Editorial: New tourism plan makes good sense

"Tourism or bust." Ack.

At several points in today's editorial the unnamed Courier editor admits explicitly that the City staff's plan to bring tourism promotion in-house is short-term thinking. He's following up on yesterday's story by Cindy in which Council applauds shearing off years of ties to PACT, rejigging the City bureaucracy and reallocating funds to pump up tourism.

Tourism is all very nice for kitschy downtown trinket-sellers, hoteliers and restaurants, but I have a hard time imagining that anyone thinks of it as a reliable foundation for economic activity in general, good jobs or municipal revenues. Communities that rely on tourism wind up out in the cold when the fashion changes or fuel costs rise, leaving their already overstretched minimum-wage workforces bankrupt, jobless and further reliant on public services for which funds have dried up. Tourism should be the frosting on economic planning, not the cake, and it's extremely disheartening to see our Council and staff so bereft of ideas that this is being hailed as some sort of great leap forward.

Does no one notice that the plan includes dropping the office of economic development director? This was the person charged with marketing the city's advantages to large companies and manufacturers. Does that effort go away while we goof around with tourists? The Courier apparently didn't ask the question.

I'm not convinced it was a great idea in the first place to privatize the bed-tax revenues by employing PACT, which farmed the whole thing out to an ad agency. But I'm also not convinced that City staff has anything like the marketing savvy to employ those funds effectively. Right off the bat they're talking about building events and a marketing plan from the ground up, and I have to wonder what we've been spending money on all these years that apparently leaves nothing useful in terms of planning from the previous regime. I also recall how eager certain City department heads have been to expand their personal empires. Finally it seems to me that with these new salaries City staff are recommending an overall increase in expenditures for tourism promotion, and I have to wonder what PACT could have done with those additional funds. It reads like an apples/oranges comparison designed to favor salaries to City staff.

In the new director's position the City is proposing to spend 10% of bed tax revenues on one person -- not on ad buys, not on communications or infrastructure, on the person in the chair. How can they possibly justify that expense in terms of benefits to our residents? The editor isn't bothering to ask. But I imagine it's occurred to more than a few business owners and managers who rarely see benefits from tourists on the square.

A rap on immigration

While today's Courier editorial is entertaining in its clueless confusion, I'm going to depart from accustomed practice today and try to say something more substantive than usual, from the perspective of a tenth-generation American citizen who's also had some experience as an illegal immigrant.

Only North Korean spies, Russian mobsters and American military get into Japan without some sort of documentation, so "undocumented" doesn't work for me, but I don't mind "illegal" at all. The Japanese immigration system is a maze of catch-22s, so most anyone who goes there for the work has to play the margins, working illegally until you can get someone substantial with a company to personally sponsor a work permit. This can take years. Meanwhile you're in more or less constant danger of sudden deportation if you run afoul of the notoriously rule-embracing authorities. Did I break the law? Yes, repeatedly and at length. Did I hurt anyone by it? It's quite safe to say no. Neither did the 35,000 other foreigners living in Tokyo at the time, serving the needs of businesses and individuals in an affluent and expanding economy.

So it is with illegals in the US. Crossing the border without official permission violates the law, but of itself it hurts nothing and no one. What matters is what you do after that.

So as the furor over AZ'a new anti-immigrant (or, materially, anti-Mexican) law plays out in the national media, I start there. If we seriously hope to resolve this issue and move on in a civilized, practical manner, we have to look past the political pantomime to the real, living challenges we face.

Immigration, legal and illegal, is an issue only because of political choices that ignore nature and practical reality. The idea that we can use an imaginary line in the sand to keep poor, hungry people from filling available jobs and taking the money back to their families is as dumb as a box of rocks, anyone with half a brain can see that. The people running this country for the last 200-odd years, their peace officers, their military, their businesspeople, their criminals and clergy, have generally been of at least average intelligence. So it's safe to conclude that the system is rigged to not work -- for a purpose.

That's how it was for me and thousands of other illegals in Japan. The system's official purpose is to protect Japanese jobs and society at large from international miscreants. But, like I said, the mobsters, spies and other criminals have no difficulty getting around it, nor do most legitimate job-seekers. Its true functions, demonstrated every day on the ground for anyone who cares to look, are to placate the voters' fear of foreigners while creating a cheap, pliable pool of off-the-books, politically powerless laborers. The same is true here, and it has been since immigration controls were first imposed.

Periodically, when economic conditions erode slightly here in the richest nation on earth, public attention turns to the 'foreigner problem' and how to address it. It's always been an easy sell politically, so it's been exploited by fearmongers since time began. This time is no different.

