Last year the rules changed, and now candidates whether incumbent or not are not permitted unrebuttable airtime.
But even at the beginning, under the old rules, I have always been concerned about the perception that the show might serve for political gain, and careful to avoid that sort of conflict.
I designed the show specifically to provide vital public information in the form of regular reports on what our representative is doing at the Legislature. This inevitably involves political opinion as she explains her bills, votes and choices. When she's been up for reelection we have very deliberately stayed clear of any talk about the campaigns, opponents or future plans that might be taken as campaign promises to keep the show clean and, most important, credible and trustworthy. We can't disconnect entirely from the reality of electoral politics, but I think overall we've been very successful in maintaining a public-interest program of high integrity.
In considering this issue, voters should ask themselves what's more important -- direct information from your elected officials on what they're doing and why, or reducing the electoral advantage of incumbents by shutting them up. Carried to its logical end, Mr Chontos' argument would ban any public speech by an elected official that does not include equal time by a political opponent.
Councilcritters Hanna and Blair seem to be making all the news lately, this time by demanding the removal of a banner in Spanish promoting participation in the census.
Never mind the blatant racism inherent in their indignation over something so benign (and so required by law, by the way). Forget that this entire region of the country was wrested by force from a well established Spanish-speaking culture only 160-odd years ago. What I want to focus on is how this cultural cowardice affects us all in terms of lost funds.
Joanna applies some good research in noting that ten years ago only 400 Hispanic residents of everybody's hometown returned their forms. I'd bet that represents an undercount of around an order of magnitude. I expect that the census professionals were able to fill in some of that with sampling, but it still means a significant loss of funds for the city and underrepresentation for us in both state and federal government for the decade since.
So because a few whiny hotheads are threatened when they see signs they can't read, we all lose money and political clout. In a citizen that's just stupid, but in a public servant that has to amount to nothing less than official malfeasance.
Update, Friday: This is getting some national attention -- Crooks and Liars featured the Courier story today.
Dennis Duvall is a familiar name hereabouts for speaking out about our simmering wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today he excoriates Rep Kirkpatrick for voting with the majority to continue war funding while selling the idea of fiscal responsibility.
I have to agree that her bill to reduce legislator pay amounts to showboating without real substance. If it were a detail in a larger bill that would do more to reduce waste in government, say, or otherwise offer us more value for our tax dollars, it would be a nice gesture. Standing alone, it's nothing.
Dennis' point about the money we're throwing away in Iraq and Afghanistan is well taken, and while I understand that the nest of snakes we inherited from the Bush administration will not be easily sorted out, I share his impatience with the Obama administration for not living up to its campaign rhetoric and showing clear commitment to getting us off those tar babies.
I have to say, however, that if I were in Ms Kirkpatrick's place I would probably be doing much the same thing. The war problem belongs to the administration, and with plenty of public voices pointing the president in the right direction, it doesn't make sense for a Dem Congress to create more problems. Further, Ms Kirkpatrick has been generally correct in representing the majority of people in this district, a principle we should all care about in elected officials. She's a freshman in a very complex situation and has a fine wire to walk anyway. Don't forget that making policy happen takes a lot more than one vote.
That said, all of us who care should communicate directly (and respectfully) with the Representative about the wars, jobs, health care, energy, education and real effort to rebuild our economy in smarter ways. Every sensible voice with a name on it moves the perception of what the majority wants.
Tim turns in one of his very occasional pseudoblog columns today on the closings of state parks and how much this money-saving measure will cost in real terms.
Tim's idle musings only scratch the surface, and he passes up an important teaching moment. Many Arizonans, used to simple answers and instant gratification, think that cutting the state budget is a simple matter. They rarely see or hear about the web of interdependent factors that government holds together, such that anywhere you look to reduce funding, you cause new costs elsewhere. Most government programs are not simple spending measures, they are designed and built to reduce social costs to all of us. 
Tim's example, Homolovi Ruins, is a case in point. Until the early '80s it cost the state -- us -- nothing. To most citizens it was a relatively remote pile of old walls. To the Hopis it was an ancestral home and sacred site. To archaeologists it was a trove of information about the migrations and lives of Hopis. And to pothunters -- thieves -- it was an unprotected treasure mine.
The social cost of doing nothing about Homolovi was daily desecration and the steady loss of artifacts and knowledge. The state began spending a little money to help prevent this loss and educate Arizonans about their heritage. Closing the park puts the site back where it was, forsaken and deteriorating. And there's a new cost on top of the old -- the businesses that have benefited from visitor traffic in the park have to look elsewhere to pay their rent. You can't find these sorts of costs and benefits acknowledged in the state budget, but they are very real.
Extending the example to other areas is easy -- kicking people off AHCCCS raises costs for families and hospitals, eliminating support for the seriously mentally ill raises costs on families and communities, cutting the Department of Juvenile Corrections raises costs for counties. Almost any cut you can name comes with a contingent cost, often greater than the savings. Some kinds of cuts also trigger losses of federal matching funds as well, compounding the revenue problem. It's a management nightmare.
