Editorial: We're closing in on political accountability

The unnamed Courier editor assigns homework for readers on election candidates, inadvertently illustrating his own narrow and cynical view of elections and candidates.

First, the cynicism. He hawks up a pretty ugly list of descriptors for a campaign season only just begun: mudslinging, accusations, inflated promises, deflated expectations, promise "more," dirtier, wild accusations, nastiness and divisions. He says, in essence, "don't listen to anything the candidates say, as they can't be trusted to act like adults." In how he calls for a "higher standard," he sets the bar really low.

The editor exhorts readers to make a little list, then tells them which issues should be on it: "the economy," secure borders, and illegal immigration, these last two being of course the same. Unfortunately, only two of the many people we will be hiring in this election will have much of anything to do with these vague issues, and they distract from the business of governing. These are the hot-button teevee issues, the newstainment that confounds our social sanity.

Further, while I firmly agree with the editor on the overarching concept of voters educating themselves and doing the homework, it strikes me that as the policy leader of our community's newsprint monopoly, he bears more responsibility that anyone else in building the information infrastructure that allows voters to inform themselves.

The founders of this country built a free press into our national fabric not because they liked reading papers per se, but because they understood that effective self-governance is only possible where the people are fully informed about what their elected representatives are doing. The free press has had its fluctuations in how well it has fulfilled this responsibility, and unfortunately we're in one of its seedier and more feckless swings now. There's little we can do about King Teevee, I'm afraid, but the editor is a member of this community and can be held to account. Continuous positive pressure from readers will push him to raise his own standard for finding and furnishing information that matters in electing representatives of quality.

So yes, voters, do your homework. But don't make it about distractions designed to divert you from substance. Meet the candidates, ask questions to determine how well they understand the jobs they seek, find out about their work ethic, their relative devotion to ideology or practicality, their tendency to rule or serve, their ability to get people working together. These qualities will tell you far more than pat answers on hot-button issues.

And editor, get to your knitting. So far your quality of service to the community around elections has ranged from shallow to blatantly self-serving. Exert yourself, bury your prejudices and try to be the sort of newsman we can all be proud of.

No, he didn't. Not yet.

I cannot imagine how the editors justify today's Page 1 headline, "ELECTION: Tobin easily takes one of two LD1 seats," without admitting that they're doing all they can to throw the election to the Rs. I challenge them to try.

I don't need to clarify for any reader of this blog that this was a primary election, meaning the winners have won the privilege of standing for the real election. Rep Tobin has won nomination, not the seat.

Yet the entire article is written as if he had. While Mr Campbell contemplates a vacation and Ms Fann gets back to work on campaigning, Mr Tobin " will head to Phoenix Tuesday to resume work on the budget," as if he's already been rehired and needn't worry about campaigning further.

As analysis (opinion) you can get away with writing that the "likely" or even "likeliest" result of this is that Mr Tobin will return to the House, but saying that he already has is not just obviously wrong, it's bound to be confusing to many voters. The editors may have forgotten, but we fickle voters could very well elect Ms Fann and Ms Bell and leave Mr Tobin to his tea-party organizing. Ten weeks have yet to tell the tale.

Hayworth wins!

“Today, the Republican party of Arizona nominated for Senate JD Hayworth in the shell of a politician that was once John McCain. The complete takeover of the Republican party by the Tea Party has included taking over the soul of a Senator who was once the face of comprehensive immigration reform and who now would just build the ‘danged fence;’ a man who once reveled in being a maverick and who now is a rubber stamp for the extreme rightwing; a man whose name was synonymous with campaign finance reform and who now barely registers a notice when the law that bears his name was gutted by the Supreme Court to favor corporate America. So, we congratulate JD Hayworth on his nomination tonight,” said DNC National Press Secretary Hari Sevugan.

Debate: Should a mosque be built near Ground Zero?

I really can't pass this one up. For anyone who takes seriously our Constitution and our heritage as a free nation, the answer to the overarching question is obvious and unalloyed. Americans do not discriminate against religion. Period.

Leave aside that what's planned for lower Manhattan is not a mosque, and that it's being planned by Sufis, who are to al Qaeda's radical Wahabbis as free-love Jesus freaks are to Inquisition Catholics. Leave aside that the people involved are not in any way related to the criminal zealots who took down the towers. Never mind that they have clearly and repeatedly expressed their mission in terms of healing and solidarity against terrorism. Leave aside the distress of a few revenge-addled relatives of terrorism victims. None of this matters in light of the larger principle.

Freedom to practice religion is a sacred founding right of this nation, and our fundamental rights are never subject to votes or current public opinion. If that ever happens, this nation is well and fairly lost, and to the extent that we tolerate public "debate" like this, we shame ourselves. There is no equivalency here, no reasonable "other side."

Now knock it off. This is another phony issue raised by evil, power-hungry men and promoted by money-grubbing corporations to make you angry and careless about your vote. Don't fall for it.

Dentists push Gosar fundraising to top in crowded CD1 primary race

Joanna is taking a lot of heat in the comments over her citation that Gosar led Beauchamp in the tea-party poll. Coupled with Beauchamp's clear identification with the tea-party crowd, the pure volume of comments and lack of refutations made it inevitable that the story would need correcting, and a correction indeed appeared this afternoon. Take care of those tea partiers, they bite.

The real question is: where was the editor when this counterintuitive 'fact' showed up in Joanna's story? Did s/he leave Joanna out there on her own?

