Wiederaenders: Writing on the 1070 wall

It comes out: For Tim, the Constitution is a "technicality."

For no reason I can see, first Tim extensively quotes a press release by Speaker Kirk Adams that's nothing more than a clumsy political frame for the legal issue against 1070. Then he indirectly lays out the true purpose of 1070, which is not to pass court muster or do anything about the phony "immigration problem," but simply to stain Democrats and anyone else who rightfully stands against it as "immigration lovers" -- to win election points. But even though it's right there in print, I have a feeling that Tim doesn't quite connect the dots on this yet.

Yes, the federal court will strike 1070 down -- it's clearly illegal -- and yes, that may push some undereducated citizens to vote R in November. If voters were better informed about how our layered government works, this schoolyard ploy would fall flat, but there's no hope of it at this point. Whether it will be significant in federal-level polls is an open question, and we're already expecting more radical rightism in the statehouse, so I don't see it altering the political landscape much by itself. It may help balance those who come out to vote for medical marijuana, raising participation in the midterm overall.

As for embarrassing the President, Tim, I'm afraid Mr Obama has much bigger fish to fry than worrying about the antics of Jan Brewer, Russell Pearce and Sheriff Joe. Let's have a little perspective, shall we?

Editorial: Smoki People had good intentions

The Smoki kick just goes on, although I expect it's is a conscious effort to publicize the current exhibit at the Smoki Museum, which is not a bad thought. Perhaps the editor should spend some time at the exhibit himself. In writing today's editorial, he clearly hasn't read the literature closely.

In defending the intentions of the old Smoki, he kicks right off on the wrong foot:

"Laboring under the misconception that the Native American culture was vanishing, the group decided to put on a show mirroring Southwest and Plains Indian dances."

In point of fact, in the late teens and early '20s traveling, professional Wild West shows were popular entertainments, and the Prescott business community simply decided to try raising money by putting on an amateur version. The fake Indian dance was only one scene in the show, and there's no evidence that it was researched at all, or that it had any more to do with the idea of preserving Indian culture than the contemporary minstrel shows of the South were about preserving black culture there. For them it was just a goof, like the Kiwanis jug band.

Their intentions were not about the Indians, they were about money and having fun, and the Smoki maintained that tradition for almost 70 years. The high-minded 'preservation' idea came later, grafted on to create a paternalistic public face for the group, and eventually they all came to believe it. But to maintain that belief they had to willfully ignore the express wishes of the people they were supposedly honoring -- for decades.

Now, says the editor,

"The Smoki Museum is striving to make amends for slights the Native American people feel by incorporating their input in planning the exhibit "The Sign of Smoki: Art & Artistry of Prescott's Smoki People." ... a plan is in the works to bring together tribal leaders in a discussion that would conciliate any bad feelings that remain over the Smoki People"

The editor is about five years late to the party.

Under its first professional director, JT Tannous, in 2005 the Museum began reaching out to the native people of this region, adjusting its mission and practices, creating a native advisory board, cleaning funerary objects out of its collection, and putting together the permanent Smoki People exhibit, both as history and public amends. The museum now has a native director as well, and is well on its way to winning trust, expunging the stain of Smoki that spoils all of Prescott for natives across the region, and moving toward its goal of becoming a respected resource for Southwest anthropology and culture by directly involving the people who made that history.

And about those intentions the editor hopes to credit: pavers on the road to hell, as I recall. Let's focus more on actions, we'll get more good teaching moments that way.

"Let us hope that we can now lay to rest controversy over the Smoki People," says the editor in fatherly benediction. Sorry, Tim, you're in too big a hurry. Give it another 30 years, and try to keep the facts straight. Above all, avoid attempts to paper over and wish away the ugliness of the insult, which only makes it worse.

Again, readers, if you hope to understand this story with any degree of accuracy, go to the source.

Editorial: No certainty in double-dip talk

One of the unnamed Courier editor's most reliably comic riffs is when he attempts comment on economic issues without reference to any understanding of economics.

In lieu of anything useful, Tim (it has to be Tim, since he addresses his readers as "folks") gleans a pile of conflicting and mostly misleading bullet points from teevee pundits and throws them out in no particular order. Around this he wraps a few data percentage points from the City budget director's presentation, and concludes, if I may paraphrase, "Well, I dunno, but it sorta looks like things might be getting a little better."

