Monkeywrenching: deadline looms

If you're registered as a Democrat and you'd like to have something to say about who represents us in the Legislature and the county building,  as mentioned in this month's Muggs (below) you can reregister as Independent or Other and participate in the Republican primary. But you only have till July 30 to change your registration.

We can do something to fix this.

Pass this idea around your Dem friends. It can take just a few votes to decisively swing some of these crowded primary races.

Linkage:
See just how easy it is to register to vote or change your registration.
Quit worrying about our confusing voter ID law and
request an early ballot.

Update, July 2: I could have sworn the county website said June 30 before, but it turns out I was wrong about the cutoff date, post updated to correct.

Messaging, old school

It's easy to forget that even in the most grave of world emergencies, naysayers will undermine good sense for profit. From the day when workers had hope and unions had real power, here's a fascinating bit of propaganda directed by Chuck Jones of Warner Bros, with lyrics by Broadway great Yip Harburg, for the UAW-CIO in support of the '44 Roosevelt campaign.



I have to think about the intended audience for this short. It wouldn't likely have been theatre audiences, as theatre bills were still controlled exclusively by the studios and I rather doubt this would qualify as a commercial draw. I'm guessing it would have been shown in union halls to build grassroots campaign strength.

Must read: What you know about the crime rate is probably all wrong

From The LA Times Nation section, today: Matt Pearce, "Think you know about crime in the U.S.? Think again"

This is ultimately more about how we perceive crime, and why, than about actual crime rates — and guess what, if you watch TV, you're more likely to have it wrong.

Editorial: Arts good for the soul, and dirt cheap!

Today the unnamed Courier editor gives a nice pat on the head to the arts, saying "Those of us who are financially able need to protect our artisans with our ongoing contributions."

The implication that spending money on art and artistic experiences is some sort of charitable activity indicates that the editor does not understand the very real value that the arts furnish.

Businesses don't install art or hire artists out of the goodness of their hearts, rather because it attracts customers and improves the customer experience.

Artists aren't looking for charity or begging to be heard out of some pitiful need for ego-boosting. As with any other product, what we make and do varies in value according to the needs and wants of the customer. But here the editor seems to be promulgating the blockheaded idea, widespread in our arid cultural landscape, that art has no real value, insidiously, and likely unconsciously, undermining the industry he purports to promote.

The paper could be far more active and powerful in helping to connect readers with the many opportunities to experience and participate in artistic experiences in our area. If the editors were to dedicate half as much ink to the broad range of subjects that constitute "the arts" as they do to the narrow band we call "sports," they could do a great deal to fulfill the sentiment that the editor expresses here, with ensuing benefit to our communities as a whole.

"The arts" are industry, no different in form from any other manufacturing or service industry. Artists of all stripes deserve respect for their skills, training and productivity -- respect in the form of cash payment for their services and products commensurate with their value. That a thriving arts industry improves quality of life for the community as a whole is indisputable, and a factor you can't get from a new mine or private prison. Yet our municipal leaders routinely bend over backward and expend millions of dollars to attract businesses that impair quality of life, while treating artists little better than homeless vagrants and paying no more than lip service for the great value they provide.

Muggs: Lockdown at the Orthodoxy Asylum

Pop Rocket, June 2012

Ken Bennett is not a stupid man. I've spoken professionally with our secretary of state many times over the past decade, and always found him to be a cut above most politicians, forthright, thoughtful, reasonable, practical and positive. For several years it's been pretty well accepted across the political spectrum that he will be Arizona's next governor, promising a step up from the hamhanded Brewer administration.
     With his history of savvy and adroit politics, I expected that Ken would be able to avoid the sort of train wreck that happened in May, when, just as he was coming out as an active candidate for 2014, he found himself in the national spotlight for the first time for hinting that he might leave the President's name off the Arizona ballot this fall. He's since backed away from that, but in retrospect the whole sorry episode can tell us a lot about why and how far the Party of Lincoln has gone off the rails.
     I believe Ken when he says he felt bound by his office to act when constituents demanded that he personally verify the President's birth certificate. It's my impression that he has a Boy Scout's sense of honor and duty about such things. Expecting this of others, he was unprepared when the State of Hawaii responded to his request with several months of a stiff middle finger.
     For its part, Hawaii had long since reached the end of its patience with this farcical issue and washed its hands of it, having verified and released documents ad nauseam to people who simply refuse to accept the facts. Its legislature even passed a bill specifically exempting the bureaucracy from having to waste more resources this way. Our own Governor Brewer had publicly stated that she'd looked into it when she was SoS, was satisfied with the word of Hawaii's governor in '08, and vetoed legislation last year, calling the birther issue a "path to destruction." Any informed observer could reasonably reject the idea that Secretary Bennett didn't know all this, and conclude that he must have been grandstanding for the extreme right.
     A bigger problem for Ken may be his decision to go back on a previous promise and get involved in the Romney campaign. As Secretary of State and our chief elections officer this is clearly a conflict of interest, evoking Ken Blackwell's shenanigans for the '04 Bush II campaign in Ohio. From my own experience with him I expect that our Ken would execute his responsibilities with integrity, but the simple optics of the matter make this a really bad idea.
     We can hope that he will respond to constituents again and correct this error, perhaps before this column hits the street. In getting to the why, the factor that most observers seem to be missing is the overheated echo chamber that the Arizona Republican Party has become.
     Republican majorities have been easy to make in the state lately, so for many years the main events in most of our political races have been the Republican primaries, where candidates have to differentiate themselves on how conservative they can claim to be. Smoking an hallucinogenic blend of helmetless iconoclasm, cowboy machismo, sophomoric libertarianism, intolerant religion and offhand racism, Arizona's Republican voters have moved increasingly toward demagogues, simpletons and religionists to make and administer our laws. The few remaining Democrats have become negligible in legislative debate, leaving the Republicans to identify the real opposition as the somewhat more centrist members of their own party, touching off an inevitable purge that has nearly wiped out those who won't toe the new politically correct line. Rinse and repeat for pure white sheets.
     The result is that within the capitol, the range of what's considered reasonable has shifted far to the right. Ideas that out here in the real world are obviously batty -- an official state firearm, demanding the surrender of federal lands, shackling women during birth, guns everywhere, drowning government in the bathtub -- seem perfectly reasonable down there. When the lunatics are running the asylum, you have to have doubts about your own flashes of sanity. So let's give Mr. Bennett a little benefit of the doubt. I expect he can learn, at least.
     A lot of reasonable Republicans have been purged from power and from the party itself, swelling the ranks of independent voters. This exacerbates the problem, of course, leaving an ever more extreme party core deserving of the satirical comparisons with the Taliban. Don't expect those new independents to vote Democrat, though.
     No, I can only see one way back toward sanity anytime soon, and that's much wider participation in the Republican primaries this August, and not just by independents. I want to encourage, even entreat, rural Democrats to reregister as independents, ask for the Republican primary ballot, do your homework and help try to move the party back toward the sensible center-right. Doing so doesn't make you a Republican or stain your integrity, rather it's a reasonable response to a dire situation for our state. Our economy simply cannot recover health with our legislative priorities so skewed toward nonsense.
     Some will call this monkeywrenching, and yeah, I'll take that. Given the mess he's in, I'll bet Ken Bennett will too.

