First comment on today's traffic-related editorial:
"The solution is obvious. Radar activated machine guns. It would slow people down and it would be totally awesome. I have suggested this already, but the council doesn't care about what the voters want."
Jason Soifer covers the inevitable conflict between a proposed Chino Valley solar-farm project and NIMBY neighbors. But rather than just tell the story, he gets in a few editorial characterizations to fuel the silly fire.
Starting with the head and subhead, we get a decidedly dark view of the project. The first adjective Jason applies to the project is "sprawling," carrying firmly negative connotations compared to, say, "large." Later he writes,
"The plans includes a 41,000-square-foot substation, water tank and tower, communications building, fencing topped with barbed wire around the farm, and trees between the fence and the roughly 70 properties that will eventually watch their serene backyard views turn partially to black."Leaving aside the idea that "properties" can "watch" anything, notice the contrast between "serene" and "black," even though he's just described a screen of trees that will clearly improve the view of treeless hardpan that we see in the photo. Maybe he thinks they'll be black trees. The graf should have ended with "70 (bordering) properties."
Former Council candidate Mike Peters gets in a letter today about Council's work to "clarify" the successful initiative to require a vote of the people before approving expenditure on any project to cost more than $40 million.
The commenters variously want to go back and debate the value of the pipeline, the value of the initiative process, the venality of Council, and the qualifications of Mr Peters to speak. Another random food fight, in other words.What most seem to be missing is that this is an important issue of process.
I didn't favor the initiative myself, but it became law fairly and we have to respect that. The initiative didn't demand the end of the pipeline project. It requires a vote on it, that's all.
If we hold an election on the pipeline plan and it wins, it validates the value of the project and the process to get us there. It would put the issue permanently to bed -- or at least until it bankrupts us or gets us stuck for years in lawsuits over easements, etc.
But by dragging its feet on the clearly mandated election process, Council is only casting further doubt on the public value of the project as well as its own integrity. They may find a legal workaround, but that will inevitably lead to more court battles, citizen anger and delays. It may be tactically astute, but it's strategically stupid.
The developer combine pushing the pipeline seems to be underestimating its ability to sell voters a bum steer -- we did wind up electing John Hanna, after all. That tells me that they really don't think they have the goods to win a popular vote, and need to try to get what they want the old-fashioned way: weasel tactics.
Heads exploded yesterday in Tusayan when Rep Paul Gosar (R-American Association of Reactionary Dentists) called the New Deal WPA model a "really good" idea for addressing our unemployment and infrastructure problems, volunteering that "the CCC is another one." The sound is pretty bad, but someone got it on video:
Evoking a stopped clock, Gosar is correct. It worked before and it could work again. But forgive me if I'm a little skeptical of his sincerity. For Republicans these days, talk like this can get you a visit from the reeducation squad.
Tim takes the PUSD Facilities Manager to task for his expression, "Short of a bond, we are going to have to get real creative," inferring from the comment that the school district is talking about borrowing money before "creative" options are explored. And I thought I was Prescott's most annoying pedant.
This my be a class-related idiom, but when a working man says to me, "we're gonna have to get real creative," I take it to mean that the next step is cutting corners and skirting good practice. In certain situations it can mean going around the law. It's sarcasm, Tim, and it bodes an ugly result. The college-guy translation would be, "Without bonding, our services and facilities will suffer unacceptably." Make a note.
I'll bet if you dusted off your old reporter's hat, showed up at the PUSD Facilities Department and asked a few questions, you'd be surprised at how creative our public employees are and have been in dealing with their diminishing budget. You may also notice that though you deserve it, they don't take a poke at you for insulting them so ignorantly and publicly.
Tim was a bit less clear with his anecdote about fundie Xtian Dave McNabb (an old radio colleague of mine) asking the school board to stop teaching evolution as fact. If I take the section at face value, Tim seems to be smiling smugly about his advanced knowledge that evolution is (just) theory. I've long known that Tim believes in the Big Guy In the Sky, but I shudder to think that our local print monopoly might be run by someone no smarter or better informed than your average Afghan Taliban.
Note to Dave: What do you care? You're lifting off tomorrow.
We also learn that until the recent school-bus crash, Tim didn't know that our local districts go out and pick up kids in adjacent districts if their parents want them to attend a different school, they do it at no cost to the parents and they've been doing it for years. This is just one of many silly results of kowtowing to the god of competition in public services.