Between Beauchamp's tea-party endorsement, Gosar's Palin endorsement and the red-meat-addicted R primary voters, we can be pretty confident that Rusty Bowers, the only credible Rep in the race, will go down in flames, leaving a reasonable and experienced D up against a nutbar, amateur R in a Dem-leaning district.

Wiederaenders: Courier is working to catch 'mythtakes'

Tim responds to a reader complaining about "letters to the editor that present 'facts' as 'truth'," implying that he intends to fact-check such letters and do something unspecified about them. He tangents into a comment on "policing the online comments," citing "libel" and "fighting words."

"Have we made 'mythtakes'? Of course," he admits, but then shows that he doesn't really understand what that means, defending himself with, "There's always another side to the story, folks." No Tim, there are sides to a story, but not to facts -- facts don't take sides. "Fact" is the value the reader (and I!) want you to uphold separate from opinion, slant, analysis, dogma and human interest. You missed the point, and with your cute and folksy stylings you denigrate your own integrity.

I also notice painfully that you're willing to step up in response to criticism of letter and anonymous comment writers, who have no impact on the value of your product, but not the more serious criticism of the Courier's own myth-propagation and failures to fact-check. A regular and serious ombudsman's column, along with policy enforcement in response to it and real change, will go a long way to repairing the Courier's awful reputation and giving it a chance of survival in a future that's all about trust.

Editorial: Iraq War's purpose still unclear as troops return

Catching up on my writing after a few "days off" (read: real life), this headline would make me laugh out loud if the Bush apologists had been less successful in muddying American minds about the debacle we now refer to collectively as "Iraq."

Many readers are too young to remember the events of the late '80s that led us directly here, and generations have grown up since the US began running the serious dirty tricks in the region that brought Saddam Hussein to power. If you don't know this history, I'm sorry, it's too complicated for a blog, read a book. But what I can say definitively is that there has never been any question among serious people as to what has motivated the US to intervene militarily in Iraq -- not now, not in 2003, not in 1990, and not before. The US has only one practical strategic goal in the region, and that's to secure the supply of oil. Everything else derives from that -- including, ultimately, the politely termed "defense" of Israel. If you think you've got a cogent argument against that, you're allowing yourself to be bamboozled.

So no, editor, it's not "Washington's responsibility to see Iraq as a country and not as a war." It's our responsibility to see Iraq as a sovereign people and not as a strategic resource.

The editor writes, "scholars will dissect the past seven and a half years and no doubt will find elements of fault, deception and untold costs of human life and money," as if the reporting on what actually happened versus what you, editor, would have had us believe was happening* is some sort of academic exercise for the enlightenment of future generations.

*: Like this. Or this. Or this, fer gadsake. More lies here. More prevarication here. Ack.

The hard truth for the editor to swallow is that he has allowed himself to be deceived by better propagandists about the Iraq adventure for years. There has never been any serious doubt that the war was venally motivated, illegal, and doomed to abject failure and horrible follow-on consequences in a hundred predictably duh-level ways. But because empty-headed flag-wavers wanted to feel heroic and hit back a someone Arab-looking for 9-11, and because small men saw it, accurately, as a way to win power for themselves, we killed at least half a million innocent Iraqis. That was not an academic exercise, and it will haunt us for yet more generations.

No, editor, you can't get off that easy. That flag you're waving is missing its drape of mourning for our victims and our national integrity.

PS: My nephew is a casualty of the Iraq adventure, by the way. That's not academic, either. Our troops and their families deserve to know clearly what their sacrifices were meant to accomplish. Above all, it was never "our freedom."

Band coverage!

Thanks to Steve for his review of Down, Boy! in the online edition, and to Bruce for working in a reference to it in print. Read more on the band and hear samples at BigDaddyDBlues.com.

I'm happy to take the Muddy reference, but I haven't much use for Canned Heat. And as for "a repeat winner of our Courier Reader of the Week award," I'm afraid I'm still trying to work out where I can hang all those testimonial plaques.

And seriously, is it really so hard to get my name right? Gad.

Editorial: Don't pass the buck - take a stand

Following up on Monday's editorial, today the unnamed Courier editor nearly clarifies his position. He wants the gate open, and he wants the homeless cleared from the park, by force.

Having penned the Orwellian phrase, "a concerted coalition of resources to humanely clear the park of the offending population," he goes on to exhort Council to "provide leadership" in attacking "the root of the problem," which is clearly "unsavory" people who don't have anyplace better to sleep.

The preference for the use of force is obvious. But he hasn't apparently thought about what to do after these "offending" people are in handcuffs. Put them in jail? Put them on a bus for parts unknown? Maybe have them camp out in the editor's back yard?

Just as locking the gate won't prevent "pillage" in the shopping center, simplistic thinking will do nothing to improve any aspect of this issue.

ToMA: : 1070's logic is all in the Constitution

In today's Talk of My Ass, Ken Singer admits right off that he really doesn't have the background to say anything definitive about 1070, then proceeds to assert definitive authority on it. Do I really need to bother taking this apart? Why do the editors insist on putting column slugs on letters to the editor?

Mr Singer attempts through the logical fallacy of false equivalence to prove that 1070 is constitutionally legal. His argument fundamentally follows the well-worn path of state's rights over federal law, which has proved reliably futile in federal court.