We get mail: It seems I've touched a nerve with this. Susan Cohen writes in email:

Just because you think you can yell "Fire!" in a theatre doesn't mean you should. (Actually there's a law against doing that.) And there ought to be a law about your irresponsible reporting in the Pop Rocket, June 2012, page 3. Your asking rural Democrats to re-register as Independents and encouraging them to ask for the Republican primary ballot, in your words, "to help try to move the party back toward the sensible center-right," made me see red. You're asking voters to engage in this kind of behavior for your own selfish interest (much like Obama would). BTW, the reason "our economy simply cannot recover" is not because our legislative priorities are skewed; it's because we have illegal aliens tapping into resources causing more than half our State's deficit.

Stay out of our business and worry about your own team, Steve. I'm a precinct committeewoman for the Republican Party, and I pride myself in educating my precinct on the issues and the candidates. Don't do me any favors and keep your pie hole shut on this issue, please. And show some integrity, for Pete's sake.

Editorial: Do what he says, he's got a gun!

I'm sure I'm hearing a dog whistle blowing, but after three readings it's still hard to put a finger on what the unnamed editor is trying to say today. The piece is pretty vague, so it's easy to read in what you want.

If there's a thesis here, it seems to turn on the idea that our individual prosperity depends on confidence in our national craps table, Wall Street. Yet he spends two thirds of the editorial explaining why people are sensibly staying away from the numbers game that so recently brought the world economy down, robbing individual investors blind along the way. He makes a lot of sense up till the old switcheroo:

"Keeping in mind that the stock market is not the economy, but a confidence game itself, restoring trust in the markets will be crucial."

As usual he offers no basis in reality for this article of faith, and I expect that he takes it so for granted that he can't imagine questioning it. But no, the speculative markets have only recently been significant to real economies, and their proper place is minor.

So after establishing this firm footing in the air outside his third-story window, he moves to his proposition: that the result of the presidential election will be the main factor in the health of the markets and therefore economic prosperity for all. The dog whistle whispers, "Make the right choice or we're doomed," and since Wall Street has to like the President to make money, the right choice is supposed to be the Republican, I'm guessing

Briefly glimpsing a path away from the insanity of the past thirty years, the editor retreats into the comforting groundhog den the corporatists have assigned him. Don't rock the boat, he tells us, just give the gangsters what they want and maybe they won't hurt us again.

Editorial: Franking frankers!

The unnamed editor is incensed that our Congressman uses his free mail privilege to send us campaign advertising disguised as constituent service information.
     I totally get it, and I agree that most of the time our public officials either don't know or don't care that they're supposed to be using the mail this way to genuinely inform voters about what they're doing. It's reached the point of absurdity, true enough.
     But let's step back for a sec. The franking privilege is one of the few facilities for members of Congress to communicate directly with constituents. Imagine for a moment a theoretical Congresscritter who, out of a pure sense of duty, truly wants to let me know how he's voting on issues and why, what legislation he's seeing, and that he wants my input. Then factor in the elimination of franking for that purpose. What modes of communication are available?
     Is he supposed to finance mailings, or buy broadcast time, or hire a telephone survey company out of his own pocket? Or is he to rely on the commercial media to spread the word? Few outlets are as compliant as Prescott eNews, for example, in printing an official's news releases verbatim (if you're a member of the right party). Fewer still are interested in carrying the dull details that build a useful picture of a complex issue. And there is no medium that reaches every voter other than the post.
     Shutting off the only useful means of communicating with constituents does not make sense in a democracy (or a republic, for all you selective pedants out there). Doesn't it make a lot more sense to look at the Congresscritter's communications and fully take them in as statements about the character and competence of the person we've sent to work for us? From that standpoint, even the most grossly abused mailing is eminently valuable, imho. And it costs us damn little.

Letter: City's price increases hurt local business

Philip Dixon wrote to let us know that the City's pricejacking of regular public events has cost us another one, this time the Contradance Festival, moved to Cottonwood. Responding to what could be read as skepticism in the comments, Warren Miller specified that the City fee for using the Armory had jumped sevenfold year-on-year, forcing the move.
     What my friend Warren didn't cover is why the City has jacked up use fees, not just at the Armory but at the Elks Theatre, at Watson Lake Park and other public facilities as well.
     During the tenure of Steve Norwood as city manager, the City moved increasingly toward the idea that City services should be individually revenue-neutral to the extent possible. Facilities and services that had traditionally been parts of the large basket of City responsibilities came to be seen as separate business enterprises and evaluated based on their narrow cash-in-cash-out balance sheets.
     Those services that cannot bring in cash — things like police, streets and City bureaucracy — have been arbitrarily exempted from this policy as "essential" services, creating a value distinction that pushes Council to lean more heavily on "nonessential" services to "pay their own way."
     Our once vibrant Parks and Recreation Department has been largely gutted. Now we're hearing rumblings about cutting the Library loose, and it seems that our City leaders will not be satisfied until everything that the voters of Prescott have built for quality of life in the past hundred years is privatized or vanished.
     The core purpose of incorporating a municipality is to create a means for a community to work together to ensure security and improve quality of life for all. Obviously the direct use of these services will vary from person to person (including police, fire and streets, of course), but the value they bring is to the community as a whole, not just in individual enjoyment, but in economic vitality as well. Our elected leaders should be looking at the big picture here, and worrying that we're being pennywise and desperately pound-foolish.
      A government, however local, is not anything like a profitmaking business, and cannot be run in the same way. If as a municipal official you find that your budget is not balancing, you can't just throw services over the side willy-nilly. Every one of those services was approved by the community as necessary enough to institute, and complex webs of dependencies build around them linking individuals, businesses, nonprofits and public agencies. I'm not saying you can't cut, but the first thing you have to do is seek the community's input on the continuing need for the service, whether there is majority support for it and, vitally, for paying for it collectively.
      Our problem statewide is that there's a new religion-like moralism holding that community action through taxation is bad across the board and must be eliminated. That attitude leads inevitably to fragmentation and an everyone-for-hermself attitude, chipping away at the bedrock of community. I don't care what your political perspective, I guarantee you really don't want to live like that.

Editorial: 'Nutty Arizona' goes national again

Lately I haven't felt compelled to write about the Courier editorial column. With a few exceptions, the unnamed editor has generally stuck with the sort of themes that suit a small-town monopoly -- fire danger, food drives, "Whiskey Row will rise again," traffic, etc.
     I guess that made today's the more disappointing, as from the headline I was expecting to see something sensible and unusually straightforward from the editor. But by the end of the first graf he's falling over his own shoelaces:

Now it's the "birther" issue again, and whether President Barack Obama is a legal US citizen who was born in Hawaii and, therefore, qualified to have run for the office in the first place and to seek re-election to another four-year term. Or is his birth place really Kenya, his father's homeland, and a birth certificate to prove otherwise is fraudulent?