Today's illegal immigration is qualitatively the same as at any time since we've had a southern border, and quantitatively it only varies with the relative economic conditions in the US and the nations of Central America -- as you may have noticed, when Arizona's economy went south for a spell, lots of immigrants split for greener pastures. There is always a small contingent of people for whom fear of foreigners is the top concern, but the only reason we've seen "immigration" become a big public issue in recent years is that it's politically convenient for certain interests to make it so.

When you're selling something, you have to keep stock on hand, and if your product is fear you have to have an object for it. When the commies imploded, the fearmongers started selling Muslims. That pitch got old, and now they're flogging brown people from the south. It's so juvenile it would be funny if it didn't have such serious implications for our economy and national character.

But here we are. Lots of Americans are invested in the idea that illegal immigrants are suddenly "flooding in" to steal their jobs and stereos, make "anchor babies," defile their daughters, empty the government ATMs and cause general mayhem. Many shady businesses large and small depend on illegal workers to make their plans and balance sheets work. Many underqualified politicians need to provide voters with a reason to elect them. And I don't care if you throw a trillion dollars and every state militia at the border, you're not going to do much to separate poor, hungry people from available cash without an ocean. They're better motivated than we are.

For decades, immigration has been a safe issue for fearmongering authoritarians. They knew in their hearts that no amount of effort would actually have much real effect, so they could demand pretty much anything without risking success -- and losing the issue -- or substantially threatening the balance sheets of their buddies in the chambers of commerce. It was perfect.

But this time their shortsightedness has come home to roost. Having failed so miserably and spectacularly at governance for so long, they ran out of other issues to run on, and so had to ramp up the immigration issue to such a pitch that something had to give.

Enter the Arizona legislature, facing an election year with nothing to show but a bankrupt government and every fifth home in or on the brink of foreclosure, and its governor, Peter-Principled by happenstance into an office which she has neither the intellectual depth nor the leadership qualities to fulfill. When an out-of-state front group for old-school upperclass white-supremacists dangled what looked like a robust response to the "problem" of illegal immigration, our elected officials took the bait like a pike on a wiggler.

It's completely illegal, of course, the consensus among those who know is pretty clear. There will be an injunction, probably at the state level but perhaps from the federal level as well, and this legislation will not stand. The Rs only need it to get through the midterm elections, and I expect most of the survivors will back away from it after that.

But there's a new factor to bring the old edifice down. The Obama administration and the Congress are making noises about doing something, perhaps before the midterms, to intercept the ball and take back some yardage.

Obviously they can't out-fascist the fascists, so what could they do to successfully address the voters' fears and maybe do some good for us economically at the same time?

My answer is to expand NAFTA to include labor. Don't try to close a border that can't be closed -- open it further, and handle it like an adult.

Speaking as an illegal immigrant again, nobody with any sense prefers shady status. We have illegal immigrants because we impose artificial limits on how many we allow to be legal. The job demand exceeds the supply of legal visas, so more people come however they can. We can only eliminate illegals by making them legal.

We can live up to our rhetoric about free trade. We can allow Mexican (and Canadian) workers to compete on a level playing field, under the same worker protections and minimum wages, and paying the same taxes. After work we can let them go home to their families rather than force them to live as a vulnerable underclass. They can be free to speak up against criminals without fear of the legal system breaking up their homes and livelihoods. They can pay a fair share for the government services we all need. We can live up to our principles as we never have, and accept them into our society as people with dignity and and important roles to play. And we can fairly ask the Mexican (and Canadian!) government to reciprocate for US workers.

The mechanics of this are simple and relatively cheap -- way less than trying to build and staff a 2,000-mile Berlin Wall. We'll need to register everyone individually so they can be tracked and taxed, the same way we citizens are, and check them in and out at the border. Registration will not convey the vote -- only citizenship can do that, and that will remain an arduous road. We'll probably also have to modify the Constitution, though, to eliminate the blanket grant of citizenship based on birth on US soil, and instead require parents who are citizens or legal permanent residents. We're not trying to fulfill Manifest Destiny anymore.

We'll still get some criminals, of course. Everyone's human, and seven to ten percent of all humans are bad enough to be criminals. We won't keep them out as long as there is profit in smuggling. We can talk later about drug laws. But they won't be smuggling people anymore, and that's a big plus for us all. There will be challenges -- language, tax cheating, health care, education -- but we're already dealing with all of those, badly. They'll be more easily handled when the people involved aren't classed as criminals.