I happened to be talking about this at dinner the other night with one of our local school bus drivers, who offered one fascinating story after another about the ridiculous contradictions drivers deal with on a daily basis, starting with the lack of seat belts and other basic safety measures for the kids. Again, Tim, consider asking a question of a working stiff once in a while.
Today JJ turns in a column that might be marginally useful in the Vitality section, but is of course completely out of place on the Op-Ed page.
It's always a slog to get through JJ's turgid and often incoherent style, and what he's saying was already well covered thirty years ago, but I'll try to say something positive about this one: other than it's placement in the layout, it's mostly harmless.
The unnamed Courier editor gets it right today in calling the HUSD Board on its egregious disrespect for the retiring teachers it put on the agenda to honor. It's fine as far as it goes.
What bugs me is that he can get exercised over whether the board got the ceremonial pins right, but he can't get interested in improving teacher compensation and working conditions, what we most need to attract and keep those great teachers he claims to appreciate. That's the kind of "break" our teachers -- and our kids -- really need.
I'm moving the post below slightly because of consistent hack attacks on it.
 |
| Community garden in Alpharetta, GA |
Paula gets into the weeds on the budget numbers, but the most important information in this story is missing: a clear explanation of the effects of the cuts.
She references "technical classes" for 9th-graders. What is that? Woodshop? Beautician training? Basic physics? No idea. How does this alter a kid's career path or employment opportunities? No comment. What are the follow-on effects for the community. Eh?
A core reason why many people are so blithe about cutting public spending is that they just don't realize how it will affect them, their neighbors or their families. Here was an opportunity missed.
In today's "Council direction on city manager search expected at Tuesday meeting," Cindy quotes Laurie Hadley saying that locals "thought it was important to go out there and really search (for the best candidate)" for city manager, and that spending money on a headhunter would accomplish that. To me this clearly illustrates the aridity of the terms of this debate and a generalized lack of both vision and logic at City Hall.
Nowhere in the discussion have I seen any reference to our criteria for hiring the most powerful person in our local government. What exactly makes a good city manager, and how will we find the right fit for Prescott?
In the past these searches have apparently been based entirely on whether the person has previously managed another city of comparable size, and whether he (always he so far) has done an adequate job. In my experience this has led to a succession of generally competent but dully conservative occupants for the office, and unremitting mediocrity in the results.
In my 17 years as a resident, Prescott has failed to progress in any positive way, and has clearly lost some quality of life. We have more big-box shopping at the cost of smaller retailers, more mall space with fewer people shopping in it, fewer middle-income jobs relative to population, more official attention on traffic and less on scenic or neighborhood beauty, and still no sustainable water plan. Our infrastructure spending is at best barely keeping up with maintenance needs. Our economic development department is now focused on tourism. Quality-of-life improvements like the trails network or the YMCA have been exclusively private and nonprofit initiatives. We seriously have to ask ourselves whether this is how we want to continue going about things.
In our form of city government, the Council is equivalent to a board of directors, and the manager to a corporate president. S/he not only carries out the policy requirements set by Council, but s/he also generates many initiatives from staff experience and input. S/he remains in the job as Council members move in and out, and holds the keys to institutional memory and vision. S/he must be both politician and technician, a leader to staff and a servant-leader to Council. Having been involved in City process and observed closely for many years, I'm convinced that the manager has far greater influence on policy and how it's exercised than any elected official can.
So if we're to get off the dime, join the 21st century and have a shot at having Prescott live up to its potential as a great place to live, beyond ordinary managerial skills, the person we pick for that chair must have visionary goals and a chess-player's mind for achieving them. That person is not likely to be out of a job and showing up on every headhunter's list. I think we have to be the headhunter.
Rather than look for the best person available, we should be looking closely at the most successful towns our size across the country and discover what they're doing and how. Then we look for who's making those efforts happen, and when we find a fit, make an offer to attract someone who's already happy in the job.
Will it take a search firm to do that? Probably, but success demands clear direction from us about how to look. I tend to doubt we can find the qualities we need for 20,000 clams. Look what it's got us up to now.
The unnamed Courier editor posits that a federal government shutdown won't hurt anyone, so there's no reason not to do it. What he fails to offer is why it would be a good thing beyond its entertainment value.
This is another case of arguing from thin air. The piece assumes that the reader already understands the situation as the editor understands it, and only needs reassurance that the action both the editor and this imaginary reader want will be painless.