     Yes, it's the birther issue again — meaning not that there's a real issue of whether the President was born American, but rather that a bunch of wackos we call birthers are making a ridiculous stink — and no, there is no question about the President's provenance. That's been clearly and publicly established. Even Governor Brewer is firmly distancing herself from this one with her signature elocution: "I talked to the governor, the previous governor of Hawaii, and she validated to me that the certificate was valid. And I put that to a rest."
     The headline fairly describes the issue as nutty, yet below it the editor feigns Pooh-like simplicity and accepts that as long as one nutcase continues to believe a thing, there must be a "fair" debate about it in the press.
     Here's the editor waiting for Superman in his conclusion: "We wait for the right person to come forward and settle the question once and for all." Who's that, editor, the disembodied Hand O' Gad writing in flaming letters in the sky, perhaps?
     It's not Arizona that's being nutty. Is it really so hard to commit to print your duh moment in realizing that the political party you identify with has come completely unhinged, hostage to insane terrorists and succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome?

Transubstantiation, v.2

The fire this time

I checked in on the aftermath of what will certainly be known as the Bird Cage Fire (no matter where it started), and grabbed a few pics.

From the top of the parking garage, you can see how the firewalls between the buildings contained the blaze. The added back rooms took smoke damage, but appear intact.

It looked to me that the fire was most interested in the BBQ place and the roof.

Anyone who's been onstage at the Cage will remember that Coke sign. I chatted with the owner's brother, who said that the stuffed birds in the cases were at least mostly hunted and mounted by his great-uncle, and some of them were quite rare. Witnesses said they saw birds floating down the gutter.

TV and other media crews were still working the site this afternoon.

It was a relief to confirm that the building fronts hadn't burned through. Essentially all the structure necessary for a relatively easy rebuild is there. The fire didn't even pop the paint on the fronts.

The owner's brother told me that the old Rex bar and backbar survive, including the mirrors, though they'll clearly need extensive refinishing. Here you can still see bottles up on the wall and stools awaiting customers.

With the street still blocked off and a ladder truck on standby, there were plenty of people on the street to take in the sights.

The crux of the biscuit

Today's letter from Kevin Goss has sparked a remarkably revealing discussion in the comments.
    Goss calls out the paper for regularly carrying the columns of Susan Stamper Brown either despite or because of the misinformation and disinformation she features in them to make her points. He then dismantles a couple of examples in one of the columns using straightforward facts.
    Commenters who have regularly demonstrated suspicion or animosity toward the administration that's been the target of Brown's attacks have piped up to defend Brown's right to lie in public, blasting Goss for asking that the paper stop buying her stuff, calling that "censorship." They seem to completely miss the importance of using lies to sell opinion.
    I'm continually amazed when partisans of any stripe blithely accept and support the use of disinformation in defense of their cause. It's so completely stupid. When you're in a game in which winning depends on reaching hearts and minds, above all you have to be trustworthy. Any kind of lie in your materials, even the little white variety, is guaranteed to turn your targets against you once they find out. And they will, more so now than ever. Ask Bill Clinton or Dan Rather.
    As a corollary to this, the paper that carries the lies, slugged as opinions or not, guarantees the loss of readers who discover them. It's not just stupid, it's bad business. Editorial integrity is all a news organization has to sell, really. From the editor's standpoint, cleaning this crap out of the paper isn't censorship, it's a survival imperative — or it should be.

The missing pic

Nicholas DeMarino's story on the Granite Creek cleanup led with mention of the recyclasaurus, but this obvious photo opportunity somehow escaped the Courier editors, so for all of you who haven't already seen it on Facebook or wherever, here he is, Fill the Recyclasaurus:

Fill was crafted by Royce and Nita Carlson for this event.

Myth of the Middle

Joe Gandelman's column on today's op-ed page bites deep into the standard narrative of Dems on the wacko left, GOPers on the wacko right, and heroic, nonplused  Independents sorting it from the the middle. Small miscalculation, though: we just don't woik like dat.

Ask any honest pollster or social scientist, and you'll learn that in hard fact Americans generally agree on 90% of the values and issues we deal with in real life, and many choose to exempt ourselves from party label for all sorts of reasons. Independents cover the whole spectrum and then some, and don't shift to left or right for a given election. Rather, more or fewer show up from different parts of the spectrum because they feel personally energized enough to exercise their franchise.
     Arizonans have more reason than most to register as Independent or Non-affiliated -- when the Republican primary is the only game in town, you still get to have a say. I register as Independent not because I identify with the mythical center, but rather as a strategic choice. Surprisingly few people can make a difference this way in local elections in particular. I recommend it highly.

Update, Tuesday: George Seaman argues for strategic registration in an LTE today.

Must read: Climate change for Republicans

Meteorologist Paul Douglas writes a regular weather feature for the Star-Tribune in Minneapolis/St Paul, and is a committed Republican. His recent piece for Minnesota Public Radio is instructive both in terms of hope that the right side of the aisle can get it on climate change, and how he delivers the message. Read it here.

Editorial: Federal, state laws keep butting heads

The unnamed Courier editor is confused: While the feds have struck down such laws in other states, why has Arizona's voter-ID law stood for years, yet we continue to have federal lawnforcement threatening to come after our medpot growers and even state employees? In standard conservative fashion, he seeks a simple answer to a complex question, and in so doing shows only surface understanding of pretty much everything he's talking about here.
    First, placing the two laws in the same category because they were both passed by initiative is completely fallacious. The courts look at the content and effects of a given law, not how it was written.
    Using Voter ID as a yardstick for a clean law remains an open question. The legal challenge to it is still in the works at the Ninth Circuit, which took oral arguments on it last June. So we have "the feds" challenging both laws. The contrast doesn't hold up.
    Looking to history, it was action by individual states that finally broke the back of Prohibition. That's what's happening now, albeit more slowly and incrementally, with medical cannabis laws. With this sort of progressive movement, surviving court challenge is partly the point.
    Regressive moves like Voter ID, on the other hand, are political tactics designed to help win elections by playing on voter fears. Those who truly understand the law on both sides of the political spectrum know that these are temporary structures that will eventually fall under legal scrutiny.Arizona's version of Voter ID has not fallen as fast as those in Texas and South Carolina because it is not as draconian, that's all. You have to look at the details.
    The real guffaw moment in the piece is here, though: "State elections officials should be more diligent before initiatives go to the ballot, vetting conflicts with federal law." This seems to be criticizing the medpot initiative, which was very carefully and extensively drawn, and the Secretary of State for allowing it to go forward. Like he had a choice. As established in the Arizona constitution, initiatives written in crayon on the back of a bar napkin in five minutes can become unassailable law with the consent of the voters. "Elections officials" can have no part in writing, editing or "vetting" initiatives, only in determining that they properly jump the legal hoops to get on the ballot.
     This in the context of our state legislators constantly writing and voting for new laws designed only to give the middle finger to clear and established federal law, stuff their own lawyers tell them will never fly.
    It looks like the editor really just wants things to be easy. Easy to do, easy to understand, easy to forget about. That choice isn't on the table, I'm afraid. Democracy is difficult, requiring that we pay attention.