The businesses that have benefited from unfair compensation will have to find new ways to get by, and the fearmongers will have to find a new boogeyman to scare us with. We win. Show me the downside.

The hard part is getting past the core fear of The Other. Americans are not much different from any other group in that we identify as a group only when faced with people in other groups. For this to ever work, and if we're to ever resolve the "immigration" issue, we have to get past that irrational fear and start seeing not scary invaders but ordinary people, just like us, living in different circumstances but with the same human values.

Editorial: History is worth effort to save it

The unnamed editor is quite right that "We need the individual efforts of those who preserve our heritage," but this conclusion misfires, showing that he is among the many in our community who take our history for granted and think that "someone - usually someone else - will protect and preserve it."

Ms Ruffner is a truly dedicated and accomplished advocate for history and the arts, but she will be the first to tell you that individual effort is only effective in the context of large, dedicated groups. That means if you care, you don't wait to give Ms Ruffner a gold star, you pitch in and help row the boat. Perhaps the editor could better inform the public about how the Courier is spending sweat and money to help preserve our heritage. It's called leading by example.

In the comments, "Gracie xx" says "The (buildings) of a hundred years ago will probably still be standing and beautiful, but nothing being constructed these days will be standing beside them. Well, maybe to illustrate a lack of class," and it struck me that she's righter than she may realize. The historic structures we cherish in our town all rose before the advent of the middle class, when the skilled workers who built them typically put in 80- and 90-hour weeks under harsh and dangerous conditions for subsistence wages. Yes, Gracie, that class system is mostly gone, but as a result very few can afford the kind of construction that will endure for hundreds of years in grace and dignity, certainly not in a commercial building.

We pay that cost for our more comfortable lifestyle and better working conditions. It's a trade no civilized society regrets, but we have to be aware that only if have the vision to maintain the great legacy of the artisans of years past can we continue to live in a community with this kind of architectural depth and character.

Pseudebate: Should names go with online comments?

Readers will recognize that this is one of my cherished hobbyhorses, and it's odd to find myself on the same side as Ben. I imagine that having spent a lot of time editing his commenters, he's simply realized that most anonymous comments aren't worth the time.

Once again the Courier has set up a false dichotomy for "debate." As several commenters are pointing out, there are plenty of ways to provide identity without risking retribution. So there's a lot of grey between guaranteed real names and no names at all.

Richard argues the benefits of anonymity, but apparently doesn't notice that comments on dCourier are anonymous only to readers -- the editors have email addresses and traceback capability. He writes, "It would be foolish to listen to feedback only if you know a customer's name and personal information," but of course he does know. There is no advantage to anonymity when you're not really anonymous.

The advantage of anonymous posting is to the Courier, in that heated exchanges keep the hits coming, raising the ad numbers. Richard is also the IT guy, it should be noted, and more comments looks good for his department. Quality doesn't matter.

What no one's saying is that if you're truly afraid that some nut or your boss is going to give you some sort of hell for speaking up in a certain way on a public issue, maybe you should just keep quiet and deal with your life in chains. You have other issues to resolve before you pipe up. If you take a good hard look you'll probably find that your fears are silly. Free your mind first, then your speech.

Ben writes, "We require everyone to sign letters and give a phone number so we can verify that they wrote the letter," assuring us that we can trust what's printed. He'll have to explain separately the several people I've known who wrote regularly under different pseudonyms so they could get published more often. It's a mug's game for everyone.

Commenting makes the paper accountable to its readers, directly and immediately. Commenters are also made accountable for what they say. But if you're wearing a mask, there's no reason to care what anyone thinks. That's why the comment sections turn into food fights. That's bad enough, but the factor people rarely note is the people who had something important to contribute but didn't post because they felt intimidated by the jerks or that the conversation was a waste of time. You can't count those people, and you'll never hear what they have to say until you make them feel safe enough to say it.

Editorial: Ag exemption abusers rip us off

Duh.

The only mystery here is why it's taken the unnamed Courier editor literally decades to figure this out.

Column: Public misunderstands bicyclists

Lisa Barnes is correct in pointing out that car and truck drivers are often actively hostile to bicyclists. This is obvious to anyone who's ever pushed a pedal in Prescott. The bigger problem, though, is the distraction and unawareness that many drivers live in as their default state while driving, which causes as many problems for pedestrians and other drivers.

Did you ever think about why we have curbs and sidewalks? They're to help keep cars in the roadway and away from pedestrians -- not because drivers hate walkers, but because so many people are incompetent to drive. We take these things for granted as civilized infrastructure. Why must it be so different for bikes?