Thrashing around for grounds, he comes up with ludicrous examples. "The federal government regulates interstate commerce. However, if you drive from Arizona to California on I-40, you will note that the speed limit on a federal interstate highway is regulated by each state," prateth he, but to me this only illustrates that driving on a highway by itself is not commerce (duh). I don't see big rigs changing their safety specs when they cross the border, though. "Although the federal government regulates citizenship, residency requirements between Arizona and Nevada are different for divorce," writes Mr Singer. And what exactly does divorce have to do with citizenship, hm?

He natters on with all the familiar nonsense about the phony immigration problem, drawing cracked and far-from-original conclusions from premises based on falsehoods ad misperceptions.

If this were labeled as a letter, I wouldn't care. The column treatment conveys the illusion of authority to speak, which this piece clearly does not deserve. Waste of time and bad editorial choice.

China surges past Japan as No. 2 economy; US next?

Half the story is missing from this AP feature, carried on 5A in the print edition. The editors loved the headline, which they slugged at the top of 1A, no doubt for its sensational effect. In the part the editors left out, Chinese officials admit that this supposed milestone is nothing to crow about, because it means that on a per-capita basis China's people are on average now one-tenth as wealthy as the average Japanese.

This gives us a chance to ponder on how insignificant facts can be processed into scary fantasies.

ToMA: Nothing partisan about new local group

I am very proud to report that a group of readers has independently gone after the lies of Monte Crooks and utterly dismantled them in the comments, quoting chapter and verse. It's a pity the editors didn't bother to do this before publishing the piece in the paper, where the rebuttals will be two or three weeks coming if "space" allows.

I saw this crap for what it was on first read, but the commenters did my work for me. Bravo!

Editorial: Separating campaign fiction from facts

Rummaging around in a dusty attic full of long-disused things, a surprised Courier editorial board stumbled over a small, shabby box labeled "Journalistic Integrity." Just for a giggle they took the machine out of the box and found that after all these election years it still works like a charm.

Readers are hoping that they can find room for it on the kitchen counter among all the shiny modern appliances and put it back to regular work. The cooking was so much better when it was the primary tool.

I thought about checking the archives to see how long it's been since the unnamed editor wrote exactly the opposite of this, but, naah. Let's enjoy it while it lasts. Here's a yummy cookie. I haven't had to make a batch in quite a while.

Alert! Marauders pillaging Prescott businesses!

Today the unnamed Courier editor tells us the fence gate into Granite Creek Park is controversial because merchants say "vagrants travel to and from the park through that path and pillage their stores and loiter on the shopping center's sidewalks."

"Pillage"? Is the editor off his meds, or is looting going on at the Depot Marketplace, and somehow I missed it?

Okay, let's say the editor just wanted a more colorful word than "shoplifting," and just hasn't enough respect for words to care what they mean, rather than that he wants to exaggerate the scale of the problem and scare his readers with images of hordes of Huns tearing up the produce section at Albertson's. Let's move on to the logic here.

Say you're homeless, broke, dry and hanging out in the park one day, and you feel the urge for a hair of the dog. You know there's lightly guarded likker on the shelves at Walgreens next door. You head in that direction, but there's a locked gate. What do you do?

My guess is that you'll walk a couple blocks around the fence, drop into Walgreens and pocket a quick pint anyway, slipping out past the overburdened and none-too-nimble staff. And since the gate is locked, you'll go around the back to the loading dock area to quaff your prize before stumbling back around the fence to the public jons.

What world does the editor inhabit, wherin a chain-link gate is going to make any substantial difference to someone dealing daily with the grinding, ordinary challenges of homelessness?

It's perfectly clear that this isn't about loitering or pillaging, this is about keeping unsightly people away from Everyone's Hometown Shopping Center (and in the park instead, by the way). We don't care who they are, how they got there or where else they might go, we just want them gone. We know intellectually that there are problems for people in the real world, we just don't want to see the real world every day. That would be "shoving it in our faces," where we might have to think about it. Let it be someone else's problem.

The drag is that harassing homeless people enough to move them elsewhere doesn't work. They don't find out by broadcast text message that Granite Creek Park is off limits. They don't use hobo sign anymore. They just show up. And we run them off again, and they show up again.

If the problem is really so large, maybe the Council ought to ask whether the downtown businesses would like to contribute to funding and staffing a shelter where most of these "vagrants," as the editor characterizes them so charitably, can find safety and some basic resources for getting off the street. How about some put-up-or-shut-up action, hm? How about working to help solve a problem? And where's the editor been on a problem that people have been moaning about ineffectually for decades?

The editor mentions "three publics" toward the end, missing an important one: the people who use the park as a thoroughfare and would like to shop in the Marketplace or elsewhere downtown. See, the editor can't imagine any respectable person traveling our city without a car.

Why we should always read skeptically

Today's cribbed Game & Fish press release carries an object lesson in the reliability of self-generated news stories and why newspapers have to investigate stories carefully if they are to maintain their own credibility.

Back in the "Getting Out" section we find "Central figure in Macho B incident to pay $8,000 fine," slugged "Special to the Courier", by which we understand that the Courier got it whole and ran it unedited, i.e. a press release. In it we find the Game and Fish Commission fining the guy who originally trapped the last jaguar in AZ and revoking his game privileges for a "prohibited take," meaning he baited and intentionally trapped the animal illegally while working as a contractor on a Game & Fish cougar study. He also drew five years' probation and a $1,000 fine in criminal court.