Feeling wonky? Here's your chance

They say to pass it on:

Want to be more informed about the issues in local elections? Maybe you or someone you know might want to run for Prescott city council or serve on a city commission...? Spend a morning learning more about how the city of Prescott really functions. Saturday April 7 - and it's free. (details below and in the attachment.)

This is a NON-PARTISAN effort to help educate Prescott citizens with an emphasis on facts about how our city government is structured, what's the budget authority, etc. This session is not about issues per se.

Please pass this on to Prescottonians who might be interested.

Saturday, April 7th, 2012
9:30 AM-11:30 AM

Prescott College Crossroads Center- 220 Grove Avenue

Come learn about the authority of the Prescott City Government and the power of citizen involvement.

Presented by Elisabeth Ruffner and the Prescott Good Governance Committee

FREE and light refreshments will be provided

Please RSVP to GOODGOVP@GMAIL.COM

Note: There's no additional info in the attachment

Editorial: We seemingly kinda don't like this, maybe.

The headline on today's editorial makes a bold statement. The column itself, however, is so qualified and mealy-mouthed that you can almost see the editor squirming to get out of the assignment.
    The issue is Republican attacks nationally and locally on users of birth-control medications, trying to allow religionists to restrict coverage for employees, invade their privacy and even subject them to dismissal. This is wrong, and the editor could have said that. It appears that the idea that it's wrong was agreed in the editorial committee meeting. But the editorial dances around it.
    Starting at the top -- "Women are seemingly and perhaps unwittingly being shoved into the spotlight this year" -- the confusion is evident. The Courier has a long and storied history of eliminating the passive voice, even at the expense of sense, and here it's the other way around. It obscures the agent doing the thrusting -- the Republican religionists -- leaving a mishmash of adverbs characterizing women, who are obviously neither "seeming" or "unwitting" in the attack on them. But this is what happens when a writer can't bring himself to criticize his political team directly.
    He trips over his own typewriter in trying to say something sensible: "What a woman decides, no matter her convictions, is her business." I have to wonder what kind of mental short-circuit it takes to commit this nonsensical statement to paper and pass it through proofreading.
    Every time the editor reaches a point where the reader might expect a call to action, he fades: "Candidates have a right to their beliefs, as does the electorate in deciding when legislation crosses the line and intrudes upon personal freedoms." ... "You decide whether government has any right to give an employer the right to intrude this deeply into women's privacy."
     Nowhere in the piece does he bring the subtext to the surface and just say it: the Republican attacks on contraceptive users are morally wrong, legally wrong and politically idiotic. I'll give him credit for trying to get over the fence on this one, but he clearly caught something sensitive on the barbed wire and isn't quite disentangled yet.

Waving the red flag

Ken Hedler's coverage of the briefing by ACLU lobbyist Anjeli Abraham is accurate given the amount of space he had to work with, and I like that he made the calls to get reactions from our local party leaders. The quote from Mal Barrett was particularly illuminating, showing that not all Rs share the extremist social agenda currently fascinating the Legislature, and some understand its risks
    It's no surprise that the knives are coming out in the comments, the self-appointed vigilantes against fairness for everyone spouting every wacko idea they ever heard about the ACLU and every cracked argument against support for civil rights.
    For those who missed the briefing, I did an interview with Ms Abraham for The People's Business, in which we talk about what the organization is doing and why, as well as why it's so reviled on the right. It's obvious to me that it's a lot more about the "values" of the reactionary right than the actions of the ACLU. (Airing on Sunday (Mar 18, 2pm) and Saturday (Mar 24, 2pm), listen on 90.1 FM in Prescott, 89.5 in the rest of NorAZ, or the KJZA live stream here.)
    The sad part of this dynamic is that it makes reasonable Republicans hesitant, even afraid, to say anything supportive of the ACLU or its perfectly reasonable legal positions. To that extent it puts Republicans in the position of having to at least neglect and often attack our civil liberties even as they believe they are the primary defenders of the Constitution.

When editors don't edit, vol. 398

So I'm looking at the feel-good story about current former mayors raising money for charity, and I find Rowle Simmons' name misspelled as "Rollie." In both references. Then I notice that the caption on the photo has the names in the wrong order. Eyes roll, forehead meets desktop.
   I'm guessing (charitably) that what's happened here is the fundraisers wrote up a press release without professional help, sent it in with a photo, and the editors dumped it into the paper without looking at it. Someone's in a hurry or just doesn't care, and we wind up reading egregious errors that live up to the paper's reputation for amateurishness. This kind of thing embarrasses the profession, in largest part because it's so easy to fix -- just look at what you're doing. You want to charge for this thing, right?

Update, 11pm: The spelling and caption errors have been corrected online, and my comment pointing them out deleted, without a correction notice.

Editorial: Voters must do their part to meet ID requirements

This comment on today's editorial hits it on the head (from "justa thought"):

"'Does the Arizona law prevent voter fraud? Certainly, even though voter fraud is not widespread'
     "Does the Arizona law prevent dinosaur attacks? Certainly, even though dinosaur attacks are not widespread
      "The law has 1 purpose and 1 purpose only and that is to lower the turn-out of likely non-republican voters"

Not widespread.

    What needs highlighting here most is the sly use of the accepted lie that voter fraud is any kind of real problem. Voter fraud is a bogus issue, used to leverage laws to suppress disadvantaged groups of citizens from voting. The editor ought to know this.
    This week a federal court threw out the Texas version of this nonsense, for exactly that reason, as the editor points out. The US Senate is investigating Arizona's version now, though Governor Brewer has refused to testify in favor of it because the committee is run by a Democrat, and it won't be surprising if it does not survive court challenge as well, deservedly so.
    I was there as a poll worker for several election cycles after the voter ID requirement came on, and I saw its effects, consisting entirely of confusing and frustrating perfectly legitimate voters. Imagine having to tell a sweet old lady in a walker, who cast her first vote for Roosevelt, that she had to make a third trip back to her apartment to find the right papers to prove she could vote again in the same precinct she'd been using since the '80s. Those of us working the polls, R, D and other, uniformly hated this insult to the body politic. Many people didn't come back, and we could only speculate on how many didn't show up at all because of the additional burden.
    If we accept that voter fraud is a real problem on whatever scale, we're led to accept voter suppression as a necessary evil. In this case we don't have to accept the lie or the evil. We should also keep an eye out for this political tactic, which really is widespread, and firmly reject those who would employ it against our rights as citizens.