This is why the Legislature's adamant resistance to talking about raising revenue through taxes and fees is dead stupid. You have to have those options on the table to prevent spiraling down into bankruptcy. I'd have liked to see Tim take a couple hundred more words to make that point. It needs saying in the Courier.
Predictably, given the paper's long history of gun love, the unnamed Courier editor comes out in favor of Steve Solomon, and faults the cops and County Attorney's office for failing to handle the evidence-gathering well. 
Could lawnforcement have done a better job? So said the judge, and that's all we really know. But the editor uses that lapse to gloss over the real issue of public concern: the fusillade of AK-47 rounds that Solomon fired off his property and into the wild, which Solomon himself said he did "for fun." Whether he knew there were people in harm's way or not, this was grossly reckless and irresponsible and it was only his dumb luck that this wasn't a manslaughter trial.
The editor's sole observation on this idiocy: "Testimony alleged that Solomon could be more responsible as a gun owner ...." Thanks, editor, for standing up for public order and responsible citizenship. Yeesh.
Speaking of cellphones, here's an eye-opener on how you're going to be using quantum mechanics to call your mom.
I think we can safely say that everyone agrees that texting while driving is stupid and dangerous. Whether we need a specific law for that is a different debate, and the unnamed Courier editor's inclusion of the single-digit results in Phoenix pretty deeply undercuts his argument.
But readers should know that the editor managed to get it completely wrong here: Yesterday, before deadline, the Senate in fact passed the ban on texting while driving. The editor failed to check his facts before publishing, another victim of Senate President Bob Burns' hamhanded handling of procedure in the upper house.
You gotta keep your eyes on the road, editor.
Another window opens on the mind of Executive Editor Ben Hansen.
Ben kicks off his first pseudoblog post in over ten weeks with a scintillating quote from a dictionary, finally proving long-held reader suspicions that he does indeed have access to one in his office. (Having established that, perhaps Ben will go on to look up the definition of "blog" and start using the word less ignorantly.) But then he immediately goes on to demonstrate how reading a definition does not necessarily lead to better usage.
"The traditional paradigm for choosing members of Congress is to re-elect incumbents." No, Ben, "paradigm" does not mean "something that happens often."
This is of course to introduce yet another reiteration of Ben's slapdash prejudices against politicians. Then, having painted all pols as venal and corrupt, he sets out suggestions for electing better ones. I have to wonder what these better ones would look like, since in Ben's world, once they're elected, they're corrupt -- by definition (urk, sorry).
He does get the first point right: Pay attention. He doesn't cover how to go about that, but I'd infer that he expects readers to try to get their information from the Courier, conveniently filtered through Ben's political interpretations -- like the other four points he offers.
Contrary to what he promises, three of those points are focused on incumbents in office rather than electing anyone. Here's a better idea, voters: if you want to be heard by your political representatives, you have to treat them as real people with a serious job to do rather than unindicted co-conspirators. Communicate clearly, succinctly and respectfully.
Notice also how point four illustrates Ben's lack of imagination and inability to control his propaganda reflex: "On illegal immigration, if you're a Democrat make them take a stand on amnesty. If you're a Republican, make them take a stand on getting control of the border." Classy, Ben.
On the final point, Ben clearly assumes that everyone identifies with a political party and trusts it, demonstrating how out-of-touch he is with people in general.
We all want smart, skilled, energetic and dedicated public servants. We will never get them by disparaging the profession and disrespecting anyone who strives to serve. Here are some alternative ideas for encouraging better representation:
1. Pay attention to your whole community, not just your pet issues. Keep an eye out for people who know how to bring people together and get things done, and talk to them positively about getting involved in public service.
2. Spend some time and effort building some detailed understanding of the issues your community faces. Don't trust your prejudices, which are what most people think of as "common sense." More than skilled representatives, a community needs informed voters to operate sensibly. How? Ask open questions as close to the source as you can get. Representatives are real people with office hours, and they will meet with you, read your letters and respond.
3. Show up at the forums, talk with candidates and get to know them as people rather than test them for the 'right' answers on your favorite issues. Vote for people who care about consensus and against those who are married to specific ideas.
4. Turn off your teevee. You won't find any useful information there.
5. Show up and vote.
6. After the election, advocate respectfully for what you want the community to do -- this is another kind of voting -- and don't act like a whiny baby if you're not getting your way. No one wants to hear from non-adults.
I'm sure our community is relieved to know that if you're walking on a public trail and bullets start flying around you, there's no legal problem.
I'm sure the editors were very happy to print this stunningly weak response to Saturday's editorial.
If I were so generous as to allow that Rep Tobin is telling the honest truth here, I'd also be forced to accept that he's completely ignorant of long-established Federal law and process in this area, has no idea what's been going on for over a year with the 'birther' non-issue, and is as politically naive as a cinder block. Quite honestly, I've met the man and I'm confident he's not that stupid.