I would love to see the Courier apply some resources to understanding and communicating the City's budget situation and strategies. I've about given up on that, I'm afraid. Instead we get uninformed surface coverage, uncritical stenography of City bureaucrats, and pap like this.

The reason Tim's seeing so much talk on his teevee about "the question of a double or second dip in the recession" is because both the US and Europe are following the same strategy the Hoover administration established in 1932, turning a cyclical recession into the Great Depression. Nobel winner Paul Krugman has been crying in the wilderness about this for a couple of years while politicians with no better understanding of economics than Tim has drive us all over the cliff with them. Krugman explains why, if you want to know, it's worth the read.

Smoki: The end

I didn't intend to comment on the second part of this piece, which the Courier should have written after we released the film and the Smoki Museum opened its Smoki People exhibit in 2006, but a graf near the end begs for clarification.

Along with most of the quotes and historical scenes in the the piece, Bruce lifted this scene from our film:

Ann Oudin wrote an Internet blog after reading a newspaper story about the Hopi protest in Prescott. "It (snake dance) is the most mesmerizing thing I ever saw," she wrote. "Once you see them, you will never forget them."

The scene shows a pair of hands typing on a text-only '80s computer as the quote rolls on its monochrome-green monitor. How Bruce managed to imagine this as a 'blog' is just embarrassing considering that Ms Oudin was writing in 1990, the word 'blog' wasn't coined till around 1998, and she wrote that letter to the Courier, which is where we got it.


Incidentally, Borrowed Dances is the title on the Museum's cut of Jerry Chinn's feature film Raindance in a Storm. The film is available for purchase at the Smoki Museum.

Kali Simpson's comment paints a sympathetic portrait of the Smoki as as "elite" who were "politically correct for their time." The old Smoki themselves tell a rather different story. They readily admit Smoki was a drinking club, with extreme frat-boy hazings for initiation followed by drunk driving home as cops looked the other way, and much partying year-round (with the exception of show day, a lesson learned the hard way). After dancing in the World's Fair parade, the club was thrown out of Philadelphia for excessive drunken rowdiness and never again toured the show. This behavior mellowed somewhat over the years, but the club's purpose was always primarily social. They collected Indian things, but there was never an Indian member of Smoki.

Ms Simpson also implies a sensitivity to the Hopi among the Smoki, but to the contrary I've seen the letters written to Smoki by the Hopi as early as the mid-'20s objecting to their desecration of the Snake Dance. Smoki "researchers," including Kate Cory and Sharlot Hall, frequently made stuff up and sold it as authentic. The "preserving Indian culture" myth was something the Smoki used to justify their behavior, but they were always insensitive in action and slapdash in execution.

Editorial: Double shot of witless propaganda

As Prescott's annual cowboygasm and animal-domination festival winds down, the unnamed Courier editor favors us with yet another pious paean to truth, justice and the American Way, managing to subvert all three in his obeisance to heroic myths.

His lead graf only infers that he hasn't done much international traveling. For those of us who have, the first impression of returning to our home shores is barbed wire, armed guards, bureaucratic hassle and suspicion, neatly expressing how most Americans view the world outside as both threatening and uninteresting (encouraged, of course, by their self-centered corporate media). If you've spent any time outside the wire, you know that America is generally regarded, with good reason, as a witless, greedy, bullying, self-absorbed hegemon, so seeing that flag is a far more mixed experience than the editor's teary relief on getting back safely from his weekend in Rocky Point.

Following the standard script written by the first modern propagandists to pump the first World War, the editor hops to the blood and treasure we expend to "preserve our freedoms" in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, where the only freedoms we uphold are those of multinational corporations to continue exploiting the resources of poor people and sell them crap they don't need, and those of our favored churches to continue marketing their superstitious crusades. The wars we fought for our freedoms ended in 1815, folks. Everything since has been empire-building, resource acquisition or blowback for same.

The Courier editors danced on the sidelines waving pompoms as the second Bush administration worked assiduously to dismantle the freedoms and rights that today's editorial purports to praise. To me this demonstrates a stunning cognitive disconnect, and the editorial provides an example of how this disconnect comes about.