Editorial: Afghan war effort is out of justifications

My, my, how times have changed.
    It was only a couple of years ago that the unnamed Courier editor was lambasting the Obama administration for "twiddling" over the decision to send yet more troops into that famous graveyard of empires, Afghanistan. Today's editorial sounds remarkably like the sort of advocacy that in '09 he excoriated as an attempt to "appease the far-left wing of the Democratic party."
    Back then the right-wing commenters piled on for more troops. Today the right-wing commenters are piling on to bug out, demonstrating the old saw about how Republicans fall in line.
    Consider how the world would be different now had they seen this same light as we wacko lefties did back in '02.
     Here is my response to the previous editorial, and below is the very first graphic to appear on this blog.

The Obammunist speaks

From Mark Fiore. See how soon you get the joke.

New abortion restrictions, by state

The researchers at Think Progress have published an interactive map of new restrictions on reproductive rights (meaning new controls on women's bodies, in case you missed the memo) moving in state legislatures this term. This stuff is generally under the radar of the national media, so seeing it all compiled may surprise you. I know it did me.
    This strikes me as a strong argument for doing more this election than cheering on the President.

Winning by deception

Priest to acolyte: "My mouth to your ear."

Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sandra Fluke and all women is the point of the spear in this year's election issue on the right, contraception and who pays for it. I don't mind watching Republicans play the holier-than-though game, particularly against each other, but to keep the zombie alive they're using some incantations designed to deceive. Wittingly or not, the Courier is taking part in this deception.
    In the first piece carried in the paper on the subject, an AP story in the Monday edition, Kasie Hunt and Steve Peoples write about a proposed "Obama administration mandate that employee health plans include free contraceptive coverage. While religious institutions are exempt, their affiliates, such as hospitals and universities, were at first included in the requirement. Under harsh criticism from conservatives, President Barack Obama later said the affiliates could opt out, but insurers must pay for the coverage.
    The use of the word "free" and the phrase "insurers must pay" is a point of confusion, caused by editorial shorthand at the expense of clarity. Almost everyone subscribing to employer health coverage in this country will tell you that the coverage is never "free" by any stretch of the imagination. Insurers pay out on claims based on the premiums that the subscribers pay. The mandate will require the coverage at no additional cost to the subscriber. This is not the same as "free."
    (We should not forget that contraceptive coverage saves both insurers and the subscribers cubic acres of money every day that would otherwise go for maternity and complication services. Reducing payouts is the religion of insurers, so let's not neglect their religious liberty here.)
    Left out of the AP story was the point of contention that brought Ms Fluke onto the Limbaugh targeting radar -- neither she nor any other woman was allowed to testify in the Republican-led Congressional hearing about the insurance-mandate issue, and she complained publicly about this obvious insult to women.
    In any case the AP story did outline the administration's compromise to effectively moot the religious-freedom angle, so, assuming that they read their own paper, the editors have a basis for understanding the facts.
    Later on Monday Tim Wiederaenders added a column to his infrequent pseudo-blog, in which he characterized the controversy this way: "At issue is whether women working for employers affiliated with a religion should get free birth control under Obama's health care law." This clearly disinforms the reader, and he should know better. It's not like he was writing under any constraint on length.
    We can take for granted his soft-pedaling Republican culpability in this and his lame attempt to claim that "no side is innocent" as essential to his unashamed political bias, though saying that Ms Fluke isn't innocent demonstrates the same blindness to the humanity of women that Limbaugh celebrates so profitably, and his Hail Mary play to blame the President for unspecified "gaffes" related to "other talk show hosts" must be pitied.
    The administration long ago provided an out for religious employers who don't want to provide contraception coverage to their employees directly, and that is to source the coverage from the insurance companies separately, paid for by the employees. There is no requirement that they violate their religious principles. Rather, they are squawking because the administration will not allow them to prevent their employees from receiving contraception coverage. In other words, they are not demanding religious freedom for themselves, but rather religious bondage for their employees.
    The Republican talking points invariably blur this picture to raise the emotional temperature and mischaracterize opposing views. The press and voters should reject this at every point. Let them compete on policy, but require that they work within the context of fact, not myth or lies.

Editorial: Please, we're desperate

With today's editorial the unnamed Courier editor instructs the Republican presidential candidates (who log in to dcourier.com daily to check for the editor's counsel) to can the spam and try to come up with something substantial on real issues. I read this as an anguished cry for something, anything, to inspire Republicans to get up off the couch and vote in November, because as of now they're likely to take a pass and allow the President an easy victory.
    The editor wants "to hear concrete answers" about a list of issues. Maybe he's missed them. For the record, here are the answers on what the candidates are promising to do, though the editor might not like them:

-- to create jobs
Cut taxes on the rich and big corporations, and gut regulatory regimes across the board.

-- bolster the economy
Ditto.

-- resolve the immigration problem
 Shout a lot and do nothing, since it's an issue they want to keep using.

-- stifle escalating gas prices
Ditto on answers 1 and 2, and bomb Iran.

-- reduce the national debt
Cut government benefits for anyone who's not rich, and bomb Iran.

-- end the war in Afghanistan
Relabel it a humanitarian effort, send more troops, and bomb Iran.

-- confront the crisis in Syria
Bomb Iran, that'll scare 'em.

-- and resolve the healthcare debacle.
Return to the debacle of ten years ago and make sure it can't ever be changed.

A good place to start

If you've ever mused on the idea of getting involved in accomplishing anything for the community or elective office, the Prescott Area Leadership program is a good place to start. Check out the introduction in today's press release.  Founded here by famous cranky liberal Ron Barnes, it's the local franchise of a nationwide organization to foster sane leadership skills and prepare people for pubic work. More involvement by people from the leftward of the spectrum would be good. It's a great way to put your toe in the water and see if you've got the head for this sort of thing. Think about it.

The state of print advertising

For the other real media geeks out there, Derek Thompson writing in The Atlantic provides some meat and potatoes about the decline of print advertising. Here's the graph:

This shows that in terms of revenue, print advertising has fallen back to its level in the 1950s. This is obviously a huge change, but Thomson notes that it's still a $20-billion business and nothing to sneeze at. The problem for newspapers isn't a lack of revenue per se, but rather their business models, which continue to rely on vanished revenue streams, and adapting to the changed conditions.
    It's obvious that the trend line over the past decade promises further decline, but at some point it will level off. (Note that since the recession, the decline has relaxed somewhat.) Publishers who are able to project that successfully and adapt their business models will survive, the rest will go under quickly.

I love this

Concerned that there are better protections for business than your bodies, ladies? Here's a novel approach: Incorporate your uterus!

Babeu update: The feeding frenzy begins

ABC15 says it's been investigating this for five months. I gotta wonder whether last week's revelations finally got the story off the spike. Living with a 17-year-old under his charge? He'll be lucky to serve out his term if this gets legs.