Comparing this end-of-the-legal-road story with the first report on the incident back in February '09 is illuminating. In that press release, carried here, Game & Fish wrote that "The male cat was incidentally captured" by the department during the study -- by accident, in other words. They collared him and released him, but recaptured him after his movements seemed wrong, diagnosed him with terminal kidney failure and killed him, setting off a small but firm national wave of outrage. News stories like this focused on that decision and how it was reached, but generally glossed over the original capture, which no cat-owner will deny very likely precipitated the health problem (if there was one) and the cat's death.

The outrageous inaccuracy of the agency's first release, whether intentional, mistaken or just sloppy, should raise hackles in the Governor's office and red flags in every newsroom. For readers, when you see "Special to the Courier," you should read it as "Unsubstantiated Happy Talk and Lies." For the editors, I'd recommend you quit running press releases as news without checking them. No serious news organization does this. If you must carry them, label them properly and protect yourself from what's in them, because readers tend to assume you're actually doing your job.

Casserly: Prescott a microcosm of health care's future

I've been watching the recently-recurring column of JJ Casserly for a little while to get a bead on where this " longtime newsman and author" is coming from. From traces left on the Net, he ghostwrote an autobiography of Barry Goldwater in the '80s, apparently worked for the Republic for a while, and claims to have covered the Vatican "for years."

JJ's pieces have been more or less innocuous till now, but today he steps over the line into right-wing scare propaganda with this piece on Medicare.

JJ parrots Republican talking points designed to frighten you about health-care reform. The "no one has read it" canard is a quick tipoff for anyone paying attention to the slant here.

He leads off with "the Obama administration will cut present Medicare payments by $529 billion." This is a lie. JJ knows that when he writes "Medicare payments," most readers will think it means "payments to doctors for my care." The $529 billion figure (in reality, about $500 billion) is a ten-year goal for cost savings in Medicare by reducing fraud, abuse and inefficiencies within this gargantuan program. $200 billion of that will come relatively quickly with elimination of Medicare Advantage, a Bush-era program designed to line the already fat pockets of the HMOs we all hate. The legislation specifically forbids reduction of benefits to achieve that goal.

"Health experts say it will be impossible to get the massive enterprise up and running within a year or two," says Casserly -- yup, and that's why most of its benefits don't begin before 2014. I expect he's quoting experts who are in favor of the new system, even advising the administration. But he's flipped the implication to support his thesis. This makes it a lie.

JJ quotes Barnett saying, "What the feds will do is create greater rationing of dollars, cutting their payments to doctors and hospitals. That will ration care," indicating that he does not know what's in the legislation in terms of legal language or intent. What's true is that the system -- not yet operating, remember -- requires that Medicare maintain benefit levels. Notice also that he doesn't touch on the influence of varying state laws and policies on how to distribute Medicare funds. We're seeing lots of problems now because state legislators are raiding the cookie jar, and unraveling that will be a broader challenge than implementing the Affordable Care Act.

Probably the most egregious violation of journalistic ethics comes with this: "Barnett is concerned about the latitude that the Department of Health and Human Services will have in interpreting the new law. Bureaucrats will have absolute power in many health decisions. Just how fair and balanced they may be is open to question." This and a later graf evoke the "death panels" lie, and its the big lie. In point of simple fact, the system will allow no legal interference or influence by the bureaucracy on doctor-patient decisions. That's a problem created by HMOs, and an important part of what the new law is designed to fix.

JJ even tosses the phony illegal-immigration bomb. I'm sorely disappointed that the Courier has brought on yet another regular columnist who has so little respect for his readers that he'll lie and cheat to convince readers to vote his way. Shame on him, and shame on the editors.

Ack

It just confirms all your worst feelings about humanity, dunnit?

Man arrested for allegedly stealing Emmett Trapp family fund donations

Be afraid! Minions of Dr Evil seen in Preskit

George Soros is here and determined to take over the world! Or at least a few nice luncheons and rallies.

Responding to today's ToT, this afternoon I attended a little rally on the Triangle, which I learned was the first event organized by a new local group affiliated with Moveon.org. With between 35 and 50 people ranged around the circle, several speakers preached to the converted as passing motorists responded to the colorful signs-on-a-stick (anything is better on a stick, don't you think?) with honks and thumb-ups.

Following up on the opinion piece, the main topic was the influence of corporate interests and money on our electoral and legislative processes. The speakers were earnest, but claimed no expertise on the issue, and I felt better informed about what they have in mind and inspired by the ToT than by the speeches. Note to Moveon: waving signs at cars is OK, but you'll change a lot more minds by engaging people who aren't already in your camp.

In the course of his talk, Bill Swahlen admitted that the credit for the ToT should go to BHS history teacher and coach Jon Vick, seen previously on the opinion page here and here. Jon told me he's taken some hits for speaking up, with people questioning his qualification to teach because they don't agree with his political opinions, hence the passing of the credit. I'd just like to encourage Jon to speak up more and consider greater involvement in politics. Our community needs more committed, articulate, energetic and personable leaders like him.

Ken Hedler was there taking names and notes, so look for a Courier report on the rally in the days ahead. I saw no other media people.

Editorial: GOP primary not about only illegals

Today the unnamed Courier editor asserts that "Candidates who take political advantage of immigration by neglecting other issues are as dangerous as voters who do the same thing." I agree, but there are two ways to look at this piece.

The first is to take it at face value. The editor would like to move the public discussion off its focus on immigration to more important things. This echoes the response of Senator Steve Pierce to the first question in last Wednesday's candidate forum. The entire editorial could be read as a rewrite of the senator's 90-second answer.