Given that, this column is nothing but smarmy political theatre, obvious to anyone with basic intelligence. I do think Andy's naive enough to believe that he can get away with dissembling this way, like a six-year-old trying his first magic trick for the aunts and uncles. Never underestimate the power of human self-delusion. And it plays well to the extreme-right base, who are similarly deluded. But out here in the reality-based community it ought to get him laughed right out of office.
What's sad is that it won't. He'll run again, and probably win again. Is there no Dem in District 1 smart enough and organized enough to stand up and take the easy electoral pickings represented by Mr Tobin? Get to work, people!
You have to be very careful when you've got a news story speculating about things that haven't happened.
Paula's story, sourced entirely from a talk by the director of government relations for the Arizona Association of School Business Officials, is all about opinions and analysis of future possibilities. Paula does a lot of paraphrasing outside quote marks of what the man said, and writes it as if she is saying it herself on the paper's behalf. This is a high-school-level writing error. Further, the lack of a contrasting view elevates these opinions to the status of fact. Wrong, wrong, wrong, especially when you're dealing with analysis from an organization with a clear vested interest, like this one. The editors should have sent this one back for further research and substantial rewrite.
In fact the Legislature has several available options for dealing with the budget lacking the sales-tax extension, and ought to be encouraged to explore them all seriously. Instead, masquerading as analysis we get a misleading political frame: sales tax vs. school funding. While many Republicans will want to play it that way, it's really not that simple.
This one is so obvious I hardly feel it's worth the trouble.
The unnamed Courier editor briefly tries on his fourth-estate hat, dusty from long disuse, and goes after the Dems for Charlie Rangel's slightly shady junkets. Not, apparently, because this is such a big deal, but rather for the much bigger fish yet to fry in the editor's ironclad pan of dark implications.
It's a pity the editor's long and storied history of blindness to the egregious corruption of Republicans has eliminated any credibility he might otherwise have on this issue. You've been too partisan for too long, editor, for anyone outside your breakfast-club cronies to care what you think of Dems.
If, on the other hand, you'd like to start building some political credibility on the off chance that you might need it some day, look to the snakes in your own nest. You could write every day for six months on Republican corruption, vice and venality at the national level and never repeat a name.
Better yet, stick to your knitting. You have no experience with Washington and no sources there. You're a small-town editor. There's plenty of work to be done here at home. Senator McCain is up for reelection, for instance, giving you enough material for a book, let alone a 350-word editorial.
The unnamed Courier editor gets after Dems to vote for a Republican initiative that would raid voter-protected conservation funds to keep state parks open. What's wrong with this picture? 
The Reps have decisive majorities in both houses and the governor's pen, if they could hold together, yet the editor doesn't point at Rep no-votes. Somehow this becomes a test of whether Dems are sufficiently public-spirited.
Then there's the actual issue that the Sierra Club (the only organization that the editor identifies as against the bill) is raising: that the funds are voter-protected, so following though on this idea would be illegal. Have the Reps finally jumped the shark, from the "Party of No" to the "Party of No Law If We Don't Like It"? I wouldn't vote for anyone, Dem or Rep, who would attempt to disregard inconvenient laws in such a cavalier fashion. I hope no one reading this would either, including you, dear editor.
The Legislature is stuck with the budget mess in large part because it cannot legally raid voter-protected funds. Suddenly there's an exception, and it just happens to be funds for an issue that Reps generally hate? C'mon, tell me another one.
If you really want Dem votes, how about raiding something like coal or cotton subsidies to keep the parks open? I don't hear that sort of idea bandied about.
To top it off, the editor decorates his online column with Rep Tobin's official photo next to the stern headline aimed at Dems. A casual reader would be forgiven for assuming that Andy is now writing editorials for the Courier, especially as this is exactly the sort of sentiment one might expect from the Republican whip. (To clarify, dear editor, official editorials, like this one, never get bylines or uncaptioned photos, especially head shots. This is just wrong, even online.)
I talked with Rep Mason about this today on the show. (Listeners: My apologies for the sound quality, I'm still trying to figure out how to get it right when both of us are on phone connections.) I said there and I'll say here that I agree completely with the unnamed Courier editor. It's obvious that the concurrent memorial is pure political grandstanding on the part of the radical right. The interesting thing is that it's not aimed at Dems, rather it's being used as a litmus test against moderate Reps.
What I got from the conversation with Ms Mason is something that neither the editors nor the commenters have apparently considered. It's this: if you're not a radical rightist or a Dem, the resolution is so far under your radar that it really doesn't matter.
I think this is a political blind spot, but I understand it. Obviously the federal government has clear process in place for determining the eligibility of presidential candidates, and obviously the President fulfilled those long before the radicals decided to create an issue out of nothing. But our state legislators are not any better informed about that process than anyone else who's not involved, so when the bill comes around that will send a postcard to Congress saying that Arizona wants presidential candidates to prove their eligibility, it's relatively harmless, whereas voting against it will give the radicals something to run against you.
Dems might be forgetting that the Republican party is in a civil war to decide who's running the show, the corporatists or the crazies, and the tactics in play are deadly. For Dem purposes, I think it's better if the crazies have the upper hand for a while.