Looked at overall, the editorial's message is that the editor worships the flag. A flag. A thing, a symbol. His fascination with the symbol allows unscrupulous people to manipulate him by manipulating the propaganda around the symbol. So an illegal, aggressive invasion of a country that cannot threaten us, or turning innocent people and children into fine red mist to prop up a corrupt but apparently compliant puppet state, becomes a "fight for our freedom," and questioning it becomes subversive, even treasonous.

If the editor were to see the hard reality of what this 'fight for freedom' means to the people whose freedoms we steal and whose lives we destroy for it, I believe, truly, that he'd be a lot less facile about what he writes around it. But, lacking any useful experience and thrust into the pundit's chair, he falls into the trap of cracked mental shorthand -- war equals the flag equals our values -- and he mires what could be a competent mind in the sticky cotton candy of unquestioned premises and sacred falsehoods.

If you hope to honor the principles on which this country was founded and the people who fought and died to secure them, read the whole document. In particular, absorb how our founders defined tyranny:

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Is this not exactly what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan? Having lived under it for generations, would our founders have considered prosecuting this sort of evil for a moment? Does this shed any light on why our misguided attempts to 'help' these countries only leads to escalating resistance and blowback? The Redcoats were patriots too, remember.

By all means, honor our founders and their struggle, but not by worshiping a flag. They didn't fight for a flag, they fought for a set of principles, a foundation for freedom and human dignity. These principles, these rights and democratic practices, are they only legacy they cared about. Wrapping up in the flag while we dishonor their sacrifice by emulating their oppressor is what's truly subversive and treasonous.

Smoki: The beginning

Bruce takes on a feature series about the amazing and ridiculous "Smoki people" in tones that promise authoritative history. Save yourself some trouble and confusion, don't bother with this, just go to the museum and study the exhibits there, including the permanent Smoki People room (which I helped build a few years ago).

It's a story that requires some research and background to tell properly. In working with director Jerry Chinn on the film mentioned here, I was exposed to the broad range of perspectives on the Smoki story and nuances essential to understanding what led these good-hearted people so far off the rails.

As we said in the marketing, if you don't know the Smoki story, you don't know Prescott. Don't let the Courier's loose accuracy and surface treatment impede your knowledge. If you're interested, go to the source.

We're too dumb to know how dumb we are

Today's Feed-Your-Head-Friday feature explores cognition and Donald Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns." Juicy!

The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)

Editorial: Mexico's lawsuit reeks of hypocrisy

Maybe I'm confused about how this is supposed to work, but usually, if you set out a thesis, aren't you sort of obliged to back it up with something related to that thesis?

I've read it a couple of times, and I have to say today's editorial is, well, incoherent. I'll just jump over the lead graf, which reads like a transcript from an intermittent cellphone connection, and try to parse the unnamed editor's argument.

It appears that the editor is incensed that Mexico has joined the legal challenge to SB1070, in defense of the civil liberties of Mexicans, because he thinks Mexico is so bad at protecting civil liberties within Mexico. Hence the "hypocrisy" in the clunky headline.

As examples he cites Mexico's high unemployment rate and drug-related violence in the northern border towns. (Admittedly, this may well be all the editor knows about Mexico beyond its beer brands.) But neither of these has anything to do with civil rights protections, unless he thinks that Mexicans have a constitutional right to a job or an orderly smuggling market, which I tend to doubt.

Then he jumps to the Arizona boycott resolution by Chula Vista, which is pertinent to his thesis presumably because it has a Spanish name.

What the editor means to say, of course, is that he thinks Mexico should stay out of the legal battle over this legislation. There are straightforward ways of expressing that based on actual facts and cogent reasoning. He's just got tangled up in a lame attempt at snark. (Warning, editor: comedy is the hardest kind of writing. I should know, I screw it up all the time.) A better approach is to preserve the dignity of the editorial column and treat it more seriously.

For instance, you wouldn't imply to your readers that Mexico has filed an "actual lawsuit" against Arizona when in fact what's going on is that Mexico has filed a friend of the court brief in support of the existing federal suit. This is the standard way for interested parties without legal standing to legally express pertinent interests to the court. It's not scary, it doesn't cost us anything extra, and it won't alter the outcome. Calm down, 'kay? And try to spend a couple minutes on research before you decide what to write.