On the other hand, candidates taking political advantage of the phony immigration issue and neglecting others are following the standard GOP playbook this year. Could it be that the editor is saying, "most GOP candidates are dangerous"? Given the Courier's history, I rather doubt this would get through the editorial board.

The nagging question is why the Senator and the editor would try to soft-pedal being on the right side of what the Rs see as a 70+-percent positive issue among the public at large. Why not lean into immigration as a sure winner? How can the editor write, "immigration is hardly the lead dog in a pack of issues," when that is obviously untrue in terms of real political rhetoric?

How about this:

Saying the right things about illegal immigration is necessary to winning the R primary (the rightward version of political correctness), so every R running for a seat is saying those things, which negates the value of the issue in the primary. If everyone's saying it, there's no differentiation among candidates. Looking past the primary, the zealotry over the immigration issue becomes a negative in attracting moderate voters (and there are a lot more of us with serious concerns about how this is shaking out than the R polls suggest). So ramping down the rhetoric at this point and pushing the real nutbars into the closet until after November is a canny move politically.

So ultimately I agree with the editor that immigration-happy candidates are dangerous. But I'm guessing the editor is saying this for different purposes. Illustrating the piece with the GOP logo is a hint.

Where's the candidate forum?

If I were managing the local paper, there would be a story in today's edition about Wednesday's LD1 candidate forum, organized by the League of Women Voters at YC. I saw Lynn McMaster there taking pics and Bill Monroe and Don Steel taking sound and interviews. I didn't see a Courier photographer or reporter.

Quite apart from my agreement with her on most of the issues, I thought Lindsay Bell was clearly very confident, well prepared and well spoken, standing head and shoulders above Noel Campbell's know-nothing jingoism, Karen Fann's smug naivete and Rep Andy Tobin's all-about-me fatuousness. Lindsay brought clear, specific, positive ideas to the table, where her opponents relied on ideology and slogans.

On the Senate side, Sen Steve Pierce was able to coast on his cowboy-patrician air because Bob Donahue couldn't seem to organize his thoughts or project any confidence in his ideas, which on paper aren't bad. I got the feeling he'd be eaten alive at the capitol.

Followup, Sunday: I thought the editors might have been saving the story for the Sunday edition, but no dice. This adds to the mound of actions indicating unwillingness at the Courier to cover Democrats. Prove me wrong, editors.

Fumble on the field, who's got the ball?

As our Accidental Governor coasts to victory in the primary, I've been saying for a while that her biggest weakness in the general campaign will be that she'll have to open her mouth in public. Today's alert on the special session to fix the anti-card-check initiative contains a perfect example. Says the Gov:

"The right to cast your vote without fear or intimidation is a fundamental tenant of our democracy."

The interesting question here is how this telltale flub of the tongue got into the AP-slugged story, which is all over the Net. I'm completely confident that the Governor could confuse "tenet" with "tenant" in speech, but one would expect an editor to correct the fumble and print what she clearly meant to say. (Despite President Bush's consistent inability to pronounce it correctly, the papers always wrote "nuclear" when he said "nookyular.") So did the reporter and editors also mistake the word? Did the editors decide to leave the Governor's mistake in? Or did perhaps the Governor get it right and the reporter and editors inject the mistake?

Why this recession is different

Easily one of the most cogent presentations I've seen on the proper response to the credit crunch, from someone who's lived through doing it wrong. Readers should understand that Nomura Research is no liberal think tank, it's the Japanese equivalent of the research arm of Goldman Sachs.

Graphs help

Jailbreak followup:

The escape of three murder convicts from the private prison in Kingman is playing out like a slush-pile screenplay. Yesterday brought news (h/t to Cap'n Tom) of another amazing operation by Arizona's crack lawnforcement system, rousting an innocent family on the basis of a bad tip. I'm on the lookout for stories on the official response to the security failure at the prison, and why these guys were in a medium-security facility.

You'd think some of this might make it into the Courier, but I guess they needed the space to tell us that nothing's happening in the DeMocker trial this week.

Editorial: It's a crucial year for Arizona education

The headline writer gets it right, for once. But like a stopped clock, this headline would be accurate every year.

Kids grow, and development happens regardless of whether our education system is properly funded this year or that. Our failure to invest in education at any given time means that kids miss learning opportunities. There's no second chance on second grade, not really. Missing a development window for a child has long-term consequences.

The unnamed Courier editor is jubilant here: "The 2010-11 academic school year . . . will be the year education makes a comeback in Arizona," arguing that the institution of the temporary sales-tax hike puts a big pile of new money into the schools. Sounds great, dunnit?

I hate to pop your bubble, editor, but you missed a crucial factor in the basis of your optimism. Before the sales-tax initiative, and to a large extent anticipating its passage, the Legislature, directed by Gov Brewer, slashed the state budget by 2 billion clams, including cutting education funding, by far the largest budget category, back to the 2006 level. The new sales tax is meant to replace most of that funding, but it only brings us back to less than zero. From a funding standpoint, our education system is therefore at least a little worse off this year and in the coming years than its already parlous state.

Even that depends on new sales-tax revenues meeting the Governor's optimistic projections. State budget cuts and the 1070 controversy are playing hob with tourism and conventions, and the construction industry is still on life support. LD1 Rep Lucy Mason is not optimistic that the sales tax will pull the ed budget back up: "We hope that it can even out, but more than likely that's not gonna happen."