Editorial: Hold your nose and vote

In the last days before an election it's customary to produce editorials urging voters to do their civic duty, and today we have the Courier's contribution, the pertinent portion consisting of four short sentences right at the end of the column. The rest is filler.
    Given the clown-car act that has been the Republican primary campaign, I'm not surprised at this phone-it-in performance. It's got to be dispiriting for any party loyalist.
    But these results are not random. The reason the field is so poor is right there in the filler: "It is the dedicated and committed few voting in a primary who set the choices for the majority in the November elections." And in today's Republican party, those few are dedicated and committed to repealing the 20th century, as Maureen Dowd wrote yesterday, "tripping over one another trying to be the most radical, unreasonable and insane candidate they can be."
    It's a bit pathetic to realize that for most voters in this country, showing up for the primary is considered a high degree of civic participation. But I have to disagree that it's the primary voters who are really making the decisions. Those belong to the sales and marketing teams that run the political parties. As in any corporation, these people value saleability over quality or substance, and you see the results in the headlines.
    Americans are encouraged constantly to devalue our political system, and we do. For the sake of making the quick sale, Republican operatives work tirelessly to fascinate Republican voters with trivialities, falsehoods and myths, giving their frightened customers the simple, comforting answers they crave. (Democrats are less effective at this because they're less organized and their voters are less fear-driven and more reality-conscious. Sorry, it's broadly true.)
    For the moment I'm quite happy to watch the Republican party tear itself to pieces, wasting its potency on pathetic dunces. But I have to hope that eventually the truly conservative voters will tire of the crazies and corporatists, cowboy up and take the party back from them. We need adults running the show on both sides of the aisle, because the challenges we're facing over the coming decades are very serious.
    Maybe the apathy and skepticism that the editor is addressing is a good sign.

Editorial: Allow high-achieving students to learn already

The unnamed editor goes off on the bill in the Legislature that would require most college students to put up at least 2,000 clams in cash.I agree wit the sentiment, but I gotta point out that the editor has undermined his argument by misunderstanding some of the facts.
    The editor unnecessarily conflates two kinds of education grants -- those that are need-based, and others that are based on academic achievement. This can be confusing because the bill specifically exempts those students who get a full ride based on being super-smart, and here the bill includes the word "solely," which is significant.
    Instead this bill is aimed specifically at the need-based grant, where a student has the grades to qualify for acceptance, but not the money. It would even prevent a relative from putting up the cash as a loan or gift. (How the state would enforce that is an interesting question, but it's there in black and white.)
     The schools will still furnish the grants, at least until the Legislature reduces their funding further. So the only clear purpose of this bill is to make it harder for kids from less well off families to get into our state university system. There's no clearer way to say it.
    Yes, many disadvantaged kids have to work hard academically to make up the gaps and qualify for admission, but that's a different level of academic achievement than the editor implies in the piece.
    The bill is disgraceful and mean-spirited, an embarrassment to any thinking being in the state, including those Republicans who haven't gone over the edge, as I've confirmed in personal conversations. But the over-the-edge crowd is powerful in our Legislature this year. A phone call to Rep Fann, Rep Tobin or Sen Pierce couldn't hurt.

About that $4 gasoline

Following in lockstep with the rest of the media, Jason Soifer's story today reports the projection of $4/gal gasoline by the AAA, blaming it on worries about Europe and Iran, but leaving out crucial facts.
    The references to international concerns hint at what's really driving prices: speculation. Kevin Hall of McClatchy provides the details. Where speculation (meaning anyone in the market who's not planning to take delivery of what they buy) has traditionally been a roughly 30% component in fuel prices, right now it's running at over 60%, distorting the normal annual price cycle.
    The Dodd-Frank reform bill has charged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission with instituting new rules to reduce the market gambling that costs everyone so much, but thanks to Republican intransigence they can't take effect for another year.
    Meanwhile real demand for fuel in this country is consistently falling, and in a sane world that would mean steadily lower prices. But, taking a cue from the price-manipulation experts of OPEC, the US refiners are instead exporting fuel at record rates. The US is now a net exporter of gasoline and other refined products, demonstrating exactly what Big Oil would do with the additional resources they want in Alaska and the Keystone XL pipeline. The number of working American oil rigs has actually quadrupled under the Obama administration and domestic production is at an eight-year high, but that won't stop the Republican attack machine from blaming the President for higher prices.
    To make sense at all, any story on commodity prices should include the proportion of speculative effect and rates of real demand. This is just standard practice in journalism.

Editorial: Logic is too much to expect (Update: Entirely cribbed!)

Update, Thursday: Sometime this morning an attribution to "The Associated Press"  was added to the online edition.


Update, 7pm: This is why I love interactive comments. A couple of astute commenters on the editorial spotted that this piece has been circulating in syndication for at least a week, as near as papers in Colorado and as far away as The Jakarta Post. (I checked it out, it's true.) Is this really how it's done in the Courier editorial office now? Do I have to go out and google phrases from every editorial to see whether you're doing your own work, editors, like a junior-high English teacher? Ayayai.

So for every reference to "the editor" below, the reader should substitute "some hack writer somewhere."


Original post:
It's no surprise that the unnamed editor is setting out markers to attack the President. It's another election year. What's sort of sad is that his arguments hold no more firepower than a cap gun -- noisy, but irrelevant, and 100% fake.
   He's certainly popping those caps with vigor, though, accusing the President of "attempting ... to enlarge the entitlement society," meaning put more people on the dole, presumably so they'll vote for Dems who'll give them more benefits.He backs this up with a quote from former OMB Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, slipping in "non-partisan" as a modifier. This is how we tell boldfaced lies in print. Holtz-Eakin was appointed by GW Bush, served three years, and wound up as budget director for the McCain campaign, so he's made a career of bashing Obama, culminating in frequent appearances on Fox News, where no doubt the editor found him. He's about as non-partisan as a Palin rally, and similarly credible.
   But let's get to the editor's "facts." He says the President's budget "avoids tough choices on the soaring costs of entitlements." This means that it doesn't sufficiently cut benefits that working people have paid for and earned over their lifetimes to suit the Republican drown-government-in-the-bathtub crowd. Instead it looks for revenues to help make up the revenue losses put in place by the Bush administration, because most Dems don't think dumping Granny off Social Security, out of her house and into the street to forage in trash cans is the right way to go. Presumably the editor disagrees.
   The editor seems particularly incensed that the President wants to spend $350 billion on additional economic stimulus measures (read: "jobs"), taking it be be a purely political ploy to attract votes. He clearly believes it's not possible that Obama really thinks that public spending is necessary to regrow the economy, as pretty much all serious economists have recommended publicly.
   So since this is a bribe to voters, which the editor seems to think will work, it will create "more takers," which I guess are people who are working at federally funded jobs. I'd like to see what happens when a Marine veteran of Iraq hears the editor refer to him as a "taker." But leaving that aside for the moment, this is what the editor calls the "entitlement society," so somehow a government-backed job becomes an "entitlement." I must have missed something in there, because the editor says that these people will be depending "on government for food stamps, retirement income, healthcare, job training and a host of other benefits." So I guess those government jobs will really suck, which ought to please a Republican. I'm confused.
   Oh, I get it, the editor was looking for a way to link up to that famous canard by de Toqueville about how our republic would survive only until we found out we can vote ourselves money from the public treasury. You know what, editor, it turns out that de Toqueville was wrong about that. We're still here, the oldest continuous republic on the planet. (Hint: If you were to actually read de Toqueville rather than grabbing an isolated quote off the net, you'd learn a lot about how European royalist thinking underestimated and misunderstood Americans at the time. I can lend you the book.)
   C'mon, editor, is that really all you've got? You're making your team look bad. Here's what you don't know: applying the President's budget (which won't happen, thanks to the kind of "thinking" demonstrated here) would help bring back the economy (including, indirectly, advertising for your paper, which has been pretty thin on the ground lately), it wouldn't cost you a nickel in additional taxes (and may save you some on your payroll tax), and it would reduce more spending than it adds. What's not to like? If a Republican were introducing this, you'd be telling us all how great it is and I'd be complaining that it doesn't go anywhere near far enough. Which I am doing, and that ought to make you feel better.