You might also want to consider what you would want your government to do if you heard that Mexico was about to start rounding up Americans with dodgy status in Mexico, running them through the prison system for X years and deporting them back here. If I know the Courier, you'd be calling for armed invasion. Makes an amicus curiae seem pretty mild, dunnit?

A story with a life of its own

Having broken the news that started the whole Blair-vs-mural hubbub, which went international and brought a whole lot of unkind attention on our fair city, now the Courier editors have had enough and wish it would just go away. Show's over, nothing to see here, move along.

Taking their cue from Mayor Kuykendall ("The public wanted the opportunity to speak, and now we're going to put this behind us"), today the unnamed Courier editor has decreed that further discussion of the topic is officially boring and we should be done with it, even promising additional censorship of the letters and comments. Nice.

This controversy touched a raw nerve in our town and opened a dialogue that's been a long time coming. It's no surprise at all that a lot of people want to be heard, nor that many are staking out extreme positions, nor that the champions of the status quo would like to vacuum the genie back into the bottle. It's an embarrassing story, and Prescott's customary way of dealing with embarrassment is to sweep it under the rug.

But is that any way for a news organization to act? Tim Weideraenders shows that this is a preferred approach in telling us he doesn't watch TV because tampon ads gross him out. After restating his own position, Steve Stockmar declares the argument over, clearly expressing the short attention span of the media in general and the public at large, as well as the typical offhand hubris of journos in deciding what's important and what's not.

Steve, Tim and the Mayor all seem to believe that their function is to lead the people in how to think, and what happened yesterday is not important. But they're all missing both the core of the story and the opportunity it presents, and forgetting that they are all in their chairs to serve the public.

Councilman Blair, Superintendent Kapp, Principal Lane and a bunch of racist yobbos all did things that were deeply offensive to the Miller Valley kids, their parents and teachers, and a large part of this community. Mr Blair has got some deserved blowback from his constituents and suffered some predictable cost in his commercial relationships. Messrs. Kapp and Lane walked their actions back and apologized, but that should not get them off without public discussion of how things are done in our schools, and how important political deals are made in secret among friends.

The Mayor blew an important and rare opportunity for sensible dialogue to address the day-to-day injustice and high background radiation of unacknowledged racism that splinters our community under its Leave-It-To-Beaver facade.

All of us overfed, comfy white folk would like to think of ourselves as friendly, open people who wave and greet passersby and treat strangers as new-found friends. But we all know or should know that we don't respond that way to all strangers, or even all of our neighbors. The majority here has grown comfortable in not seeing the ones who are different, or poor, or young, or mentally challenged, and there's constant pressure to make them even less visible. Many of us are in deep denial about how Prescott is changing with the world around it and refusing to go along, making Prescott increasingly neurotic.

This is news, one of the biggest news stories in our community. Refusal to talk about it, including by our local media, has built up the pressure we see being released now.

Rather than pulling the curtain and telling us the show's over, the Courier should be leaning into this story, seeking out the reasonable voices and different viewpoints, challenging rhetoric with facts, and pushing for answers to the very important questions it raises. Proaction, not reaction.

I don't know how long the story will sustain itself. Americans really do have the attention span of a gnat, after all, and in its current form the dialogue isn't very productive. The status-quo types will probably win. But be warned that the issue of racism in Prescott will not go away, it will only repressurize and emerge somewhere else, uglier and more recalcitrant. The editors have only kicked the can down the road.

Editorial: No more reasons to avoid parking garage

The editor chastises residents who prefer parking on the street rather than the city garage on Granite, with a headline discounting any excuse. Here we have mainly a failure of imagination, I'm afraid.

Consider someone who wants to buy something downtown, say a large ceramic pot, and faces the idea of carrying it across the square, around to the alley, up the alley and up several flights of stairs.

Consider someone who's planning dinner at Murphy's and a popular show at PFAA.

Consider the working musician (me) who has to show up at the club during the dinner hour and unload for the gig -- on Cortez St.

We have to face facts here: the garage is only practical for able-bodied people with destinations from the square on the east to Sharlot Hall Museum on the west, south to about Carleton and north to Willis. The eastern and most of the northern blocks of downtown are too far for most people even when parking is at a dire premium and you're able-bodied, leave alone those who are over 60, have little kids in tow, or are carrying more than five pounds of goods.