I'm willing to allow that the editor simply does not understand what the Governor and Legislature were doing with the budget. It was confusing, after all, like the shell game it was meant to be. But one would hope that the editor of a daily newspaper would be a little more on the ball about something so important to our community.

The Incredible Invisible Dems, Greens and Libs

Following up on a week in which the three Republicans vying for the two LD1 House seats appeared on the front page every day, we have another piece by Joanna surveying Republicans for CD1 on a question that they are bound to agree on. We'll get to that.

I don't think Joanna's the problem, rather the headline writer who persists in implying that no one other than Republicans exist. Today's "CD1 GOP candidates reflect on federal health care legislation" again omits the "primary" qualifier that would have made this a fair headline. Previously:

LD1 GOP candidates describe the legislation they'd introduce
Candidates tackle Clean Elections issue
LD1 Candidates: What should the Legislature do to help Arizona's economy?
LD1 candidates: Is SB 1070 helpful or harmful for Arizona?
State House candidates in Prescott forum Friday

This isn't rocket science. You just have to look at what you're writing and see it from the readers' standpoint. What is the plain meaning of it that the reader takes away? In all these cases, the headline says these are all the candidates, with pictures to define the list.

I'm obviously no fan of skimming the headlines and thinking you know what's going on, but it would be ridiculously naive to assert that even a majority of readers are more thorough than that. These headlines make readers dumber about the election, and if it isn't intended by the Courier editors, they're demonstrating incompetent neglect.

Wait!, I hear you cry, it's about the primaries, and there are no contested Dem nominations! Not so. We have important Dem primary votes for Secretary of State, Attorney General, Supervisor of Public Instruction and Corporation Commission, and the results of those elections will affect our lives as much or more than the LD and CD races. Will we see profile and debate pieces on them as well? Color me skeptical at this point. The Libertarian and Green candidates deserve good coverage as well, and it's the primary duty of a local paper to fairly inform voters about who and what they'll be voting on.

Now, as promised, about today's piece. Joanna, please. You're asking Republicans about the Affordable Care Act? How could their predictably uniform answers possibly help voters differentiate among them? Rather than informing voters about the candidates in a meaningful way for the primary, it's like you chose the question simply to foreshadow the discourse in the general race. It makes this article a complete waste of time, both for Republican partisans and uncommitted voters.

Next time, for gad's sake, ask about something where the party isn't in lockstep. I admit that may take a little research.

Update, Wednesday: Another one.

The birthright-citizenship thing

The next session of Congress will likely include some kerfuffle over the 14th Amendment, with much throwing of the "anchor baby" epithet.

Following up on something I wrote earlier in this space, I'm looking for the policy arguments in favor of birthright citizenship for all, including the children of illegal immigrants. I get that the 14th institutes this right, but what I'm not seeing are arguments to support why we want this right protected. Yes it's American tradition now, yes it's liberal and charitable, but I want to see a solid, cogent argument based on national interest. If you've read something like this, please post a link in the comments.

The new Republican economic catechism

"Republicans used to believe that prosperity depended upon the regular balancing of accounts -- in government, in international trade, on the ledgers of central banks and in the financial affairs of private households and businesses, too. But the new catechism, as practiced by Republican policymakers for decades now, has amounted to little more than money printing and deficit finance -- vulgar Keynesianism robed in the ideological vestments of the prosperous classes."

"This approach has not simply made a mockery of traditional party ideals. It has also led to the serial financial bubbles and Wall Street depredations that have crippled our economy. More specifically, the new policy doctrines have caused four great deformations of the national economy, and modern Republicans have turned a blind eye to each one."

-- Reagan budget director David Stockman, The New York Times, July 31

3 inmates escape from Kingman prison

"Armed and dangerous," last seen this morning at a truck stop in Flagstaff.

Must-read

Tim Rutten: "Hysterical moral panic seems an apt description for our fevered political condition"

Wiederaenders: Technology, rules grow exponentially

Tim writes,

"My parents and in-laws are from the generation for which: TV was only a dream (come true); school buses were largely non-existent because farm kids hiked to school; seeing airplanes other than the WWI variety was a rarity; male teachers always wore suits, and women wore dresses - no slacks or shorts; air conditioning was a modern convenience - mostly for the rich; and WWII triggered many forms of mechanization."

Let me point out some other aspects of your parents' generation, Tim. TV was a dream come true that they simply turned over to commercial interests without a thought as to the damage it would cause for both the medium and society. Farm kids hiked to school, and not a few died on the way. Seeing airplanes other than the WWI variety was a rarity because they hadn't been invented yet. Male teachers always wore suits and women wore dresses because the pressure to conform was so intense, the women were paid a small fraction of the men's wages for the same or more work, and they both routinely pummeled the children in their charge with sticks, convinced beyond reason that it would somehow help them learn. Air conditioning was a modern convenience, mostly for the rich, and oddly enough it still is. WWII triggered many forms of mechanization, not least the mechanization of genocide, economic oppression, and nuclear war.

Tim's nostalgia for the halcyon past ignores the gulf between classes that kept the poor forever poor, the discrimination that kept everyone but white upperclass Protestant men out of any position of power, the grinding racism and sexism, the utter disregard for worker health and safety, the flu epidemics that wiped out millions at a stroke, the barbaric conquest of poor people the world over to steal their resources, and many other blindingly obvious aspects that characterized the prewar era in the US. Go ahead and live there if you like, Tim, but for gad's sake don't try to bring it back here.