Want to hear the other side? Facts and figures at whitehouse.gov.

Editorial: GOP candidates crack crooked

In which the unnamed editor expresses some frustration that the Republican presidential candidates aren't offering useful rhetoric on addressing issues that engage Republican voters.
   I'd be lying if I said I feel the editor's pain, since idea-free platitudes and tired playground taunts are the standard playbook for the Rs in election season, and this year it appears that voters really are looking for something more substantial, which is good for the country.
    It's hard to know what to make of his penultimate paragraph, where he rolls out three disjointed sentence fragments with question marks after them. But sometimes I know we have to write for length on short deadlines.

Not much of a photographer, either.

   You have to admire how the editor manages a way to bring in this week's media hoot-fest over Sheriff Paul Babeu, though. For a journalist it's irresistible, of course -- he had to write something about it. So he shoehorned it into this column using its possible effect on Romney's campaign, uprightly naming only the real issues -- Babeu's alleged threats and romantic connection with someone he may have thought was illegal -- and saying nothing about the ones that will really ick out the right-wingers -- he's gay and he put nekkid pics of himself on the Web. You can't make this stuff up.
   The editor should know that the Babeu imbroglio will have negligible effect on the primary -- if it's not in commercials on Fox, most R primary voters won't hear about it.
   What's funny is that while the editor never did anything of the sort, some of the right-wing commenters are jumping up and down on him for playing the gay card, showing exactly how much it really does matter to them even as they insist it doesn't. Precious.
   In case you missed it, it was the Phoenix New Times that broke the Babeu story, and deserves more readers for it.

Cantlon: Garbage in, garbage out

In his column today Tom highlights the danger of monocultural news-sourcing, which not only can but inevitably does skew your perspective on the world. He frames it in terms of left-right politics, and I'm afraid he doesn't go anywhere near far enough.
    Most Americans believe that we live in the most open society in the world in terms of the variety of opinions and perspectives that our media bring us. But most anyone who's done any serious time outside the wire in the larger world will tell you that it's not what it seems.

It may seem alarmist, but it's truer than any of us
would like to believe.

    We live in the North Korea of materialist consumerism. What look like competing, opposite worldviews here are only subtly different flavors of the same pap to the rest of the world. The American ideological landscape is a giant ant-lion trap, pulling us closer to the jaws even as we think we're walking away. And the idea that we're free to choose makes the pervasive propaganda more effective. North Koreans think they're free, too.
    I learned how this works when I first got involved professionally in the propaganda business, back in the mid-'80s. I started getting work editing business news and communications, still my bread and butter today, and I needed more depth in the lingo, so I subscribed to The Economist. As its title suggests, this weekly publication, part newspaper and part magazine, primarily covers news and analysis about business and economics. But at least half its pages are dedicated to some of the best detailed news reporting in the world, bar none. It is erudite, excellently written for educated professionals, and its coverage is broad, worldly and international. It's dense and meaty, making Time and Newsweek look like supermarket coupon flyers, and it takes days to get through it. I studied up and it helped me a lot in my business.
    But after a couple of years I noticed that I had gradually started seeing everything in terms of money. The core perspectives of the paper's editors, despite their obvious high value on editorial objectivity and integrity, had seeped through between the lines and stained my value set. I spent a couple of months looking for conscious propaganda moves in the paper, but never found them. I canceled my subscription, and after a few months found that I got better. Since then I've been a lot more guarded about what I read -- not reading less, but rather reading more consciously.
    Our pervasive consumer culture, with its attendant sense of powerlessness, its low regard for spiritual and community values, and its mechanical simplicity, is the blinders on American culture today. Its messages are literally everywhere, inescapable if we're engaged with the world at all. Its central purpose is to get us to buy stuff, but the related values and methods infect everything we see and think, especially our politics. While I don't believe in a grand malevolent conspiracy, the results are indistinguishable.
    There exists no wonderland of objectivity anywhere on the planet, but outside this country the values and cultures are far less powerful and more competitive. Many nations actively control their media to better reflect the values of their culture, and while this sounds like totalitarianism to Americans, it also helps keep the consumerist wolf at bay, and there's a lot to be said for that. The competing voices coming across borders, so hard to find here, provide broader and more diverse perspectives for those willing to pay attention.
    So when Tom writes, "constant exposure to only one view really does ... limit your thinking," I hasten to add the warning that American media, left, right and "center," really do give us a remarkably uniform view of the world that is broadly inimical to our interests as individuals and communities.Our only defense is to be constantly and positively skeptical and conscious about the messages that bombard us daily, checking in with our internal values and aware of the larger context and bias of our mediated culture as a whole.

PS: Commercial television sucks your brain out through your eye sockets. There is literally no value there. For the survival of your own ability to think, get it out of your life. Try it for a couple of weeks and see what happens to your head. More here.

Editorial: So now you're sick of campaigns

As the Arizona Republican presidential primary approaches, the unnamed Courier editor is getting tired of all the political campaigning, and proposes taking a few moves from the UK system, including limits on campaign expenditures by parties, a ban on purchasing broadcast time, and shorter campaign seasons.

    With this he demonstrates utter cluelessness about the differences between the US and UK political systems, which is not all that surprising given the limits and Amerika-centricity of our education system and media. More to the point, he seems to have missed  the entire debate over campaign finance reform of the past couple of decades and the crushing blow to our democratic institutions that was the Citizens United decision by our sadly misguided SCOTUS.
    The editor's innocent fantasy of getting political attack ads out of his football games on teevee is literally impossible now without an amendment to the Constitution revoking corporate personhood and the direct equivalence of money and speech.
    Sure, we can wax romantic all we like about candidates taking the high road, but we might also hope that the guy with the butter knife might win against the guy with the tank. If you want a fair fight, editor, you'll have to start advocating stronger medicine for our failing system, and quick.
   You can join the campaign to amend the Constitution here or here. If that doesn't interest you, you're blowing smoke, so enjoy the mudfights.