It's a little over the top for the editor to decorate the editorial with the pic of Ms Mason, who only voted for the resolution, rather than Rep Tobin, who whipped it through the House, or Rep Burges, who wrote it. These last two are far more radical and have been favorites of the Courier editorial board, where Ms Mason has been often slighted by and far more critical of the paper throughout her four terms. Judy Burges wasn't "seduced by birthers," guys, she's a misspelled-sign-carrying member.
I'll be away from my desk on vacation this week, so blogging will likely be light again. I'll check in when I can. Feel free to add open comments here on whatever strikes your fancy.
The unnamed Courier editor echoes a big chunk of The People's Business this past weeekend, pointing out lawmaker initiatives that pretty obviously waste the Legislature's time.
I'm not sure he goes far enough. More than "a few" are pointless, silly, venal or evil. It's worse in an election year (that is, every other year) as legislators trot out the hobbyhorses that they think will attract votes.
The trouble is, that's exactly what they're elected to do: express the will of the people as they see it. By their actions shall ye know them, and if they're not up to the task of office, it's not really their fault -- blame the voters who put them there and keep them there. It's pretty easy to spot the silly, and the incompetent, and the evil when they're running for office, if you pay attention and know what to look for. Dumb legislation ought to get them boosted out after the first term. To the Legislature's credit, only one of the bills the editor mentions, the divorce bill, is making any headway in the process. That's also how the system is supposed to work.
But hold on: The editor concludes that rather than spend any time on other legislation, "it is justifiable to ask them to concentrate on this (the budget) and only this," even after saying "many of these measures ... will be for the good of Arizona's citizens."
Perhaps the editor was otherwise occupied last year, when Senate President Bob Burns (who also appointed himself chair of the Rules Committee and so holds more power over lawmaking than any legislator in AZ history) decided arbitrarily to halt all other legislative processes until the budget went through. The upshot was that the session lasted into August, the bills that squeaked through in the last minutes were ill-considered, and despite two special sessions the budget never got finished anyway. They're still working on it, and they're already months late in getting started on 2011.
These are clear and direct results of legislative inexperience. Burns was elected Pres only because smarter and more experienced pols were termed out. Ken Bennett would not have made those mistakes. Inexperience across the board in the Legislature allowed the debacle to go forward. Here are the results of the term limits you so love, editor: silly bills, wasted time, venal behavior and a bankrupt state.
(Prescott cable subscribers can hear replays of The People's Business on Tuesday at 11:30pm and Thursday at 7am on Access13.)
As an estimated three inches of snow fell on Prescott, hundreds gathered on the square today protesting what they called the "global-warming scam."
Buried on 7A (and not on dCourier.com) we find this story of a supposedly mystified House leadership playing catch-up with a budget plan that's been making the rounds for a couple of weeks. It seems Rep John Kavanagh has no idea who it's coming from.
The Courier could have scooped AP on this one if the editors listened to The People's Business over the last couple of weeks. This is the bipartisan plan that Rep Lucy Mason announced on the show. She's one of the plan's prime movers, advocating for compromise up the middle of the political divide that's brought the Arizona legislature to a standstill.
By the way, Kavanagh is not being entirely truthful about not knowing where it's coming from. Rep Mason and Rep Bill Konopnicki were keeping the plan inside so that leadership would have a chance to sign on before they went public with it.
We'll have more on this week's show, 2pm Saturday and Sunday on KJZA (89.5 FM) and KJZP (90.1 FM).
Update, Sunday morning: Rep. Kavanagh responds in the comments. Here's a link to the story as carried on myfoxphoenix.com, including a big chunk the Courier left out.
How figure skaters control spin speed, and how much fun you can have in a physics lab: angular momentum.
Apparently the unnamed Courier editor has again forgotten that the editorial column is not a personal blog.
Stories about movie stars go in the entertainment section, stories about church services go on the religion page, and stories about sports go on the sports page. Papers traditionally do this so readers can conveniently toss out the useless pages en masse.
Stories about local sports a hundred miles away have no place in a local paper at all, and that doesn't change just because the editor happens to be interested in sports. Readers don't care about his saltwater fish tank or his stamp collection, either.
What's weird and noteworthy about this piece, though, is the editor's support for a new non-user tax to help pay for his entertainment. This follows his blanket refusal to accept any new taxes to balance the state budget just four weeks ago. Gotta have priorities, I guess.
On first read of today's offering by the unnamed Courier editor, you might think, "well, that certainly sounds reasonable." Who can argue with "Honest solutions and personal accountability"?
But taking a look into the right-wing codebook I boosted from the cloakroom at the Hayworth fundraiser, I find some hidden messages. 
Code: "Good, because voters will have their say at the polls when it comes to foreign and domestic policies. Last month's shocking Massachusetts Senate race defined voters' strength in numbers."
Decoded: "Virtuous voters elect Republicans."
Code: "But voters will have to endure endless campaigns designed only to confuse, distort and generally raise rabble - hardly the hallmarks of a productive society. But is helping society the true agenda? Not in an election year."