This is the problem with nostalgia. Rose-colored glasses don't change anything but how you see things, sort of.

"For today's generations, the Internet and technology have changed much of what we do and how we do it." Change the word "Internet" and that was true for your parents, and for theirs, and for theirs, Tim. Along with technology, a constant in that has been increasing population pressure, the kind that makes ten motorcycles much louder than one. And that's why we have more rules.

As long as human society has existed, we've made and enforced rules of conduct, and where there are more people, there are more rules. Tim's parents chafed at new rules and were nostalgic for their mythical past, too. Rebelling against the idea of rules is characteristic of adolescence, but, thankfully, most of us grow out of that and set to work helping ensure that the rules are fair and make sense. That's called citizenship.

Conflict sells, I guess

Not long ago, in response to something I wrote in a comment on dcourier, an anonymous commenter wrote a personal attack on me -- one of a great many I've recieved over a couple of years. This time, rather than just ignore it, I posted another comment pointing it out to the editors and challenging them on whether they were enforcing their own policy. A few hours later my complaint was posted and the offending comment was taken down.

I thought this might alert the editors to the great many personal attacks that they allow through in the comments. It's important to enforce this code, since anonymous nitwits coming on and calling people names is enough to keep a lot of people with real lives from participating. But the attack level has not apparently abated. I hear and believe that the editors still often decline to post comments without indicating they have done so, leaving us in the dark about whether they're enforcing the attack ban selectively, occasionally, or not at all.

So as an experiment, yesterday evening I posted comments on eight or ten articles, simply pointing out to the editors the clear personal attacks of previous commenters. The offenders included people at both ends of the political spectrum (although those attacking people expressing rightward opinions were pretty rare), and I simply listed them by the "comment by" title. I selected only those comments that were clearly aimed at a single person as attacks and nothing else. Examples, all from yesterday's edition:

from "Hey, Honky,"
Why you keep posting is a real mystery. You are like a one trick pony with zero analysis in any of your posts. I could post on your behalf because your views are so predictable.

from "Keith T"
Phil, It sure seems like you have an opinion on everything when it comes to the town government. What have you done for your community?

from "Poor little put-put"
Poor little put-put-Putin. He's almost as bad as donkey burro or barfut t. babbler. Oh, wait, you don't suppose...? Naah, couldn't be, right?

from "Joe Pandoli"
Keep drinking that Koolaid honky.
I don't know, or care, what flavor it is, I just know it's Red.

from "NotA Cop"
Oooh! Honky Brujo! Are we feeling picked on? Boy, are you displaying your ignorance!

from "Write Right"
Mike Mike - Do you really have the ability to be a successful business owner with those poor writing skills?? I think I'd seek a little more education before I put my pitiful writing skills on public display like that. This is a classic example of a huge part of our problem in this country, folks.

from "honky brujo"
C.R. you fall for that Fox Noise stuff everytime. Grow up and check other sources before send another inane letter to the editor.

from "Just A Thought"
Wow, Honky and Christopher* sure are sensitive! They must be two of the few who still get their "gospel" from MSNBC. C.R. was just being sarcastic to make a point. The Tea Party movement sure must be worrying you two. Just a thought.

from "Brilliance to go"
Absolute brilliance Honky. As always, we can count on you to make a ridiculous, meaningless comment. Blaming others for your problems never fixes anything.

As of this afternoon none of my comments is posted, and all the attacks are still up. Other, later comments have been posted as well.

From this I can only conclude that the editors either do not define "personal attack" the same way I do, they don't care about enforcing their own policy, or they have an overriding policy that actually favors personal attacks because they think it draws more readers or increases hit rates and subsequent ad revenue.

I'm busy with another project, but thought I'd surface for a sec and pass this on from Candace, who's fished her limit of Courier LTEs this week:

July 20, 2010 -- Dear Editor:

Your story about the Clean Elections forum on July 15 was informative . . . as far as it went. But it only went as far as the Republican candidates! The headline, Legislative candidates debate top issues in Prescott, should have been preceded by the word GOP. As it is, you implied that those were ALL the candidates.

You could have served the public better with a complete explanation of why the Citizens Clean Elections Commission ran the forum the way they did. You stated that the Commission "requires all Clean Elections candidates to attend its forums. Candidate Noel Campbell of Prescott is the only Clean Elections candidate in the three-way LD1 race." And all of that would have been true if you'd put the word "Republican" in front of LD1.

There is a Democratic candidate in this race, Lindsay Bell. She's the only Democrat running; her primary run is uncontested. The Commission is required to hold a forum wherever a Clean Elections candidate runs in a contested election. There are two seats that are up for LD1, and there are three Republican candidates, one being a Clean Elections candidate. That's why there had to be a Republican forum.

And Lindsay Bell is a Clean Elections candidate, but since (with just one candidate) the Democratic primary is uncontested, she doesn't get to appear in a forum at this time.

Sometimes it feels like the Republicans consider themselves the only show in town, but I think as Prescott's newspaper of record, you owe your readership the full story.

Candace McNulty

Followup, Thursday: The Courier does it again today.

Prescott BBQ Days

Doug doesn't mention that the entertainment at Prescott BBQ Days will include Big Daddy D and the Dynamites, but no blame for that as it's difficult to find any reference to us or other performers in the event PR materials. FYI, we're playing on Saturday, 2:30-4pm.