Sincere, innocent bungling will hamper public-art policy

I've been watching the developing story of a public-art policy for Prescott, and as usual our town is a few years late to the gate, so the insane events at Granite Creek Park and Miller Valley School have sparked a reactionary process that will inevitably be about preventing controversy. Artists will be perfectly right to look on this with doubt if not suspicion.
    Unfortunately the City exacerbated the problem with its first move, in which it handed the hot potato to Elizabeth Ruffner and the Prescott Area Arts and Humanities Council with practically no public process.
    I served three years on the PAAHC board of directors and I believe the organization has the potential to be useful to artists and contribute to the community in important ways. But its modern incarnation has yet to find a clear mission or clear benefit for membership, making it a small, self-selected interest group, plagued with the inevitable weaknesses of such groups.
    This is not to say that PAAHC is incapable of doing the job. Rather, Council should have spent some time hearing public input on who should take on the responsibility and establishing credibility both for the process and the decision-makers. Score another hamhanded, amateur move for Council.
     Now PAAHC has to step up and establish its credibility with the public on its own. From what I've seen, it has selected a committee of officers and members, again without public process or deliberation, and set to. Score another hamhanded, amateur move for PAAHC.
     Elizabeth Ruffner's status as spokesperson for the arts community is entirely informal, based on her decades of work on behalf of the arts in Prescott as well as her status as matriarch of one of Prescott's old cowboy families. I do not doubt her sincerity or her political clout, but her political style favors the good-ol'-boy network and keeping things controlled and inside, which will lead inevitably to doubt among outsiders about any decision the group makes. Her organizational and leadership skills have been formed entirely in small-town Prescott, and her history over the past twenty years or so demonstrates her limitations in this area.
    Cindy Gresser is also a sweetie-pie and will bring a lot of positive energy to the project. But like Ms Ruffner, she's a fan, not a professional, thrust into a position of responsibility at Smoki Museum by circumstances rather than merit or training. The political situation at the museum has been in disarray for years, with Ms Gresser continually at the center of the storm. This does not inspire public confidence, whatever the facts are behind it.
   The best thing PAAHC could do at this point is rethink its strategy and start over. The obvious political heat around this issue requires a wide-open process that puts respected arts professionals in the key positions, publicly referencing established, successful precedents in other cities and inviting both professional and public input in open sessions that have been carefully and widely promoted. No one in Prescott should have the slightest reason to believe that they could not have participated if they'd just got up off the couch, or bitch about it afterward.
   PAAHC has a few extra-smart people already working on the committee (you know who you are), and I hope they'll be able to persuade the good-ol'-boy network to loosen up on this and stand back for the good of the project.
   Getting this one right could finally boost PAAHC up to organizational credibility. Getting it wrong, as it seems to be going now, will doom both the policy and the organization.

La Grande Vitesse by Alexander Calder, commissioned in 1967 as the centerpiece of the new government complex in Grand Rapids, MI, my home town. It was instantly accepted as the city's logo, a tradition that continues today. Public art matters, and can have huge impact if we let it.

Update, Saturday: Note the comment below by Charlene Craig, which is right on point and adds a lot to the discussion. On reflection, I'm concerned that the process will go beyond preventing controversy to the active exclusion of whole categories of human thought, issues and even people. Bear in mind that the manufactured controversy over the Miller Valley School mural was about excluding people of color as "not representative of Prescott." We could easily see the process pandering to the culture warriors and ensuring that the policy requires public art to be pretty, dull and non-threatening to right-wing sensibilities. I'd have to wonder whether the Vietnam memorial on the square would pass muster in the current political climate.

Editorial: Hang 'em high

One of the inherent weaknesses of conservatism is the inability to stop doing something when it doesn't work. The conservative's response instead is to do more of it.
   So it is with the unnamed editor and today's editorial, stumping for Rep Eddie Farnsworth's HB2373, which would increase minimum sentencing for certain repeat felons and maximum sentences for others in cases first- and second-degree murder.

Tell me how this improves anything.

   The editor agrees with Rep Farnsworth that judges, juries and parole boards cannot be trusted to fulfill their responsibilities to evaluate the character and actions of individuals in assigning and enforcing sentences. He prefers that we legislate sentences instead, removing the human element and therefore, he thinks, the possibility that scary criminals get out of prison to scare again. On some people he wants to throw away the key.
   What he's also apparently willing to throw away is our justice system, or more precisely the parts of it that focus on anything other than penalties. In the editor's world, all we'd need are cops to develop evidence, laws that describe the penalties, and prison guards to warehouse the transgressors.
    I certainly understand the reflex to punish those who break society's rules. It'd be nice if punishment worked. But it doesn't, particularly for the sort of person the editor imagines as "the worst of the worst." True sociopaths are mentally ill, and incarceration with other bad actors only exacerbates that illness, increasing the risk to society. Less enlightened societies simply kill them (or sometimes elevate them to dictator status). If we hope to reduce the risk of violence by people with mental challenges like this, we really need to focus a lot more on treatment.
   What the editor's conservative blinders won't admit is that non-sociopaths will be swept up in this hang-'em-high net, and mandatory sentencing takes a bad act and turns it into a career, again increasing the risk and cost to society.
   Violent crime has been decreasing steadily for decades, and will continue to do so, not because of incarceration but in spite of it, due to inevitable demographic changes. Aren't we better off trusting our judicial professionals and our juries to do their jobs? I expect the editor would certainly feel that way if he found himself in the dock.

Doing my job for me

Thanks to commenter "Silly Editorial" for the response to today's editorial, in which the editor buys the Republican propaganda move wholesale:

Do you not get that the point of this was to deny government employees a cost of living raise? I agree that Congress' performance has been terrible, but 595 people making $174,000 per year is probably the smallest impact of this vote. The real impact is on millions of federal employees, and is totally unrelated to their performance, other than the fact that they are being scapegoated for people's dissatisfaction with American politics.

Couldn'ta said it better.

Cantlon: Occupy redistricting!

In today's column Tom rightly calls foul on the efforts of Speaker Andy Tobin and Senate President Steve Pierce to subvert the will of the voters and get around the independent redistricting process. There is far too little reporting on this in the press and it really deserves much more extensive public attention.
    I spotted an interesting piece in The Atlantic today that I think adds a very significant but underappreciated point. Republicans are inspired to resist the redistricting changes because they see increasing political clout for minorities and Democrats, and from that they infer a biased process. Nate Berg reports that demographic changes over the past decade are turning the entire mountain West more Hispanic, more urban and therefore more purple. Any fair redistricting effort will naturally reflect these changes.
    If you need some sort of good news to get you through the day, you may appreciate the back half of Tom's column, but it's unrelated to his main point and feels like filler to me.