The idea of more and better signage to direct out-of-towners to the garage and other free lots is a good one. Forbidding downtown workers and juries from using on-street parking would be huge (although hard to enforce). A second garage on Union St, as per the original and smarter plan, would be better for the east side and far more visible and attractive to tourists and juries. Inside the garage, moving the spaces reserved for City vehicles to the top deck would probably raise garage occupancy by a third, since I'm sure lots of people give up looking when they see that block of white cars and trucks.

A lot of people complain that they're scared to use the garage because of poor lighting and nasty people hanging out there. Lighting in the garage is fine 24/7, but the alley behind the Row isn't exactly inviting all the time. A couple of electric four-place golf carts with drivers to ferry shoppers (free) around the square and to the garage might go a long way.

The central point is that the parking situation downtown has always suffered from inertia in accepting things as they are and a severe dearth of the necessary imagination to create multidimensional, positive solutions. Angled parking on our busy, narrow streets down there is dead stupid and we really need to upgrade or get rid of it entirely. Closing the streets around the square to cars would vastly improve the quality of the experience for everyone, and we ought to be doing some big-idea traffic planning to move in that direction. Simple public people-movers could knit downtown together over a much larger area than the frontage on the square, good for both visitors and businesses.

But standing up on the editor's soapbox, berating people to go park in the garage and belittling their concerns and practical needs is not going to help one bit -- particularly considering that the Courier so recently abandoned the downtown area.

I gotta say it

Prescott man gets 10 life terms in prison for kid porn and unsavory pursuits, and his name is what?

Christian Royalty?




Oh, that's rich.

Immigration facts slipping through the media fence

A great piece appeared in the Republic today confirming what the reality-based community has been saying for years about the phony "immigration issue." Just go read.

Feed-Your-Head Friday

Jay Rosen has a great think piece up on his blog offering a new way to look at press bias: Clowns to the Left of Me, Jokers to the Right: On the Actual Ideology of the American Press. Definitely worth a look.

Band coverage

Thanks Bruce, and we hope we'll see you at The Raven tonight. For more, check out the Big Daddy D website.

I told you it wouldn't work

Horizon's pulling out, and I'll bet Great Lakes won't be far behind. They can't make it work without public funding.

Watch those headlines

Courier headline today, p. 10A:
Dissatisfaction with Obama on oil spill mirrors Bush/Katrina criticism

Every other outlet's headline for the same story:
Obama defending Gulf effort in Oval Office address

Say no more.

The Kourier Koffee Klatsch

The idea of an editorial sit-down with readers is great, giving them the opportunity to talk and the editors to hear about how the paper is working for the community, ideas for change and improvement, kudos for what's right and accountability for what's not. What's not to like? But the point would be having the editors actually listen to the readers. Is that's what's happening here?

Reader Bob Bockrath ... discussed the differences between facts and opinions in editorial pieces.

"We have an editorial board that meets regularly to discuss positions we will take on editorials," Courier Editor Tim Wiederaenders shared during the discussion. "The editorials are opinions of the newspaper and of the board, not of an individual writer."

The fact/opinion question apparently went straight into File 13, and we get boilerplate about editorials that regular readers will instantly spot as hokum. This was the only bit where an editor even appeared to reply to a concern, leave alone offer a solution or change.

The event makes for some nice happy filler for the paper, but I'll bet it's massively frustrating for the reader participants. And don't even try to tell me that George Karsa showed up with nothing notable to say.

Rap on birthright citizenship

Rand Paul nationally and Russell Pearce locally are leading a nutbar charge against birthright citizenship, the concept that anyone born on US soil is automatically a citizen. Pearce is even proposing new state legislation to prevent the issuance of birth certificates to the children of illegals, thereby, he imagines, impeding the citizenship process, which is of course a federal function. It's another election-year stunt from our shadow governor, and he knows it'll go nowhere, but he can keep it in the news and use it to get himself and other nutbars reelected.

The senator is going about it in completely the wrong way, for clearly the wrong reasons. But at its core the idea has some merit, and I think we should be talking about it in a way that's rather less unhinged.