Obviously a lot of people are incompetent to drive bikes as well, but that's only an argument in favor of separating them from car and truck traffic. As I've said before here, bike lanes aren't for bikes, they're for cars, keeping bikes from impeding traffic lanes. If drivers ever start to catch on to that idea, you'll see bikes lanes striping in lickety-split.

It would have been nice if Ms Barnes had gone beyond telling stories that everyone knows to advocate solutions for everyone, biker and driver alike.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I thought proofreading on the paper had improved, but the egregious top line on this story shows the editors are still prone to distraction.

Editorial: Gun owners should get CCW training

It's revealing that the unnamed Courier editor thinks it necessary to say that gun owners should get training even though the new law doesn't require it. Isn't it dead obvious that society has little to fear from people who are competent and responsible enough to take this advice? The problem for us all is the many who are irresponsible and/or incompetent.

From the mouths and keyboards of that same group, the comments further illustrate why responsible people want and support restrictions on firearms. It's hair-raising what some people think.

Just as we institute speed limits because of the few who aren't responsible enough to keep fellow drivers safe, we maintain restrictions on firearms because of those who would abuse their rights stupidly, incompetently or irresponsibly. No one seriously argues that speed limits are an unconstitutional infringement of our right to free movement and assembly.

If the editor cared more about public safety than the imagined freedom of an armed populace and his personal right to make loud noises and break things whenever he likes, he'd have opposed the new law. Imagining that this "freedom" will not encourage irresponsible people to act irresponsibly is as woolly-headed as it gets.

This week on Healthy Medicine

We just had a fabulous interview with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor, author of My Stroke of Insight. She also gave a great talk at the TED conference in '08. Check it out. Then listen to Healthy Medicine at 1pm this Saturday and Sunday on KJZA/KJZP, 89.5 and 90.1FM.

Feed-Your-Head Friday

What do you know about Neptune?

Gov. Brewer urges voters to support Prop. 100

Paula plays dutiful steno for the Governor as she stumps for the sales-tax initiative. The enormous pushback from the right, as seen in in the comments, would be amusing if it weren't so blockheaded and ill-informed. The fur is flying as everyone throws their favorite myths into the fray.

Myth 1: The tax won't really be temporary, they'll just keep it going. I've seen the legislation and its ironclad sunset provision, and in order to extend it the Legislature would have to write a new bill and either vote for it themselves, which they are obviously too frightened to even attempt, or get us to vote for it again.

Myth 2: The Republicans want more taxes to support unnecessary programs -- they can cut a lot more. The cognitive disconnect that allows people to maintain this idea without heads exploding amazes me. Our entire state government has been underfunded for decades as Republicans exploited every chance to reduce taxes and ignored every opportunity to restructure the revenue system on a more reliable and sustainable basis. Beyond programmatic efficiencies like reducing education paperwork, there really isn't anything significant left in the budget to cut that won't severely hurt vital programs or cause significant cost increases elsewhere.

Myth 3: Money is being spent on "government" that should be spent on education. Take a look at any pie chart of the Arizona budget: education and health care are already the vast majority of it, and administration is a sliver.

Myth 4: The schools are already well funded, they're just incompetent. There's no public school in America with sufficient resources to provide sufficient education to prepare students for real life and citizenship in the 21st century, and Arizona is consistently near the bottom of the rankings on both the funding and result scales. Yes, we could be spending what we spend more efficiently by demanding less of our education professionals in terms of paperwork and such, but we'd still be way behind the curve in giving kids the educational opportunities they need and we need them to have.

Myth 5: A temporary sales tax is the best way to bridge this temporary problem in the economy. No, more sales tax is probably the least smart way to fix a problem caused in greatest part by overreliance on sales taxes for revenue. It's just the easiest to get through the Legislature. Sales taxes are regressive in that they fall most heavily on those less able to pay, and they tend to dry up at exactly the point where recessive economic cycles increase the need for state services, as we have just experienced so famously.

The Republicans have taken our state economy for a long joyride, trashed it and left it in the farmer's field. They're culpable, but we're the adults who have to deal with the mess. Further, if we don't pass Prop 100 and tax ourselves more, the hammer falls harder on our kids and teachers -- that's built into the budget already. There is no alternative mechanism ready to fix that barring a magic and completely unforeseen infusion from the federal level through the Governor's office. We really don't have much choice about the sales tax -- we have to call the tow truck, pick the heap up and get it fixed. But as voters we do have the opportunity to fire the people who have been making the wrong decisions that led us here, and install those who understand the problem and will apply a better vision for our future.