It's possible the editor is doing this innocently, naive in the assumption that most everyone is like him. More often writers use this tactic willfully and underhandedly, to lull the reader into the idea that everyone thinks this way and so the reader should too.
The reader should be suspicious of this position, and not just because of the obvious propaganda techniques employed to sell it. A government shutdown does not mean that the government stops working. It means government workers and contractors just don't get paid.
With three wars in the field, this has some pretty serious implications for our military personnel and families. While there is a bill working through to maintain the flow of active military pay, the services that support those personnel aren't in it.
The shutdown will certainly disrupt most federal public services -- courts, parks, highways, health care, food and product safety, supply contracts, patents, housing, reservations, you name it. To say this will carry no pain is, again, naive at best.
But the gaping hole in the argument is that there really is no reason for the Republicans to withhold their cooperation from the majority in fulfilling the most important responsibility of Congress, other than to make a political point that can only be sensibly translated as "do what I want or I'll take my ball and go home!" The editor seems to be saying that he'd prefer a non-functioning government to one run by Democrats. That's just asinine, as I know a lot of Republicans would agree.
I have no doubt whatever that there will be pain from a shutdown, not least for the Republicans who are engineering it. So if there were no pain for ordinary people, I'd say bring it on, the result will be politically positive. But it's just not like that. Playing brinksmanship for a couple of days won't matter much, but going beyond a week will guarantee real hurt for a lot of Americans.
"Fear leadership"? Does the editor really think that's a sensible idea? Yikes.
I just need to point out that Bruce's piece implies that Tom Agostino created "The Folk Sessions" on his own. I'm sure that Tom would not slight the contribution of Alexa MacDonald, who co-hosted the show for years and co-organized the weekly live mini-concerts that evolved into the current series.
Also: KJZA's primary frequency for the Prescott area is 90.1FM. Use 89.5 north of Prescott Heights and in PV. KJZA is not affiliated with NPR.
Would someone please point out to Tim that his Friday columns are a whole lot more like Jerry's chatty back-page filler than anything pertinent to an op-ed page?
The unnamed Courier editor commiserates with Councilman Blair on how proper enforcement of fair-housing law will allow icky group homes near respectable people and their precious property values.
The Boston Review is carrying an excellent think piece by Tom Barry bringing together the various threads contributing to Arizona's sudden pain. It's a great digest for voters who need catching up on the big picture, as well as a crystal-clear example of how businesspeople outside are evaluating Arizona as a prospect, and why marginal tax cuts won't attract sensible industry.
Today we see yet another fail for Tim's "local, local, local" mantra on 8A, a 3/4-page celebrity obit with no local connection. It makes a pretty stark contrast with 10A, wherein a dozen profiles of Prescott Area Leadership award nominees are crammed together with tiny photos. These are supposedly some great role models for our community doing interesting and underpublicized things. Smells like news to me.
Do the Courier editors imagine that Liz Taylor won't get blanket coverage across all media and supermarket tabloid displays? Or did they just have a loose page to fill? If the latter, they can call me, I'll be happy to offer some better ideas. Or ask any bum hanging out on the square, it just isn't hard.
Today Tom gets going on a metaphor and it takes him a few stops past where he wanted to get off.
He started out on the right route, outlining some of the systemic weaknesses of laissez-faire capitalism and why public policy is necessary to ensure that it works in service to society rather than the other way around.
I can't endorse Tom's definition of a healthy economy, bristling as it is with unquestioned self-references to the distorted 'norms' we generally accept. His core thesis is good, that we need to find a way back to sensible regulation, but it's buried in waffly verbiage that makes it hard to spot. I think he's fooling himself with the idea that our labor surplus will eventually go away and we'll naturally return to labor shortage. The global economy has done away with that dynamic for good.
 |
| Great pension plan, too. |
Okay, I'll bite. What would you change about the definition of a healthy economy?For me economic health can be measured on three criteria: robustness, in terms of exchange and added value, sustainability (renewable production and freedom from destabilizing excess fluctuation in value), and freedom from exploitation of people or the environment.
5 comments:
Have a great day.
Growing a small garden in a dry and warm place with expensive water like Prescott isn't a money saver, it is a hobby that costs money. I was fine with this, given that my wife likes doing it, but I had no illusions that we were being thrifty.
I think if you grew a couple tomato plants in those upside down things or 5-gallon buckets, or planted a couple herbs you like (our basil was one thing that grew well and was fabulous) you might be able to save a few bucks, but if Prescott was meant to be an agricultural area there would be more farms already.