First let me set some bright lines on what I'm thinking. It's not the same as Pearce's proposal. There's no question that the 14th Amendment grants birthright citizenship to anyone, legal or illegal. Congress wrote it this way over the express objections of the amendment's primary drafter, who wanted to include a provision for lawful presence of parents in this country. That was the 1860s, the US still had half a continent to populate, and Manifest Destiny was still public policy.

Things are different now. The entire world is overpopulated and migration pressures are strong and complex. Beyond the charitable aspect (the nice side of paternalism), I just don't see a clear public good in granting citizenship to babies born to people who are not lawfully here. Appeal to tradition if you like, but I'm not sold.

Making that change would require the full megillah of a constitutional amendment to specify that the mother must be lawfully present in the US or a territory, including good visa status. (I don't include the father because paternity isn't always clear; if the birth is happening in the US, the mother is here. Duh.) Since the 1980s the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and South Africa have made changes like this, specifying parental citizenship or minimum residence requirements. I think we can afford to remain a little more liberal than that.

I'm not among those who feel that the children of illegals are a huge problem, certainly not large enough to warrant a constitutional process to address it. But we clearly do need an entirely new regime for immigrant workers, giving much broader legal status and bringing everyone into our systems for worker protection and taxes. This modification of our traditional approach could be a reasonable measure to offer the right in making a deal for sensible immigration policy, and that would be a huge gain.

It's worth thinking about, we can hope a little more clearly than Messrs. Pearce and Paul.

(Hmm: a tasty treat -- the Pearce and Paul Nutbar!)

The Unquestioned Premise

An ironclad rule of logic is that if one of the premises is bad, the conclusion is bad as well. The primary tactic of a skilled debater, whether on the school team or the courtroom, is to go after the weak premises and shoot them to pieces. And one of the primary techniques of the propagandist is the unquestioned premise, a basic form of disinformation.

It goes like this. Say you want to prove that the sun moves around the earth. You point out that everyone can see that the earth is flat and no one falls off, therefore the earth isn't moving, therefore the sun must be moving. Just slip that "common (non)sense" premise in there, and your mark swallows the argument whole. It's as easy as pie. But it requires either self-delusion or the intent to delude, as well as a pliable mark. Us readers, in other words.

The unnamed Courier editor manages to work four unquestioned premises into today's editorial, which is ostensibly on immigration reform but is really about getting more Republicans elected. I know, just go with me for a sec.

The editor's argument, in logical form, boils down to this:

Premise 1: The federal government is "neglecting its own immigration enforcement."
Premise 2: The federal government is "unwilling to enact positive immigration reform."
Premise 3: If the federal government will not enforce immigration law, Arizona must.
Premise 4: SB1070 would be effective in enforcing federal immigration law.
Conclusion: The federal government should allow Arizona to enforce immigration law as per SB1070.

Just look at those premises! I'll bet you didn't think he had it in him to make such breathtaking leaps!

What we have here are not facts, but rather talking points -- ideas designed to persuade you to think in a certain way. The unrelenting media narrative holds that the border is out of control and the feds are doing essentially nothing as illegals overrun the country causing havoc, crime, cracks in the earth, hail of toads, what have you. Anyone who knows otherwise is forced to show over and over again in tedious detail that these concerns are just not justified by reality. But those who are paying enough attention to know generally have jobs, families and real lives, so they get tired. The media machine never gets tired, especially of a story that generates beucoup moola.

Some facts:

The federal government is spending more resources and personnel on the southern border than at any time in history. To the editor, that's "neglecting."

The federal government cannot "enact positive immigration reform," much as our president would like to. That's the role of Congress, one in which the minority party is using every available tactic to block any initiative by the president or the majority party. To the editor, that's "unwilling."

Recession, not enforcement, is reducing the number of illegal immigrants here: illegals are leaving our state in droves, causing reasonable concern about further depressing our economy.

If its backers are being honest in how they're selling it, SB1070 is essentially toothless. If it's not, it's likely to exacerbate the crime and other problems we already have and add new ones, licensing bad cops, vigilantes and garden-variety racists to go after anyone who looks sufficiently brown, including Puerto Ricans and Indians. What the bill amounts to is a legislative temper tantrum, and that's causing reasonable people to step back, but I'm positive it doesn't scare the criminals one bit.

