Editorial: "Status quo preferable to immigration bill"

I have to give the unnamed Courier editor some points today for applying himself a little more than usual in terms of original writing, timing the issue properly for voter effect and avoiding any mention of cowboys or dated pop culture. Hooray. But he loses points again for trying to make voters dumber.

His use of charged buzzwords in place of thinking is obvious. Less obvious is his employment of poll numbers to support his preconceptions. A more nuanced and reliable analysis is easily available from the Pew Center, directly contradicting several of the editor's core points. The overall point that most people say they don't like the bill is true as far as it goes, but not because they have a considered understanding of the issues or the bill.

Here the editor is fulfilling only his chosen role as part of the right-wing echo chamber, where he should be getting past his personal prejudices to serve the interests of the community. A personal, bylined column is fundamentally different from an unsigned editorial in this regard, and this piece should have come with a byline.

A1: "Council cuts bed tax hike proposal by half"

Cindy Barks covers the basics pretty well, but I can't help feeling that something's missing from this story.

We have the major business players supporting a two-percent bed-tax rise to allow for more tourism promotion. We have an apparently small group of hotels resisting, and Councilcritters compromising as a result, probably in part because of ideological opposition to taxes.

What's bugging me is that if City-sponsored promotion is making the Chamber happy, why are some hotels not happy? Might there be some favoritism going on in the promotions? If investing in promotion is working, why don't the Chamber members just get together and invest the money that Council now says it won't extract in taxes? Might the tax regime be creating a market distortion that some businesses can use to advantage over others?

I'd like to see more on this.

A1: "School board member is at the heart of 9-1-1 dispute"

Anyone who's watched Tom Staley on the PUSD board will not be surprised at this story, in which his hot-headedness gets a little out of hand. This ran him straight into conflict with the ridiculous over-cautiousness of our lawnforcement policy today, in which overreaction is not just tolerated, it's required. Mirsada Buric went beyond summarizing the police report to get comments from Staley, all good. The recording of the 911 call on the free site is welcome too.

A1: "No water in a desert"

We semi-urbanites can take a lesson from our more rural neighbors on just how close we all are to the edge of survival these days. Joanna Dodder turns in a good story and informative sidebar on continuing problems with Wilhoit Water that ought to give us all pause, and don't think it can't happen in town just because our system is bigger and doesn't employ any ridiculous coin boxes.

This issue might also make for a more pertinent editorial, informing both urban and rural voters. Either our legal system is too weak to properly regulate these companies, or somebody in government is falling down on the job.

Editorial: "Method is ugly, results are the same"

Somebody needs more coffee. Today the unnamed Courier editor sleepwalks through yet another 250 words on the PV Wal-Mart aftermath, to no apparent purpose other than to fill the space. There's an amusing element in his working in a gratuitous cowboy reference by saying that he can't figure out how to work in a gratuitous cowboy reference, but nothing else worth the read.

I can picture this with the editor's picture at the top on B1 -- it's essentially the breezy commentary column that's been missing for a while. I'd say it's time for the unnamed Courier editor to move into the old-soldier role and turn the top-left space over to someone who's got the energy to do it right.

Wiederaenders: "Somebody must step up to transportation plate"

This is good. Tim gets hold of a local issue, applies some analysis and thought, takes a position and delivers it in a timely manner to have an effect on voters and our representatives. That I agree with his position on this is gravy. This is how a Courier editorial should look, and my only complaint is that it isn't at top left in place of the current waste of space.

Coming?: Kyl shills for rightwing talker

I'm looking forward to seeing what the Courier does with this hint from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on who's operating our Senator:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., the key conservative negotiator behind the compromise bill, told reporters Friday that California-based radio host Hugh Hewitt “had several ideas” that “we are trying to include” in amendments to be offered in an upcoming series of crucial votes.

Hewitt, a conservative who has criticized many aspects of the bill, had Kyl as a guest on Thursday and asked: “Does the bill provide for any separate treatment of aliens, illegal aliens from countries of special concern?”

Kyl replied: “It’s going to, as a result of your lobbying efforts to me.”

Amster: "'Sanctity of life' too complex for narrow views"

Randall's getting better at this. In today's effort he weaves some needed nuance into a national issue on which most people are rock-ignorant, and brings it home with a real local connection. Good show.

I appreciate Randall's assiduous work to calm the waters and get people talking on an adult level. It still ropes me off that we're dealing with this as any kind of controversy, though. We all know, if we're paying attention and honest about it, that this is an invented political issue directly related to the ongoing effort to assign human rights to blastocysts, which is a reactionary stratagem designed primarily to regain legal control over the sexuality of women. I'm really sick of it, we ought to be past this.

Editorial: "Congress disappoints again with ‘pork’ bill"

The unnamed Courier editor feels that $153 million in earmarked spending, in the context of a trillion-dollar budget that doesn't include funding for two ongoing wars, is something worth his morning finger-wag. OK, fair enough, how are we doing, relatively speaking?