Decoded: "Politicians only care about winning elections, and lying is the only way to do that."
Code: "The voters are acutely aware of what's wrong with our system."
Decoded: "Be afraid. Be very afraid."
Code: "Access to 24-7 information, solicited or otherwise, magnifies the flaws and expands the blame game."
Decoded: "When the media notice that Republicans are doing everything they can to block all government functions and can't seem to keep their pants zipped, it's just political blame-gaming."
Oh yeah, and how about "Honest solutions and personal accountability"? The codebook says: "Simplistic thinking and you're on your own, bubba."
I've got a better idea. When you're in Congress and the other party holds the largest majority in living memory, you accept that the voters said something pretty clear last time and get out of the way, like when you weren't picked for basketball that time. When the majority invites you to bring your ideas to the table, you show up, argue your points, and look for ways to advance compromise. It's called cooperation, and it's wildly unfashionable since Newt began his scorched-earth campaign, but it's how the system is supposed to work.
So no, we don't need less blame, we need less blameworthy actions. We need more statesmanship and devotion to public service. Look for that in your candidates this year, and where you find it, support those candidates.
That is to say his son Mike, high priest and oracle of the Reagan cult, thinks he would if he were, you know, alive. Today on the op-ed page he announces his new ReaganPAC "to seek out and support those candidates who share the principles of my father." I've got an idea who that is: 
Republicans to Nominate Zombie Reagan in 2012
Regular readers know what I think of Mike Reagan. But today there's a little chunk in there that I can agree with wholeheartedly: "... too many have quickly dismissed elected officials and potential candidates because they failed to (live) up to every possible expectation. If we are to accomplish our goals, we must remember that while our elected officials are imperfect, they must also be our allies."
He's trying to get a halter on the Tea Partiers and bring them in line behind the GOP, of course, but responsible citizens of all stripes would be wise to bear this in mind rather than treat all public servants as unindicted co-conspirators.
Jeannette Myers writes protesting the recent ruling giving corporations free rein to spend as much as they like for or against any candidate for public office. Some of the commenters would have it that this is just another left-right tussle, 'cuz they loves them some right-wing Supremes. Turns out it's really not.
Today's WaPo reports poll results showing clear majorities left, right and center strongly against this ruling and the political environment it would have us all live in.
Like health care, this is an issue that should unite us in doing something positive about it. Instead we see our corporate media creating spurious controversy, dividing us and conquering us. The opposition leaders in Congress oppose any effort by the majority to head this disaster off. You who identify with the right have to ask yourselves, seriously, who those guys are working for. It's clearly not you.
Most days it seems that the unnamed Courier editor has no difficulty cutting and pasting yesterday's front page into the editorial column. On this subject, however, it took from Thursday, when Cindy was writing up the Council retreat, to Tuesday night to come up with this little finger-wag. OK, it was a holiday weekend, there were a few dull, canned editorials already in the pipeline, and he didn't get to his desk to do anything about it till Tuesday. Anybody could understand that, right? (Well, except for Thursday and Friday. Dunno what happened there.)
What it tells me is that the paper is on autopilot not just on weekends but around them as well, susceptible to the Friday-news-dump strategy, and perfectly willing to be well behind the curve in responding, when it suits. Play the sleepy-small-town card.
PS Editor: You endorsed those boneheads for election, remember?
I normally skip completely over ads, so I'm three days late in noticing a box on A2 about a "coffee with the editors" scheduled for tomorrow and soliciting ideas and input for improving the paper. Fine idea.
What strikes me is that Exec Editor Ben Hansen's picture isn't in the ad, but that of formerly retired editor Karen DeSpain is, slugged as an editor, and she doesn't appear on the masthead. I smell change afoot. Karen is well regarded in the community and has been missed since she left the paper.
Since Cindy's story on Friday I've been wondering when we might see a Courier editorial on the City talking about charging for customarily 'free' public services like the library and public parks and trails.
They're not free, of course. Our taxes pay for them. Now the City, or at least certain Council members, would charge us again to use them.
The free public library in particular is an American tradition that speaks loudly of our commitment to open government, education, free thought and responsible citizenship. I would think a newspaper editor, of all people, would understand the implications of making access to public information more difficult based on economic class, and say something about it. Something loud.
Last week's revamp of the Courier's online offerings are overall very positive, I think.
The sleeker dCourier pages eliminate lots of clutter, fluff and advertising and look more professional, though I would like to see somewhat larger headlines to help distinguish the stories from one another. The home page is still a mess, trying to cram too much in, but it's easy to bypass.
I'm having fun with the new DailyCourierPages.com site, which brings back online pages as printed, following a long hiatus. The navigation and zoom work smoothly and much more quickly than the old version. Zooming in to read takes a little getting used to, as the zoom feature is maybe a little too sensitive to mouse movement, but you get the knack after a while. I'd only ask for a second zoom level for those of us who try to avoid getting too close to the monitor.