LWV registration event Sunday morning

The League of Women Voters, a rigorously non-partisan nonprofit dedicated for many decades to maintaining our political process by registering and informing voters, will stage a registration drive at Stepping Stones, 3343 N. Windsong in PV on Sunday, 9:30-11:30am.

The comments on the Courier's hamfisted entry about the event lead me to some concern that immigration peacocks and Tea-Party types will attempt to disrupt the process and intimidate Hispanic registrants. If you care about the integrity of our political process, you should consider showing up to provide some support for both registering voters and the League.

Dirty Water

This week the City Council takes up the issue of algae bloom in Willow and Watson Lakes as well as the state of the creeks that feed them, and following up on Cindy's story yesterday, the Courier weighs in with an editorial and an LTE from Paul Peterson.

It's not news to anyone who's paying attention that the creeks and lakes are in pretty rough shape. How anyone can think it's a good idea to swim in them is beyond me. It's also no surprise that in talking about weeds and algae, both Council and the editor are focusing on a surface symptom that speaks volumes about much bigger underlying challenges.

I forget just how long it's been, maybe thirteen or fourteen years, since the county allowed the lakes to go dry and buddy Ross and I hiked across Watson from the boat ramp to the dam. But I clearly remember how ugly it was and must remain down there. As we stepped carefully from one dinner-plate sized island of dried mud to the next, we could clearly see the black, oily muck that makes up the bottom, and we couldn't avoid the stink of sewage and noxious chemistry from decades of thoughtless dumping in the creeks and accidental discharge from the treatment plant just upstream. The sepulchral skeletons of trees stand yards deep in this filth, their crowns festooned with lost fishing tackle and garbage. There was no evidence of life till we got to the dam and its ring of dead fish. That anything at all can live and grow in that toilet of a lake still amazes me.

But rather than take that opportunity to dig out and clean up the disgusting mess, the county just filled it up again and kept taking parking fees from swimmers and boaters. Beyond making it cleaner and safer, removing what has to be between ten and twenty feet of toxic crap from the bottom would substantially increase the lake's water storage capacity in the face of chronic drought.

Upstream, as we saw after the last big winter storm, we have cracked, broken and poorly secured sewer lines crossing the creeks. We also have huge amounts of lawn and garden fertilizers washing off into them. In every other freshwater system in this country, this sort of pollution is the most important source of nitrogen feeding the algal blooms, but the editor fails to mention it. I mention it here as one thing every homeowner can do to help: ditch the chemicals (or, for you literalists, stop ditching them) and seek out healthier ways to make your home look nice. (Hint: It's cheaper, too!)

It bears repeating that Prescott has the largest concentration of regularly flowing creeks in the state, and they are a big part of what makes this such a beautiful place to live. It's long past time we as a community halted the abuse and began investing seriously in restoring and maintaining their health, and not just on the surface.

Editorial: Feds say one thing and do another

The unnamed Courier editor writes, "Often when a child "misbehaves" in the eyes of adults, it's because a real need is falling on deaf ears." What s/he doesn't write is that more often, the child is motivated to misbehave by imaginary fears, ignorance and immature thinking. That's exactly what's happening with 1070 and today's editorial.

"So, where have all these agencies been?" bawls the editor. Answer: Daddy has been working, honey, he can't pay attention to you right now. Our federal agencies have been working the real problem, not the imaginary ones. Southern border enforcement is getting more resources now than ever, by far.

"How many of their people have (set) foot in Arizona to observe firsthand the problems challenging the state because of illegal immigration?" Answer: They're doing it, sweetie, you just didn't notice them. Most of the decision-makers have indeed at least toured the border, and commanders on the ground are certainly reporting up the chain. Their top commander, Secretary Napolitano, was lately the governor here. If they don't see the problems you expect them to, isn't that a clue that maybe your ideas need rethinking?

"As for the one we know of - Janet Napolitano, our former governor - we can only wonder why what she says and does now is so different (from) what she did before becoming secretary of Homeland Security." Response: Don't fib, baby, Daddy doesn't like it. As governor she repeatedly vetoed previous versions of 1070 because they were equally illegal, and refused to deploy state resources illegally even as she repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more resources in response to the public concern whipped up by Republicans. Now she is allocating and managing more border resources as she advocates striking down 1070. The inconsistency escapes me.

"Why has it taken Arizona's measure to get the federal government's attention?" Answer: Daddy was already doing it, honey, you didn't see him. Responding to right-wing outcry dating back to early in the Bush years, the Obama administration was ramping up border enforcement long before Senator Pearce (R-Bizarro World) got his legislative temper tantrum signed by the Accidental Governor.

In the midst of all this crying and cracked framing, the editor pulls up a side issue: "What too many refuse to accept is the fact that Arizona is not a racist state. People here do not want to round up illegal immigrants, most notably Hispanics, and walk them down the plank." Sensitive about that, are we? I agree, Arizona is not a racist state. That should not be taken to mean that Arizona is home to no racists, either on our streets or in our houses of state. The editor can't pull the "some of my best friends are Mexican" ploy while supporting a law that specifically targets brown-skinned people both legal and illegal for harassment.

I'll bet the editor would have written that Prescott loved its many Chinese-American residents, too, as they were being run out of town in the '40s. You can't ignore the racist and political motivations for this phony issue, editor, and maintain any pretense of objectivity or maturity about it.

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.