Drawing from a comparative report by the Congressional Research Service (big PDF), I did a couple of sums. It appears that for '05, following a decade of consecutive increases, Congress earmarked over 1.2 billion bucks for over 16,000 individual projects. Took me about ten minutes, including downloading the 50-page report on dialup.

I can't say how the editor arrived at his number, so I don't know that it's directly comparable, but I'm sure that if he'd found a higher number he'd have used it. I'll walk right past the discussion we ought to be having about the good that's bound to be mixed in with the bad in the earmark pile. Just taking the editor's supposed point of view, it seems to me that in the context of his apparent desire to reduce earmarks, a drop in this category of spending by nearly an order of magnitude in two years ought to be cause for celebration rather than disappointment.

So which do we have here: a lack of interest in the simplest research, or a considered effort to make the voters dumber and slam Democrats? Either way, our community is poorly served.

Editorial: "Missing FTA deadline pushes back progress"

All right, I'll be nice and avoid dwelling on the amusing irony presented with the Courier editorial page warning of the dark implications should a public program that the editors have worked against for years miss its chance at a dip from the public trough. I agree completely, we need public transit, we'll need public money to make it happen, and we deserve Federal participation as much as any municipality in the country. Perhaps the unnamed Courier editor could help boost the profile of the CYMPO initiative, thereby building motivation and organization to hit the numbers and get it done.

Letters: Guns kill reason

Our pal Candace McNulty performs her trademark elegant slapdown of Bob Shimizu and his me-too chorus. Must read.

Talk of the Town: "Cheap tomatoes cost the U.S. $2.4 trillion"

Fellow blogger Tom Steele makes the case for the simple-minded approach to the immigration non-problem. There's not much here we haven't seen before, of course, and on this page at that, but it's a good example of how whipping people up emotionally can effect one's judgment about the facts.

I knew Tom was headed for trouble with his lead: "Most people know Latino farm workers have been part of our American picture since the 1940s." Most people also know that Mexican farm workers have been in the picture throughout the Southwest since long before there was an American picture at all.

But Tom's core argument is built on the idea that illegal workers receive more in services than they contribute in tax revenues. Here's a little of the research that Tom missed, as quoted by the National Immigration Law Center:

According to Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Board Chairman, in congressional testimony, July 2001, "undocumented workers contribute more than their fair share to our great country". He continued to inform Congress that immigrants, including undocumented workers, in essence donate $27 billion to state and local economies.

This is the difference between what they pay in taxes -- $70 billion -- and what they use in services -- $43 billion. Greenspan also testified that in Illinois alone "Illegal workers pay $547 million in taxes yearly, compared to $238 million in services used." This is a net "profit" for Illinois of $309 million.

A recent February 2002 study by the University of Illinois found that even as undocumented workers paid federal and state income taxes -- one study puts the amount of taxes paid at $90 billion per year -- they did not claim the tax refunds for which they were eligible. These unclaimed refunds amount to the donation of billions of dollars to the public coffers.

Another study by the Urban Institute found that undocumented workers contribute $2.7 billion to Social Security and another $168 million to unemployment insurance taxes. Because of their illegal status, these workers will not be able to access these programs even if they wanted to. In addition to the above tax donations, undocumented workers pay billions of dollars in local and state sales taxes when they purchase appliances, furniture, clothes and other goods.

According to The National Immigration Forum undocumented immigrants pay about $7 billion annually in taxes, subsidizing funds like Social Security and unemployment insurance from which they cannot collect benefits. In California, which accounts for about 43 percent of the nation's undocumented population, or about 1.4 million people, undocumented immigrants pay an additional $732 million in state and local taxes.

These are older numbers, but there's plenty more. This is an easy one.

Tom's big number in the headline is based on this idea: The (unimpeachably right-wing) Heritage Foundation "estimates the 'underpayment' of all taxes including the earned income tax credit, items previously mentioned and the projection of all Social Security benefits for life on these 20 million legal residents, is estimated at $2.4 trillion!" Hate to break it to you, Tom, but notice that this is about legal beneficiaries. Illegals can't get Social Security benefits. If they could, you might have a case, in the real world, no.

Tom is kiting large parts of his argument on his own prejudice that no one is paying attention to the real social costs incurred by illegals. It's just not true. These costs are well studied, well documented and available to anyone who can handle a Google search line. The social scientists and economists are in broad agreement that illegals are net contributors by a large margin.

Yup, and your tomatoes are cheap -- not because the illegals are being subsidized, but because their employers can more easily exploit them. You want a real scary story, look at what's happening with corn, what government subsidies of corn producers here are doing to the Mexican agricultural industry, and how that's affecting the northward flow of economic refugees.

A1: "Endowment equals more money for teachers, students"

We hear from the state treasurer and leading school-district administrators in this piece by Shari Lopatin about additional megaclams coming down from the state to the districts. For me as a voter I'd like to know how this will affect my kid, so what really matters is exactly how much of this money will wind up on the tax return of my kid's teacher (OK, I don't have a kid and I don't want one, just stay with me here).