Editorial: Trees, power lines always conflict

The unnamed Courier editor agrees that APS needs to slow down and that power lines don't necessarily warrant unchallenged right-of-way on Prescott streets. He even risked the 'p' word in urging utilities to "adopt more progressive policies about neighbors' coexistence with trees," at which point I about fell off my chair. But again I reached the end of the column disappointed that the editor can't seem to get beyond the surface of the issue.

The problem is far larger than one poorly planned power line vs one old Ponderosa pine. It's far larger than the widely reported gratuitous and radical destruction of trees by APS as well.

The situation that made the news came about because the rules changed a couple of times on how far lines must be spaced away from trees, and rather than provide a longer-term solution and move the lines, APS (with the City's blessing) has chosen instead to mow down trees that have been perfectly OK for many decades. The editor seems to have missed that dynamic entirely.

But that's still not the whole picture. Look around. We normally see right past it, but if you open your eyes a little wider you may notice that the view in most Prescott neighborhoods is dominated by electrical lines and raw poles. We've come to accept it as normal, but it's nasty to look at and, given weather and all sorts of moving hazards, unsafe and unreliable. Its only virtue is that it's relatively cheap. Should that be the primary value in this transaction?

APS is a monopoly provider sanctioned by the state for our area. We have no choice about that. In return for this captive market, it's both legally and ethically right to demand that the company serve our community values as well as it does its shareholders.

The hundred-year legacy of overhead power and communication lines is not a cherished tradition, it's always been an eyesore and safety hazard. A forward-thinking community that cares about quality of life will find ways to gradually move that creaky old infrastructure underground as roads, sidewalks and alleyways are repaired and replaced. Conserving our trees is an important part of a bigger picture, the sort of vision for our community that our elected leaders and City staff should bear in the front of their minds at all times.

A plea for typography

My introduction to the word biz included extensive training in typography, the arcane and underappreciated art that makes printed text both beautiful and easier to read. Despite what you see increasingly on the web, that art is even more important online, where readers are often reluctant to read from the screen.

So it's with some frustration that I've seen the style change on dcourier.com from paragraph separations to no separations and no indents. It's been bad enough that the Courier editors generally insist on splitting what should be paragraphs up into individual sentences. By removing any indication of the head of the line, they've made a mess of the page, and as a result I'm sure many readers tire and give up. That's bad for public information and it's bad in terms of eyes on pages and the revenues they bring into the paper.

This change happened a little while ago, and I've been holding off commenting on it in hopes that it was a transitory glitch someone was working to fix.

I expect it came about porting stories to the site from the paper edition, where the typography software automatically indents body text, and no one has bothered to set up a short conversion routine to simply double the end-of-line character. That's just one of many ways to skin this cat, it's easy and will cost nothing. Since the editors apparently don't care, can someone in IT just handle it? Your readers won't necessarily understand well enough to thank you, but they will get to the end of the story a lot more often and the Courier may then be able to afford to keep paying you.

Update, April 27: Perhaps this did the trick.

Editorial: Closed session undermines faith

The unnamed Courier editor gets it right today in calling the City Council (specifically, Messrs. Lamerson, Blair and Hanna, who forced the issue) on its secret meeting about "vagrancy," which is code for brown and homeless people.

If there's any way to legally justify invoking executive session for this topic under Open Meetings law, Council has an obligation to provide that publicly, and I expect the Courier to follow up and demand that public documentation. Short of that, some pertinent questions to the Attorney General's office are in order.

You've earned a cookie on this one, editor, now follow through and show Council that you mean it.

Too big to fail

Jon Stewart spots the strategy in the senator's scrapping his "maverick" brand.

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Editorial: Leaders show us what we can do

Today's editorial by the unnamed Courier editor's Barcalounger is too dull to matter, but as I was slogging through it I happened to notice the stock-image photo that the editor chose for it on the website, illustrating a handshake. It would also be too cliche to mention, but the details of the image struck me: the hands of two older white men in identical suits.

Despite the editor's applause for the women selected for honors in the article, the Courier's image of "leadership" remains, probably unconsciously, firmly wrapped in the company-man stereotypes of the 1950s.

Haddad: Sanctity of marriage must be protected

In his pseudoblog, Richard complains that "ever-swelling waves of political correctness threaten to erode the very foundation of the family unit." He doesn't mention the slowly building wave of equal protection nationwide for non-heterosexuals, but his dog whistle is good and loud, just to let us know that unashamed, blockheaded bigotry is not dead in Courierworld.