Finally, on the idea that the states must do what the federal government won't (to their satisfaction): Let's say there's a gigantic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and huge amounts of oil are threatening the coasts and industries of five southern states while the oil company who made the mess dithers around trying to save its investment in the well and avoid paying the cleanup costs. By the Courier editor's logic, because Louisiana doesn't like how the feds are going about fixing it, the state would be justified, even obliged, to nationalize (state-ize?) the oil company, direct the leak fix and take on the cleanup costs itself. You do the math.

The editor packs all this wrong thinking into his unquestioned premises. (Why bother thinking when the media are doing it for you, after all?) His conclusion is rotten to the core as a result, but in the context of the unrelenting narrative, it looks fairly reasonable.

Underneath, the message is quite pointed and partisan. See, in the editor's world, "positive immigration reform" is code for "closing the border and sending them all home," and that's the only approach the Republicans will talk about. The smart ones know the idea is preposterous in the real world, it just can't happen, I don't care how much money and manpower you propose to throw at it. But they also know that as long as they beat the drum, they have an issue that scares voters and gets them elected, and, as proven over the last decade, once they're elected they don't have to do anything about it, they can just keep beating that drum. It's perfect. A continuously winning issue that can't be resolved.

In the real world, "positive immigration reform" means eliminating the artificial shortage of legal routes to work, bringing all immigrants onto the level playing field of workplace protections, minimum wages and withholding taxes, and looking after U.S. economic interests in a flexible and skilled workforce. When the editor writes on those ideas, I'll consider the possibility that the Courier is turning a corner on the issue. But however reasonable it may appear on the surface, today's editorial is just the same old scary drumbeat. On with the stampede. Watch your step, there's a cliff over that way.

Editorial: In this case, what's in a name is a lot

The story of the Whiskey Row crosswalk is often told as Prescott lore, and there are many variations in the details. It may be that it's so often told that no one feels compelled to research the facts, but it would be nice if we could count on the unnamed Courier editor to take an interest in separating lore from reality, or at least not confusing them further.

I've been in town longer than Tim has, and while that doesn't confer any special knowledge, I may have heard the story a few more times. I've never before heard the idea that the City eliminated the crosswalk, rather it was ADOT, the reason being that Montezuma Street is officially a state highway (89), and unregulated crosswalks are not allowed on highways. One of the remarkable things about the crosswalk -- and I'm talking secondhand here, I haven't confirmed this with ADOT -- is that it is the only unregulated crosswalk on a state highway in Arizona. I've also never heard that when Sam painted the crosswalk he was operating only as an outraged citizen. Sam's reputation for stunts and gaffes while drunk is well established in the lore, extending to his failure to appear for his mayoral speech at the Y2K event ten years ago.

Some will say it's not fair to kick a man while he's down -- Sam suffered a severe stroke some years ago and is no longer able to defend himself -- but knowing him, I'd say he'd be the first to laugh at the idea of sanitizing his image for posterity.

If we're talking about putting up an historical marker, what we need is an official account, researched and confirmed, from someone with the authority to tell it. Another hipshot from the editor only muddies the water further. Prescott cares about history. I have to hope the editor does too.

Update, Tuesday: Daveinprescott asks, "Do you know anything about "The Prescott Western Heritage Foundation"? I have never heard of this group before and wonder what their involvement is with the local politics and why they'd be interested in putting this guy up front and center as a symbol of Prescott's past-as if it's something we should all admire? Is this a sizable group? Who are its members?"

Good question! This "group" filed with the Corporation Commission as a tax-exempt nonprofit on May 4 of this year, stating as its purpose "to provide charitable opportunities for children to a) participate in performing arts productions; and b) to participate in educational seminars and classes in the theatrical arts." Its articles of incorporation state that it will have no members, so it consists of just two directors: sculptor and Western art booster Dennis Gallagher, and former councilman Rob Behnke. Mr Behnke signed the filing and the organization's official address matches his home address.

Mr Behnke was on Council during Mayor Steiger's term, and is one of the prime movers of the foundation raising money to renovate the Elks Theatre, which the City purchased under Sam's leadership.

It's not clear to me how ennobling a crosswalk with Sam's name plays into theatrics for children, but the world's a funny place, y'know? I expect Mr Behnke came up with the idea on his own and is using the foundation's name to make the effort look a little bigger, gad bless'm.