On the comments feature, I have to say that "requiring" first and last names, but disclaiming (above it, in red!) that you can use a pseudonym sort of defeats the purpose. Registering commenters with real names will lead to fewer but more responsible comments. You might also consider giving registered commenters pride of place and putting anonymous comments lower, or maybe a larger typeface for registered comments.
Here's a cookie for the IT department. Now marketing gets the challenge of making money on it.
One thing, though: The narrower pages of today's papers make the six-column format hard for readers. The lines are just too short. Go to five and you'll make it easier for your readers and have more interesting layout choices in the bargain.
I guess the editors missed me over the past week, so to lure me back to my desk, they gave me this great big Monday-morning present, guaranteed to piss me off. They ran a politically charged opinion piece as news.
But wait, there's more. Having chosen this AP op-ed by Tom Raum for a box on 6A, they cut it on both the hard copy and dCourier to eliminate what little balancing information Raum used in favor of the Obama administration. (Sorry, cutting an outside story on the Website, where there is literally no space limitation, is just wrong.) Here's the original story in full.
I can understand it when subtle propaganda works its way into news stories. People often write from unexamined assumptions about the world and don't realize it. But this is far from subtle. The assertions of fact without references, the assertions of other people's motivations, the use of obvious opinions as facts all mark this clearly as an opinion piece. No editor could miss it. This was not a mistake, folks.
I'm having a visit with one of my oldest and dearest friends, so there's not a lot of time for the paper. I notice big unannounced changes in the look of dcourier.com, and I'll have comments on that once I have a chance to get used to it. For now it doesn't seem that the editors are doing anything egregious or particularly interesting this week.
I've been looking for the Courier's coverage of this week's press release from Rep Kirkpatrick on the budget, but nary a word.
It seems that our Mr Tobin can get his press releases printed anytime, but our representative in the big game is only covered when she's being criticized. A local newspaper monopoly ought to do better for us than that.
What's cool about the seventh planet, and lots of talk about its funny name, which could have been George.
This silliness about the pronunciation might be avoided if English-speakers weren't so habitually bad at pronouncing classical words. The Greeks called the mate of Gaia Ouranos, and that was Latinized as Uranus, which in Latin is pronounced "oorahnoos."
Bonus: The Greek creation myth featuring Ouranos as a primordial player is wild and fairly gruesome, a fun read. Before you click through, a trivia question: From what dismembered organ did Aphrodite spring?
I've been a little hesitant to say anything that might jinx it, but I've been noticing that copy editing on the Courier has been much better of late. The rampant, glaring typos and embarrassing headlines that have been standard fare in the paper for many years are lately much diminished. I don't know who should get the credit for this, but here's a cookie for whomever you are. I'd love to hear from inside whether there have been relevant policy changes.
The Bush administration's teevee-inspired border boondoggle turns out to be as unworkable as Reagan's "missile defense shield," and we're all just so surprised. But for once the unnamed Courier editor isn't hopping up and down about how the Feds are doing nothing to "control" the border against the illegals who are the root of all evil. While he doesn't really take any position, today he seems relatively thoughtful as he dips a few spoonfuls from the AP story (did this run in the print edition?) and scatters some numbers from 'studies' published by reactionary think-tanks.
Between this and the gun thing on Tuesday, one might wonder whether there's been a change in someone's medication this week.
After years of searching, a charitable nonprofit providing disabled kids and adults with a very special, therapeutic service finds a permanent home, but can't get all the neighbors to sign off. If the comments are any indication, there's going to be some public pressure about this. If you'd like to help, here's the HwH website for a start. They can use it.
I've met with these people and put them on the radio. Their service is terrific and their community spirit is palpable. How anyone could think they and their ten horses wouldn't be the best sort of neighbors is utterly beyond me.
Update, Friday: I see the editor agrees.
This is a nice, solid, researched and balanced news story, giving the subject its due without rehashing too much of the play-by-play that we've seen too often before. Lisa gets a cookie.
If I read this correctly, the unnamed Courier editor is advocating mandatory life sentences for every violent offense. It would be fascinating to hear the editor argue this in a case of, say, a drunken bar brawl in light of the actual cost of incarceration and the inevitable effect this would have on his taxes.
Public safety matters, but perfect public safety is simply not possible in a nation that values freedom. Criminals will exist, cops and innocent people will be hurt and die, as long as we value our humanity more than imaginary safety. It's part of the price of liberty.
Before lightly dismissing the idea that our culture of adolescent worship of guns and violence might have had anything to do with this problem, the editor asks a few plaintive rhetorical questions demonstrating only his lack of imagination. Were he a journalist, he might have taken a more constructive tack with this and put those questions and others to some of our judges, prosecutors, corrections professionals and maybe a psychologist or social scientist. He might have got a good, informative story out of it. Instead, we get this pitiful waste of space.
Editing note: The editor leaves a crucial fact out of this piece, assuming that everyone knows it: the alleged shooter was in prison here for nearly four years on aggravated assault and related charges (AZ Dept of Corrections). That omission makes his argument nonsensical within the piece.