What's amusing is the photo he put on as an illustration, apparently shot by himself, showing a pair of happy newlyweds. Not all that long ago that white Marine and his brown bride could have been jailed in Arizona for that photo. The state instituted anti-miscegenation laws in 1865 and did not repeal them till 1962.

I imagine Richard's father in the role of Courier columnist in 1960, opining mightily that an "ever-swelling wave of disgusting racial impropriety threatens to erode the very foundation of the family unit." Ack.

Whenever you read some variation on "political correctness," dear reader, bear in mind that it can be fairly translated as "positive change that frightens the writer." What we've learned over and over again is that the fears that seem so important to one generation are often laughable to the next.

Amster: Corporations, politicians need work

I have no idea what the headline is supposed to mean, but Randall's column yesterday really gets to the meat of most of our big social problems. I've long advocated the idea that corporatism is the mostly hidden third force that distorts our social systems and politics beyond reason, and that corporations use our progressive-vs-conservative mental model to deceive us into giving them pretty much everything they want from us. It's a really important point, and we almost never hear it in our mainstream media, which despite all the screaming are neither conservative nor progressive, but firmly corporatist.

I appreciate that Randall used the health-care bill (which you can reference via the sidebar link at left) as his main example. Universal health care is something progressives have been fighting for since the '40s, and so conservative readers might expect Randall to favor anything that seems to move in that direction. One of the most effective ways of convincing people is to drive the snakes from your own nest first. The commenters don't seem to get the point at all, but that's par for this course, I'm afraid. What pains me is that conservatives so rarely seem to notice that corporations are equally inimical to their interests. Until we can see that we all share the pain of this cancer at the heart of our society, we'll never begin to address it.

I broadly agree with Randall here, but I'm not quite so cynical that the issue will end by simply enriching corporations again. They don't always win all the marbles, as our relatively shallow but firm national commitment to environmental protection is showing. Sometimes they're even teachable. New laws make small changes in a large, dynamic system, and more changes always follow. We have choices about where this first step will lead. If we can maintain clear vision and some hardheaded optimism, we can go far.

Editorial: The real priority on kindergarten

In today's rambling, apparently unedited editorial, it's difficult to tease out what the unnamed Courier editor is trying to say. He details the costs to school districts of the retraction of recently instituted funding for all-day K, and how they're allowing parents to make up the shortfall to keep the program going. (He doesn't mention that in relying on this sort of thing in cutting the budget, the Legislature has simply pushed the costs back onto taxpayers by other means than direct taxation.)

After pointing out the standards that kids are expected to meet for entering the first primary grade, he concludes that "the question we should be asking" is "are we putting too much pressure on them? Is childhood over way too soon?" and I have to wonder what planet the editor is inhabiting. Does he really think that all the kids growing up unsocialized and prepared only to be perpetual teenagers aren't getting enough of childhood? Yikes. Our entire society seems dedicated to never getting past adolescence, and it's getting worse, not better.

The idea that education is somehow separate from childhood is ridiculous. Education is the raw essence of childhood -- it's the whole point. Yes, there are a lot of important experiences that our factory-style education model does not usually provide for children, but that's not to say we couldn't be doing a lot better with it. That takes imagination, vision, dedicated professionals and the sort of serious funding that most "conservatives" won't countenance.

What would the editor prefer to early childhood education -- more TV? More baby-warehouse daycare with hordes of other kids? Or is the core idea, once again, forcing mothers out of the workplace and into barefoot-and-pregnant mode, where so many "conservatives" think they truly belong?

Feed-Your-Head Friday

What's going on with Mars, and an exciting, inspiring mission that's ready to go. At 18 minutes this one's a little longer than usual, but way worth it.

Today's Chuckle

Tim fires off an angry column about a frustrating experience on the phone, only to have commenters point out that he just failed to follow clear instructions.

Editorial: ADWR closure not end of world

The unnamed Courier editor's Barcalounger was hard at work again yesterday rewriting Tuesday's story on the closure of the local state water-agency office. As opinion the overstuffed chair offers little more than "that's life" and that no one will care very much, and since growth has ground to a near-halt, the water problem is on hold anyway.