We get a hint of that on the other side of the turn from Humboldt, estimating maybe $450 per year, but Prescott was pretty coy, as usual, and more focused on administrative staff. I'd expect rather more blunt language from a representative of the teachers union, but apparently that interview didn't happen. Any reason for that, Shari?

A1: "Municipalities release review critical of USGS water reports"

Joanna Dodder is pretty careful to separate fact from PR in this report on Prescott and PV going after the strongest basis for skepticism about what they're hoping to do with their rights to the Big Chino aquifer.

The strategy has become standard in our anti-intellectual age -- use the scientists' own acceptance that nothing is ever completely known against them (and us) and argue that since it's not completely true, it's therefore completely false. While this line of reasoning ought not to work on anyone over the age of seven, our education system seems to be allowing altogether too many people to graduate unequipped to deal with even this most obvious logical fallacy.

It'll be interesting to see what the editor makes of this on the op-ed page. Tomorrow, maybe, with a cowboy reference?

The sidebar notes that the USGS scientists have not been invited to the party as the PR campaign rolls out. I'm so surprised.

Reagan: "Republicans going down with the ship"

This is sort of funny. Reagan seems to believe that the Republican party is imploding because of the immigration bill rather than the gross incompetence of the Bush administration across the board.

Reagan seems to be forgetting that his industry -- ravening right-wing entertainment -- was invented in the early '90s to move the country's political discourse rightward, not to actually serve the wacky ideas the wingnuts and religionists put forward out there in reactionary Bizarro world. Reagan came to truly believe that the nutbar tail has been wagging the corporate dog, and now he's all hurt that the corporatists are abandoning the extremists faster than a Vegas escort dumps a crapped-out date. Life's tough when you're stupid.

"Going Down with the Ship," June 14

Meta: Link policy

I've been talking with the Web mavens at the Courier about how I can link to Courier stories without treading too heavily on the proprietary rights of the subscription site, and we've reached a happy agreement that I'll link to the free site unless I can't. They're still shaking the bugs out of the free site, and I know what a PIA that can be, so I've been keeping quiet about difficulties there until they're finished. This morning the free site has been really erratic and I couldn't get a link, so in the post below I linked to the sub site instead. I'll get that changed when I can, so don't be surprised if a link switches on you.

Editorial: "City-county land swap a win-win deal"

Repackage yesterday's page one, add a gratuitous reference to dated cowboy culture, and call it good. The unnamed Courier editor's job is easy.

OK, here's what really bugs me about this.

The constitutional role of the press is to inform the voter so that the voter is equipped to make informed decisions about public policy. An editorial is a position on public policy taken by the news organization as a whole, which is why editorials are traditionally unsigned. The purpose of a newspaper publicly endorsing what amounts to a political position is a call to action by the public, presumably informed by the editor's knowledge and analysis.

So the time to take a position is before the political decision is made, hopefully far enough in advance that voters have time to weigh in effectively. Editorials like this, reacting to the end of a long series of events and applauding from the sidelines, or like yesterday's, reacting to something on TV that has absolutely nothing to do with our community, demonstrate a weak grasp of the editor's responsibility to the community. The top left corner should never be treated as filler.

Update, 11:20: Relinked.

A1: "Williamson Valley Road design almost complete"

Paula Rhoden turns in a good, well balanced story on the runaway development project that Williamson Valley Road has become despite tremendous effort by local residents to get it under control. It may be that most locals favor the five-lane idea, as the Queen Bee claims, but I see nothing but her word on that. Maybe Paula can follow up with some investigation of this critical factor.

Editorial: "Nifong deserves whatever he gets"

Today's top-left rant is matched with a cartoon on the same subject, bringing a sort of Martha Stewart coordination to the editorial page. I seem to recall that I got a memo from Tim a while ago claiming "LOCAL, LOCAL, LOCAL" as his all-capped "mantra." Apparently he failed to distribute it in his own office. As with the recent editorial-page fascination with Paris Hilton, our editors are simply writing out the acid reflux of what they consumed from TV the night before. My advice would be to slug some Maalox and start paying attention to what's happening right here in everybody's hometown.

Goodman: "Politics: the red and blue of stem cells"

Considering the treatment Goodman was regularly getting up to some weeks ago, I suppose I really shouldn't complain that her columns have lately been coming through full-length and not much distorted by editorial depredation. Today's (originally titled "Tinting Science," June 14) is well in that trend. We have only to endure the editor's unaccountable fear of the passive voice.

Here's Ellen's lead sentence:
"By now you may be forgiven for suspecting that science is tinted -- if not entirely tainted -- by politics. "

And the Courier version:
"By now most will forgive you for suspecting that politics taint science."

Somebody please explain to me how this improves the column. To my eye it's hack work of the lowest order.