The unnamed Courier editor displays some common sense in protesting Sen. Russell Pearce's attempt to roll back restrictions on firearms, even identifying Pearce correctly as "radical," qualifying for the cookie. I'm grateful that the Courier has lately been consistently applying a more nuanced position on guns than the blind devotion it did previously. It's just too bad the editor's not a little better at journalism, however.
Yesterday, before deadline, the bill passed out of committee carrying amendments addressing the editor's expressed concerns. In other words, the editor wound up writing about a different bill, getting his editorial completely wrong. Here's the update.
This might be just an "oh well,things change" moment, but the readers wind up utterly misled on the content of the legislation, so any input they give their representatives will misfire.
A newspaper editor should understand that the legislative committee process is where a raw bill gets hammered into something the body can vote on, and it's rare that a bill doesn't change substantially in the process. In Arizona it's relatively easy to find out online when a bill is being considered in which committee, and the state offers streaming real-time video of many committee hearings. It's not like the editor couldn't know what was going on.
A skilled journalist would have either published this before the committee process, when constituents still had time to weigh in on the raw bill, or held his fire until the bill was out of all committees and appeared on the floor agenda. On this the editor jumped the gun. (Sorry, sometimes I can't resist.)
Will we perhaps see a followup on the current bill?
Befitting the regular Monday dump of press releases on the front page, here the unnamed Courier editor takes on a topic of kindergarten complexity -- public comments at City Council meetings -- and manages to live up to the challenge by saying pretty much nothing.
Windbags are a professional hazard of public meetings, and we have to face the fact that these opportunities exist every bit as much for the windbags as for anyone else.
Windbags do what they do because they don't feel they're being heard, either by the public officials they're addressing or by others in their daily lives. The only good way to reduce incidents of windbaggery is to build and resolutely reinforce a culture of caring respect, so people clearly understand that the officials aren't using the Council table as a wall between higher and lower classes, while reinforcing respect for the time of everyone in the room. But Council members must accept that windbaggery will happen on occasion, and they're drawing their pay in large part to put up with precisely that. Skilled leaders know that just expressing that they care to hear what the windbag is saying will reduce windbaggery by 20% out of the gate, and other leadership techniques can help a poor communicator get to the heart of what he wants to say and step down.
Even when those don't work, it's far better to have Council and the public put up with a windbag than to have the Mayor gaveling people off the podium to avoid hearing what they're saying, and the difference between worthwhile speech and windbaggery is in the ear of the beholder. The First Amendment does not say "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, unless it's boring or takes too long." Council must bear in mind at all times that they are elected to serve the public, not the other way around.
Note to editor: Where you wrote, "the presiding officer has the right to reign in a speaker," that should be "rein in." Given all the Western movies you so love to quote and our town's cowboy reputation, your readers expect you to know a little more about the terminology.
Today the Courier extends its reputation for hipshooting into the area of transportation policy.
The unnamed Courier editor poo-poohs the paltry 13 billion clams the President is proposing for high-speed rail as inadequate to the task of building a national high-speed rail network. Of course, no one has promised any such thing. From the WSJ:
"Building a high-speed rail network like the one in Western Europe would likely cost hundreds of billions of dollars, but Mr. Obama called the $13 billion effort 'a first step.'"
From The New York Times: "The government has identified 10 corridors, each from 100 to 600 miles long, with greatest promise for high-speed development. They are: a northern New England line; an Empire line running east to west in New York State; a Keystone corridor running laterally through Pennsylvania; a major Chicago hub network; a southeast network connecting the District of Columbia to Florida and the Gulf Coast; a Gulf Coast line extending from eastern Texas to western Alabama; a corridor in central and southern Florida; a Texas-to-Oklahoma line; a California corridor where voters have already approved a line that will allow travel from San Francisco to Los Angeles in two and a half hours; and a corridor in the Pacific Northwest."There's a reason it's called "mass transit" -- it's designed for lots of people to use. Look at the graphic, editor: the lines are where the people are. The city of New York by itself has half again as many people in it than the entire state of Arizona. You want bang for your tax buck, right?
Update, 11pm Monday: Well, well, well, there are situations in which the editors will stoop to correcting mistakes online! An anonymous commenter alerts me that the editorial has been changed, sometime in the last four hours, adding attribution of the copied bits to the CSM. Pity he didn't get the typo while he was at it. Must've been in a hurry.
I've been thinking about this one since it went up, but haven't had time to get to it.
The editor blasts legislators for having the unmitigated gall to try and walk back laws that "the people" gave us by initiative. He's talking yet again about term limits, his second editorial on the subject in three days. This writer wonders whether he'd be as protective of an initiative he doesn't like so much, but let's leave that aside for the moment. There's plenty of stupid here to deal with already.
His argument is that "the voters have spoken" on term limits -- 18 years ago -- and while he doesn't refute that "they deprive lawmakers of institutional knowledge and give too much influence to aides and lobbyists," to him that decision is carved in stone, apparently because it is infallible. Like the Pope.