Perhaps if the editor were in the chair while this was going on he'd have remembered that we were declared in violation of regulations against groundwater mining over ten years ago, and plenty more still-thirsty people are here now. The lull in growth we're experiencing is an opportunity to regroup, reassess our situation and create a new, more sustainable vision for our area without the pressure of thousands more homes going up and millions more dollars skewing the picture. So it's arguably more important that ADWR maintain a presence here now, to keep tabs on what's happening more directly and to be a trustworthy resource for local policymakers.

The editor's history of advocacy for unsustainable growth and disregard for environmental concerns belies his unconcern about the loss of our state water watchdogs -- this really makes him happy.

Notice also that the the lull isn't stopping the pipeline builders: Big Chino bills move through committees

Editorial: Shift on drilling for oil is welcome

The unnamed Courier editor is mystified as to why the Obama administration might be willing to allow oil drilling off the East Coast and north of Alaska.

"Why the sudden change? We're going broke and supporting countries that harbor terrorists otherwise," he writes, giving himself a pat on the back for a pat answer. It's almost unsporting to point out that no, what the administration has done, even if it results in lots of new oil platforms dotting the continental shelves, will not begin to reduce oil importation or significantly change the country's economic prospects. There simply isn't enough oil there to make much difference, and getting the things built and producing takes many years. The arguments against it during the Bush administration still make the same amount of sense.

From what I've seen, the President is looking at two factors. In practical terms, well-run environmentally safe operations could be producing much higher-priced oil 15 or 20 years from now, when supplies are clearly dwindling worldwide and we'll still be shifting to sustainable energy sources. I suspect that despite the vast areas tagged for potential leasing, very few locations will both have useful oil in the ground and be suitable for extraction given environmental factors, so let's not get all twisted up in rosy (or nightmarish) scenarios just yet. I'll have a lot more trust in this administration to put rules in place to ensure that the southeast coast doesn't wind up looking like Alaska after the Valdiz than I would the Bush administration, which would have happily converted the Washington Monument into a derrick if it thought there were two barrels of oil under it somewhere.

The second and far more important factor is taking the issue away from the "drill, baby, drill" Republicans. With this move the President has effectively eliminated the criticism that he's only interested in solar panels on hippie domes as an energy policy. The Southeast can hope for thousands of jobs in building and operating rigs someday (not incidentally helping rebuild New Orleans as well), plus perhaps more environmental survey, assessment and monitoring jobs, building up a more useful and needed industry. It will also embarrass the financial Morlocks when they get what they've been saying they wanted all these years but won't actually take the financial risk and follow through. There's not enough oil there, see. The same goes for those Republican-run coastal states when the rich Republican folks in the beachfront condos start standing up for their right to a clear horizon and clean sand.

This will bring in better results for Democrats at the midterms, and could pull enough Dem votes together on energy to push through some more serious reforms quickly.

As for the editor's confidence that "Republicans surely will back Obama," I'm afraid he's in for disappointment on that score. The Reps have chosen a strategy -- no -- and they will be sticking with it at least until they take another drubbing in November. The current crop has neither the ideas nor the imagination to do otherwise.

McCain coloring outside the lines again

This is the kind of total BS that our Senator is dishing out (video from Mar 13).



The necessary questions:

Does he really know so little about what he's talking about -- he's supposed to be an expert in this area -- or is he just flat-out lying?

How could either of these scenarios possibly do anything but disqualify him from yet another six-year term representing us in the Senate?

Why the heck was he doing a town hall in New Hampshire?

Editorial: Battle ends; war on health goes on

I'll try not to make too much of the unnamed Courier editor's headline fail here, although it's really hard to resist something so Freudian-slippish as "war on health goes on" from so dutiful a soldier in that cause. I'll even skip lightly over his reuse of the photo from yesterday that makes Speaker Pelosi look so bad. What we need to talk about, once again, is content and propaganda.

The editor tries to make it look like he's rising to the 50,000-foot level and standing above the grisly fray. What's he's really doing is reinforcing myths and unreasonable doubts to make political points.

The "unanswered questions" the editor alludes to are in the main well answered, but the reactionaries won't hear it. (This is not unlike to the inability among a small minority to accept that the president was born in the US.) He asserts that few in Congress have read the bill, which may be technically true, but the implication is that few "if any" understand it, which is certainly not true, and further that the language just dropped out of the sky from somewhere, rather than evolved in the fire of intense negotiation. And yes, there will be unintended consequences, but that's true of every piece of legislation ever passed. The editor's dark foreboding is just theatre, and you'll notice that he doesn't even try to back it up with a single fact.