He tries to reinforce this with Rep Tobin's aborted move to reintroduce as a bill the payday-loan industry's failed initiative of a year and a half ago. The editor sees a parallel there that evades me.
"A government by the people is supposed to be one in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them," says the editor, citing a principle of American civics that as far as I can tell he made up on the spot. Our system is not direct democracy, that doesn't exist anywhere. In representative government, supreme power is indeed vested in the people, but it is by design not exercised by them.
Our little direct-democracy option, the initiative process, was designed and built well over a century ago, and acts like it. It's primitive, allowing nefarious players to take advantage of us in many ways, and it's morphing into government by advertising. The idea that "the people" are behind most initiatives is either blindly naive or actively malicious. The idea that a few sentences scrawled on a bar napkin can pass through the initiative process and become good law is plain stupid, and most initiatives really are nearly that poorly vetted.
But the crux of the editor's argument is that "the people" can't be wrong in passing through these things. We've given term limits 18 years to prove out, and what we see is growing ignorance, disorganization, disarray and even corruption in our legislative bodies as a direct result. The state is functionally bankrupt, our Accidental Governor is trying to get her way by screaming at people, and our amateur Legislature is arranging duckpins on the poopdeck of the Titanic and thinking about a nice lunch. It's past time to repair this crucial mistake and start rebuilding our political culture.
The real 'duh' moment here is at the end, where the editor implies that the Legislature will pass this through the regular process and "the people" won't get to vote on it. The bill in process is a concurrent resolution, which if passed will result in a ballot measure. There's no other legal way to get around an established initiative. A newspaper editor ought to know these things.
It's funny, I must have missed the Courier stories about the candidacies of Dean Martin, Terry Goddard and the other front-runners for actual nomination. But we get the press release from our semi-local gun god verbatim as a news story. I have a feeling we know how this is going to go in everybody's hometown newspaper.
I've got just one thing to say about this AP story: In eight years of unending public controversy, the Courier never once associated the word "embattled" with George W Bush. Just sayin'.
Regular readers know that I was born without the sports gene and could not care less about the Olympics or any other spectator sports event. As a mediated pastime I consider sports less harmful than, say, eating bugs, but I'd still be happy to see the whole international-combat-via-sports thing dry up and fall off as we humans move through our social adolescence. I wouldn't bother to write an editorial on it, though. It's just not that important.
So when the unnamed Courier editor spends his daily inches to feign a question and opine clumsily that the Olympics are "so, so worth it," I have to laugh. So worth what, exactly? The games have never cost our community one thin dime, and the editor will get them for free on his teevee (albeit amid a relentless commercial assault that would melt my brain). It's just a non-issue.
So we come to the question: why did he write this? Logically all I can come up with is that the editor is so bored with our puny local issues that he's wrapping his brain in the primary opiate of the masses -- television -- and parroting its navel-gazing self-absorption, making its concerns his own.
So the editor offers an unintended public service here, exemplifying the danger in the same way a certain pan of frying eggs did some years ago -- this is your brain on teevee. Just say no.
The Legislature is considering a move to repeal term limits, and the unnamed Courier editor is predictably steamed that any politician might have the temerity to resist one of his favorite policies. He casts dark aspersions on their motivations, as usual, and farbles on about how we need a running clock to keep lazy pols from "wasting time" in office. Legislation is such an easy job, after all.
I've been there on a weekly basis through over seven years of legislative experience with Rep Lucy Mason, heard her stories (those we talk about on the radio and those we can't), and watched her evolution from fresh-faced, idealistic freshman to hard-bitten, tempered senior. I have no doubt at all that she is a far smarter and more effective legislator now than in her first term, and that no one comes into the job with much useful understanding of how the state works or any knowledge of the players involved.
Term limits shift institutional memory and organizational power to staff (who, if they're doing their jobs correctly, do not impart it to legislators) and lobbyists (who use it at least selectively and often strategically). A less-experienced Legislature overall means slower and lower-quality training for freshmen. A more tenuous institutional culture empowers newbies to reinvent the wheel with a square rim and call it innovation.
It's hard for people who are already convinced to understand, but the train wreck that we're currently experiencing at the Capitol is largely the direct result of inexperience in the Legislature and the Governor's office. And the Courier would have us not only maintain this as received wisdom, but extend it to Washington. As if our national politics aren't sufficiently dysfunctional.
Perhaps most convincing to me on this issue is that the freshman Rep. Mason was a true believer in term limits, and by her junior term she was completely convinced that the policy is idiotic, not because she will be unable to continue working 72 hours a week of constant frustration and flak from people who think she's a criminal for $25K a year, but rather because she really does care about effectively addressing the problems we face as a society. I don't always agree with her policy choices, but I'll defend to the end her sincerity and abilities in public service. She's better for her experience, and that's the sort of legislator I want working for me.
Term limits arbitrarily prevent me from voting for the representative I want.This I consider a substantial impairment of my most basic constitutional right. The editor makes his living on the First Amendment. One would think he'd be more protective of the body of that great document.