The parliamentary "hurdles" the editor mentions were apparently only important to Fox News commentators, as the bill is expected to breeze through the Senate this week. The constitutional challenges being mounted by a small minority of state AGs ("aspiring governors," as I saw it put so well this morning) are political theatre as well, though given our Bush-packed Supreme Court, a few nuts might try with not unreasonable hope to get slavery declared constitutional again.

He waves the red flag of abortion, always good for a roar from a certain small constituency. That straw man has been knocked down so many times it should be in the same bin with the birther conspiracy.

"Polls showed a majority of Americans opposing the bill right up until Sunday night's vote," intones the editor. He was accurate about that until today, sort of, but not in support of his argument that the Dems are risking electoral losses for it, since the same polls he was reading found that 52% of respondents either supported the bill or favored something more liberal. Even that's moot today, as new polls are coming out showing even higher favorables, vindicating several pundits I heard weeks ago predicting that once the thing was in the bag, the majority would embrace it.

Finally, evoking the tea-party wingnuts protesting the bill as some sort of decisive political force while ignoring the many more who publicly gave thanks for its passage is just silly. The editor is looking for what he wants to see in the world, and seeing it. He's either trying to fool you, or fooling himself. This is absolutely not the sort of person that you want running any news outlet.

Health care reform: Legislation makes numerous changes

Joanna takes a stab at laying out what's in the bill, doing what a reporter should be doing. Then the editors come in and turn it into a political debate piece by running a sidebar with comments from McCain and Kirkpatrick.

They won't let it go, it all has to be about politics. This keeps voters confused and stirred up emotionally so they can't think with any clarity about what's actually happening. The photos are more than twice the size of the sidebar, top of page one: so what's the message?

The animals are growing bold

Yesterday we saw several particularly scary comments from a guy signing himself "1 of we the people" and identifying with the tea-party cult, expressing that "only white men are responsible enough" to carry guns and make public policy decisions, etc. The editor came in this morning and trimmed out the worst of it, but we still have part of his rant about the military being "out to get us" to justify violence.

This sort of paranoia is the inevitable result of whipping up fear over nothing and using it for political gain. Readers have to bear in mind that as we chuckle over the juvenile political antics of the Courier editors, there are serious consequences for allowing our media to jump off into extremism. "1 of we the people" is among a tiny number of sick individuals who eat this stuff up, and as they move deeper into it, eventually one of them goes over the line and starts hurting people.

As it can happen anywhere, it can happen here, and our only defense against it is prevention. A big part of that is moderating our public discourse and acting like responsible adults.

Update, Tuesday: Like I said.

News Analysis: Health care's political lift uncertain

Isn't it precious how the Courier editors found ways to undermine the news of the passage of health-care legislation?

The photo of Speaker Pelosi gaping in laughter is pretty bad, but this piece is a particularly egregious abuse of a news page in service to propaganda. Carried as news, it's nothing but political opinion, and obviously belongs on the op-ed page.

This is childish, guys, and your adult readers are generally capable of understanding it as such. Please make an attempt to grow up. You've got at least three more years of Democratic administration to suffer through. If you whine and tantrum like this over everything, why should anyone, left, right or center, trust anything in your paper?

This says it all

Happy anniversary, war fans

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.

Editorial: Kirkpatrick vote surprises no one

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?

ToT: Budgets should go onto Internet

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.

Editorial: Remember the life of St. Patrick

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?

Editorial: Congress lawsuit matter of sense

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.

Governor's chief of staff to Cattle Growers: AZ's woes should sound familiar

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.

Editorial: City should shift money to needs

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.

Feed-Your-Head Friday

Some very cool demonstrations here on how charges work.

Editorial: Aim sign anger to do some good

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.

ToT: Corporations don't count as people

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.

Editorial: Taxpayers might be out of money

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.

Letter: Radio electioneering gives undue advantage

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.

Spanish Census banner comes down after complaints

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.

ToT: Kirkpatrick 'Talk' feeds pablum

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.

Wiederaenders: Close the parks? At what cost?

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.

Editorial: Missteps abound in shooting trials

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.

Feed-Your-Head Friday

Speaking of cellphones, here's an eye-opener on how you're going to be using quantum mechanics to call your mom.

Editorial: Safety must wait until next year

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.

Hansen: Let's elect a better Congress

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.

Man accused of shooting 70 bullets toward equestrians acquitted

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.

Column: 'Birthers' didn't sway lawmaker

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!

School budgets could be slashed

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.

Today's Chuckle

Page-one headline: Butte-ing Heads. Ewwwwww, that's a real stinker.

Editorial: Progress by inches hints of miles ahead

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.